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

The Frère roams among us, reading from the book, his voice monotonous, endlessly repeating itself. The air in the classroom is still, impending sleepiness teases me, and through the window next to me I look out onto the cars, the passersby, and Uncle Kamil, who sells doum fruit. I entertain myself by watching the street until I am brought to my senses by the sting of the cane on my back and the Frère’s voice breaking in on my thoughts. “Continue reading!”

I die. I stare trembling at the book but the small lines run into one another in front of my eyes.

“Put your hand out!”

The Frère is in front of me brandishing his cane in the air. There is no way out. I extend my hand and he grips it and brings the cane down on it. I scream and cry and beg him to forgive me, but he strikes and strikes and then lets me fall back onto my seat. I look tearfully at the boys around me. I call on them to be my witnesses, but they pretend to be reading and following the lesson; they ignore me, and, if I were to appeal to them now, they would answer as one, feigning innocence, “What happened to you? We didn’t see anything and we don’t know anything.” In fact, after this incident, as soon as the Frère asks a question, they leap up from their seats and thrust their hands into the air, as though, through their eagerness to answer, they are annihilating any connection to me; as though they are saying to the Frère, “He’s the one who disobeyed you. We, however, are your ever faithful students.”

My hand hurt and I was crying loudly but the Frère paid no attention. He resumed reading as though nothing had happened, except that maybe his thin lips mumbled a little, as if saying, threateningly, “Observe! This is the reward of him who disobeys.” And who would dare? We have submitted to you, O Teacher, and obeyed your orders and become—under the influence of time and obedience—parts of you, like your finger: you crook us and bend us and do with us as you will. Sometimes the Frère is happy, and he smiles and jokingly calls us by the names of various animals. Immediately, we catch the signal, bursting into raucous laughter and shouting at the tops of our voices and stamping our feet, and then it’s as though we are letting out all at one go everything we have long hidden beneath the surface of our polite, still faces. Things come to an end just as they began, with a gesture or a light cough from the Frère, or a look that takes us unawares and stops us in our tracks. Then we shrink; there’s not a voice or a breath to be heard as we know well that the slightest suggestion of indiscipline now means certain perdition, the very thought of which terrifies us as much as any mythical monster of the dark.

Then Nagi came. That morning he stood at the door to the classroom, regarding us with his startled, honey-colored eyes. He dazzled us, he was so beautiful. His face was white and pale, his chestnut hair smooth and flowing, his smock neat and well ironed, his leather bag—unlike our bulging versions—high-quality and gleaming, without patch or sign of wear. Even his sandwiches were delicate and white, like him—slices of snow-white, foreign-style bread, spread with butter, which he carried in a smart transparent bag like the halvah that we ate on our birthdays. The Frère said, “This is your new classmate, Nagi.” Then he looked around searching for a place for him, and the place next to mine was vacant, and I wished…. Is it enough for us to wish hard for something to come true? The Frère was pointing to where I was sitting and Nagi was approaching me, whispering a greeting, and sitting down, and I could smell the faint aroma that emanated from his clothes. I would spend the rest of that day examining him and sniffing him until the bell rang and we could talk. He told me that his mother was French and his father Egyptian and I told him about myself. I waited with him at the door to the school until his luxurious car arrived, the driver descending and picking up his bag, and I asked him urgently as I shook his hand, “Are we friends, Nagi?” and he nodded and got in. At home in the kitchen, I tugged at my mother’s dress so hard that the hot food almost spilled all over her. I wanted her to listen while I told her about Nagi. From then on I controlled myself and would imitate his face, drawing in my features in front of the mirror in the hope of seeing the two dimples that appeared on Nagi’s when he smiled.

In no time, Nagi settled into his place at the pinnacle of the class. He was the most beautiful one among us and the cleverest. A flash from his eyes meant an hour of explanation by the Frère, and we would follow along with the two of them, panting and struggling to keep up, and in the end we would stare at the blackboard and nod our heads as though we understood. Even our French accents seemed heavy beside Nagi’s fluent, refined speech, his French being like the Frère’s, or perhaps better. Then we discovered, little by little, that Nagi wasn’t afraid like us. His face didn’t blanch, his voice didn’t shake, and his eyes didn’t seek refuge in the ceiling or the floor. He would stand in front of the Frère, pull himself up to his full height, and speak to him with a clarity and confidence that increased each time; and each time we expected the accident to happen, as though Nagi were a speeding car rushing headlong toward the top of a