‘Abdu al-Fakahani had finally given me the apartment after taking me to the verge of despair. Less than a week after he had received the two hundred pounds he told me that he needed another hundred. I screamed, and it was a comical scene, with me angrily waving my hands in front of his face, our heads only half a meter apart, as I struggled to restrain myself from hitting him. He walked away and sat down, while I kept pacing back and forth in his store, looking at the fruits and vegetables and thinking that I would like to pile it all on top of him until he died.
“I’m not rushing you. The apartment can wait.”
I wanted to say that my mother would die if she heard this, but he looked as if he knew that. He was smiling like a monkey while I was about to explode. I could not even say a word, but something in the way I looked must have urged him to say: “You can write an IOU for the amount, and I can use it to borrow the money from another merchant.”
I agreed. It was either that or I would kill him. No middle ground. He gave me the keys to the apartment, even before the scheduled date, and was shameless enough to congratulate me and wish me good luck. I thought of asking Magid, Hassanayn, and ‘Abd al-Salam to help me move, but ended up renting a truck, and, in the middle of the night, I piled up all the furniture into it myself.
I heard my mother mumble “Bismillah” as she entered the apartment with her right foot, not forgetting to make sure that I did the same. I thanked God, thinking that she was going to like the apartment. I quickly put the old furniture in two rooms. The apartment looked as if it could accommodate all the furniture that I had seen displayed at stores on the streets of al-‘Attarin, Tawfik, Salah Salim, and Fuad. I had seen these stores many times before, but only recently did I look at them more closely. I spent a whole week looking at furniture I knew I could not afford. But I did it when I was feeling optimistic following a pleasant surprise.
A few days after Labor Day, the chairman of the board of directors had called me to his office, and said, “You have honored us, Shagara.”
He was a big man with a white face and rosy cheeks, and at that moment he had a big smile on his face. I would not have believed my eyes had it not been for al-Dakruri, who was also there, looking absolutely delighted.
“You have indeed honored us,” he went on saying, and produced a thank-you note addressed to him and to all the workers who had participated in the Labor Day celebrations in Hilwan.
“It is a letter from the President’s office. You will be famous, Shagara,” he said, looking straight at me, but I was unable to utter a word. He must have thought that I was too happy for words, and decided to give me a raise. Al-Dakruri looked as if his face were going to burst with joy, but I just stood there in shock at how things worked in this country. . .
#
I went to the beach, where there were quite a few people. I was hoping to meet Magid, Hassanayn, and ‘Abd al-Salam, but they didn’t show up, so I sat alone at Biso Bistro. Most of the faces there looked familiar, but I didn’t really know anyone. It was the early afternoon and I had eaten two Bolti fish, which I had grilled myself for lunch. My mother said that she was not going to eat until late afternoon, and remained sitting on the balcony, looking at the sea. I watched the children playing in the water and on the beach, the little girls walking together with their arms wrapped around each other’s waists. I watched a few families who had gathered to eat under the umbrellas. The sun was shining brightly, flooding everything around me in waves of light, while my mother still wore her black mourning clothes. She inspires silence at home and sometimes even scares me. The silver paint on the walls makes her clothes look even darker, especially now that the electric light is brighter. Yesterday she said that she heard a noise in the apartment next door, so she went over and knocked on the door. A young man opened the door and she offered him her congratulations on the new apartment, but he laughed, and said that he was only a painter, and that most of the apartments in the building were empty because the renters worked in the Gulf countries. Then he asked her when we had returned from Saudi Arabia. He also asked if she liked the paint job in our apartment, and she said that she did.
“Does the situation bother you?” I asked her, and added, “I won’t go to the café as often from now on.” But she said that she was happy, and that she liked to spend the day watching the children on the beach nearby, the people who fish on the rocks in front of the building, and the ships moving in the sea. Then she smiled and said that she had never seen a ship before, and asked me why ships were so big and white.
#
Has any man in this world ever wished that he were born a girl? I have. Maybe if I were a girl, my mother would have been less lonely. She will never forget my father, Muhammad ‘Ali Shagara, that kind, down-to-earth man. He married her when she was fourteen and patiently lived with her for twenty years until she became pregnant with me.
“You should name him,” she said.
“Shagara,” he said. She laughed, but he went on saying: “Shagara Muhammad ‘Ali. I planted him ages ago. He will live as long as an olive tree, and will be as tall as a palm.” He also said that his grandfather had been given that name, because he was born under a sweet-smelling camphor tree. Then he laughed and cried. He had become a father after waiting for twenty years.
I grew up with amazing speed at our old house in the Baladiyya housing project at Kum al-Shuqafa. My mother stopped telling me the story of my name and I stopped asking her about it, but continued to defend it in front of the other children, who teased me. I never complained. I was growing taller than all the others, and I used to think that when I grew up, I would be a real tree, that I would grow branches and leaves, that birds would land on me, and kids would throw pebbles at them. That thought both scared me and made me laugh. Suddenly, I became taller than my father, and became embarrassed of walking with him or with my mother, but he would always look at me and say, “Just as I had hoped.”
I used to play in the alleys between the huge brick buildings, which stood in the middle of a large vacant lot surrounded by fields of bright green grass, with asphalt roads running between them all. No strangers came to our neighborhood, and no cars passed there. Mothers felt safe letting their children go out to play. What charm God had sent to this spot. He must have created it for Himself, and so filled it with peace and quiet. And He must have liked us, and so left it for us. It was always flooded with sunlight, in both summer and winter. Even though there was a hospital for pulmonary diseases nearby, we only saw the trees surrounding it and were not afraid. The days passed, as peaceful as a mother’s pats on the head of her child. My father’s small salary from his job as supervisor in the town workshop was enough for everything we wanted.
Bab al-Muluk was the commercial street. My mother and her neighbors bought leftover pieces of cloth from the Clock Square in Karmuz for themselves and their husbands and bought new clothes for us children. They would make joyous trips to Bayyasa to buy meat and seafood. We used to eat the shrimp like peanuts. Sardines were salted in the summer for the winter. We children enjoyed teasing the crabs with little wooden sticks.
On the day of ‘Eid al-Adha, the men used to go to the nearby sheep market in the Tubgiyya hills to buy lambs and goats. The women dressed in black and went to visit the dead at the ‘Amud al-Sawari cemetery. I can still smell the narrow alleys that we used to cross to get to Bab al-Muluk, the soapy water dumped from the windows onto the streets, and the sheep in the hills. I can still hear the gossip of the one-eyed broker. My father once said that, every morning before going to the market, the broker swore never to tell the truth all day. “This is how all brokers are, my son. Their only pledge is to lie!” my father said. I can still see the crowds at Bayyasa laughing and arguing, the women giggling obscenely as the mutton sellers pointed the sheep’s balls at them.
But one day the whole place changed. The vacant lot became a field for soldiers training to use artillery. Barricades and anti-aircraft guns were everywhere. I came home one afternoo
n and said happily, “They gave us a holiday, because of Eden.”
“Damn Eden, and these bad times,” said my mother.
Later that day, my mother caught me with Kawthar, Hani’s sister. I was not a little boy anymore. I was ten and was kissing Kawthar behind one of the doors. Kawthar always smelled nice and her blond hair hung loosely over her shoulders. She often came to visit our apartment. All the children were welcome in any of the apartments at any time. The doors were usually open, and stray cats went in and out as well. I was especially welcome in the neighbors’ apartments because I was dark and my parents were both very white. That day I found myself moving closer to smell Kawthar’s scent, and I didn’t leave it at that. My mother slapped me for the first and last time that I can remember. I was her only son. She kicked me out of the house, so I went down to watch the soldiers who were standing by the anti-aircraft guns, constantly watching for any airplanes that might appear among the clouds.
As soon as the lot became vacant again, we went back to playing in it, with new memories. We played brave young soldiers firing anti-aircraft guns at airplanes that shone like distant stars. We had been brave during the actual war, and generous as well. We regularly offered food to the soldiers.
But things had changed. The grass was no longer soft and green. It was withered and patchy. The asphalt roads had lost their luster. The years went by in a dull monotony, and we soon became too old for games in the alley. My father started coughing.
“I have often found myself looking in the direction of the hospital,” he said. “Now I know why.”
My mother clapped her hand on her breast to show her shock.
“I can’t help it,” he said.
She crouched in a corner and wept. I realized that the hospital was more than tall trees, and that it had a door.
“How much have we saved?” he asked her.
I saw her pull out a small rolled-up cloth purse from inside the frame of their copper bed, and I noticed him looking at me. Twice I had had a strange fever strike me right before the final high-school exams and not pass until the exams were over. I was not a bad student, despite my occasional trips to the cinema with Hani and Rashid. Now Hani was in the military academy, Rashid in the school of medicine, while I was studying the same lessons for the third time, and fearful of another attack of the fever.
During the next week, my father bought a one-hundred meter-square plot of land. He talked about Dikhayla and the hills where people bought cheap land. “If I die, you will have to leave this apartment,” he said one day as a final statement on the matter. I had heard about Dikhayla before then, but had never seen it. I used to go halfway there, to the youth camp where high-school students went every year to practice shooting firearms.
The day after my father bought the land, exams were postponed, and a heat wave swept over the city together with strong Khamasin winds. Our neighborhood had already changed. Small piles of garbage had appeared everywhere, the garden seats were broken, and many of them disappeared. The trees around the hospital had lost most of their leaves and many of their branches, so that we could now see its windows and the patients who gazed out of them with lost expressions.
It seemed as though a gigantic black fist were gripping our world by the neck. Screams were heard on the streets. Women slapped their faces until they broke their teeth, and children huddled in corners to cry. President Gamal ‘Abd al-Nassir had resigned, and the Israelis had entered the country.
We listened sadly to the stories of soldiers in ragged uniforms and bare feet who had taken to the streets, running away from death, from the Canal cities, where death was everywhere. We heard stories about the bodies being buried at ‘Amud al-Sawari, coming from faraway hospitals. It seemed as if people had come to hate each other. They closed their doors at sunset, and darkness ruled the earth and skies.
I actually passed my high-school exams that year, but my grades were not good enough for me to go to college. I wasn’t upset. I had no desire to learn anymore. I found a job in a new shipyard. I told my father that I would finish building our new house. He must have hated the hills after we moved there, because he didn’t stay long. I hated the whole area, but where could I go? I learned that time was the best cure. The days passed meaninglessly. The area became more crowded, and children started playing in the dirty alleys around us. I learned that our desire for beauty is an acquired habit, and that we can become completely indifferent to our surroundings. I no longer hated the hills but came to feel indifferent toward them. I was even indifferent to the youth camp, which I used to notice on my way to work every day and remember how I had first learned to shoot, and how I used to stick a kerchief under my shirt to absorb the recoil of the Mauser gun. Even this camp lost its ability to attract my attention. I stopped looking at it. Only yesterday, I looked at it again to discover that the sign on its entrance had been replaced by another that said “Central Police Camp.”
I thought that my mother had become as indifferent as I was, and it wasn’t until it was too late that I realized she was more like my father. I took care of her faithfully, but it was useless. Those who say that children can make a woman forget about her deceased husband are liars. She never forgot Muhammad ‘Ali Shagara, who disappointed me when I wanted to put some joy into his bleeding chest. Now she was doing it again, leaving me alone and going away with the white ships. . . I must be the one who killed her. I took her from the grim hills to the wide-open universe, and when she couldn’t find other neighbors in the building, and couldn’t go out because this damned apartment is on such a high floor, she took off into the universe. She shouldn’t have done that. She was my mother. How could she leave me alone in this apartment with the bare walls? What woman would brighten up this dismal place? And how could I find her?
4
Fayyad, who worked in the oxygen preparation station at the shipyard, has now become famous all over Alexandria. He climbed a light tower, thirty meters high, and didn’t come down. During the day he chanted the call to prayer several times, and the workers left their jobs to go watch him. The security officers came and called to him, but he did not respond. One of them tried to climb up to him, but discovered that it was impossible, and that Fayyad had a thick club in his hand. The shipyard manager came and called to him. Still he did not respond. They left him until the next day, and then brought his wife and three children and gave them a megaphone to call to him. Still he did not respond. His wife was a beautiful blonde in rags. At first everyone felt sorry for her, then they lusted after her. They fired shots near the tower, but he did not stir. They left him until the third day, and left his wife and children to sleep under the tower. Then the police and the firemen came, and climbed up to him from all directions, so he took out a knife, and slit his own throat.
Near the end of the year, winter takes hold of Alexandria. Thick black clouds form in the sky, and two storms hit, one after the other. By mid-January, the city is usually soaked in rainwater, and the sun timidly starts to appear. Slowly, it becomes sunnier and sunnier.
People reappear on the streets and tell stories about the rain that penetrated the roof, the wind that broke the window, and the influenza that attacked every member of the family. They talk about how much sugar cane they chewed, how much lemon and orange juice they drank, and how many onions and beans they ate. And there are tales of the electricity that went out, the thunder that frightened the children, the lightning that could be seen through the shutters, the heartless man who kicked his wife out on a cold rainy night and threw her clothes out the window, and the little girl who was standing on the balcony and was carried away into the street by the wind.
Women appear on their balconies, hanging out their wet clothes or just sunning themselves, and the city looks as if she had never endured those short gloomy winter days. The city is like a little child who screams in the shower, but as soon as it’s over and her mother lets her go, she fills the house with joy and laughter.
But I went through that
winter on my knees. I hated the year ’76, that year that seemed like an extension of ’67. Those two dirty digits had collaborated against me twice—the first time they took my father from me, and the second, my mother. My mother’s death seemed like a divine punishment, but what could I have done? I only wanted to move a step up. Is there anyone who does not want that?
I often thought of Hassanayn, Magid, and ‘Abd al-Salam, who rarely visited me. They came over once on the day after my mother died. I went to Hassanayn’s house to ask for his help, and he brought them along. Despite our deep friendship, we had never visited each other at home. We always met at the café. My friends weren’t ignoring me. They just hated houses and walls. Then again, perhaps the seed of our separation was always there, despite our apparent harmony.
I bought a 16’’ television set on credit after borrowing two months’ salary from the shipyard for the down payment. I didn’t give much thought to my debt to ‘Abdu al-Fakahani, who came to my mother’s funeral and told me that he didn’t want the money right away. I didn’t regret turning down the offer to participate in the twenty-sixth of July celebrations. They came less than a month after my mother’s death. Al-Dakruri told me at the funeral that he could handle it by himself. I was afraid that the workers would ask him to do what I had done and that he would find out about my scheme. At the time, however, my sadness outweighed my fear, and I forgot to consider this possibility. I later learned that it all went well. I thought that perhaps he did what I had done, and that it had become his own secret. In fact, I came to like al-Dakruri, that thin and pale man. On the day my mother died, he brought me an authorization to let the shipyard and the union pay for the costs of her funeral.
#
Yesterday I went to the café and, despite the cold weather, I found all of them there. Hassanayn laughed and said, “I told you he would come.”
Magid and ‘Abd al-Salam laughed too as they warmly shook hands with me.
The House of Jasmine Page 3