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

of a silly thread could possibly upset anyone. And in fact Mr. Gouda didn’t display any appreciable annoyance in front of the young man. Later, however, when waiting ages for the bus, when he raised his daily paper to shield his bald head from the sun, when he managed (with a skill born of practice) to leap onto and stuff his fat body inside the crammed vehicle, he felt an oppressive sensation bearing down on his chest and, one by one, Mr. Gouda’s cares welled up, overflowed, and violently burst their banks. He was forty-five years old. An employee in the Monitoring Department at the Ministry of Planning. His main job was to stamp papers—numerous papers which, the years had taught him, possessed neither use nor significance.

Often, Mr. Gouda would catch sight of companions from his school days riding in luxury cars or read about their doings in the press, and when he encountered these glittering successes he’d always hope in his heart that one of them would treat him with arrogance and scorn, that one of them would mock him or scoff at his poverty and failure, that one of them, in a word, would give him a reasonable excuse to vent his spleen against him, but it never happened. They treated him with excessive kindness and politeness. They put him at his ease when talking to him, laughed long at his witticisms, and listened to him with interest, exactly like the good-hearted sultan who halts his mighty procession and, seized by pity, hurries over to a weeping child or poor widow. This would cause Mr. Gouda’s anxieties to overwhelm him completely.

Now, I have to stress that the story of the cigarette kiosk was an odd one and that Mr. Gouda was used to telling it in the café to make his friends laugh. They all loved the story and often asked him to repeat it, at which moment he would feel true ecstasy and, taking a deep drag on his cigarette, would tell it over again, each repetition adding to his skillfulness in the telling, as he focused like a master on the funniest parts, so that his friends’ enjoyment became intense, their laughter raucous. And Mr. Gouda always laughed along with them.

This time, however, Mr. Gouda recalled the story of the cigarette kiosk and found nothing in it to laugh about. On the contrary, embarrassment and distress swept over him as he thought back over the day when his wife had convinced him that most millionaires had started by selling cigarettes and candy. He remembered how he had struggled, and gone on struggling, until he’d acquired a cigarette kiosk in a Cairo suburb, how he’d used to leave work and go and stand in the kiosk surrounded by the cartons of cigarettes and packets of cookies, and how the kiosk, which was built of metal, would grow hotter and hotter in the heat of the sun until it was burning like a furnace, with Mr. Gouda inside it, waiting for customers and wealth.

And finally Mr. Gouda remembered how he’d discovered, after three whole months, that they’d tricked him and that the area had no customers. By the time his memories had carried him along to that point, he’d reached the house.

No one at home noticed any sign of dejection on his face. He took off his street clothes as soon as he entered the house and joked around with the kids, as usual, picking up Sherif, the youngest, by his little feet and raising him until his hands touched the ceiling, and he went on doing this until the little fellow broke out into rapid and continuous fits of laughter. Then he went into the kitchen, asked for the food to be brought in a hurry and joked a lot with his wife, even pinching her more than once. He was entirely normal.

Mr. Gouda did only one thing that was strange. It occurred after lunch, when he and Busayna sought their bed for a little rest. It was stiflingly hot, and Mr. Gouda and his wife were dripping with sweat, despite which, and despite the fact that it was not his habit to have relations with her in the middle of the day, he asked for her and, very naturally, she refused, saying, “I’m tired, Gouda, and it’s hot.” Mr. Gouda, however, kept insisting until in the end she gave in and he flung himself onto her in a hot, violent encounter, wallowing and losing himself and producing a strong and copious performance. Busayna knew him. He was never like that unless he was very happy or very sad.

When Mr. Gouda had finished, he collapsed on his side, exhausted, and soon he covered his head with the pillow. He didn’t go to sleep, though, and some minutes of silence passed. By the time that he let out a heart-felt sigh, Busayna had decided to intervene.

“What’s worrying you, Gouda?”

There were so many things he would have liked to talk about that he said nothing.

“You don’t want to tell me? Come on, you don’t really think I’m going to go to sleep and leave you all upset like this, do you?”

“It’s the way I look, Busayna. I don’t look right at all any more, Busayna.”

At first, she didn’t hear, and when he repeated the same sentence, she didn’t understand a thing.

“To be honest, I don’t understand,” she said.

“I’m telling you, it’s my clothes. My clothes have got really awful. Especially the shirts. The shirt I was wearing today was a disaster.”

He expected her to answer him with any old thing that might come to her mind, but he never expected her to laugh. But Busayna did laugh. She went on laughing until the bed rocked beneath her. Mr. Gouda’s surprise turned to extreme annoyance and he shouted, “What are you laughing at? I’m telling you I don’t have any clothes to wear.”

“I’m laughing so that you’ll know just what a treasure your Bussy is.”

Mr. Gouda didn’t understand. Her voice