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

and dirty, the penetrating smell of their sweat combining with the exhaled breath of the audience and the cigarette smoke so that the air in the room was now oppressively offensive and stifling. El-Zahhar brought his speech to a close and sat down, pouring with sweat, to thunderous applause, and it was the turn of Muhammad Bey Bassiouni (God grant him health and strength). Rising from his seat with the assistance of Bora‘i, his private driver, he advanced slowly to the microphone, swept the audience with his eyes for a moment, and said, “I want to ask you, brothers, why we have come here tonight. Have we come seeking wealth or positions? Certainly not! We have gathered here for him, for Mustafa el-Nahhas. We have come to reawaken his sainted memory. Mustafa el-Nahhas, you live on! You will remain in Egypt’s heart so long as the Nile runs and the pyramids stand. Mustafa el-Nahhas…” Here, Bassiouni Bey suddenly stopped and bent his head in silence. A fugitive tear escaped from behind his thick glasses and all of a sudden his aged body shook and he burst into violent weeping. An embarrassed silence reigned in the room, but Sheikh Ali Sahhab’s excitement took fire and he leaped to his feet and shouted three times, in his deep voice, “No leader after el-Nahhas!”

The people repeated the call behind him but Kamil seemed to sense that the listeners had tired of the heat, the crush, and the constant clapping and cheering and he went to the microphone and thanked them, and read the opening chapter of the Qur’an with them for the repose of the leader’s soul. Then the two pillars of the Wafd departed along with some of the rest. The majority, however, stayed in the room; they had attended el-Zahhar’s celebrations before and knew the routine. They crowded, therefore, in front of the dais next to a small, closed side door. A moment later, this opened, and an aged maid dressed in black appeared carrying a large tray of sandwiches—heaps of pita bread loaves sliced in half and stuffed with boiled meat. As soon as the front of the tray appeared through the opening of the door, the throng set upon these voraciously, causing the maid to thrust the whole thing at them, at which a fierce battle immediately broke out, the hands snatching at the meat sandwiches and the shouts swelling and quickly turning into screams and horrible insults. Kamil el-Zahhar stood on the dais watching the battling throng. He remained calm, not intervening with a single word, and eventually the battle came to an end and the throng dispersed—each with his booty—and little by little the room emptied completely. Then he stood up, closed the door, and sat down on the nearest chair.

What had upset Mr. el-Zahhar? The celebration had been wonderful and his speech on Mustafa el-Nahhas extremely well received. He had been able to refute all the scurrilous lies Abdel Nasser had put into people’s heads. He had told them how el-Nahhas Pasha had stood like a lion against the British and the high-handed king and demonstrated with cogent arguments that the February 4 Incident ought to be held to Mustafa el-Nahhas’s credit and not against him.* His eloquence had convinced everyone present and their hands and throats had burned from all the clapping and shouting. Everything was as it should be, so what was it that was upsetting him? The truth is that Kamil el-Zahhar was one of those excessively sensitive people whom the merest word can gladden or wound to the utmost degree, and this evening the sight of the public fighting over the meat had shocked him. He was well aware that they were poor and he knew the faces of many of them but that the struggle over the food should have reached such an appalling level! And who were the people involved? The very ones who had applauded and sometimes cheered for the Wafd and its leader! This thought gave Mr. el-Zahhar pause when he considered their devotion to the principles of the Wafd, and here his wife Dawlat’s words as she handed him the five hundred pounds that he was to spend on the celebration returned to bother him. She had told him, with an affectionate smile, “Take this, Kamil, and may the Lord support you in your good works. Even if those people do just come to eat at our expense, it’s the intention that God rewards.”

The sharp intractable idea that kept sawing at his brain was that the Wafd was dead. Abdel Nasser had failed at everything else but he’d succeeded in cutting the Egyptians off from their past, and a generation had thus grown up that didn’t know, and didn’t want to know, anything about the Wafd and its leaders. How did Mr. el-Zahhar’s children, Mustafa and Zeinab, look at him when he talked to them of Mustafa el-Nahhas? With a polite smile and an indifferent eye, and were it not for their respect for him they would openly make fun of him and his leader. It was not their fault, it was what they’d been taught in Abdel Nasser’s schools. “What’s happened to the world?” muttered Mr. el-Zahhar as he stretched his legs out and sank back into the chair, contemplating the picture of el-Nahhas on the wall. The Leader was wearing court dress and his chest was adorned with glittering stars; draped over his shoulder was the red sash of the judiciary, a silver sword dangled from his hip, and on his kindly face was a beautiful smile, full of nobility and patriotism.

Mr. el-Zahhar closed his eyes and images from the distant past welled up from within his memory. He saw himself as a student at Sa‘idiya Secondary borne on the others’ shoulders in a crowded demonstration and shouting out the slogans, the other students taking up the cry: “Long Live Egypt—Independent and Free!” The demonstration crosses University Avenue and in no time the students from