A third picture has a fine wooden frame with something that looks like a cross in each corner. He stands between two officers. One of them wears puffy pants tucked in high boots that come up to the knee. The shoulders of their uniforms have small, steel swords that show they’re officers. He takes hold of the picture in his hand and stares up at the wall as if searching for a place to hang it. I say: “Shouldn’t we put a glass pane over it first?” He shakes his head as if he’s sad: “May God have vengeance on them.” Mama Basima with ’Azmi goes out all mad and leaves us with his mother, the cook. We start to gather up our things in canvas bags. He puts the big pictures in grooved frames in the bag and ties it with string. We stack what we need next to the door. We put on our clothes and get ready to leave. I go to the toilet to pee. I trip over the water bucket and it spills. The cook yells at me: “Are you blind?” He yells back at her: “Shut up!” She runs to the door. She opens it. She grabs one of the bags. She throws it over the ledge of the stairwell. She grabs another. We rush out and go down. The bag of pictures comes after us. It crashes at the bottom and I hear the sound of breaking glass.
Fatima takes the pictures back to their place over the dresser. He points at a yellow envelope and asks her to bring it over. He throws it towards the desk and it falls. She starts to bring in the bedding.
We leave her alone in the room so she can sweep and mop it. Father brings the yellow envelope with him. He sits at the table in the hall facing the door to our room. I stand next to him. He dumps out what is in the envelope. Pictures without frames around them, some of them as small as a postcard. He picks up one and studies it. I lean over his shoulder. My glasses slide down my nose and I put them back in place. Father is between my aunt and my uncle’s wife. They’re all three wearing white gallabiyas. Only father, in his skull cap, wears anything on his head. The hair of my aunt and uncle’s wife is black like charcoal. It’s short and thick and gathered around their faces. Nabila is standing in front of my father’s legs. Behind them, there’s a wall made of reeds, and in front of them, a beach. I ask him: “Where’s this?” He says: “In front of our cabin at Ras al-Bar.”
He puts the picture to the side and picks up another. A crowded beach. Father, his face full of laughter, is in a white suit coat, a fez, and a necktie. He’s holding a cigarette. I don’t know any of the people in the crowd next to him except my brother, who is wearing a bathrobe.
He stands up and goes to the entrance of our room. He follows Fatima as she bends over her squeegee. She stacks up the rag on its blade with her hands. He waves at her to unfold it and then fold it up again into one straight piece. She finishes cleaning the room. She sits down on the edge of the bed to change the sweaty pillow cases. I’m waiting uncomfortably for her to get up and move away from the bed. Father swats at the flies with a towel. She says that her husband bought a can of Mobiltox to kill insects, from the shop attached to the petrol station. Father says: “You mean you know about Mobiltox too?” She says: “So because I’m a fellah that means I’m ignorant?” She brings in the long rug that she hung over the ledge of the balcony. She asks my father: “Shall I spread it on the ground, Sidi?” He replies: “No. It’s hot as hell. Fold it and put it under the bed.”
The sound of the watermelon vendor comes in from the window. Father goes out to the balcony. He calls to him: “Are they ripe?” “Of course, Bey.” The seller picks one up and thumps it with the flat of his hand. He puts it back and picks up another one. He thumps again. Father starts to say something, but the seller cuts into it with a knife. He makes a square opening in its side. He turns it over and pulls out a piece that is bright red, then he sticks it back into place. He puts it to the side and picks up another one. Father calls out: “One’s enough.” He bends over and takes the cut watermelon from him. He gives him his money. He takes it to the sink and washes off its surface, taking care not to get water in its opening. Then he puts it on a tray on top of the sideboard. He brings a piece of cheesecloth from the dresser and covers it.
We get ready to have lunch. Father notices that the okra in red sauce has turned sour. She says she forgot to boil it yesterday. I wait uneasily for father to explode, but he doesn’t say a word. Instead he sends her to buy head meat from the Husseiniya market. I say: “Shall I go?” He says no. She goes to the storage room and comes back wrapped in her black coat. He gives her some money. He repeats to her: “Forehead, eye, brain, and tripe.” He runs after her and yells down the stairwelclass="underline" “Don’t forget the pickles and arugula.”
He takes the envelopes back to the room and throws them on top of the desk. I pick up a picture with some man wearing a big overcoat that goes down to his shoe tops. His fez covers his forehead and comes down almost all the way to his eyes. His thin moustache twists upwards. His right hand is behind his back and his left fist sits on the table. A big vase sits on the ground with the end of a curtain hanging on it. The picture is old and its edge is torn. I turn it over. Nothing. I show it to father. “Who’s this?” He takes it and studies it for a while. He says: “It’s me.”
“You?”
“Yeah, when I was eighteen.”
I show him another picture of a man in a winter coat. The fez is again close to the eyes and the moustache twisting upwards. He’s sitting in a chair with his left elbow on an armrest that has a lion’s head on the end of it. His thumb is propped against his cheek. The other hand has a cigarette holder between the index and middle fingers. The sleeve of his pressed shirt shows a button at his wrist. He says: “That’s me too — after I married Nabila’s mother. I was about twenty-seven.” I turn over the picture and read my father’s full name written in red pencil. The handwriting is my mother’s.
I recognize him easily in another picture. He’s in a fancy suit, resting his hand on the handle of a walking stick. His back is leaning against a brick wall. He looks very handsome. There’s a beautiful boy next to him in a suit with two rows of buttons. A folded handkerchief dangles from the breast pocket of his jacket. His short trousers stop just below the knee, at the tops of his long socks. I flip over the picture: “Respected Mr. Khalil Effendi with his son during Eid of 1928.” Underneath is my brother’s signature.
In the last picture, he looks the way he is now. He’s sitting down, reading in a full suit. His fez tilts back. The glasses are sliding down his nose. The wrinkles in his neck show over the collar of his shirt. On the back of the picture, he’s written in his own hand: “1945.”
Fatima comes back with a wrapper full of head meat. She puts it in a plate on top of the table and takes the arugula to the kitchen. Father shouts at her: “Wash it well.” He waves at her to come and eat with us. I get mad and think about not eating anything if she does come. She says she has to make tomorrow’s food for her husband. He puts a piece of meat in a half loaf for her. She takes it and thanks him.
I get out of my chair and drag it to the table. I notice a small picture on the floor. It must have fallen from the envelope. A small girl wears a dress with short sleeves. Her face is round and her hair is curly. She has short boots on. Her right hand rests on her stomach and her left sits on a stone wall. There’s a strange look in her eyes. Fear? Worry? Anger? I recognize father’s neat handwriting on the back, “middle of 1921.” I give it to father asking: “Who’s this picture of?”
He answers curtly: “Your mother.” I stand on top of a chair in my white summer pyjamas with their short sleeves. My elbows are leaning against the windowsill. I watch the people walking. The sun moves close to the edge of the window. I jump down to the floor and go out to the hall. The voice of mother comes from the kitchen, singing: “I’m going to hide my pain.”