Chicago, Alaa Aswany [first e reader .TXT] 📗

“Does this apply to Dr. Graham?”

Carol laughed and said, “John Graham is an American of a rare kind. He doesn’t care at all about money. He might be the only university professor in Chicago who doesn’t own a car.”

After a short while we had dinner prepared by Carol. They were both very nice to me. I talked to them about Egypt and we discussed various topics. I drank more wine and was in such an ecstatic mood that I talked and laughed a lot. Then Carol disappeared suddenly and I realized that she had gone to bed. I took that to be a signal that the evening was over. So I got up to leave, but Graham signaled to me to wait and said as he raised the vodka bottle, “How about one for the road?”

I opened my arms, welcoming the idea, and emboldened by the wine, I said, “I can have a glass of wine.”

“You don’t like vodka?”

“I only drink wine.”

“Following the Abbasid religious scholars?”

“I actually do love the Abbasid era and I have read a lot about it. Maybe my love of wine is an attempt to recapture the golden Arab age now lost. And, by the way, what would you say to doing like Harun al-Rashid?”

“What did he do?”

“One of the paradoxes of history was that Harun al-Rashid, despite being able to behead any person with a simple nod to Masrur, the executioner, was at the same time a tender, bashful human being who took care not to slight the feelings of others. He had a cane that he placed next to him when he sat drinking with his friends. When he got tired and wanted them to leave, he placed the cane across his legs, whereupon they would understand that it was the end of the evening. That way he didn’t embarrass them and they didn’t overstay their welcome.”

Graham laughed loudly and got up with childish enthusiasm, fetched a hockey stick that was hanging on the wall, and said, “Let’s re-create history then. Here’s the stick in an upright position; if I drop it you’ll understand that I want to sleep.”

We talked about many things, most of which I don’t remember now, and we laughed a lot. In my drunken state I felt like talking, so I told John what had happened with the black call girl. Graham guffawed at the beginning, but by the end of the story, he bowed his head pensively and said, “This is a significant experience: millions of citizens in the richest country in the world live in such poverty. But this miserable woman, in my opinion, is more honorable than many American politicians. She’s selling her body to feed her children while they control American foreign policy to provoke unnecessary wars to control sources of oil and sell weapons that kill tens of thousands of innocent people so that profits in the millions of dollars continue to pour in for them. There’s something else you’ve got to understand: the American establishment is in control of everything in the life of Americans. Even the relationship between a man and a woman is now heavily regulated.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the 1960s our call for sexual freedom was an attempt to have emotional fulfillment away from the control of adults. Now, however, bourgeois conventions have come back with a vengeance. If you want to get to know a woman in America you have to do so through specific steps, as if incorporating a commercial company: first, you have to spend some time talking to her in an entertaining and humorous way; second, you have to buy her a drink; third, you have to ask her for her telephone number; fourth, you have to take her to dinner at a fancy restaurant; and finally, you invite her to visit you at home. Then bourgeois convention gives you the right to sleep with her. At any of these steps a woman can withdraw: if a woman refuses to give you her telephone number or turns down your dinner invitation, that means that she doesn’t welcome having a relationship with you. But if she goes through the five steps, that means she wants you.”

I looked at him in silence, but his sense of humor soon reasserted itself. He laughed and said, “As you can see, your old professor has information much more important than histology.”

It was a wonderful evening. Suddenly I heard a sharp, intermittent buzzing sound. I noticed for the first time the presence of a speaker and a panel with several buttons attached to the wall next to the sofa. Graham brought his head closer to the speaker, pushed a button, and cheerfully exclaimed, “Karam? You’re late. I’ll impose a fine on you.”

Then he turned toward me and said, “This is my surprise for you tonight. An Egyptian friend like you.”

The speaker made a noise that I couldn’t make out. Graham pushed a button and there was another buzzing sound that I figured was opening the outside door. After a short while there stood in the middle of the room an Egyptian man pushing sixty. He had a tall, slim athletic build, gray hair parted in the middle, and typical Coptic features: dark complexion, a large nose, and big round eyes filled with intelligence and sadness, as if he had just stepped out of one of the paintings of the Fayyum Portraits exhibit. Dr. Graham said, “Let me introduce my friend, Karam Doss, one of the most skilled heart surgeons in Chicago. And this is my friend Nagi Abd al-Samad, a poet who is studying for a master’s degree in histology.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Karam in polished English. From the first impression he seemed strong willed, confident, and extremely well dressed: white shirt with patterned sleeves and the designer’s signature on the chest, handsome black trousers, and black patent leather shoes. Around his neck was a thick gold chain bearing a cross, buried in his dense