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

hurried over to the man and welcomed him with elaborate courtesy, bringing him a chair and ordering him a glass of tea with milk but not, naturally, inviting him to share the waterpipe. Then he turned to him and said—smiling, lowering his eyes, and extending his lips—“What can I do for you, sir?”

“I’ve come to see you about the dogs, actually, my dear sir.”

Fawwaz relaxed at the sound of “my dear sir” and immediately rose and left, returning after a few minutes with the dog, which he had been keeping tied up next to the stand where they made the coffee, on his shoulder. The man looked the dog over carefully, before picking it up and playing with it while examining it with an expert hand. While this was going on, Fawwaz kept up a constant stream of words.

“This dog, sir, is the last one left. I’ve sold three and this is the fourth. Of course, Your Excellency is well aware that boxers are very hard to find these days. Lots of people are looking and they just can’t find any.” Then, with an unexpected movement, Fawwaz extended his hand and took hold of the gentleman’s, saying, “Honest to God, my dear friend, I have a very good feeling about you and everything tells me this boxer should be yours, so what do you say?”

“It’s very good of you. But this dog isn’t a boxer.”

“What?” cried Fawwaz, as though to deny what the man had said and looking around him as if seeking someone who would see justice done in the face of this false accusation.

“What a thing to say, sir! That dog’s a boxer through and through. Take a good look and you’ll see. Look! He’s telling you, ‘I’m a boxer.’ Is that any way to talk?”

The gentleman’s smile widened. He was quite sure of himself.

“My dear fellow, boxers are utterly different. I’ve been a dog lover for forty years.”

“What kind is it, then?” mumbled Fawwaz, finally submitting and inwardly cursing customer and dog alike, while the twenty pounds he’d paid for the advertisement loomed up to torture him.

“Pekinese.”

“So what? It doesn’t matter. The point is, how much will you pay for it?”

Fawwaz said this wearily, having decided to get rid of the miserable dog at any price.

The gentleman was silent for a moment as he affectionately contemplated the dog, and the dog, as though somehow aware of what was going on, jumped up at the man, extending his nose and licking his face.

“I’ll pay three hundred.”

It took Fawwaz a moment to absorb the shock. Then he said in loud tones, “Hold on, that’s just not right! Shame upon Your Excellency! A…(but he just couldn’t get his tongue round the wretched name)…a pedigree dog like that and you tell me three hundred pounds? I mean, you ought to offer seven hundred, or six.”

After some chaffering, the gentleman took three hundred and fifty pounds out of his pocket. Fawwaz counted them quickly and put them into the pocket of his pants. The gentleman put the dog on his shoulder, his face flushed with happiness, and Fawwaz escorted him to his car, then bowed and shook his hand in farewell.

After that he vanished and no more news was heard of Fawwaz Hussein in the café or the alley. No one knew why he had disappeared until word went round a little while ago that some young men from the alley had seen him early one morning prowling the streets of el-Maadi, hovering around outside the gardens there, and, as soon as he spotted a dog, throwing him a little bone from a bag he was carrying, then puckering up his lips and calling in a low voice, “Good doggy. Come here, doggy.”

Mme Zitta Mendès, A Last Image

1961

ON SUNDAYS MY FATHER WOULD TAKE ME with him to her house. The building, which was immensely tall, was situated halfway down Adly Street. The moment we went through the main door a waft of cool air would meet us. The lobby was of marble and spacious, the columns huge and round, and the giant Nubian doorkeeper would hurry ahead of us to call the elevator, retiring, after my father had pressed a banknote into his hand, with fervent thanks. From that point on, my father would wear a different face from the one I knew at home. At Tante Zitta’s house, my father became gentle, courteous, playful, soft-spoken, tender, afire with emotion.

Written in French on the small brass plaque at the door of the apartment were the words “Mme Zitta Mendès,” and she would open the door to us herself, looking radiant with her limpid, fresh, white face, her petite nose, her full lips made up with crimson lipstick, her blue, wide, and seemingly astonished eyes with their long, curling lashes, her smooth black hair that flowed over her shoulders, and the décolleté dress that revealed her ample chest and plump, creamy arms. Even her finger and toe nails were clean, elegant, carefully outlined, and painted in shiny red.

I shall long retain in my memory the image of Zitta as she opened the door—the image of the ‘other woman’ enhanced by the aroma of sin, the svelte mistress who draws you into her secret, velvety world tinged with pleasure and temptation. Tante Zitta would receive me with warm kisses and hugs, saying over and over again in French, “Welcome, young man!” while behind her would appear Antoine, her son, who was two years older than I—a slim, tall youth whose black hair covered the upper part of his brow and the freckles on whose face made him look like the boy in the French reading book we used at school.

Antoine rarely spoke or smiled. He would observe us—me and my father—with an anxious look and purse his lips, then make a sudden move, standing or going to his room. He always seemed to have something important on his mind that he was on the verge of declaring but which he’d shy