Standing on the pedals and keeping her bicycle in a wobbly balance by swaying her hips ever so slightly like a tightrope walker, the graceful outline of the young saltimbanque Teymour had seen one morning performing in front of the café on the square appeared in the middle of the alleyway. She was dressed in parade clothes; her face was made up in shades of pinks and oranges and trembled in the soft light of the sun.
“Ah! Here you are at last!” she said with childlike joy.
“Were you looking for me?” asked Teymour, somewhat dumbfounded by this encounter.
“I’ve been looking for you for days,” answered the girl; her tone was reproachful and she had suddenly stopped smiling. “So, you haven’t left?”
“No, I haven’t left,” said Teymour. “What made you think I was going to leave?”
“You seemed so sorry to be here that my heart took pity on you.”
“Was it that obvious?”
“As obvious as a train wreck,” she said, laughing at the extravagant image that Teymour’s misery as he sat on the café terrace had brought to mind. “I could tell that you despised this city and you were thinking of leaving it. So I smiled to encourage you to stay. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could do.”
“Believe me, it was a lot. Perhaps I only stayed because of that smile.”
She looked at him in astonishment and joy.
“How wonderful!” she cried. “I’m so happy!”
Suddenly she let herself go, placed a foot on the ground and clapped her hands to show her pleasure; then she leaned forward and rested her elbows on the handlebars, as if she wanted to make herself comfortable to continue the conversation.
“My name is Felfel,” she said. “My father is dead and I live with my mother and brother.”
“And my name is Teymour. I was abroad for six years. I only came back three weeks ago.”
“What were you doing over there?”
“I was studying. I have a diploma in chemical engineering.”
She seemed not to understand what a diploma in chemical engineering was; she remained hesitant for a moment, looking at him with a kind of frightened respect, her eyelids darkened with eye shadow.
“This diploma, is it some of kind of talisman you wear to protect yourself?”
“Yes, something like that,” said Teymour, smiling at such naïveté. “But I’m not wearing it.”
“Well you should be. Everyone here has an evil eye, I’m warning you.”
“Don’t worry. It protects me even if I leave it at home.”
She had a doubtful expression about the power of a talisman consigned to the bottom of a drawer in a faraway house and, as if to dispel her anxiety, she rang her bicycle bell several times. The strident sound echoed in the alley like a call to riot, but no one moved and the shutters above their heads remained closed.
“Was it beautiful where you come from?”
“Yes, very beautiful,” said Teymour.
The girl sighed, seeming to feel sorry for herself.
“Oh, how I too would like to leave.”
“Why? Aren’t you happy in this town?”
She made a face that signified all the disgust and horror the city inspired in her.
“There is no one here to appreciate my work. They’re nothing but a pack of peasants.”
“The other day you seemed to have had a lot of success.”
“Success with the rabble! What good is that? All those men are only interested in the charm of my young body, not in what I do. They think I’m not conscious of their lecherous leering. But I know what they want.”
She laughed, shaking her head, as if none of that had any importance. Then, all of a sudden, she seemed to remember something and hit her forehead with her hand:
“I’m such a fool!”
She rummaged feverishly through a small canvas bag attached to the handlebars, pulled out a slightly wilted red rose, and handed it to Teymour saying:
“Here, this is for you.”
Teymour took the rose, gently inhaled its scent, then said:
“It smells good. It’s very kind of you to offer it to me.”
“Poor thing, it’s not very pretty any more. I’ve been saving it for you for a long time.”
She looked at him for an instant, eyes laughing, as if she were happy about the emotion she was arousing in the young man’s heart.
“I don’t now how to express my gratitude,” said Teymour. “May I kiss you?”
“Yes, on the forehead.”
Teymour leaned in and brushed his lips on her forehead.
Felfel had lowered her eyes; she raised them toward Teymour but this time she was no longer smiling. Her gaze was serious, as if Teymour’s kiss had just sealed a pact between them.
“We understand each other, don’t we?”
“I have never in my life been so close to understanding,” answered Teymour with a quiver in his voice.
“I have to go now,” said the girl.
“Will we see each other again?” asked Teymour.
“Of course. I ride around the city several times each day! Bye!”
She hopped nimbly back on the seat, turned the pedals, and with lightning speed raced off toward the end of the alleyway.
Teymour continued walking; he still held the rose in his hand and breathed in its scent from time to time as if he wanted to recover, in the perfume of the faded flower, a trace of his emotions from meeting the girl.
As soon as he had seen the little saltimbanque perched on her bicycle making a beeline for Teymour and blocking his path, Rezk had hidden in a doorway and from there observed the entire scene with utter amazement. The sudden revelation of a relationship between Felfel, his young sister, and the dashing and distinguished engineer who had recently returned from abroad was an extremely anomalous event worthy of all his curiosity. The brazen nonchalance with which Felfel had approached the young man, and the equivocal appearance of their conversation, proved that there was, between these two beings so far apart in social status, an understanding and an intimacy that were, to say the least, bizarre. Was the chief of police right in thinking that the young man with the diploma had only returned to his home town to sow the seeds of revolutionary spirit among the people? For a moment, Rezk was tempted to believe it. But instantly this idea appeared ludicrous to him and he was ashamed of being so foolish. In any case, young Felfel could not feel wronged by an oppressive regime; illiterate like all her peers, she was not even aware that there was a government. On the other hand, she undeniably possessed nascent charms — which her saltimbanque’s clothes showed in great detail — capable of igniting the concupiscence of a man of refined tastes lost in this town’s putrefaction. And yet, strangely, the passionate nature of the affair between his sister and Teymour did not offend him at all; on the contrary, it thrilled him and brought to life an unforeseen hope: that of becoming close to Teymour and of being able to love him like a brother.