Ingo Schulze - One More Story - Thirteen Stories in the Time-Honored Mode

Sheila went on and on about the Pyramids. The whole time they had done nothing but gaze at the Pyramids, watching the progress of their shadows. And Samir had told her everything that you could possibly want to know about the Pyramids. She was now addicted to viewing the Pyramids. There was nothing in the world to compare with them. For her, viewing the Pyramids was the best medicine — no, the best religion there was.

I didn’t want to squander what little strength I had left on sarcastic remarks. I wasn’t listening all that closely to Sheila anyway. But the longer she spoke, the more indisputable it seemed to me was the change she had undergone. I had encountered this same phenomenon only among the children of my friends, who at some point were no longer children and suddenly responded to me with either greater attention or detachment. Something of the sort had happened with Sheila. Despite her chattiness she seemed calmer, no longer so nervous and overexcited, more mature in fact. Suddenly I desired her again. Yes, it wouldn’t have taken much, and I would have proposed to her.

While we were waiting for the bus, Samir appeared beside us unannounced. He would love to come along, he was very interested in the conference. I said I didn’t know if it was all that easy to do. If I had no objection, he said, there wouldn’t be any problem at all. I shrugged.

At that same moment a gray-haired man with a large nose and a mouth far too wide for his narrow face stepped up to us. As if by way of a greeting he ran his hand through his hair and addressed me in French. I don’t speak French. As if by pre-arrangement, Samir soon interrupted our amiable colleague to provide a translation. The only thing I understood was très bien, très bien , which in Samir’s version became “wonderful, simply fantastic.” That pleased me, and I grinned like the Cheshire cat.

It turned out that a different Samir, that is Samir Grees, had sent his Arabic translation of Simple Stories to several authors, and this amiable gentleman standing here before me had evidently been one of the recipients.

Instead of thanking him directly, I requested our Samir to ask the man his name and then whether his own work had been translated into German or English. Samir hesitated briefly, supplied the name of my vis-à-vis, and then passed on my question about translations. After a firm “Non, non, non,” my Arabic colleague said, “Au revoir,” turned around, and strode off.

The conference opened in a large auditorium that I recall as being rather dark. I had asked Samir to inquire about earphones for me, but in vain, although meanwhile I kept an eye out for interpreter booths. Of the few writers whom I knew, I saw no one except Edwar al-Charrat, and he had more than enough to do greeting the many colleagues encircling him. A half hour later Dr. Bassalama, the signer of the invitations, entered in procession with his entourage. Had everyone risen from their seats and applauded, the staging would have been perfect.

I understood not a word of any of the speeches, of course, but did notice that Dr. Bassalama was mentioned repeatedly. The more frequently his name occurred, the more it sounded like an invocation. An earnest Samir sat ramrod straight beside Sheila and applauded enthusiastically after each speech.

An hour and a half later, as the participants of the conference streamed out into the lobby, I finally caught on: There were no interpreter booths and thus no earphones either. Samir confirmed my observation at once: “Only Arabic is spoken here.” Then what, I asked Samir, was I doing here? He didn’t know either. I grew even more upset when a few minutes later I tried and failed to find something to drink at a buffet table that was grazed clean within a few minutes. Only a few dirty glasses were left, and the container of orange juice had already been tipped forward so that a gentleman could dribble the last of it into his glass.

Sheila and Samir both declared their desire to stay. I rode back to the hotel, bought five cans of ice-cold cola, and dozed the afternoon away in my bed.

Sheila did not even appear for dinner, for which I was joined by Hoda Barakat. We had become acquainted in Yemen the year before and exchanged addresses. Hoda had fled with both her children to Paris from Beirut in 1989. I pumped her for details about Beirut, and she replied half in English, half in French. I needed the information for a character in my New Lives , the novel I was working on. While we spoke I spotted Sheila returning to the hotel. Around ten o’clock Hoda wrote down an address for me, the same one I later used for Vera Türmer: Beirut — Starco area — Wadi aboujmil, the building next to Alliance College — fourth floor.

When I returned to our room, Sheila had already departed again. She came back long past midnight. She asked where I had been and why I couldn’t finally get into the habit of leaving my cell phone on.

The next afternoon — until then I had gone downstairs only for breakfast, and upon spotting Samir out on the street had retreated to my bed again — I was sitting with two colleagues whom I did not know on a podium in a space not much larger than an ordinary classroom, with very high-set windows revealing a white sky outside. After I was greeted and congratulated for something or other, I listened to my neighbor’s lecture and finally to a very beautiful woman who read my speech in Arabic. I had plenty of time to keep count of the audience, which was in constant flux. Although I could perfectly understand such a steady ebb and flow during the long, droning contributions of my colleagues, I was amazed nonetheless when the first listeners stood up to leave while my text was being read. There were never more than eighteen people in the room at any one time. Samir and Sheila sat stock-still side by side in the first row. Trying to keep from watching them the whole time was the greatest effort of all. At the end Samir once again applauded enthusiastically. There were two questions, neither related to my text.

“What am I going to do with you?” Sheila exclaimed when I announced I’d be returning to the hotel. I said that if Samir had time, she should have dinner with him, and climbed into a taxi.

On the hotel stairway I ran into Hassan Dawud. A few of his books have also been translated into German. He’s the publisher of a newspaper in Beirut. We had likewise become acquainted in Yemen. Hassan asked me for my speech, he wanted to print it. I said he should first take a look at it. No, he laughed, that I was the author was enough for him. For a moment the pressure eased in my head, and I thought the worst might be over. Two minutes later I fell into bed.

The telephone rang. It was Hoda. She invited me to join her and a couple of her friends for dinner. No, she wouldn’t hear of it, I was to come to along, it would do me good.

Just showering and dressing were Herculean labors, the walk down the hall to the elevator finished me off.

In the lobby Hassan Dawud waved me down, asked me to wait while he rummaged in his briefcase, held out a few pages to me — my lecture, it was incomprehensible, sorry to say. That might possibly be the translation, I said. Possibly, he said. I amazed myself with how calmly I took the news. But as I came down the hotel stairway I was on the verge of bursting into sobs.

How had I ended up in this farce? This conference could rot in hell. I felt deceived and humiliated. I hated Sheila, I hated Samir. I wanted out.

No one had come to the conference to hear lectures, Hoda said. The invitation was like a gift, you flew to Cairo, met some friends, enjoyed yourself — it was really a great time. It didn’t matter in the least — she laughed — whether there were any interpreter booths or not. And I had the best deal of all. I didn’t even need to have a twinge of conscience for playing hooky, I was a free man! Whereas since arriving in Cairo she herself had had to race from interview to interview — Hariri had been assassinated only a few days before.