by Waguih Ghali
‘Just leave it to Moony,’ I repeated. Then I asked him where they were staying, and he said with Moony.
‘It must be useful for your fact-findings,’ I said, ‘to be living with an Egyptian family.’
‘It is indeed,’ he said, ‘my observations are written down while I am living with the very people I have come to observe.’
‘Excellent,’ I said. Then I asked him how did the standard of living compare with that in the United States.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘there is a lot of untruth said about this country, Egypt. The folks back home will be surprised when I tell them some of the facts I have accumulated while living here with your cousin and your aunt. Now let me give you a personal example of what I mean.’ His eyes wide open, his mouth practically brushing my ear, using his finger for emphasis, he unveiled the accumulated facts gathered whilst living with my cousin and my aunt. ‘Back in L.A. where we live,’ he continued, ‘we have one maid and one cook and no more. My wife Caroline has to do a lot of housework her own self. Well, here the housewife does not do any housework, she has a gardener, a chauffeur, two cooks … I believe,’ he looked at Mounir for verification, and Mounir nodded wisely, ‘and a servant for the housework.’
‘You’re doing a fine job, Jack,’ I said with an American accent. Then I stood up and said I was going to have a swim and as I might not see them later, I’d better collect this little money I had won at bridge. ‘Let me see,’ I said. ‘That’s sixty pounds you’ve lost, Caroline.’ I put the score sheet in front of her.
‘Jack, will you give Ram sixty pounds?’
‘Sure. Now let me see. How much is that in dollars?’ Whereupon Mounir took out his gold pen and calculated how much that was in dollars and then took out his cheque book enclosed in a leather jacket and started writing out a cheque for Sue. Jack gave me two hundred-dollar notes, which is more than sixty pounds but was in accordance with Mounir’s gold-pen calculation.
‘Anyone else feel like swimming?’ I asked, in an attempt on Sue.
‘Yes,’ Caroline said, standing up. ‘See you later.’ We walked away together.
‘Have you a bathing costume with you?’
She didn’t have one. I have a locker in the club containing mine. We stood for a while watching the swimmers. Around the pool people were having lunch and drinking.
‘Gee, I do feel like swimming.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’ll get you a costume.’ I asked her to look at the people around the pool and to tell me if she found a girl of her size. She pointed to a girl reading a book beneath an umbrella.
‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ I said, and walked towards the girl.
‘Loula,’ I said, ‘be a sport and lend me your bathing costume.’
‘We were talking about you yesterday, Ram,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t interest me,’ I said. ‘Anyway I know what you were saying.’
‘What?’
‘That none of you would marry me.’
‘Well, you know what, Ram? Someone said …’
‘I know, I know; Vicky Doss said she wouldn’t mind marrying a penniless man because she’s intellectual; and she’s intellectual because she lived for two years in her dear Quartier Latin and her St Germain des Prés.’
‘Ouf, tu es antipathique; anyway, who is the woman with you?’
‘An American.’ Loula gazed at her.
‘Tu trouves qu’elle est plus jolie que moi?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, ‘which one of you is more jolie; at least she’s not a bloody virgin like you.’ This kills them. This business of virginity just kills the girls in the club. They’re as sophisticated as you could wish, but they are virgins. Even Vicky Doss is a virgin. They remain so until they are married. It kills them.
‘Salaud,’ she said and laughed. ‘Here is the key to my locker. She’s probably too fat for my costume.’ And then, just as I was about to go, she said, ‘I hope she doesn’t leave anything venereal in my suit.’
‘Better,’ I said, ‘to have loved and to have had a venereal, than never to have loved at all.’
‘Perhaps,’ she replied, ‘but I don’t want anything venereal without even having loved.’ We both laughed and I went back to Caroline.
After swimming, we had lunch together by the pool. We drank cold Egyptian beer with our steaks and were served by Hassan who had given me the five pounds to play bridge with. Caroline asked me why he was grinning, and I told her about the five pounds.
‘I guess you are poor, then.’
‘I am,’ I said.
‘Jack owns two large restaurants in Los Angeles,’ she said. ‘I was a waitress in one of them.’ She too, it seemed, found it nicer to be poor at the moment.
And so, I thought, here we are. We have drunk whisky, we have been sarcastic, we are having lunch by the swimming pool with a beautiful woman, two hundred dollars in our pocket, and Vicky Doss wouldn’t say no.
‘Where are your thoughts, Ram?’
And then supposing, just supposing, I had never met Edna and had never gone away; would it be so bad marrying Vicky Doss? or Loula who has a sense of humour? and having a beautiful flat and a car, and spending my life in the club, and playing croquet? And even then, even now would it be so bad? Isn’t that my real character anyway? A natural son of his upbringing? And for the first time since my return to Egypt I thought of Didi Nackla.
‘Gee, you’re sighing.’
‘Hassan,’ I called out. ‘Two large cognacs, please.’
‘That’s a lot we’re drinking. You are used to it, I guess?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘My, my,’ she said, ‘you do look sad.’
I looked at her. We had flirted a bit in the water, I had held her hand and she had squeezed it in response. I took her hand and kissed it.
‘You’re cute.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
Hassan changed one of the hundred-dollar notes, and I had just given him twenty pounds for himself, when Mounir came unsteadily towards us.
‘Seketnalo dechel b’hmarol’ he shouted in Arabic, which translated would mean: We’ve put up with so much, he now permits himself to drag his donkey in with him.
‘Her husband waiting for her inside, and you having lunch here! Seketnalo dechel b’hmaro,’ he shouted again.
Our table was placed just next to the pool, and Mounir saw fit to repeat his sentence from that side of the table overlooking the water. He needed just the gentlest of physical persuasions, a tiny little weight to unbalance him. I gave it. I heard the splash, saw his tie about to follow him in, looked round and ran way. It was too much for me. Coward. Never, I thought, never shall I be Ambassador. Anywhere; not even to an oasis.
I found a taxi just outside the club. I turned to the taxi-driver and asked him how things were with him. He said he wasn’t complaining. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I mean since the revolution and all that.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘Before the revolution you could only pick up a fare in the posh districts, now the army people also ride in taxis; that means we have the posh people and the army,’ and as I knew, the army was scattered all over Cairo. No, he said, he wasn’t complaining.
‘I am glad to hear it,’ I said.
‘Yes, things are not so bad. Of course one takes what God gives.’
Of course. And if there is no God, nobody gets anything. It’s only fair after all. I was a bit drunk.
‘You’re a good Roman Catholic,’ I told him.
‘Me? Ha ha. I am named Mohammed after the Prophet.’
‘That’s what I mean. A good Moslem Roman Catholic.’
‘I bet you’ve had a bit,’ he said.
‘Me? No.’
‘Very difficult to get now,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘Very expensive,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Still, if you feel like it, you know; I mean if you’re in the mood; it’s just possible …’
&
nbsp; ‘No,’ I said.
‘Pure stuff. The same we used to get before the revolution.’
‘No,’ I said. I wasn’t interested. I’ve often smoked hashish, but never alone, and I never go out of my way to procure it. Still, it is there if one wants it.
I put my hand in my pocket to pay him, and grasped this wad of money I had forgotten all about. It cheered me up.
I went upstairs to the snooker club and asked Font if he’d like to play snooker.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I have to go shopping. Look after the place until I come back.’
I went downstairs to the shoe-store and asked Varenian if he wanted to have a game of snooker with me.
‘What are you playing for, excellence?’
‘A pound a point,’ I said.
‘Andiamo,’ he shouted. We were just about to go upstairs, when Doromian came running from the back room. There followed one of those loud and passionate conversations in Armenian I love hearing. Doromian starts a tirade and carries it higher and higher until he has reached the top of his pitch, at which point Varenian comes to his rescue, carries the conversation downwards to a sonorous plea for generosity and a final appeal with his hands, his four fingers touching the tip of his thumb and his arm outstretched. Then, after mixing modulations for a few minutes in a cacophony of funny-sounding words, there is silence, each utters one syllable, and they are agreed. They toss up. It is Doromian, after all, who’ll play with me, and not Varenian. But that is not all. Doromian insists he has also bet a pound he’d win the toss, while Varenian pretends that not at all, it has been decided that the winner will give the loser one pound as a consolation prize. However, it is only one pound and Varenian admits he was only joking. They insult each other in a friendly way, Varenian makes a few obscene gestures and noises, and finally Doromian and myself go upstairs.
‘The professor forming a government?’ Doromian asked.
‘Gone shopping,’ I said, setting the balls on the table.
‘Guillotines, no doubt.’
‘Yes.’
He took his jacket off, put the ends of his tie between shirt and body, and practised some shots on another table.
‘In which university have you learnt snooker?’ he asked.
‘In Turkey,’ I said.
There is a group of Turkish members in the snooker club with whom Doromian and Varenian brandish macabre jokes when playing.
‘Allah,’ says a Turk, ‘you’d have made a beautiful sausage, you would have. I’ve just received a box of Lokoum from Ankara, smells just like you. The fat comes from mother Doromian, my grandfather had her melted at home.’
‘My mother is at home,’ Doromian says. ‘She was constipated for a long time until we built her a little mosque in our flat – she was so used to using them for such matters in Turkey.’
‘Your money, excellence,’ Doromian now said.
I took the wad of notes out of my pocket and placed it on the window-sill. He also took a bundle of pound notes and placed it next to mine. Then he chalked his cue, scrutinized the tip, crossed himself, murmuring something in Armenian, and made an ‘X’ sign on the table with his finger to bring me bad luck.
‘You start,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘you start.’
It is impossible to score with the first shot because the balls are still grouped together.
‘Copt,’ he said, spitting in his hanky. He sat down, pretending no more interest in the game, and I did likewise, placing my snooker stick in its stand and looking out of the window. Suddenly I pretended to see Varenian from the window and gesticulated wildly, inviting him to come up for a game.
‘Bashooving!’ (or something like that) shouted Doromian, running to the window. ‘We’ll toss up.’
‘All right,’ I said.
He won the toss and I started. Half-way through the game Font returned.
‘What are you playing for,’ he asked.
‘Pound a point.’ He looked at the score; I was forty points to the good.
‘Will you make some Bass, Font?’
‘Bass, Bass,’ mimicked Doromian, who was annoyed about the forty points. ‘Why don’t you call it beer like everyone else?’
‘Bass is the beer of the intellectuals,’ I said.
‘I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon,’ he said, bowing down to the floor. ‘I haven’t read your latest book,’ he said to Font, ‘will it be translated in Armenian?’
‘Of course you’ve learnt the alphabet,’ I told Doromian.
‘Yes’, he said, ‘and I hope the professor will not mix it up in his book.’
I laughed. Font sat on the window-sill watching the game.
‘I am losing forty pounds,’ Doromian told Font, ‘and I want to write a thesis about not playing snooker with Copts who pretend they are drunk. Zazmadarian Doromian, Doctor es snooker à vos services.’ He came to Font and bowed down once more. Extending one hand behind him, thinking I didn’t notice, he moved the black ball, worth seven points, i.e. seven pounds, to just in front of a pocket. However, before you are allowed to shoot the black, you have to pocket a red ball. There was a red ball conveniently pocketable for Doromian – which I moved when he moved the black.
‘And now,’ said Doromian, chalking his cue once more, ‘Grock, the private clown of the professor …’ He then noticed the red ball had changed positions. He stood very still, then sat on a leather armchair, staring at me.
‘You’ve changed the position of a red ball,’ he said, pointing his finger at me.
‘Yes,’ I said.
He appealed to Font. ‘I have never been to university,’ he said, ‘I have no degrees. I went to a humble school, and I am a poor man. But never would I cheat. No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Never.’
Font stared at me. ‘Ram, have you cheated?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Just next to Font, where he was sitting, were the bundles of money. Font took them both and gave them to Doromian. Doromian put them in his pocket and put his jacket on. I remained sitting. He went towards the exit door and looked at me. I didn’t move.
‘Dirty Egyptian,’ he laughed. ‘In Farouk’s time I’d have done it, but now I’m scared.’ He gave me my wad of notes, paid the forty pounds he had so far lost, and placed the black ball in its original position. I put the red where it had been and we continued the game. Twenty minutes later it ended. He gave me another thirty pounds which he had lost, and went out cursing my luck in Armenian. I locked the door behind him.
‘Font,’ I said. ‘Do you really think I would cheat?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
We had quarrelled many times since my return, and it always meant two or three weeks of not going to the snooker club.
‘You know what you’re like?’ I said. ‘You’re like a man who buys a valveless radio because he likes silence.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Work it out for yourself.’
‘What …’
‘I mean what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing; working like a bloody fool here and passing lofty judgments on me. Why the hell don’t you pull yourself together and get yourself a decent job and …’
‘You can talk,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m not talking about myself,’ I said.
‘Why don’t you get a job?’
‘It so happens,’ I shouted, ‘that I do have a job …’
‘What?’
‘Never mind,’ I said, annoyed that I had started to quarrel with him again. He pretended to be busy putting the snooker balls away.
If he did get a job, that is, without being ‘placed’ somewhere or other by my aunt or someone like her, he’d earn about twenty pounds a month which is what Jameel now gives him. We have an amazing amount of engineers, lawyers, architects, chemists, physicists who are either jobless or earning twenty pounds in government employment, sitting behind desks doing nothing all day long. They get excellent offers of jobs from South Americ
a, Sudan, Ghana, Turkey and even Germany; but they are not given passports and are not allowed to leave. I can’t understand why. They are jobless. That, however, is not why Font doesn’t work.
‘Font,’ I said quietly, ‘what is it exactly you want?’
‘Oh, shut up,’ he said. As I said before, he doesn’t know what he wants. I went behind the bar and started mixing some Bass. It was Font’s afternoon off and he locked all the doors.
‘There,’ I said, giving him his beer-mug full of Bass. ‘Font,’ I asked, ‘do you know who did this terrible thing to Edna?’
He shook his head.
‘God,’ I said, ‘I’d murder whoever did it.’
‘You,’ Font sneered. ‘You even stayed in England while the English were bombarding Port Said.’
‘Much good it did, you coming back,’ I said. ‘Yehia was in Paris having a holiday,’ I continued, ‘he didn’t come back either. Why don’t you sneer at him as you do at me?’
‘Yehia,’ he repeated. ‘Are you like Yehia?’
‘No,’ I sighed, ‘I’m an intellectual like you.’
And then there could have started one of these repartees I am tired and weary of; those shovels of mud which only help to bury the old Font and the old me in our suspended graves. Suspended between eras of civilization. ‘I never said I’m an intellectual.’ ‘No, but you think you are …’
I changed the subject.
‘Let’s have a game of snooker, Font.’
‘What’s this job you say you do?’ he asked after a while.
I belong to a secret organization the head of which is Dr Hamza, Jameel’s father. He is collecting documents, pictures and literature, concerning atrocities carried out in our political prisons and concentration camps. He is the type: as I said earlier, a French-educated intellectual of le droit de l’homme beliefs, he is compiling a dossier about these things which he intends to present to the United Nations. The strange thing about these prisons and camps is that the rich landowners and reactionaries who still favour a régime like that of Farouk, are well treated, allowed special privileges and given lenient sentences. The others, though, the communists, the pacifists and those who see no economic future unless a peace is arranged with Israel, are tortured and terribly ill-treated. The trouble with Dr Hamza is that although he already has more than enough material for his purpose, he keeps putting off presenting it, or carrying out whatever his plan is.