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

desk and wrote on the first page, “I have just realized that I have fallen captive to the spirit of the West, for the more certain I become of how useless we are, the more their spirit appears to me to be running over with amazing potential.”

12

The mystery of my passion now solved, my infatuation with the pictures inevitably began to fade. The pictures were merely my path to the Beloved and there were many other paths that would bring me closer. Why shouldn’t I live this spirit of theirs instead of searching for it in pictures—experience it, breathe it, and touch it? I would travel to their countries, to their sun and their ice and their buildings and their faces. And if I was incapable of traveling, I would look for them here in Egypt. They came here and roamed the streets and previously I had seen them a lot and paid them no attention. It was amazing that you could see beauty dozens of times and pass it by without being affected; then one day, in a moment of divine inspiration, you would discover it and your body would tremble with burning ecstasy.

I would spend the days in the department daydreaming and anxious. I didn’t read and I didn’t look at anyone. I would see my loved ones in my mind’s eye and burn with longing to meet them. As soon as the time to leave came, I would rush off to them. I would go to their places—the Pyramids, the Egyptian Museum, Saladin’s Citadel. Everyday I would meet them somewhere new. I would pretend to be looking, like them, at the place, while following them with my eyes. I devoured them and memorized their details in my mind—their faces and bodies, their laughter and voices. Then I would chew over these with pleasure each night as I smoked hashish. Sometimes I would ask, “Doesn’t God realize that they are His most exquisite creatures? Can God be bent on torturing them the way He will torture us? Even their adulterous women, their thieves, and their murderers—will God punish them by grilling their beautiful white skins? It’s not possible. God could not have created such splendor only to burn it later on.” One night I stood in front of the mirror and looked at my coarse hair and my ugly dark face. I thought of the faces of my mother, my father, and all those whom I knew. I was disgusted and rushed to write down in my notebook, “We deserve torture because we are disfigured.”

Sometimes I would borrow money from my mother and sometimes I would steal from her purse. With it I bought smart new clothes that I would wear every day, and I would buy a pack of imported cigarettes and go to them, at food festivals, culture centers, classical music concerts—any place I knew they would be I went to and with time I developed a lover’s experience. I found out that Italian pizza was crisp and thin and American thick and stuffed. With a single glance I could distinguish the uprightness of the Germans, the delicacy of the French, the vivacity of the Italians, and the natural transparency and simplicity of the Americans; all these beautiful variations, like gorgeous colors, seemed to be separate, but blended in the end to produce light. The poles of love and knowledge met and the circle was completed, thus qualifying me to take a new step upward that would bring me closer to the melting point of ecstasy.

13

The German Cultural Center is a small elegant building on a noisy street. There was a photographic exhibition. The photographer was standing there receiving the visitors—a young German man in his early twenties with a small pointed beard, blue eyes, and long hair like a girl’s which he tied in a tress that hung down his back. He shook my hand, smiled in welcome, mumbled some English words in a low voice, and I went in. The visitors were Germans and Egyptians. The Germans wore jeans and T-shirts and the Egyptians were smartly dressed. Expensive scents mixed and luxurious new clothes scintillated. I detached myself from the flow of the crowd and started the exhibition from the end, viewing the photos on my own. Some had been taken in Munich, the photographer’s hometown, but most were taken in Egypt. There was everything that would please the tourist—a cart laden with limes, a liquorice drink vendor clapping his little cymbals, and another of a man wearing a turban buying a watermelon and having the vendor cut it open in front of him to prove it was ripe. I stopped in front of a picture of a number of young boys in el-Husayn Square, their bodies emaciated and their faces worn with weakness and malnutrition. They were standing barefoot in torn gallabiyas and laughing before the camera and one of them had pulled his gallabiya up to the top of his legs and was sticking his backside out in an obscene movement.

“That photo is an insult to Egypt, wouldn’t you agree?”

The voice came from behind me. Clear English and a friendly tone. I turned and saw her.

You are walking in the street on an ordinary day on your way to some ordinary event; the cameras take you by surprise and the passersby rush up to shake your hand and congratulate you, all because you’ve won a huge prize just by virtue of being the first to cross the street that morning—that was the sort of surprise I felt when I saw her. Deep blue eyes that once you had caught sight of you could not pass by as one might dozens of other faces. I was drawn into them and the rest of her beautiful face disappeared into the background. Eyes from which there was no escape. I looked at them and stammered. Then I said in a deep voice to hide my agitation, “Why? I can’t see anything