Strings - Capstone Amal Al Shamsi (1)

Get Lost
Hamza didn’t need to look at the reflection in the window. He could see the redness of
his eyes like rosy vignettes around the curves of his eyeballs, framing his sight. He peered in
between the sore redness as the subway rattled along the Q, allowing his lids to fall halfway,
lashes tickling the skin beneath.
There came a faint thudding, a kind of uncoordinated knocking. Hamza looked up
curiously. Two teenage boys were leaning against the doors, elbows knocking into the glass. The
scene felt ominous. One of them angled his head to itch his scalp against the corner of the
doorframe. A smell wafted towards Hamza. He could only think of green, the insides of a
compost bin or an overturned meadow.
“Dude, dude, help,” the boy called out breathlessly to his counterpart teen. He had half of
his face hidden beneath his coat.
His friend smirked, moving a lazy finger up before hissing as he touched the glass.
Twisting it to one side and then to the other, the boy studied his finger. He then looked up at the
other, who had not yet succeeded in breaching the glass seal. “Was that hot or cold? I can’t
remember,” he said softly.
The first boy exhaled and a small stream of smoke slid out of his nostrils. He swiftly
clapped a hand over his mouth, as if in shock.
“What? What? Come on, man!” the second cried, holding his hand to his chest as his
friend squinted at him.
Hamza stretched his neck to see past them, the train was skipping a stop but it was no
matter. He jolted back into his seat when the two boys erupted into hysterical laughter. The
second boy dipped his head into his friend’s coat, coughing.
The smell of hash enveloped Hamza into a distant memory, of a woman who would laugh
when he coughed it out. He would curse, say that it was just a cigarette gone rotten, all to hide
that he was just bad at smoking. Besides, all that it made her do was close her eyes and pretend
to get to her feet only to fall onto him and laugh helplessly. They would stand in front of the
river, counting the miserable pigeons. Hamza would say how he used to pick birds out of the sky
in the desert while she would recoil and tell him off. Then, she’d laugh and admit that maybe
some of them deserved it. Before them, the ducks flapped their wings but stayed put. They
stayed like that, as long as he could remember, her head in the crook of his arm, leaning away to
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