by Waguih Ghali
‘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 …’
‘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 beta 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, Docteur ès-snooker à votre service.’ 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 pocket-able 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 America, 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 les droits 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.
I drive once a week to those places to visit police officers supposed to be friends of mine. They hand me an envelope containing pictures and reports written by the inmates and in return I pay them a certain km of money. I have the terrible feeling that some of the pictures wouldn’t be so gory if we didn’t pay for them.
This is all I do.
‘What’s this job?’ Font asked again.
‘Nothing,’ I told him.
I have never wanted anything tragic to touch me, to afflict me. I don’t even want to see anything tragic. And yet, since … well, since London and all that, I always seem to move towards the tragic things, as though I had no free will of my own. It is funny how people – millions and millions of people – go about watching the telly and singing and humming in spite of the fact that they lost brother or father or lover in a war; and what is stranger still, they contemplate with equanimity seeing their other brothers or lovers off to yet another war. They don’t see the tragedy of it all. Now and then one of the millions reads a book, or starts thinking, or something shakes him, and then he sees tragedy all over the place. Wherever he looks, he finds tragedy. He finds it tragic that other people don’t see this tragedy around them and then he becomes like Font or Edna, or joins some party or other, or marches behind banners until his own life, seen detachedly, becomes a little tragic. I hate tragedy.
‘Nothing,’ I repeated. ‘Come, Font, let’s have a game.’ Sometimes we still have a quiet, friendly game, Font and I. Not for money or anything like that; just friendly and sarcastic about each other’s game.
‘Got anything to eat in the kitchen, Font?’
‘Yes. Make some more Bass and I’ll get something.’
He went into the kitchen and came back with a tray full of little plates; hazel-nuts, peanuts, pickled onions, white cheese, celery stuck in beer glasses. The Bass had put us in a better mood.
‘Cheers, Font.’
‘Cheers, Ram.’
Font switched on the light over the snooker table, we rolled our sleeves up, chose sticks, rubbed the ends with chalk and powdered our hands. The rest of the hall was dark and cool because Font had closed all the shutters, and that oblong light reflected on the green table with the coloured balls was nice to look at.
Font hit the triangle and all the reds dispersed.
‘You’re a good shot,’ I said. ‘Another yard to the left and you might have pocketed something.’
I tried to pocket a comparatively easy red, but missed. Font said he’d see about ordering a snooker table with larger pockets for me. We were just getting into our stride, so to speak, when we heard loud voices and bangs on the door.
‘Police—open up!’
‘Kyria lysoon,’ I said. I don’t know what Kyria lysoon is, neither does Font, but we have often heard high Coptic priests sing it in the churches of Egypt. There they stand under their magnificent beards and sing what sounds like Kyria lysoon to four ugly, orthodox youths, who sing Kyria lysoon back to them. Long ago Font and I came to the conclusion this was a secret tennis match being played between the priest and the youths, with Kyria lysoon for balls. Font got a tummy cramp once, laughing. The priest serves a Kyria lysoon and you can see the four youths bumping each other trying to hit it back to him. They often miss, and a Kyria lysoon is heard bouncing in a corner of the church. But that particular priest was a fantastic player. He used to take a Kyria lysoon from the youths before they even served it as it were, modulating it cunningly in his own corner, and before you knew where you were, he had a smasher right out of the window, the youths looking at each other in perplexity. Once the priest came to speak to us after church and Font said: ‘Well played, sir,’ in English. I nearly died laughing.
I don’t know why I suddenly said Kyria lysoon when I hea
rd ‘police’ at the door. Perhaps because my religion never went further than laughing at Kyria lysoon, and because one looks to God when in fear.
I caught Font’s head and covered his mouth with my hand.
‘Listen,’ I whispered, ‘you don’t know where I am.’ I let him go. ‘Take your time opening the door. Give me time to jump from the window.’ I was trembling.
‘Open up! Open up, Font, you rascal. Look what we’ve got.’
I recognized Jameel and Fawzi’s voices. I sat down wiping the sweat off my face. I went behind the bar and poured myself a large cognac. Font opened the door.
‘We’ve got a present for you, Font,’ they shouted. They were drunk. They had three Greek prostitutes with them. I recognized one of them, called Ellena; she sits at the bar of the Hotel de Paris. They caught Font and danced ringa-ringa-roses with him. The girls were also drunk. One of them lay on a snooker table and pulled her skirt up, while another took a snooker stick and pretended to be an impatient man. Jameel saw me and ran towards me: ‘Ramos – Ramos.’ He took a bottle from behind the bar and went to the girls.
I sat on a stool and poured myself another cognac. It was the first time in my life I had experienced real fear. Terror. It was like a fantastic smack on the face. It was as though I had been drunk all my life and had suddenly sobered up.
‘Ram.’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Your hand is shaking.’
‘The Bass has turned my stomach somehow. I wanted to vomit.’
Font sat gazing at me, his eyebrows high up in his forehead.
‘Why did you want to run away when you heard the word “police”?’
‘Run away? I was only joking; pretending they were real police and that they were after me.’
He kept on staring at me. Sometimes your emotions are unexpectedly stirred and you suddenly become angry or sentimental or sad. I wanted to pat Font on the back.
‘Why don’t you take one of the girls to your room, Font?’
‘Ram,’ he said. ‘Are you involved in some organization or something dangerous?’
‘No.’
‘Ram, are you a member of the Communist Party?’