“I’m no genius and no rabbi,” the good doctor demurred, “but even I can risk it and tell you it will be …”
“A boy!” called Grandma.
“A girl!” cried her granddaughter.
“Forget it!” said the doctor in English, washing his hands of prophesies.
“If it’s a girl,” the child vowed with her eyes closed, “she will be my doll. I’ll toss all my dolls to the sea, or give them away to poor people.”
When she heard the baby was a boy, she cried inconsolably. This is why she continued to call her brother ma petite fille. The grownups could do no more than to guess how his years serving as his sister’s petite fille affected his mind and personality.
“Where have you been?” Robby asked once the tirade of kisses was over.
“Where have I been?” his sister asked with a smile. “Where everybody’s been.”
“At the race! Then who won?”
She smiled ironically and said, “You’re dying to hear that David won, aren’t you? You’re dying for me to marry him, aren’t you?” She shoved a finger under his arm and began tickling him.
“What’s it to me?” he tried to defend himself.
“It really is nothing to you, or to anyone else in this family, but everyone’s butting in, and especially your grandma!”
“Fine, don’t marry him. Just tell me, who won the race?” he asked impatiently.
“Well, what do you think?”
“Going by your smile, I’d say he lost.”
“You got it, genius,” she said and pulled off her dress. “It’s so hot today.”
“He lost, huh?”
“And you know who won?”
“That Arab!” Robby said hatefully.
She danced around in her slip, gyrating her hips and waving her dress over her head.
“Stop dancing in your underwear!” Robby said angrily. “Someone might walk in. They’ll all be back soon, won’t they?”
“Are you worried about me, mon cher frèrot?” she asked and hugged him. She smelled of perfume mixed with tobacco from Ramzi’s pipe. Suddenly she said, “The Arab was practically drunk with victory. His face shone with sweat, and you know what he did? He rode all the way to the English consul’s loge, to pay respects to his lady, like some Ivanhoe in a knights’ tournament. Then he started doing acrobatics on horseback, like a circus performer—he rode standing up, got off and on the horse while it galloped, and the crowd went mad with excitement, especially the other Arabs. Some of them even started shouting, ‘Maut al yahud! Death to the Jews!’ We were a little scared, but thank God, the voices were few, just a handful of hotheaded young guys, maybe some students from the Muslim Brotherhood. They were shut down immediately. The Chief of Police, Nawas, you know him, the guy who plays belotte with Papa at Café Zisis, stood up and said, ‘Shut your mouths, you dogs sons of dogs, or you’ll get to spend a few weeks in the can!’ They turned quiet right away, like good little boys. Then I saw Nawas go up to Mom, and from his gestures I could tell he was apologizing to her …”
“What? You didn’t sit with Mama and Papa?”
“No. No one knows I was at the race, and neither do you. And just you wait and see what happens if you tell anybody. We got out of there fast and Ramzi drove me home in his car.”
“Ramzi!” called Robby.
“Ramzi is just a chubby guy with a heart of gold. He’s crazy about me. That’s all. He’s no more important to me than David Hamdi-Ali, or any other guy for that matter.” She hugged him to her chest and he blushed.
“So David lost. Lost,” Robby lamented.
“Because I wasn’t serving as his good luck charm,” she said and took off her slip while walking to the bathroom. She grabbed a bathrobe on her way, and her laughter echoed through the long, dark hallway.
24. BABA AU RHUM
By the time the gang arrived it was already dark. Robby’s parents didn’t come with them. They were invited, along with Grandma, to the house of Officer Nawas, for some coffee. The Hamdi-Alis and Murads returned to the house on Rue Delta. A silence of mourning. Joseph sat on one of the chairs in the hall and mumbled to himself, “What humiliation … how dare he? All that wheeling and dealing … he was putting on a show! A show! A masquerade. Shaming my son in front of everybody.” This excitement did not fit the old man’s general calm spirits. His small frame shrank further and he was curled up in his chair like a fetus, trembling in spite of the heavy heat. “I could kill him … kill him …” Suddenly he stood up and took hold of his son’s shoulders. “How could you let him win, ya ibni? How could you let him? Didn’t you think of your father?”
“What’s it got to do with you?” David said, almost choking on the insolence of his own words.
“What’s it got to do with me?” Joseph mumbled, and began tittering nervously, until his titters piled up to form one loud, hoarse peel of laughter.
“Joseph, you aren’t feeling well!” Emilie called out with alarm.
“I feel great, Emilie. I’m as healthy as a horse. I just want to die.” Then he laughed again.
David recuperated from his own words, and was ready to defend himself, but then that jinn, that demon, overtook him again, and he lashed out at his father once more: “I don’t understand why you see it this way, ya baba! It isn’t the end of the world. It’s only sport, a race …” And he turned his back on the man with the ecstasy of revolt.
“Sport. A race,” Joseph repeated with a gloomy whisper. Then he raised his voice, “And life—is life not a game? It’s because of these thoughts of yours, because of this disrespect of yours, that you lost! Because you saw it as a game, not a mission. Your enemy – he was on a mission. He was going on jihad. Jihad. That’s why they were yelling, ‘Maut al yahud!’ The entire thing has become a war of religion, a war of nations. Islam versus Judaism. They were yelling, ‘Death to the Jews.’ What if they decided to slaughter the Jews, what would you say then, David? Would you call that a game too? What would you say? What would you say?”
David was barely listening. He was still recovering from the shock of his own brash words, spoken to his father, and especially by the way the old man seemed to perceive them as legitimate and understandable, and accepted them without consternation, without astonishment, without violence. Suddenly David realized that a new world had opened up to him, and he was intoxicated. Through the twilight of ecstasy he heard himself speak in a different voice, a new voice: “What do you care? You’re not even Jewish!”
“I … I’m not Jewish?” the old man said meekly, pleadingly.
“I love you Mademoiselle Emilie, I love you with all my heart and soul!”—“My parents would never have it, Yusef. Never!”—“But why?”—“Because you aren’t Jewish, Yusef my darling …”
“Come on, what’s the point in pretending?” David was deep in the fever of the stride, bouncing on the saddle, unable to stop. “Everybody knows you’re a Muslim!” he spat, his cheeks flushed with rebellion.
“Besides, we’re leaving Turkey for Alexandria!”—“I’ll follow you wherever you go, my Emilie. We’ll find a rabbi in Alexandria”—“A rabbi?”—“A rabbi, a rabbi to convert me and let’s be done with it!”—“You’re willing to… for me? Oh, Yusef, Yusef!”
“David!” cried Emilie.
Joseph chuckled to himself. So this is what it’s come to—his delicate wife has to defend him against his own son. In the past, Joseph would have beaten his son to a pulp for much smaller offenses. This time he stayed seated, almost laughing, luxuriating in his own impotence.
“Nobody would have slaughtered you, ya baba. You would have yelled ‘Allahu akbar’ and they’d leave you be.”
“This is how you treat us, Yusef my son? Your father, your mother, leaving the religion of your ancestors for a woman? Allah will punish you! Don’t you fear Allah?”—“No, Papa.”—“If you do so you are not my son anymore, Yusef, go. Go to your Jewish woman, and never come back …”
“Why are you doing this
to me?” Joseph mumbled in a far-off voice, as if asking with detached curiosity, as if this were an argument for the sake of argument.
“Allah will punish you!”
“Because I’m sick of it! I’m sick of dieting and being afraid. I want to eat, you hear me? I want to eat!” he screamed, and turned to the servant who rushed in at the sound of shouting. “Salem, go to the bakery and bring me half a dozen cakes!”
“Allah will punish you! Allah will punish you!”
“What kind of cakes, ya sidi?” Salem asked quietly and politely, as if not noticing the storm he’d just stepped into.
“Baba au rhum,” spoke the ridiculing voice of Robby’s sister. She appeared in a bathrobe, a towel wrapped around her head like a turban, fresh, her cheeks blushing.
“Baba au rhum, ya sidi?” Salem awaited David’s confirmation.
“No, don’t go, Salem. No! I don’t want cakes. No …” He turned to his father and dropped to his knees, put his head in the man’s lap and called, “Papa, I’m sorry. I’ll stick to a strict diet, I’ll train and next Sunday, I’ll win. I promise you, I’ll win!”
“You have to, ya ibni. You have to win. And you will win! We’ll work on it together, you and I, together, and you’ll be victorious hazben ‘annu! In spite of it all! I’m so tired.” He chuckled with some vindication. “Tired.” Then he got up and went to his room. His eyes reflected an exhaustion beyond words and deeds, and a sort of yearning. You aren’t Jewish. His son said these words to him, clear as day. And what did he do? He laughed. You aren’t Jewish …
He heard the voice of the muezzin from the top of the minaret, and the faithful chant curled up to him with tender trills. Yusef stood still and listened for a moment to the faraway cantillation, the words and sounds pricking his heart.
“Allah will punish you!”
He walked to his room, stooped and broken. All eyes were on him, and were then lowered once the door closed.
At that very moment, the front door opened and Victor barged in, wearing a bathing suit and sounding the battle cry of a savage.
25. BECAUSE OF A GAME
The yellow marble rolled on the carpet, heading toward the red marble, which was lying peacefully, unaware of its approaching fate. Crystal touched crystal—a tap. Robby jumped for joy. He’s never been a good shot, which is why any hit was a victory. Victor was a lot more skilled than he was, and Robby attributed this to his friend being a year older. The marbles in their pockets collided joyously with one another.
Outside, eastern winds grunted and the sun was veiled with haze, like an eye plagued with trachoma. David and Joseph were out practicing on the tracks. Emilie tried to dissuade them from going, due to the heat wave, but her husband looked at her with contempt and dragged his son along. Ever since his loss in the match, father and son had been working ceaselessly, with fervent zealotry. David maintained a strict diet and weighed himself any chance he had. Still, he did not lose any weight. Allah’s ways are wondrous and mysterious! His father was the one to lose weight. His cheeks were sunken, his hair graying, his eye sockets slowly turning black. Only the eyes burning with an alien fire hinted at the hidden treasures of raging life within this dead man’s skull. “David must win!” he repeated to himself, as if possessed. As if this were a matter of life and death. He barely spoke at home. His usual taciturnity became crushing speechlessness.
Grandma sighed and said, “Did you see Emilie? She’s so worried, the poor thing.” She liked Emilie and was sad to see her husband treat her so badly, all for that horse racing nonsense. Had Robby’s father not strictly prohibited her from interfering, she would have spoken her mind to Joseph Hamdi-Ali ages ago.
“What’s that Emilie got to be so worried about?” Madame Marika said impatiently. Once more, Emilie Hamdi-Ali managed to get everyone’s attention, as if the entire world revolved around her. “Big deal!”
“Wouldn’t you worry, Renée, if Vita stopped eating all of a sudden?”
“Vita, stop eating? That’s not a concern. He’d never give up food.” She burst out in fat-jiggling laughter. “He eats and eats and never gets fat. And I fast and fast and never get thin!” Another series of loud jolts. Then she said with contempt, “People are experts in making mountains out of molehills!”
“And over horses, no less!”
“She tried to get him to go see a doctor …”
“Did she?”
“You should have heard how he answered her. I’ve never heard him speak to her so rudely!” Grandma sighed.
“Those men …” Alice said with a heavy sigh, shifting her large behind in her seat. “Each and every one of them, without exception, is bound to suddenly lash out at you with the whip of his anger, and you never know why and what for … It’s so hot today … this girdle is killing me!” She looked around her, watching her friends as they formed a sort of wall of flesh to protect her from her husband Isidore’s hotheadedness.
“Only my late husband was different,” Aunt Tovula said unexpectedly. The other women waited on alert, not wanting to encourage her to tell yet another story they’d heard many times, and which always ended with a river of tears. But their efforts were for naught. “He never said a bad word. Never.” Already she was on the brink of tears. None of the women said anything. Any talk would only serve to prolong things. Even Madame Marika held back from making a statement such as, “Your husband didn’t have many chances to say anything to you, good or bad,” hinting at how in his final years he lived in Jerusalem, far from his wife and children, working as a night guard at the Anglo-Palestine Bank, where he died in the great explosion on Ben Yehuda Street. Once in a while, Robby heard about his aunt taking the train to Palestine to see her husband. She’d return full of stories and experiences, but with few keepsakes and purchases, as fit her meager earnings. She stopped making the trip in 1948, because her husband was no longer alive, and the border was closed.
“My husband never said a bad word about me!”
“He must have been an angel,” Madame Marika couldn’t resist, but Robby’s aunt was in her own world, staring out beyond her friends’ ridiculing smiles. Her gaze clung to the small, green, alert eyes of her sister, Robby’s grandmother. Her sister had also become a widow in the same year, 1948. Three years had gone by, the eastern winds kept blowing and their pain was slightly dulled.
The story of this unfortunate woman, who, years later, when she died in Israel, was described as not having known a moment of peace her entire life (which is a slight exaggeration), the story of this widow and her three daughters and one son, Raphael, is one of those Alexandrian stories that deserves to be told, and maybe it shall be, but our story is about the Hamdi-Alis, a family from Cairo that came to spend a summer of joy on the shores of Alex; Aunt Tovula’s story must wait, along with others, for its proper time.
The conversation is back on course: “What can I tell you, good women, if you haven’t heard Joseph curse in Arabic and Turkish, you haven’t heard proper cursing in your life!”
“And all because Emilie dared suggest he go see a doctor?”
“As I live and breathe.”
“And how did she react?”
“Locked herself in her room and cried and cried.”
The women sighed. Crying, tears, that was the only outlet for women in this world of men.
“In Arabic and Turkish!”
A riddle floated through the air: What’s going on with Joseph? His response was in no way proportionate to the scale of the catastrophe. It was clear that a much deeper crisis was taking over the old man. Something that touched his essence, his flesh, and was beyond winning or losing a race at the Alexandria Sporting Club. But who could think hard enough to figure it out in this heat and this dry air …
“Salem, salim idak!” Marika burst out with joy. “Bless your hands, Salem!” The servant walked in carrying a large tray with glasses of cold water and a plate of jam, snow-white and sweeter than honey, the kind Grandma called dulce blanco. Each woman enjoy
ed a spoonful of jam and a sip of refreshing water. Emilie and Joseph and the echoes of their drama melted away in all the chewing and gulping.
The only member of the Hamdi-Alis who continued with the normal course of life was Victor. No one thought of him or bothered him, everyone was preoccupied with David and his fateful race next Sunday. The marbles formed tracks through the rug. Sometimes they tapped one another, other times they overtook one another, working with a kind of secret regularity known only to them. In the dark coolness of the hall, the heat wave seemed faraway and unreal. The game went on, like a kind of ceremony, in almost complete silence. Suddenly Robby told Victor, “Your father … why is he taking this whole thing so hard?”
Victor looked at him for a moment, as if incredulous that Robby would stop the game so abruptly only to ask such a silly question. Robby had to repeat the question before receiving an answer. “Why? Because he’s stupid.” Victor went back to the game and scored a nice point from a distance, while he remained standing up. He dropped Robby’s marble in his pocket and waited for Robby to fulfill his part of the ritual and place another marble on the rug.
But Robby only looked at him with wonder. How could a son speak of his father this way without being struck by lightning? “How can you talk about your father that way?” he asked, appalled.
“He’s stupid, I tell you.” Victor saw things plainly, and did not realize that his friend still lived in a world in which parents were beyond all judgment. “He’s forgetting that racing is only a game. Just like marbles. Who gets sick over a stupid game? Only fools! Put a new marble on the rug. Go on!”
Alexandrian Summer Page 11