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  As for Ahmed Al-Bahairi and myself, everyone must have noticed that our attempts to eat like them were tortuous. In the end, I don't remember eating anything much at all since I didn't want to make a fool of myself in front of Simone. I tried to conceal my ignorance behind a pretext of being a moderate eater in any case, who was satisfied by the generosity and bounty piled upon the surprised and delighted Simone. I even, for good measure, leered at the gluttonous Maamur and the elders several times as they made loud noises while drinking their water and soup. This seemed to me inappropriate in Simone's presence. They would break in two with their hands pieces of chicken or pigeon dripping with grease. They would fill their faces with food, then chew,

  then burp. They continued taking second helpings, too, and God knows, they weren't paying a milleme for any of it. God save anyone who tries to be generous to them. People's minds close once their stomachs are opened.

  Simone, herself, didn't eat much. She wiped the sides of her mouth with the napkin after a while and declined to wash her hands and mouth, waiting instead in her chair for everyone to finish their meal until, finally, the Maamur and myself convinced her that she didn't have to wait any longer. She got up and we got up with her: the Maamur, his lackeys, Hamid, Ahmed and myself, that is, while all the others remained seated trying to fill their bottomless stomachs, which they'd apparently not put anything into all day.

  We took her out onto the balcony which we'd furnished with rugs and plush couches, and she sat with Hamid in the place of honor. Then she began fanning herself with a delicate colored fan like the ones I'd seen a few times before carried by beautiful women in the cabarets of Cairo. She covered her shoulders with a shawl to protect herself against the flies, moths and mosquitoes swarming around the gas lamps, so I tried to apologize to her through Mahmoud Ibn Al-Munsi (that accomplished student, whose father was an overseer in the fields). But Hamid dismissed the matter. He told us that they had prepared for the problem by covering their skin with a special oil so that flies and mosquitoes would not come near them and annoy them. And I said to myself, surely these people possess knowledge above us all.

  Glasses of mango juice were passed around followed

  by a round of coffee and tea, and some of the men began cane fencing in the middle of the courtyard. Then Ibrahim, the village singer, began singing a Mawwail about love to the accompaniment of a wooden flute. Then a gypsy dancer, whom we'd brought in for just such a moment, entered and began to dance to the music of the flute, a tar drum and a tambourine. At about that time Simone began chatting with a few of the officers who knew the language of her country; which by the way, one of them had even visited and stayed in for a year. She also talked on the topic of singers in France with Mahmoud Ibn Al-Munsi, who knew much about her country even though he had never visited it.

  Hamid (whose name Simone had trouble pronouncing) was very generous with us. He left Simone on the balcony to watch and chat and take dozens of pictures, and he invited the Maamur and myself into an adjoining room and gave him hundreds of pounds for his policemen (God knows how much of it they'll really see) and gave me money as well for the watchmen and improvements in Darawish and for the price of the reception, which was really only about a sixth of the amount Hamid had given me. But he did also ask me to pass some out as charity for the poor of Darawish who gathered and danced and hung on the walls outside, in the darkness cut only by the shining lamps inside, yelling and chanting and calling for Hamid to have a long and prosperous life with his beautiful French Madame.

  What Hamid Ibn-Mustafa Al-Bahairi paid out that day was enough to purchase several acres of land even in this time of rising land and cotton prices, and I began to

  look at him as a bearer of many blessings who distributed good luck among our people. At that moment, I felt I understood what the Mosque Imam had meant when he'd said: 'Perhaps what you despise is actually best for you.' Amen. Hamid had left our land an exiled vagrant, then returned from across the seven seas a revered conqueror, like Sindbad whom Ibrahim sang about. I began to wish that Hamid would stay with us forever, and I almost told him of my wish, but then I became fearful of calling his attention to an idea he had never had and which might actually cause him to stay with us here in Darawish. I was afraid he might become a challenger to me or that he might raise the very modest level of his family through his status and his wealth to the level of my own. I was confused: did I love Hamid or hate him? I was amazed by God's decrees, His will, and His mysterious ways. I had been the biggest man in Darawish when, suddenly, the son of Al-Bahairi showed up to make me realize that he was even bigger. My family was the richest family in Darawish and from the finest stock; then along came Al-Bahairi's son to make his family finer with his money, his status, and his French wife, whose appearance left us with no doubt about her. . . May God who honored the son of Adam by making him in His image save our souls.

  The party concluded that night without incident. Simone took dozens of pictures, including a picture of me which she said would come out in color, and she promised to send me a copy of it from Paris. Then everyone went back to their houses to rest, but dreams of Simone stayed with me. I saw her once as a 'Houri' or

  Virgin of Paradise, and another time as a Genie rising out of the sea, whose enchanting power over Darawish, in the company of her husband Hamid, exceeded that of Satan. Later that night, my wife came toward me uncharacteristically made up, wearing more perfume than she had on our wedding night. After twenty-five years of marriage! I shouted at her then turned my back to her, and I don't think I'd be lying to myself if I said at that moment that I felt as though she were a cow ... a mere cow.

  Then the phantom of Hamid himself came to me and made me think to myself, as I floated toward that small death called sleep, who am I in comparison to him? The thought came to me as I tried to sleep, in spite of all my anxiety. I began thinking about what I would do with Hamid's money. Suddenly, I found myself calling on God to save me from the enchanting powers of Simone from the land of the Franks, who appeared to my mind's eye like a Genie from the Garden of Eden.

  Ahmed Al-Bahairi

  Just by coming to our village and staying in my house Hamid and Simone hurt me a great deal. I can't help ut remember how the devilish children of Darawish suddenly began to delight in pissing against our house, until the Omda finally had to send a watchman to guard us all night. Those same devilish children broke the glass and the mantel of the lamps hanging on the street corners, so that Darawish returned to its old familiar darkness.

  Also, it seemed to me that Zeinab had fallen for Hamid and that she was practically competing with Simone in being close to him, smiling at him, jumping to

  serve him and dolling herself up for his sake. It had to be true. Zeinab was starting to mispronounce Hamid's name the same way Simone did and she would say things to him like:

  ( 0o . . . 'Amid . . . pardon . . . Monsieur Hamid . . . merci. . .'

  She even started answering Simone's comments and questions with: 'Oui, Madame,' although she never understood what Simone was saying to her.

  Even when we were alone together in our room, after Simone had trimmed Zeinab's hair, she started saying to me: 'Pardon, mon cheri, Monsieur 'Ahmed.'

  Things went so far that one night, for the first time ever, she refused me, using the excuse that she was tired and not in the mood and adding that she had grown tired of our behaving like a couple of rabbits. Then, when I made the mistake of trying to coax her, she said to me:

  'So she's got you hot has she?'

  'Who?'

  'Her . . . shall I call her for you?'

  I was on the point of coming at her with a cane, to beat her and not stop until she remembered her manners just as I had the day she claimed to be possessed by an evil spirit who wanted to scream through her. How badly I wanted to slap her face until it bled whenever she mispronounced my name by saying it with a French accent. But to tell the truth, I was frightened that Simone would disapprove. I dreaded her being ang
ry with me or that Hamid would look down on me with disgust. My mother would cackle like a spirit from the dead whenever she saw Zeinab and me at odds, and we'd

  end up escaping to the roof to try to come to some understanding and to sleep in the open air. When I did finally manage to coax Zeinab into it, she felt to me as cold as a tile floor in winter. I was unbearable even to myself, engaging in a private routine wearily and with effort until, in the end, I would turn my back to her unfeelingly, without saying a word. But I would be unable to sleep all night until the roosters crowed and the donkeys brayed and the dogs finally stopped their nocturnal barking.

  I thought later that if Zeinab really feared that I fancied Simone to the point of being in love with her, she might stop being so interested in Hamid. So I tried to play that part with Simone in front of Zeinab in order to keep her by making her jealous: but she never did anything to give away her jealousy. She was only jealous of the love Hamid felt for Simone, but she mocked me because she knew from the start that someone like Simone would never pay any attention to me. Once she even insulted me by saying I wasn't like Hamid, and that time I did slap her hard on the face. But she didn't cry out at all. She just walked out angrily and sat by herself in the living quarter trying to pick up the sounds coming from behind the closed door of Hamid and Simone's room. My mother meanwhile began to look more feebleminded than ever. Every afternoon she would try to force us all to take a nap — even Simone who had once told us that she never slept during the day. She would also stretch out on her stomach on the roof of the house and, hanging her head over the edge, call out to people walking in the street to come in to our house and eat with

  us. She told them we had lots of food and even threw some of it out every day to the chickens, who'd grown used to eating meat since they never ate anything else anymore. They had become voracious, she would say, and would end up eating each other once it came time to return to our old ways of being poor and empty-handed. I would listen to my mother and try to pretend she was talking to herself out loud. But I was also scared that Hamid would hear her (in spite of how far away from her his room was) if he ever opened up his window to the fields filled with date palms and other trees. So I went up on the roof to try and bring my mother back to her senses with a mixture of anger and softness so that Simone wouldn't get the idea, for example, that she was crazy. When I said this, my mother screamed at me, as though Simone had actually said that to her face, shouting: 'So I'm crazy, Simone. Fine! You daughter of red demons. By God, I won't let her stay in my house, or let him stay with her for one more minute, I'll throw her out.'

  'Mother, I didn't mean it. Simone never really said it, but she could be thinking it.'

  Then she pushed me away and went back to her bed in the shade of the wall of the hen house, where she folded herself up and began to tremble as though she were crying for someone.

  Hamid also confused and distressed me. I told myself he was my brother and I was proud of him , and said so before the people. He had raised my status in Darawish and in the town. He had provided some fame to my formerly unknown shop, which was run for the time being by my oldest son. But I didn't feel like he was

  really my brother. I searched but could not find a single childhood memory that we'd shared together. He was still a stranger to me. I was not like my mother who remembered everything he did, and always had another story to tell about things that happened to him during those ten years he'd lived in Darawish. As far as I knew, none of it had ever happened. But she never grew tired of reminding him of these things or relating them to the neighbors and the elders of the village. She assured them all, for instance, that she had known he would be lucky ever since he was a year old. It began to seem to me that my mother really had gone crazy, but Zeinab was ten times worse.

  One day I came back to the house from my shop after a quick review of the business. It was dusk and women were sitting around on the roofs of the nearby houses sewing, and there were children listening quietly with open mouths and staring toward the closed door of our house. I hurried until I was close enough to hear foreign music bursting out from the middle of our house. I chased away the children and waved at the women to go back inside their own houses. I went inside and slammed the door behind me, without giving myself a chance to see how they had ignored my orders. Hamid's door was closed, and the music coming from the room was shaking the walls slightly. Meanwhile, my mother was peeking through the keyhole while Zeinab tried to push her away to take her own turn to look. I shouted at them, and they moved away toward the middle of the living room. Then I drew near the door myself and looked through its keyhole. They were dancing together.

  At that moment, I didn't know my head from my feet. The scene pleased, excited and angered me all at once. When I turned to fume at Zeinab and my mother, I found Zeinab, dancing with her two hands grasping her own arms in imitation of Simone's embrace of Hamid, while my mother laughed with delight. Great God! Zeinab was in a dream. Dreaming with him and about him. I lost my senses and began looking around for something to strike her in the face with, but the two of them escaped quickly into our room and locked the door behind them.

  I sighed in anger and waited for a moment, then leaned back down to the keyhole to see Simone as she moved lightly with Hamid, neither of them ever stepping on the other's feet. The side of her face was buried in his chest, just below his collarbone. Sublime God, giver of life and good fortune! You, Ahmed Ibn-Mustafa Al-Bahairi, I thought to myself, have wasted your life! I ran outside the house to find a shady tree to sit under while I collected myself and poured out what was in my heart. I felt that I loved Simone with all my heart and that I'd never loved anyone before her, and that Zeinab may have married me, but she had never loved me. I felt I'd wrapped my hands around an empty space, that there was nothing more than a mere illusion between them. And I found my sorrow too great to be dispelled through my tears. Finally, I fell to consoling myself by thinking maybe Hamid and Simone were going through the same thing as Zeinab and I. After all, who really knows what hearts hide and walls conceal?

  -.

  THE DIARY OF

  MAHMOUD IBN

  AL-MUNSI

  Friday, August 10

  Today, Hamid Al-Bahairi travelled by himself in his red car to Cairo to close a deal for the importation of some products needed for his business in Paris — Arabic foods in particular for his hotels and restaurants — and to see some of his Egyptian friends whom he had met back in the City of Lights. His trip was to last five days, after which he would return to prepare for his departure from Darawish next Friday.

  But before Hamid said goodbye to Simone and rode off in his car, he entrusted his wife to his brother Ahmed's care. Then he charged me to make sure she passed five enjoyable days and filled my pockets with all

  I might need to cover the expenses of Simone's wanderings in Darawish and the surrounding area. Frankly, I was happy to bear these responsibilities. I was to plan out her days, hour by hour, as I did for myself with my daily schedule of diary entries at home. Hamid added that his brother could accompany us in our walks if he wanted to and had enough time.

  Then Simone hugged him and kissed him standing beside the car on the agricultural highway, and Hamid got in his car, turned on the engine and drove off as Simone waved to him with a white handkerchief and yelled out her wishes for a pleasant journey.

  Meanwhile, Ahmed Al-Bahairi sat appalled by what he was seeing with his own eyes, embarrassed before the men sitting in the coffeehouse who began clapping their hands together and shaking their heads in amazement as they called for God's protection against temptation, apostacy and Death's torment.

  Simone wanted us to walk together for a while along the agricultural highway before going back to the house. She tactfully asked that Ahmed was not to and gave assurances that she would return quickly. I relayed all her wishes to him, until he understand what she wanted, said goodbye politely, and walked back over the bridge.

  Simone told me that sh
e was happy about Hamid's trip since his absence would free her from those formal visits and allow her to really get to know the people of Darawish and the true character of our village. At the same time, she said, she really would have liked to be with Hamid, exploring Cairo for a few days. But he had promised her yesterday to extend their stay an extra

  week after leaving Darawish to visit Cairo, Luxor, Faiyyum and Alexandria. She also told me she was anxious about the problems in communicating with her mother-in-law and Zeinab that would be caused by her limited Arabic vocabularly, not to mention their ignorance of French. For this reason, she told me, I should stay close by at all times, even at their house. I promised her I would and assured her I had nothing else to do and that I would be at her service at all times. She squeezed my hand in a gesture of thanks. I felt so happy that I had come to know Simone.

  We turned to go back along the agricultural highway toward Darawish. Simone seemed solemn. Her head was bowed slightly and her attention seemed to be elsewhere. I thought she was feeling that she was suddenly alone in the midst of a people totally alien to her, and I think I even saw her wipe away a tear that had welled up, in spite of herself, with the corner of the white handkerchief that she had used to wave goodbye to Hamid. But she quickly raised her head once again as she neared the Al-Bahairi house. She surprised me a little when she said to me that she planned to shut herself in the house until the following morning with Zeinab and Hamid's mother in order to rest and also to get to know her mother-in-law and sister-in-law better. Then she laughed and shook my hand to leave me until the following morning. After she went inside, I became self-conscious, suddenly noticing the eyes all around watching me, which I hadn't been aware of while with Simone, and I picked up my step as I hurried back to my house.