Friendly Fire

by Alaa Al Aswany

  Despite all that politeness and all that submissiveness, the answer is known to the residents of Sugar-and-Lime Alley, where Fawwaz is accustomed to sit, in the café at its top end. These residents have seen Fawwaz fight with switch blades and chairs, on which occasions he pushes his lips forward in preparation, fixes his opponent with a look of fire, and then initiates the battle with a roaring flood of insults most of which turn on the latter’s mother’s private life. They will never forget the day when Fawwaz got into a fight with Sergeant-Major Abd el-Ghani following a game of cards they’d been playing for money. Fawwaz gathered the children of the alley and went and stood with them outside Abd el-Ghani’s house by the railroad tracks and started singing in his deep, cracked voice, the children gleefully repeating after him, “Mrs. Sergeant-Major, you great fat turd, you eat green beans and shit bean curd.” Such is the Fawwaz Hussein known to the people of the alley, but they don’t know everything. No one, for example, knows where Fawwaz works. Sometimes he has money, but more often he’s broke.

  On one particular morning, Fawwaz was sitting in the café as usual drinking tea with milk and smoking a waterpipe when a boy passed in front of him carrying a puppy on his shoulder. The boy was barefoot and wearing an old, torn gallabiya. The dog, on the other hand, had sleek black hair and looked beautiful, and there was a red collar with a bow round its neck.

  “You boy, come here,” cried Fawwaz, an idea flashing through his mind. The boy approached, looking fearfully at Fawwaz.

  “Where did you get that dog?” Fawwaz asked him in threatening tones.

  “From el-Maadi.”

  “You stole it. I’ll give you hell,” cried Fawwaz, before delivering a hard blow to the boy’s face, causing him to throw the dog down and show Fawwaz his heels.

  Fawwaz grabbed the dog and picked it up; it had a strange appearance, with a sagging belly, short legs, and a sloping face. Then he got it a small bone to chew from the kebab seller’s and sat down and smoked his pipe and thought, “What can I do with this dog?”

  The dog was from el-Maadi and had to be worth a lot; once he’d heard that boxers could fetch as much as a hundred pounds. After some thought and meditation, Fawwaz arrived at the solution, and two days later an advertisement appeared in al-Ahram stating, “Dogs for sale, pedigree Boxers, all colors available,” followed by the telephone number of the café.

  From morning on Fawwaz sat next to the telephone answering enquiries and giving out his address in Sugar-and-Lime Alley, and a little before noon the first “client” showed up when a large black Mercedes entered the alley and a white-haired man of imposing appearance wearing an overcoat of expensive black cloth descended. His face was as red as an Englishman’s and for a moment Fawwaz thought he must be a foreigner. Fawwaz hurried over to the man and welcomed him with elaborate courtesy, bringing him a chair and ordering him a glass of tea with milk but not, naturally, inviting him to share the waterpipe. Then he turned to him and said—smiling, lowering his eyes, and extending his lips—“What can I do for you, sir?”

  “I’ve come to see you about the dogs, actually, my dear sir.”

  Fawwaz relaxed at the sound of “my dear sir” and immediately rose and left, returning after a few minutes with the dog, which he had been keeping tied up next to the stand where they made the coffee, on his shoulder. The man looked the dog over carefully, before picking it up and playing with it while examining it with an expert hand. While this was going on, Fawwaz kept up a constant stream of words.

  “This dog, sir, is the last one left. I’ve sold three and this is the fourth. Of course, Your Excellency is well aware that boxers are very hard to find these days. Lots of people are looking and they just can’t find any.” Then, with an unexpected movement, Fawwaz extended his hand and took hold of the gentleman’s, saying, “Honest to God, my dear friend, I have a very good feeling about you and everything tells me this boxer should be yours, so what do you say?”

  “It’s very good of you. But this dog isn’t a boxer.”

  “What?” cried Fawwaz, as though to deny what the man had said and looking around him as if seeking someone who would see justice done in the face of this false accusation.

  “What a thing to say, sir! That dog’s a boxer through and through. Take a good look and you’ll see. Look! He’s telling you, ‘I’m a boxer.’ Is that any way to talk?”

  The gentleman’s smile widened. He was quite sure of himself.

  “My dear fellow, boxers are utterly different. I’ve been a dog lover for forty years.”

  “What kind is it, then?” mumbled Fawwaz, finally submitting and inwardly cursing customer and dog alike, while the twenty pounds he’d paid for the advertisement loomed up to torture him.

  “Pekinese.”

  “So what? It doesn’t matter. The point is, how much will you pay for it?”

  Fawwaz said this wearily, having decided to get rid of the miserable dog at any price.

  The gentleman was silent for a moment as he affectionately contemplated the dog, and the dog, as though somehow aware of what was going on, jumped up at the man, extending his nose and licking his face.

  “I’ll pay three hundred.”

  It took Fawwaz a moment to absorb the shock. Then he said in loud tones, “Hold on, that’s just not right! Shame upon Your Excellency! A…(but he just couldn’t get his tongue round the wretched name)…a pedigree dog like that and you tell me three hundred pounds? I mean, you ought to offer seven hundred, or six.”

  After some chaffering, the gentleman took three hundred and fifty pounds out of his pocket. Fawwaz counted them quickly and put them into the pocket of his pants. The gentleman put the dog on his shoulder, his face flushed with happiness, and Fawwaz escorted him to his car, then bowed and shook his hand in farewell.

  After that he vanished and no more news was heard of Fawwaz Hussein in the café or the alley. No one knew why he had disappeared until word went round a little while ago that some young men from the alley had seen him early one morning prowling the streets of el-Maadi, hovering around outside the gardens there, and, as soon as he spotted a dog, throwing him a little bone from a bag he was carrying, then puckering up his lips and calling in a low voice, “Good doggy. Come here, doggy.”

  Mme Zitta Mendès, A Last Image

  1961

  ON SUNDAYS MY FATHER WOULD TAKE ME with him to her house. The building, which was immensely tall, was situated halfway down Adly Street. The moment we went through the main door a waft of cool air would meet us. The lobby was of marble and spacious, the columns huge and round, and the giant Nubian doorkeeper would hurry ahead of us to call the elevator, retiring, after my father had pressed a banknote into his hand, with fervent thanks. From that point on, my father would wear a different face from the one I knew at home. At Tante Zitta’s house, my father became gentle, courteous, playful, soft-spoken, tender, afire with emotion.

  Written in French on the small brass plaque at the door of the apartment were the words “Mme Zitta Mendès,” and she would open the door to us herself, looking radiant with her limpid, fresh, white face, her petite nose, her full lips made up with crimson lipstick, her blue, wide, and seemingly astonished eyes with their long, curling lashes, her smooth black hair that flowed over her shoulders, and the décolleté dress that revealed her ample chest and plump, creamy arms. Even her finger and toe nails were clean, elegant, carefully outlined, and painted in shiny red.

  I shall long retain in my memory the image of Zitta as she opened the door—the image of the ‘other woman’ enhanced by the aroma of sin, the svelte mistress who draws you into her secret, velvety world tinged with pleasure and temptation. Tante Zitta would receive me with warm kisses and hugs, saying over and over again in French, “Welcome, young man!” while behind her would appear Antoine, her son, who was two years older than I—a slim, tall youth whose black hair covered the upper part of his brow and the freckles on whose face made him look like the boy in the French reading book we used at school.


  Antoine rarely spoke or smiled. He would observe us—me and my father—with an anxious look and purse his lips, then make a sudden move, standing or going to his room. He always seemed to have something important on his mind that he was on the verge of declaring but which he’d shy away from at the last minute. Even when I was playing with him in his room, he would apply himself to the game in silence, as though performing a duty. (Just once, he stopped in the middle of the game and asked me all of a sudden, “What does your father do?” I said, “He’s a lawyer” and he responded quickly, “My father’s a big doctor in America and when I’m older I’m going to go there.” When I asked him disbelievingly, “And leave your mom?” he gave me an odd look and said nothing.) Antoine’s disconcerting, difficult nature made my father and me treat him with caution.

  So there we would sit, all together in the parlor. My father and Tante Zitta would be trying to hold an intense conversation and Antoine would be his usual aloof self, but I’d be giving it all I had: I’d flirt with Tante Zitta and surrender to her kisses, her strong, titillating perfume, and the feel of her warm, smooth skin. I’d tell her about my school and make up fabulous heroic deeds that I’d performed with my fellow students and she’d pretend that she believed me and make a show of astonishment and fear that I might get hurt in the course of one of these amazing ‘feats.’

  I was very fond of Tante Zitta and colluded totally with my father when each time on the way back he’d impress on me that I shouldn’t tell my mother. I’d nod my head like a real man who could be relied on and when my mother, with her apprehensive, reluctant, alarming eyes, would ask me, I’d say, “Father and I went to the cinema,” lying without either fear or the slightest sense of guilt or betrayal.

  Zitta’s magic world captivated me. I keep it in my heart. Even her apartment I can summon up in detail now as a model of ancient European elegance—the large mirror in the entrance and the curly wooden stand on which we would hang our coats, the round polished brass pots decorated with a lion’s head on either side for the plants, the heavy, drawn drapes through which the subdued daylight filtered, the light-colored patterned wallpaper and set of dark brown armchairs with olive-green slip covers, and, in the corner, the large black piano (Zitta worked as a dancer at a nightclub on Elfi Street, which is where, I suppose, my father must have met her).

  Tante Zitta would go into the kitchen to get the food ready and my father would draw Antoine and me close and put his hands on us and talk to us like an affectionate father chatting with his sons during a moment of rest. From time to time he would shout out in mock complaint about how long the food was taking and Zitta would answer laughingly from the kitchen. (I now take these touches of domesticity as evidence that my father was thinking of marrying her).

  The luncheon table was a work of art—the shining white table cloth, the napkins ironed and folded with offhand elegance, the polished white plates with the knives, forks, and spoons laid round them in the same order. There would be a vase of roses, a jug of water, sparkling glasses, and a tall bottle lying on its side in a metal vessel filled with ice cubes. Tante Zitta’s food was delicious and resembled that at the luxurious restaurants to which my father would occasionally take my mother and me. I would eat carefully and pretend to be full quickly, the way they’d taught me at home, so that no one might criticize me, but my father and Tante Zitta would be oblivious to everything, sitting next to one another, eating, drinking, whispering, and constantly laughing. Then my father would urge her to sing. At first she would refuse. Then she’d give in and sit down at the piano. Gradually the smile would disappear and her face would take on a serious expression as she ran her fingers over the keys and scattered, halting tunes rose from the keyboard. At a certain point, Zitta would bow her head and close her eyes as though trying to capture a particular idea. Then she would start to play. She would sing the songs of Edith Piaf—Non, je ne regrette rien and La vie en rose.

  She had a melodious voice with a melancholy huskiness to it and when she got to the end she would remain for a few moments with her head bowed and her eyes closed, pressing on the keys with her fingers. I would clap enthusiastically and Antoine would remain silent, but my father’s excitement would know no bounds. By this time he would have taken off his jacket and loosened his tie, and he would clap and shout, “Bravo!”, hurrying to her side and planting a kiss on her forehead, or taking her hands in his and kissing them. Experience had taught us that this was a signal for me and Antoine to leave. Antoine would get up first, saying as he moved toward the door of the apartment, “Mama, we’ll go outside and play.” I can see now—with understanding and a smile—the face of my father, flushed with drink, alight with desire, as he searched impatiently through his pockets, then presented me and Antoine with two whole pounds, saying, as he waved us toward the door, “Tell you what. How about some ice-cream at New Kursaal after you’ve finished playing?”

  1996

  The foreigners’ table at Groppi’s. All of them are old—Armenians and Greeks who have spent their lives in Egypt and kept going until they are completely alone. Their weekly date is at seven on Sunday mornings, and when they cross empty Talaat Harb Street, walking with slow, feeble steps, either propping one another up or supporting themselves on their walking sticks, they look as though they had just arisen from the dead, brushed off the grave dust, and come.

  In Groppi’s they sit at one table, which never changes, next to the window. There they eat breakfast, converse, and read the French newspapers until the time comes for Sunday Mass, when they set off together for church.

  That morning they were all in their best get-up. The old men had shaved carefully, polished their two-tone English shoes, and put on their three-piece suits and old ties, though the latter were crumpled and crooked. They were wrapped in ancient, heavy overcoats whose colors had faded and which they removed the moment they entered the restaurant, as convention required.

  The old women, those once skittish charmers, were wearing clothes that had been in fashion thirty years ago and had powdered their wrinkled faces, but the old men without exception were careful to observe the rules of etiquette, standing back to allow them to go first, helping them to remove their coats and to fold them neatly and carefully, and pulling out chairs so that they could sit down, after which they would compete at telling them curious and amusing anecdotes. Nor had the women forgotten how to let out oohs and aahs of astonishment and gentle, delicate laughs.

  For these old people, the Sunday table is a moment of happiness, after which they surrender once more to their total and terrifying solitude. All they have left is likely to be a large apartment in the middle of the city, coveted by the landlord and the neighbors. The rooms are spacious, the ceilings high and the furniture ancient and neglected, with worn upholstery; the paint on the walls is peeling and the bathroom, of old-fashioned design, is in need of renovations the budget for which remains forever out of reach; and memories—and only memories—inhabit every corner, in the form of beloved black and white photographs of children (Jack, Elena) laughing charmingly, children who are now old men and mature women who have emigrated to America, speak on the telephone at Christmas, and send tasteful colored postcards, as well as monthly money orders, which the old people spend a whole day standing in long, slow lines to collect, counting the banknotes twice just to be sure once they have finally cashed them, and folding them and shoving them well down into their inside pockets.

  Despite their age, their minds retain an amazing capacity to recall the past with total clarity, while inside themselves they harbor the certainty of an impending end, always accompanied by the questions, When? and How? They hope that the journey will end calmly and respectably but terrifying apprehensions of being murdered during a robbery, of a long, painful illness, or of a sudden death on the street or in a café haunt them.

  That particular morning, I noticed something familiar about the face of one of the old ladies. She was sitting among the old people, her face embellish
ed with a heavy coating of powder and on her head was a green felt hat decorated with a rose made of red cloth. I went on watching her and when I heard her voice I was sure. It must have looked strange—a staid man in his forties, rushing forward and bending over her table. I addressed her impatiently. “Tante Zitta?”

  Slowly she raised her head toward me. Her eyes were old now and clouded with cataracts and the cheap glasses she wore were slightly askew, giving the impression that she was looking at something behind me. I reminded her who I was, spoke to her warmly of the old days, and asked after Antoine. She listened to me in silence with a slight, neutral smile on her old face and for so long that I thought I might have made a mistake, or that she had completely lost her wits. A moment passed and then I found her pushing herself up with her hands on the table, rising slowly until she was upright, and stretching out her arms, from which the sleeves of her dress fell back to reveal their extreme emaciation. Then Tante Zitta drew my head toward her and reached up to plant on it a kiss.

  About the Author

  ALAA AL ASWANY is the internationally bestselling author of The Yacoubian Building and Chicago. A journalist who writes a controversial opposition column, Al Aswany makes his living as a dentist in Cairo.

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