Sonallah Ibrahim - Stealth

The doorbell rings. She starts to get up to open it but he signals to her to stay put. He waves at me to go and see who it is. I open the door and find Abbas in front of me.

“Is Fatima here?” I don’t know how to answer.

“Okay then, can you just call the bey?”

I leave him and run in to get father. He gets up and leaves the room. He closes the door behind him. I think about following him, but I don’t want to leave Fatima by herself. I stand up behind the door. She stands next to me. We listen. My father’s voice: “Sit down, Abbas.” His voice sounds very firm. We cannot pick up anything from the conversation. Abbas’s voice makes him sound in a bad way. Father calls to Fatima. She goes into the living room and I follow. He says to her: “It’s settled, my girl. Go back to your husband. He won’t raise his hand again. You can come and get your clothes later, after they’ve dried.” Abbas heads for the front door with her right behind him.

He grabs his fez with his left hand. He lifts it up, level to his chest. Bends his right arm. His right hand comes up to the fez. He brushes off its sides with his sleeve. He sets it on top of his head. Locks the door to our room. He tells Fatima to cook the spinach just the way he taught her to, and to remember to throw in a few dried chickpeas. We go out and head for the street. The grocery shop is closed. I lean over towards the chemist. He pulls me sharply by my arm. We cross to the other pavement and pass in front of Hajj Mishaal’s shop. He is sitting inside. His body is huge. He is wearing a long-sleeved shirt and trousers. His hair is slicked down with Vaseline. He smiles an unsettled smile when he sees us. Father ignores him.

We turn into the next alley. We come out in the next street along. “Khalil.” I turn around angrily at whoever is calling my father without giving him the title of “Bey.” Aly Safa comes up to us in a rush. He is walking with his feet flying out to each side of him. He is wearing a blue suit coat and grey trousers. Father stops to let him catch up with us. They shake hands. I stand between them. Father pushes me to the right and we keep walking so that Aly Safa falls in to his left. Father asks him: “Where’ve you been? Did you get married or something?” Aly Safa says: “Do I look crazy?”

He reaches out to pat me on the cheek and asks: “Don’t you have school today?” Father pushes me away from his hand gruffly and says: “These days there’s a strike almost every day.” Aly Safa says he is running off to the electric utilities office and he goes on ahead of us. I ask father why he pushed me to the side. He says: “The thing is, he corrupts young boys.” I think about this strange puzzle.

We turn into a small side alley. There is a smell of mold and mildew. We go into a house with no doorman. We go up the steps to the second story. He knocks on the door of an apartment. A woman’s voice comes out after a while: “Who is it?” Father says: “Aziza, it’s me.”

The voice repeats: “Who?”

“Aziza, it’s me, Khalil. Open up.”

“Just a minute, Bey.”

The door opens to the figure of Hajj Abdel ’Alim’s wife. She is taller than father and has a face that is white and beautiful with tiny black moles scattered over it. The hair on her head is wrapped in a scarf that starts at the middle of her head and goes down to her neck. There is a pigtail coming out from under it. She is carrying a child in her arms.

“Please, come in, Bey”—(she pronounces the title like all the fellah women do)—“You’re one of the family.”

Father and I go in. It is a wide hall with no furniture at all. There is a room in front of us where Sofia, the sister-in-law of the hajj is standing. Behind her you can see a bed, raised on high brass posts. Father speaks to her: “Good health to you.” She answers coldly: “Good health to you too.” He ignores her tone and follows Aziza to another room. We stop at the door. The same kind of bed is there with a child lying on top of it. Father says: “I’ve just come to check on you. Do you want to send him food or anything?”

“The Lord preserve you, Bey. Selim has taken him food and money.”

Father turns back towards the front door and I follow. “Inshallah he’ll come out today. Anyway, if there’s anything you need, tell me.”

“May the Lord always keep you in our lives, Bey.”

We leave the apartment. We go out to the main street. We head toward the closest tram stop. We get on. We change cars at ’Ataba Square. We take the new one to Abdel Aziz Street by the big fire station. The tram turns around in front of the Omar Effendi department store. We get off after two more stops. We cross the tracks to the pavement across the street. We stop in front of a huge building with crowds of people gathered in front of it. Father puts his hand on his chest right over his heart. I ask him: “What’s wrong?” He says: “There are lots of pickpockets around here.” We go up a few steps that pass through stone pillars. We walk into a large hallway full of people. A vendor is sitting cross-legged at the base of a marble pillar. In front of him is a tray with falafel patties, loaves of pita, and small plates of salad. He is surrounded by people eating.

At the next column is a cross-legged man with many women around him, squatting on the ground hugging their knees. He wears a gallabiya decorated down the front with black thread. An old fez sits on his head. A student’s satchel made of canvas sits in front of him with papers stacked up on it. He has an fountain pen in his hand. We go up the steps to the second floor. We cut through the crowd until we’re in a hallway with large rooms that are closed up on either side of us. Father goes up to each door and reads the paper sign nailed to it. We go on searching but it is no use, so we go back to the stairs. We’re surprised by a woman pulling off her cloak, followed by her black gallabiya. Underneath she is wearing a man’s shirt and yellow trousers from army salvage. She pulls a bench up from under the people sitting on it and uses it to attack people standing around her. A man in a gallabiya and skull cap tries to stop her, but she knocks him back with a head butt. We run down the steps and stop near the entrance to the building.

Dr. Mandour shows up wearing black trousers and a grey coat. He says: “Is everything alright?” An assistant comes up to him carrying his black lawyer’s robe. Father says: “We read your article in the Wafd al Misri newspaper. What happened between you and Akhbar al Youm ?” He laughs: “Nothing. I called it a piece of yellow journalism because it’s a British publication that set out to make the case for the king against the Wafd Party. It’s always calling him the just ruler, the great governor, or the leader of the faithful.”

I sneak over behind the writer. A squatting woman dictates in front of him as he writes. The pen must not be absorbing any ink because he keeps dipping it into the ink bottle after every few words. He scolds her every now and then. After the writing is done, he waves for her to go over to his co-worker, who holds up a small piece of brass shaped like a ring. The woman leans over and hands him the paper. He shouts at her: “Your name?”

She answers: “Aida.”

He says: “Give your complete name, woman.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean your name, followed by your father’s name and your grandfather’s name.”

She takes out a paper rolled up in her chest and gives it to him. He unwraps it in a hurry and reads. He scratches her name into the piece of brass. The writer takes it and presses it into a small box. He studies the stamp, and asks: “Are you Aida Girguis Estafanous?” She answers with a southern accent: “Yes.” He presses the stamp down on the paper and hands it to her. She gives him money. He says to her: “Give it to the head clerk.” He points to the man standing nearby. His fez is taller than everyone else’s and his reading glasses have dark lenses. He takes the paper from her and goes with her to the falafel vendor. She buys him a loaf of bread and a few pieces.