I say as I wave the empty dish at him: “The oil shop’s closed. It’s Friday.”
He says: “They used to open for a while before high prayer. Shall I make you an egg?”
I say: “I’m not hungry.” I go into the room and sit at my desk. I take the notebooks out of my satchel. I open my reading textbook. I read a poem called “Lament of a Cat.” Father comes in. He spreads the prayer rug out on the floor and prays the morning prayer.
He puts on his clothes. He goes out to pray the high prayer at the mosque. I make sure that the doors to the apartment and the bedroom are both locked. I open the dresser. I drag the desk chair over in front of it. Climb up. On the front of the top drawer there’s a glass pane with a picture of a lion. A bottle of Bislari’s iron tonic. I take down The Great Star of Knowledge. I bring it to the desk. I flip through its pages. A little picture falls out of it, about the size of an I.D. photo. A new one. It shines. I can tell whose it is by the perfumed scent spilling off it. It is Tante Samira’s. She looks just the way I saw her during Eid. Very beautiful.
I put the picture back in its place. I examine those pages that father has marked with slips of paper. I flip through the pages again. At the end of the book, there is an index of the four sections. I read through it quickly, making notes of important page numbers in my penmanship notebook. I start with page 108 in the first part. I don’t understand a thing. I go to page 25 of the second part. Then page 61 of the third part, then 3 and 140 from the fourth part.
I read: “Take the skin of an owl and dye it with henna and alum, then write on it the letter aleph and draw next to it the name of the angel in cursive, the invocation and the ellipsis, make it into a cropped hood and wear it.” What does “the ellipsis” or “a cropped hood” mean? I move on. “Write ‘O Koreishite, Sharaibite, Yahoubite’ on the sand, then sit on it and recite from the holy book, ‘And we will make before them a wall,’ along with the holy words, ‘For they cannot see,’ then say, ‘Take their eyes and their sight and make them, O servant, these names in the sea wrapped in darkness that they might not see me. “Deaf are they and blind, For they cannot see.” ’ ”
I keep reading: “The divine benefits of the name ‘Ghaffar.’ Whosoever puts it inside a square during the last night of the month on a grey sheet of paper and carries it after reciting the name the same number of times as the day of the month, God will make him invisible to whosoever would do him harm.” Next to this is a drawing of a square with four rows made from blocked off columns. The top of the columns are headed by the letters gh, f, a, and r. The other columns are marked by numbers.
I go back to “O Koreishite, Sharaibite, Yahoubite.” I go to the few empty lines in the back of the penmanship notebook. I close the book and put both of them back in their place in the dresser, and push the chair back to its place.
I look out from the balcony. Abdel Hamid, the nutcase. He walks out of the building and heads toward the entrance to the alley. He is fully dressed and carrying a newspaper in his hand. Mother forcefully presses the key into the lock. She pushes the door. I go into the room. She locks the door behind me with the key. My father stands at the window. He looks over the comings and goings in the street. I tell him about mother. A stone falls from the window. I hear one of the children chanting: “There goes the crazy man!”
Father comes back in carrying a bag of grapes on the vine, with the plump fruit. And another of Armenian cucumbers. I don’t like them when they have a bitter taste. I like the local ones better.
I wait until he has changed clothes. I pretend to be memorizing my daily Quranic verses. I ask him about the verse that starts off, “And we will make before them a wall.” He knows most verses by heart. He finishes the verse for me.
~ ~ ~
Uncle Fahmi brings a round box of sweets over to us. On its cover, there is a full-color picture of a European boy wearing a tall cap and holding a cane. I take the box from him and put it on the desk. He sits on the edge of the bed. He wears a dark brown jacket and beige trousers. He is carrying a book. He puts it on the desk. Father sits cross-legged next to him. They turn to face each other. I sit at my desk. I go back to my review of grammar, syntax, meter, and pentameter. I grab Uncle Fahmi’s book, The New 1,001 Nights by Abdel Rahman al-Khamissi. The Everyman’s Book series. Five Piastres. Father warns me: “Leave the book alone and go back to your homework.” I tell him I’ve finished going over all the grammar. He says: “Study something else then.” He shouts at Fatima to make some coffee. I pull out my chemistry notebook. I read about how to separate sand from salt.
Uncle Fahmi takes off his fez and puts it next to him. He passes his hand over his hair. There is a ring of matted hair from where the edge of the fez rested. He says the whole country is in an uproar over the divorce between the king and Queen Farida, and that the students at the high school for girls marched in protest and chanted “Farida’s left the brothel. She’s sworn off all betrothal!”
Fatima brings in two cups of coffee on a tray. She puts them on the round table. She hangs around for a second, saying: “Something else for you now, Bey?” Father says: “No thanks.” She leaves the room. They sip the coffee without talking. Father says to him: “What is that fancy shirt you have on?”
“Van Heusen.” He takes a pack of Blair’s no. 3 cigarettes out of his pocket.
Father asks him: “Did you switch?”
He says: “It’s ten piastres cheaper than Three Fives brand.” He offers one to father, but he turns it down, saying: “I never switch.” Uncle Fahmi lights one with his Ronson lighter. I hand him the ashtray and he puts it between them on the bed. He asks: “Hey! Do you have a backgammon set?” Father shakes his head and says no. He says he used to play every night at “The Parliament,” his regular coffeehouse, back in the days of the real estate trade. He sighs and begins to talk mistily about that time. The broker would walk from table to table with a map. He would throw a glance over at it and pick a piece of property. He didn’t pay a cent. You could barely throw your dice or take a sip of your whisky before the broker would come back and announce he had sold your property for a good price. You would collect your profit without breaking a sweat. More than once, he would go back home in a horse-drawn cab with a purse full of gold coins in his hand.
He asks about Sameera. Uncle Fahmi answers that she’s worried about Nadeen because she is so rebellious. She wants to go alone with her fiancé to the cinema. Father says: “So what?” He turns to me and I pretend to be absorbed in my reading. He goes on: “So what if they kiss each other or something? Doesn’t she love him and plan on marrying him? Then that’s that. You need to get over this old-timey talk. It’s a new world.”
Uncle Fahmi lights another cigarette. He says: “To tell the truth, Khalil Bey, I’m here about a personal matter.” I lift my head up from the book and prick up my ears. Father turns toward me. I put my head back down. I start to move my lips and run the pen over the paper. Uncle Fahmi complains about Nabila wearing him out. He says: “I give her what she wants right away. I bought her an electric washing machine with a revolving element that holds 52 liters. I brought in a telephone line. I got an Electrolux fridge.”
“Is it electric?”
“It works with oil, gas, or electricity.”
Father asks “So what’s she angry about?”
Uncle Fahmi leans his head towards father. I prick up my ears. Father turns towards me. He orders me to go study in the hall. I pick up my notebook and open up the door that has been left open a crack. I bump into Fatima who runs away quickly. I leave the door open a crack. I stand near it. Fatima stands in front of the sideboard. She makes herself busy filling the spice bins. I hear Uncle Fahmi say: “She doesn’t want to sleep next to me, and she says I’ve lost my appetite for women.”