Chicago Page 6

  Or by wondering sarcastically, “And what would I do with ‘thank you’? Which bank can I cash it at? You’re such a loser!”

  The suddenly humiliated student, weakened by need and silenced by gratitude, would have no choice but to ignore the insult or laugh nervously or fall silent and turn his face away as if he had heard nothing.

  “We finished all items on the agenda. Any new business?” Danana asked. No one spoke except a bearded student who said, “Dr. Danana, the Palestinian butcher from whom we bought halal meat has unfortunately closed his store and left Chicago. You know, sir, that meat in ordinary stores is not slaughtered in the Islamic way—”

  Danana interrupted him with a gesture of his hand as if saying it wasn’t a big deal, then turned around and pulled from the bookcase behind him a sheet of paper that he handed to him, saying, “Here, Ma’mun, is a list of the addresses of all halal butchers in Chicago.”

  Ma’mun’s face lit up and he took the sheet, muttering, “May God recompense you well, sir!”

  As usual Danana ignored the thanks and said, “Anything else?”

  The students remained silent so Danana turned off the recorder and the meeting was adjourned. Nothing remained, according to the usual routine, except distributing the newspapers among the students. But Danana’s cell phone rang suddenly, and as soon as he answered it, the expression on his face changed from ordinary welcome to intense interest. Then he ended the conversation and jumped to his feet, saying, as he gathered his things hastily, “I have to leave at once. A high-ranking official has arrived in Chicago and I’ve got to welcome him. Take the newspapers and don’t forget to close the apartment door and turn off the lights.”

  Chapter 6

  Dr. Muhammad Salah had not expected anyone to visit him at that hour. He had just finished having dinner with his wife, Chris, and together they had finished off a bottle of rose wine. Then she sat next to him on the sofa; he patted her head affectionately and passed his fingers through her soft blond hair. She let out a soft moan that he understood, so he moved away a little and began to read some of the papers he was holding. She whispered wistfully, “You have work tonight?”

  “I have to read this paper because I have to explain it to the students tomorrow.”

  She fell silent for a moment then sighed and got up, kissed him on the cheek, and whispered affectionately, “Good night.”

  He listened to her footsteps as they receded on the wooden staircase. When he heard the bedroom door close he put the paper in his briefcase and poured himself a drink. He had no desire to drink but he wanted to while away the time until Chris was fast asleep. Then he came to suddenly when the doorbell rang. At first he didn’t believe it was actually ringing until he heard it ring again, clearly and emphatically this time. He got up reluctantly and looked at the wall clock: it was after eleven-thirty. He remembered that the intercom had not been working for a week and that he had asked Chris to get someone to repair it, but she had forgotten as usual. When he was only a few steps from the door, a disturbing idea occurred to him: had the intercom been deliberately sabotaged? He remembered many similar details that he had read in the crime pages of the newspaper about groups of criminals watching houses and cutting off burglar alarm systems before attacking them. Usually it happened this way: a perfectly innocent-looking girl would knock on the door at a very late hour asking for help. As soon as the owner opened the door the home invaders would attack him. He did his best to dismiss the disquieting thought, but he couldn’t. So he stopped in front of the little safe in the wall near the entrance and pushed the secret button. It opened and he took out the old Beretta handgun that he had bought when he first came to Chicago. He’d never used it but took care of it and kept it in good condition. He felt some trepidation when he listened to the click of the bullet chamber. He moved with agility toward the door, his right hand feeling the cold metal with his finger on the trigger. Now, with just one movement of his finger he could shoot the person behind the door if they had evil intentions. He approached with extreme caution and looked through the peephole and at once his hand, still clutching the gun, relaxed. He put the Beretta away and opened the door and shouted enthusiastically while grinning, “Hello, what a surprise!”

  Ra’fat Thabit was standing in front of the door, slightly awkward with an apologetic smile on his face. “Sorry to disturb you, Salah. I tried calling but your telephone was turned off and I had to see you tonight.”

  “You’re always disturbing, Ra’fat. So, what’s new there?” he said, laughing as he pulled him by the hand. This was their way of joking with each other: sarcastic and somewhat cruel, as if the cruelty masked the affection they felt for each other, their thirty-year friendship as comrades-in-arms. They had been together through sorrows and joys and tempestuous times that had created a rare kind of understanding between them, so much so that one glance from Salah now at Ra’fat’s face was sufficient to make him realize that his friend had a serious problem. His smile vanished and he asked him anxiously, “What happened?”

  “Make me a drink.”

  “What would you like?”

  “Scotch and soda with lots of ice.”

  Ra’fat began to drink and speak. He spoke fast and passionately, as if getting rid of a heavy burden. And when he finished, he kept his head bowed for a while. Then Salah asked in a serious and understanding voice, “Did Sarah actually leave?”

  “She will, this weekend.”

  “What did her mother do?”

  “I avoid talking with her as much as I can so we won’t have to fight. But of course she supports Sarah.”

  Silence fell again and Ra’fat got up to fix himself another drink, his tired voice mixed with the clinking of the ice cubes. “Don’t you find it strange, Salah? That you father a little girl and you grow attached to her and you love her more than any other person on the face of the earth and you do your utmost to provide her with a happy life. And as soon as your little girl grows up, she turns against you and leaves with her boyfriend at the earliest opportunity.”

  “This is natural.”

  “I don’t find it natural at all.”

  “Sarah is an American girl, Ra’fat. Girls in America leave their family home to live independently with their boyfriends. You know that better than me. In this country you cannot control your children’s personal lives.”

  “Even you say that? You are talking exactly like my wife. You both really irritate me. What can I do to convince you both that I accept the idea that my daughter has a boyfriend? Please believe, just once and forever, this fact: I am American. I have raised my daughter with American values. I have got rid of, for good, Eastern backwardness. I no longer make a connection between a person and their genitals.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “But that’s what your words meant.”

  “I am sorry if I’ve upset you.”

  “You don’t understand me, Salah. That’s all. I don’t interfere in Sarah’s personal life, but I don’t trust this creep with her, not for a single moment.”

  “If Jeff is a bad person, Sarah will discover that one day. She’s entitled to have her own experiences, by herself.”

  “But she’s become a different and unfathomable person. It seems to me sometimes that she’s another girl, not the Sarah that I carried in my arms as a baby. I really don’t understand her. Why is she treating me so cruelly? Why does any word I say provoke her? She will be very calm and nice and suddenly for no reason she’ll have these outbursts of rage. Besides, her face is pale and she’s in poor health.”

  “This is the nature of youth: changes in feelings, going from one mood to the opposite mood. Even her cruelty with you is natural. Do you remember how you treated your father when you were a young man? At that age our desire for independence from our parents makes us cruel toward them. Her rudeness toward you does not mean that she no longer loves you. She’s just rebelling against the authority that you represent.”

  They talked for a
whole hour in which they repeated what they said in different ways. Then Ra’fat got up and said, “I have to go.”

  “Do you have classes tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “Okay then, sleep well, friend, and in the morning you’ll discover it’s a simple problem.”

  Ra’fat left and Salah closed the door behind him then went up the stairs leading to the bedroom, trying not to make any noise, so as not to wake up Chris. He took off his silk robe and hung it on the clothes rack and sneaked quietly into bed next to her. There was a faint light from a small side lamp that Chris left on at night because she was afraid of the dark. He stared at the ceiling and saw the shadows as if they were ghosts prancing about. Suddenly he felt pity for Ra’fat. He understood him well. Ra’fat couldn’t stand the idea that his daughter was in love with another man. He was in the grips of deathly jealousy toward Jeff. That was the truth. Dostoevsky has written in one of his novels that every father in the world harbored deep-seated hatred for his daughter’s husband no matter how much he pretended otherwise. Ra’fat’s problem, however, was much more complicated: he couldn’t bear the idea of his daughter having a relationship outside marriage, for despite his harangues in defense of Western culture, he still had the mentality of the Eastern man which he attacked and mocked. Salah said to himself: Maybe I’m lucky I didn’t have any children. To be barren is better than to be in Ra’fat’s shoes right now. But Ra’fat’s problem is inherent in his own personality. Many Egyptians have fathered children in America and were able to maintain a balance between the two cultures. But Ra’fat despises his culture and yet carries it within him at the same time, which complicates matters. “Poor Ra’fat,” he whispered in English, then caught a glimpse of the alarm clock and was dismayed to find that it was one in the morning. He had only a few hours to sleep. He got under the covers, turned on his side, assumed a fetal position, covered his head with the pillow, closed his eyes, and started gradually to feel that comfortable darkness of sleep. But Chris, lying next to him, suddenly coughed and moved. There was something rigid about her movement that told him she was awake. He ignored her and tried to fall asleep, but she turned toward him and embraced him under the covers, and when she kissed him he could smell alcohol on her breath and whispered in alarm, “Have you had more to drink?”

  She clung to him and began to embrace and kiss him, panting. He tried to speak, but she placed her hand gently on his lips, and her face in the soft light for the first time seemed to be burning. He felt her hand sneaking between his thighs as she whispered while bringing her lips close to his mouth, “I miss you.”

  Chapter 7

  Tariq stood on the alert, staring at Shaymaa as if he were a goalkeeper expecting the ball to strike from any direction, ready to catch it or deflect it in an instant.

  He was waiting for any word from her to refute and to mock. But she did something he did not expect: her features suddenly contracted, then she started to sob like a lost child, her whole body shaking. He looked at her not knowing what to do, and then said in a voice that sounded strange to his ears, “Enough, Doctor. It all ended well, thank God.”

  “I am tired. I can’t take it anymore. Tomorrow I’ll withdraw from the scholarship and go back to Egypt.”

  “Don’t be hasty.”

  “I’ve made up my mind. It’s settled.”

  “Remember that you’d be getting a doctorate from Illinois. Think how hard you’ve worked for this scholarship and how many of your colleagues in Tanta wish to be in your place.”

  Shaymaa bowed her head, and it seemed to him that she’d calmed down a little, so he added, “Don’t give in to bad thoughts.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Get accustomed to your new life.”

  “I tried and I failed.”

  “Do you have any problems at school?”

  “No, thank God.”

  “What’s the problem then?”

  She spoke in a soft voice, as if talking to herself, “I am completely alone here, Dr. Tariq. I have no friends or acquaintances. I don’t know how to deal with the Americans. I don’t understand them. All my life I had a perfect score in my English language classes, but here they speak another kind of English. They speak so fast and they swallow some of the letters so I don’t understand what they say.”

  Tariq interrupted her, “You’re feeling homesick, and being out of place here is quite natural. As for the language problem, we’ve all faced it at the beginning. I advise you to watch television a lot so you’ll get used to the American accent.”

  “Even if my language improves, that won’t change anything. I feel I am an outcast in this country. Americans shy away from me because I am Arab and because I am veiled. At the airport they interrogated me as if I were a criminal. At school the students make fun of me when they see me. Did you see how that policeman treated me?”

  “That’s not your problem alone. We all face unpleasant situations. The image of Muslims here suffered a lot after 9/11.”

  “What have I done wrong?”

  “Put yourself in their place. Ordinary Americans know almost nothing about Islam. In their minds Islam is associated with terrorism and killing.”

  They both were silent for a moment, then she said, “Before coming to America, I complained about how difficult it was to live in Egypt. Now, my dream is to go back.”

  “We all feel homesick like you. I myself, even though I’ve spent two years here, miss Egypt a lot and I go through hard times, but I say to myself that the degree I’ll get is worth all this hardship. I pray to God to give me patience. Do you perform your prayers regularly?”

  “Yes, thank God,” she whispered and bowed her head. He found himself saying, “By the way, Chicago is a beautiful city. Have you been out and about?”

  “I only know this campus.”

  “I am going out to do my shopping for the week. Why don’t you come with me?”

  Her eyes grew wider; it seemed she was surprised by the offer, and then she looked at her flannel gallabiya and stuck out her foot and jokingly asked him, “In my slippers?”

  They both laughed for the first time. Then she asked him, as if she were reluctant, “Are we going to be late? I’ve a lot of studying to do.”

  “Me too. I have a long assignment in statistics. We’ll be back soon.”

  He sat waiting for her in the lobby until she changed her clothes. She returned a short while later wearing a loose-fitting blue dress that he thought was elegant. He noticed that she had got over her dejection and seemed almost cheerful. They spent the evening together: they took the L downtown and he showed her the Sears Tower and Water Tower Place and she seemed as happy as a child standing next to him in the glass elevator at the famous Marshall Field’s store. Then they went back to the mall and bought what they needed. Finally they took the university bus back to the dorm. They talked the whole time: she told him how she cherished the memory of her father and of her love for her mother and two sisters. She said that despite her missing them she called them only once a week because she had to be careful how she spent every dollar of the meager scholarship. She asked him about himself and he told her that his father was a police officer who was promoted to assistant director of Cairo Security before he died. He told her how his father raised him strictly and beat him hard when he misbehaved. Once, while in preparatory school, his father forced him to eat in the kitchen with the servants for a whole week because he had dared to announce at the table that he didn’t like spinach. Tariq laughed as he remembered then added fondly, “My father, God have mercy on his soul, was a school unto himself. He meant this punishment to give me a lesson in manliness. From that day I’ve learned to eat whatever is placed before me without objection. You know, my father’s strictness has done me a world of good. All my life I’ve excelled in school, and had it not been for nepotism, by now I would have been a great surgeon. Thank God anyway; I’ve done very well in school. Do you know how high my GPA is? It’s three point nine nine o
ut of four.”

  “Ma sha’Allah!”

  “American students often seek me out to help them understand the lessons, which makes me feel proud because I am Egyptian and better than them.”

  Then he leaned back in his seat and looked in the distance, as if remembering, and went on. “Last year in biology class I had an American classmate named Smith, known throughout the university because he’s a genius who has maintained excellence all his years as a student. Smith tried to challenge me academically but I taught him a lesson in manners.”

  “Really?”

  “I floored him. I placed first three times. Now, when he sees me anywhere, he salutes me in deference.”

  He insisted on carrying her bags and accompanied her to her apartment on the seventh floor. He stood there, saying good-bye; her voice shook as she thanked him. “I don’t know what to say, Dr. Tariq. May God recompense you well for what you’ve done for me.”

  “Can you call me Tariq, without titles?”

  “On condition that you call me Shaymaa.”

  Her whispering voice almost made him tremble. As he shook her hand he thought how soft it was. He returned to his apartment and found the lights on, the statistics book open, the cup of tea where he had left it, and his pajamas lying on the bed. Everything was as he had left it, but he himself was no longer what he used to be; new feelings were raging inside him. He got so worked up that he took off his clothes and kept pacing the apartment up and down in his underwear, and then he threw himself on the bed and began to stare at the ceiling. What had happened seemed strange to him. Why had he acted that way with her? Where did he get the courage? For the first time in his life he had gone out with a girl. He felt that the person sitting next to her on the L was somebody else, not himself. And even now, he believed that his meeting her was a delusion, that if he looked for her now, he wouldn’t find her. O God. Why was he attracted to her like that? She’s just a country girl of mediocre beauty like dozens of girls he used to see every day in Cairo. What made her stand out? Did she arouse him sexually? True, she has two full, delicious lips, good for fantastic uses. Besides, her loose-fitting dress sometimes clung to her body, against her will, pronouncing two well-formed breasts, but she could not be compared at all to the American coeds at Illinois or the Egyptian brides-to-be whose hands he had sought in marriage. It was also impossible to mention her in the same breath as the naked beauties who stoked his desire in the porn movies. Why then did she appeal to him? Was it her fragility and vulnerability? Was it her crying that won his sympathy? Or did she make him nostalgic for Egypt? Yes, indeed. Everything about her was Egyptian: the flannel gallabiya with the little flowers, her beautiful snow-white neck and delicate ears with the rustic gold earrings in the shape of bunches of grapes, the khadduga slippers that revealed her small, clean feet with their well-trimmed nails left without nail polish (so her ablution would be complete), and that subtle clean smell emanating from her body as he sat next to her. What attracted him to her was something that he felt but couldn’t describe, something purely Egyptian like ful, taamiya, bisara, the ringing laugh, belly dancing, Sheikh Muhammad Rifaat’s voice in Ramadan, and his mother’s supplications after dawn prayers. She represented all that he missed after two years away from home. He got lost in thought until the stroke of the living room clock sounded, whereupon he jumped out of bed and remembering his statistics assignment shouted, “What a disaster!” He sat at his desk, placed his head between his palms, concentrated to get out of his dreamy state, and gradually started working. He finished the first problem correctly then the second and the third. When he finished number five, he was entitled, according to his revered tradition, to eat a small piece of basbusa. But, to his surprise and for the first time, he had no appetite for basbusa. The point of the lesson had become quite clear to him, so he finished several other problems in about half an hour. It occurred to him to rest a little but he was afraid he might lose his enthusiasm, so he kept working until he heard the doorbell ring. He got up lazily, his mind still filled with numbers. He opened the door, and there she was in front of him. She was still in her street outfit and her face, in the soft blue light that lit the hallway, seemed more beautiful than ever before. Shyly she said as she extended her hand with a plate covered with aluminum foil, “You’re undoubtedly hungry and won’t have time to prepare dinner. I made you two sandwiches. Please, enjoy.”