Friendly Fire. Humphrey Davies

mercy, treatment overseas, and friends of theirs (people they knew very well) who had suffered exactly the same symptoms as my father’s and who had recovered, with God’s help, and now enjoyed the most robust health and happiness. Then the visitors went away, one by one, leaving behind bunches of roses and colored boxes of chocolates, and my mother and I remained seated in front of my father; and when he closed his bulging eye and his breathing became regular, I realized that he had gone to sleep. It was late, perhaps after midnight, when we heard a faint knocking on the door, which opened a little to reveal the face of Uncle Anwar. He was wearing his black working tuxedo with the shiny lapels and under it a white shirt and sagging black bowtie. Uncle Anwar’s eyes roamed the room and then he signaled to me with his hand, so I went outside, followed by my mother, and he heard from us what had happened and asked us in detail about the opinions and prognoses of the doctors. His face was dark and the way he interrupted us as we spoke indicated that he was angry. Soon he put out his cigarette with his shoe and asked my mother if he could see him. He went forward, pushed open the door, and entered, and when he got close to my father I thought I saw a flash of consciousness pass quickly over my father’s eyes, and that he recognized Anwar. This, however, was quickly extinguished and the eye resumed its vacant look. Uncle Anwar laughed loudly and said, “What’s going on, my dear Mr. Abduh? What kind of a stunt is this you’re trying to pull? Do you get a kick out of making us worry or what? Look at you—as strong as a bull! These guys sent people to look for me at a wedding and they told me, ‘Come to Abduh at once!’ So I thought something bad must have happened!”

      He turned to my mother and went on, “What kind of way to behave is that, Madam? You gave me a nasty shock. There’s nothing wrong with Abduh. Look at him! He’s as strong as a horse.”

      Then he turned back to my father, seemingly wanting to empty out everything he had to say at one go, or having decided not to stay silent for a second.

      “That’s enough now, Abduh! As a punishment for having got me worried, I’m going to come see you on Tuesday and the bill’s on you—you’re going to pay for a bottle of Fortyeight brandy and a kilo of kebab. Isam and the madam are my witnesses.”

      I could almost have sworn that my father’s face jerked into something like a smile. Uncle Anwar went on talking and laughing and then said goodbye to my father and us and went out. I followed him but when he passed through the door that led to the hospital’s lobby, he didn’t look at me but turned to the right where the elevator was. Soon, however, he slowed his steps, then stood and bent forward, putting his hands over his face as gasps of violent weeping escaped.

      The morning of the following day, one of the nurses at the hospital got into a resounding fight with the cleaner, accusing him openly of stealing the patients’ food. The cleaner shouted filthy insults and leaped forward in an attempt to strike the nurse, but colleagues gathered around and prevented him, and at the moment they were sitting him down on a chair and starting to calm him down, my father died.

      4

      I got my baccalaureate in science and was appointed as a researcher in the government’s Chemistry Authority. The appointment suited my circumstances: at that time I was making continuous and exhausting efforts to realize my withdrawal from society, in which context it was enough for me to become acquainted with one intelligent individual for my mission to be aborted, since, when this happened, I would ask myself, “Why am I putting up with all this pain in the cause of cutting myself off from people when there is among them at least one person intelligent enough to understand me?” From this perspective, my presence in the Chemistry Authority served to hasten my withdrawal. The building was ancient, shabby, and covered in dust. It had been erected in a forgotten corner of Ramses Street where, for the length of its fifty years, a clamorous life had swirled around it while it crouched in the silence of death.

      You may use your bathroom at home for many a year without it occurring to you that there is a kind of life that goes on inside the drain. If, however, at some point, you were to perform an experiment and raise the cover, a whole world would appear to your eyes—dozens of maggots, and insects of different kinds, eating, multiplying, fighting, and killing one another. You would then be struck with amazement by the notion that these creatures had been living with you for years without your knowledge. This was the image that haunted me every morning as I walked among the crowds on Ramses Street, with all its bustle and noise, then turned to the left and abandoned it to enter the Chemistry Authority—a drain in whose darkness and damp were enclosed a group of filthy cockroaches of the sort that when stepped on and crushed extrude a sticky white liquid. ‘Cockroaches’—that was the scientific term for my colleagues in the Authority. My boss, Dr. Sa’id, didn’t, in fact, have a doctorate, though he had taken the exams three times in succession and failed, leading the Authority employees to award him the title (either as a compliment or sarcastically) and he had immediately grabbed on to it and would get angry if he were not so addressed. The worst troubles to disturb the tranquility of this man who occupied the post of Head of the Research Department (a post, that is to say, of some moment) were those that afflicted him after a meal. At midmorning, Dr. Sa’id would sit himself down at his desk and devour a large dish overflowing with stewed broad beans, bean patties, and fried eggs, accompanied by sweet red onions and pickled eggplant, after finishing which he would be compelled to loosened the belt of his pants to alleviate the pressure on his great belly. Then he would gulp down a glass of imported Epsom salts and send someone off for tea. His head was bald, without a single hair, and this made him look as though he were sick or wearing a disguise, and one’s first glance at him, with his bulging eyes, sparse eyebrows, sagging dewlaps, and vulgar voice, left a bestial impression. Sometimes, as I observed him, a strange idea would occur to me: in some mysterious way, I expected that Dr. Sa’id would suddenly interrupt what he was saying and reveal his true nature, i.e., bellow and pull his tail out for all of us to see and place it on the desk in front of him. I knew very well of course that such a thing would never happen but if it had I wouldn’t have been that surprised. During the tea break, all the employees of the department would come to Dr. Sa’id’s office to pay their respects and hover around him, passing the time in conversation until they had to go. Three topics were dear to the doctor’s heart—the national soccer championships since he was a loyal Ahli Club fan, the automobile market since he made money dealing in cars on the side, and, most importantly, sex, its secrets and its arts, since he was an outrageous skirt-chaser.^* Some said that the reason for this was that his wife was frigid but he didn’t have the guts to divorce her or take another wife because she was rich and supported him. This, supposedly, was why he satisfied his lusts far from home, in his office at the Chemistry Authority. Dr. Sa’id was particularly smitten with the department’s cleaning women and female workers—a taste no doubt attributable to his early experiences. When one of these women pleased him, he would keep calling her to his office, where he would treat her quite informally and press gifts on her until, little by little, he’d start coming on to her by making jokes of a sexual nature, which he’d toss out to her quite confidently, roaring with laughter. When the day came for him to make his move, Dr. Sa’id would invite the woman to his office and order her to close the door (which had a special lock that could not be opened from the outside). After she’d closed the door, he’d ask her to get something from the cupboard, and then he’d get up and place himself behind her and stick his huge body against her back, hugging her and having his way her. When this was going on in the office, the workers in the unit would know and would whisper and gossip and laugh about it, or express their disapproval. Under no circumstances, however, would they express their opposition openly.

      Years passed and Dr. Sa’id practiced his private life at the research unit in peace. Only once did something happen to disturb its even tenor, which was when Umm Imad appeared in the department—a beautiful young woman with green eyes who’d moved from Tanta after her husband died and joined the department as a worker on a temporary contract. Dr. Sa’id fancied Umm Imad from the first day. He promised her he’d do his best to get her appointed on a permanent contract and started arriving every morning at the department with his pockets full of different kinds of chewing gum and candies that he gave to Umm Imad for her children. Did Dr. Sa’id make his move too early or had he misjudged her from the beginning? He called for her and ordered her to close the door and