Sonallah Ibrahim - Stealth

He looks through the dresser trying to make sure she hasn’t stolen anything. I sit down at my desk and open up my composition notebook. A visit to the zoological gardens. Hassan the sea lion. Cheetah the monkey. Sayyid Qishta the hippo. Mother wears a light coat over a patterned dress. We walk over paths of colored pebbles. We sit down at the tea stall. Suddenly, mother jumps up, saying: “We have to get away from here. We have to go back now.”My father tries to calm her. She keeps repeating: “Something terrible is going to happen. We have to go back the way we came.”

I tell Maher that a relative of mine owns a car. Gallal steals my gun and refuses to give it back. He pulls me by the collar of my suit jacket, tearing the lapel. I promise him that father will tell the principal and have him punished. He says: “Go to hell.”

We all go to the large auditorium to watch the film Tarzan in New York. I walk next to Lam’aiy. Taller than me. His face is ruddy and a yellow fuzz covers his legs. I invite him to sit next to me, but he’d rather sit in another row. I take out my glasses and wipe them off with a handkerchief. I watch the movie in a magical trance. Then we go back to our classroom. We all take our satchels and go down to the drawing room. The teacher wears a suede jacket. Easy and kind of quiet. He can draw anything in an instant with no problem. The drawing desks are arranged in an open square. Three sides of it are our rows. The fourth is his table in the middle of ours, underneath the blackboard.

I throw my satchel on the ground. I sit at one of the tables and put my composition book on top of one of the slanted desks. The teacher writes on the board: “I watched the grand procession last October.” He sits at his table. He opens a wide notebook filled with thick paper. He throws himself into his drawing.

I take out my pencil and sharpener and open up my notebook. We walk downhill until we get to the florist’s shop, then we stroll towards the square. We cross it and stand on the sidewalk in the middle of the crowd waiting for the grand procession. If we get lucky, we’ll see the king in his red convertible.

I draw a camel. It looks more like a donkey. I try to erase it, but its lines are still visible on the page. I get up and look for Maher, but I can’t find him. The teacher is still absorbed in his drawing. He seems not to know that we are there. One of the students goes up to him and asks for help. The teacher answers him then fills his page with quick line drawings. The student goes back to his seat. He puts the notebook in his satchel, picks it up and, heading towards the door of the class, sneaks out.

I put the sharpener on the point of the pencil and turn it several times. The point sharpens, then breaks off. I sharpen it again. Another student wants help from the teacher. A third one follows him. A fourth and a fifth. Each of them leaves the class after he does their drawing for them. After a while, our numbers dwindle until I find myself sitting alone. I take my notebook and go to him. I put it in front of him without a word. He neither looks at me, nor speaks to me. He draws a camel bending down with one stroke of the pen. I steal a glance at his notebook. Country houses in a row. Their fronts are drawn with careful detail. I go back to my seat. I put the notebook in my satchel, pick it up, and head towards the door. I turn around to look at him. He is absorbed in his drawing.

We scatter at the front door of the school. A sky full of clouds warns of rain. The breeze smells nice. The pavement made of colored gravel. The wall surrounding the Jewish school. A colored poster advertises the film Sanity Takes a Vacation, starring Mohamed Fawzi, Layla Fawzi, Bishara Wakeem, Abdel Salaam al-Nabulsi. The film Bol-bol Effendi is playing at the Corsal cinema with Sabah and Fareed al-Atrash.

I walk beside the wall of the school until I come to the corner. The tall windows are open. I look down over tables set up in messy rows, with grains of wheat scattered on top of them. A strange smell. A few steps and I find myself in front of our old house. The clouds part the way for bright sunshine. The iron door is closed. The windows are closed. Mother gets up and goes out to nurse my sister. My father wears a robe over his gallabiya, and he has replaced his nightcap with a fez. He goes along with me to the road. We walk along the quiet street. We pass a monk wearing a white outfit. His pale face is sunburned. My father winks at him and stammers in French: Coamantalleefu? We go about half way up the street, then turn back. I walk close to the wall of the garden of the convent school with its thick trees. I steal a look inside. My father stands waiting for me. I know he’s watching me. I pretend to be all wrapped up in watching what’s around me. The light of dusk starts to break up. He calls to me in a commanding voice.

I cross the street. I stand under one of the two windows. One is the bedroom window, the other the dining room. Next to it is the alleyway, which the window of the guest room and the steel-grated kitchen window look down on to. The alleyway ends at the storage house for the barrels of molasses. That’s why the yellow-striped hornets gather there. One of the children manages to catch one of them. He ties its stinger with a thread.

A private car with an arched roof comes by, moving up from the part of the street that dead ends into the square. It heads down a side street that goes toward the shanty town. It stops in front of the villa a few doors down from our house. A plump man gets out wearing clothes of the countryside underneath a loose-fitting aba. The same man is in a white jacket, blue trousers, and white shoes, with a strikingly beautiful woman in a green dress, on his arm. There’s a sunken spot at her temple near her ear. My father says that it’s the remains of a green tattoo that peasants have. The two of them come out of the door of the villa. The children and I stand on the pavement across the street. We try to sneak a look inside the villa. There’s a small circular garden with cactus plants rising up out of it.

The sun disappears. Three fat monks pass by in dark brown cloaks. Around each of their waists, there is a long rope, tied in front, with the ends dangling. A cart moves along carrying spools of paper. Two fat nuns in white clothes. A horse-drawn cart. We run behind it shouting at the driver: Mr. Love Juice. He raises his whip and tries to strike us, as he insults our parents. We notice a boy and a girl walking together under the trees. We yell at them: “Mr. Young Buck, leave the doe alone.”

I know that I’m late and I’ll find father mad and waiting for me on the balcony. He’ll scold me for tearing the collar of my suit jacket, then we will sit together and eat leftovers. Then he will go to work in the kitchen and leave me alone, sitting behind my desk. Before long, the night will take over without me having enough time to get my homework done.

I start walking again without much enthusiasm. I go out to the square and I cross it. I stop in front of a poster advertising a special screening for students of the film The Conquest of Egypt, at the Cosmo cinema. The Rich and the Famous at the Majestic, starring Mohamed Abdel Mutlub, Ali al-Kissar, Haggir Hamdi, Abdel Fatah al-Qusari, and Ismail Yasseen.

I enter the alley. I notice father in front of the house across the street talking to its doorman. He waves at me to go inside the house. Abbas sits at the entrance on the steps next to his regular bottle of cheap red whisky. I walk around him trying to keep away from his putrid smell. I go inside the house. The sound of a radio. Abdel Wahab is singing “The wheat tonight, on the night of its harvest.”