Alaa al-Aswany - The Automobile Club of Egypt

Alku continued staring Abd el-Aziz up and down as if he heard nothing of what Suleyman said. His anger was building, perhaps because Abd el-Aziz was not quaking with fear and had not rushed forward to pay obeisance or perhaps because Suleyman appeared so sympathetic to Abd el-Aziz, a sentiment that Alku knew could lead to insubordination. Alku gave a loud grunt, and Hameed, like a well-trained hunting dog, picked up on the signal immediately. He went right over to Abd el-Aziz, fixed him with a glower and asked in his high-pitched unctuous voice, “Have you got the key to the storeroom, you piece of scum?”

Abd el-Aziz was startled. He felt his mouth go dry at being spoken to in this way by someone who was young enough to be his son. He said nothing. Hameed took the humiliation one step further, “Are you deaf? I asked you if you’ve got the key to the storeroom!”

“Yes,” replied Abd el-Aziz, trying to control his anger. Hameed continued to stare contemptuously and said, “Then run and get your master, Alku, a box of Havana cigars.”

Abd el-Aziz remained silent. He turned quickly and started toward the storeroom. He knew where the cigars were kept and wanted to fetch them to stop the insults from being piled on him, but before he could take a single step, Hameed shouted at him, “You do know what Havana cigars are, don’t you, you donkey?”

Abd el-Aziz turned around and answered firmly, “I am not a donkey. I am a human being like you.”

Hameed grunted and relaxed, as if he had finally made the point. Standing right next to Abd el-Aziz, he shouted in his face, “You are a donkey, and I’m going to teach you some manners.”

I pieced together the details of what had happened that day.

Hameed called over Labib the telephonist and Idris the waiter. The two held my father to still him as Hameed slapped him across the face, shouting, “You have no right to do that. You have no right to do that.”

Witnesses to the incident confirmed to me that Hameed slapped my father until his nose bled. After Alku and Hameed had left, my father’s colleagues gathered around him. They sat him down and wiped the blood from his face with a damp cloth. Idris and Labib tried to console him. They felt guilty for having held him to receive the slaps.

Idris said weakly, “Don’t worry, Uncle Abd el-Aziz. We have all been through it. Alku beats the stuffing out of all of us.”

My father nodded but said nothing. Idris put his arms around him and whispered, “By the Prophet, please don’t be upset with me. I had no choice.”

Labib then declaimed, “Sometimes Alku is harsh with us, but he has a good heart and he looks after us like a father.”

He added that sentence as a precaution. If Alku came to hear about them consoling my father, then Labib would at least be able to provide a defense for himself. My father just mumbled a few platitudes about not being angry with his colleagues. He shook their hands as he got up and seemed to be in a hurry to leave the Club.

According to my mother, he arrived home at around two in the morning. He got changed, made his ablutions and said his prayers before sitting down to eat his dinner. My mother noticed that he appeared downcast, but when she asked him about it, he just said he was tired out and wanted to go to bed. My mother went into the kitchen to make him a glass of lemon juice with mint, but when she returned to the sitting room, she found him at the table, the tray of food in front of him untouched and his head lolling backward. She walked over to him, shook him gently and called his name, but he just gave a weak groan. His eyes were half open. My mother screamed and rushed outside to ask our neighbors to come and help. Aisha came immediately. She poured some ammonia onto a cloth and held it under his nose. Then she dripped some sugar water into his mouth. The ambulance arrived about half an hour later. After examining him carefully, the doctor said that there was no hope. My father died before his fifty-second birthday. He just gave up the ghost. He had struggled along with honor and pride until he was delivered a mortal blow.

I went through a period of denial, as if the news of my father’s death was patently a fabrication with no basis in reality. It was a joke for him to have died like that. It went against all the rules. It was a sudden unilateral breach of trust. It was not fair that you could build your whole life around the presence of one person and then without forewarning have to face his sudden and senseless disappearance. I could not cry for my father until some months after his death. I felt a sadness greater than anything I could express. And I was caught in a slough of inaction. It takes us some time to absorb the great tragedies that hit us like thunderbolts, and it might take you years to grasp what it means when your father dies. Your father’s death means that you are left alone and naked, unprotected and insignificant, with no buffer against the vicissitudes of life. You feel like a victim of a fate, which, like some enormous mythological bird, has cast its shadow over you, making you realize that death comes to one and all, sometimes sooner rather than later. It is disorientating to have spoken to your father in the morning, to have chatted and laughed with him, only to come home in the evening and find that he is a corpse for you to lower into the earth the following day. It is astonishing to find that your father, that robust being who has always been the mainstay of your life, has suddenly turned into a memory and that every time you mention his name, you have to add, “May God have mercy on his soul.”

During my father’s funeral, I experienced a strange froideur, as if I were observing everything from behind a thick glass screen. I made a point of walking with the coffin all the way to the cemetery, deliberately trying to make myself feel as much pain as possible. When I saw the gloom of his prepared grave, I was taken aback, unable to take my eyes off the dark and dank hole in the earth. This was the end of the line, the last station. This whole fierce and violent struggle into which our lives plunge us ends up here in this hole. Here, everything is equal. Happiness and misery. Poverty and wealth. Beauty and ugliness. We can only bear to live our lives to the extent that we can avoid thinking about death. If death were constantly in our thoughts, if we were constantly aware it could come at any moment, we would not be able to live a single day.

With my father’s death, a chapter in our family life came to a close, and a new one began. Apart from Said, who was always in his own world, we all changed. We were fractured. We were orphaned. Is orphanhood the loss of a parent, or is it a feeling, an expression, a type of behavior, or is it all those things?

For the first few days, my mother cried unceasingly and continued talking as if she could see him, “Why have you left us on our own, Abduh?”

There was reproach in her voice, as if she was angry at him for having made his mind up to die. Gradually, my mother exhausted all her tears and became a little calmer, but her whole manner changed. She became cold and brusque. She turned from wife into widow. The loving glances she used to give us, with a twinkle in her eye, whenever she was happy, had now disappeared forever. Her beautiful brown face took on the dejected and frightened expression of someone dealt a hard blow and who was not about to let it happen again.

I came home from university that evening, and she told me, “Be ready tomorrow. We’re going to the Automobile Club to claim what they owe your late father.”

The next day, I went with my mother to the office of Mr. James Wright, the general manager of the Club. Our appearance elicited sincere expressions of sorrow among the staff, and I shook hands with them one by one. They all came to express their condolences: the doormen, the waiters, Monsieur Comanus, Maître Shakir, Yusuf Tarboosh. Even Rikabi the chef rushed over to us in his white uniform and toque, shaking my mother’s hand and putting his arms around me. The staff’s welcome and sympathy could not, however, hide the fact of tension in the air. There was something that they were not saying, but it was apparent on their faces. The most honest was Bahr the barman, who, as he pressed my hand, said, “May God have mercy upon your father. His passing is a huge loss for us. He was a true man. May God punish those who wronged him.”