Albert Cossery - The Jokers

“Wait!” called Karim. “I’m about to make some coffee. Won’t you have a cup?”

He’d just realized that he’d broken all the rules of hospitality by offering nothing to Taher; he was sincerely ashamed.

But Taher didn’t turn around to accept or refuse his invitation; the sound of his thick soles rang down the stairway, vanishing forever.

Amar walked across the terrace to her lover.

“Who was that guy? He was scary.”

“He makes bombs,” Karim replied.

“Bombs!” The girl was stunned. “What an awful day!”

“On the contrary, it’s a marvelous day!”

He put his arm around her shoulder and returned to the bedroom, holding her tight. After all that fuss about bombs, he wanted to make love.

***

The next day around noon Heykal opened the paper that his servant had brought him and learned about the governor’s assassination.

The picture on the front page showed the governor’s car ripped apart by the explosion; there was also a photo of Taher, his face swollen and bloody, his handcuffed fists held out in front of him in a gesture of supreme dignity. The details of the attack filled several pages, but Heykal read no farther. He crumpled the paper and threw it on the floor. He was appalled by the gratuitous violence. The governor had all but disappeared from the scene, and Taher had gone and made him a martyr. He had turned an executioner into a victim, a glorious example of civic virtue and self-sacrifice for generations to come, thus perpetuating the eternal fraud.