Refaat says: “Just the same, we’ll consider you one of the heroes of the revolution and vote for you to represent our precinct.” Dr. Mandour laughs: “That is if we even have the elections.” Abdel ’Alim says to the priest: “What about you, your holiness? Who are you voting for?” The priest says: “God’s truth be told, I committed to vote for Girgis Salih, the candidate of the Saadist Party.” Father says: “Me too.” Dr. Aziz says: “This country needs an election sweep that’ll bring in a new government.” Refaat says: “That’s not possible as long as we have emergency law.” Father says: “We need the emergency laws because of all these political assassinations and the war. If they let them expire and had elections, the Wafd party would come to power.”
Dr. Mandour challenges him: “So what’s wrong with that?”
“We’d go back to bribes and abuse of power.”
Dr. Mandour tries to control himself: “So, you, sir, believe that right now there’s no bribing and abuse of power going on?”
Abdel ’Alim says: “The doctor is right. We saw what the papers wrote about the Minya airport and the relationship between the politicians and the land owners.”
Dr. Mandour keeps going: “Besides, the Wafd isn’t just Othman Muharram and Fouad Serag el-Din. There are other members who are good, patriotic people. The important point is that this state we’re in now won’t do. Prices are going up every day. School fees are rising. The king goes to the automobile club every night and gambles. The other officials go to the tiro gallery to place their bets.”
The turbaned sheikh asks: “What is this tiro thing?”
“It’s betting on shooting matches at the Rifle Club.”
A breeze stirs up a pile of dirt at the end of the street and it comes down on us. Abdel ’Alim says that repair workers have been digging up the streets and leaving their dirt on the sides to be stirred up by wind and traffic. Then they start to level off the street with gravel, but without paying attention to how high they go, so that the street level comes up higher than the street that meets it, so they have to start the repairs all over again to make the street level with the rest of the neighborhood, and so on and so forth. Dr. Mandour says: “It is all to the benefit of the sub-contractors. They’ve become millionaires with guard dogs and servants collecting salaries that university graduates can only dream of.”
Refaat says: “It’s gotten to where we can’t even get on the bus because it’s so damn packed.” Dr. Aziz says that the companies being taken over by the government are losing lots of money. “Nationalization does no good.” Dr. Mandour starts to get worked up: “That’s what Aboud Pasha is telling people. The companies themselves are causing overcrowding. They’re making the drivers and the ticket collectors let on more and more passengers. They want to grab as much money as they can before they get nationalized, and then leave nothing but pieces of scrap metal that they call buses.”
I see a magazine on Abdel ’Alim’s desk. I sneak inside the shop and pick it up. It is folded open to a page with an ad for the film Passion and Vengeance, starring Ismahan and Yusuf Wahbi. I pick up the magazine and take it outside. I show it to father: “Ismahan has a new film out.” He says: “That’s an old one. She made it before she died.”
“When did she die?”
“Four years ago. Isn’t that right, Refaat Effendi?”
Refaat crosses his legs. His black shoes are shiny in the faint light: “Yeah, that’s right. Four years.”
Abdel ’Alim throws in: “Still nobody knows whether she died by God’s hand or somebody killed her.”
Dr. Aziz says: “Of course, she was killed. Her car crashed into the water without a driver. Where did he go?”
The turbaned sheikh asks: “So who killed her?”
Father says: “The British Secret Service. She was a spy for the Germans.” She lets father out for ten minutes to go to the bathroom. She goes with him all the way to the door and waits there until he comes back out. She leads him back to the room as she watches him carefully. He tries to touch her but she says: “Don’t try it. You’re a German spy and you have to go to jail. Or would you rather I tell the police and make a big scene?” I sneak inside the room with him. She locks us into the room. My father makes a joke of it. He says: “It is written for me to go to prison and this one sure is better than the government jail.” To the right, there is a stack of living room chairs piled on top of each other. Their bed with its brass posts stands to our left. He tells me to take the pan out and fill it up and see what happens. I knock at the door for her to open. I fill the pan, spying on her at the same time. I rush back to the room to tell him.
Dr. Mandour says: “Queen Nazli is the one who planned the whole murder. She was jealous of her.”
I become interested now that they’re talking about the king’s mother. Father asks: “Why?”
“Because of Ahmad Hassanein Pasha.”
“What about him?”
“She was his mistress.”
“Who? Ismahan?”
“Ismahan at first, then the queen.”
He talks about the crisis in cinema and theatre. He says the producers made huge profits during World War II by making comedies and fluff. Then the actors started getting salaries that nobody had dreamed of. This attracted everyone and their mother into the business of film production until the standard of films started to sink, and they went all the way down to appealing to the basest instincts of the lowest common denominator. I lean over to father and whisper in his ear: “I want to see Ismahan’s film.” He says to me sharply: “Inshallah.”
He drags the desk chair to the balcony. The alley is dark. A faint light shows in some of the windows and balconies. He grumbles about the heat. Takes off his skull cap. He tries to fan his face with it. I stand next to him. We notice Siham leaning on her elbows in the frame of their window. The engineering student is next to her. Fatima comes to us with a stalk of sugar cane in her hand. She sees where we are looking and says that Siham became pregnant by the student and that is why they rushed into a quickie marriage. Father growls at her: “What do you care?”
She is barefoot as she sits down cross-legged on the clean bare floor tiles. She peels the stick of cane and carves off a piece with her knife and offers it to father. He laughs and says he cannot chew it. She gives it to me instead. I bite it and start to chew and keep on until it is just pulp that I spit out and throw on to the plate. She stretches her legs out in front of her. She throws the second piece to the side, saying that it’s too stringy.
The light from the electric lamp grows dim. She gets up to prepare the gas lamp, thinking that the electricity is going to be cut soon. He shouts at her: “Put on some slippers.” She comes back with a plate full of persimmon seeds. She sits down cross-legged and her robe comes up to show her thighs. I sit in front of her on the floor. I take a few seeds. She hides her hands behind her back, then puts them in front of her in fists. She rests them on her bare thighs. I say: “Eeny Meeny, Sayyid Ameeny. Put it all, on, this, one.” I point to her right fist and she pulls back her hand, laughing. My hand lands on her bare thigh. Father says: “It’s chubby, isn’t it?” I grab the flesh of her thigh and answer: “Chubby.”
She says: “Even the hebb al’azziz snacks cost more. Everything’s gone up.” Father says Egyptians have always suffered from bad rulers and rising prices. In the days of the Mamelukes, they suffered from the rising taxes to the point where they chanted in the streets: “Hey Bardissi, why do you squeeze me? You eat off my bankruptcy!” I ask him to tell us one of his stories. He says he once went on a trip to Turkey and toured the magnificent Yildiz Palace. Its bathroom was pure marble with fancy French toilets. He felt nature’s call, so he sat on one. When he was finished, he turned the tap and was surprised to feel something strange brushing against his thighs, as though it were human hands. He jumped up and found tiny streams of water running down in all different directions.
You can tell she is impressed: “They did that in the days of the caliph?�
�
“What do you mean caliph? You don’t understand a thing. When Istanbul was destroyed in the earthquake and they came to pull the people up from underneath the rubble they found all the men and women clinging to each other like this.” He locks the fingers from one hand into the other.
“Aren’t they Muslims?”
“The real Islam was in the days of the prophet and the Rashidian Caliphate.” He tells us about the prophet and his devoutness. Then about Omar Ibn Khattab and his sense of justice. Then Ali Ibn Abi Talib and his two sons.
I ask him if he participated in the revolution of 1919 and he says: “I sure did. I left the bureau where I worked with the other clerks. We climbed into a carriage and rode through the streets, chanting ‘Down with British rule,’ and ‘Long live Saad Zaghloul.’ ”
Fatima asks him: “Have you seen lots of countries, Sidi?”
He says: “Not many.”
“Tell us about them, Sidi.”
He says: “I’ll tell you, but give me the jar first.” She pushes herself up and goes to get one of the three jars placed on the tray resting on top of the ledge surrounding the balcony, so they can cool. He sips from it and takes a deep breath. He tells her to make sure the other two are full. She takes one inside to fill it up. She comes back and puts it on the tray between the lemon and the cucumber.
Father sits back in his chair. He lights up his dark colored cigarette. He says: “The first time was when I went to Sudan with the army. Um Nabila, God rest her soul, came along with me. She was pregnant with Nabila too. We rented a whole house. It was hot as hell. I looked for somebody at the place to help us get our cots unfolded but there wasn’t anyone around. I saw two guys wearing white, resting under a tree. They were each propped up on one elbow playing a game of tic-tac-toe. One of them was chewing on something that made his teeth as black as coal. I called out: ‘Hey, you guys!’ but it was like calling to the wind. I heard Um Nabila scream. I ran back and found her back against the wall. Her face was yellow and her eyes were fixed on an untied cloth bundle and a tiny bug, a scorpion with its tail in the air. I went to smash it but I missed. It ran to the wall and escaped through the window. Um Nabila threw herself into my arms. I gave her a glass of water to drink. We had to sleep inside a big mosquito net and we put cans full of water under each leg of the bed.”
Fatima puts her hand on her chest and stretches her legs out: “A person would be right to never go abroad and stay at home his whole life.”
“Do you think staying here was that safe?”
He tells us about the draft and how people were trying to escape being put in the army. The poor were maiming themselves to get out of it. Cutting an arm or leg or even gouging an eye. The rich were all bribing their way out of it, paying what they called “a replacement charge.” Thieves and robbers started to target the people who took the payoffs.
He fans his face with his cap. “I was sleeping with a revolver under my pillow. That and an envelope full of money. At night I woke up once to the sound of steps on the roof. I took the revolver out and got up really slowly. I stood in the dark and then yelled out strong and bold: ‘Who’s there?’ No one answered. Fifteen minutes passed and no sound. After a while, I heard the dawn call to prayer and went back to sleep.”
Fatima looks at him amazed: “Oh my. You have a heart of steel, Sidi.” He goes on, saying that being on the road wasn’t safe either. Especially in the south. At night, gangs would gather along the side of the road, coming back from a soirée at the house of some police chief or local official. The night would be black like kohl. His hand held his money belt real tight and his eyes darted around in the dark. “My eyesight was 20/20 back then. Once I was hit by a bullet.” He points to a scar on his forehead, just between his eyes. “Once I was stabbed with a switchblade.” He turns his head so we can see another scar on the nape of his neck.
I ask: “Do you still have the revolver?”
“No. The English were collecting all firearms, so I hid it in the garden of the villa. Probably, Nabila’s uncle who was living with us stole it and sold it.”
Silence echoes around us. After a little while, he says: “The important thing is that one’s got to know how to act. Once I was riding the tram. Two guys got on. One stood on the stairs to the right and the other jumped off to the left. He asked me what time it was. I suspected they were pickpockets. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a closed hand. I pretended to look at it and told him it’s about such and such. The guy on the right burst out laughing and said: ‘Leave him alone, champ. It’s clear he’s just like us.’ ”
Fatima laughs and slaps her hand on her bare thighs. I ask him to tell us about Hafiz Naguib. He says that he was a sly thief and an international crook. He became famous for his ability to disguise himself and escape from the police. “Once they caught him in the disguise of an Italian baron, another time as the Turkish ambassador. A third time he was dressed like a priest. Another time he was standing in a cage in the courtroom. He stood up to hear his sentence. The judge turned for a second, then he couldn’t find him. Up until today, still no one knows how he escaped from the cage.”
She says: “By the prophet, Sidi, please please tell us one of Juha’s tales.” He says that once upon a time Juha was living in a house. After a couple days, he started complaining to the landlord about a rumbling sound coming from the ceiling that made him afraid it was going to come crashing down. The landlord reassured him by saying that by the grace of God the ceiling was sound, so Juha says: “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.” “Why?” he asks. He answers back: “I don’t want God’s grace to rain down upon us.” Father bursts out laughing until tears flow down his cheeks and he starts to wipe them away, saying: “May our Lord keep us safe.” I ask him why he says this and he tells me that happy times are always followed by bad ones. We have our breakfast on a boat off Rod el Farag Isle in the Nile. Ful beans and heavy cream with honey. The wooden table is painted blue. Mother is humming a tune. We get off the boat and we walk through a farm. We go into a fruit orchard. My father buys bananas and dates. The owner of the fruit stand invites me to eat guava. I eat until I’m stuffed. We leave the fruit stand. I trip on a drain cover. I fall down and hit my head on it. I throw up all that I’ve eaten.
Abdel Wahab’s voice wafts in from Um Zakiya’s radio. He sings: “In the sea I did not desert you/ On land, you abandoned me/ For gold I could never sell you/ You sold me for straw.” Father sings along: “I was a flower in a garden/ You plucked me/I was a candle burning in a hearth/ You smothered me.” He shakes his head sadly and says: “Once you were ‘Mr. Khalil,’ like a flower in people’s hands that they’d sniff, then you turned into something else, like the old rotten leftovers to be tossed out.” Fatima says: “Please don’t talk that way, Sidi. Look at you, fresh as a rose.”
He gets up and walks across the room. His eyes are on her bare thighs. Abbas’s voice is calling her. She covers her legs quickly and jumps up. She says: “Good night, all.” He goes with me to the bathroom to get ready for bed. He turns off the light. He lies down beside me. He leaves the door to the balcony open. I say to him: “Aren’t you scared a robber will come in?” He says: “Whosoever depends on God, He protects.” He recites the verse of the throne. I think about the angels protecting us, flapping their wings around us. I fall asleep.
Suddenly, I am awakened by moving around next to me. Father’s scratching between his legs. I sleep. I wake up again. He’s still scratching. His hand’s moving faster. He’s panting. He turns toward me. I close my eyes and fall deep into sleep.
Chapter Four
The strike starts right after the first class. We repeat the chant of a student, wearing a fez, from fifth grade. “Long live Egypt, Free and Independent!” We call for more armed opposition to Zionism and for the English to quit Egypt and for the unification of Egypt and Sudan. We leave the school grounds. Some suggest that we go to the university to join up with the students there, others that we go the other way toward
s Fuad the First School and Al-Husseiniya School. I remember father’s instructions. I pull myself out of the group and steal away, across the side streets that lead towards our house.
He opens the door for me wearing his flannel gallabiya. His white skull cap covers his head. A frown. The leftovers from breakfast are on the table in the hall. I tell him the story of what happened. He says: “Put down your satchel, sit down, and study.” Our room is all gloomy and the bed has not been made. I ask: “Did Fatima not show up or something?” He gives a short answer: “No. Put the satchel down on the desk.” I take out the history textbook. I open to the chapter about the Islamic Empire in the age of Othman. I read the story of his dispute with Ali Ibn Abi Talib and the way it ended in tragedy for both.
The doorbell rings. I run to open it. Fatima is carrying a bundle of clothes. She is wearing flimsy plastic sandals. Tears stream down her cheeks. She says Abbas beat her and kicked her out, and that she is heading back to her village. Father says to her: “Calm down. Have a seat.” She says she cannot spend another night with Abbas. Father says our house is her house and that she can stay on with us until Hajj Abdel ’Alim gets out of jail. “Come on, don’t cry so much. Get up and get to work.”
She cleans the table, the room, and the kitchen. He tells her to get a bath ready for herself. She brings the stove into the living room. She lights it and puts a pot of water over the flame. She fills the zinc basin about half way up with water. She puts it in the middle of the room. We follow her in. He tells her to wash her hair well and asks: “Do you have a comb?”
“Yes, why?”
“For lice.”
She says her hair is clean.
“Do you have a loofah or should I bring you ours?”
She says: “No. I have one.”
“Do you have clean clothes?”
“I have some.”
He tells her to put her dirty clothes to the side to be washed later. We leave the room and she closes the door behind us.
Stealth (New Directions Paperbook) Page 15