Of course I did. It was wintertime, after lunch. My father sat in the north-facing room with my aunt, looking out at the palace through the veranda’s window. I went to him, wanting to sit on his lap, but he turned me away. He said I wasn’t a little boy anymore. I turned back to the living room and walked through it to my cousin’s room. She sat at the sewing machine and I watched as she worked the machine with her foot. Look at this, she said, the string broke at the first stitch. There’s a devil in this machine. She bent over the machine after a glance in my direction. I turned toward the window, ears burning. I could see her white face with red cheeks even as I looked toward the closed window. It was only the glass that was closed. Beyond it was the sky. Brilliant rays of sun shone through the glass and lit up the mouth of the well in the garden below. Soon the servant boys would come and I’d go down with them to pump the water. We would steal a few flowers and shake the mango tree to no purpose, then run through the bedrooms and the cellar. This time I would hide from them in a room that was tucked away and only used during Ramadan, when the sheikhs recited there at night. When we left that evening my aunt would say goodbye at the door and turn on the light for the stairs. We would walk down the broad white steps and over the colored paving stones, open the garden’s squeaky gate and go out into the wide and noiseless street. I would pick jasmine from the walls of the gardens. My cousin’s friend said something. She was standing just in front of the wardrobe’s mirror, putting on lipstick. I wasn’t looking at her. She was tall with green eyes. She’d only said one thing to me. When she came into the room she said, Hey. Then she turned to my cousin. But my cousin was talking to me when she said, Look at this. The little wardrobe was behind me. Each of its wooden panels was fixed with a bright mirror. A small brass chime hung from the middle keyhole, so that whenever the wardrobe was opened it made a pretty ringing sound. Inside the wardrobe were closed drawers with my cousin’s things arranged in rows. I was happy because the wardrobe was closed. Without taking my eyes from the window, I could watch my cousin’s fingers lightly touching the machine’s handle, making the wheel spin noisily. She bent down, following the fabric as it moved beneath the needle. Her two braids fell over her chest. Her friend said to her, Will you ever finish? We’re late. My cousin lifted her head and our gazes met and then she looked at her friend and said, This is the last part. I blinked and heard the ring of the small brass chime.
My sister came in and said, The city sewers are overflowing. Then an old relative of my cousin came in, panting. He could hardly see from behind his thick glasses. My cousin’s face darkened. The old man said, Give me a shilling after I have some coffee. He took off his tarboosh and placed it beside him on the sofa and drank his coffee and then just sat there. My cousin went into her room and came back and asked if I had any change on me. I didn’t have any change. They sent the cook to get two shillings for ten piastres. We sat and waited for him to come back without speaking. Then my cousin gave the old man his shilling and he got up and put his hat back on and said goodbye and left. My cousin said, He’s a crafty old man. He only wheezes like that when he comes to see us. My sister said that he lived with his married son and that the son’s wife encouraged her children to rip his clothes and hide his shoes and make a mess in his room. My cousin said, He’ll drink up the shilling. My sister said, When he visits his daughter she leaves him in the living room and shuts her bedroom door on him. My cousin said, He’ll spend the day drinking and begging from all his relatives.
Many years ago in that same room, my aunt sat in her white veil on the sofa, smoking, and next to her my father was still panting from the stairs and the heat. He used a handkerchief to wipe his bald head, fringed with white hairs. The cook came in and my aunt took out her purse and gave him a guinea and the cook left. My father said something and she shook her head. My father got up and walked toward the north-facing room out onto the veranda and lit his black cigarette and leaned his elbows on the veranda’s ledge and smoked.