Alaa al-Aswany - The Automobile Club of Egypt

The previous day was his break from lovemaking. Mahmud had finished work at two in the morning and had gone to visit Fawzy, who was sitting up late on the roof. They drank some delicious mint tea as Fawzy busied himself rolling spliffs. He gave one to Mahmud and lit the other. As he smoked, Mahmud leaned against the wall of the roof terrace and started thinking aloud.

“I’m starting to feel sorry for women.”

“What are you going on about?”

“Well, it seems to me that women are just like men. If they don’t get sex, they start getting all ratty.”

Fawzy nodded. “Of course, my boy,” he said as if an expert. “If they aren’t satisfied, they can cause no end of problems. If they’ve never had it, they can control themselves. But once they’ve tried it, they can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Rosa and Dagmar should put up a statue of me.”

Fawzy chuckled, and handing Mahmud another spliff, he said, “God is great! You’ve finally started getting some sense into that head of yours.”

Mahmud smoked the second spliff, and the hashish made him taciturn.

“You know,” Fawzy said looking at Mahmud. “Next week is the Eid al-Kebir. I hope you’re going to make the most of it?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the big feast! Rosa and Dagmar should each be giving you a present.”

“I can’t go asking for presents.”

“Oh, Mahmud, my friend!” said Fawzy in exasperation. “No one is saying you should ask for presents. You drop a hint or two, and they’ll get the point.”

“And what if they don’t?”

“Then give them a stronger hint. For example, tell them that you are thinking of buying a leather jacket before the feast.”

“I can’t say something like that!”

“What a child!”

Fawzy went on making fun of Mahmud, and they flung friendly curses at each other before changing the subject.

Mahmud went home just before the dawn call to prayer, and as usual, the next day he found himself acting out Fawzy’s directions. Rosa fell for it immediately. She kissed him on the cheek, went into her bedroom and returned with two pounds.

“Here’s some money for the feast, Mahmud,” she said.

Dagmar, on the other hand, just gave him a suspicious look. “Are you asking for something?” she said.

His resolve completely crumbled, and, embarrassed, he muttered, “No,” and then left her apartment.

On the following visit, Dagmar had the same serious look on her face, but she gave him a new white shirt as a present. When Fawzy examined it later, he could not help thinking that it was a bit cheap of Dagmar.

The boys were now rolling in money, and they started acquiring the appurtenances of luxury: smart new suits, Lucky Strike cigarettes, Ronson lighters and Persol sunglasses. They did not worry about how much they spent when they went out together, and they no longer loitered around the girls’ school trying to persuade this or that one to go and sit with them in the back row of the cinema. They had moved on from schoolboy distractions. They started frequenting a brothel that Fawzy had discovered in the Ataba district. He negotiated with the madame a price of twenty-five piastres for a girl. Fawzy would sit there chatting away with the corpulent madame before giving her the fifty piastres, and then the two men would go into the inner room to choose a girl. Fawzy would always choose a different one, unlike Mahmud, who was enamored of one called Nawal from Alexandria. She was pretty and thin with sad, dark eyes and shoulder-length hair. When Mahmud went off with her to a bedroom, she would take off her red robe and lie there naked. He would look at her for a little and then move over to her, whispering, “How are you, Nawal? I’ve missed you.”

Each time he had sex with her, which was always forceful and passionate, it felt different, in contrast to how it was with the two older women. When he was done, he would keep his arms around her and feel her hot breath on his face. She would stroke his back and broad shoulders, kissing him gently on the neck.

One time, he asked her, “You’re a nice girl, Nawal. How did you end up here?”

“It’s my fate,” she whispered curtly, and he realized that she did not really want to discuss the matter.

After Mahmud had been with Nawal a few times, Fawzy felt it was his duty to intervene, and as the two friends were sitting on the roof one evening, he said, “You seem to have become quite attached to that Nawal.”

“She’s a nice girl.”

“Nice or not, you’re paying to have a good time. You’ve got to try out another girl, and then when we’ve been through them all, we’ll go to another establishment.”

Mahmud looked as if he had been found out.

“Listen, Mahmud,” Fawzy told him in a fatherly voice, “don’t go getting soft on that girl Nawal. It would be a disaster. She’s just a tart who’ll sleep with any scumbag.”

Mahmud winced at the description, but the following week Fawzy took him off to a different brothel in Abbasiya. Mahmud was hesitant, but Fawzy told him decisively, “Listen, Mahmud. The only way to get you to stop thinking about her is for you to find an even prettier one.”

No matter what happened to the two boys and whatever adventures they went through, Mahmud was always grateful to Fawzy for looking out for him. As they were now flush with money, Fawzy suggested they start putting aside a bit every month for a Lambretta scooter.

“What are we going to do with a Lambretta?” Mahmud asked innocently.

“We’ll go places.”

“Which one of us will drive it?”

“You can use it to get around town, and when you’re done, I can use it. When we go out together, one of us will drive and the other will ride pillion.”

“We can both go on it at the same time?”

Fawzy sighed and assured Mahmud, “Of course we can. Listen, Mahmud, as you sit riding the Lambretta, you’ll see a whole different world.”

The two friends started saving, and within two months, they had enough for a deposit. They went to the scooter dealer in Fuad Street, and Fawzy talked Mahmud into signing a hire purchase agreement for a year at fifty piastres a week. Then they registered the Lambretta in Fawzy’s name. The boys left the motor vehicle registry with the Lambretta, now bearing a white license plate. Mahmud was quite content to sit behind Fawzy, but his greatest pleasure was driving himself and feeling the breeze against his face and body. Then he felt himself on a higher plane, a life of hitherto unimagined fine living. He was on top of the world, but events soon hurled him in an unexpected direction.

One night, Mahmud went off to see Rosa on schedule, but the moment he got there he felt something was wrong. Rosa’s face did not light up to see him; neither did she hug or kiss him but kept her distance, with a strange smile on her face.

“Sit down,” she said seriously. “I want to talk to you about something.”

Mahmud was nonplussed and sat down on the sofa.

“You do love me, don’t you?” Rosa asked him.

This question usually made him uneasy, and he would typically lie, but this time he nodded affirmatively.

Suddenly, Rosa screwed up her face and screamed at him, “You’re a liar, Mahmud!”

He was shocked into silence, but Rosa continued shouting.

“How can you love me and be seeing someone else?”

“I’m not,” Mahmud retorted. Then he bit his lips and knitted his brows like an accused child trying to prove his innocence. Rosa got up and took a few steps toward him.

“You’re seeing Dagmar,” she said. “I know everything.”

As she uttered the name “Dagmar,” she lost control and grabbed Mahmud by the shirt, screaming at him, “If you love her, why do you come and see me? Tell me!”