The Overcoat

The façade of the railway station shimmers in late afternoon heat. It's the first warm day of an otherwise cool, cloudy English spring. Business commuters crowd the platform. Shirtsleeves furled, ties loosened, jackets, raincoats slung over shoulders they await the arrival of the Liverpool bound train. The onward leg is going to be packed. Many will end up standing. At least until Crewe. There's also a sprinkling of tourists: Italians, Germans. A group of American students are also waiting for the train.

Noticeably, Jamaluddin Wahab Mangoosh, a young man standing at the periphery of the throng, has not shed any clothing. Not even slackened the tightly buttoned overcoat with turned up collar he wears. Tall and gaunt, the young man's lank, dark hair drapes like a scarf about the material encircling his neck. His pale, chiseled face peers out at the world as though from between parted curtains. His few friends know him as Jama. A quiet, pious individual they will tell you. One who keeps himself to himself, to the point of anonymity.

Conscious of the curious stares, being clothed for a winter's day in sticky heat, he barely resists doing something other than stand motionless-like a statue-as he's been instructed to do. Though mindful of the command, he cannot help but worry a frayed edge of the garment's lapel, in the hope such fidgeting gives the impression the overcoat hides some kind of neck brace-a plausible enough reason, he feels, for not taking the thing off. But the stares continue and the stress of enduring them intensifies, such that he finds himself forced to lower his eyes. To the concrete slab he happens to be standing upon. To whirls left long ago by a builder's trowel. To a flattened cigarette end. A brightly colored chocolate bar wrapper.

As Jama takes in the trash littered platform, and his planted feet astride it, he recalls his mother speaking about the overcoat. About over the years being worn by his father, and by others within the Mangoosh family: ceremonial events, weddings, even funerals. He remembers too the navy blue garment hanging from a hook on his bedroom door. In certain lights his boyish imagination filled the overcoat with a ghoulishly hung body. Now his body occupies that space. In circumstances so unspeakably dreadful that back then-even in the most horrific of nightmares-would never have entered his head. He remembers the garment being used as an eiderdown on cold nights, daring himself to extend an arm outside its inner warmth; insert his tiny hand into a seemingly bottomless pocket. Or of the overcoat being held by his mother. Ghostly lit one frigid night, slowly releasing it's warming heaviness upon his bed.

Despite his need to vent the stupefying layer of heat trapped around his body, he dare not take off the overcoat. Or even loosen it about his neck. It's not that he would have found either task difficult. Or that he would not have hesitated a second to shed it had his circumstances been normal. To undo the shiny black buttons would be simple enough. Although the one fastened high up beneath his chin, may not be so easy. This button differs from those below it in having a thinner, curved edge that complete with a bulging knot of hard twine, now presses irritatingly against his windpipe.

The discomfort forces him to risk hooking a finger over the top edge of the lapel. To ease the pressure at that spot. For fear he might choke. He does this despite being aware that the lightest of tugs at the material, or excessive jerkiness of movement, might generate enough static electricity within the woolen folds to jeopardize the holy order rite for which he's been ordained.

To minimize movement, he'd walked painstakingly slowly to the platform from the beat up Toyota that dropped him off at the station. So anxious was he to avoid jolting the fabric, he adopted a kind of foot dragging gait, causing many travelers to stop and stare. Arrayed in such heavy clothing, it appeared he was putting on some kind of sarcastic comedy act. Others might have supposed the tentative motion not humorous at all. The bloated appearance, the need to shuffle in that strange way, was possibly the result of a defect in the youth's skeletal structure.