u/SilverLie5437

The tall man behind the window in the door to the staircase stooped down to watch us play. I think I was the first and probably the only kid to notice him. Being the second oldest in the group at the age of 13 came with its own share of responsibilities - you had to watch out for your band of brothers and painstakingly keep up with the reputation you had built across the different parents who treated you like you were one of their own. I could make out the vague silhouette of a face and hands pressing against the window but the image was featureless. I felt my hair stand up. I never saw him again.

Basement 3 was always a peculiar floor. It housed the white car in the dark corner that lay abandoned forever with various signs of "I was here" and obscene imagery etched onto the dust. Once my friend pulled at the door under a dare and it opened. Near a section of the basement lay a graveyard of cycles both new and old. We never saw another kid outside of our gang come down to take his or her cycle. For all practical purposes it looked perpetually abandoned save for our beautiful, well-maintained and gorgeous cycles at the end of the section with flickering lights. I had a foldable one that I bought on an offer from Karama. It was plastered with an array of stickers I collected through various points in my life and I loved it very much.

We owned the night. To be precise, the evening before our curfew but back then the streets would look deserted enough for you to not notice a difference. We had mapped the place several times before, drawing by hand on paper like we're charting uncharted territory. We named places. We knew almost every grocery, every park, every secret hiding spot, every unfinished foundation of a stalled construction project. We would play all kinds of sports on the abandoned parking lots. At our biggest, our gang comprised of 13 members. Usually the number keeps drifting around with the exception of 6-7 constant ones. We would play football on the concrete with socks in the burning sun. Blisters, torn skin, ankle sprains. At that age, you knew how to push. Push against the heat, push against the pain, push against the defender on the other team and then you could probably take a lousy shot at the goal. I was great though.

Sometimes the ball would fall into the unfinished foundation and we would scale down an old rickety ladder and split amongst the steel pipes jutting out of the ground to find it. Getting up and down the ladder would terrify us each time. But it's a special UEFA edition ball we won against a group of British kids who challenged us when we were hanging out at the park so brave the storms we must. That foundation is now a Tiger apartment complex with an overpriced wellness center and a store that sells candles and soaps that would cost my kidneys.

Our building used to be the biggest one in the neighborhood before getting sandwiched between newer, bigger ones. We were a diverse bunch. My first Arabic tutor was a stay-at-home Pakistani auntie who lived down the corridor and befriended my stay-at-home Indian mom while they were hauling garbage bags through the chute. In fact, the mom group at the building is one of the only few factions our gang feared. Veto power and all that. My floor had a Jordanian kid who joined us at the swimming pool sometimes and a Thai kid who would run around shirtless but score the most beautiful goals ever. And throw a few glass bottles at the streets sometimes. We would have nerf battles and Just Dance tournaments and Diwali celebrations where we went to every door in the building and offered snacks. The first time I fell down trying to ride a bicycle an old man ran up to me to help. My dad worked from early morning till night to support our family so a lot of my core memories involve kind strangers and sometimes unkind ones. He watched me try for 15 mins and get a hang of it, and he patted my back and left. I remember heading back to the grocery after to grab a reward for myself in the form of some gummy bears.

It was THE grocery. The grocery we would raid all the time, where we would get special discounts and chat about our plans for the day as we browsed for snacks. Ashraf uncle was called a delivery boy but he had a 1 year old child and talked to his wife back home using the Hello cards you could buy back then. The grocery doesn't exist now obviously, which meant no memory of him among the residents who later moved there after all of us moved out due to the increasing rents. The local shops and cafes were replaced with chain restaurants and supermarkets. The security guard who smiles at you gets replaced by one who verifies your apartment number 21 times before letting you in.

Places are people and people are places. In Dubai, both were transient. But that taught us to live in the moment and not worry about the past or the future. But sometimes some things have a peculiar way of haunting us long after it's gone. In the flesh and in your heart. A little part of my knee still juts out after the freak injury we had at the ground. The streets and I talk to each other wordlessly sometimes. I pull up the concrete like it's a great black carpet and under it I find abandoned memories. My first heartbreak. My first fit of senseless anger. The first time I ran around in joy. It knows me still but I cannot recognize it anymore.

Last summer, I went to the neighborhood etched into my mind as home but I cannot call it that anymore. I searched for my friends and the Pakistani auntie and the Thai kid and Ashraf uncle but I couldn't find anyone anymore. A family friend of ours still stayed in the old building. Once when we visited them I asked them to excuse me for a while and went down to Basement 3.

There is no white car and there are no bicycles. The lights were fixed and the place was so silent I could hear myself breath deeply. I realized I stood at approximately the same spot I stood at years ago. I looked across and walked to the door to the staircase. I opened it and pressed the switch that illuminates the space for a few moments before dying into darkness. I pressed it again. I faced a tall slab of a perfectly uniform shade of grey concrete that signified the end of the staircase at the bottom of the building. I stared at it for a few seconds, shut the door and went back to the elevator.

There is no tall man behind the window in the door to the staircase stooping down to watch us anymore, and I'm the only one who remembers.