Friendly Fire, Alaa Aswany [10 ebook reader .TXT] 📗

Between my mother with her cancer, drawn and terrified of death, and my aged grandmother there existed a bitter animosity that may have been an indicator of ancient love and deep sorrow—a hopeless, vicious conflict of tooth and claw between two people imprisoned in the same narrow cell for too long after having lost all hope of release. When my mother rained insults and curses on her, I would think I caught sight of a slight tremor affecting my grandmother’s tranquil face. There can be no doubt that she was angered by the lack of respect with which she was treated and she knew how to pay my mother back for her cruelty with skill. Once my mother and my grandmother were alone together in the house and my grandmother seized her opportunity. By this time all my mother’s hair had fallen out because of the cancer medication and she covered her bald head with a headscarf, which slipped off easily, revealing the surface of her smooth dark pate with its flaking skin. My grandmother got out of bed, without assistance from anyone, and crossed the corridor to my mother’s room with slow heavy footsteps that could easily be heard. When she entered the room, my mother screamed at her, “What do you want?”

My grandmother didn’t reply but went up to my mother, on her face a deeply engrossed smile of the sort that appears on that of a child as it approaches an exciting toy that inspires feelings of both danger and pleasure. She came closer until she was next to my prone mother, ignoring her ever-louder cries, bent over her, stretched out her hand, and pulled the headscarf off her head, leaving it naked. Then she looked at my mother and said in clear tones, “Heavens! Where did all your hair go?”

When I went in to her a few moments later, my mother was howling with tears and screaming, “What’s kept you alive so long? Just die! Just die and give us some peace!”

I watched my grandmother quit the room with the same heavy steps, leaving the storm behind her, and I noticed at that moment, on her aged face, the signs of satisfaction and contentment.

9

I have drawn close and seen, and I am neither sad nor happy. How do you feel when you examine your features closely in the mirror? A certain astonishment at the details of your face that you are seeing for the first time in close up. But your face, nose, eyes, eyebrows, and mouth confirm to you that your face is different from those of others.

That is how I feel about myself now. I have grasped the truth. I have taken it in my hand and it has sentenced me to loneliness. Isolation has become my fate because I have understood. It is not easy to achieve isolation and it does not come quickly. I have tried hard. I made many attempts and failed before I finally triumphed. A forbidding transparent wall that permits only seeing has been erected and I have withdrawn within my borders. I am possessed by the calm of the scientist who mixes solutions in test tubes and waits to record the reaction with precision and objectivity in his little notebook.

I am not now for or against anything. I am totally alone and being alone fills me with satisfaction and comfort. I am no longer concerned to prove my superiority or to make others aware of their inferiority. The days of quarrels and problems are past. I wake up every morning, pick up my books, go to the department, and sign in for the day as though I were in my own private office. I make tables for the readings and carry them out, starting with the newspapers, then a magazine, then a chapter from Nietzsche or Spengler. I may finish off the day with Shakespeare or an Arabic novel. The employees rarely speak to me. After my quarrel with Dr. Sa‘id, they realized that I was special and too much for them to deal with for, were they to do so, it would push them toward unfamiliar and painful patterns of thought. It followed that they took a silent collective decision with regard to me—to resume the life that they knew and leave me alone in my dark obscure corner. They remember me sometimes when one of the women employees gives birth or a man marries and their colleagues subscribe to buy a present, sending me the messenger Abd el-Alim, who now speaks to me entirely politely. Sometimes it seems to me when I direct a look at him that a slight quiver afflicts his face and that he expects me to erupt at any moment and throw something at him. I suppress my smile at this thought and pay the amount requested without a word and go back to my reading. Isolation is my blessing, and I insist on preserving it. When night comes, I make my way to my father’s studio and lock myself in.

Sometimes I go days without seeing my mother and I pay no attention to what goes on in the house. Even Huda I only rarely desire, passion being a part of the life from which I have withdrawn. In my father’s studio I have fashioned for myself my own alternate world, a just and beautiful world to which I flee each night like a terrified child taking refuge in his mother’s bosom, eagerly breathing in her good smell and complaining and crying until, calmed and reassured, he goes to sleep—my own beautiful world, enveloped in a cloud of hashish like a rose enveloped in its calyx. Hashish is a just ruler. He grants you whatever you deserve and gives to each his rights. On the simple, hashish bestows hilarious joy. As for the thinker, the one whose love of the truth is known to Sultan Hashish, he takes him by the hand, draws him close, and reveals secrets. As its