Yitzhak Goren - Alexandrian Summer

“Doctor, it’s going to be a girl, right?” asked Robby’s eleven-year-old sister.

The doctor patted the child’s head and mumbled something unclear about the mysteries of nature and God’s will.

Then Grandma told the famous folktale of the rabbi who, whenever asked to foretell whether a baby would be a girl or a boy, always said, “A boy, Madame, a male child. Mazal tov!” while hiding behind the door a note that read, “Girl.” If a boy was born, the rabbi humbly accepted praise; if a girl was born, as sometimes happened, the righteous rabbi would open the door with fanfare, and with a mysterious grin pick up the note and present it knowingly, saying, “I knew it was a girl …” sigh, “but I didn’t want to upset good people. I thought, maybe a miracle would happen? But I hid the truth behind this door, like a truth at the gate. What is left but to celebrate our all-knowing God?” Grandma summed up, “And what’s left for us to do but to celebrate the genius rabbi?”

“I’m no genius and no rabbi,” the good doctor demurred, “but even I can risk it and tell you it will be …”

“A boy!” called Grandma.

“A girl!” cried her granddaughter.

“Forget it!” said the doctor in English, washing his hands of prophesies.

“If it’s a girl,” the child vowed with her eyes closed, “ she will be my doll. I’ll toss all my dolls to the sea, or give them away to poor people.”

When she heard the baby was a boy, she cried inconsolably. This is why she continued to call her brother ma petite fille . The grownups could do no more than to guess how his years serving as his sister’s petite fille affected his mind and personality.

“Where have you been?” Robby asked once the tirade of kisses was over.

“Where have I been?” his sister asked with a smile. “Where everybody’s been.”

“At the race! Then who won?”

She smiled ironically and said, “You’re dying to hear that David won, aren’t you? You’re dying for me to marry him, aren’t you?” She shoved a finger under his arm and began tickling him.

“What’s it to me?” he tried to defend himself.

“It really is nothing to you, or to anyone else in this family, but everyone’s butting in, and especially your grandma!”

“Fine, don’t marry him. Just tell me, who won the race?” he asked impatiently.

“Well, what do you think?”

“Going by your smile, I’d say he lost.”

“You got it, genius,” she said and pulled off her dress. “It’s so hot today.”

“He lost, huh?”

“And you know who won?”

“That Arab!” Robby said hatefully.

She danced around in her slip, gyrating her hips and waving her dress over her head.

“Stop dancing in your underwear!” Robby said angrily. “Someone might walk in. They’ll all be back soon, won’t they?”

“Are you worried about me, mon cher frèrot ?” she asked and hugged him. She smelled of perfume mixed with tobacco from Ramzi’s pipe. Suddenly she said, “The Arab was practically drunk with victory. His face shone with sweat, and you know what he did? He rode all the way to the English consul’s loge, to pay respects to his lady, like some Ivanhoe in a knights’ tournament. Then he started doing acrobatics on horseback, like a circus performer — he rode standing up, got off and on the horse while it galloped, and the crowd went mad with excitement, especially the other Arabs. Some of them even started shouting, ‘ Maut al yahud! Death to the Jews!’ We were a little scared, but thank God, the voices were few, just a handful of hotheaded young guys, maybe some students from the Muslim Brotherhood. They were shut down immediately. The Chief of Police, Nawas, you know him, the guy who plays belotte with Papa at Café Zisis, stood up and said, ‘Shut your mouths, you dogs sons of dogs, or you’ll get to spend a few weeks in the can!’ They turned quiet right away, like good little boys. Then I saw Nawas go up to Mom, and from his gestures I could tell he was apologizing to her …”

“What? You didn’t sit with Mama and Papa?”

“No. No one knows I was at the race, and neither do you. And just you wait and see what happens if you tell anybody. We got out of there fast and Ramzi drove me home in his car.”

“Ramzi!” called Robby.

“Ramzi is just a chubby guy with a heart of gold. He’s crazy about me. That’s all. He’s no more important to me than David Hamdi-Ali, or any other guy for that matter.” She hugged him to her chest and he blushed.

“So David lost. Lost,” Robby lamented.

“Because I wasn’t serving as his good luck charm,” she said and took off her slip while walking to the bathroom. She grabbed a bathrobe on her way, and her laughter echoed through the long, dark hallway.

By the time the gang arrived it was already dark. Robby’s parents didn’t come with them. They were invited, along with Grandma, to the house of Officer Nawas, for some coffee. The Hamdi-Alis and Murads returned to the house on Rue Delta. A silence of mourning. Joseph sat on one of the chairs in the hall and mumbled to himself, “What humiliation … how dare he? All that wheeling and dealing … he was putting on a show! A show! A masquerade. Shaming my son in front of everybody.” This excitement did not fit the old man’s general calm spirits. His small frame shrank further and he was curled up in his chair like a fetus, trembling in spite of the heavy heat. “I could kill him … kill him …” Suddenly he stood up and took hold of his son’s shoulders. “How could you let him win, ya ibni ? How could you let him? Didn’t you think of your father?”

“What’s it got to do with you?” David said, almost choking on the insolence of his own words.

“What’s it got to do with me?” Joseph mumbled, and began tittering nervously, until his titters piled up to form one loud, hoarse peel of laughter.

“Joseph, you aren’t feeling well!” Emilie called out with alarm.

“I feel great, Emilie. I’m as healthy as a horse. I just want to die.” Then he laughed again.

David recuperated from his own words, and was ready to defend himself, but then that jinn , that demon, overtook him again, and he lashed out at his father once more: “I don’t understand why you see it this way, ya baba ! It isn’t the end of the world. It’s only sport, a race …” And he turned his back on the man with the ecstasy of revolt.

“Sport. A race,” Joseph repeated with a gloomy whisper. Then he raised his voice, “And life — is life not a game? It’s because of these thoughts of yours, because of this disrespect of yours, that you lost! Because you saw it as a game, not a mission. Your enemy — he was on a mission. He was going on jihad . Jihad. That’s why they were yelling, ‘ Maut al yahud! ’ The entire thing has become a war of religion, a war of nations. Islam versus Judaism. They were yelling, ‘Death to the Jews.’ What if they decided to slaughter the Jews, what would you say then, David? Would you call that a game too? What would you say? What would you say?”

David was barely listening. He was still recovering from the shock of his own brash words, spoken to his father, and especially by the way the old man seemed to perceive them as legitimate and understandable, and accepted them without consternation, without astonishment, without violence. Suddenly David realized that a new world had opened up to him, and he was intoxicated. Through the twilight of ecstasy he heard himself speak in a different voice, a new voice: “What do you care? You’re not even Jewish!”

“I … I’m not Jewish?” the old man said meekly, pleadingly.