The next afternoon — until then I had gone downstairs only for breakfast, and upon spotting Samir out on the street had retreated to my bed again — I was sitting with two colleagues whom I did not know on a podium in a space not much larger than an ordinary classroom, with very high-set windows revealing a white sky outside. After I was greeted and congratulated for something or other, I listened to my neighbor’s lecture and finally to a very beautiful woman who read my speech in Arabic. I had plenty of time to keep count of the audience, which was in constant flux. Although I could perfectly understand such a steady ebb and flow during the long, droning contributions of my colleagues, I was amazed nonetheless when the first listeners stood up to leave while my text was being read. There were never more than eighteen people in the room at any one time. Samir and Sheila sat stock-still side by side in the first row. Trying to keep from watching them the whole time was the greatest effort of all. At the end Samir once again applauded enthusiastically. There were two questions, neither related to my text.
“What am I going to do with you?” Sheila exclaimed when I announced I’d be returning to the hotel. I said that if Samir had time, she should have dinner with him, and climbed into a taxi.
On the hotel stairway I ran into Hassan Dawud. A few of his books have also been translated into German. He’s the publisher of a newspaper in Beirut. We had likewise become acquainted in Yemen. Hassan asked me for my speech, he wanted to print it. I said he should first take a look at it. No, he laughed, that I was the author was enough for him. For a moment the pressure eased in my head, and I thought the worst might be over. Two minutes later I fell into bed.
The telephone rang. It was Hoda. She invited me to join her and a couple of her friends for dinner. No, she wouldn’t hear of it, I was to come to along, it would do me good.
Just showering and dressing were Herculean labors, the walk down the hall to the elevator finished me off.
In the lobby Hassan Dawud waved me down, asked me to wait while he rummaged in his briefcase, held out a few pages to me — my lecture, it was incomprehensible, sorry to say. That might possibly be the translation, I said. Possibly, he said. I amazed myself with how calmly I took the news. But as I came down the hotel stairway I was on the verge of bursting into sobs.
How had I ended up in this farce? This conference could rot in hell. I felt deceived and humiliated. I hated Sheila, I hated Samir. I wanted out.
No one had come to the conference to hear lectures, Hoda said. The invitation was like a gift, you flew to Cairo, met some friends, enjoyed yourself — it was really a great time. It didn’t matter in the least — she laughed — whether there were any interpreter booths or not. And I had the best deal of all. I didn’t even need to have a twinge of conscience for playing hooky, I was a free man! Whereas since arriving in Cairo she herself had had to race from interview to interview — Hariri had been assassinated only a few days before.
Hoda introduced me to four women, including Leila, a writer from Kuwait, who gave me the once-over from behind dark glasses, as if suspecting me of being a spy. Finally she stomped her cigarette out and squeezed in beside me. Hoda shared the front passenger seat with a professor of French and Arabic literature from Cairo. The owner of the car had slid her seat so far forward that she was literally being pressed against the steering wheel.
Actually all I remember now is the women’s laughter. And that I envied them, because I had probably never laughed so hard in my life as they did during our ride. None of the women, not even skeptical Leila, could bring a sentence to an end without being overwhelmed by her own laughter. To this day I don’t know what they were laughing about. At one point Hoda slipped between the seats and fell against my knee, unleashing another salvo of laughter. She kept trying to explain something to me in English about the huge throngs at Nasser’s funeral, but what was so terribly funny about that? There were brief pauses when they had to catch their breath, but the very next word was a spark that ignited a new explosion. Even the policeman standing beside a stoplight in a vast square grinned when he saw five people crammed together, holding their hands to their mouths and laughing to the point of tears.
A grated barricade in front of the Al-Azhar Mosque slid back and we were directed to a parking place. Passing begging women and children, we walked through an underpass and arrived at the square outside the entrance to the souk frequented by tourists. We were stormed by several waiters who tried to thrust menus at us and steer us to specific chairs at specific tables in a sea of tables and chairs. In the company of these women the waiters, as well as the beggars, vendors, and roving children, no longer seemed an annoyance.
Just the opposite — they were part of the scene and prompted new topics for a conversation that branched off now and then into English for my sake. Even a carpet vendor I was certain would be rebuffed — who would be buying a carpet at this hour? — had to fulfill his role. The price fell from 160 Egyptian pounds to 70, then to 60, to 55. At which point the vendor imitated strangling himself and, cursing and shaking his head, left our table, only to hail us cordially from a distance shortly thereafter — and was soon standing again before us. Because they were such wonderful ladies — for that was what they were—45 pounds. Hoda explained that 20 would have been plenty, and she could have had it for 20, but he had been unwilling to haggle. Leila waved over a heavily made-up girl who was screeching wildly as she fought off a waiter trying to ban her from his tables. Leila had the girl approach very close, gave her a talking-to, and when she tried to run off, swiftly grabbed her by the arm, held it tight, and went on talking until the girl gave several nods and said something in response. Only then did Leila let her go. Ten minutes later the girl returned, and Leila pressed a couple of bills into her hand. A beggar slinking up from behind suddenly bent down and gave Leila a loud smooch on the cheek. Leila screamed. But then, instead of being outraged, she laughed and rubbed the kiss from her cheek with a handkerchief.
Even now, after darkness had fallen, one tourist bus after another pulled up. One guide after the other hoisted a little flag, and one group after the other climbed out and vanished in the direction of the souk. A few of these mostly elderly ladies and gentlemen — whose flipped-up sunglasses made them look a little like insects — gazed wistfully our way, took a few snapshots, and straggled after their flags.
First the sense of exhaustion returned, then the pressure inside my head. I noticed our food being served, pigeons with their tiny drumsticks bound together. While we ate — pigeons don’t offer much to gnaw at, the stuffing’s the important thing — other pigeons searched for bread crumbs at our feet. One bite and I felt an aversion, something close to nausea. I couldn’t take another, I wanted to but simply couldn’t. I had to stop, my energies were exhausted. It’s a miracle I was still able to sit upright in my chair.
After I had persuaded the women not to accompany me, they called the waiter, and the waiter called over a boy, and the boy went to fetch a cabbie. A price was settled on, and Hoda instructed me on no account to pay more than the fifteen pounds.
All I had to do was stand up and walk a few steps behind the driver — and they were all around me, a whole pack of boys. The youngest were maybe eight, the oldest maybe twelve or thirteen. But I’ve already told about that, probably far too often.
The worst part wasn’t the kids. The moment I said good-bye to the women and began to walk away, memories flooded in. Or to put it another way, everything collapsed in on me. Sheila and Samir, the conference, my failed speech, my disappointed colleagues, the hotel room with its sweat-drenched pillow. The hour and a half I had spent with the women already seemed like some pleasant movie. Now I was leaving the theater and returning to reality.