Ibrahim Meguid - The House of Jasmine

Magid had learned all this from some of his customers at the pharmacy, who used to be Bedouins and were now driving Peugeots and Jeeps. He said that they had sold the lands which their parents had traditionally planted with figs to tourism companies or to individual investors, often Egyptians who had been working in one of the Gulf countries. Magid also said that they were often surprised to know that he didn’t sell aphrodisiacs at his pharmacy and didn’t know how to prepare them.

“There will come a day when we won’t be able to find a single fig. What a tragedy!” Hassanayn said gravely, and we all laughed. Then he turned to me and asked, “Are you really thinking of marriage?”

“Of course I am.”

“Then finish your story, and we will find you a wife,” he said, and went on laughing. I wasn’t upset. I felt that it was just an innocent joke, and I went on with the story.

I told them how I had been unable to sleep the previous night. I watched television until the end of the broadcast, and was thinking of a strange dance that appeared on the show “We Chose It for You.” The dance ended with the hands of the male dancers placed on the rear ends of the female dancers. It was quite a scene! It almost jumped out of the television screen at my face. How is it that television shows are so daring these days? Anyway, that wasn’t all that happened that night.

A little before dawn, I heard a loud splash in the sea. I heard the sound repeatedly and thought that a ship might have drifted to the shore, but then I realized that this was impossible because the ship would get stuck in the sand long before it reached the shore. I opened the window and cold air struck my face. I saw several dark objects floating on the surface of the waves. I turned on the balcony light and stood there. Chairs, mattresses, boards, suitcases, and many other pieces of furniture were flying off the balcony above mine. Each item glowed briefly in the light of my balcony before sinking into the darkness below and finally splashing into the sea. It was the same furniture that I had seen the delivery men bring up two weeks earlier. Of course I didn’t hesitate to go up to the apartment above. I wasn’t scared, and didn’t find the matter surprising for long. I was sure that it was the work of an intruder in my neighbors’ apartment. I expected a fight, so I took a knife with me.

When I got to the door of their apartment, I found it open, so I tiptoed inside. I saw the young man whom I had seen earlier with the girl and her mother. He was wearing only a bathing suit, and his thick hair was sticking out like the quills of a porcupine.

“Can I help you?” he growled at me with a fierce look.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled as I retreated out of his apartment.

“What do you say we all spend the rest of the night in Qabbari?” Hassanayn suggested. “Hagg Luqman has set up a big tent for his election campaign that’s worth seeing.”

It was almost ten o’clock, and the effect of my story on my two friends was gone except for occasional smiles that appeared on their lips every now and then when they interrupted the backgammon game and looked at me. We had exhausted all the comments and jokes that we could make about the story, all revolving around how strangely people behaved these days. We laughed hardest when Hassanayn said, “If he had decided to get rid of his furniture, why didn’t he give it to you or ask you if you knew someone who needed it?”

Magid was not in favor of going to Qabbari because he wanted to drive us around the city as he had promised. He pointed to the steady flow of cars coming from ‘Agami and said, “We should spend the night in Bahari like other car owners.”

As usual, I was uninterested in the elections. I knew that President Sadat had dissolved the People’s Assembly, and that there were going to be elections for the new members. I also knew that there was strong popular opposition to the Camp David agreement and that the government newspapers were fiercely attacking the opposition parties, but I never really bothered to read the details or get into any conversations about what was going on. I saw several signs hanging on stores and on the streets with pledges of support for Hagg Luqman, but I didn’t care. I don’t remember ever having voted in any elections or referenda. I don’t even carry a voter’s registration card, although I still keep my father’s card with all the other papers of his that I have kept since he died.

Besides, I had completely stopped committing my crimes, because the President still flew to Alexandria in his helicopter on the twenty-sixth of July and his visitors from among the other world leaders came only in the winter, when he was usually in Aswan. I sometimes thought that they came to enjoy the warm Aswan sun and take the opportunity to be cured of rheumatism rather than to meet with the President. The shipyard still sent a few members of the workers’ union to participate in the Labor Day ceremony. When I was told to lead the workers who were sent to take part in Begin’s reception, I did exactly as I was told, and didn’t make a single penny off of the assignment.

“Who is Hagg Luqman?” I asked, without any real interest.

“There isn’t a single person in Alexandria who doesn’t know who Hagg Luqman is,” Magid said. “Even I have had the honor of meeting him. One day a black Mercedes stopped in front of the pharmacy, and the driver came in to buy five boxes of Givrin. I saw Hagg Luqman in the back seat and he waved at me. I recognized him from the pictures that were hanging everywhere, and I waved back. Then I saw him get out of the car, and thought that he was going to come into the pharmacy to talk to me about the upcoming elections, but he only walked into the side alley, then walked out, buttoning his pants, and got back into his car.”

We all laughed. Hassanayn was surprised at the large amount of Givrin which Hagg Luqman had bought. I wondered if he were really ill, but Magid said that Givrin was a general dietary supplement and also effective as an aphrodisiac.

“You only saw him once,” Hassanayn said to Magid, “but I have seen him many times. At the Lansh Café in Mafruza he used to sell goods stolen from the customs warehouse, such as sweaters, jeans, and transistor radios. Then he disappeared about three ago, and when he returned he had acquired the title Hagg and was known to be one of the biggest importers of girders in Egypt. He’s worth seeing, especially since I’ve heard that he gives public speeches even though he’s illiterate. Come on! We have nothing to lose. If we don’t like it, we can still go to Bahari.”

#

We got into Magid’s car and for the whole trip I was thinking about what a crazy mood we were in. This whole trip was a joke and we took it no more seriously than a game of backgammon. When we got to Qabbari, I almost asked Magid to drive on to Bahari, but I saw the white and yellow lights on Sidi al-Qabbari Street making the night as bright as the middle of the day. There was a huge crowd of people and a tent which took up half the street, and I became really curious to see this Hagg Luqman who could attract so many people.

Magid had a hard time finding a place to park on one of the nearby side streets. We had to push our way through the huge crowd to get to the entrance of the tent. It was only by chance that I was ahead of Magid and Hassanayn when we walked in.

“The men of Dikhayla have arrived,” a man shouted, raising both his arms high in the air to point at us and at the stage where Hagg Luqman was seated in the midst of a large number of men in dark suits and galabiyyas. Hagg Luqman was wearing a dark glittery suit. His dark face glittered as well and looked as if it had been rubbed with oil. “The men of Dikhayla have arrived,” the man yelled out again, and I recognized him as al-Dakruri, the head of the workers’ union at the shipyard. I was surprised to see him here, and wondered what he was doing and what his relationship to Hagg Luqman was.