Friendly Fire

by Alaa Al Aswany

  When my thinking got to this point of clarity, I was afraid I’d forget what I’d understood, or that less important thoughts would obliterate it later, so I got an exercise book out of my desk and wrote on the first page, “I have just realized that I have fallen captive to the spirit of the West, for the more certain I become of how useless we are, the more their spirit appears to me to be running over with amazing potential.”

  12

  The mystery of my passion now solved, my infatuation with the pictures inevitably began to fade. The pictures were merely my path to the Beloved and there were many other paths that would bring me closer. Why shouldn’t I live this spirit of theirs instead of searching for it in pictures—experience it, breathe it, and touch it? I would travel to their countries, to their sun and their ice and their buildings and their faces. And if I was incapable of traveling, I would look for them here in Egypt. They came here and roamed the streets and previously I had seen them a lot and paid them no attention. It was amazing that you could see beauty dozens of times and pass it by without being affected; then one day, in a moment of divine inspiration, you would discover it and your body would tremble with burning ecstasy.

  I would spend the days in the department daydreaming and anxious. I didn’t read and I didn’t look at anyone. I would see my loved ones in my mind’s eye and burn with longing to meet them. As soon as the time to leave came, I would rush off to them. I would go to their places—the Pyramids, the Egyptian Museum, Saladin’s Citadel. Everyday I would meet them somewhere new. I would pretend to be looking, like them, at the place, while following them with my eyes. I devoured them and memorized their details in my mind—their faces and bodies, their laughter and voices. Then I would chew over these with pleasure each night as I smoked hashish. Sometimes I would ask, “Doesn’t God realize that they are His most exquisite creatures? Can God be bent on torturing them the way He will torture us? Even their adulterous women, their thieves, and their murderers—will God punish them by grilling their beautiful white skins? It’s not possible. God could not have created such splendor only to burn it later on.” One night I stood in front of the mirror and looked at my coarse hair and my ugly dark face. I thought of the faces of my mother, my father, and all those whom I knew. I was disgusted and rushed to write down in my notebook, “We deserve torture because we are disfigured.”

  Sometimes I would borrow money from my mother and sometimes I would steal from her purse. With it I bought smart new clothes that I would wear every day, and I would buy a pack of imported cigarettes and go to them, at food festivals, culture centers, classical music concerts—any place I knew they would be I went to and with time I developed a lover’s experience. I found out that Italian pizza was crisp and thin and American thick and stuffed. With a single glance I could distinguish the uprightness of the Germans, the delicacy of the French, the vivacity of the Italians, and the natural transparency and simplicity of the Americans; all these beautiful variations, like gorgeous colors, seemed to be separate, but blended in the end to produce light. The poles of love and knowledge met and the circle was completed, thus qualifying me to take a new step upward that would bring me closer to the melting point of ecstasy.

  13

  The German Cultural Center is a small elegant building on a noisy street. There was a photographic exhibition. The photographer was standing there receiving the visitors—a young German man in his early twenties with a small pointed beard, blue eyes, and long hair like a girl’s which he tied in a tress that hung down his back. He shook my hand, smiled in welcome, mumbled some English words in a low voice, and I went in. The visitors were Germans and Egyptians. The Germans wore jeans and T-shirts and the Egyptians were smartly dressed. Expensive scents mixed and luxurious new clothes scintillated. I detached myself from the flow of the crowd and started the exhibition from the end, viewing the photos on my own. Some had been taken in Munich, the photographer’s hometown, but most were taken in Egypt. There was everything that would please the tourist—a cart laden with limes, a liquorice drink vendor clapping his little cymbals, and another of a man wearing a turban buying a watermelon and having the vendor cut it open in front of him to prove it was ripe. I stopped in front of a picture of a number of young boys in el-Husayn Square, their bodies emaciated and their faces worn with weakness and malnutrition. They were standing barefoot in torn gallabiyas and laughing before the camera and one of them had pulled his gallabiya up to the top of his legs and was sticking his backside out in an obscene movement.

  “That photo is an insult to Egypt, wouldn’t you agree?”

  The voice came from behind me. Clear English and a friendly tone. I turned and saw her.

  You are walking in the street on an ordinary day on your way to some ordinary event; the cameras take you by surprise and the passersby rush up to shake your hand and congratulate you, all because you’ve won a huge prize just by virtue of being the first to cross the street that morning—that was the sort of surprise I felt when I saw her. Deep blue eyes that once you had caught sight of you could not pass by as one might dozens of other faces. I was drawn into them and the rest of her beautiful face disappeared into the background. Eyes from which there was no escape. I looked at them and stammered. Then I said in a deep voice to hide my agitation, “Why? I can’t see anything insulting to Egypt in this picture.”

  She came closer and her smile widened. She radiated beauty. She said, “I know lots of beautiful things in Egypt that deserve to be photographed more than barefoot children.”

  By now I could distinguish a small nose, plump rosy lips, and smooth long yellow hair that she wore straight and that fell below her shoulders. The body was full and ripe, and, restraining myself from looking at her delicious, ample breasts, I said, “If you don’t take photographs of the barefoot children, the poor, and the piles of garbage in Egypt, then what are you going to take photographs of? The Pyramids and the Sphinx?”

  I was being sarcastic and my voice dripped bitterness. She asked me in amazement, “Are you Egyptian?”

  “I am. Unfortunately.”

  Her surprise increased and she said nothing. I turned back to the picture, then passed on to the next one and stood looking at it, my heart beating. It pounded when I heard her steps behind me. I became aware of her at my side, and heard her voice again, saying, “How strange you should feel sorry because you’re Egyptian. Since I was a child, I’ve longed to be Egyptian.”

  Her face flushed a little and a dreamy look passed over her eyes. I laughed and said, “What country are you from?”

  “I’m German, but I love Egypt. I love it passionately.”

  “You love Egypt in exactly the way you’d love an exotic show at the circus, or rare animals at the zoo. But believe me, if you’d been born Egyptian it would have been a tragedy.”

  The conversation had to be extended. She stated her surprise at my opinion and said that she had spent two years in Egypt during which she’d gotten to know dozens of Egyptians but she’d never heard anyone express this point of view before. I rushed on, heatedly confirming my opinion while she continued to listen. The astonishment and disbelief in her face drove me to even greater obstinacy. I stated to her that Egypt was a dead country and that civilizations were like any other being that passes through the stages of babyhood, childhood, and youth and then grows old and dies, and that our civilization had died hundreds of years ago, so there was no hope of reviving it. I told her that the Egyptians had the mentality of servants and slaves and understood no language but that of the stick, and I told her the story of the poet al-Mutanabbi when he came to Egypt, translating for her the lines that go “Buy not the slave without his stick!/ Filthy and ill-starred indeed is the slave!”*

  We became completely engrossed in our conversation and stopped bothering with the photos. Nor did we notice the time, and in the end we found ourselves making our way, still talking, to the exit. She stopped and gave me a deep, friendly look that pierced my heart, and said, smiling as always,
“Really, I thank you for this enjoyable conversation. I’m happy to have got to know the opinion of an Egyptian intellectual on his country. True, I don’t agree with your opinion, but I respect it because it is authentic.”

  Then she laughed and went on, “Just imagine! I still haven’t learned your name.”

  I laughed wholeheartedly as she tried, haltingly, to pronounce my name, and then asked her hers and she replied, “My name is Jutta.”

  As she pronounced the name, her lips formed a delicious rosy circle. Then she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Just a German name. Do you like it?”

  I nodded my head and she held out her hand to shake mine, saying in farewell, “Isam. Happy to have met you. I hope we get a chance to continue this discussion some other time.”

  Then she turned to leave but I called out suddenly, “Where are you going now?

  “Now?”

  She appeared to be thinking about what lay behind the question and then answered slowly, “I don’t have anything particular to do.”

  “Let’s continue our conversation then, somewhere else. I’m inviting you. Do you have any objection?”

  She looked at me seriously for a moment, then nodded her head, and after a few minutes we were getting into a taxi. I hesitated a little, then said to the driver, “Hotel Sémiramis.”

  14

  I am neither brave nor an expert in women, and when I think now of what I did with Jutta I am amazed at my audacity; it feels to me as though the person who did it was someone else, that someone daring and capable had slipped inside me and stayed there pushing me. I resisted, but he overcame my weakness and gave me strength. When a fire breaks out or someone comes close to drowning or some incredible event occurs, a person who is completely insignificant in ordinary life may be transformed in an instant into an extraordinary being and resolutely undertake acts that nobody, including himself, would have imagined he had it in him to perform. I asked Jutta to go with me? Me, the broken-spirited, whom a glance from a doorkeeper would throw into confusion and who didn’t dare to direct a look—not even a look—at the face of a beautiful woman! I sat next to her in the taxi watching her. She had folded her arms and turned to look at the street from the window. She was wearing a blue denim jacket with a black top beneath it that revealed her white upper chest and neck, wide pants of a light white material, and, on her small feet, simple black shoes. She had washed her hair but not combed it, so that its dark thickets intertwined in thick tresses. I caught the driver watching through the car mirror and smiling, the only way to explain my relationship with Jutta in his mind being my sexual prowess. That was the most a servant like him could comprehend. I felt a sudden rage against the driver but suppressed it and asked her, “What are you doing in Egypt?”

  She answered with a laugh, “Uh! That’s a long story. I came to Egypt as part of a tourist group and fell in love with it so much that it ruined the rest of my life. When I went back to Germany, everything seemed to me deathly boring so I made up my mind to come and live in Egypt and here I am.”

  “Do you have a job?”

  “Yes. An Egyptian friend pulled some strings to get me a job as a secretary in an import-export company. I get a generous salary, but every six months, I have to pay a huge amount in dollars to renew my residency.”

  I must have been silent for a little because she suddenly laughed and asked me, “Does my story sound strange?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, I said, “Yes.”

  The hotel was crowded—a lofty ceiling, huge expensive complicated dangling chandeliers, corridors and lights and servants dressed all in black. As I crossed the entryway with Jutta, she asked me if I knew the hotel and I answered that I didn’t, so she nodded and led me up the marble stairway to the bar. It seemed she knew the place well. A smartly dressed waiter received us and led us to a table on the terrace that looks out over the Nile. Jutta asked me gaily, “Would it annoy you if I ordered alcohol?”

  “It would annoy me if you ordered anything else,” I replied.

  When she laughed, her lips revealed small, regular, shining white teeth. The waiter brought a bottle of beer for me and a glass of gin for Jutta. I suddenly got worried when I thought of how much money I had on me, but then I relaxed at the thought that it would cover, at the least, a beer for me and another drink for her. On the other shore, the lights were shimmering in the distance and a cool evening breeze was pushing at the surface of the water and breaking it up into waves that made a low murmuring sound. Jutta drank from her glass and looked at the night, seemingly intoxicated by her surroundings. Then she asked me, in a tone fluctuating between reproach and playfulness, “Can anyone hate a country as beautiful as this?”

  “Trust me, nature in Germany is no less beautiful, but to you it’s familiar and everything familiar loses its beauty.”

  “That’s not true, because after two years here the sight of the Nile still bewitches me—more so perhaps than at the beginning. And you have to remember too that what I like about Egypt isn’t just its views.”

  “What else do you like?” I asked her sarcastically, being now a little drunk.

  “The people have extremely warm and kind feelings.”

  I laughed so loudly that a lady at the next table turned and looked at me. Jutta asked me, “What’s so funny?”

  “Your opinion of Egyptians. Exactly what ‘kind feelings’ are you talking about? Egyptians are merely poisonous insects. That is the scientific description for them.”

  “But I’ve never noticed that.”

  “Of course, you couldn’t possibly notice it because you’re foreign and a woman and beautiful! Listen. Would it be correct for us to consider this waiter a kind man just because he treats us politely? The courtesy he shows to customers is imposed upon him by circumstances stronger than himself. If you want to know what he’s really like, ask one of his neighbors or his family.”

  She rested her chin on her hands and looked at me for a moment. Then she said, “Your way of talking is crude and your vision is crude, but it pleases me somehow.”

  I ordered another drink for her and a beer and felt a strong desire to talk, to tell. I was afraid Jutta would get bored and felt embarrassed to be baring my soul in front of her, but once the alcohol had started to have its effect, a fervor rose within me that made me speak with a wild enthusiasm. I told her about my father and mother and the Chemistry Authority. I even spoke about Huda the maid, and Jutta kept listening to me with interest. Sometimes she would stop me to ask a question about some detail or other and sometimes I was so bitter I would burst into laughter, but on these occasions she would not share my laughter. She would just look at me with her deep eyes and I would feel that she understood me. When I finished, the bar had almost emptied and Jutta said slowly, looking at her glass and turning it between the palms of her hands, “Isam. I don’t want to make any comments on what you said. I’m afraid anything I say would sound foolish or childish. But I’m thinking now of Frederick, a German friend, who was the first person who told me about Egypt. He’s an engineer and he spent ten years in Egypt. Do you know what he told me once? He said that he’d visited most of the countries in the world and he’d never seen a country as full of talented people as Egypt and that he felt sorry that the talented people in Egypt faced such great problems.”

  She said this looking at me and slowly nodding her head as though to emphasize the meaning, and it occurred to me at that moment that her face seemed to me to have two different forms: sometimes it would be delicate and dreamy, and then it looked like that of a wonderful gay little girl, and sometimes her features changed and a severe cast would cover it.

  “Let’s have another drink,” I said and she replied gently, “I’m sorry. It’s late and I have to be going.”

  When I looked over the check, my disquiet must have shown because she brought her head close and whispered, “I can share it with you.”

  I thanked her and refused and paid the check, leaving the waiter a big tip,
and we got up and descended the stairs in silence. There was an insistent question suspended between us and I felt she was aware of what was going on in my head because, as soon as we went out on to the street, she immediately took the initiative and extended her hand to shake mine, saying, “Thank you so much. I had a good time. I hope we can meet again. Do you have a telephone at home?”

  I looked at her for a moment. Then I said suddenly and in an unequivocal tone, “I shall never leave you.”

  She laughed and asked, “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. I am incapable of leaving you. I want to be with you.”

  Once again, my audacity amazed me. Jutta looked at me as though sizing me up and her face shifted into its serious mode. Then she said, giving weight to each word, “Isam. Listen. It’s true that I like you and find you very interesting. I’d even be okay with your coming home with me. But that would cause me problems I can do without.”

  “What problems?” I asked. She sighed and replied, “Before I came to Egypt, Frederick warned me, because Egyptians have their own different traditions. You know what I mean, of course. But I ignored the warning. I didn’t take him seriously. And one night I tried to invite a male friend to my apartment, and that made Mr. Shaaban very mad and almost caused a scandal.”

  “And who’s this Mr. Shaaban?”

  “Shaaban the grocer. His shop is below my building and he stays up until midnight. I don’t want to make trouble with him. He’s a religious zealot and can’t accept my bringing a man to my apartment. That’s what he told me clearly the first time.”

  I found myself yelling in fury, “Are you going to let the grocer control your private life?”

  “Please understand. I don’t want to hurt his feelings and I also know that challenging tradition in Egypt leads to disaster. Frederick made that very clear to me.”