No one knew anything. We asked our late grandmother, when she was still alive, and she couldn’t answer such a seemingly simple question either: Did Joseph Hamdi-Ali visit the pharmacy that summer’s day? And if so, did he buy a toothbrush or some brilliantine for his hair, or perhaps something else … something which was later presented in court as Exhibit A?
Grandma told us there were people who tried to jump to conclusions and judge Joseph Hamdi-Ali by the way his life ended, and who said that what he did afterward proved it alclass="underline" Had he not known he was guilty, why would he have acted the way he had?
Grandma disputed this view. Grandma, illiterate but shrewd, disputed this by asking a simple question: Since when is everything we do a result of our previous actions? She didn’t ask it quite this way, of course, having spoken Ladino, a language in which things sound differently. At any rate, no matter how we look at it, we find ourselves returning once more to Leila, striding calmly among the clouds, wavy and graceful as silk, almost feline, eternal.
33. STAIN
His deterioration began after Leila’s death. Joseph would not replace her. Cards and raki, and perhaps other women, who knows? Emilie certainly didn’t know. He’d disappear for entire days, sometimes nights too, and when he’d return, worn out and ragged, nerves shot, Emilie would welcome him as if nothing happened, as if everything was as it always had been. She cooked him food which he barely touched. She tried to make love to him, usually unsuccessfully. She told him of the child’s accomplishments at school. She didn’t tell him that their money, not only the large fortune he’d accumulated in his years as a jockey, but even the insurance money they’d received upon Leila’s death, was running out. Some say Victor was conceived on one of those tortured nights, and that this is the cause of his strangeness. Who knows?
One fine morning, when David was seventeen, his father came to school, pulled him out of class, ignoring the teacher’s protests, and took him away. He bought him a mare and paid with a check, not knowing it would bounce. When Emilie found out she ran to her father and groveled at his feet, threatening to kill herself. The shocked old man pulled out his wallet. Joseph began training his son in riding the new mare, called Esperance, for she represented hope. David learned quickly. He’d inherited his father’s agility on horseback, though he clearly lacked that passionate devotion on the tracks. It didn’t take long before the Hamdi-Ali team began making waves. Money slowly began flowing back to the family. Emilie returned her father’s loan and never told her husband a thing. She smiled happily: God hadn’t let her down. Now everything would be as it once was, before Leila had died. She was sure Esperance would take Leila’s place. The bad years were over. Maybe one or two white hairs. A five-year-old child clinging to her leg. She had a special affection for that boy, or perhaps it was pity. His heart-wrenching ugliness, the strangeness of his manners. But he was only a baby. When he grew up things would work out, Emilie told herself, though deep inside she resigned herself to a different fate for him. It was clear he would never be like David. And so what? Did all children have to be like David? She watched her eldest son with pride as he leaned into the mare’s back, a reflection blurred by dust and speed. She would sit in the loge wearing a small brimmed hat, ruffles cascading against her eyes. She followed her son through small binoculars. A seventeen-year-old boy, and that giant horse obeyed him as if he were God. One day they’d be rich again thanks to that boy. Joseph expected it to happen within three, or maybe four years …
Three years, four years, five — she wasn’t getting any younger, but she had no complaints. Once more he sat there bent over the horse, and it was clear he would win. Emilie had no doubt about it. She brought the binoculars to her eyes.
The horses stood in a row, every muscle flexed and prepared. The jockeys bent over them, their visors turned back. Any unnecessary protrusion could set them back. A horse and a jockey must be one aerodynamic unit, like a bullet shot from a gun. The row of horses at the starting line is long, the competition great, but all minds and hearts are set on only two contestants. They all know only two are battling today. A tournament of two.
Al-Tal’ooni’s black eyes looked ahead stubbornly. Emilie’s binoculars fixed on her son’s bright blue eyes, which wandered around with bored indifference. They all awaited the signal. Flies swarmed around the moist corners of the patient horses’ eyes. One might wonder what makes them run, these slender beasts? They know nothing of the bets placed and pending in the hot, stifling air of an Alexandrian summer’s day. Is it an innate sense of competition that shoots adrenaline into their hooves? They cannot be moved by external forces only, by the spurs in their sides and the reins around their necks. Perhaps it’s the brotherhood of man and beast? Or maybe this love, this sensual love that turns the wheels of the world, which also animates this graceful, magical gallop, making your breath speed and your throat let out cries of excitement you’d never dare sound in a respectable salon, sitting down to a game of cards.
Al-Tal’ooni must have been certain that the bond between him and his horse was the main factor in his success on the track. They said that Ahmed had never loved a woman. Even if the rumors about him and the consul’s wife were true, it clearly wasn’t love. They said he never loved his mother and his father, and that he despised his many brothers. He loved the desert, but even that love he abandoned for greener pastures. The track was a small-scale desert for him. Occasionally he disappeared from the city, riding out to the dunes. He’d often been seen on the beaches of Lake Mariout, riding around, his white gown blowing in the breeze. Some said he did it for the newspapers, as a form of public relations, creating the image of a legendary hero from Arabian Nights, his life filled with mystery and fantasy. Leila loved the desert too, Joseph thought to himself and shook his head, as if trying to push away a disturbing thought. Ahmed and his horse, Al Buraq, named for the mythical steed that transported the prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem, were like one being, perfection; no one could tell where the man ended and the horse began. That’s just the kind of thing people used to say about him and Leila. Is it any wonder, then, that the day Leila left him, flying off to gallop in the eternal fields of heaven, Joseph retired from the track and never rode again?
Not David. He did not see the mystical, romantic side of things. He loved Esperance and could have said (and if he didn’t dare, we would say it for him) that in his affinity toward her he sometimes experienced emotions and exultation close to that felt with a beloved woman. But this cult of the animal was nowhere near a bond of love, mon vieux! Joseph turned to horse racing because his soul could find peace nowhere but on the track. David turned to horse racing because his father had been in the trade before him, and because he admired his jockey father as a child, and because he was promised he could get rich.
In the past — when was it? — Joseph had some dim hopes for his son as his true successor on the track, the one who would seamlessly continue the career he’d started. Now as Joseph waited breathlessly for the signal, he had no illusions. Even if his son won the race, it was all a lie. A deception, trickery. Joseph might have even looked forward to his son’s defeat, or at least accepted it. His son did not deserve to win this race, and since it was all predetermined, and nothing was incidental, there was no reason to assume that the unworthy one would win, even if he was Joseph Hamdi-Ali’s son. For a moment, he felt a strange closeness to the dark Arab, who looked slightly ridiculous in his colorful jockey’s outfit and funny cap, so European, looking as if the cap just happened to fall on his head. But of course, this was only when he stood waiting with the other riders. Not when he flew upon the wind, clouds of dust swirling around him. In those moments he resembled a simoom, an eastern desert storm that blew in and altered the face of the desert in an instant.