Mahmud finally caught on, and his face relaxed. “Great thinking, boss!”
Friday arrived. The three contestants said their prayers in the Sayyida Zeinab mosque and then headed for the kushari café owned by Hagg Subhi, who, according to terms prearranged with Fawzy, had kept a table for them in the far corner, out of sight of the other customers. At the last moment, Sidqi al-Zalbani became hesitant and whispered anxiously, “Let’s forget the bet. Why don’t we just go to the cinema instead?”
“You’re speaking like a child!” Fawzy barked back at him. “We’ve already agreed, so let’s get on with it, or are you so afraid of losing?”
The last remark hardened Sidqi’s resolve, and the three cavaliers took up their positions around the table. Fawzy asked the waiter to stay near them, “Listen, brother! We three champions have got colossal appetites. The moment you see an empty plate, clear it away and bring another one. And make sure that you don’t keep us waiting!”
“At your service, Master Fawzy,” the waiter answered politely, Fawzy sneering back at him, “God protect you! You look healthy enough, but by the Prophet, I’m sure that you’ll trip over your long legs when serving us. Anyway, in the name of God, just keep bringing us the kushari, will you!”
“Would you three young sirs like medium or large portions?”
Fawzy snorted indignantly and snapped back, “Since when do big cheeses like us eat medium size? What a stupid question.”
The waiter apologized for his blunder and rushed off to the kitchen, returning quickly with three large plates of kushari. The boys shoveled them down in a trice, whereupon Fawzy called out, “Next one!”
The second round was followed by a third and then a fourth. By the fifth round, Fawzy had expected Sidqi to throw in the towel or at least show signs of slowing down, but he was going full steam ahead as he finished off the fifth plate. In the sixth round, Fawzy managed to finish his plate with some difficulty, and he noticed the color ebbing from Mahmud’s face. When he noticed Sidqi still eating like there was no tomorrow, Fawzy realized that the contest would not be a pushover.
The three sat eating in grim silence. Fawzy, hoping to get his breath, ordered a jug of water. He was about to drink it slowly in order to settle his stomach, when Sidqi poured a whole glass down his throat in one go and gave a huge belch before calling out to the waiter, “What’s the matter with you? Have you gone to sleep? We’re waiting for the seventh round!”
With the first spoonfuls, Fawzy and Mahmud started having obvious problems. They were chewing slowly and finding it difficult to swallow. Sidqi, on the other hand, was sending spoonful after spoonful down his gullet, in a state of complete insouciance. The sight of him shook Fawzy’s morale; he felt dizzy and breathless, not to mention that ache in his distended stomach.
“This is a catastrophe!” he thought. “That Sidqi’s a ringer. But if I lose, it will be even worse. I’ve only got ten piastres on me.”
11
Aisha had such a thunderous voice that she might as well have shouted her curses through a megaphone, as her every word was audible to the neighbors, passersby and those whiling away their evenings in the coffee shop opposite the apartment building. They all regularly enjoyed a good row. The only person disturbed by it was Said Gaafar. He had put on a white shirt and gray trousers, shaved, combed his hair meticulously and dabbed lavender cologne all over his neck and hands. Then he stood by the front door of his flat, anxiously listening to the argument across the hall, his usual insouciant look wiped from his face. Said was neither brainy like Saleha nor talented like Kamel, but he was also not as dim-witted as Mahmud. He had an alert and organized mind, though he lacked the imagination to fathom anything beyond the immediate scope of his senses. He understood nothing in life that he could not translate into a number. Said saw the world as completely stark, without shadows, one-dimensional. In Said’s world, life was just one enormous race for riches. Words of wisdom and tales of other people’s achievements were nothing more than chimeras, distractions from the real business of life that could only bring about the sort of misery into which his father, Abd el-Aziz, had fallen. After all, while his father had gone around claiming to be the leader of a clan and a wise Arab elder, he had frittered all his money away on his relatives, only to discover that they were ingrates and not prepared to lift a finger to help him back out of penury. If only his father approached life in a more practical manner, they would not now be living through these hard times. Deep down, Said resented his father for his ridiculous behavior, all the more so since Abd el-Aziz, despite having so little, still maintained a guesthouse on the roof for all those hangers-on from Daraw. He appeared not to have learned his lesson. It was his father’s spendthrift behavior that was preventing Said from going to university. Well, he could not deny there was also the matter of his having had to repeat a year at school twice and even so not quite having managed to get the marks necessary for college. But if his father had saved his money instead of squandering it on his good-for-nothing relatives, Said would have been able to afford a private college, and then he would be able to go to university like his younger brother.
Nevertheless, he knew what he had to do and had set himself some very specific goals. If life was a race, then he had to come first. He tried to map out exactly how he could get the desired results. He did everything in a calculated and meticulous way, starting with shaving: after each use he dried the razor blade and put it back in its paper wrapper to keep it from rusting. Likewise with his shoes, which he put back in their original box every night before going to sleep as if he were putting his children to bed. Then there were his savings, which no one knew about. His ceaselessly competitive spirit subjected everything to the dictates of profit and loss. Often, when meeting someone for the first time, after the usual introductions, Said would cock his head and ask, “And how much do you earn?” Usually, the person was so taken aback that he actually answered. Then Said struck with another question, “And how much do you save each month?”
This utterly gauche behavior afforded him great satisfaction when he came out on top after comparing the answer to his own monthly savings. Said subjected everything he did to the same careful scrutiny, except for his relationship with Fayeqa. It was not romantic love but rather physical attraction that made him chase after her, helplessly, like a moth to a flame. Fayeqa simply exuded femininity. It was as if her mother’s flawed and aggressive sensuality had been distilled into some pure essence in Fayeqa. Nature grants women sufficient charms to attract a man so that they can bond and form a family, but, without exaggeration, Fayeqa’s inherent allure was greater than the sum of its parts. Her every movement and glance could wildly excite a man. Such natural and searing femininity often became a crushing burden for a woman, an unanswered cry for help that left her troubled and overwhelmed. Taking a refreshing hot bath seemed to help. But there too: for Fayeqa, bathing was not just something she did for cleanliness but a ritual in which she celebrated her body. She would check herself all over: the fingernails that she clipped, filed, buffed and painted every day making them look like little works of art; her soft, smooth skin, her jet-black hair, her pale face with its rosy blush. As far as she was concerned, her beauty was not just a blessing but a modus vivendi, and one to be cultivated. Just as a soccer player works on his agility, a violinist practices fingering and a singer does vocal exercises, Fayeqa worked her body as her chief asset and the guarantor of a secure future. Despite her father’s stinginess, Fayeqa, through all sorts of clever schemes, had managed to amass a small arsenal of beauty products, her mother’s hand-me-downs, some items bought on sale and a few odd gifts in addition to a library of old glamour magazines she had bought for next to nothing from Awad the secondhand bookseller in Tram Street.
One of the most astonishing things was Fayeqa’s ability to transform herself completely not only with makeup but with manners. Like a gifted actress, she could blend in to any situation. All she had to do was decide on an emotion and she cou
ld embody it. If she wanted to affect sadness, she could weep like a child, and if she wanted to appear happy, everyone would be moved by her sincere delight. Fayeqa was always quarreling with her mother, perhaps because they were so much alike. Sometimes they had violent run-ins, like wild animals disputing territory. At the same time, they were completely in sync and between themselves could communicate with a single glance.
Standing behind the front door of his apartment, Said looked out through the peephole, his mouth dry and his breathing labored in anticipation. As they had agreed, at half-past midnight, Fayeqa would carry a basket with colored laundry up to the roof. She could get away with going up there at that hour by saying that the laundry bin was completely full and that coloreds could not be hung out to dry in the sun without fading. Said was out of sorts that evening. Just a little before his rendezvous with Fayeqa, an enormous argument had broken out between her parents. That meant that he would probably not see her. He was completely crestfallen. He had started the relationship just three months earlier, but she had become indispensable in his life, and he now felt like a child told he couldn’t go out to play. The moments Said spent with Fayeqa were his only escape from the daily stress. And so it came to be that he could not imagine life with her. At the end of every date, they would agree on the next one, and that prospect would preoccupy his thoughts. The argument tonight sounded so ferocious that he was sure she would not be able to elude her quarrelsome parents and reach the roof. “Why are you still waiting, Said?” he told himself. “Go to bed, and may God give you strength.”
There seemed no point standing by the door. He should go to bed, but he knew his emotions would never let him fall asleep. So he remained glued to that spot, and after a short while, something surprising happened. Ali Hamama stomped out, slamming his front door in the face of Aisha spewing curses. Total silence followed, and Said’s hopes sprang up anew. Had his sweetheart already gone to bed? How could she have fallen asleep with that racket going on? True, some people can sleep through anything. But even if she was awake, she would most likely be busy consoling her mother. Maybe she figured that he was no longer waiting anyway. These thoughts went swimming in his head as he stood planted by the door. But then, by God, a miracle happened. His heart almost stopped as he heard the door of Fayeqa’s flat opening. He looked through the peephole, and in the dim light of the bulb overhead, he saw her, in all her beauty, with her penciled eyebrows, her cheeks dabbed with blusher and red lipstick on her juicy lips. She closed the door of her flat gently behind her and started climbing the stairs. He shut his eyes in rapture at the sound of her footsteps. After a few moments that seemed like an eternity, he slipped out. He sprang up the stairs to the roof door. It was a dark night, but he could make out her shape as she hung the wash on the line. He rushed over and hugged her tightly, but she brushed him away. That little “don’t do that” drove him wild. She always tried to push him away, and he always managed to win her over, wrapping his strong arms around her and feeling the warmth of her full breasts against his body. She would whisper reproachfully, “Said! Are you mad? You’ll be the end of me.”
Those words, uttered so gently, only served to inflame him, and he would throw himself on top of her, kissing her all over, rubbing himself against her until he could control himself no longer. His volcano extinguished, he would lie there holding her for a while, chatting a little. They would exchange gentle kisses, which would get him so aroused that they would go through the whole performance a second time.
That night Fayeqa seemed different. She seemed a little strange and sullen. Her pushing him away had been unusually forceful. He kept his distance for a few moments trying to gather his thoughts. Then he put his hand on her and asked apprehensively, “What’s the matter?”
Fayeqa gave a big sigh, which worried Said even more, and he repeated the question. She answered meekly, “I’m frightened.”
“Frightened of what?”
“Frightened of God, because what we do is a sin.”
“God won’t punish us for being in love.”
“Would you like it if your sister, Saleha, fell in love with a man who did to her what you do to me?”
He did not answer, so she shouted angrily, “Of course you have no answer. That’s just like you—you worry about your sister’s honor, but you don’t give a hoot about mine.”
As she uttered that last sentence, she burst into tears, and Said could only stand there feeling miserable and not knowing what to do.
She moved away from him and said, “I’m going downstairs now.”
“Please don’t go,” he pleaded, stretching out his hand, but she pushed it away.
“I’m not coming up to the roof again, Said.”
“But, Fayeqa, I’m in love with you.”
“If you’re in love with me, then treat me properly.”
“I do treat you properly.”
“When you treat someone properly, you meet them in broad daylight.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you know what I mean.”
“I told you, I’m going to ask your parents for your hand when the time is right.”
“Oh, stop it. Let me go. I’ll see you again when the time is right then.”
Said watched as she straightened her dress, smoothed her hair and went back the way she came. He walked behind her, in a trance, watching her as she went down the stairs. She stomped down as if to say that she did not want to be near him. Said felt as if he were falling into an abyss.
At the same moment that Fayeqa was going down the stairs back to their apartment, her father, Ali Hamama, was wandering aimlessly around the streets of Sayyida Zeinab, having fled from Aisha, still carrying under his arm the velvet box with the gold necklace that he had grabbed as he stormed out. What should he do now? Where should he go? Instinctively, his footsteps led him to al-Khalfawi teashop in Qalat al-Kabsh, which was open all night long. He felt he needed a little space to clear his mind. By God, his head felt like it was about to explode. He went into the tea shop, greeting the customers who variously muttered greetings in return. As soon as Ali Hamama took a seat in the far corner, the black serving boy, Abdu, with his two chipped front teeth and his squinty eye, came over. He set down a freshly rinsed water pipe, along with a tray of clay bowls stuffed with Ali’s favorite tobacco. Ali Hamama leaned back against the wall, stretched out his feet as if relaxing after a long trip, took a lump of hashish out of his pocket and said wearily, “Take this, Abdu, and make me two nice strong ones so I can forget everything.”
“I hope everything is fine, Hagg Ali.”
“The missus is giving me hell, Abdu.”
“Same with everyone, Hagg!”
Ali Hamama took the mouthpiece. Feeling so down in the dumps and in need of relief from the hashish, he took a long drag on it, making the charcoal glow. This gratified the squint-eyed Abdu so much that he let go of the mouthpiece, raised both hands above his head as if dancing and started chanting, “Praise to the Prophet! Praise to the Prophet.”
The best thing about Abdu was that he did not try to make small talk with the customers. When he noticed that Ali Hamama was deep in thought, he carried on tending to him without a word more. Gradually, the hashish worked its way into Ali Hamama’s head, and he could think clearly again. He went over the evening’s events in his mind and felt stunned. How could things with Aisha have deteriorated to such a degree? How dare she treat him like that? Thank God he had some hashish to calm his nerves and teach him wisdom. Had he been addicted to alcohol, his nerves would have shattered and he would have killed her with his own hands. By God, that’s what she deserved. What do this woman and her children think I am? That pampered and useless Fawzy wants a new suit. Of course he does. But he’s not going to get one. A new suit while he keeps failing at school? When he passes his final exams, what’ll it be then? A Cadillac?
With a bitter smile, Ali Hamama asked himself, “Do they think I can just print banknotes on a machine in my s
hop? Every day, it’s ‘I want this, I want that.’ Does everyone think they can just help themselves to my money? Are you kids trying to get your inheritance while I’m still alive? Bloody bastards!” He smoked ten bowls of tobacco, one after the other, then got up to go and pay al-Khalfawi, the tea shop owner. His bill was less than half what it should have been, as a result of a complicated agreement whereby purchases from his grocery were set against the cost of the tobacco he smoked there. As he left the tea shop, he felt as free as a bird and as finely tuned as a perfect musical phrase. He set off slowly, swaying from side to side, but still clutching the box with the necklace. Gradually, he started to see the situation in a new light. Aisha was his wife, and he knew her only too well. She was as stubborn as a donkey, and when angry, she was the worst sort of harridan created by God, fully capable of causing considerable damage. He could never forget the day she took a pair of scissors to his beautiful brand-new galabiyya. In the end, there was no might nor power except in Allah. What was the point, then, in continuing to provoke Aisha? Her capacity to do him evil was unequaled, and her obstinacy beggared belief.
“Right. I’m going to be better than her. I’ll be the noble, forgiving one.”
So it was decided. He would just tell her off this time so that she would realize that she’d been at fault and not do it again. But instead of plotting revenge on Aisha, he started thinking how he could make her happy. It was actually not because he was afraid of her or feeling unusually compassionate that Ali Hamama’s mood changed but because he was so aroused that it almost hurt. Hashish sent his sexual imagination into overdrive, but he could never imagine sex with any woman but his wife. For a quarter of a century, he had not been to bed with any other woman, not out of propriety but because Aisha used up so much of his energy. Her fondness for sex and her amazing skills under the covers had always kept the spark in their marriage. Ali Hamama made a half-hour detour to the Tahira sweet shop and then went home to find the light still on in the bedroom. He tried to open the door, but it was locked from the inside. He gave the door a few friendly yet persistent taps with his finger, but Aisha did not respond. He was certain that she was still awake. He leaned against the door and said quietly, “Open the door, Aisha.”