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

dishevelled hair. She patted my hand and said, “You know what? Sometimes a girl can feel really sorry for herself.”

I put my arm around her and whispered, “Never mind,” as I embarked on a new kiss.

She was sweet-natured and poor, and she told me about her father who was a driver and her five brothers and sisters and their room on the roof in el-Mawardi Street, and her Saudi husband who had disappeared after two months. And she laughed as she imitated the accent of the consular official and described to me his luxury flat in Zamalek.

I can see her now.

I see her hair, wet after a shower, after she had put on my patterned silk dressing gown, rolling up the sleeves to accommodate her slight build, and I see her in the evening at the moment before leaving my flat, alone in the dark entryway, where she would stand as though taking off the face of the lover and replacing it with an ordinary face like those of the passersby, then carefully open the door and leave, her footfall reaching my ears and growing louder as it receded. And I see her spending a whole day with me going around the shops to pick me out clothes to her own taste, examining and comparing everything carefully, as though we were really married and she my beloved, thrifty, wife.

Then I see her for the last time that morning. We had arranged to meet at the bus stop next to her house. It was cold, and the people standing at the stop had taken refuge in a solitary spot of sunlight on the pavement, where she too stood, in her old blue winter dress that was a little threadbare at the elbows. Her face seemed to me changed and strange, and when she sat down next to me in the car, I felt as though something oppressive had imposed itself between us.

She was the first to speak. She said, “The hospital’s at the end of Salah Salim Road.”

I headed the car in that direction and started in on a new act of the play. Sighing as though my patience was exhausted, I said, “I told you, I can marry you.”

I’d said the same words a hundred times over the past two days but she’d made no comment, not even once. Whenever I offered to marry her, she’d wait until I’d finished and then go on with what she’d been saying about the operation as though I hadn’t spoken. She knew that I’d never marry her and I somewhat over-insisted so that it would be plain to her that I wasn’t serious.

The hospital was a small white building with a large sign that said Adeeb Maternity Home and it seemed to me—as she went up the marble stairs with slow uncertain steps and bowed head—it seemed to me that I was in some film, playing the role of the warder who leads the erring woman to her inescapable doom.

We met Dr. Adeeb, with his flabby body, broad bald patch and soft, full face, in his office, where he welcomed us tersely. Then he asked me, with a show of innocence, “Are you married?”

I nodded, and he said, “Why do you want to have the operation?”

I replied—as she had instructed me—, “The fact is we have two children…and we’re quite happy that way.”

With the formalities thus disposed of, the doctor’s face took on a resolute expression and he told us, in his normal voice this time, “The operation costs five-hundred pounds and the anaesthetic’s a hundred.”

I’d got the money ready in an envelope and gave it to the doctor, with thanks. No sooner had he put it in a drawer than he leaped up and said, “So let’s be getting on with things. This way, madam.”

The doctor led the way and we—she, the nurse, and I—had to go down a long dark corridor to reach the operating theater with its double doors and twin glass portholes. We walked in silence. Then there, right at the door, she suddenly turned toward me and whispered, “I’m very scared, Salah.” But I didn’t say a word. I stayed rooted to the spot until the nurse pulled her inside by the hand, the door swinging violently behind her. I had a headache and as I sat in the hallway I thought that it was a difficult situation but I couldn’t marry her however sweet she was and however much I loved her. She was—when you came right down to it—simply a fallen woman. And also, mightn’t it be that she’d got pregnant deliberately so as to trap me into marriage? Wasn’t that a real possibility?

2

A Close-fitting Covering for the Head, Brightly Colored

What I liked about her most were her morals, which were impeccable. There were five of us in the accountancy class and she was the only female student who covered her hair. Her head scarf wasn’t one of those flowing, billowy ones; it was just a cover for the head, a round piece of embroidered silk to cover her hair of a sort that I found out later was called a bonnet; she had a varied collection of bonnets, each dress having its own of the same color. And her beauty was stunning: wide black eyes, a complexion of shining, angelic whiteness, a little nose as delicate as some delicious fruit, and full lips, which, when slightly parted, revealed regular, pearly teeth.

All that beauty, and swathed in a grave and modest comportment that commanded respect. No frivolous laugh escaped her lips and there wasn’t a wanton or uncalled for word to any of her male colleagues or a single attempt to attract attention to herself. In addition she was so profoundly religious that she would ask the teacher to halt the class so that she wouldn’t have to skip the afternoon prayer. I was attracted to her, but despite all my experience with women I didn’t dare. How could I pollute the surface of