She moves away from us, then disappears. A darkened alley. Narrow stairs with worn-out steps. Father lights a match. We go up a few floors. We stop in front of a door with two glass windows. One of them is covered over with sackcloth. He knocks on the door and an angry-sounding voice inside calls out: “Who’s there?” He knocks again. An old woman opens up, carrying an oil lamp. She lifts the lamp up high to see us. The light falls down over a face that is pale and frowning. A droopy eye tries to stare out from its hiding place under a swollen eyelid. “Is Sheikh Affifi here?”
She stands back for us without saying anything. Old furniture in piles. A door is opened by a skinny old man wrapped in a caftan made of shiny, striped cloth. He greets father and leads him over to a table with an oil lamp on top of it. He makes a big effort just to walk and teeters from side to side, on the verge of falling. He clutches the caftan to his body as he sits in a chair by the table. Father sits in front of him and I stand next to father. He takes two glasses and pours some liquid into them. One of them smells like musk. He takes a reed pen and dips it into one. He pulls over a plate made of white china. He puts his eyes right next to it. It’s decorated with boxes and dark lettering. The light from the lamp spreads across his thin, clean-shaven face and his two eyes that never stop blinking. Father’s eyes stay fixed on the pen. Framed Quranic verses are hung on the wall. There’s a Coca-Cola sign too that says it quenches thirst in the winter also. The chairs are covered with dirty cloth. One of them has a sunken chair that almost touches the ground.
I move away from father. I come closer to the door that’s left ajar. I turn my eyes to the open crack. Right in front of me, there’s a blue circle with a surface that stands out. The bad eye of the old woman who opened the door for us becomes clear in it. She is craning her body, bending her knees, trying to hear. I step back and begin to feel for the safety of father, clinging to him. His head is tilted and he’s taking in the words of the old man. His bottom lip is plump and dangling. He tells father: “How do you feel about reading my horoscope for me?”
Father says in a surprised voice: “Who, me?”
“Yes, you. I’ll teach you. It’s very simple.”
“Well then do it yourself.”
“I wish. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Well, what do you want to know?”
“How much longer shall I live?”
Father sighs and says: You’ve already lived long, and you’ll only live a little longer.”
He gives him a silver coin. He asks him about a good woman who can clean and cook. He says he’s ready to marry her if she comes from good stock.
We leave the house and go to board the tram. I ask him how long he will live. He says he’ll live to 100. We pass in front of the chemist. It is closed even though it’s not closing time. Father heads towards a hand cart with a pile of date paste on it, covered in a sheer white cloth. A light shines down from a mantle lamp fastened over the middle of it. He buys a pound. Hajj Abdel ’Alim, the neighborhood sheikh, starts to call out to us. We go into his shop. Hajj is behind his desk. Next to him is another sheikh, Sheikh Fadhl. Wearing a turban, and he has no teeth. He is holding the newspaper Akhbar al Youm in his hand. My father tells Selim that one of the eggs he sold him two days ago was rotten. He sits down on a chair and I sit on the one next to him. Abdel ’Alim says while he’s clearing his throat that the chemist’s owner sold a copybook at a price that was two millimes over the regulation price, and that he was sentenced to six months and a fine of 100 pounds.
Father asks him about Maged Effendi. The neighborhood sheik says: “He’s gone to Zarakish.”
“Who’s Zarakish?”
“You mean you don’t know? It’s the genie he’s married.”
“He married a genie? How do you mean?”
Abdel ’Alim says that a white cat fastened itself to him and started to share his bed. Then one day it stood on its two hind legs, and stretched upwards. Then it peeled off its fur and a beautiful woman appeared. He asked her name and she said: “Zarakish.” She began to dance and then asked him to marry her, saying that she was Muslim like him.
Father asks about the butcher that disappeared. Abdel ’Alim says that he married a second wife without telling the first. Father asks: “A spring chicken?” No, he answers. She’s a divorcée who has been married three times before. He left the shop to his son and left the neighborhood altogether. He says that Um Nazira came to him today and begged him for sympathy. She’s ready to kiss his foot if he’ll let her come back. Father says sternly: “No. I don’t want her.” Abdel ’Alim asks him: “Have you tried the Maid Services Office?” Father says he doesn’t trust the girls that they send, and besides that, the agent takes a big commission.
A fancy looking brown-skinned man comes in wearing a white shirt with a starched collar and a fez tilted slightly to the left. The neighborhood sheikh greets him: “Welcome, Refaat Effendi.” Father lifts me on to his lap to give Refaat my seat. He sits down and says that today he defended a woman facing the death penalty. She is twenty-three years old and married to an old man who is older than sixty. They sent him to the hospital throwing up violently.
Abdel ’Alim asks: “Cholera?”
The lawyer shakes his head: “Cholera’s on holiday until the summer.”
‘Then what the hell?”
The lawyer says that the old man accused the wife of trying to poison him so she could get rid of him and marry a young buck her own age. The physician of the court testified that the old man had drunk an amount of whisky mixed with camphor oil.
He is quiet for a while, then says: “All the evidence was against the girl. She would’ve been thrown to the lions if I hadn’t asked the old codger three questions.”
Everyone except father asks him in one voice: “What were they?”
He says: “I asked him if he was in the habit of rubbing his legs with camphor oil before he went to bed. The man said yes. I asked him where he kept the bottle of camphor oil. He said on the night stand next to the bed. Then I asked him: “And where exactly was the whisky?” He said it was by the camphor oil.”
He looks around at us full of pride: “The court drew the conclusion that the man got drunk, reached for the whisky bottle, grabbed the camphor oil instead, and took a sip.”
The sheikh wearing the turban looks at father and says: “That’s what he gets for marrying a woman that’s his daughter’s age.” Father’s face twists into a frown. Then the neighborhood sheikh steps in and asks if father wants to go in with the rest of the group in buying Al Ahram newspaper. Everyone would pitch in a piastre and they could get the paper for the whole month. Father says that he reads the paper at the shoeshine shop, “and anyway, today’s news is the same as yesterday’s.”
Refaat Effendi says: “You can say that again. Look at the story today about the Yemeni Jews and how the English are smuggling them into Palestine. Ever since the partition, ships keep coming and going, gathering them up from near and far.”
Then he lowers his voice and adds that the university students tore up the king’s picture and made fun of his fooling around. They chanted that he was “Ruler of Egypt, Sudan. . and the dancer Samia Gamal!” Sheikh Fadhl says that the king dumped Samia Gamal long ago and replaced her with Um Kalthoum. The lawyer says that an electric air-conditioner was installed in her private villa. The turbaned sheikh says his son got a university degree by being granted a tuition waiver, then he went to work in the Qena district office for six pounds a month at the ninth clerical rank. The lawyer says that Lutfi Al-Sayyid Pasha, as president of the Academy of the Arabic Language, makes nine pounds a month, with a stipend for inflation of three pounds. He was getting four pounds a month when he was appointed at the council fifty years ago. The sheikh says: “An oka of sugar with a ration certificate is 75 millimes and it costs 200 on the black market.”