Husseini felt strong, and believed that his diet of fish and rice and the sea air he breathed improved his blood. In his opinion, a person’s soul was in the blood. Blood travelled all around the body and infused with spirit the framework of flesh and bones that called itself Mahfouz Husseini.
Sometimes he would fall asleep in a beach chair and wake the next morning just as the sun rose above the mountains on the far shore. He lived with his face to the sea and his back to the desert, free of the great desires that make life a living hell. After someone told him that the Sinai was sliding away from the Arab Peninsula across the way at the rate of a centimetre and a half each year, he thought he could see the distance widening.
The day a bus from Piramid Tours came rolling into Nuweiba, he was sitting in his armchair outside the shop. Later that afternoon the first tourists from this new bunch appeared in his street: three women. Dutch. Mahfouz could tell right away. It was possible at times to mistake Dutch people for Germans, but the latter tended to have a kind of belaboured modesty, as though they could be arrested any minute. Germans also did talk louder than the Dutch, it’s true, but they didn’t walk around as though the world belonged to them. Dutch people moved with a heavily self-confident tread, as though they knew their way everywhere.
Mahfouz’s colleague, Monsef Adel Aziz, shouted, ‘Lookie-lookie-no-obigation’ at the women, the sign for the others to approach them as well, rubbing their hands and preening their feathers. Mahfouz saw a tired smile cross the face of the youngest woman. One of the older women, he could tell, had come to his country in search of physical love; one developed an eye for such things. Women like that had something hungry in their gaze, something insatiable. More and more of them had started coming each year; sometimes you saw white grandmothers with amazing lavender hair walking hand in hand with young boys. The story had it that these women had been abandoned by their husbands in their own country, or that they had come to Egypt because their husband was ill and could no longer fulfil his conjugal obligations. Monsef Adel Aziz consorted with such women and was none the poorer for it. The young men of the village didn’t care whether the women were old, young, fat or pretty. Mahfouz himself had had an affair with an American woman; when her vacation was over she had asked him to go home with her, but in his eyes a house in Iowa was no better than a shop in Nuweiba. Catherine O’Day had therefore started spending a few weeks each year in Nuweiba. It had been a few years, however, since he’d seen her. He’d received a postcard from her once, with greetings from America. The postcard hung on the back wall of Husseini’s shop, half covering a photo of him with his arm around the popular actress Athar el-Hakim, who had once come to Nuweiba for a day to shoot some scenes on the beach.
The women were coming toward his shop. Concerning the oldest, the one Mahfouz had recognized as sexually needy, he heard later that week that she had started a torrid affair with a bellboy at the Hotel Domina; an attractive young man who, in response to her elaborate praise for the ease with which he had carried her luggage, had immediately dropped his trousers to show his sizeable dong. Mahfouz took a good look at the youngest of the three — there was shadow around her. He felt the need to comfort her.
‘Hotchachaandoolalabathingbeautywithoutabra!’ Monsef Abdel Aziz shouted after them, knowing full well that he had lost the battle for their attention.
The women had almost reached Mahfouz’s shop. Stroking his moustache in one fluid motion with the back of his index finger, he said with his most winning smile, ‘Welcome, welcome. .’
The women had run his clothing through their hands, each of them had tried on a few rings bearing semiprecious gems and bought a few postcards. Then they walked on. But anyone travelling down the road in a southerly direction had to pass back that way again. When they reached the end of the shopping street the women turned, the woman with the shadow walking on the inside now. Mahfouz ran into his shop, grabbed a souvenir and flew back outside, where he was just in time to hand his present to the woman with ash-blond hair. She took it, confused, not knowing whether it was a present or whether he wanted money for it, and tried to give it back.
‘It’s a gift, for you,’ Mahfouz said.
It was a little model boat, a felucca with an alabaster hull and a sail with the Eye of Horus painted on it in blue and gold. The woman thanked him awkwardly and walked on.
Nuweiba was little more than a hamlet. It was certain that Mahfouz Husseini and Regina Ratzinger would meet again.
The next day they saw each other beside the swimming pool at the Hotel Domina. He had delivered a box of leather wallets to the hotel’s souvenir shop and was about to walk back down the beach to Tarabin when he saw her.
‘Ah, the beautiful lady,’ he said, bowing his head slightly.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I wanted to. . a little something. . for that lovely present.’
She went back to her recliner at the poolside, wrapped a sarong around her body and tied it with a knot between her breasts, bent over and took a couple of Egyptian pounds from her bag. She walked back to the man and said, ‘Here, for you.’
Mahfouz shook his head and smiled sadly.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘You don’t want my gift. I am sorry.’
‘Of course I want it, but. .’
But it was too late: the Egyptian raised his hand briefly to cover his heart, took two steps back and was gone.
Later that afternoon she took a taxi to his shop to apologize. He agreed to meet her that evening for a meal.
‘Oh,’ she said as she left the shop, ‘my name is Regina Ratzinger. What’s yours?’
‘Call me Mahfouz.’
They had fish on the beach in Tarabin. A Sudanese man, his skin black as ink, sat smoking in the shadow of a fishing boat; wagtails were hopping on the sand. The evening sky wrapped itself around them like the lightest of woven fabrics. A Bedouin came by leading a camel by a rope. The Bedouin tried to interest her in a ride along the beach; Mahfouz said something and the Bedouin left. After dinner they walked along the water to the Temple Disco at Hotel Domina. Regina danced with her eyes closed; around them the other members of her tour group swayed tipsily.
Later, back on the beach, Mahfouz built a little fire. He pulled a pack of Cleopatras from his shirt pocket and stuck a cigarette between his lips. His hands went to his pockets but found no lighter. Regina took a burning stick from the fire and held it up to him with shaking hands. He touched the tip of the cigarette to the wood and drew fire into it. Neither of them noticed the glowing ember that fell on Mahfouz’s Terlenka trousers. When the material began to smoke and he leapt up with a shriek to slap out the fire, Mahfouz realized that something had changed for all time.
Look,’ Joe said, ‘Mrs Eilander.’
The Peugeot station wagon belonging to P.J.’s mother was racing along the dyke in our direction. She was kicking up a lot of wind and we watched her go by in a flash, looking grim. She didn’t even respond when Joe and I raised our hands in greeting.
‘Pissed off,’ Joe said.
We had seen her car parked at the police station manned by Sergeant Eus Manting. Why she was there was not hard to guess: she was complaining about a strange airplane that sometimes flew frighteningly low over her garden; Joe had recently started carrying out reconnaissance missions over the White House.