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

a single mouthful, there was only a quarter of an hour left to go before the dawn prayer, and his hollow stomach was nipping at him. He was hungry and wanted to eat and that was all there was to it.

When things came to this pass, Hagg Ahmad felt embarrassed, even ashamed. He despised himself. “You want,” he thought to himself, “to eat, fill your belly, and belch, with your father only an hour dead? Can’t you put up with being hungry for one day, out of respect for the one who raised you and made you a man of means? The souls of the dead see and hear, and your father’s soul may this very minute be smiling sadly and despising your ingratitude. So soon does your mind turn aside from this calamity in favor of an omelet, and beans with tomatoes?” Hagg Ahmad uttered the words “I seek refuge with God” in an audible voice and twisted his head sharply to the right, as though to expel the evil thought, but Satan—God curse him—is a clever foe. See how he whispers to him, in calm, convincing tones, “Why all the fuss? Has the predawn meal suddenly become something reprehensible, or forbidden in religion?” He knew himself too well to think that he could tolerate the day’s fast without a meal before dawn. If he didn’t eat now, he would break his fast tomorrow, and what ignominy that would bring down on him! So he should eat, because tomorrow was going to be a hard day. He had to attend to the washing, shrouding, and burial of the corpse plus the funeral and a million other headaches. How could he get through it all on an empty stomach? And then there were all these people seated around him in mourning only a few minutes before the canon was due to sound to mark the start of the feast. How was he to know they hadn’t eaten at home? If they were as hungry as he was, they wouldn’t look so peaceful! Of course they’d all eaten well at home before coming to weep their bitter tears over the dear departed. He himself, if his father had died somewhere other than in his own home, would have eaten and drunk before going to pay his respects. It was perfectly natural, and there was nothing reprehensible or forbidden about it.

Thus did Hagg Ahmad’s resistance erode, until, at forty minutes past three, it was gone altogether. There were five minutes left and Hagg Ahmad jumped up like someone who’s just remembered something important and trotted out of the drawing room muttering words of apology. He hastened his pace as he crossed the small corridor that led to the kitchen and there he found his wife, Hagga Dawlat, standing in silence and doing nothing, as though she was waiting for him, as though the long years of cohabitation had made her expect his appearance in the kitchen at that very moment. Dawlat gave him a look of understanding. Her eyes were swollen from crying and she had slapped herself so hard there were dark marks on her cheeks. In a voice whose sorrow and tremulousness she worked hard to maintain, she said, “Shall I get you a pot of yogurt, Hagg?”

Despite all her precautions, her voice and posture, and the way the dim light emanated from the kitchen, gave Hagg Ahmad the feeling that they were somehow conspirators and he shouted in her face, “Yogurt? What damn yogurt? What’s that got to do with anything?”

Dawlat bowed her head as though shamed and quietly withdrew across the corridor. When she had disappeared completely, Hagg Ahmad stepped inside the kitchen and closed the door gently but firmly behind him. And there, on the marble counter next to the sink, Hagg Ahmad saw the dish of beans with tomatoes of which he’d been able to eat only one mouthful.

Waiting for the Leader

“MY BROTHERS, the twenty-third of August will remain forever engraved on our hearts in letters of light. Twenty-five years ago to this day, el-Nahhas Pasha, leader of the Wafd and of the nation, departed from us, his pure spirit calling down curses on the oppressors as it ascended.* That day, my brothers, the tyrant Abdel Nasser refused to let us accompany our leader to his place of rest and yet we went out onto the streets. We went out onto the streets and Egypt, to her last man and woman, went out with us to bid farewell to her devoted son, after which Abdel Nasser’s prisons received us and we entered them content, reconciled to our fate, for we—sons of the Mighty Wafd—will remain faithful to the Covenant so long as there is breath in our bodies.”

Kamil el-Zahhar was standing on the dais and now that his passion was ignited his voice reverberated around the hall and he started punching the air with his fist. Behind him, a life-size portrait in oils of the Leader, Mustafa el-Nahhas, could be seen on the wall and next to him sat those two pillars of the Wafd, Muhammad Bey Bassiouni (may God prolong his life), former director of Mustafa el-Nahhas’s office (a venerable seventy-five years old, sick of body and weak of sight, yet with a heart still overflowing with love for the Wafd and its leader) and, on his left, with his countryman’s cloak and towering figure, Sheikh Ali Sahhab, the well-known Wafdist member of parliament and fellow townsman of el-Nahhas Pasha, from Samannud, in the province of el-Gharbiya. The celebration in memory of el-Nahhas was taking place in the living room of the home of Kamil el-Zahhar in el-Mounira and the room was crowded to capacity, some of those in attendance even having to follow events from outside. They were a mixture of neighbors, a few passersby who had come up out of curiosity, and, and these were the majority, the poor of the area—men and women dragging children along with them, their clothes shabby