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

And el-Dawakhli would submit to these attacks, aware that he was powerless to catch his assailant if he chased him and knowing from experience that resistance only increased their fury. He would, therefore, remain seated, saying nothing, his body stuffed behind the desk, pretending that he hadn’t heard, or sometimes with an abject, pale, wan smile on his face that pleaded with his assailant to desist. When one of them slapped him and ran, el-Dawakhli would turn toward us, the ones who were laughing, his face still clouded with the effect of the blow, and then sigh and shake his head as though to ask us in amazement, “What’s wrong with that boy?”

Despite all of which, el-Dawakhli made every effort to ingratiate himself with us. He’d willingly lend us anything as soon as we asked for it. He’d give us a sandwich or an exercise book or even a pen during an exam, should one of us have forgotten his, and on his own initiative he’d phone any student who was absent and dictate what he’d missed to him. The moment that el-Dawakhli saw you in the playground, he’d start talking to you about something that you were interested in—the increase in the school fees, or how difficult geography was—as though to distract your attention from his person, or he’d take you by the hand and pull you aside and bend over and whisper in the accents of one imparting an important secret that he’d heard that the Arabic teacher was going to call a pop quiz tomorrow, so you’d better get ready; then he’d pat you affectionately on the shoulder and move away.

El-Dawakhli did this so that we’d like him, or, at the least, so that his niceness to us would shame us into not hurting him any more, but all his efforts were in vain. We’d listen to his exciting news, accept his help, and thank him, but our exchanges with him remained tense and surrounded by danger, coming at a certain point to teeter on the edge of embarrassment and then suddenly flipping us back into our mockery and insults.

Miss Souad disappeared and we heard that she’d been transferred to another school. In her place they brought Mr. Hamid, who was extremely tall, with piercing wide eyes and a frowning face, and whose long thin cane with the pointed end that stung our backs and our hands if we slacked off a little during the exercises never left his hand. He was a new teacher, and severe, and, as soon as he saw el-Dawakhli sitting on the steps in his school uniform, he called him over and asked him why he wasn’t wearing his gym clothes. El-Dawakhli hung his head and didn’t answer, and the teacher warned him that he’d better turn up in his uniform the next time.

In the playground, we surrounded el-Dawakhli and asked him about it and he told us very plainly that he’d never wear gym clothes. He asserted that students who had special ‘circumstances’ such as his own were forbidden to wear gym clothes, and everyone knew that.

Despite el-Dawakhli’s assertion, something about his voice and his eyes made us feel that he was in a tight spot and didn’t know what to do. The next time we had gym, we took our places in the lines in readiness for the exercises. We looked around for el-Dawakhli but couldn’t find him, and he wasn’t sitting on the steps as he usually did. Our eyes scanned the whole playground until we discovered him: he was there, hiding behind the large tree next to the cafeteria. He had concealed his body behind the huge trunk, his head peering round it to watch what was going on, very like an ostrich trying to disappear. But in vain: the teacher spotted him and yelled out his name, so el-Dawakhli hurried over to him. The teacher forestalled him by saying in a threatening voice, “Did you bring your gym clothes?”

El-Dawakhli was silent for a moment. Then, to our astonishment, he nodded his head, and the teacher said, “Go and get changed and come back here.”

A murmur ran through the boys. This was the bombshell of the season. El-Dawakhli wearing shorts and gym clothes? We were going to die of laughter at the sight and lay into him with mockery and teasing until he could take no more. We were possessed by an overweening curiosity and a powerful, malign desire of the sort that takes over the people watching a wrestling match. We wanted at that moment to harm and hurt and enjoy. Our eyes hung on the steps, on which, after a moment, el-Dawakhli would reappear. We were restless with eagerness, like young wild animals smacking their lips in anticipation of the prey. We didn’t have to wait long. There was el-Dawakhli coming down the stairs looking much stranger than we’d even imagined. The gym shirt made his breasts stick out like a woman’s and his big belly hung down and shook this way and that. The shining whiteness of his fat thighs, and his incredible buttocks, divided by the shorts into two closely spaced segments of equal size, one rising while the other fell, were there for all to see.

A gale of laughter rang out. All of us were consumed with hilarity—even the teacher, whose lips parted in a wide grin. We began clapping, whistling, and shouting, “El-Dawakhli!” El-Dawakhli had to cross the playground to get to us but we couldn’t contain our impatience and rushed over to him and formed a circle around him, laughing and applauding. El-Dawakhli started behaving in a strange way. He started laughing and pretending that he couldn’t stop himself. Then he started to walk doubled over so as to exaggerate the way his buttocks stuck out, and to pat his belly. He’d made up his mind to make himself as much of a laughingstock as he could and this was