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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 May 1999 Issue No. 429 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 May 1999 Issue No. 429
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Monthly supplement
Food for thought
A word from the Editor-in-Chief Hosny GuindyTime for forgiveness?
Mona Anis revels in a 1960s memoir vividly chronicling the underground life of Egypt's angry young writersA sun which leaves no shadows
Mokhtarat (Selections), Ghaleb Halasa, Al-Ahram (Kitab fi Garida), February 1999Mothering the populace
The Pure and the Powerful, Studies in Contemporary Muslim Society, Nadia Abu Zahra, London: Garnet Publishing,1997. pp.308Lights, camera, chit-chat
Cairo: From Edge to Edge, essay by Sonallah Ibrahim and photographs by Jean Pierre Ribière, Cairo: AUC Press, 1998. pp21+ 70 photographsThe art of conversation
Tawfiq El-Hakim Yatathakar (Tawfiq El-Hakim Reminisces), ed Gamal El-Ghitani. Cairo: Supreme Council of Culture, 1998. pp183Not quite another country
Alnesaeyat, Malak Hefny Nassef. Cairo: The Women and Memory Forum publications, 1998. pp246Journey of a giraffe
Zarafa, Michael Allin, London: Headline Book Publishing, 1998. pp215Village life from within
Denys Johnson-Davies offers insight into Mohamed El-Bisatie's work, and translates an extract from his new novel, appearing this Saturday in the Al-Hilal series
And the Train Comes
Short Reviews:*Al-Kotob: Wughaat Nazar (Books: Viewpoints)
*Soheir El-Qalamawi, Nabila Ibrahim
*Sifr Amal Donqol (The Book of Amal Donqol), ed Abla El-Reweini
*Al-Sayida allati wa'l-Rajul alathi lam... (The Lady who and the Manwho did not ...), Sabri Moussa
*Buka'iya illa Hafiz Al-Shirazi (Elegy to Hafiz Al-Shirazi), Abdel-Wahab Al-Bayati
*Al-Ibna Faten (Daughter Faten), Naim Sabri
*Siwa Door: Poems 1993-1997, Tom Lamont
*Ragul Tayeb Yukalim Nafsah (A kind man who talks to himself), Girgis Shukri
*Nizwa: A quarterly literary Journal
*Al-Tifl Al-Manbuz (Testaments Betrayed), Milan Kundera
*Arba' Masrahiyat 'Iraqiya (Four Iraqi Plays)
Illustrations courtesy of International Commitee of the Red Cross
"Folk drawings and tales", Cairo, 1996And the Train Comes
By Mohamed El-Bisatie
My father and two of his colleagues who lived in our area used to read the daily paper Al-Masri. They would take it in turns to buy it and would keep it after they'd read it.
On the day assigned to my father I would go off early to the station. I would bring it from the newspaper man and would pass by my father's colleague who lived closest to the station, Mr Hassan, and would leave it with him. After reading it he would send it with his son to the other colleague, Mr Bilal. As he had no children, all of them dying before completing their first year, I would go to him in the afternoon and bring the newspaper back for my father. On the days when Mr Bilal was to keep the paper, I would take it to him after my father had read it and he would reward me with a peppermint flavoured sweet. The pocket of his galabiya always contained some such sweets which he would sometimes give to the boys he had arguments with when they passed by him.
On the other side of the village were four of my father's colleagues who had a preference for Al-Ahram. They would also read in turn, and I would meet the son of one of them early of a morning as he came to buy it. On our return we would stand under the shade of a tree before going our separate ways, each of us with his newspaper under his arm and would exchange some words.
One of them was a skinny, pale-faced boy whose days for collecting the newspaper coincided with my own. He used to complain about his father who forbade him playing in the lane with the other boys. Each time we met he would ask me about the games we used to play. He would listen blankly and would then say that the boys in the lane used to provoke him to a fight whenever they saw him leaving his home. They would follow him when he came to buy the newspaper. He said that they didn't scare him as he knew how to give them the slip, though he was frightened that the day would come when they'd tear up the newspaper.
I would walk along the street with the newspaper under my arm, sometimes leaping onto an animal-drawn cart on which I'd cover some of the distance; at other times, if I was late, I'd run all the way back. On the way, spotting a group of boys in a side alley playing marbles, I'd shove the paper behind the bars of a closed window and join them. I'd get into a fight and would tear my opponent's galabiya and might give him a bloody nose. He and his friends would try to get a grip on my galabiya, but I'd jump away. Other boys would intervene and when things had quietened down, I'd take the newspaper from its place. I would find it as I had left it, untouched by anyone, even after they had been unable to catch hold of me: it was as though the newspaper had an inviolability of its own.
I would be rushing along the souk street, imitating a train as I went, with the newspaper for Mr Hassan when I'd hear someone calling me. Who could it be other than Hagg Osman, the grain merchant sitting cross-legged on his bench above the shop's mastaba? Always alongside the bench were three or four peasants from the estates; they would be squatting down, their palm-frond baskets empty and folded between their feet so as not to take up much space on the mastaba. He used to make them loans on the basis of the coming crop; whatever the benefit he derived, I would hear my father and his colleagues talking about it and describing it as usury. However, he wouldn't give them what they asked before he had made his first cash sale of the day. It seems that he felt it would bring bad luck if he did so before making his first sale, so he would ignore their presence alongside him. They would stay on sitting there without moving, and their number might well increase as time went on, while their eyes would be fixed on the passersby, waiting for some customer to enter the shop. Hagg Osman and a couple of others on the souk street -- the cloth merchant and the cement merchant -- were the only ones in the street who knew how to read and write: they knew how to make out promissory notes and receipts.
I would slow down as I turned round towards him and I'd see him motioning to me to go to him. He'd make as though to get up and greet me but wouldn't in fact do so, and I'd see them beside him looking at me, their faces having relaxed slightly. Each time I would tell myself that I should make my escape from him so as not to be late and I'd find myself drawn by his welcome. He would snatch the paper as he made a place for me beside him on the bench, muttering that he merely wanted to see some tiny thing in it.
'Al-Masri. Ah. The newspaper of Mr Ibrahim and the son of Mr Ibrahim'.
The owners of the nearby shops would come as they heard his shouting. The peasants would beat a retreat with their baskets in order to clear a space for them. Hagg Osman would spread out the paper and read the headline in a loud voice:
'Nahas Pasha gives a warning.'
He would read another sentence in a slightly less loud voice and would then start stuttering. Those standing beside him knew that he wasn't as good at reading as he was at writing promissory notes and would quickly come to his rescue by pointing to the pictures:
'Ah, it's a picture of him.'
'And who's with him?'
'His wife.'
'She's a young thing, man.'
'And what a thing!'
He would turn over the pages, stopping at any writing in large letters as he tried to read it with eyes and lips and then to pronounce it, while his friends would be leaning over his shoulders looking down at the pictures. Finally, turning to them, he would fold up the newspaper :
'He's warning them.'
And they'd ask him whom he was warning them about, and he'd say:
'Who but them? The English of course.'
And Sayed the barber, with his back to us as he returned to his shop, says:
'Ah, he warns them -- after the Germans came.'
'Hold your tongue, Sayed.'
He'd push the newspaper under my arm without looking at me:
'You've honoured us, O father of Ibrahim.'
With a sullen face he would turn to the barber's shop, but I wouldn't stop to hear the words they exchanged.
***
In the afternoon I go to the house of Mr Bilal to bring the newspaper. He only enjoys reading it in the street. He puts a bamboo chair by the doorstep with its back leaning against the wall. Shade will have covered the street and advanced on the house opposite. He sprinkles water over a large space in front of the chair and places the glass of tea beside him on the edge of the doorstep. He then seats himself and spreads out the paper.
He would spot me approaching. Before I reach him he says with a smile:
'Only the obituaries remain to be read', and he would motion to the doorstep and I'd sit down.
After going to him on several occasions I noticed that a time would come when he would stretch the newspaper out fully and suddenly address me in a loud voice that would reach to the end of the street:
'Didn't your father say to you that Rommel was truly one of us?'
Without waiting for my reply he would continue:
'Ah, his grandfather lived all his life in Alexandria and married from there. Her name was Zaynab. And of course he didn't inform you of Hitler's real name. What's your father teaching you?'
And without turning towards me he would add:
'His name is Hagg Mohamed Hitler.'
I would notice that he wasn't reading the paper. His eyes would be stealthily peering over it and I would spot the woman on the roof of the house opposite. At the time she was newly-wed and the marks of the henna were still to be seen on her hands and feet. Her house was a low-lying one made of mud with its door opening onto the other street; its roof was full of odd bits and pieces and piles of straw and firewood. She had spread out on the washing-line a yellow-coloured galabiya with dark designs, also pink linen bloomers, and her headcloth was not properly done up. A lustrous lock of her black, wet hair had slipped out of place. She bent down, collecting a peg which had come undone from the bloomers. She grasped hold of the line, also the bloomers which had slid down and almost fallen. She supported her weight on one foot, with the other stretched straight ahead of her and with her body inclined to one side. The plumpness of her leg, white and rounded, was visible with her galabiya having risen up and the leg quivering slightly with the vibration of her body. I could hear him alongside me muttering something. Forgetting his caution, he went on staring at her with distracted gaze as his hand relaxed its hold on the paper. The body was extended with the legs wide-open in a direction far from our gaze. He rocked slightly as though she were a gust of wind, then regained his balance. Finally she straightened up. Pegging the bloomers to the line and stretching out her arms above them, she was gazing at the roofs in front of her. Her eyes were darkened with kohl, her cheeks rouged, while a lock of hair remained uncovered by the headcloth fixed at an angle to the side of her forehead. She seemed not to be looking at us. However, sitting beside me, he was taking in her glances and was smiling all over his face. His neck was craned slightly forward as a feeling of exuberance surged through his whole body so that he was swaying ever so slightly. I espied a small smile at the side of her mouth before she turned her face away.
She disappears from the roof and I see him sitting quietly on the chair with his eyes fixed over there. Her galabiya and bloomers, having dried a little, keep swinging in the wind. He folds up the newspaper and hands it to me, and off I go.
One day she was on the roof with her husband. He was gathering up the bits and pieces and putting them to one side so as to make a space for the bundles of dried clover. He had asked permission of the teacher before beginning the work for fear some of the dust would blow his way. The teacher gave him such permission, pointing out that the wind would take the dust in the other direction. However, the dust did in fact come directly on us, but the teacher did not complain, and the husband was up on the roof eyeing us in trepidation.
As usual he was talking to me of Hitler while glancing furtively at the roof. I was surprised to find her asking, as she sat at her ease squat-legged near the edge:
'Is it not true, sir, that Hitler's name is Hagg Mohamed Hitler?'
'Yes, that's right.'
He braces his body in the chair as he answers her, his eyes embracing and caressing her.
'And that he visited the Holy Shrine of the Kaaba?'
'They say that he did.'
She removed a stone out from under her thigh and threw it to one side: 'Oh, they say so, do they.'
Her husband, who was not far off, turned and asked her what she was getting at. It seemed, from the angry tone of his voice, that he didn't like the answer she had given to the teacher.
She said that she had heard people calling someone "hagg" who'd never in his life visited the place.
The teacher's laugh reverberated as though he wanted to lessen the tension that had appeared on the husband's face.
'What a thing to say Fatima! Yes, by Allah, it's quite right.'
At the sound of the conversation his wife came from inside the house She stood on the threshold, with the baby, who was decreed to live, restless in her arm, kicking and squirming and scratching at her face. Irritably, she transferred the boy to the other arm. She spoke with a nasal twang and she aimed her free hand in her husband's direction like a shot from a gun, saying:
'Hitler! Ach.'
The teacher froze for a moment in his seat, then turned to her, having recovered his calm. However, by then she had disappeared inside the house.
The rapture of marriage does not last long. Soon the few days of being a bride came to an end and she no longer appeared on the roof, spending instead the whole day with her husband in the fields.
I see her of an afternoon coming to the teacher's house, asking his wife for a little salt or a drop or two of oil as she's just put the rice on the fire. She hasn't found the time to rinse the mud and dirt from her face and feet, or even to change the patched working galabiya. She stands quietly, leaning with her arm against the frame of the door. The ruddy look has disappeared from her cheeks and been replaced by a sallowness and small white patches. The teacher looks up from his immersion in the newspaper and greets her with a couple of words and asks about her husband.
'He's fine,' she says.
The teacher's wife hands her what she has asked for and she goes off.
The teacher yawns and folds up the newspaper. Leaning slightly in the direction of the open door, he asks for another glass of tea.
