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by Alaa Al Aswany


  “Listen, good woman, you’ve wronged me and behaved insolently toward me. I’ve given you this time to come back to your senses.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I am advising you just for God’s sake. What you are doing is forbidden by the canon law. True, I hit you. But I used my legitimate right.”

  “Keep your religious sermons to yourself. What exactly do you want?”

  “Nothing but good things.”

  She smiled derisively and said as she searched in her handbag, “I know what you want.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You want the money? Here, take it, please, but don’t you come near me after that.”

  The money was several one-hundred-dollar bills folded together. Danana took it with a nimble move of his hand, and then sighed and said as he slipped the bills into his wallet,“May God forgive you, Marwa. I will not hold you accountable for what you’ve said. Obviously your nerves are strained. I recommend a hot bath, then a two-prostration prayer to end hardship. That will do you a lot of good, God willing.”

  * * *

  At exactly eight o’clock on Saturday evening, I was standing in front of Dr. Graham’s house. I had put on my best clothes and carried a bouquet of flowers in my hand. It was a small one-story house surrounded by a narrow garden, with flowerbeds lining both sides of the walkway. A graceful and beautiful young black woman (she looked like Naomi Campbell) opened the door. She had on a simple outfit: a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Behind her stood a black boy, about six years old.

  “Hello, I’m Carol McKinley, John’s friend, and this is my son, Mark.”

  I shook hands with them and gave her the flowers. She thanked me warmly as she smelled them. The furniture was all dark wood in the English style, simple and elegant. Dr. Graham was sitting in the living room, relaxing his large body on the sofa. In front of him was a cart table on which were arranged bottles of liquor and glasses. I presented him with a simple gift, a plate inlaid with mother-ofpearl from Khan al-Khalili. He welcomed me and offered me the chair opposite him. The boy approached and whispered something in his ear. Dr. Graham nodded and kissed him on the cheek and the boy ran inside. Dr. Graham turned to me, and smiling, asked, “What would you like to drink?”

  “Red wine.”

  “Isn’t wine forbidden in Islam?” Carol asked as she opened the bottle.

  “I believe in God in my heart. I am not strict. Besides, religious scholars in Iraq, during the Abbasid caliphate, permitted the drinking of wine.”

  “I thought the Abbasid caliphate ended a long time ago,” commented Dr. Graham.

  “It has indeed ended. But I love wine.”

  We all laughed and Carol said in a gentle voice as she sipped her drink, “John told me you’re a poet. Can we hear some of your poetry? That’d be wonderful!”

  “I don’t know how to translate my poetry.”

  “Even though your English is so good?”

  “Translating poetry is something else.”

  “Translating poetry is treason,” said Dr. Graham, and then added earnestly, “As a poet, your study in America will offer you a good opportunity to understand American society. Perhaps you’ll write about it one of these days. New York has inspired the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca to write beautiful poems, and we are waiting for your poems about Chicago.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Unfortunately you’ve come to America at a time when it is swept by a reactionary, conservative current. There was a time, which I personally experienced as a young man, when there was another America, more humane and liberal.”

  He paused for a moment to pour himself another drink and then went on, his voice acquiring a more profound tone. “I am from the Vietnam generation. We were the ones who unmasked the deception of the American dream and exposed the crimes of the American establishment and fought it ferociously. Thanks to us America in the 1960s witnessed a true ideological revolution when progressive values replaced traditional capitalist ideas. But, unfortunately, all of that is now gone.”

  “Why?” I asked, and Carol replied, “Because the capitalist system was able to renew itself and co-opt elements opposing it. The young revolutionaries who rejected the system have now become soft, bourgeois middle-aged men, their utmost goal a successful deal or a higher-paying job. Revolutionary ideas are gone. Every American citizen now dreams of a house with a garden, a car, and a vacation in Mexico.”

  “Does this apply to Dr. Graham?”

  Carol laughed and said, “John Graham is an American of a rare kind. He doesn’t care at all about money. He might be the only university professor in Chicago who doesn’t own a car.”

  After a short while we had dinner prepared by Carol. They were both very nice to me. I talked to them about Egypt and we discussed various topics. I drank more wine and was in such an ecstatic mood that I talked and laughed a lot. Then Carol disappeared suddenly and I realized that she had gone to bed. I took that to be a signal that the evening was over. So I got up to leave, but Graham signaled to me to wait and said as he raised the vodka bottle, “How about one for the road?”

  I opened my arms, welcoming the idea, and emboldened by the wine, I said, “I can have a glass of wine.”

  “You don’t like vodka?”

  “I only drink wine.”

  “Following the Abbasid religious scholars?”

  “I actually do love the Abbasid era and I have read a lot about it. Maybe my love of wine is an attempt to recapture the golden Arab age now lost. And, by the way, what would you say to doing like Harun al-Rashid?”

  “What did he do?”

  “One of the paradoxes of history was that Harun al-Rashid, despite being able to behead any person with a simple nod to Masrur, the executioner, was at the same time a tender, bashful human being who took care not to slight the feelings of others. He had a cane that he placed next to him when he sat drinking with his friends. When he got tired and wanted them to leave, he placed the cane across his legs, whereupon they would understand that it was the end of the evening. That way he didn’t embarrass them and they didn’t overstay their welcome.”

  Graham laughed loudly and got up with childish enthusiasm, fetched a hockey stick that was hanging on the wall, and said, “Let’s re-create history then. Here’s the stick in an upright position; if I drop it you’ll understand that I want to sleep.”

  We talked about many things, most of which I don’t remember now, and we laughed a lot. In my drunken state I felt like talking, so I told John what had happened with the black call girl. Graham guffawed at the beginning, but by the end of the story, he bowed his head pensively and said, “This is a significant experience: millions of citizens in the richest country in the world live in such poverty. But this miserable woman, in my opinion, is more honorable than many American politicians. She’s selling her body to feed her children while they control American foreign policy to provoke unnecessary wars to control sources of oil and sell weapons that kill tens of thousands of innocent people so that profits in the millions of dollars continue to pour in for them. There’s something else you’ve got to understand: the American establishment is in control of everything in the life of Americans. Even the relationship between a man and a woman is now heavily regulated.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In the 1960s our call for sexual freedom was an attempt to have emotional fulfillment away from the control of adults. Now, however, bourgeois conventions have come back with a vengeance. If you want to get to know a woman in America you have to do so through specific steps, as if incorporating a commercial company: first, you have to spend some time talking to her in an entertaining and humorous way; second, you have to buy her a drink; third, you have to ask her for her telephone number; fourth, you have to take her to dinner at a fancy restaurant; and finally, you invite her to visit you at home. Then bourgeois convention gives you the right to sleep with her. At any of these steps a woman can withdraw: if a wom
an refuses to give you her telephone number or turns down your dinner invitation, that means that she doesn’t welcome having a relationship with you. But if she goes through the five steps, that means she wants you.”

  I looked at him in silence, but his sense of humor soon reasserted itself. He laughed and said, “As you can see, your old professor has information much more important than histology.”

  It was a wonderful evening. Suddenly I heard a sharp, intermittent buzzing sound. I noticed for the first time the presence of a speaker and a panel with several buttons attached to the wall next to the sofa. Graham brought his head closer to the speaker, pushed a button, and cheerfully exclaimed, “Karam? You’re late. I’ll impose a fine on you.”

  Then he turned toward me and said, “This is my surprise for you tonight. An Egyptian friend like you.”

  The speaker made a noise that I couldn’t make out. Graham pushed a button and there was another buzzing sound that I figured was opening the outside door. After a short while there stood in the middle of the room an Egyptian man pushing sixty. He had a tall, slim athletic build, gray hair parted in the middle, and typical Coptic features: dark complexion, a large nose, and big round eyes filled with intelligence and sadness, as if he had just stepped out of one of the paintings of the Fayyum Portraits exhibit. Dr. Graham said, “Let me introduce my friend, Karam Doss, one of the most skilled heart surgeons in Chicago. And this is my friend Nagi Abd al-Samad, a poet who is studying for a master’s degree in histology.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Karam in polished English. From the first impression he seemed strong willed, confident, and extremely well dressed: white shirt with patterned sleeves and the designer’s signature on the chest, handsome black trousers, and black patent leather shoes. Around his neck was a thick gold chain bearing a cross, buried in his dense gray chest hair. He looked more like a movie star than a doctor. He sank into the comfortable chair and said, “Sorry I’m late. I was celebrating the retirement of one of our surgery professors with a bunch of colleagues and the celebration just kept going. But I decided to come here if only for a few minutes.”

  “Thanks for coming,” Graham said. Karam went on to say in a soft voice, as if talking to himself, “I work so much that on the weekends I feel like a child in recess at school. I want to enjoy it as much as I can and meet as many of my friends as I am able to. But, as usual, time is not enough.”

  “What’s your drink?” Graham asked, pulling the cart table toward him. “I drank a lot, John, but I can have a short scotch and soda.” I asked him, smiling affectionately, “Did you learn medicine in America?”

  “I am a graduate of Ayn Shams Medical School. But I fled to America to escape persecution.”

  “Persecution?”

  “Yes. In my day the chairman of the general surgery department, Dr. Abd al-Fatah Balbaa, was a fanatic Muslim who didn’t make a secret of his hatred for Copts. He believed that teaching surgery to Copts was not permissible in Islam because it enabled infidels to control the lives of Muslims.”

  “That’s very strange!”

  “But it happened.”

  “How can a professor of surgery think in such a backward manner?”

  “That’s very possible in Egypt,” he said as he stared at me in a manner that I thought was somewhat provocative. Graham intervened. “Until when will Copts suffer persecution, even though they’re the original Egyptians?”

  Silence prevailed for a moment. I looked at Graham and said, “The Arabs mixed with the Egyptians fourteen hundred years ago. We cannot, practically speaking, talk about ‘original’ Egyptians. Besides, most Egyptian Muslims were Copts who converted to Islam.”

  “You mean were forced to convert to Islam.”

  “Dr. Graham, Islam has not forced anyone to convert. The most populous Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, was not conquered by Arabs. Islam spread there at the hands of Muslim merchants.”

  “Weren’t Copts massacred to convert to Islam?”

  “That’s not true. If Arabs had wanted to exterminate the Copts, no one could’ve prevented them. But Islam commands its followers to respect the faiths of others. You cannot be a Muslim unless you recognize the other religions.”

  “Isn’t it strange that you’re defending Islam so passionately while you’re drunk?”

  “My being drunk is a personal matter that has nothing to do with the discussion. Islam’s tolerance is a historical fact acknowledged by many Western Orientalists.”

  “But Copts are persecuted in Egypt.”

  “All Egyptians are persecuted. The regime in Egypt is despotic and corrupt and it persecutes all Egyptians, Muslims and Copts. Of course there are incidents of fanaticism here and there, but they don’t constitute a phenomenon in my opinion. Religious persecution is a direct result of political repression. All Egyptians are suffering from discrimination so long as they are not members of the ruling party. I, for instance, am a Muslim, but they refused to appoint me to Cairo University because of my political activity.”

  Graham played with his beard and said, “Well, let me examine this idea: you mean persecution in Egypt is political and not religious?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It’s easy for a Muslim Egyptian like you to assert that everything is hunky-dory,” said Karam, itching for a confrontation. It seemed he didn’t like what I said.

  I responded calmly. “The problem, in my opinion, is not between Muslims and Copts; rather it is between the regime and the Egyptians.”

  “Do you deny that there is a Coptic problem?”

  “There is an Egyptian problem, and the suffering of the Copts is part of it.”

  “But Copts are passed over in all key posts in the state. Copts are persecuted and they also get killed. Have you heard of what happened in the village of al-Kushh? Twenty Copts were slaughtered right before the eyes of the police and no one lifted a finger to save them.”

  “This, of course, is a tragedy. But let me remind you also that Egyptians die from torture every day in police stations and state security headquarters. The executioners do not make a distinction between a Muslim and a Copt. All Egyptians are persecuted. I cannot see the problem of Copts as separate from Egypt’s problems.”

  “You are following the well-known Egyptian practice of denying the truth. Until when will Egyptians be like ostriches, burying their heads in the sand so as not to see the sun? You know, John, when I was a new doctor in Egypt, the minister of health came to inspect the hospital where I was working. The director kept warning us not to talk about problems in the hospital. All he cared about was for the minister to think that everything was great, whereas the hospital was suffering from gross neglect. This is a sample of Egyptian thinking.”

  “This thinking is caused by the corruption of the ruling regime in Egypt and not the Egyptians themselves.”

  “Egyptians are responsible for the regime.”

  “So you are blaming the victim?”

  “Every people in the world gets the government it deserves. That’s what Churchill said, and I agree with him. If the Egyptians were not willing to accept despotism, they wouldn’t have lived under it for so many centuries.”

  “There’s no people in the world that was not ruled by despots at one time or another.”

  “But Egypt was ruled by tyrants more than any other country in history, and the reason for that is that Egyptians by nature are subservient.”

  “I am surprised that you, an Egyptian, should say that.”

  “Being Egyptian does not prevent me from stating the faults of Egyptians, whereas you consider repeating lies a national duty.” I said in a warning tone of voice, “I do not repeat lies and I hope you’ll be more selective in your choice of words.”

  We were sitting on opposite chairs while Graham was sprawled on the sofa. Suddenly he moved his body forward and stretched his arms, as if separating us, saying, “The last thing I need tonight is for you to fight.”

  Karam looked toward me, raring to
go, as if he was determined to take the matter all the way. He said, “Why are we running away from the truth? Ancient Egypt had a great civilization but right now it’s turned into a dead country. The Egyptian people are behind other peoples when it comes to education and thinking. Why do you take this fact as a personal insult?”

  “If I have the shortcoming of the Egyptians, I also have their good traits.”

  “What are these good traits? Name one, please,” Karam asked me sarcastically, and I replied, “At least I love my country and haven’t fled it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you fled from Egypt so you don’t have the right to speak about it.”

  “I was forced to leave.”

  “You left your poor, miserable country for your comfortable life in America. Remember, you got a free education at the expense of those Egyptians you now despise. Egypt gave you this education so that one day you’d be useful to it. But you turned your back on the Egyptian patients who needed you. You left them to die over there and came here to work for the Americans, who don’t need you.”

  Karam stood up suddenly and shouted, “I’ve never heard anything more stupid in my whole life!”

  “You insist on insulting me, but that won’t change the facts: those who’ve fled their country like you should stop criticizing it.”

  Karam snarled some insults and rushed toward me, raising his fist, so I got up, ready to defend myself. But Graham, despite his considerable heft, sprang up at the right moment and separated us, saying, “Easy, easy. Calm down. You’re both drunk.”

  I was panting in sheer agitation and shouted loudly, “Dr. Graham, I won’t allow anyone to insult my country. I am leaving now because if I wait one more minute, I’ll beat him up!”

  I turned and left hurriedly. As I was crossing the corridor I heard Karam shouting, “It’s I who’ll break your head, you rude son of a bitch!”

  I was so drunk I didn’t remember how I got back to the dorm. It seemed I took off my clothes in the living room because I found them later on, piled on the floor next to the table. I woke up at four in the afternoon feeling terrible. I had a horrendous hangover; I threw up more than once and felt very weak. There was an excess of acidity in my stomach and I had a splitting headache, as if hammers were pounding my head. Worst of all, I felt guilty because I had ruined the evening and created a problem for Dr. Graham. I didn’t regret one word that I had said to Karam Doss. Whenever I recalled his arrogance and his insults against Egyptians, my resentment toward him was reignited. How can anyone publicly insult his country so easily? And yet I was wrong, because I did not exercise self-control. It wasn’t appropriate at all to quarrel. What was Graham’s fault? The good man wanted to welcome me and get to know me and I caused him a problem. He had told me that for him a student’s character was no less important than his academic standing. What did he think of me after what had happened? I took a hot bath and drank a large cup of coffee. I called Dr. Graham to apologize, but he didn’t answer. I remembered that he kept my number in his telephone memory: Did that mean that he was refusing to talk to me? I called several times, but he didn’t answer. I drank a second cup of coffee and felt somewhat better. I began to go over what I’d done since arriving in Chicago. It seemed that I indeed, as Dr. Salah said, could not control my negative feelings. There was an essential defect in my character that I had to confront. Why was I so easily provoked? Am I aggressive? Was my viciousness the result of drinking too much or feeling frustrated? Or was it that our feelings became more delicate and sensitive away from home? All these were contributing factors, but I realized what was the true cause of my misery, which I had carried inside me, ignored, and avoided even thinking about. A whole year had passed and I’d been unable to write even one verse of poetry. My real problem was my inability to write. When I wrote I would be more tolerant and accepting of differences. Then I drank less and ate and slept better. Right now, however, I had a short fuse and was prone to quarreling and felt the need to drink nonstop. Poetry was the only thing that restored my balance. I had ideas for poems that sounded excellent from a distance, but no sooner did I sit down to write them on paper than they eluded me, as if I were a thirsty person chasing a mirage in the desert, time after time, endlessly. There was nothing more miserable in the world than a poet who had lost inspiration. Hemingway was the most important novelist of his age, and when he couldn’t write, he committed suicide. Wine consoled me but it pushed me to a dark tunnel that had no end. How would I pursue my studies regularly when I was drinking so heavily?

 

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