Strings - Capstone Amal Al Shamsi (1)

across the soiled mattress. Hamza quickly looked up, half-expecting someone to spot someone
just leaving the area.
“What are you doing?” one of the boys asked.
There was a sharp stench as Hamza edged closer to read one of the notes, curiously. He
jolted back and moved his sleeve over his mouth and nose.
Raed picked up a wax stub from nearby, a kind of makeshift candle. “Look at this, what is
this like a memorial?”
“Eugh, put that down,” Faisal told him, repulsed.
He dropped it and it rolled down the pavement.
Hamza followed suit and moved away, pulling at Raed’s elbow. “That’s a dead body.”
Salem froze before nodding his head. “That would make sense.” Where they were
standing, where the rolled-up corpse lay, was across from a funeral home.
“Is no one going to bring it in?” Hamza asked.
“Probably a homeless person,” Faisal said.
They quietly shuffled away. They made it to the corner of the park before Raed stopped
to retch. Salem made them find a bodega to get the poor guy gum before they could continue
home.
“That’s a sign, as sure as it could come,” Faisal said. He was talking about leaving New
York.
Raed was frowning, pushing another gum into his mouth. Hamza felt disgusted,
although he also felt bad.
“Don’t you think?” Faisal asked.
Hamza had wanted to say that that could be said about everything, if Faisal was looking
for a sign that he should go home then he would find it everywhere. He wanted to say that he
was being selfish, for leaving them. But he didn’t.
“Faisal, you are not just tormenting yourself but everyone else,” Hamza told him.
They dropped Faisal off at the apartment, giving him all the grocery bags, before they
continued forward. Over sticky fried chicken, they talked about selfishness.
Salem visited the funeral center the next day to pay for the burial of the mattress person,
and came back angry. The woman was ready to go through with it for a flat charge of a large
amount of money, the exact figures of which Salem would not disclose.
“Just tell us,” Hussain said.
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