Egypt Kid

 Egypt Kid

Hari Potet was a homeless Egyptian kid from the block in Cairo. Every day he lay in an abandoned busted open room working on his tablet. Everyone on the block knew him as the homeless kid that wanted to be famous.

The construction workers every day would tell him ‘Come work with us, Hari Potet. We pay three pesos a day. You can get a room and eat. And be a real man.’

No thank you, he would tell them. ‘You’ll see. When I’m finished my tablet Ima be huge. The next Amotemopep.’ 

‘We all KNOW your story!,’ they yelled, weary-eyed and deranged. ‘Come work and make a real living.’

‘Not everyone in Cairo knows my story,’ he said, embarrassed but stubbornly.

The wise woman from the block would cry and bring him Tacos every day. Some threatened to tell the pharaoh on her and cutoff her welfare checks.

Yeruet the street paver once lost his mind. He couldn’t stand the thought of going to work every day while Hari Potet lay around every day entertaining people for scraps.

He had to be restrained. ‘You think you’re Tuthantino? Tuthantino was a man. He wrote about female heroes!’

‘I write about female heroes.’

‘Who are what, Disnep princesses? You’re a joke. You’re so 4330 B.C.’

‘You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You don’t even know my tablet.’

‘Your hieroglyphics are crap. You’re gonna end up the cow legs we saw at the big tablet last week.’

Hari growled. ‘No I am not. I am not! I am not a cow legs. I saw the same tablet. I’m the rooster head!’

Yeruet got discouraged and left him alone. He lost sleep that night, went manic and some say it was the end of his career as a street paver.’

Two hood kids burst out of line from their walk home from school, and jumped onto Hari’s bed platform as he was laying about eating humus and drinking. The girl grabbed his tablet, ‘what’s this homie. A board game? This ain’t no board game homie.’ She chuckled to the boy as she brandished the tablet in the air as if to smash it on the ground. The boy seemed poised to beat Hari up. An old lady cried in the distance, ‘you see he’s not so strong!’

Hari shed tears and turned on the charm. ‘Why you gotta do me like that? I’m not against you!’

The boy looked at the girl, confused. Hari continued. ‘You don’t like me, is that it. Do you realize I like you? I always liked you.’

The boy laughed, feeling guilty. The girl relinquished the tablet, and they sat down next to him.

‘Why you hate me? It’s cause I’m white isn’t it.’

‘You ain’t white.’

‘I’m a quarter white.’

They laughed.

Hari waved his hands in the air. ‘Look, if you leave me alone you can have some beer and I’ll let you read my story.’ 

They agreed, and so he did.

Three years later the tablet was finished, and at the big premiere Hari Potet stood before a sea of people being interviewed by the paparazzi.

‘You went from being homeless to a world-class director. People are saying this tablet is hot. What do you have to say to all the people who said you wouldn’t make it.’

‘I have nothing against them. Some people don’t understand that not everyone’s calling follows on the beaten path. I had to finish my tablet at all costs. I wanted my mom to see me successful while she was still here.’

‘What do you say about allegations you gave beer to minors while you were homeless in East Cairo.’

‘What?’

A year later Hari Potet was convicted of corruption of a minor and sentenced to banishment from Cairo. There was some police altercation with gangsters and his tablet was destroyed in the crossfire.

The End.

AtilA