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

intercourse with a female, he must first fondle her antennae gently and softly until she softens and accepts. This law of nature, unfortunately, does not apply to Tariq Haseeb. He is the opposite of all of that: if he likes a beautiful woman he starts to treat her aggressively and tries to embarrass and harass her in every possible way. And the more he likes the woman the more vicious he is toward her. Why does he do that? No one knows. Perhaps it is to hide his excessive bashfulness before women, or because his attraction to a woman makes him feel weak in comparison to her, so he tries to overcome that by mounting a crushing attack against her. Or because, in the eagle-like loneliness in which he lives and his relentless fight to get to the top, he internally resists any feeling that might distract him from his work. This strange quirk in Tariq’s character has ruined several prospective engagements that he had undertaken with the best of intentions but which all ended in regrettable incidents. The most recent had happened two years before his coming to the States on this scholarship, when he went with his mother to ask for the hand of the daughter of a retired army general. The visit started amicably: cold drinks and pastries were served and courtesies exchanged. The young lady, Rasha, was a graduate of the Spanish department in the College of Languages. She was very pretty: she had long, smooth black hair and a captivating smile revealing snow-white, perfectly arranged teeth. She had two enchanting dimples on both sides of her alluring white face. As for her figure it was luscious and curvaceous, filled with vitality and sending off lustful vibrations in the air that made Tariq lose his concentration for a few moments as he imagined himself possessing the bride-to-be’s body, and doing such things to it. But his admiration, as usual, turned into an aggressive inclination that he tried to control at first, but he failed and gave in to it and it swept him overboard. The father of the bride, as usually happened on such occasions, was talking about his daughter lovingly and admiringly. Somewhat boastfully he said, “Rasha is our only daughter and we’ve done all we could to give her the best upbringing and education. Praise God, all her life she was in language schools, from nursery to secondary school.”

Tariq looked at him with his bulging eyes for a few moments then asked him with a mocking smile on his flushed face, “Pardon, pasha, what school exactly did Mademoiselle Rasha attend?”

The general fell silent for a moment, taken aback by the question, then answered smiling, still willing to be tolerant, “Amon School.”

Thereupon, Tariq found himself in front of the goal, so he kicked the ball hard. With a light laugh on his face that he tried to hide in order to double its impact, he said, “Pardon, General. Amon School was never a language school. Amon is an experimental school, that is, a regular government school but with nominal fees.”

The general’s face showed signs of distress which soon turned into resentment, and he got into a heated debate with Tariq about the difference between experimental and exclusive language schools. Tariq’s mother tried to intervene with pacifying words and secretly gestured to her son several times with her eyebrows and lips to be quiet. But his viciousness was out of his control. He cruelly started to refute the arguments of the father of the bride, having decided to deliver a final, crushing blow. Sighing, as if he had already tired of discussing self-evident platitudes, he said, “With all due respect, sir, what you’re saying is absolutely wrong. There’s a big difference between Amon School and language schools. Language schools in Egypt are few and well known and one cannot enroll in them easily.”

“What do you mean?” asked the general, his face now red with vexation. Tariq took some time before delivering his coup de grâce. “I mean exactly what I said.”

Several moments of silence passed during which the general exerted a great effort (almost audible as hyperventilation) to control his anger. Finally he turned to Tariq’s mother sitting to his left and said in a tone of voice fraught with meaning as he fidgeted, indicating the end of the visit and the engagement, “We are blessed and honored, dear lady.”

The return trip seemed too long. There was heavy silence in the taxicab. Tariq’s mother had put on her best outfit for the engagement: a long dark blue suit and a bonnet of the same color adorned with sequins and crystal beads. She wanted her son to be engaged before he traveled on the scholarship, but every time he behaved like this and ruined the engagement. She had given up on giving him any advice; she had told him many times that he was a respectable and highly regarded catch, that many a girl would love to have him as her husband, but that his combative ways left people with the impression that he was aggressive and strange, so they were afraid of him for their daughter.

“Did you see these liars, Mother? They called Amon School a language school!” he said suddenly, as though he sensed what his mother was thinking.

His mother looked at him for a long while then said in a soft voice in which were mixed rebuke and kindness, “It wasn’t worth all the fuss, my dear. The man just wanted to brag about his daughter, which is natural.”

Tariq interrupted her sharply. “He can brag as much as he likes, but he shouldn’t lie to us. When he says that Amon School is a language school, it means that he has little regard for our minds. I cannot let him get away with that.”

ON SUNDAY EVENING TARIQ HASEEB woke up from his siesta and said to himself that he’d finish the statistics assignment then go out to do his week’s shopping. He applied himself