The turbaned sheikh makes a show of his anger. Hajj Abdel ’Alim turns to him: “God gave our lord Solomon use of the djinn. We’re just going to speak with djinn that are Muslim believers. We’re not asking for anything that’ll corrupt us either. We just want it to raise the treasure hiding under the earth’s surface up for us.”
Father talks about what happened when he called on the servant of the “Latif,’ or holy God. He made a habit of doing it every night. Finally, he heard a bump in the living room over the sideboard, and an angry voice came to him: “What do you want?” And he was so scared that he didn’t answer, so the servant never came back after that.
Dr. Aziz says good-bye and gets up to leave. Hajj Adbel ’Alim asks him: “Are you planning on listening to the Um Kalthoum concert?” Father asks what her new song is about. The Hajj answers him: “It’s called ‘I Could not have a Generous Heart.’ ” The doctor says he will listen to the concert at home.
They chat about Hajj Mishaal. Abdel ’Alim says that he sits around counting out 100 pound banknotes the way ordinary people count change out from small bills. The turbaned sheikh adds that he traded in people’s salvage goods before the war.
The fruitseller who walks around the quarter passes by. He calls out that he has oranges from Jaffa. Father buys two okas’ worth. He tells Refaat Effendi: “Who knows when we’ll see these again?” We get up after a while. The entrance to the house is dark, as always. Our apartment too. There is a faint light at the entrance to the storage room, like the glow from a candle or an oil lamp. Father knocks on the door. He takes out the key and opens it. The door to our room is open, but the room is pitch black. He calls out: “Um Muhammad!” but she doesn’t answer. He calls her again. I hang on to his clothes. We go into the room and he turns on the light. He comes back out. I follow him. He wanders through the nooks and crannies of the apartment, calling out: “Um Muhammad.” There is no sign of her. We go back to our room. He looks around for her bundle and cannot find it. He says: “The old crone has taken off.”
He looks through the dresser trying to make sure she hasn’t stolen anything. I sit down at my desk and open up my composition notebook. A visit to the zoological gardens. Hassan the sea lion. Cheetah the monkey. Sayyid Qishta the hippo. Mother wears a light coat over a patterned dress. We walk over paths of colored pebbles. We sit down at the tea stall. Suddenly, mother jumps up, saying: “We have to get away from here. We have to go back now.”My father tries to calm her. She keeps repeating: “Something terrible is going to happen. We have to go back the way we came.”
~ ~ ~
I tell Maher that a relative of mine owns a car. Gallal steals my gun and refuses to give it back. He pulls me by the collar of my suit jacket, tearing the lapel. I promise him that father will tell the principal and have him punished. He says: “Go to hell.”
We all go to the large auditorium to watch the film Tarzan in New York. I walk next to Lam’aiy. Taller than me. His face is ruddy and a yellow fuzz covers his legs. I invite him to sit next to me, but he’d rather sit in another row. I take out my glasses and wipe them off with a handkerchief. I watch the movie in a magical trance. Then we go back to our classroom. We all take our satchels and go down to the drawing room. The teacher wears a suede jacket. Easy and kind of quiet. He can draw anything in an instant with no problem. The drawing desks are arranged in an open square. Three sides of it are our rows. The fourth is his table in the middle of ours, underneath the blackboard.
I throw my satchel on the ground. I sit at one of the tables and put my composition book on top of one of the slanted desks. The teacher writes on the board: “I watched the grand procession last October.” He sits at his table. He opens a wide notebook filled with thick paper. He throws himself into his drawing.
I take out my pencil and sharpener and open up my notebook. We walk downhill until we get to the florist’s shop, then we stroll towards the square. We cross it and stand on the sidewalk in the middle of the crowd waiting for the grand procession. If we get lucky, we’ll see the king in his red convertible.
I draw a camel. It looks more like a donkey. I try to erase it, but its lines are still visible on the page. I get up and look for Maher, but I can’t find him. The teacher is still absorbed in his drawing. He seems not to know that we are there. One of the students goes up to him and asks for help. The teacher answers him then fills his page with quick line drawings. The student goes back to his seat. He puts the notebook in his satchel, picks it up and, heading towards the door of the class, sneaks out.
I put the sharpener on the point of the pencil and turn it several times. The point sharpens, then breaks off. I sharpen it again. Another student wants help from the teacher. A third one follows him. A fourth and a fifth. Each of them leaves the class after he does their drawing for them. After a while, our numbers dwindle until I find myself sitting alone. I take my notebook and go to him. I put it in front of him without a word. He neither looks at me, nor speaks to me. He draws a camel bending down with one stroke of the pen. I steal a glance at his notebook. Country houses in a row. Their fronts are drawn with careful detail. I go back to my seat. I put the notebook in my satchel, pick it up, and head towards the door. I turn around to look at him. He is absorbed in his drawing.
We scatter at the front door of the school. A sky full of clouds warns of rain. The breeze smells nice. The pavement made of colored gravel. The wall surrounding the Jewish school. A colored poster advertises the film Sanity Takes a Vacation, starring Mohamed Fawzi, Layla Fawzi, Bishara Wakeem, Abdel Salaam al-Nabulsi. The film Bol-bol Effendi is playing at the Corsal cinema with Sabah and Fareed al-Atrash.
I walk beside the wall of the school until I come to the corner. The tall windows are open. I look down over tables set up in messy rows, with grains of wheat scattered on top of them. A strange smell. A few steps and I find myself in front of our old house. The clouds part the way for bright sunshine. The iron door is closed. The windows are closed. Mother gets up and goes out to nurse my sister. My father wears a robe over his gallabiya, and he has replaced his nightcap with a fez. He goes along with me to the road. We walk along the quiet street. We pass a monk wearing a white outfit. His pale face is sunburned. My father winks at him and stammers in French: Coamantalleefu? We go about half way up the street, then turn back. I walk close to the wall of the garden of the convent school with its thick trees. I steal a look inside. My father stands waiting for me. I know he’s watching me. I pretend to be all wrapped up in watching what’s around me. The light of dusk starts to break up. He calls to me in a commanding voice.
I cross the street. I stand under one of the two windows. One is the bedroom window, the other the dining room. Next to it is the alleyway, which the window of the guest room and the steel-grated kitchen window look down on to. The alleyway ends at the storage house for the barrels of molasses. That’s why the yellow-striped hornets gather there. One of the children manages to catch one of them. He ties its stinger with a thread.
A private car with an arched roof comes by, moving up from the part of the street that dead ends into the square. It heads down a side street that goes toward the shanty town. It stops in front of the villa a few doors down from our house. A plump man gets out wearing clothes of the countryside underneath a loose-fitting aba. The same man is in a white jacket, blue trousers, and white shoes, with a strikingly beautiful woman in a green dress, on his arm. There’s a sunken spot at her temple near her ear. My father says that it’s the remains of a green tattoo that peasants have. The two of them come out of the door of the villa. The children and I stand on the pavement across the street. We try to sneak a look inside the villa. There’s a small circular garden with cactus plants rising up out of it.