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

She came closer and her smile widened. She radiated beauty. She said, “I know lots of beautiful things in Egypt that deserve to be photographed more than barefoot children.”

By now I could distinguish a small nose, plump rosy lips, and smooth long yellow hair that she wore straight and that fell below her shoulders. The body was full and ripe, and, restraining myself from looking at her delicious, ample breasts, I said, “If you don’t take photographs of the barefoot children, the poor, and the piles of garbage in Egypt, then what are you going to take photographs of? The Pyramids and the Sphinx?”

I was being sarcastic and my voice dripped bitterness. She asked me in amazement, “Are you Egyptian?”

“I am. Unfortunately.”

Her surprise increased and she said nothing. I turned back to the picture, then passed on to the next one and stood looking at it, my heart beating. It pounded when I heard her steps behind me. I became aware of her at my side, and heard her voice again, saying, “How strange you should feel sorry because you’re Egyptian. Since I was a child, I’ve longed to be Egyptian.”

Her face flushed a little and a dreamy look passed over her eyes. I laughed and said, “What country are you from?”

“I’m German, but I love Egypt. I love it passionately.”

“You love Egypt in exactly the way you’d love an exotic show at the circus, or rare animals at the zoo. But believe me, if you’d been born Egyptian it would have been a tragedy.”

The conversation had to be extended. She stated her surprise at my opinion and said that she had spent two years in Egypt during which she’d gotten to know dozens of Egyptians but she’d never heard anyone express this point of view before. I rushed on, heatedly confirming my opinion while she continued to listen. The astonishment and disbelief in her face drove me to even greater obstinacy. I stated to her that Egypt was a dead country and that civilizations were like any other being that passes through the stages of babyhood, childhood, and youth and then grows old and dies, and that our civilization had died hundreds of years ago, so there was no hope of reviving it. I told her that the Egyptians had the mentality of servants and slaves and understood no language but that of the stick, and I told her the story of the poet al-Mutanabbi when he came to Egypt, translating for her the lines that go “Buy not the slave without his stick!/ Filthy and ill-starred indeed is the slave!”*

We became completely engrossed in our conversation and stopped bothering with the photos. Nor did we notice the time, and in the end we found ourselves making our way, still talking, to the exit. She stopped and gave me a deep, friendly look that pierced my heart, and said, smiling as always, “Really, I thank you for this enjoyable conversation. I’m happy to have got to know the opinion of an Egyptian intellectual on his country. True, I don’t agree with your opinion, but I respect it because it is authentic.”

Then she laughed and went on, “Just imagine! I still haven’t learned your name.”

I laughed wholeheartedly as she tried, haltingly, to pronounce my name, and then asked her hers and she replied, “My name is Jutta.”

As she pronounced the name, her lips formed a delicious rosy circle. Then she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Just a German name. Do you like it?”

I nodded my head and she held out her hand to shake mine, saying in farewell, “Isam. Happy to have met you. I hope we get a chance to continue this discussion some other time.”

Then she turned to leave but I called out suddenly, “Where are you going now?

“Now?”

She appeared to be thinking about what lay behind the question and then answered slowly, “I don’t have anything particular to do.”

“Let’s continue our conversation then, somewhere else. I’m inviting you. Do you have any objection?”

She looked at me seriously for a moment, then nodded her head, and after a few minutes we were getting into a taxi. I hesitated a little, then said to the driver, “Hotel Sémiramis.”

14

I am neither brave nor an expert in women, and when I think now of what I did with Jutta I am amazed at my audacity; it feels to me as though the person who did it was someone else, that someone daring and capable had slipped inside me and stayed there pushing me. I resisted, but he overcame my weakness and gave me strength. When a fire breaks out or someone comes close to drowning or some incredible event occurs, a person who is completely insignificant in ordinary life may be transformed in an instant into an extraordinary being and resolutely undertake acts that nobody, including himself, would have imagined he had it in him to perform. I asked Jutta to go with me? Me, the broken-spirited, whom a glance from a doorkeeper would throw into confusion and who didn’t dare to direct a look—not even a look—at the face of a beautiful woman! I sat next to her in the taxi watching her. She had folded her arms and turned to look at the street from the window. She was wearing a blue denim jacket with a black top beneath it that revealed her white upper chest and neck, wide pants of a light white material, and, on her small feet, simple black shoes. She had washed her hair but not combed it, so that its dark thickets intertwined in thick tresses. I caught the driver watching through the car mirror and smiling, the only way to explain my relationship with Jutta in his mind being my sexual prowess. That was the most a servant like him could comprehend. I felt a sudden rage against the driver but suppressed it and asked her, “What are you doing in Egypt?”

She answered with a laugh,