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

changes, next to the window. There they eat breakfast, converse, and read the French newspapers until the time comes for Sunday Mass, when they set off together for church.

That morning they were all in their best get-up. The old men had shaved carefully, polished their two-tone English shoes, and put on their three-piece suits and old ties, though the latter were crumpled and crooked. They were wrapped in ancient, heavy overcoats whose colors had faded and which they removed the moment they entered the restaurant, as convention required.

The old women, those once skittish charmers, were wearing clothes that had been in fashion thirty years ago and had powdered their wrinkled faces, but the old men without exception were careful to observe the rules of etiquette, standing back to allow them to go first, helping them to remove their coats and to fold them neatly and carefully, and pulling out chairs so that they could sit down, after which they would compete at telling them curious and amusing anecdotes. Nor had the women forgotten how to let out oohs and aahs of astonishment and gentle, delicate laughs.

For these old people, the Sunday table is a moment of happiness, after which they surrender once more to their total and terrifying solitude. All they have left is likely to be a large apartment in the middle of the city, coveted by the landlord and the neighbors. The rooms are spacious, the ceilings high and the furniture ancient and neglected, with worn upholstery; the paint on the walls is peeling and the bathroom, of old-fashioned design, is in need of renovations the budget for which remains forever out of reach; and memories—and only memories—inhabit every corner, in the form of beloved black and white photographs of children (Jack, Elena) laughing charmingly, children who are now old men and mature women who have emigrated to America, speak on the telephone at Christmas, and send tasteful colored postcards, as well as monthly money orders, which the old people spend a whole day standing in long, slow lines to collect, counting the banknotes twice just to be sure once they have finally cashed them, and folding them and shoving them well down into their inside pockets.

Despite their age, their minds retain an amazing capacity to recall the past with total clarity, while inside themselves they harbor the certainty of an impending end, always accompanied by the questions, When? and How? They hope that the journey will end calmly and respectably but terrifying apprehensions of being murdered during a robbery, of a long, painful illness, or of a sudden death on the street or in a café haunt them.

That particular morning, I noticed something familiar about the face of one of the old ladies. She was sitting among the old people, her face embellished with a heavy coating of powder and on her head was a green felt hat decorated with a rose made of red cloth. I went on watching her and when I heard her voice I was sure. It must have looked strange—a staid man in his forties, rushing forward and bending over her table. I addressed her impatiently. “Tante Zitta?”

Slowly she raised her head toward me. Her eyes were old now and clouded with cataracts and the cheap glasses she wore were slightly askew, giving the impression that she was looking at something behind me. I reminded her who I was, spoke to her warmly of the old days, and asked after Antoine. She listened to me in silence with a slight, neutral smile on her old face and for so long that I thought I might have made a mistake, or that she had completely lost her wits. A moment passed and then I found her pushing herself up with her hands on the table, rising slowly until she was upright, and stretching out her arms, from which the sleeves of her dress fell back to reveal their extreme emaciation. Then Tante Zitta drew my head toward her and reached up to plant on it a kiss.

About the Author

ALAA AL ASWANY is the internationally bestselling author of The Yacoubian Building and Chicago. A journalist who writes a controversial opposition column, Al Aswany makes his living as a dentist in Cairo.

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ALSO BY ALAA AL ASWANY

Chicago

The Yacoubian Building

Credits

Cover design by Robin Bilardello

Cover photograph by Luis Orteo/Getty Images

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

FRIENDLY FIRE. Copyright © 2004, 2008, 2009 by Alaa Al Aswany. English translation copyright © 2009 by HumphreyDavies. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Digital Edition August 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-195945-5

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* Mustafa Kamil (1874–1908) was an Egyptian nationalist leader.

* Zaqaziq is a city in the Nile Delta, the capital of Sharqiya Governorate.

* Sabri Ragheb (1920–2000) and Hussein Bikar (1912–2002) were both well-known Egyptian painters.

* In Ramadan, Muslims are required to start fasting