I hear something that sounds like father’s steps. My chin falls suddenly down to my chest. She pinches my thigh with her wet fingers to keep me awake. It is a hard pinch. The tears well up in my eyes. I rub the spot. She threatens to cut off my ear if I tell father.
~ ~ ~
The children in the alley repeat the call for the prayer of the Big Feast: “To God the Supreme be acclaim/ All praise to His great holy name.” Father takes the scissors and sits me down between his knees. He gives me a haircut. I have the mirror with the cracked metal frame in my hand. I tell him the right side is higher than the left. He throws the scissors on to the desk and pushes me away from him.
“No. It’s fine.” The barber unrolls the leather strip hanging next to the door of the shop. He runs the edge of the blade over it as hard as he can. He finishes shaving the customer’s beard. My turn comes. He spits into the iron spittoon. I sit in the barber’s chair and he ties a towel around my neck.
I put on my suit. I look around the desktop for the notebook of songs. My hand hits the bottle of ink and spills it on to the front of my jacket and my trousers.
Father blows up: “You clumsy. . You’re completely worthless. Take off your clothes.”
I take off my jacket and trousers. He gets mad and pulls them off me. He examines the ink spot. I follow him to the kitchen. He sprinkles salt over it. He comes back to the hall and takes a lemon off the fruit tray. He cuts it up with a knife and squeezes one of the wedges over the salt. We go back to the room. He studies the spot in the light. He puts the jacket and trousers over the back of the chair.
He says: “It won’t come clean right now. Put on your light pyjamas.”
I am surprised and ask: “You mean go out in them?”
“What else can we do? I’ll iron them for you and they’ll look great. Pass the iron.”
I drag the heavy metal iron from under the bed. He takes it to the kitchen to heat it up. He brings it back in with a wet towel. He folds the pyjama top over the bed. He covers it with the towel and passes the hot iron over it. He goes to the sleeves, then to the back. He gives it to me then irons the trousers. Grumbling, I put them on.
He prays the midday prayer then puts on his brown suit. We leave the house. We head toward the main street. A wide poster congratulates Mishaal on his return from the hajj. “May your hajj bring forgiveness and acceptance from God.” We take the tram. Abbasiya, then Heliopolis. We pass in front of a fancy villa. A crowd of country women has gathered in front of it. Father says they’re poor women, waiting to receive their portion of the zakat, the rich man’s tithe of meat slaughtered for the holiday. It may be the first time they have tasted meat.
Nabila greets us by saying: “Why are you so late? Lunch has been ready for a while now.” She turns to me: “Who gave you that haircut?”
Father says: “I did.”
“Couldn’t you’ve taken him to the barber?” She feels the hair on my head. “Your hair is all curly like your mother’s.” She looks over my clothes. She starts to say something then keeps quiet. Mother opens the glass pane in the front door to see who is there. She says to Nabila: “What do you want?” “To see papa.” Mother tells her: “He’s not your father and he doesn’t know you.” She slams the glass shut. I run to the room. I push the door open. Mother forgot to lock it. I go in and tell my father what happened. He steps back from the window. Nabila passes underneath it. She raises her eyes. A strange smile is on her lips.
Showqi and Shareen come to father so he can hug them. Their clothes are new. Shareen looks over my clothes: “Oh my gosh. Are you wearing pyjamas?” Uncle Fahmi throws her a harsh look and she shuts up.
We wash our hands and sit around the table. Nabila serves us beef bouillon out of a large soup dish. Meat pastries, stewed lamb meat, and okra. Father slurps the soup loudly. My sister watches me until she catches me making a slurping sound too, then she scolds me.
After eating, we fall in along the couch in the living room. Showqi asks his father if he can go out and play with the children in the street. Uncle Fahmi tells me: “Go with him.” I bend my head down and look at my pyjamas. “I don’t feel like it.”
Tante Samira, Uncle Fahmi’s sister, shows up at the door. Her husband and her daughter Nadeen have come with her. Father uncrosses his legs and welcomes them. He studies Samira carefully. Tall and wide, like her brother. Her face is round and white and beautiful. Her big eyes are laced with kohl. Her mouth is tiny and reddened with lipstick. The smell of her perfume drifts off her clothes and spreads through the room. She wears a dark black jacket, a blouse with a high collar that comes up over the jacket collar, a full, orange skirt with pleats, and white and black shoes with high heels. Khadra brings in the chairs from the dining room, so everyone can sit.
Her husband is a clerk in the finance ministry. He wears a fez. His suit is beige. He undoes the buttons of his jacket and a big pot-belly hanging over his waist pops out.
Nadeen is seven years older than me. She has full lips, narrow eyes, and a small chest. She wears a silk dress with a tiny collar and baggy sleeves that narrow down into tight wrists. Her blouse has baggy folds around the chest and shiny buttons.
My sister seems in love with the blouse: “Oh, your little chemise is divine.” She drops her eyes down over the blue skirt that hangs just above the tops of her feet by a few inches. Then down to the shoes with fat high heels: “What’s that? What’s that?”
Samira laughs: “It’s the latest style, madam.”
“Where’d you get them?”
“From Chicurel. Three days before it was blown up. You can still get them at Chemla or Oureeko.”
“Nowadays, one gets scared to even go to these stores.”
“Try the Egyptian Factories Outlet store.”
Her husband says the time has come for the government to ban the Muslim Brotherhood. Samira complains that Nadeen wants a new hairdo in the latest style. “Two wavy tresses, a short bob around the sides, stacked up behind the neck in the shape of a beret.” She crosses her legs. Her skirt comes up to her knees. She is wearing nylon stockings. Father looks over the bare part of her plump legs.
Nabila says: “Have you seen the bonnets they’re coming out with now?”
Samira says that one of her husband’s relatives attended a high tea organized by Princess Faiza for the new society for the welfare of women. She said she saw women in strange bonnets with large bird feathers sticking out of them. “Most of them wore black, as though they were at a funeral or something.” Nabila says that black is still in style.
Father asks Nadeen what department she’ll be joining the coming year. She says: “Philosophy.” He suggests she start reading up on it now. He gives her the name of a book on Islamic philosophy and another in human psychology. I get the feeling that she doesn’t think much of his suggestions.
A relative of Uncle Fahmi joins us. He’s a student in the last year of law school. He is wearing a navy blue jacket with two rows of buttons down the front. A thin necktie. Glasses with big square frames. He uses an old-fashioned title, “aneeshta,” instead of “uncle” when he talks to father. His sister Selwa, a student at the American School for Girls, comes in after him.
The two children pull back and disappear into the room of Showqi and Shareen. Alwy, the older son of Hajj Hamdy, comes in. A white coat with one button to the side and long lapels that end up at his belly button. Grey trousers with pleats and white shoes. He takes off his fez to reveal shiny, short hair that clings to his scalp.