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

“Uh! That’s a long story. I came to Egypt as part of a tourist group and fell in love with it so much that it ruined the rest of my life. When I went back to Germany, everything seemed to me deathly boring so I made up my mind to come and live in Egypt and here I am.”

“Do you have a job?”

“Yes. An Egyptian friend pulled some strings to get me a job as a secretary in an import-export company. I get a generous salary, but every six months, I have to pay a huge amount in dollars to renew my residency.”

I must have been silent for a little because she suddenly laughed and asked me, “Does my story sound strange?”

After a moment’s hesitation, I said, “Yes.”

The hotel was crowded—a lofty ceiling, huge expensive complicated dangling chandeliers, corridors and lights and servants dressed all in black. As I crossed the entryway with Jutta, she asked me if I knew the hotel and I answered that I didn’t, so she nodded and led me up the marble stairway to the bar. It seemed she knew the place well. A smartly dressed waiter received us and led us to a table on the terrace that looks out over the Nile. Jutta asked me gaily, “Would it annoy you if I ordered alcohol?”

“It would annoy me if you ordered anything else,” I replied.

When she laughed, her lips revealed small, regular, shining white teeth. The waiter brought a bottle of beer for me and a glass of gin for Jutta. I suddenly got worried when I thought of how much money I had on me, but then I relaxed at the thought that it would cover, at the least, a beer for me and another drink for her. On the other shore, the lights were shimmering in the distance and a cool evening breeze was pushing at the surface of the water and breaking it up into waves that made a low murmuring sound. Jutta drank from her glass and looked at the night, seemingly intoxicated by her surroundings. Then she asked me, in a tone fluctuating between reproach and playfulness, “Can anyone hate a country as beautiful as this?”

“Trust me, nature in Germany is no less beautiful, but to you it’s familiar and everything familiar loses its beauty.”

“That’s not true, because after two years here the sight of the Nile still bewitches me—more so perhaps than at the beginning. And you have to remember too that what I like about Egypt isn’t just its views.”

“What else do you like?” I asked her sarcastically, being now a little drunk.

“The people have extremely warm and kind feelings.”

I laughed so loudly that a lady at the next table turned and looked at me. Jutta asked me, “What’s so funny?”

“Your opinion of Egyptians. Exactly what ‘kind feelings’ are you talking about? Egyptians are merely poisonous insects. That is the scientific description for them.”

“But I’ve never noticed that.”

“Of course, you couldn’t possibly notice it because you’re foreign and a woman and beautiful! Listen. Would it be correct for us to consider this waiter a kind man just because he treats us politely? The courtesy he shows to customers is imposed upon him by circumstances stronger than himself. If you want to know what he’s really like, ask one of his neighbors or his family.”

She rested her chin on her hands and looked at me for a moment. Then she said, “Your way of talking is crude and your vision is crude, but it pleases me somehow.”

I ordered another drink for her and a beer and felt a strong desire to talk, to tell. I was afraid Jutta would get bored and felt embarrassed to be baring my soul in front of her, but once the alcohol had started to have its effect, a fervor rose within me that made me speak with a wild enthusiasm. I told her about my father and mother and the Chemistry Authority. I even spoke about Huda the maid, and Jutta kept listening to me with interest. Sometimes she would stop me to ask a question about some detail or other and sometimes I was so bitter I would burst into laughter, but on these occasions she would not share my laughter. She would just look at me with her deep eyes and I would feel that she understood me. When I finished, the bar had almost emptied and Jutta said slowly, looking at her glass and turning it between the palms of her hands, “Isam. I don’t want to make any comments on what you said. I’m afraid anything I say would sound foolish or childish. But I’m thinking now of Frederick, a German friend, who was the first person who told me about Egypt. He’s an engineer and he spent ten years in Egypt. Do you know what he told me once? He said that he’d visited most of the countries in the world and he’d never seen a country as full of talented people as Egypt and that he felt sorry that the talented people in Egypt faced such great problems.”

She said this looking at me and slowly nodding her head as though to emphasize the meaning, and it occurred to me at that moment that her face seemed to me to have two different forms: sometimes it would be delicate and dreamy, and then it looked like that of a wonderful gay little girl, and sometimes her features changed and a severe cast would cover it.

“Let’s have another drink,” I said and she replied gently, “I’m sorry. It’s late and I have to be going.”

When I looked over the check, my disquiet must have shown because she brought her head close and whispered, “I can share it with you.”

I thanked her and refused and paid the check, leaving the waiter a big tip, and we got up and descended the stairs in silence. There was an insistent question suspended between us and I felt she was aware of