I nodded in agreement. He looked at his watch and exhaled another puff of smoke, which hung in the air between us.
“I’ve lived in Egypt for twenty years,” he went on, “and yet I still find Egyptian behavior odd. For example, I don’t understand why the Egyptians cling to a complicated dead language like Classical Arabic.”
“Because Arabic,” I answered without thinking, “bears our history and is something all the Arab peoples have in common, as well as it being the language of the Quran.”
“Delusional.”
I said nothing. The conversation was taking a course I had not expected.
Mr. Wright smiled and then shot out another question at me. “Why don’t you write in the everyday language you use for speaking?”
“The colloquial is not a written language. It’s just a dialect. Lots of cultures have a written language and a dialect that they use for every day. The French and Americans also have various local forms that differ greatly from their written languages.”
Mr. Wright shook his head, unconvinced. “The Egyptians will never advance,” he added, “if they don’t let go of that barren classical language.”
“It’s not barren,” I interjected. “It’s one of the richest living languages. Moreover, it is not Arabic that is the cause of Egypt’s backwardness. Egypt is backward because it is under occupation.”
There was a sudden look of disapproval in his bluish eyes.
“Were it not,” he continued, “for what you call ‘the occupation,’ your country would still be in the Middle Ages.”
“We didn’t ask for anyone’s help. And I don’t believe that Britain has occupied Egypt for charitable purposes.”
“And do you think,” he asked with a look of contempt, “that Egyptians are capable of governing themselves?”
“The Egyptians ruled the civilized world for centuries.”
“Yes, of course. You have to look to distant history for your glory because your present is not very inspiring.”
“The deterioration in the quality of life in Egypt is due to the occupation that is systematically plundering our resources.”
“Before the Egyptians start demanding independence, they need to learn how to think and work properly.”
What a nasty, odd man. Just as arrogant as he was when my mother had dealt with him. What makes him talk like that? If he hates Egyptians so much, why does he live in their country? He didn’t even shake my hand. He did not utter a word of thanks. Even if he is paying for the lessons, shouldn’t he at least thank me for being so obliging? I was really irritated and thought that I should stand up for myself, give him a piece of my mind, and to hell with the Club. But I tried as hard as I could to avoid doing anything I might regret. Then I realized that this was not a spur-of-the-moment argument. He was driving at something. Maybe he was trying to take revenge for my mother’s reprimand the first time we met. Perhaps he himself did not want me teaching his daughter and was trying to provoke me into saying something out of line so that he could fire me despite the prince. I decided not to take the bait.
I stood up and asked him calmly, “Mr. Wright, what time should I start the lesson?”
“When Mitsy’s ready.”
“What time will Mitsy be ready?”
“Wait outside,” he snapped. “Khalil will take you there soon.”
I waited for about a quarter of an hour outside his office before Khalil came to collect me. We took the lift to the top floor and made our way to a small room next to the casino. I tried to control my anger and rid myself of the bad taste from our meeting. I swore to myself that if Mitsy exhibited the same vanity and arrogance as her father, I would quit, no matter how much he paid me. Khalil pushed the door, it opened slowly and I walked over to Mitsy, who was sitting at a small round table next to the window.
“Good morning,” I said in English.
She stood up and shook my hand warmly.
“Hello,” she smiled. “I’m Mitsy Wright. Thank you for having agreed to help me with my Arabic.”
21
A week had passed and no punishment had been meted out to Abdoun. Seeing that he carried on chatting and laughing and doing his job as normal, the other staff kept warning each other nervously:
“Just wait. Alku will crush him like a cockroach.”
“He’ll make an example of him.”
But when another week passed and nothing happened to Abdoun, they were disconcerted and confused. They started looking at the matter from different angles: if Abdoun was able to criticize Alku openly and carry on working for two weeks without being punished, then he was not mad or feckless as they had imagined. He knew exactly what he was doing. There was, however, something that still concerned them: Why had Alku not punished someone who had spoken up against him? After all, he had come to the Club and the fury on his face said he knew what Abdoun had been up to, but for all that, he did not make a move against him. What was the world coming to! If anyone had told them such a thing, they would not have believed him. Had Alku been struck by some debilitating illness, or did Abdoun enjoy the patronage of someone mightier than Alku? There was only one explanation that they could settle on: Abdoun had been planted by Alku himself. It was entirely plausible, because Alku was known for playing no end of dirty games, and this could be his latest devilish plot. He had planted among them someone to speak up against him, letting him go unpunished in order to check their loyalty. Karara the waiter took up this notion in the coffee shop.
“Be careful,” he told his colleagues. “That lad Abdoun’s a spy. Don’t let him fool you into saying anything that could land you in the shit.”
“You’re right,” some of those present responded. “Of course we can see that!”
Bahr the barman wagged his finger. As usual he was sitting there smoking a shisha. He blew out a heavy puff of smoke and told them, “Listen, all of you. Use your brains. Would Alku need to send Abdoun? He knows everything about us. He already has spies who report every last detail.”
“Then you’re on Abdoun’s side?” Karara asked dejectedly.
“It’s not a question of sides.”
“How do you mean?”
“The guy is just doing what he thinks is right.”
“Impossible!”
“Listen, all of you,” Samahy the kitchen boy chimed in. “Abdoun is standing up for what’s right. We are all taken aback because we’re not used to someone speaking up.”
Several of them then retorted:
“Even you, even your brain has gone soft!”
“If you go on like that, you’ll go down with him!”
“That Abdoun’s a spy. You’ll see soon enough.”
During the third week, they refrained from discussing the subject of Abdoun. Whenever they got together, they would talk about everything under the sun, tell each other jokes and have a laugh, but something inside them had changed. Except for Bahr and Samahy and a few other sympathizers, the staff now resented Abdoun. He was pushing them toward the unknown. He was upsetting the equilibrium. If he could speak up against Alku and get away with it, then why, for all those long years, had they been so submissive and put up with all his bullying? Their lives had been based on one truth: that Alku was a tyrant about whom they could do nothing. If their faith in that truth was shaken, then nothing was sacred.
As much as their image of Alku as a bully terrified them, it also gave them a sense of security. However harshly he might deal with them, he also looked after them and made them feel safe. At times of crisis, they looked to him the way a child clings to its mother in a crowded room. They derived their strength from him. They knew that he would always put things right. You could say that Alku was a husband, and they were his obedient wives. If they were in a predicament or felt something was going wrong, they would tell each other, “Alku won’t like it. He likes everything to go like clockwork. Just wait and see what he does.”
But now the ground rules were changing, and it perturbed them. Cause was n
o longer leading to effect. Something fishy was going on behind the scenes. How was it that Alku could know about Abdoun’s outspokenness but not punish him? Moreover, Bahr and Samahy and maybe even others were publicly supporting Abdoun. What would Alku do to them? It would be a mockery if he left them unpunished, but it would not be logical to punish them and not Abdoun. Why would you punish the small fry and not the big fish?
As if the staff’s anxieties had been communicated to Alku, he responded with a series of brutal daily inspections of the Club. From out of his black face, his eyes flashed like those of a wild animal about to savage its prey. He was no longer investigating a complaint or checking up on their work. He was searching for the slightest reason to punish them. If someone looked at him wrong or if there was the tiniest delay in carrying out his orders, he would gesture to Hameed, who would seize the victim for a slap and a few good kicks. The staff usually accepted the punishment mutely as if it was their inexorable fate or else cringed before Alku begging forgiveness. Now, a strange phenomenon could be noted. When a worker was being beaten by Hameed, he would make some sign of protest. He might mutter a word or make a gesture with his hand like someone who’d been wronged. These almost imperceptible and trifling objections bore a hidden message, an unspoken grudge: “You’re having me beaten for the flimsiest of reasons while Abdoun rails against you in front of us all, and you haven’t done anything about that.”
Alku understood the message, and he would glower, gnash his teeth, ordering Hameed to beat the man harder.
Rikabi the chef, Maître Shakir and Yusuf Tarboosh in turn each oversaw a state of terror in their respective departments. Their pent-up anger made them snap if one of their subordinates made the slightest error, leading to reprimands and curses and confiscation of tips. Yusuf Tarboosh slunk around behind his staff in the casino, and if he noticed something not right, he would say quietly to the man, “That’s two days’ salary gone. You’ll learn.” Maître Shakir was likewise pronouncing punishments and then walking off, ignoring the poor waiter’s pleas. In the kitchens, Rikabi the chef, having meted out punishment to one of his staff, would look at the rest, hold up one finger in an obscene gesture and snarl at them, “By God, I have to put up with you bastards every day. If you think you’re Abdoun’s boys, you’ve got another thing coming.”
The daily inspections continued, and the random bullying left the staff in a state of dejection. They now all worked in anxious silence, expecting the worst at any moment. The happy atmosphere that had existed as they cleaned the Club each morning was a thing of the past, dispelled by thought of the dark day to come.
In the midst of this misery, Karara the waiter surprised them all by rushing over to Abdoun when he walked through the Club door. “Who sent you,” he shouted at him, “to cause such problems and turn us all against each other?”
Karara tried to slap his face but missed and hit his shoulder. Abdoun made no attempt to evade him but grabbed him by his waistcoat, pulling it so violently that he ripped it open at the neck, exposing his chest. Abdoun made the most of the moment of Karara’s surprise to direct a punch at his nose.
Looking down at his ripped waistcoat, Karara touched his nose, incredulous that it was bleeding. “I’ll rip your fucking clothes to pieces, you bastard!” he roared at Abdoun like a wild animal about to lunge.
But Abdoun anticipated him and jumped backward, landing another punch on Karara’s nose, making him scream. Then Abdoun kicked him, and he fell to the ground. It was clear to all that Abdoun would have killed him were it not for three of their colleagues, Suleyman the doorman, Mur’i the lift operator and Labib the telephone operator, who had come out of his cubicle when he heard all the commotion. The three threw themselves between the two men rolling around on the floor, using their every ounce of energy to pry them apart. Karara carried on screaming obscenities, whereas Abdoun turned around calmly and walked up the stairs to the changing room.
The next day, some well-intentioned colleagues tried to get them to make peace with each other.
“We know that Karara slapped you,” they told Abdoun. “But you ripped his waistcoat and punched him.”
“He started it, so talk to him.”
“Don’t be like that, Abdoun. Karara is older than you. Come on; let’s make it up.”
Abdoun allowed himself to be led to the restaurant, where Karara was busy setting the tables.
“Peace be upon you,” one of the men said to Karara.
“Peace and God’s mercy be upon you,” he murmured, realizing straightaway the purpose of their visit. The men started their attempt at reconciliation, saying, “Karara, Abdoun is your younger brother. You’re like family to each other.”
“It was a moment of madness, Karara. We’re back to normal now.”
“Both of you are in the wrong.”
“For God’s sake, Abdoun, shake hands with Karara.”
They pushed Abdoun toward Karara, and he held out his hand as the others urged them on. Karara looked at Abdoun and, breathing heavily as if trying to contain himself, firmly shook his hand. A sense of relief descended, and some even cheered. Karara, unconvinced by the reconciliation, forced a half smile. He turned around and went back to laying out the cutlery, signaling that he wanted the parley to be over. The men decided that they had gone far enough and led Abdoun back out of the restaurant, feeling that they had done their good deed for the day. Except that what had transpired between Karara and Abdoun sent a message to everyone: no one should mess with Abdoun. That changed the way they spoke to him. When they disagreed with him, they expressed themselves without sarcasm or derision. The afternoon of the following day, they found him in the café and started firing the usual aggressive questions at him:
“So Abdoun, do you really think that you can fix the world?”
“Are you happy that our tips have been confiscated and we have blows raining down upon us?”
Abdoun looked back at them and answered calmly, “You’re in the wrong. Instead of demanding your rights, you’re afraid. You don’t say anything, and as a result, Alku can do what he likes.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Abdoun?” someone asked him.
“By God, just the opposite. I feel bad for you, but if you had just demanded civil treatment from Alku, he couldn’t be treating you any worse.”
“You want us to go head-to-head with Alku?”
“Aren’t we all human beings like he is?”
“You’re deluded.”
The conversation carried on in this vein until they all fell quiet, drained of the energy or will to keep discussing the matter. They tried to cheer themselves up at the café before going back to the drudgery of work. Their daily routine helped them to forget their predicament. Their submissiveness was a refuge, and they lost themselves in work, having come to the conclusion that with a little patience their ordeal would come to an end, and everything would go back to normal. Alku’s rampages, however, only got worse, and bad luck does not come in single doses. As they were all busy doing the cleaning one morning, they were surprised to see Labib the telephone operator rushing toward them, shouting, “Help! Abd el-Malek is in a really bad way!”
22
The party was held in the hunting lodge in Fayoum, where the king stayed when he wanted to hunt waterfowl. It was an elegant, white two-story structure, with nothing else around it but a swimming pool beautifully illuminated at night by an underwater lighting system. Near the pool, two tables had been laid out a little distance apart so that those at one could not overhear what those at the other were saying. At the first table sat the old Princess Mahitab and her consort, Prince Shawkat, with Prince Shakib and his wife, and at the second sat Carlo Botticelli with three women, a white-skinned foreigner in her twenties, a plump olive-skinned woman in her thirties and, between them, Mitsy Wright wearing a low-cut black dress, showing off her cleavage and her beautifully turned shoulders, her long hair falling over them. Botticelli sat chatting with the three women as he l
ooked them over with a hint of worry. He wanted to reassure himself that they were up to scratch. From time to time, Botticelli would get up and ask one of them to come with him. He would take a step backward and look at her as if examining an old master painting and then whisper a remark: “Go easy on the rouge,” “You need to freshen your eyeliner” or “Straighten the shoulder of your dress.” Then he would return to the table, letting the woman go off to the bathroom to carry out his instructions. He had already examined two of them, and now it was Mitsy’s turn. She was surprised to find him pulling her away from the table by the hand.
“I want to speak to you,” he said in English.
She got up and went with him. She had worked out what he was doing and was not going to let him give her a beauty critique as he had done with the others. If he mentioned her lipstick or her eyeliner, he would regret it. Perhaps guessing how she might react, he took a different tack. He looked at her and gave her an affectionate smile.
“You are so beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“This night might be a turning point in your life. I hope that you appreciate the gravity of the moment.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, it’s not every day that you meet the king.”
“What exactly do you want me to do?”
“His Majesty adores beauty,” Botticelli said suavely. “And if he asks for something, he always gets it.”
Mitsy looked at him with anger in her eyes, but he continued, “You will see that His Majesty is a jolly nice chap and actually quite humble.”
Mitsy turned her back on him and returned to her table. Botticelli was not in the least worried by Mitsy’s sharp reaction. He knew that she would submit to the king if the time came. Otherwise, she would not have accepted the invitation in the first place. She had turned up, and that’s what mattered. Her edginess was just her way of overcoming her shyness in the situation. How strange women are, Botticelli thought to himself as he looked again at the three sitting there in front of him. Were someone to say to any of them that they had come to sell their bodies, she would wipe the floor with him. They had this marvelous power of self-deception. Despite his long experience with women, or perhaps because of it, Botticelli had no great respect for them. Palace rumor had it that in his youth he had been in love with a Greek woman from Alexandria, only to discover that she had been cheating on him with a friend of his, and thereafter he never trusted a woman again. After having convinced scores of women to sell their bodies and finding well-thought-of and respectable women who were ready to go to bed with the king, he no longer believed that any woman could be virtuous. These seductive and delicate creatures all wore a false veneer of innocence but were ready to lie or do anything else for riches. Each had her price. Any woman could be seduced if the time and manner were right. Not surprisingly, Botticelli’s opinion of women had led him to avoid marriage, leaving him a bachelor now in his fifties. When drinking with his friends, they would goad him about it, but he would just laugh.