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

best mood, and then getting him on his own and telling him fawningly, “I would like to benefit from your experience, Professor. What should I do to make Dr. Bassiouni pleased?” To which, as one, they would smilingly reply, “Our professor, Dr. Bassiouni, loves anyone who gives himself wholly and sincerely to his work.” Hisham knew that they were lying and started asking his colleagues in the other departments. He would enter the radiology department or walk to the pathology department, look around for an old fellow student, and put the question to him. Gradually, Hisham started presenting his problem to doctors he didn’t know: he would go up to them smiling, introduce himself, and then go over the matter, posing the question, “What should I do to please Dr. Bassiouni?”

No one knows exactly how Hisham happened across the answer because what happened then happened so suddenly. On Sunday, Hisham went in as usual to go over the list of operations with Dr. Bassiouni, a process that normally took only a few minutes. This time, however, Hisham stayed…and stayed…until, after an hour had passed since he’d gone in, the doctors in the department started whispering to one another in anxiety and surprise. Eventually, Hisham came out, his face wearing a strange expression that was a mixture of pain, exhaustion, and relief. No one knows what passed between Hisham and Dr. Bassiouni on that day, but equally no one ever forgot that meeting of theirs because it was the beginning of the transformation. After this, Hisham would go in to Dr. Bassiouni every day and spend a long time with him. Indeed, Dr. Bassiouni would send someone to look for him if he did not come, and within a few weeks it was widely reported in the department that the doctor had taken Hisham to help him in his private clinic (which was something Dr. Bassiouni hadn’t done with a resident for years). Thenceforth Hisham became the sole person charged with taking care of Dr. Bassiouni’s appointments and availability and if you wanted to know in what hospital Dr. Bassiouni would be performing an operation tomorrow or whether he was in the mood to allow you to present your request to him, you would have to ask Hisham, and only Hisham. Nor did Hisham any longer have to put up with anyone’s abuse, for the simple reason that no one abused him any longer. On the contrary, everyone, great and small, started treating him nicely; even Dr. Mansour took to making a point of finding him every morning to say hello and he asked him more than once to assist him with his operations, though Hisham would decline, excusing himself on the grounds that his time was completely taken up with “the Pasha” (that is, Bassiouni), on hearing which Dr. Mansour would nod his head as though he completely understood just how busy Hisham must be. It wasn’t long before Hisham gained a reputation as a strict resident who would countenance no slacking where work was concerned and dock days from any sister who made a mistake, after first giving her a dressing down. If the mistake was made by a senior doctor in the department, Hisham would look at him, smile (politely and broadly), and ask him, “Do you think the Pasha would be happy to hear that you are doing that?” (a question that would agitate even the most confident and severe among them). And when Hisham took the master’s exam for the second time, he didn’t bother to closet himself with his books like the time before, but passed and took first place, and Dr. Bassiouni, before the results were made public, congratulated him with the words, “Well done, pig. You’ve come out at the top.” Hisham smiled and bowed, his smile and his movements seeming this time to be of a new and different kind, and said, “I owe it all to you, Pasha.”

His colleagues and professors made a big fuss over congratulating Hisham but when the time came for him to be appointed, the university administration announced that there were no empty posts. Such a problem could have been enough to destroy Hisham’s future but, as soon as he heard the news, early in the morning, he picked up the phone and called Dr. Bassiouni at home (which is something no one had ever dared to do before) and Dr. Bassiouni quite understood the situation and immediately contacted the relevant people, and before midday, Hisham had received the news of his appointment as an assistant lecturer in the department of general surgery.

All this happened two or more years ago. Now Hisham is busy preparing his doctoral thesis (under Dr. Bassiouni’s supervision) and we—his former fellow students—are forever delighting in his achievement. Frequently we visit him at the surgery department, where we have a lovely time with him, chatting and recalling old memories, though sometimes, despite the cheerful welcome he gives us, and despite our affection for and pride in him, we feel that something about our old friend has changed. It is, however, a thought that we quickly expel from our minds.

And We Have Covered Their Eyes

WHO DOESN’T KNOW MR. GOUDA? Doubtless, most of us do. If someone hasn’t found themself a colleague of Mr. Gouda’s at work or during their studies, they will surely have come across him on a crowded bus or, and this is even more likely, will have seen him with a bag of groceries under his arm breaking up some fight that has broken out in the line at the government food co-op, or perhaps listened to the lecture on soccer that Mr. Gouda is accustomed to deliver every Friday evening at the café.

At the very least, all of us will have observed Mr. Gouda on his daily morning journey with his three children, each of whom he delivers to their respective school before hurrying to the Ministry of Planning, where he is employed in the Monitoring Department.

In any case,