The Jewish Neighbor Read Free

privacy, like harmful, cancerous rays.
She appreciated the ability to walk in public harboring dark secrets without a
nosy neighbor trying to force her open.
    When
the woman with the dog had disappeared to a mere dot, Umayma scanned the park
and the playground until she was certain both were empty. She sat on the swing
and shot her legs in the air to gain momentum. Almost instantly her body became
one with the swing as together they drew imaginary arcs in the air.
    The
sky above was muddled with dark clouds and the threat of rain. Frosty wind
caressed her face and caused her eyes to tear. And it didn’t take long for
those weather-induced teardrops to usher in a genuine fit of desperate crying.
She hated her life. She despised herself. But most of all she loathed the
injustice of her predicament. If only I was born rich. Umayma didn’t
want to waste these precious solitary moments doing something she did every day
in bed. So she forced herself to focus on anything else to bring a smile to her
face. Like that one dollar bill in her purse.
    Thunder
erupted and it stunned her. She remembered stories of people being struck by
lighting and dying. If only she was that lucky.
    Voices
coming from behind and across the park snapped Umayma out of her reverie. She
tilted her head and saw the figures of two men moving slowly but conversing a
lot louder and with more animation than what the English are usually prone to.
Their tone of voice reminded her of the drunken youths who sometimes crawl by
her house late on weekend nights as they emerged from nearby pubs.
    Umayma
decelerated her swinging, and sat quietly waiting for the young men to pass her
by. Praying she’d remain invisible. She wasn't doing anything wrong, but the
sight of a grown foreign woman in a head scarf swinging alone could be
provocative for some. And Umayma hated confrontations. She stared at her
low-priced sneakers purchased at a supermarket and counted away the seconds,
hoping their voices would fade as they walked in the opposite direction. But as
they grazed forward on the grass, their rambling only grew louder until they
stopped abruptly. She had her back turned to them, but she sensed they couldn’t
have been more than a few feet away.
    “Hey,
look at this,” one of them whispering to the other. Umayma’s shoulder’s tightened and her heart drummed a little faster. Her eyes blinked
rapidly and uncontrollably. Without thinking, she started to recite small,
protective verses from the Quran under her breath.
    Their
feet shuffled closer as they circled around and came to stand in front of her.
She looked up to face them.
    Two men in their mid-twenties. One tall
and bulked with muscles, the other shorter and stout. Both white as
white can be, wearing army fatigues and black boots, with shaved heads,
tattoos, body piercings, and ice-cold blue eyes.
    “Excuse
me. May I ask you a question?” the big one said in a mock professorial tone
with steam coming out of his mouth.
    Umayma
nodded.
    “Do
you understand and read the English language, dear?” he said reverting now to
what she assumed was his normal cockney drawl.
    Umayma
paused to think before she responded. “I was an English teacher in my country,”
she mumbled, projecting a nervous, desperate smile. She had worked hard to
eliminate her Arabic accent, but now under stress whatever pronunciation tricks
she had learned were all but forgotten.
    “Jolly
well then. I suppose you must have seen all the graffiti near the tube stations
and on Archway. Do you happen to remember what most of them say?”
    Umayma
shook her head.
    They
took a few steps towards her until they were mere inches from her face. Enough to hear the anger buzzing on their skin and smell the
alcohol fuming on their breaths.
    “They
say ‘Go the fuck back to where you came from you fucking cunts’.”
    The
other guy broke out in mad, hyena laughter then joined in slurred, drunken
stupor.
    “Why
the fuck do you pajama mamas and your sand