Alaa al-Aswany - The Automobile Club of Egypt

Could a man love a woman so much? As Kamel was explaining the verse to me, my imagination was set loose. Should a man ever love me to that extent, I would grant him my body and soul. I would be ready to live and die for him. I was by nature excitable, subject to wild emotions and mood swings. Sometimes I felt cheerful for no reason, but mostly I just felt depressed and would lock myself in my bedroom and cry. Then I started having dreams every night, but when I woke up, I could never remember what they were. Every last trace of them would disappear from my memory, leaving me sad and gloomy. Then the same dream started recurring two or three times a week. It is strange that a person can have the same dream again and again, but it was even stranger that I could remember the details of this one. I can still recall it with astonishing clarity. It starts off with me walking between two rows of trees in a beautiful park. Wherever I look, I can see pretty flowers in all colors, the smell of jasmine everywhere. I feel like I don’t have a worry in the world. Then my father suddenly appears from a side path; wearing a clean white galabiyya, he looks as relaxed and carefree as he did in his youth. His white teeth glisten as he smiles and holds his hand out to me, saying, “Come with me, Saleha.”

I feel enveloped in a sense of security as I take his hand and feel its warmth. He pulls me along behind him, down the side path. I am laughing, hoping that I can stay with him forever. He stops between the shadow of two trees, smiles and says,

“Look at me.”

Then I notice that his left ear is missing, and I scream in terror, but he just whispers calmly, “Don’t worry, Saleha. I’m all right.”

I point at his missing ear and try to speak. I try to tell my father that his ear has disappeared, but I cannot get my throat to utter a sound. He puts his arms around me and leans over to kiss my head, and as I feel his lips touching my forehead, I wake up.

Try as he might, Mahmud could hardly finish his seventh plate of kushari. His eyes bulged, and his head lolled forward as he wheezed like an exhausted bull. Both Fawzy and Mahmud felt sick from overeating and both secretly regretted ever having come up with the bet. But that damned Sidqi al-Zalbani ordered an eighth round and immediately started eating it, so Fawzy and Mahmud did not have a moment to catch their breath. They continued cramming kushari into their stuffed bellies, desperately trying to keep up. Sidqi cleaned his plate and seemed delighted at the sight of his competitors struggling.

Suddenly, Mahmud threw his spoon down onto the plate with a clang. He let his big head roll forward and put his hands on his stomach, crying out, “Oh, my stomach. My stomach. My stomach’s killing me.”

Fawzy was in no better shape, though it showed on him differently. He was having difficulty breathing, he felt dizzy and rivulets of sweat were running down his face.

Sidqi just looked at the two of them and laughed. “Tough luck, guys. I’ve won.”

“How do you know?” said Mahmud, still holding on to his stomach.

Sidqi looked at him almost sympathetically and said, “All right, Mahmud. Let’s carry on with the ninth round.”

“Can’t,” said Mahmud, giving a large groan, and Fawzy’s silence confirmed their defeat.

Sidqi laughed again and said, “Well, that means you’ve got to pay the bill, and don’t forget you each owe me a pound.”

They remained silent until Fawzy cleared his throat and said in a friendly way, “Of course. We have to pay, but unfortunately we weren’t expecting to.”

“What do you mean by that?” Sidqi shot back at him.

“Please, Sidqi,” Fawzy whined, “could you pay the bill and, God willing, we’ll pay you back as soon as we can?”

“If you can’t pay, why did you make the bet?”

“Don’t get all uppity with us!”

“I’ll get however I want with you!”

“Oh, do I have to teach you some manners?”

Fawzy was trying to turn it into an argument because he was sure that he and Mahmud, in spite of being completely exhausted and stuffed to the gills, could take Sidqi on in a fight. Then this tricky situation would be just a quarrel that sooner or later would end with a truce. There was the added complication, however, that the waiter had overheard them discussing the bill and scuttled off to tell Hagg Subhi, the owner of the café, who rushed over to them panting and shouting, “The bill, gents! You’ve had twenty-four large plates of kushari. ”

Mahmud said nothing, but Fawzy smiled and answered, “Of course Mr. Subhi. We’ll pay the bill immediately, with a kiss on top of it.”

“Forget the kiss, you waste of space. I want what I’m owed!” Hagg Subhi snarled, looking as if he was about to pounce.

But feigning a jovial air, Fawzy replied, “Don’t worry. The bill is going to get paid, God willing. Believe me. Of course, you know Mr. Sidqi al-Zalbani?

Hagg Subhi glowered at them, appearing unwilling to allow the conversation to move away from the topic of the bill.

Fawzy gestured at Sidqi, saying, “Hagg Subhi. I’d like you to meet our friend Sidqi, son of Hagg Muhammad al-Zalbani, owner of the famous al-Zalbani sweet factory. Naturally, you will have heard of him…”

Hagg Subhi barked back at him, “Listen, sunshine! I’ve never heard of al-Zalbani, or al-Talbani for that matter. You owe me for twenty-four large plates of kushari !”

Fawzy smiled and wincing at his tone said, “Give us a moment, sir. Our brother Sidqi al-Zalbani is going to pay right away.”

Sidqi had already stood up and said in a loud voice so that everyone could hear, “Listen, Hagg Subhi. Let’s settle this like gentlemen.”

Hagg Subhi roared back at him, “Oh, so you want to settle this like gentlemen?”

“Yes. Have I made any sort of arrangement with you?”

“No.”

“All right then, Hagg. The bill will be paid by these two who made the arrangement with you. Good-bye.”

Sidqi dropped this bombshell and walked away. Fawzy called after him despairingly, “Wait! Sidqi. Come back. I want to tell you something.”

But Sidqi ignored him and left the restaurant.

Hagg Subhi turned to Fawzy, shouting, “All right now. You made the arrangement, you have to pay the bill.”

“Mr Subhi, I’ll pay it. I promise you. But please give me twenty-four hours.”

“Twenty-four hours, my arse!”

That was the signal for five enormous waiters and busmen to gather around the table. They had been trained for such a situation, and they performed beautifully. The owner, Hagg Subhi, grabbed Fawzy by the collar, jerking his head back and bellowing,“Either you pay now or you’ll regret that your father ever met your mother!”

In a final attempt to calm the waters, Fawzy asked Hagg Subhi to let him go with the restaurant’s employees to his father’s shop on al-Sadd Street, where the elder Hamama would gladly pay the bill. Hagg Subhi gave this some thought, although his glowering face did not change one iota. He gave a signal, and his men clustered around Mahmud and Fawzy, who were so large and muscular that each required three of the restaurant men to frog-march him out of the restaurant. On the street, they were stopped repeatedly by people asking them, with thinly veiled curiosity and feigned concern, “Is everything all right? What’s going on?”

When the employees explained what had happened, some passersby just laughed, and others dished out suggestions as to what should be done with the boys. A skinny man in his fifties wearing slippers and a faded and old blue galabiyya almost in tatters around his shoulders listened to the story with a scowl; he looked at the pair and said timidly, “What a pair of filthy swindlers!” And then, out of nowhere, he walloped Fawzy’s face, to which the fettered lad responded with a torrent of obscenities as Mahmud tried to wriggle out of his captors’ hold to retaliate. But they held him all the tighter, dragging them all the way to Ali Hamama’s shop.