Alaa al-Aswany - The Automobile Club of Egypt

Karl said nothing for a moment and in a deep voice replied, “I’m very sorry, but there’s nothing to see.”

“What do you mean? I’d like to see the carriage you invented.”

Karl looked down for a moment and then raised his head toward the man before quietly repeating his response, “There’s nothing to see.”

The man kept looking at him and then with a bow politely said, “All right, Mr. Benz. I’m so sorry to have disturbed you. Have a nice evening.”

That night, the couple lay stretched out near each other in bed, in the dark, saying nothing. Bertha put her arm around him, and as if on command, he shifted his body a little and laid his head on her chest. She asked him gently, “Why wouldn’t you show the carriage to that man?”

He said nothing for a few seconds, then sighed and in a weak voice, as if speaking to himself, replied, “I’m just tired of being taken for a fool, Bertha. I just can’t stand any more of those skeptical glances, the preposterous questions and the gloating laughter.”

“They are the fools. They have no idea of the value of your invention.”

“Stop it, Bertha, my darling, I have failed. That’s the truth of the matter, and I have to face up to it. I have been building a castle in Spain, chasing a chimera.”

He said nothing for a little and then continued in a whisper, “Bertha, please swear as God is your witness that you won’t talk to me about the carriage ever again.”

His head was still on Bertha’s bosom. They fell back into silence, and she felt his body start to tremble. Her Karl was weeping. She thought her heart would break, and she held him firmly. They stayed like that, clinging to each other, until she heard his breathing become regular, and she could tell that he had fallen asleep. Gently, she placed his head back on the pillow.

She stayed sitting up in bed, wide-awake and musing away in the darkness. By the time the first glimmer of light came through the open window, she had made up her mind. She tiptoed to the wardrobe and took some clothes out in the dark, went downstairs and got dressed in the sitting room. She then woke up her two sons, Richard and Eugen, who were fourteen and fifteen years old, respectively. She asked them to get washed and dressed as quickly as they could. When they asked her where they were going, she thundered back, “I’ll tell you later.”

She carefully opened the front door to avoid its squeaking and then stopped as if she had just remembered something. Leaving the children standing there, she went to the kitchen and on a large piece of paper in large letters she wrote, “Karl. Don’t worry about us. We’ve gone to visit my mother. Back tomorrow.”

She pinned the note where he would see it when he woke up. Then she went out and locked the front door. Holding her children by the hand, she walked them to the workshop, where the three of them pushed the carriage onto the street. Then she helped them in, sitting between them on the seat. She grabbed the leather drive belt with both hands and jerked it as hard as she could. At that moment, the motor growled and gave off a puff of smoke, and the carriage lurched forward.

The morning call to prayer sounded, and Ruqayya opened her eyes and whispered the profession of faith. Then she slid out of bed and shut the bedroom door quietly behind her in order not to wake up her husband, Abd el-Aziz Gaafar. She went to the bathroom and lit the boiler, then walked to the kitchen. She prepared a tray with breakfast for the guests and made sandwiches for the children to take to school. By the time she went back to the bathroom, the water was hot, so she laid out her clothes for the day and took her morning shower as she had done every morning since getting married.

At that time, she was living in Upper Egypt with her mother-in-law (may God have mercy on her soul), who used to observe whether she took a shower in order to know if she had had sex with Abd el-Aziz the night before. From then on, a morning shower was Ruqayya’s way of covering up her private life. Over time she just got used to starting her day with the feeling of being refreshed. After showering, she would carefully dry herself and put on a clean, ironed galabiyya, go upstairs carrying the breakfast tray covered with a napkin and put it down outside the guest room on the roof, which was reserved for relatives who had come to Cairo from Upper Egypt for one reason or another — for medical treatment, to get some official papers or on business.

The guest room was spacious and had a sink, a toilet and a separate staircase. Abd el-Aziz’s house was always open to relatives, and he considered putting them up just as much his duty as he did taking care of his own children. Ruqayya would then set about waking up the children. Mahmud, the difficult one, would always require a few attempts because he would just go back to sleep each time. She was patient with him, forgiving whatever mischief he’d get up to. Some months after his birth, she had noticed that he was a bit sluggish and had taken him to a renowned doctor in Aswan who told her that the boy would have developmental problems. Thus it was no surprise that Mahmud kept having to repeat a year at school. At the age of seventeen, he was big and bulky, since he spent all his free time and energy lifting weights.

After her first attempt to wake Mahmud, Ruqayya would go and wake his older brothers, Said and Kamel. Kamel was stick thin, and the moment he felt her touch on his head, he would open his eyes, sit up and kiss her hand. Then he would wake up his brother Said. Ruqayya liked to leave Saleha until last, to let her have a little more sleep. After the children washed and dressed, they would sit around the table. Ruqayya always tried to make them a delicious breakfast: eggs, cheese, fava beans and fresh bread with tea and milk. Then she would sit cross-legged on the sofa with her left hand holding the string of ninety-nine prayer beads as her children lined up and bowed to her one after another. She would place her hands on their heads and utter a Quranic verse over them to keep them safe.

She would not let them leave the house together for fear of the evil eye. People might look at them and say, “There go the Gaafar children,” and some disaster or illness might strike them. She insisted that they leave the house one by one, none setting out until the one before had reached the end of the street. Said would always wriggle out of taking his sister, Saleha, to school, whereas Kamel willingly walked with her to the Suniyya school and then took a bus to the university.

Mahmud was always the last to leave. His mother would make him swear by the holy Quran that he would really go to school and not go off to play football in the street or to the cinema. He never argued with his mother. All her children had inherited the light-brown Gaafar skin tones except Mahmud. He was coal black, like a Sudanese. At school when students teased him for being a dullard and for the color of his skin, he would fight back and beat them up. On those occasions, he hardly knew his own strength. The previous year he had been in two fights, splitting the brow of the first boy and breaking the arm of the second. This led to the headmaster’s warning Mahmud’s father that the next fight would mean expulsion. That was a day from hell. Abd el-Aziz gave Mahmud a good beating, shouting at him, “It’s not enough for you to be too stupid to get anywhere at school, but you have to go around strutting like some tough. I swear by God Almighty that if you touch another student I’ll come to school myself and show all your friends how I beat you.”