The boy, who can turn a phone into a spinner

 
Khaled is standing next to the garage door, where Aymen is trying to spackle his work's imperfection with the help of a tube of joint compound.
Khaled captures my gaze: he would like to tell me a weird story, I hear him say.
His grandmother, the grandmother in Syria that is, has an old green phone - his fingers make the dial plate turn -  
She would always give him the phone to play with it. He would take it apart and - even though this is hard to believe - he would turn the phone into a spinner.
I am puzzled. Seems as if a dial plate is something extraordinary.
Slowely, Khaled opens his right hand. I see the brake of one of the asylum bicycles Ali detached a few minutes ago with the help of a saw, when its constant frictional resistance at the front wheel would annoy him.
"Do you think that maybe I could turn the brake into another spinner?"
I think that is a huge challenge. A wonderful challenge but not impossible; at least not for someone who made a green phone spin.
The question whether or not the green phone did belong to his grandmother who lived on Bagdad street in Damascus where the family would harbor when their house was bombed, remains unspoken.

Khaled