Alaa al-Aswany - The Automobile Club of Egypt

This is a difficult question to answer, because Aisha was well known in the street for her compassion, being the first to help anyone who needed it. On the other hand, the way Aisha stood solidly by Umm Said during her ordeal had another inescapable effect. Fayeqa, spending most of the day cleaning in the house of the deceased, had fallen in completely with the appearance of mourning: yet her unadorned, simple black robe was somehow tight enough to show off her tempting curves and short enough, falling just below knee level, to reveal the gleaming paleness of her calves (particularly when she was sitting). Fayeqa had stopped putting on her regular makeup and made do with a hint of kohl around her eyes, a dab of powder on her cheeks and a touch of red on her luscious lips, though this minimal application somehow made her look more radiant than ever. Instead of painting her nails bright red, she used an almost transparent varnish, so her hands and feet looked far too beautifully manicured to do mundane, menial jobs. In short, Fayeqa’s mourning guise in no way detracted from her beauty; on the contrary, it somehow only enhanced her loveliness and allure. Fayeqa looked as if she were performing a scene in which grief was mixed with beauty, sadness with seduction.

It was a moving performance, watched closely by one person — Said Gaafar, who came home from school every afternoon to find Fayeqa walking around with a tray of food or setting the table. As much as he tried, he could not stop watching her quivering bosom, which for so long had afforded him unforgettable pleasure. Said would eat something quickly and then take a nap. When he woke up, he would find Fayeqa in the kitchen washing the dishes, or he would watch her leaning out of the window as she hung the laundry. Then his imagination would run wild with obscenely tantalizing images. At first Said would remember his dead father, feel embarrassed and suffer pangs of conscience. He would make an effort to avert his gaze from Fayeqa’s body, but his passion raged on inside him, completely overcoming his misgivings and exciting him until it was painful. The mere presence of Fayeqa aroused him, never mind seeing her walk back and forth around the apartment, causing the blood to drain from his face, turning his vision blurry until it was all he could do not to pounce on her from behind. When she spoke, the playful tone and cadence of her mellifluous voice kept him from understanding her words. Even when she asked God to have mercy on his father, her lips half opened and closed again so sensually that he could think only of kissing her. Said had not touched Fayeqa since she had blown her top and left him on the roof. He had tried time and time again to talk to her after that, but she had stubbornly refused. One day, an opportunity arose when he was alone with her in the kitchen.

“Fayeqa,” he whispered, panting with lust and excitement. “I’m going up to the roof. Please come. I need to talk to you.”

She gave him a stone-cold look. “Go up on the roof? And do what, Said? What do you take me for? You should be ashamed of yourself.”

The rebuke was harsh, but he registered something in her voice that gave him hope. He asked again and received a second refusal but slightly less harsh than the first. He started pleading with her as she continued to refuse, then became angry and confused, finally hesitant and grudgingly agreeing. She followed him up the stairs and stood a little way from him on the roof. When he tried to get closer, she drew away and told him, “Keep your distance.”

He did not appear to hear. He seemed to be hypnotized or perhaps possessed as he stepped closer. As she pummeled his chest, her beautiful kohl-lined eyes staring out at him fiercely, she said, “If you touch me, I’ll scream till the house comes down.”

His face drooped, and in a broken, pitiful voice, he asked her, “Why are you being so hard on me, Fayeqa?”

“I’m doing the right thing.”

“I love you.”

Fayeqa leaned back a little, bit her lip, raised her left eyebrow and then sighed, “ ‘I love you’? What bank can I deposit that in?”

Her callousness aroused him again, and he whispered hoarsely, “Let me hold you one more time.”

“Not a chance.”

“Just for my sake.”

“Listen, buster! I made a mistake with you and I have repented. If you think I’m going to lower myself again, you have another thing coming.”

“Fayeqa.”

“A respectable man enters a house through the door.”

She uttered the sentence with finality. Then she turned to go back down the stairs, but Said called after her, “Just one minute. I want to talk to you.”

Fayeqa shrugged and said, “The time for talking is over, Said.”

He watched her walk away. The sight of Fayeqa going down the stairs was, without exaggeration, a living masterpiece, perfectly uniting the elements of sound, sight and rhythm. Her house shoes, clacking against her feet as she walked, sounded like the ostinato of a virtuoso tabla player. With every step she took, her body undulated in three different directions: her heavy thighs rubbed together with a slight swishing sound, her full breasts imprisoned in her robe wobbled and announced their overweening presence, and her large and luscious backside heaved from side to side as evenly as an enormous pendulum. Fayeqa’s backside was so undeniably unique in its contours and contents that the particulars could fill up pages. Her backside, so soft and full of vitality, seemed, in its perpetual motion and in the scores of delightful and seductive poses it struck, to possess a life of its own. Fayeqa’s body burbled like an active volcano, exuding such strong waves of desire in the direction of Said that he turned to jelly. He spent sleepless nights tossed by swells of such violent passion until he could take no more, and one evening he finally went to talk to his mother. She was sitting on the sofa fingering her green amber prayer beads. Said burst into her bedroom with a hurried greeting before sitting down next to her. “Mother, I want to talk to you about something.”

He seemed excited and impatient, desperate to unburden himself.

“What is it, son?” she asked smiling.

“I want to propose to Fayeqa, Ali Hamama’s daughter.”

“Propose what to Fayeqa?”

“I mean, I want to get engaged to her and marry her.”

Umm Said sighed and set her prayer beads down. “Good Lord above. You’ve gone mad. Your father is not yet cold, and you want to get married?”

Said tried to calm her down, but she became even angrier, shouting, “You should be ashamed of yourself! Is this any way to carry on?”

When they heard her, Kamel and Saleha rushed into the bedroom to see what was going on. Said told Saleha to get back to her own room, but Kamel stayed to hear the story. He looked at his brother. “I can’t believe,” he said, “that you are thinking about marriage right now. Can’t you wait a year?”

“Shut up, Kamel,” Said shouted at him. “It’s none of your business.”

“And how is it none of my business? It’s not right for you, and it’s not right for Fayeqa’s family. How could Ali Hamama agree to your marrying his daughter when we are still in the period of mourning for our father?”

Said, aware of the seriousness of the matter, tried as hard as he could to suppress his anger. “Fayeqa’s family,” he replied, “don’t know anything about this.”

At this point, his mother cried out, “Listen, my boy, are you a fool, or do you take us all for idiots?”

Said listened silently as his mother harangued him until she sank back, exhausted, sobbing quietly. Staring at Kamel, Said said, “Mother, I’d like to speak to you alone.”

“Your brother is not a stranger,” Umm Said mumbled, her face wet with tears. Kamel, however, stood up and said, “I’ll leave you two alone, Mother.”