Chicago

by Alaa Al Aswany

  Karam looked at me then drank the rest of his drink in one gulp and said, “Let me think about it.”

  Chapter 23

  Everything that happened to Tariq Haseeb that evening was out of his control. He was not in a position to accept or reject it. If what happened had taken place a hundred times, he would’ve done exactly what he had done. He had found himself glued to Shaymaa, who raised her hand to pick up a tin from the shelf. He felt her whole breast brushing against him. He spontaneously reached out and embraced her. She didn’t object. He felt her luscious body filling his whole being; he plunged his hands around her back and showered her with kisses all over: her lips, her face, her hair, then her neck and chin. Her fresh skin was so soft it aroused him even more. He kept kissing her neck and began licking her ear then took it between his lips (as he had seen in pornographic movies). It was then that she let out a soft passionate moan and murmured a few indistinct words in a low voice, as if making a weak, formal objection that she was the first to know would not change anything, or as if she were proclaiming her innocence one last time before being swept away by the flood of pleasurable lust.

  After a few moments of passionate embracing, Tariq extended his hand and undid the zipper in the middle of the dress, making a light whizzing sound. Shaymaa did not object and kept watching his hands as if she were hypnotized. Her chest was revealed behind a rose-colored cotton bra. He pressed the breasts out of the bra as if they were two ripe fruits hanging on a branch. Tariq inhaled strongly then exhaled and pressed his whole face between her breasts, rubbing it against their unbelievable softness. He was suddenly overcome by an urgent desire to cry, as if he were sad that he hadn’t done it before, as if he were a child who had been lost for such a long time that he’d given up hope then suddenly found his mother, as if the warmth coming from her breasts was his original abode, which he had known at an earlier time then lost and was now coming back to. He kissed her breasts all over and gently bit them and she let out a soft, pained, and coquettish scream, whereupon he became certain that her body was now at his disposal, obedient and responding and clamoring for him to go forward. He undid his fly and clung to her tightly. He didn’t dare take off her dress but they embraced closely and their muscles contracted in instinctive successive thrusts until they both crossed the gate of pleasure together. His body shook with great ecstasy, real flesh-and-blood ecstasy, not that artificial one that he experienced in the bathroom every night. It occurred to him that he was being born at that moment, brought back from the dead, leaving behind forever that old colorless life for another, a real and wonderful life. He closed his eyes and hugged her hard, as if cleaving to her, seeking shelter with her so that she wouldn’t leave him. He began once again savoring her fresh smell voraciously and kissing her anew. He was ready to make love to her time after time, forever. But he came to when he felt her tears wetting his face. He opened his eyes and withdrew his head as if waking up. He patted her on the cheek and she burst out sobbing and speaking in a disjointed voice:

  “How I despise myself!”

  “I love you,” he whispered, kissing her hands.

  “I am now an immoral woman!”

  “Who said that?”

  “I’ve fallen!”

  “You are the most beautiful woman in the world!”

  She looked at him from behind her tears and said, “You couldn’t respect me now after what I’ve done with you.”

  “You’re my wife: how could I not respect you?”

  “I am not your wife.”

  “Aren’t we going to get married?”

  “Yes, but right now I am forbidden to you.”

  “We haven’t committed fornication, Shaymaa. And there are noble hadiths, all authentic, all unanimous, in stating that God Almighty forgives the trespasses that do not amount to fornication of those He wills. We love each other and intend to be lawfully wedded, God willing. And God the Merciful forgives us.”

  She looked at him for a long time, as if to see whether he was telling the truth, and then whispered, “Won’t your opinion of me change after what I’ve done with you?”

  “It won’t change.”

  “Swear that you will continue to respect me.”

  “I swear by God Almighty that I will go on respecting you.”

  “And I swear to you by God’s mercy to my father, Tariq, that I haven’t done this with anyone before you and that I’ve done it with you only because I love you.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you going to leave me?”

  “I’ll never leave you.”

  As they went out of the kitchen, her steps looked confident and graceful, as if she had found fulfillment or got rid of a burden. He sat her next to him on the sofa and they exchanged a few whispered words interspersed with tender and heartfelt kisses from him on her hair and hands. Little by little the troubled look left her face, replaced by a warm softness. In a moment, as if he had just received a sign from her, he extended his arm and pulled her toward him, slowly and confidently this time. He felt her neck and lips with his fingers, then lifted her face, and they lost themselves in a long kiss.

  Chapter 24

  When Sarah opened the door, Jeff was standing behind her, high, staring at what was happening with unfocused looks. Dr. Ra’fat rained blows on her, and strangely enough, she didn’t resist him. She cried only once after the first slap then succumbed after that, as if she were receiving a legal punishment. When he kicked her hard and she fell to the floor, Jeff came to and rushed at Ra’fat to grab him, but he pushed Jeff with his hand and Jeff staggered under the influence of the drug. Ra’fat roared at him, “As for you, dirty junkie, I’m going to put you in jail tonight.”

  Ra’fat stood in the middle of the hallway as if he didn’t know what to do next. Then he turned around and hurried outside, and soon the sound of his car could be heard pulling away. The outside door remained open and the entryway lights on. Jeff began to pace back and forth, muttering angry curses. Then he stopped suddenly and for a moment seemed out of it, as if just waking from a dream. He walked slowly, closed the door, and turned off the lights, then extended his hand to help Sarah get up. He accompanied her inside and they sat next to each other on the sofa that had witnessed the climax of their pleasure a little earlier. He looked at her face in the light, and for the first time, he noticed a bruise around her left eye and a thin line of blood trickling from the side of her mouth. He extended his hand and felt her face gently then said in a hoarse voice, “We’ve been assaulted.”

  She remained silent, as if she hadn’t heard him. He went on, “Your father has shown his true colors. He wants to control the life of his adult daughter as if he were still living in the desert.”

  She started crying in silence. He extended his hand with the dish that contained the dope, whispering in a confused tone of voice, “Wash the dish well. We’ve got to move fast. I’ll hide the dope at a friend’s on a nearby street. Then we’ll call the police.”

  “I am not going to call the police.”

  He looked at her for a long time and said, “Sarah, this is serious. We’ve got to turn your father in before he turns us in.”

  “He won’t turn us in.”

  “You’re beginning to worry me. How can you be so sure?”

  “Because he’s my father.”

  “How can you trust him after what he’s done?”

  “Listen, Jeff. I know my father well and he’s not going to call the police. Okay? Isn’t that all you’re worried about? Now, back off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Leave me alone. I want to sit quietly for a little while, please.”

  She leaned her head to the wall. She really needed some quiet. Despite her fatigue and pain her mind was seething with successive images that were astonishingly strong and clear. Her father’s angry face appeared as his hand rose in the air and slapped her, time after time. She kept recalling what had happened in full detail, as if she had not absorbed it or as if she
wanted to inflict more pain on herself. Old scenes kept coming to her mind, shining and disappearing like flashes from the dark past. She saw herself as a child in her father’s arms, and her mother’s face came to her. She remembered how, for years, whenever she went to her little bed every night, she would close her eyes and put her head under the pillow, praying to God passionately that her father and mother not fight during the night so she wouldn’t be awakened in fright, as often happened. She recalled her first night with Jeff, the first tremor of pleasure and her alarm at the drops of blood that had stained the bed and Jeff ’s voice whispering, “Now you’re a real woman.”

  The first time she saw Jeff snorting, she chided him harshly, reciting all she had learned at school about the danger of drugs. But he laughed and said simply, “If you haven’t tried it you don’t have the right to talk about it. It’s a fantastic medium. Without it I wouldn’t have seen the world as I depict it in my paintings.”

  He kept insisting that she snort with him, but she adamantly refused. One night she was in bed with him and he persisted again more strongly. He said, as if pleading with her, “Listen to me. I want what’s good for you. Dope doesn’t take away your consciousness; it gives you additional consciousness. Try it just once, and if you don’t like it, don’t ever touch it again.”

  She will never forget the first ecstasy. As soon as she snorted the powder she felt as if she were flying, soaring among the clouds: no sorrows, no worries, no fear about the future; a pure burning and raging happiness. Then she had sex with him and climaxed. Next time he offered her the dope she didn’t mind. When she asked him for it the third time he laughed out loud for a long time and said as he handed her the rolled-up paper, “Welcome to Club Happiness!”

  Making love came to be associated with snorting, which took her to the highest levels of orgasm. It made her shake strongly several times, scream loudly, and then her body would subside, dying and being reborn from sheer love. Now Jeff was trying to resume what had been interrupted. He got closer until he clung to her then whispered, “Goddamn your foolish father; he ruined our trip.”

  He was talking in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, as if commenting on bad weather conditions or a traffic jam. His voice was neutral and his regret light and passing. He didn’t wait for her reply, as if he took it for granted. He reached out for the bottle that originally had vitamins in it, raised it against the light, looked at it and shook it carefully, then emptied a little of the powder onto the dish, using a small razor to separate a thin line. When he started snorting through the tube, Sarah got up suddenly. She moved away and went toward the window quickly, as if she were running away. She was making a feeble, low-key attempt that she knew deep down was doomed to fail before it even began. She turned her face away and began to look out of the window. Jeff, as usual, seemed confident of her response. He looked at her with a smile, as if making fun of her childlike attempt to play hard to get. He extended his hand with the funnel. His blue eyes were exuding total control and when he sensed her reluctance, he said in a confident voice, as if concluding a pending matter, “Come on, little girl. Enough playing outside. Come back to the garden!”

  She lowered her gaze and moved toward him, her head bowed, her will bent, burdened with all the hopelessness that in a few moments would turn into overpowering, boisterous pleasure. She threw herself next to him on the sofa, picked up the tube, raised it slowly to her nostril, closed her eyes, and snorted hard.

  Chapter 25

  Ever since General Safwat Shakir was a student at the police academy, his instructors predicted that he would have a brilliant future because of the strength of his personality, his precision, and his mental and physical capabilities. After graduation he worked as an assistant in the Azbakiya secret detective division and was able, despite his young age, to greatly optimize the way the system there worked. Back then, the work of a detective simply consisted of arresting suspects and torturing them until they confessed. Methods of torture were conventional: suspects were beaten, bastinadoed, or flogged with oversize whips. If a suspect insisted on denying the charges, he would be violated by the insertion of a thick stick up his anus, the putting out of cigarettes on his penis, or the administering of electric shocks to his naked body. Torture continued until the suspect gave in and confessed to what he was accused of. Those conventional methods were useful, of course, but they resulted in the death of many suspects, which led to some embarrassing situations. A detective would then have one of two options: either to obtain a medical report indicating that the suspect had died as a result of a sudden drop in blood circulation, then order him to be buried secretly after threatening his family with detention and torture if they opened their mouths, or to order the plainclothesmen to throw the suspect’s body from the police station balcony, then write a report afterward indicating that he had committed suicide.

  The young officer Safwat Shakir, after obtaining his supervisor’s permission, introduced a new protocol: instead of beatings and electric shocks, he would arrest the suspect’s wife (his mother or sister if he was a bachelor); then he would order his men to take off the woman’s clothes, one item at a time until she was naked, then they would begin to fondle her body in front of her husband, who would soon collapse and confess to whatever he was asked to confess. The new protocol led to brilliant results, and bringing cases to closure took half the customary time, so much so that the head of the Azbakiya precinct, for several years in a row, received letters of thanks from the minister of the interior, commending the precinct for its productivity and precision. Only one time was there a problem: one of the suspects couldn’t stand seeing his old mother naked, with the policemen fondling her private parts. He let loose a loud, rasping scream, as if he were on fire. Then he lost consciousness and later it turned out he had become a hemiplegic as a result. Safwat Shakir, as usual, did not lose his composure and dealt with the situation wisely. He ordered the suspect moved to the hospital and obtained a medical report stating that the detainee had hypertension and had suffered a clot in the brain. Apart from that fleeting incident, the new protocol achieved such brilliant success that other precincts adopted it. News of Safwat Shakir’s genius reverberated so strongly throughout the halls of the ministry that he was transferred to the State Secret Security detective division. There he used his method with political dissidents, achieving the same rate of success, which made his supervisors rotate him to different governorates. With repetition and experience Safwat Shakir finessed his method and added to it a theatrical dimension that made it more effective. So when a suspect’s wife or mother was stripped naked, he would scrutinize her in a leisurely fashion and tell the suspect in a neutral tone, “Look at that! Your wife is very beautiful. Isn’t it a shame that you leave her starved for sex, while you worry about politics?” Or he would say, “True, your mother is old, but when we took off her clothes and saw her naked, we discovered that she’d still be good in bed!”

  The detainee might then cry or scream, cursing or begging for mercy. Safwat, like veteran stage actors, had learned how to remain silent until the suspect was through with his reaction. He would wait a moment then say in a soft voice that would reverberate in the detainee’s ears like evil suggestions hissed by Satan, “That’s my last offer. You either agree to talk or I’ll let the policemen violate your wife before your eyes. You should thank me — I’ll be offering you the chance to watch a pornographic movie for free.”

  For many years, not a single detainee stood his ground vis-a-vis Safwat Shakir. Many detainees confessed to belonging to several organizations at the same time or signed blank sheets of paper that Safwat Bey later filled in to his heart’s content with any confession he wanted.

  In addition to his rare efficiency, Safwat Shakir was also well known for encouraging younger officers. He taught them patiently, and he sincerely tried to make them benefit from his experience. He would pick up a pen and a sheet of paper and draw a sloping graph that began from a high point and stayed in a straight h
orizontal line for some distance then plummeted fast to zero. He would explain to his students, the young officers, “This graph represents the resistance of the detainees: you’ll notice from the drawing that the resistance always starts at a high point and remains constant for a while then suddenly collapses at a certain point. The efficient officer will bring about that point of collapse quickly. Don’t rely on beating only: after a certain point of physical pain, the detainee might lose sensation. As for electric shocks, they might kill the detainee, creating an unnecessary problem. Try my way and you’ll appreciate it. The most hardened and most vicious detainee cannot bear to see his wife or mother violated in front of his own eyes.”

  Safwat Shakir stayed in State Security until he made the rank of colonel, and then the state wanted to utilize his genius in a new field. So he was transferred to General Intelligence, where the modus operandi was different, of course. His new job consisted of keeping spy rings under surveillance, following and documenting public opinions, and controlling and coordinating agents of the service — university professors, media personalities and executives, party and government officials — and assigning them specific tasks.

  General Intelligence in its long and eventful history would, however, remember one of Safwat Shakir’s greatest feats. Back at the time of strong opposition to the Egyptian regime by Egyptian intellectuals living in Paris, led by a well-known writer who enjoyed respect in French circles, Safwat Shakir asked the head of General Intelligence to give him a free hand in the operation to deal with the situation. Permission was granted and Shakir went to Paris. After getting permission from French intelligence, he hired a prostitute for a quarter million francs. He trained her and she started a relationship with the Egyptian author. She slipped him a sleeping pill in his whiskey then called Safwat and his men, who injected him with a strong drug and shipped him in a box that they had carefully prepared. The author regained consciousness a few hours later and found himself in intelligence headquarters in Heliopolis. It was a brilliant coup; French investigations led nowhere, so the incident was attributed to person or persons unknown. As for Egyptian dissidents, their voices were muffled for a long time afterward for fear of a similar fate.