Cloudburst

“I feel a hand on my shoulder and before I know what’s happening I’m pulled under a grape-seller’s tent. My apparent savior looks at me like I’m crazy: what on earth was I doing out there in the rain? I give him an obliging smile and he offers me a cigarette. My tentmates, though dripping wet, don’t appear the least bit inconvenienced. Perhaps they’d rather not be stuck here, sure, but they’re happy to be stuck here with each other.”

All day the sky has been a wash of grayish-blue, the wind cold and wet and promising storm. Long shadows fall on the street market, a snaking commerce hidden in a labyrinth of pink-and-yellow apartment blocks like a well-kept secret. At street level, things are colorful and lively – peddlers hawk their wares beneath red tents and umbrellas; cooks serve up kebabs, breaded fish, fried rolls, boiled corncobs, dumplings, foul-smelling tofu; throngs of shoppers and wanderers clog the broken sidewalks and pavement, making misery for the few drivers foolish enough to attempt these routes. But up above, rainclouds darken the apartment walls and make strange shadows over the corroded window-bars.

I’m inspecting a rack of secondhand shirts when the first few drops fall. They hit the pavement like warning shots, and crowds disperse almost immediately. Just in time: the drizzle turns to downpour only moments later.

Most everyone has squeezed themselves into impossible spaces to avoid the rain. Tents that moments ago barely covered a few crates of fruit now shelter a dozen or more people. People squeeze together, chat, share cigarettes.

I feel a hand on my shoulder and before I know what’s happening I’m pulled under a grape-seller’s tent. My apparent savior looks at me like I’m crazy: what on earth was I doing out there in the rain? I give him an obliging smile and he offers me a cigarette. My tentmates, though dripping wet, don’t appear the least bit inconvenienced. Perhaps they’d rather not be stuck here, sure, but they’re happy to be stuck here with each other.

A young boy sloshes down the street, exploding with laughter, while his mother tries to catch him. She’s holding a sheet of plastic over her head to stay dry (it isn’t working), and though I can’t understand what she’s screaming at her child, her message is fairly clear.

The drainage in this neighborhood is inadequate and before long the street has become a minor flood. Loose paving stones and uneven cracks give the flood little rapids.

The rain slackens to a drizzle. We emerge from our tents and carry on like nothing has happened, nevermind that we have to tiptoe through an inch of water. But the torrent returns a minute or two later, stronger now, and so thick that I can scarcely see across the way. I run to the nearest market stall; this one is selling potatoes. I recognize one or two of my companions from the grape stand.

But this tent is less steady than the others and a few of us try to set it right. Eventually we’re forced to pin one of its edges to a nearby pickup truck with a paving brick, which someone has yanked out of the sidewalk. It’s only a temporary solution, though, and at least one crate of potatoes is ruined. The potato vendor, an old man with checkerboard skin, doesn’t seem to mind, and for a moment we’re hypnotized by the huge roar of water thundering down around us.

Standing next to me is a woman about my age. She’s wearing a yellow dress and a pink jacket with flared shoulders. Her false eyelashes and makeup have fared poorly in the rain, though her beauty is natural and unaffected. She speaks some English, and, taking me for an English speaker, introduces herself. Her name is Ruby, she’s three years my junior, and she sells real estate in a neighboring district.

We have a short conversation while we wait for the rain. Finally she tells me she wants to travel, live in Australia or America for a few years, but her mother has forbidden it: the outside world is full of dangers.

The conversation drifts, and soon the rain lets up again. But now we know better: we don’t stray far from the tents. And of course the rain starts and stops many more times over the next half-hour, and the market becomes a large and disorganized game of musical chairs.

I lose Ruby at some point. She was explaining her religious beliefs – she’s one of a growing number of Christians in a country not known for its Christian population – when the last downpour began, but now our paths are uncrossed.

I’ve found a new shelter; this one is selling nuts and beans. Next door, a fishmonger is having a run of bad luck. His tent is set up beneath a downspout, which by now is dumping cascades of water onto his badly leaking canvas. Worse, a sizable heap of his inventory is dead and soaking in a nearby puddle. Some kind of flatfish – I at first mistook them for discarded trash bags. The man shakes his head in shame, but there’s nothing to be done about it.

Through the gray sheet of rain I just barely make out Ruby’s yellow dress a few stalls over. She waves, and in the next intermission we meet in the shelter of a watermelon stand. We exchange phone numbers, though I lose her in the rain shortly after. I’ll never see her again.

Another lull in the rain. I step out into the street and the scene brings to mind a few lines from Swift: “Filth of all hues and odors seem to tell / What street they sailed from, by their sight and smell.” Hunks of raw meat, unidentifiable vegetables, plastic bags, a fish or two, dirty diapers – I try to guess where all the flotsam came from. In another puddle floats a single playing card. Two of hearts.

A warm haze forms over the market, only barely clear enough to see through. In the middle of the road some kids are making good use of their newly-bought water guns. Along an adjacent sidestreet a couple of young prostitutes poke their heads out of a hair salon. A shirtless fellow with fresh massage bruises smokes a cigarette in a serpentine alley. A man with crippled legs is looking for shelter; he pulls himself along on a small wheeled board.

I don’t see Ruby anywhere, so I tiptoe out of this backstreet labyrinth and head home, waiting for the rain to start again. I step carefully; the water has made the streets’ imperfections doubly dangerous, and I’m on the lookout for the sometimes broken, sometimes missing manhole covers common in this neighborhood.

When the rain finally returns I duck beneath a shop awning. Under an adjacent awning stands a gentleman who looks rather like me. He’s waiting on the rain, same as I am. We share a bemused smirk for a few moments, happy to be caught on either side of a strange mirror.

But I soon give up and march straight into the torrent. Before he disappears behind the curtain of water, my neighbor shakes his head at me, as though I’ve just marched blindly toward a steep cliffside. I smile, wave goodbye, and let the curtain close behind me. In a moment the neighborhood vanishes.