“It isn’t very big,” he said. “I hope you haven’t forgotten everything you’ve learned. This piece of paper cost me a fortune.”
Teymour remained silent; he almost pitied his father. But a mad hope led him to say:
“Father, if you’d like, I can get a bigger one, but I’ll need to go back there for a few more years.”
“Oh, no, this one will do!” cried old Teymour. “After all, it seems suitable enough for our city. But I don’t like how pale you look. You must have worked very hard all those years. Rest up, and in a few days you can go to the factory. They’re waiting. I’ve arranged everything. They’re all curious to see you on the job.”
And now, revisiting this scene in his mind, Teymour had the sense that it belonged to some absurd dream. He tried to convince himself that he was sleeping, and that a day would come when he would awake, freed from this oppressive nightmare. He closed his eyes for a long time to create the illusion necessary for the miracle to occur. When he opened them again, an astonishing sight appeared before him. For a few moments he remained dumbfounded, trying to make out the strange, brightly colored group that stood out from the surrounding gray and that, coming from the far end of the square, advanced in slow motion toward the café. Pulled by a bony horse, an old carriage seemed on the verge of collapse beneath the weight of several females in ceremonial dress who filled it to the brim. It was moving forward with difficulty — either it was going for a very slow drive or the cabby did not dare whip his horse for fear of killing it. It took forever for the conveyance to arrive in front of the café terrace, where Teymour could study at close range the girls in their sequined dresses with plunging necklines, lolling about, laughing and gesturing in the grip of the hysteria of masquerade. It was hard to tell how many there were — they were stuck to one other, making up a mountain of flesh and fabric with flashes of sequin and cheap jewelry. From this pile of festive creatures emerged a motionless and terrifying face — a hybrid monster, neither man nor woman, covered entirely in white powder as if to erase any and all human expression beneath a plaster mask. Its blazing black eyes were unfathomable and empty, like the eyes of the dead made up for eternity. It remained stiff and haughty, indifferent to the deluge of feigned rejoicing that was making the carriage tremble. Teymour was momentarily captivated by this face of an opulent ogress taking her lively victims to her den; then he turned his gaze away and brought it to rest on a girl — the youngest and most beautiful in the group — who, on the seat near the cabby, was wearing a dress of almost transparent pink tulle. She had got hold of the whip and was brandishing it above her head while emitting the cries of a female in heat being serviced by a giant. The queen of this magnificent mob, she seemed as amazing and outrageous as a vision glimpsed in an erotic dream.
The carriage went by, grazing the edges of the terrace; it drove around the entire square and, after a time, came back to the café. The whole thing resembled a circus parade. The girls’ gaudy dresses shone with the thousand flames of their sequins, coating the dismal landscape of the square with a brilliant, fluid stain as illusory as a mirage. Teymour noticed that the customers around him had stood up, the better to savor the glorious spectacle of bared flesh crammed into the carriage, these girls who were rewarding the men’s vanity by calling to them and ogling them with fiery eyes. Other customers came out of the dining hall and remained on the threshold, struck dumb with admiration and lust. Teymour heard exclamations and husky sighs of an animal sensuality, mixed with obscene jeers. The object of this passionate display was the girl beside the cabby; she was now standing up and performing a kind of belly dance that was having the most potent effect on the virility of those men who, a moment before, had seemed dazed by a millennial drowsiness. Suddenly they began to applaud and cheer the young dancer. As if in response to their frenzied cries, she accentuated the swaying of her hips, lifted her dress, thrust forward her juvenile tummy in a shameless, lascivious gesture, then stuck out her tongue several times as if to defy love. An enormous, liberating wave of sound swept over the terrace. “Now that’s what I call Awakening the Nation!” thought Teymour as the carriage pulled away and disappeared around the corner of the square. Giddy, forgetting his own misery, he retained from the extraordinary spectacle only the pale face of the madame, sitting like an implacable monster in the midst of her menagerie. Against his will he shivered, as if recalling some evil beast.
The waiter was standing near him, livid, still under the shock of his contact with this lust-on-wheels. Teymour couldn’t help asking:
“What on earth was that?”
“Where have you been, Excellency! Haven’t you heard about Wataniya’s brothel? It’s the poshest in the city.”
“Sorry. I’ve been out of the country for quite some time.”
“Ah, I see,” said the waiter, looking at Teymour attentively. “Well, nowadays it’s the custom. Every time Wataniya attracts a new recruit, she hires a carriage and parades the new girl through the city with the old ones. That way, potential customers can size up the merchandise — it’s called advertising.”
He expressed himself fervently; his jaded gaze reflected a kind of sordid and resigned eroticism.
“What progress!” said Teymour. “In my day, nothing like that existed. Thanks for the information.”
“At your service, Excellency! Believe me, you won’t be bored here. Did you see that little whore, the one exhibiting herself beside the cabby? She’s the new girl — not even fifteen. To look at her, you’d think she was the daughter of a government minister.”
The waiter glanced one last time at the spot where the carriage had disappeared, and his sly face became sullen and sad, as if he were wistful about all those fleshly lures that had escaped his concupiscence. Then, with a strident voice calling him from the dining room, he left Teymour to fret over the comments he had made about the girl. Why would the young whore be a minister’s daughter? It was a while before he recalled that the expression was a common one, used to enhance the value of people or things by comparing them to a high-ranking personage. The fact that he had forgotten this mortified him, and he realized just how impervious to this city and the colorful language of its inhabitants he had become. His mortification increased all the more at the idea that the brothel run by that frightening creature Wataniya would be his sole distraction from now on. Admittedly during his long stay abroad he had, on occasion, visited all kinds of brothels, but it was out of sheer intellectual curiosity rather than from necessity; whereas here it would no doubt be one of the rare pleasures — perhaps the only one — within his grasp, the sole possibility of joy to which he could aspire. Suddenly he felt so sorry for himself that he decided to go back to the house.
This fainthearted resolution did not last long, however; before shutting himself up at home, he had to find Medhat, a childhood friend about whom he had not ceased thinking all these years. In fact, Teymour’s only reason for going out that morning had been to see Medhat, even though he kept postponing the moment when he would find himself face to face with his old friend; his behavior was due both to the anxiety this reunion was causing him and to a feeling of guilt. During the early period following his departure, he had written Medhat a few tedious letters about his health and his deep contentment; then he had stopped writing — not deliberately, but almost unwittingly, so caught up had he become in the constant exaltation and euphoria of discovering a new world. But Teymour’s superb detachment — which had stemmed from an unconscious desire to destroy all concrete ties to the past — had never implied a fading of his affection for this far-away friend. Each episode in his adventurous life, each pleasure experienced through a chance encounter, each minute of some unusual and wonderful situation, had only had meaning because Teymour could already picture himself recounting it to Medhat. It was the complicity he conferred on his friend who had stayed behind that had given weight to his most insignificant adventures, and shaded them with tender melancholy. But now that he was at long last in a position to relate every detail of the passionate life he had led over there, he wondered if Medhat were capable of imagining, or even of understanding through mere reason, such breathtaking things. Would Medhat even believe him? Could he possibly conceive of the blissful wonders that had been offered to Teymour? Just as daylight cannot be explained to a blind man, wouldn’t his words come up against a void of incredulity? He realized that no power of language would be able to describe, even approximately, the Edenic existence that a paternal decree had brutally brought to an end. But if Medhat couldn’t understand him, who, then, would listen to him in this city? Like the bearer of some implausible piece of news who has little chance of being believed, Teymour feared he would be taken for a braggart. The nature of his knowledge was so enormous, so unheard-of in these regions, that he thought it would be better to keep silent if he didn’t want to spark a riot. He was like a man several centuries ahead of his compatriots, obliged to keep to himself his knowledge of an invention of immeasurable importance.