Throwing Sparks Read Online Free PDF

Hamdan would leap to his feet and bound into the twisting, rubbish-strewn alleys, holding his nose against the putrid stench and muttering to himself.
    When he reached Masawi’s dead poultry, he had to cover his mouth to quell his surging nausea. Simultaneously he would take in short breaths of air to keep him going as he hurtled towards the west side of the city, with its gardens, street lights, neon signs, villas and luxury cars, as well as a plethora of construction sites, opulent shopping malls, entertainment centres, hospitals and banks. Once there, he would take a long, cleansing breath to fill his lungs to their maximum capacity, and then invariably exclaim, ‘At last, I’ve made it to Paradise!’
    The letters of the alphabet exhausted him, in the way they were so similar and yet so different from one another. He sought help from a neighbour who attempted to make the Arabic alphabet accessible to a mind that knew only the configurations of domino pieces and playing cards. Hamdan could never get through this daily rote without being struck by the difference between the letters noon and jeem , and was completely mystified by the notion that some words that began with one of those letters could have a synonym that began with the other.
    He voiced this observation one day at the neighbourhood hang-out, where some men and boys had gathered to discuss what could be done to stop raw sewage from spilling into the alleyways and to put a decisive end to the stench. Hamdan jumped right into the discussion with an idea he believed was unique and that would solve all their problems.
    ‘Our situation might improve,’ he said, ‘if we changed the name of our neighbourhood.’
    This caused an immediate outburst by the assembled men who mocked his suggestion and harangued him.
    Hamdan held his ground. ‘Just listen first,’ he insisted, ‘and then decide.’
    The men quietened down and grudgingly gave him a chance to speak.
    ‘There is a paradise of riches a stone’s throw from our neighbourhood,’ he began, pointing in the direction of the Palace. ‘Why is that?’ he asked them. ‘Can you tell me why?’
    There was a moment’s silence.
    Hamdan answered his own question. ‘Because there is Paradise ,’ he said triumphantly, stressing the Arabic word Jannah . His finger still stretching westward, he continued, ‘There, it is Jannah , a word that begins with the letter jeem . And as everyone knows, jeem occurs early in the alphabet – and Allah always starts at the beginning of the alphabet when bestowing His blessings.’
    Upon hearing God’s name used this way, some of the men started to shout, warning him that this was close to blasphemy.
    Hamdan was undeterred. ‘But we are in the Firepit , don’t you see?’ Again he stressed the Arabic word Naar and his finger shot down to indicate the ground under their feet. ‘And as everyone knows, noon , which is the first letter in Naar , is near the end of the alphabet. So we get nothing from Him but hardship.’
    This time most of the men shouted, some in loud protestations of their virtue and others, louder still, admonished Hamdan for his blasphemy. A few, however, nodded and liked the contrast he had drawn between the two sides of the road.
    They brought up the suggestion in subsequent get-togethers, albeit sarcastically at first. But gradually Hamdan’s names were adopted by the residents of the neighbourhood. From then on, they referred to the western flank as ‘Paradise’ and the eastern one as the ‘Firepit’.
    But Hamdan did not know that the word ‘firepit’ had a synonym beginning with the letter jeem – jehannam, or hell – nor, for that matter, that the synonym for ‘paradise’ was na’eem , which began with the letter noon that was closer to the end of the alphabet. Residents of the neighbourhood had no need for knowledge beyond what they already knew in their bones: that they were burning up inside a raging inferno and that this was reason