Alaa al-Aswany - The Automobile Club of Egypt

“What is it?”

“As if you need my problems.”

“Please, let me see if I can help you.” Her voice was trembling with a mixture of sympathy and desire.

“You know,” Mahmud said, without looking at her or letting her see from his eyes that he was repeating the words Fawzy had taught him, “that I work and give my salary to my family and that I need every piastre. On top of working at the Club, I had a bookkeeping job for a grocer, which gave me a little extra income. Unfortunately, the grocer died two days ago, and his family are going to close down the shop.”

“Is that why you’ve been looking so downcast?” Rosa smiled.

Mahmud looked down and said nothing, so Rosa put her hand on his cheek and whispered softly, “How much did you earn at the grocer’s?”

“A pound a week.”

She got up and went off to her bedroom. When she came back, she slipped a banknote into the breast pocket of his shirt and whispered, “I’ll give you a pound a week. So don’t worry about it.”

According to the plan, Mahmud had been supposed to hesitate and decline the money, but Rosa’s speedy response to his request, his joy at having the pound in his pocket and his feelings of gratitude, all made him throw his arms around her.

“So,” she whispered in his ear, “are you going to spend the night with me?”

At this point he remembered Fawzy’s instructions, and as Mahmud gently pushed her away, he told her, “I can’t tonight.”

Rosa sighed and went with him to the door. Just as he was leaving, she held his face in her hands and said, “Please, if you ever need anything, just tell me.”

“Thank you, Rosa.”

She gave him a peck on the mouth.

“I love you, Mahmud. I wonder if you love me as much.”

He smiled and nodded. Then he gently eased himself out of her embrace and left. Rosa now gave him a pound every Thursday. On the first of the month, when his mother tried to give him some pocket money from his salary, Mahmud resolutely refused to take it.

“Mother,” he told her, “thank God that I’m now starting to earn some decent tips. You can keep my whole salary.”

His mother poured her blessings down on him. The four pounds he was earning from Rosa every month was more than enough to cover the cost of his and Fawzy’s nocturnal excursions. His relationship with Rosa had settled into a fixed routine. Day by day, she became more attached to him and started calling him at the Automobile Club to check that he was all right and to hear his voice. He enjoyed Rosa’s company. After having sex with her, he would tell her all about his life, and she would listen intently, giving him some bits of advice. Mahmud used to tell himself, “Rosa has a lot of life experience. She loves me and wants the best for me. I should learn from her.” Mahmud considered Rosa a kindly and devoted lady friend. He loved her in his own way but not in the way she loved him, and he found it uncomfortable when she tried to get him to say things he did not feel. She kept on telling him that she loved him in the hope that he might reciprocate. He tried and tried to avoid saying it, but her persistence won out, and he sounded like a little child trying to pronounce a difficult word for the first time. He had often thought of being frank with her and telling her that, in spite of their relationship, they were friends and not lovers. He had been on the point of saying it a few times, but at the last moment he always felt sorry for her and kept it to himself.

“I’ve got a problem,” Mahmud told his friend Fawzy during one of their regular sessions on the roof. “Rosa is in love with me and wants me to be in love with her.”

“So be in love with her, chump,” retorted Fawzy taking a drag on his fat spliff.

“I can’t go on with her this way,” Mahmud sighed. “I do like her. She’s a nice, kind lady, but I can’t love her the way she wants me to. Do you see?”

“By the Prophet, you’re useless. What’s all this talk of love, you idiot! Women only want one thing. Just go and see her one time without doing anything with her. Then you’ll see what happens!”

Fawzy’s method of making light of Mahmud’s anxieties always left Mahmud with a feeling of relief. Their chats were akin to a psychoanalysis session, during which Mahmud could get everything off his chest and then face the world again.

His relationship with Rosa had been going on for three months now, and he spent the whole twelve pounds he had earned on his evenings out with Fawzy. Mahmud’s life had fallen into perfect shape now that he was finished forever with the nightmare of school. He was having regular sex and had become a man of means.

One night, Mahmud told Rosa what was going on with Abdoun and Alku at the Automobile Club. She turned serious on him and told him, “Listen, Mahmud. You have got a family and responsibilities. Don’t get involved.”

“But it’s also wrong for Alku to beat us like kids. All right, he’s never beaten me. But if he ever beat me in front of other people, I honestly wouldn’t be able to cope with it.”

“He only does it if someone puts a foot out of place. I mean, as long as you work properly, he’ll never beat you.”

Mahmud appeared perturbed, but Rosa smiled and told him, “Promise me that you won’t get involved.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Rosa was a woman whose motherly instincts were as sincere and gushing as her sexual appetite was visceral and raw. This schizophrenic behavior confused Mahmud to the point where he thought of her as two different women behind the same face. She was lover and mother. The former was only interested in getting satisfied sexually, and the other treated him with sincere kindness in a way that moved him. One night, he went to deliver a dinner order to a German Club member called Madame Dagmar. Mahmud thought her name sounded strange, and Mustafa told him that she had come to Egypt thirty years ago with her German husband and that they had opened the famous Librairie Max in Soliman Pasha Street. Her husband had died two years earlier, and his son and daughter decided to go and live in Germany, leaving Dagmar running the bookshop and living alone in her apartment in Garden City. Mahmud rang the bell and stood waiting at the door with the delivery. The door opened quickly, and there appeared Madame Dagmar. Her smooth and completely white hair was cut in a boyish bob, which, along with her skinny body, gave her a military air. Her metal-framed round spectacles gave her the appearance of a grandmother or a headmistress.

Mahmud took two steps forward, bowed and uttered his usual greeting, “Bonsoir, Madame. Automobile Club.”

She looked him up and down. “Can you take it into the kitchen?” she said in a monotone.

She stepped back and opened the door. Mahmud came in, looking at his feet and stood in the hall.

“The kitchen is through here,” Madame Dagmar said. “Follow me.”

He followed her through the sitting room to the kitchen, and after putting the food parcel on the marble table, he pulled the bill out of his jacket pocket. She paid the bill, leaving him a tip of fifty piastres. He put the banknotes in his pocket and thanked her in a low voice. He suddenly felt confused. The situation was rather strange. Here he was with this German lady, and they were both standing alone together in the kitchen. Why had she asked him to come inside the apartment when the package was so light that she could have managed it herself?

Mahmud smiled, nodded good-bye and turned to leave the kitchen, when Madame Dagmar called out, “Just a moment.”

Mahmud stopped, and Madame Dagmar walked up to him. Then, smiling, she held out a whole pound. “Have it.”

“Oh no, Madame!” he retorted. “It’s too much. You have already given me a tip.”