The Coin
Yasmin Zaher
Yasmin Zaher, whose debut novel, The Coin, was published by Catapult in July. (Credit: Willy Somma)
It’s strange where we start stories. I might as well have started from my birth if I was going to be proper and methodical. But the dirt is not a metaphor, I really saw it. In my ear canals, inside my nose, around my ankles. Do I disgust you? I don’t look dirty, do I?
One day, I began to notice that my body was dirtier than usual. It was a pleasant day, in late September, and I went for a long walk after Franklin, wandering down some streets that were neither numbered nor lettered. I wasn’t afraid of being lost, there was always a cab around the corner, and when I felt that I’d had enough, the sun was setting, I raised my hand in the air and a taxi took me home. I entered my apartment and decided to take a shower. I did this naturally and with no intentions, I was only doing what felt good.
Before I got in the water, I remembered that I had a Turkish hammam loofah in my suitcase. I brought it out, stepped into the shower, slipped my hand inside the loofah, and began scrubbing. The bathroom was small, the bathtub short.
First, my right hand scrubbed my left arm. It burned. The water was hot, my heart began to race and it gave me the energy to continue. As I said, it was a pleasant day and perhaps in my boredom I had found a way to make it exciting. I closed my eyes and rubbed as hard and fast as I could, until my muscle began to stiffen, which wasn’t long, I’d be exaggerating if I said it took more than thirty seconds. As you can see, I’m a small woman, I wait for others to open doors for me.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the miniature gray snakes. They fell to my feet, three or four of them.
I looked at them and immediately I knew. I mean, I had seen them before, but not like this. A heart-faced woman had once scrubbed me in a Turkish hammam and I saw them there too, wiggling in the splash on marble. But the snakes of New York were scary and ghoulish, like my own voice in the mouth of a total stranger.
I took the dirt to heart. I knew that the snakes were not just a material fact but that they were a sign of something very bad, something terrifying that was happening to my body.
The loofah was a harmless-looking thing that in reality was wicked and rough. I continued, scrubbing my entire body, peeling off the dead skin. I told myself that this was a death that I could manage, if only I worked hard enough, if I stayed clean and organized. But I had no stamina, and when I switched, left to right, I did not see any snakes. My left side is not as strong. And you will see, as I proceed, that this is a condition of asymmetry. The left is cleaner, but it is weak. The right is strong and covered in filth.
The snakes lay there in the bathtub. I bent over, picked them up, and threw them all in the small garbage can in the bathroom. I didn’t like the sight of them, just lying there, so I dug my hand inside the garbage and stirred it, flipping them as one flips a tender risotto.
I got out of the shower and tiptoed back to my bedroom. It must have been dark out, yes, I remember it was. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise. I didn’t have a problem with my neighbors seeing me naked from the bedroom window, but the kitchen window faces Fulton Street, and I didn’t walk naked by that window at night. It’s a good area, a great location. But how do I say it? Working class, going to and from work, always tired, and I didn’t want to be seen by them.
I’m just going to say it. I didn’t want poor people to see my body. Their desperation scared me.
That evening, I went to dinner at Sasha’s. He also lived in the neighborhood. Do you know the tall clock tower, the one that looks like a dick? Sasha was in real estate and a few years back he had even bought the small building across from Kushner’s 666, which, by my advice, he later leased to Salvatore Ferragamo. But Sasha was very humble about it. When people asked him he said he was in real estate, and you wouldn’t know, he could have been just another Eastern European broker.
I wore a dress by McQueen, my arms and legs were like polished bronze, but underneath my dress everything else was dirty, beginning to rot.
I couldn’t sleep at Sasha’s. All night I thought about my dirty body and the place I could not clean. It was behind me, between my shoulder blades, the only part of my body I could not touch, nor fully see, the part of my body which must have been the dirtiest, because I couldn’t get to it with the Turkish hammam loofah.
From The Coin, copyright © 2024 by Yasmin Zaher. Reprinted by permission of Catapult.
