Alaa al-Aswany - The Automobile Club of Egypt

She had announced to her father that she would not go to the party. She had done this for the pleasure of provoking him, and they had quarreled as usual, but this time he had become so furious that she could sense the heat of his incandescent rage. She avoided him now to the point of not sitting down to dinner with him but instead eating a sandwich or two in her bedroom. Three days before the party, she had knocked at the door of her father’s study. The moment he saw her, his expression turned to one of anxiousness. He leaned back in his chair, bracing for any and all surprises.

“Have you told Mr. Botticelli that I’m not going?” she asked calmly.

“That’s none of your business,” he snapped at her. He was expecting her to answer him back, but she smiled innocently and said, “All right. If you haven’t told him that I’m not going, then don’t. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll go.”

His look of rage turned to one of astonishment and then gradually to one of delight and possibly even gratitude. He smiled and hesitantly, as if fearing that she might renege, he said, “Finally, you’ve made the right decision. I knew that you were too clever to miss this opportunity.”

“I’ll go out this evening,” she informed him drily, “and buy a new dress as you told me to.”

She did not wait for him to respond but turned and left the study, having taken in his astonishment. She seemed to enjoy foisting surprises upon him as much as defying him. Her father could never understand her behavior, but then neither could she.

She always felt the urge to rebel. She hated anything that was taken for granted or prearranged. She liked breaking rules or rushing headlong in the wrong direction. She took delight in pulling the rug from under people who were sure of themselves and their own wise decisions. She had been headstrong like this ever since she started school. If the class was sitting in silence, just at the moment when the teacher thought that he had got all his pupils quietly doing what he wanted, the temptation to make a scene would be too much for her. She would laugh suddenly or shout out to one of her friends and typically ended up being punished. How often had she had to stand in the corner throughout a whole lesson, and how many times had she had to write out the line “I must behave in the classroom”? That did not deter her, however. Her impetuosity stayed with her throughout her youth and even evolved, so that her ongoing challenge to authority also became a search for some hidden truth. As she confronted the status quo, the false smiles and hollow gestures, there was always something that she enjoyed blurting out to everyone’s shock and horror. She craved sincerity. That was why she loved Egypt. She preferred to spend time in a small coffee shop in Cairo to going for dinner at the Carlton Club in London. The people here were real, and even if life was difficult, it was authentic, whereas in London things might be refined and elegant, but people were false.

It was this fickle and headstrong nature that helped Mitsy with her acting. When she appeared in a play, she never felt that she was performing. She would lose herself in the character she was playing. Once, during a rehearsal, a director had told her, “Mitsy, you are a very special actress. It’s difficult for me to direct you because you are drawing on something inside yourself. I will talk you through your character without giving you any directions. Try to understand the character and then act her out in your own way.”

She lived as if she were acting a role on stage. She would look inside herself for specific motivation, and then, having found it, she would give herself over to it. So had she accepted the king’s invitation because she thought she might find the experience exciting or because the king’s attention would gratify her feminine vanity? These were both plausible reasons, but her strongest motivation generally had to do with her father. Her mother was cold and emotionally inhibited, spending most of the time alone with her books, taciturn and almost totally indifferent to what was going on around her. Mitsy loved her notwithstanding all that, because her mother could not bring herself to tell untruths and always called a spade a spade. Her father was the diametric opposite: he was a liar and a hypocrite. He represented everything she hated. He was condescending and arrogant, always scuttling around after money and trying to cover up his behavior with a façade of moral probity. She resented him because she understood him too well. He had pushed her in the direction of the king’s bed for his own benefit while trying to convince her that he just wanted her to be friends with the king. Her father lived in grand style in Egypt, but he never stopped complaining. He whined every day about having to live there even though he knew that in England he could not earn even half of what he made at the Automobile Club. He was paid well because he was English, not because he was the general manager of the Club. Perhaps the time had come to confront him about all his lies. Mitsy wanted to make him look in the mirror and to ask him, “So, you want me to be the king’s mistress, and you call that ‘innocent friendship’? All right, Mr. Wright. I’ll sleep with the king, and in order to show you up, I’ll make myself a pushover. I’ll part my thighs the moment I see His Majesty. I know that will be of use to you, dear Father.”

She told herself that she would go to bed with the king, but how would His Majesty get her there? Would he first kiss her? Would he ask her to strip completely naked in front of him? At this point, she thought back to Thomas, a ginger engineering student in London who never stopped laughing. He was the first man who taught her how to love, and they were happily together for two whole years before it ended abruptly. Did love have its own life span? Did it always burn for a specific amount of time and then splutter out like a candle? Still deep in her thoughts, Mitsy noticed Botticelli laughing away with the other two women, who were pretending to be amused by him. How she hated this slimy pimp. When she had first shaken his hand, she felt so defiled by his touch that she went straight to the bathroom to wash up. Now she felt like doing something to unmask the whole charade. She wanted to tell Botticelli that he was nothing more than a procurer and then to dash the haughtiness of those princes and princesses sitting at the other table by pointing out the true nature of their role as adjunct pimps, with their artificial chatter and forced sickening laughter. It was two a.m., and the king had still not made an appearance. The two other candidates had twice gone to the bathroom to adjust their makeup. Mitsy looked at them and said to herself, “You poor little tarts. So much time have you spent making yourselves beautiful only to see your hopes dashed.”

Suddenly the one sitting on her right spoke, “Mr. Botticelli, hasn’t His Majesty arrived yet?”

Botticelli gave her a cold stare.

“His Majesty is not a prisoner of punctuality. You can leave if you so wish.”

The girl looked worried.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s not what I meant. Of course I shall wait for His Majesty to appear.”

“Whether you go or stay,” retorted Botticelli sarcastically, “is of no importance. I don’t think that the king will be greatly chagrined if he doesn’t find you here tonight.”

“Of course, Monsieur Botticelli,” she said sycophantically. “I’m just aching to see the king, that’s all I meant.”

Botticelli averted his gaze from her as if to punish this insolence and started chatting with the other girl. But by half past two, the princes and the pimp were getting a little worried themselves, knowing the king only too well. If His Majesty was in the casino, then time lost all meaning for him. If he was losing at poker, he would sit there all night trying to claw back his losses, ignoring any appointment, no matter how important. When the clock struck three, Botticelli was certain that the king would not appear, but the guests could not go home until they had the king’s permission. Botticelli decided to call His Majesty at the Club and request his permission for the guests to leave. Before Botticelli could get up and make the call, however, there was a commotion with the waiters scurrying here, there and everywhere. Then Alku strode out from the lodge and stood bolt upright in his gold-trimmed white uniform near the swimming pool. He looked behind him a few times as if waiting for some signal and then bowed and announced with pomp, “His Majesty the king of Egypt and the Sudan.”