Chicago, Alaa Aswany [first e reader .TXT] 📗

his Egyptian clothes. He packed them into this suitcase and hid them in the basement, as if he knew that one day he’d go back to them. He emptied the suitcase on the floor in front of him: elevator black patent leather shoes with pointed tips in the style of the 1960s, a gray English woolen suit that he used to wear at Qasr al-Aini hospital, a number of narrow neckties of the same time period. These were the clothes he was wearing the last time he met Zeinab: the white shirt with red pinstripes, the dark blue pants, and the black leather jacket he bought with her at the La Boursa Nova store on Suleiman Pasha Street in Cairo. Oh, God, why was he remembering everything so clearly? He extended his hand and felt the clothes. He was overcome by an overpowering, burning desire that made him pant and sweat profusely. He tried to resist that desire, but it swept over him like a hurricane. He stood where he was, took off his house robe then his pajamas, and stood in the middle of the basement in his underwear. It occurred to him that he had actually gone crazy. What was he doing? It was madness itself. Couldn’t he control that perverse desire? What would Chris say if she opened the door and saw him?

He said to himself: let her say what she wants to. There’s nothing for me to fear anymore. She’ll say I’ve gone crazy? So be it. Even if what I am doing is crazy, I’ll do it. It is time for me to do all I want to do. He began to put on his old clothes, one piece at a time. His body had filled out and they no longer fit him. He couldn’t fasten the belt on his belly; the shirt stuck to his body in a way that almost hurt. As for the jacket, he was able to insert his arms into the sleeves with difficulty but he couldn’t move them. Despite the strangeness of the situation a comfortable feeling came over him. He was filled with wonderful serenity and felt contained in dark, moist security, as if he were once again at his mother’s bosom. He looked at his reflection in the mirror in the corner of the basement and burst out laughing. He remembered the concave mirrors before which he had played in amusement parks as a child. Then a thought occurred to him and he went back quickly to the open suitcase, whose innards had spilled on the floor. He was moving with difficulty, limping as if his feet were injured due to the tight clothes. He squatted before the suitcase and reached for the inner pocket, and then he found it, exactly where he expected to, exactly as he had put it there thirty years ago. He brought it slowly out into the light—a broad green address book that he used to carry in his medical bag and which Zeinab often made fun of because of its large size. She would shout in childlike mirth, “This, dear, is not an address book. It is the Cairo telephone directory. When I have the time, I’ll explain to you the difference.”

He smiled when he remembered and opened the book gently. The pages had yellowed and the letters were slightly faded with age, but the names and numbers were still clear.

I saw a strange sight, as though in a dream: the sky grew dark in the middle of the day. A strong wind blew which I imagined would uproot the trees. Then thousands of soft white particles like pieces of cotton flew into the air and fell down softly until they covered everything: houses, roads, and cars.

I stood dazzled, watching what was happening outside the closed window, wearing my robe on my naked body. The central heating was so high I felt hot. There were ice drops accumulating like beads of sweat on the window glass on the inside as a result of the difference between the cold outside and the warmth inside. I sipped my drink slowly and put my arms around Wendy, who was naked. We had just finished a spell of fantastic lovemaking that, together with the heat and the wine, made her face even more like a rose in full bloom. She whispered in my ear, “Do you like to watch the snow?”

“It’s fantastic.”

“Unfortunately it no longer excites me because I’ve seen it since I was a child.”

After a short while, Wendy prepared dinner. She turned off the lights then lit two candles in a candelabra she had brought with her. We began to eat in an enchanting atmosphere.

“This is Jewish chicken soup. Do you like it?” she said.

“It’s delicious.”

She looked at me, her eyes gleaming in the candlelight. Her beautiful face changed expression sometimes in a mysterious way: it would cloud over and its muscles would contract, as if she had remembered something that gave her pain, as if she had inherited an ancient sorrow that remained hidden inside her then appeared suddenly, crossing her face then disappearing.

“Nagi, you’re an exceptional event in my life. I expected our relationship to be casual, just having a good time. I never imagined loving you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re an Arab.”

“What’s the problem there?”

“You’re the only Arab who doesn’t dream of exterminating the Jews,” she said, laughing.

“That’s not true. The Arabs hate Israel not because it is a state for the Jews but because it stole Palestine and committed dozens of massacres against the Palestinians. If the Israelis were Hindus or Buddhists, it wouldn’t have changed anything for us. Our conflict with Israel is political and not religious.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Read the history. Jews lived under Arab rule for many centuries without problems or persecution. They even enjoyed the trust of the Arabs, as evidenced by the fact that, for a period of a thousand years, an Arab sultan’s personal physician was most likely to be a Jew.