Friendly Fire Read online

  She bent over him, took him in her arms, and started calling to him. Then she buried her face in his chest and burst into tears. In an hour, the doctor came and, after examining my father carefully, bent down to me and informed me in a whisper that he had suffered an aneurysm. He advised me to take him immediately to the hospital, asked for twenty pounds, which he thrust into his pocket with thanks, and left. The ambulance workers exerted huge efforts with my mother before managing to get my father dressed in a white gallabiya and then they placed him on the stretcher and took him down the stairs, my mother and I behind them. As they took my father through the entryway of the building, Huda, our young maid, suddenly appeared and, with her skinny, nervy body and flying pigtail, started running after the stretcher and leaping round it and screaming.

  In the light of the lamp suspended over the bed in the hospital, my father’s face seemed to me to be divided into two halves, one with a bulging eye, opened as far as it could go and blood-shot, and the other defeated and sagging. My father was trying to speak and a vague, suppressed, rattling sound emerged from within him. My mother left me with him and went to ask the hospital administration about something. In the afternoon, friends, relatives, colleagues from work, and others I didn’t know appeared. They spoke to us—my mother and me—of God’s mercy, treatment overseas, and friends of theirs (people they knew very well) who had suffered exactly the same symptoms as my father’s and who had recovered, with God’s help, and now enjoyed the most robust health and happiness. Then the visitors went away, one by one, leaving behind bunches of roses and colored boxes of chocolates, and my mother and I remained seated in front of my father; and when he closed his bulging eye and his breathing became regular, I realized that he had gone to sleep. It was late, perhaps after midnight, when we heard a faint knocking on the door, which opened a little to reveal the face of Uncle Anwar. He was wearing his black working tuxedo with the shiny lapels and under it a white shirt and sagging black bowtie. Uncle Anwar’s eyes roamed the room and then he signaled to me with his hand, so I went outside, followed by my mother, and he heard from us what had happened and asked us in detail about the opinions and prognoses of the doctors. His face was dark and the way he interrupted us as we spoke indicated that he was angry. Soon he put out his cigarette with his shoe and asked my mother if he could see him. He went forward, pushed open the door, and entered, and when he got close to my father I thought I saw a flash of consciousness pass quickly over my father’s eyes, and that he recognized Anwar. This, however, was quickly extinguished and the eye resumed its vacant look. Uncle Anwar laughed loudly and said, “What’s going on, my dear Mr. Abduh? What kind of a stunt is this you’re trying to pull? Do you get a kick out of making us worry or what? Look at you—as strong as a bull! These guys sent people to look for me at a wedding and they told me, ‘Come to Abduh at once!’ So I thought something bad must have happened!”

  He turned to my mother and went on, “What kind of way to behave is that, Madam? You gave me a nasty shock. There’s nothing wrong with Abduh. Look at him! He’s as strong as a horse.”

  Then he turned back to my father, seemingly wanting to empty out everything he had to say at one go, or having decided not to stay silent for a second.

  “That’s enough now, Abduh! As a punishment for having got me worried, I’m going to come see you on Tuesday and the bill’s on you—you’re going to pay for a bottle of Forty-eight brandy and a kilo of kebab. Isam and the madam are my witnesses.”

  I could almost have sworn that my father’s face jerked into something like a smile. Uncle Anwar went on talking and laughing and then said goodbye to my father and us and went out. I followed him but when he passed through the door that led to the hospital’s lobby, he didn’t look at me but turned to the right where the elevator was. Soon, however, he slowed his steps, then stood and bent forward, putting his hands over his face as gasps of violent weeping escaped.

  The morning of the following day, one of the nurses at the hospital got into a resounding fight with the cleaner, accusing him openly of stealing the patients’ food. The cleaner shouted filthy insults and leaped forward in an attempt to strike the nurse, but colleagues gathered around and prevented him, and at the moment they were sitting him down on a chair and starting to calm him down, my father died.

  4

  I got my baccalaureate in science and was appointed as a researcher in the government’s Chemistry Authority. The appointment suited my circumstances: at that time I was making continuous and exhausting efforts to realize my withdrawal from society, in which context it was enough for me to become acquainted with one intelligent individual for my mission to be aborted, since, when this happened, I would ask myself, “Why am I putting up with all this pain in the cause of cutting myself off from people when there is among them at least one person intelligent enough to understand me?” From this perspective, my presence in the Chemistry Authority served to hasten my withdrawal. The building was ancient, shabby, and covered in dust. It had been erected in a forgotten corner of Ramses Street where, for the length of its fifty years, a clamorous life had swirled around it while it crouched in the silence of death.

  You may use your bathroom at home for many a year without it occurring to you that there is a kind of life that goes on inside the drain. If, however, at some point, you were to perform an experiment and raise the cover, a whole world would appear to your eyes—dozens of maggots, and insects of different kinds, eating, multiplying, fighting, and killing one another. You would then be struck with amazement by the notion that these creatures had been living with you for years without your knowledge. This was the image that haunted me every morning as I walked among the crowds on Ramses Street, with all its bustle and noise, then turned to the left and abandoned it to enter the Chemistry Authority—a drain in whose darkness and damp were enclosed a group of filthy cockroaches of the sort that when stepped on and crushed extrude a sticky white liquid. ‘Cockroaches’—that was the scientific term for my colleagues in the Authority. My boss, Dr. Sa‘id, didn’t, in fact, have a doctorate, though he had taken the exams three times in succession and failed, leading the Authority employees to award him the title (either as a compliment or sarcastically) and he had immediately grabbed on to it and would get angry if he were not so addressed. The worst troubles to disturb the tranquility of this man who occupied the post of Head of the Research Department (a post, that is to say, of some moment) were those that afflicted him after a meal. At midmorning, Dr. Sa‘id would sit himself down at his desk and devour a large dish overflowing with stewed broad beans, bean patties, and fried eggs, accompanied by sweet red onions and pickled eggplant, after finishing which he would be compelled to loosened the belt of his pants to alleviate the pressure on his great belly. Then he would gulp down a glass of imported Epsom salts and send someone off for tea. His head was bald, without a single hair, and this made him look as though he were sick or wearing a disguise, and one’s first glance at him, with his bulging eyes, sparse eyebrows, sagging dewlaps, and vulgar voice, left a bestial impression. Sometimes, as I observed him, a strange idea would occur to me: in some mysterious way, I expected that Dr. Sa‘id would suddenly interrupt what he was saying and reveal his true nature, i.e., bellow and pull his tail out for all of us to see and place it on the desk in front of him. I knew very well of course that such a thing would never happen but if it had I wouldn’t have been that surprised. During the tea break, all the employees of the department would come to Dr. Sa‘id’s office to pay their respects and hover around him, passing the time in conversation until they had to go. Three topics were dear to the doctor’s heart—the national soccer championships since he was a loyal Ahli Club fan, the automobile market since he made money dealing in cars on the side, and, most importantly, sex, its secrets and its arts, since he was an outrageous skirt-chaser.* Some said that the reason for this was that his wife was frigid but he didn’t have the guts to divorce her or take another wife because she was rich and supported hi
m. This, supposedly, was why he satisfied his lusts far from home, in his office at the Chemistry Authority. Dr. Sa‘id was particularly smitten with the department’s cleaning women and female workers—a taste no doubt attributable to his early experiences. When one of these women pleased him, he would keep calling her to his office, where he would treat her quite informally and press gifts on her until, little by little, he’d start coming on to her by making jokes of a sexual nature, which he’d toss out to her quite confidently, roaring with laughter. When the day came for him to make his move, Dr. Sa‘id would invite the woman to his office and order her to close the door (which had a special lock that could not be opened from the outside). After she’d closed the door, he’d ask her to get something from the cupboard, and then he’d get up and place himself behind her and stick his huge body against her back, hugging her and having his way her. When this was going on in the office, the workers in the unit would know and would whisper and gossip and laugh about it, or express their disapproval. Under no circumstances, however, would they express their opposition openly.

  Years passed and Dr. Sa‘id practiced his private life at the research unit in peace. Only once did something happen to disturb its even tenor, which was when Umm Imad appeared in the department—a beautiful young woman with green eyes who’d moved from Tanta after her husband died and joined the department as a worker on a temporary contract. Dr. Sa‘id fancied Umm Imad from the first day. He promised her he’d do his best to get her appointed on a permanent contract and started arriving every morning at the department with his pockets full of different kinds of chewing gum and candies that he gave to Umm Imad for her children. Did Dr. Sa‘id make his move too early or had he misjudged her from the beginning? He called for her and ordered her to close the door and she closed it. As usual he got up and tried to stick himself against her but she put up serious resistance. He didn’t care and tried to get closer and she growled warningly, in a voice that was clear but still not loud, “Shame on you!” Wisdom required that he desist, but he kept on going, either because he was so aroused or because all he saw in her refusal was a crass kind of coquetry. He threw himself on her with his whole body and put his arms around her, but she screamed and went on screaming, her cries resounding through the Research Unit. In a second, the employees had gathered outside the office and when the screaming went on, one of them plucked up his courage and knocked on the glass pane in the door. Minutes of silence passed. Then Dr. Sa‘id’s heavy footsteps were heard and he himself opened the door to them and they burst inside, hoping for the scene of a lifetime. Umm Imad stood in front of the cupboard, struggling to catch her breath, her hair disheveled and her gallabiya pulled tight and torn in more than one place. Everything about her indicated that a violent struggle had just taken place and she started repeating in a tearful voice, clasping her head with her hands as though lamenting at a funeral, “Shame on you! I’ll make you pay for this, you’ll see. Do you think if I was that kind of woman I’d be living the way I do? But the Lord knows all. I work to take care of my children. Shame on you!”

  For one minute, or two, Umm Imad was on the verge of having an effect on the employees, but Dr. Sa‘id recovered his poise, lit a cigarette, went up to Umm Imad, and took a strong grip on her shoulder. Then his angry voice rang out like thunder while he waggled his middle finger in a vulgar gesture.

  “Listen, you silly little girl! Keep that stuff for saints’ carnivals! ‘Woooooh! Blessings, Holy Master! Wooooooh!’ I’m no fairground sucker and I’m not some dumb wog. Forget the ‘This happened and then that happened’—I know how that crap works. I’m telling you for the last time, in front of these men, you either return the hundred pounds that were in the drawer or I call the police, I swear. Got it?”

  There were exclamations and whispers as the employees listened first to Dr. Sa‘id’s version of events and then to Umm Imad’s, and there was some attempt to bring about a quick reconciliation, but Dr. Sa‘id refused. He refused the very idea and shouted at them, “What? What’s going on here, my friends? Is a hundred pounds a joke to you? You want my supplementary benefits to go for nothing?” He struck one palm on the other and muttered furiously, “That’s the limit!”

  Umm Imad swore by the greatest oaths and prayed she be struck blind and her son Imad run over by a streetcar if she’d touched or even set eyes on the money but in vain. Dr. Sa‘id continued to insist that she return the money that he’d been paid the day before, left forgotten in the drawer, and not found this morning after Umm Imad had cleaned the room. The employees were all well aware of the truth but they made a silent pact to respect Dr. Sa‘id’s version and oppose Umm Imad, feeling that a victory for Umm Imad over Dr. Sa‘id would be, in some sense, a defeat for them too. The following day, delegations went to her to scare her, force her to accept a reconciliation, and return the money but she seemed to have lost her wits and kept screaming and cursing herself and swearing on the Qur’an. The business ramified and meetings were convened and broke up and the problem kept the employees busy for a whole week until, finally, they were successful and Umm Imad, pushed by the others, went to Dr. Sa‘id’s office, apologized, and kissed his head; indeed, she would have kissed his hand had he not pulled it back and declared in front of everyone, in a tone of voice indicating the opposite, that Umm Imad had stolen nothing, that he’d found the money where he’d forgotten it in the pocket of his jacket, and that Umm Imad in fact was a very decent woman, one whom he loved like his own daughter. I was present and at the moment when Abd el-Alim, the office messenger, proposed that everyone recite the first chapter of the Qur’an to bless the reconciliation, I felt that what was happening in front of me was not real, that the people seated there—Dr. Sa‘id, Umm Imad, and the employees—were all actors who were playing out a well-rehearsed scene after which they would straightaway take off their costumes and resume their original characters. This strange idea of mine must have been apparent on my face because I noticed that everyone avoided looking at me when they were speaking. I had no doubt that my colleagues hated me and longed for an opportunity to do me harm.

  From my first day in the department, I had determined to despise and look down on them. Without saying anything, I knew how to let them feel their insignificance. It happened at this period that I needed glasses and I picked out round frames made of thin plastic. I felt that these gave my face a superior cast that was somehow provocative. Every morning I’d go to my office with the newspapers under my arm and a huge book that I chose deliberately as one that I knew no one in the office would ever have heard of—el-Isfahani’s Songs, or Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, or Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West. Once I’d done with the newspapers, I’d open my huge tome and immerse myself in my reading. When the room filled up with employees and the noise level grew, I’d raise my head from the book and give those present a steady stare, without speaking. The noise would then die down right away and sometimes they’d withdraw from the room.

  I resolutely refused their insistent attempts to get closer to me, to find some common factor, and when any of the employees came up to me smiling and asked me hesitantly, “What are you reading, Mr. Isam?” I’d answer him seriously and without pausing, “To tell you the truth this book is extremely specialized. You’d find it difficult to understand.” Then I’d start reading again and he’d retire, silenced.

  After a month in the department, I could almost touch their hatred for me with my hands. Dr. Sa‘id treated me with caution. I could see dislike and alarm in his eyes. For him, I was something mysterious that he feared and knew was superior to him. One morning, he came to me, reproached me laughingly for not coming to see him in his office like the rest of my coworkers, and said, “My dear man, do come and drink a glass of tea with us. They’re a nice bunch and we keep ourselves entertained.”

  A malicious pleasure filled me, because he’d provided me with a perfect opportunity to give him a slap in the face. I looked at him seriously, as though I had
n’t understood. Then I told him quietly, resuming my reading, “I don’t have time for entertainment.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw his face darken with anger and he said as he left the room, “Fine. Don’t come. I shouldn’t have asked. Do you think we have nothing better to do? We’re up to our necks in work.”

  It occurred to me then that he wouldn’t let my slight pass unpunished and that a tough battle was inevitable. And I was right.

  During the month of Ramadan, Dr. Sa‘id transformed himself into a pious believer. His long green string of prayer beads never left his hand, he covered his bald patch with a crocheted white skullcap, and on his feet he wore open sandals from which his thick swollen toes with their horny nails protruded. He spent his days between his office and the bathroom, where he would repeat his ablutions, and he kept up a flow of “Glory be to God!”s, leading the employees in their prayers with strict punctuality, and reciting the Qur’an to himself from a large copy that he kept open in front of him on his desk.

  On the first day of Ramadan, I sat down at my desk, opened the papers, and started reading. As was my custom every morning, I asked Abd el-Alim to get me a cup of coffee. I noticed that he seemed reluctant and was muttering something in a low voice but I paid no attention and went back to reading. Half an hour went by and Abd el-Alim did not turn up with the coffee. When he came in on some other errand I questioned him and he answered insolently, “No coffee today. Season’s greetings. Happy Ramadan.”

  Before I could respond, he went on quickly, “It’s Dr. Sa‘id’s instructions. No coffee or tea during Ramadan.”

  Abd el-Alim was an aged peasant, from Minuf. He spied on the employees and passed on information to Dr. Sa‘id. Like the rest, he hated me and the pleasure he took in getting his revenge was obvious from his tone of voice, because he was a servant and servants derive an ecstatically malicious pleasure from seeing one of their masters in a position of weakness.