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

continued, with new strength: “You’re a lucky devil to have married a woman like me.”

“Meaning what?”

“My dear good Mr. Gouda, I’ve known for ages that you don’t have any shirts, and so I joined a savings co-op. And Thursday next, God willing, we’re going to take a trip to Port Said and buy everything you need.* Now do you understand?”

From that Thursday to the next the days were all color and excitement, but Mr. Gouda was a sensible man. He dreamed, it’s true, of the coming Thursday and a tender, naughty smile would, it’s true, leap, despite his best efforts, to his lips whenever he pictured himself roaming the department’s corridors in his smart new shirt. At the same time, however, he understood very well that he’d have to go on paying into the co-op for a whole year, during which he would have to deduct a part of his salary to pay the price of that day. Mr. Gouda therefore thought everything over carefully and left nothing to chance. What would he buy from Port Said? Where exactly would he go? How would he deal with the officer at Customs? Which pocket, indeed, would he put his money in while he was on the outward journey? Dozens of minute details engaged Mr. Gouda’s attention and were studied exhaustively by him, until in the end he had everything ready in his mind and the time to act had arrived.

On the morning of the Wednesday before, Mr. Gouda announced to his colleagues at the Monitoring Department that he wouldn’t be coming in the following day. When they asked him why not, he started leafing through the file that was in front of him on his desk and then said, out of the corner of his mouth and as though it had nothing to do with him, “Oh, it’s nothing really. I was just thinking of going to Port Said tomorrow, you know.”

Within less than half an hour, the news of Mr. Gouda’s trip to Port Said had spread among the employees and he was inundated with requests of every description—shirts, socks, beauty products. Mr. Gouda knew full well that he wouldn’t buy any of them but he refused no one nevertheless. He would listen and then say, with that air of importance of which he had felt so long deprived, “God willing. I’ll do my very best to remember.”

How happy he was too when he entered the office of Mr. Allouba, the department’s director, and asked him if there was anything he’d like from Port Said.

Mr. Gouda’s pleasure increased further when his boss responded, in a pleasant and gentle voice, “Before all else, your safe return, of course, Gouda. Though, actually, there is a kind of chocolate that my wife is very fond of. You know how women are, Gouda.” Allouba chuckled, and followed with a loud clearing of his throat to restore his dignity.

That Wednesday, Mr. Gouda was an important personage, but when, at night, he betook himself to bed, he was seized by an obscure feeling, a foolish feeling both illogical and baseless, that inspired in him the notion that he would never get to Port Said. Everything was ready. He had the money and had even familiarized himself with the prices. The next day he would go—what could prevent him? All the same, that darkly seductive voice kept on whispering at him and it was only with the greatest difficulty that Mr. Gouda managed to rid himself of his imaginings and go to sleep.

In the morning, when he woke up, he felt somewhat terrified as he counted his money for the last time, then folded the bundle of notes carefully and put it into his pants pocket, making sure that it had gone all the way down to the bottom. When Mr. Gouda and his wife took their seats on the bus headed for Port Said, Busayna recited the opening chapter of the Qur’an in a low voice, and the moment they arrived in Port Said, Mr. Gouda put his plan into action.

He had written down the things he needed on a small piece of paper. The names of the stores were written on another, separate, piece of paper, which saved Mr. Gouda and his wife a great deal of wandering, so that by the middle of the day they were done with their shopping.

There were some household items for Busayna, while Mr. Gouda had acquired four new shirts, one of them with red and white vertical stripes. This shirt was particularly elegant.

The couple having found a discreet refuge in the lobby of one of the city’s smart apartment buildings, Mr. Gouda took off, for the last time, his old white shirt and exchanged it for one of the new ones, while Busayna succeeded in hiding two more shirts inside the folds of her clothes. This meant that just one shirt was left, which Mr. Gouda carried in his hand. The two were then ready to enter Customs, where they had to stand at the end of a long line of people without cars waiting for the inspector.

When their turn approached, when they were within a few paces of the inspector, Busayna bent toward her husband and whispered in his ear, and Mr. Gouda’s voice, filled with anguish and anxiety, was soon to be heard, uttering the words, “In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,” and then proceeding to recite, in genuine holy dread, new shirt in hand, “And We have put before them a barrier and behind them a barrier; and We have covered their eyes so they do not see…and We have covered their eyes so they do not see…and We have covered their eyes so they do not see….”*

To the Air Conditioning Attendant of the Hall

DEAR MR. AIR CONDITIONING ATTENDANT, pray listen closely as I start my tale.

My tale, my dear Attendant, is a boorish Arab tale that knows not how to behave. The ladies and gentlemen present in the hall will