The journalist tried to make a pretense of surprise and innocence, but Hatim said in a decisive voice before going back to his papers, “That’s a final warning. No further discussion is called for. Get out. The interview’s over.”
Hatim Rasheed is not merely then an effeminate but also a talented and inquiring individual who has learned much from experience and whose competence and intelligence have brought him to the pinnacle of professional success. Moreover, he is an exquisite intellectual, who speaks a number of languages (English, Spanish, and French, as well as Arabic) fluently and whose wide and deep reading has introduced him to socialist thinking, which has influenced him greatly. He has made efforts to become friends with the leading Egyptian socialists and as a result at the end of the 1970s was once summoned to an interview with National Security investigators, who interrogated him; however, he was released after a few hours after they had recorded in his file that he was “a sympathizer and not an organizer.” His socialism has caused his name to come up several times for enlistment in the secret communist organizations (the Workers’ Party, the Egyptian Communist Party) but his known homosexuality has dissuaded those in charge from going ahead.
Such is Hatim Rasheed’s genuine but public persona. His secret life, on the other hand, is a kind of locked box full of forbidden, sinful, but pleasurable, toys that he opens every evening to play with, then locks again and tries to forget. He strives to reduce the homosexual space in his life to the narrowest possible, living his daily life as a journalist and an executive and practicing his pleasure for a few hours in bed at night. He tells himself that most men in the world have some special pastime that they use to relieve life’s pressures. He has known men in the most elevated positions — doctors, councelors, and university professors — who were devoted to alcohol or hashish or women or gambling and this never lessened their success or their self-respect. He convinces himself that homosexuality is the same sort of thing.
This idea appeals to him greatly because it brings him relief, balance, and respect. This is why he is always looking for a stable relationship with a permanent lover so that he can satisfy his needs safely and restrict his homosexuality to his nighttime hours in bed, for when he is alone, without a lover, temptation seizes him and his importunate lust pushes him into ignominious situations. He has had days of pain and distress when he was driven to defile himself with criminal types and the scum of society in order to pick out from among them a lover with whom to satisfy his need for just one night, never to be seen again. Again and again he has been subjected to theft, insult, and blackmail. Once they beat him horribly in a public bathhouse in the quarter of El Hussein and took his gold watch and wallet.
In the aftermath of such insane nights, Hatim Rasheed would hole up at home for a few days, seeing and speaking to no one, drinking a lot, passing his whole life in review, and remembering his father and mother with resentment and hatred. He would say to himself that if they had made a little time to look after him, he would never have sunk this low, but they were preoccupied with their professional ambitions and had devoted themselves to achieving wealth and glory so they left him and his body to the servants to play around with. He never blames Idris or doubts for one moment that he loved him truly, but he longs to see his father, Dr. Hassan Rasheed, rise from his grave just once so that he can tell him what he thinks of him. He would stand in front of him and face down his powerful glances, huge frame, and awe-inspiring pipe. He wouldn’t be afraid of him at all and he would say to him, “Great scholar, since you’d dedicated your life to civil law, why did you get married and have children? You may have been a genius at law but you certainly didn’t know how to be a real father. How many times in your life did you kiss me? How many times did you sit down with me so that I could tell you about my problems? You always treated me as though I were a rare art object or painting you’d acquired because it had taken your fancy; then you’d forgotten about it, and from time to time, when your crowded work schedule permitted, you’d remember it, look at it for a while, and then forget about it again.”
His mother, Jeanette, he would also confront with the truth. “You were just a barmaid at a small bar in le Quartier latin. You were poor and uneducated and your marriage to my father was a bigger social leap than you’d ever dreamed of. Despite this, you spent the next thirty years despising my father and blackmailing him because he was Egyptian and you were French. You played the role of the cultured European among the savages. You kept grumbling about Egypt and the Egyptians and treating everybody coldly and haughtily. Your neglect of me was part of your hatred for Egypt. I think you were unfaithful to my father more than once; in fact, I’m sure of it, at least with Monsieur Benard the embassy secretary, whom you used to spend hours talking to on the phone, lying on the couch, hugging the receiver, and whispering, your face contorted with desire, sending me off to play with the servants. You were just a whore like the ones anyone could catch by the dozen in the bars of Paris simply by sticking out his hand.” In these black moments, despair seizes Hatim, his sense of humiliation tears at him, and he surrenders himself to weeping like a child. Sometimes he thinks about suicide, but he lacks the courage to carry it out.
Right now, however, he is in the best of form: his relationship with Abd Rabbuh has kept going and settled down and he has succeeded in linking Abduh’s life to his own by means of the kiosk and the room he has rented for them on the roof. He has guaranteed his physical satisfaction and stopped going altogether to the Chez Nous and other homosexual meeting places. He is urging Abduh to complete his education so that he can become a respectable, educated person capable of appreciating his feelings and ideas and worthy of his permanent friendship.
“Abduh. You’re intelligent and sensitive and you can improve your circumstances through your own efforts. You’re earning money now, your family is taken care of, and your life is stable. But money isn’t everything. You have to get an education and become a respectable man.”
They’d finished the morning love session and Hatim got out of bed, naked, and took a dreamy, dancing step on the tips of his toes, his face full of contentment and animation as it usually was after he’d had his fill of lovemaking. He started to pour himself a drink while Abduh, stretched out on the bed, laughed and said jokingly, “Why do you want me to get an education?”
“So you can be respectable.”
“You mean I’m not respectable?”
“Of course you’re respectable. But you have to study and get a certificate to bear witness to that.”
“ ‘There is no god but God’ is the only witnessing I’ll ever do!”
Abduh laughed uproariously, but Hatim looked at him reproachfully and said, “I’m serious. You have to make an effort. Study, get the Intermediate and the Secondary, and go to a major faculty, like law, for instance.”
“ ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ as the old saying goes.”