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

and shouts loudly or claps his hands and heaps obscene insults on an imaginary person or raises his arms and dances wantonly all over the room. That is the way he expresses joy when he manages to understand a scientific problem that he has had some difficulty comprehending.

With the same determination, Tariq Haseeb continues his holy march every day with the exception of Sunday, which he devotes to chores that might distract him from studying the rest of the week. He does his grocery shopping at the shopping center and his laundry in the apartment building, vacuums his room, and cooks for the week, keeping the food in paper containers that can be easily reheated. It is this military precision that has enabled him to achieve the difficult goal of staying at the top. He placed first in his Cairo primary school, third in preparatory school, and eighth nationally in the general secondary school certificate with a 99.8 percentile. After that Tariq maintained the grade “excellent” throughout his five years in medical school but did not have the right connections, so he was appointed to the histology department rather than the general surgery department as he had dreamed. But it didn’t take him long to overcome his sorrow, and he devoted himself to work anew, obtained an MS in histology with distinction, and was nominated for a scholarship to obtain a doctorate from the University of Illinois. In his first two years there he maintained straight As.

Does that mean that Tariq Haseeb does not have any fun?

Not true. He also has his little pleasures, such as the basbusa tray whose ingredients he gets from Egypt and which he takes delight in making himself. He places it on the kitchen table, and when he is pleased with the way he studies he decides to reward himself by devouring a piece of basbusa commensurate in size to the work done. He also has a recreational hour that he takes pains to observe every night, even during examination periods. It is divided into two parts: watching pro wrestling and fantasizing. He cannot go to sleep before watching on the sports channel a complete match of professional wrestling. From the beginning he roots for the bigger wrestler. When that wrestler rains blows on his rival’s face, causing him to bleed profusely, or when he picks him up by the waist and throws him down on the floor of the ring or when he locks his head with his huge arm and slams it on the edge of the ring, as if it were a melon about to explode, Tariq claps and jumps up and down in sheer ecstasy and shouts as if he were an adoring, ecstatic fan at an Umm Kulthum concert in Cairo: “Wonderful, mountain monster! Drink his blood! Break his head! Finish him off tonight.” By the end of the match, Tariq collapses on his bed, out of breath, sweat pouring from his pores, as if it were he who’d fought the wrestling match. But he would by then have satisfied something deep inside him (being partial to strength, perhaps, because he is thin and has been in poor health from a young age).

After the delight of wrestling comes the moment of fantasy, the secret pleasure for which he yearns so much that he pants and feels his heartbeat shaking him to his foundations as he takes the CD from its hiding place in the lower desk drawer. He places it in the computer drive, and soon a magical world of utmost beauty reveals itself to him: graceful, voluptuous blond women with soft and delectable legs and extremely splendid breasts of different sizes with aroused erect nipples, the mere sight of which transports him beyond sanity. Then strong muscular men appear with long, swollen, and erect organs, built as if they were giant, well-wrought steel hammers. The women and men soon start making love harmoniously, accompanied by a cacophony of orgiastic screams, with camera close-ups of women crying from sheer pleasure and biting their lower lips. Tariq cannot stand this excitement for more than a few minutes after which he dashes to the bathroom as if in a race or putting out a fire. He stands in front of the sink and gets rid of his pleasure and little by little he calms down and regains his equanimity, then takes a hot bath, performs his ablution and his evening prayers—both mandatory and optional—and finally pulls a woman’s nylon stocking that he had brought with him from Egypt over his head so that in the morning his hair would be smooth, thus covering, as much as possible, his bald spot, which, unfortunately, is constantly expanding.

At that point a day in the life of Tariq Haseeb would come to an end. He would turn off the light and lie down on his right side, in emulation of the tradition of the Prophet, peace be upon him. He would whisper in a submissive voice, “O God, I have submitted myself to You and turned my face toward You and left all my affairs up to You. I have entrusted my back to You, out of desire and fear of You. There is no recourse and no succor for me except in You. I believe in Your book that You have revealed and in the Prophet You have sent.” Then he’d fall asleep.

THE MORE PRECISE THE MACHINE, the more subject it is to damage. One hard blow to the most sophisticated computer is enough to render it inoperable. Tariq Haseeb received just such a blow last Sunday. In order to understand what happened, we must first examine how Tariq behaves with women.

When a man likes a woman he seeks out her affection with tender talk or gladdens her heart with flirtation and praise, or just makes her laugh and amuses her with interesting stories. This is the nature of humans and animals too; even in the world of insects, if a male wants to have