Chicago

In his first two years there he maintained straight As.

Does that mean that Tariq Haseeb does not have any fun?

Not true. He also has his little pleasures, such as the basbusa tray whose ingredients he gets from Egypt and which he takes delight in making himself. He places it on the kitchen table, and when he is pleased with the way he studies he decides to reward himself by devouring a piece of basbusa commensurate in size to the work done. He also has a recreational hour that he takes pains to observe every night, even during examination periods. It is divided into two parts: watching pro wrestling and fantasizing. He cannot go to sleep before watching on the sports channel a complete match of professional wrestling. From the beginning he roots for the bigger wrestler. When that wrestler rains blows on his rival’s face, causing him to bleed profusely, or when he picks him up by the waist and throws him down on the floor of the ring or when he locks his head with his huge arm and slams it on the edge of the ring, as if it were a melon about to explode, Tariq claps and jumps up and down in sheer ecstasy and shouts as if he were an adoring, ecstatic fan at an Umm Kulthum concert in Cairo: “Wonderful, mountain monster! Drink his blood! Break his head! Finish him off tonight.” By the end of the match, Tariq collapses on his bed, out of breath, sweat pouring from his pores, as if it were he who’d fought the wrestling match. But he would by then have satisfied something deep inside him (being partial to strength, perhaps, because he is thin and has been in poor health from a young age).

After the delight of wrestling comes the moment of fantasy, the secret pleasure for which he yearns so much that he pants and feels his heartbeat shaking him to his foundations as he takes the CD from its hiding place in the lower desk drawer. He places it in the computer drive, and soon a magical world of utmost beauty reveals itself to him: graceful, voluptuous blond women with soft and delectable legs and extremely splendid breasts of different sizes with aroused erect nipples, the mere sight of which transports him beyond sanity. Then strong muscular men appear with long, swollen, and erect organs, built as if they were giant, well-wrought steel hammers. The women and men soon start making love harmoniously, accompanied by a cacophony of orgiastic screams, with camera close-ups of women crying from sheer pleasure and biting their lower lips. Tariq cannot stand this excitement for more than a few minutes after which he dashes to the bathroom as if in a race or putting out a fire. He stands in front of the sink and gets rid of his pleasure and little by little he calms down and regains his equanimity, then takes a hot bath, performs his ablution and his evening prayers — both mandatory and optional — and finally pulls a woman’s nylon stocking that he had brought with him from Egypt over his head so that in the morning his hair would be smooth, thus covering, as much as possible, his bald spot, which, unfortunately, is constantly expanding.

At that point a day in the life of Tariq Haseeb would come to an end. He would turn off the light and lie down on his right side, in emulation of the tradition of the Prophet, peace be upon him. He would whisper in a submissive voice, “O God, I have submitted myself to You and turned my face toward You and left all my affairs up to You. I have entrusted my back to You, out of desire and fear of You. There is no recourse and no succor for me except in You. I believe in Your book that You have revealed and in the Prophet You have sent.” Then he’d fall asleep.

THE MORE PRECISE THE MACHINE, the more subject it is to damage. One hard blow to the most sophisticated computer is enough to render it inoperable. Tariq Haseeb received just such a blow last Sunday. In order to understand what happened, we must first examine how Tariq behaves with women.

When a man likes a woman he seeks out her affection with tender talk or gladdens her heart with flirtation and praise, or just makes her laugh and amuses her with interesting stories. This is the nature of humans and animals too; even in the world of insects, if a male wants to have intercourse with a female, he must first fondle her antennae gently and softly until she softens and accepts. This law of nature, unfortunately, does not apply to Tariq Haseeb. He is the opposite of all of that: if he likes a beautiful woman he starts to treat her aggressively and tries to embarrass and harass her in every possible way. And the more he likes the woman the more vicious he is toward her. Why does he do that? No one knows. Perhaps it is to hide his excessive bashfulness before women, or because his attraction to a woman makes him feel weak in comparison to her, so he tries to overcome that by mounting a crushing attack against her. Or because, in the eagle-like loneliness in which he lives and his relentless fight to get to the top, he internally resists any feeling that might distract him from his work. This strange quirk in Tariq’s character has ruined several prospective engagements that he had undertaken with the best of intentions but which all ended in regrettable incidents. The most recent had happened two years before his coming to the States on this scholarship, when he went with his mother to ask for the hand of the daughter of a retired army general. The visit started amicably: cold drinks and pastries were served and courtesies exchanged. The young lady, Rasha, was a graduate of the Spanish department in the College of Languages. She was very pretty: she had long, smooth black hair and a captivating smile revealing snow-white, perfectly arranged teeth. She had two enchanting dimples on both sides of her alluring white face. As for her figure it was luscious and curvaceous, filled with vitality and sending off lustful vibrations in the air that made Tariq lose his concentration for a few moments as he imagined himself possessing the bride-to-be’s body, and doing such things to it. But his admiration, as usual, turned into an aggressive inclination that he tried to control at first, but he failed and gave in to it and it swept him overboard. The father of the bride, as usually happened on such occasions, was talking about his daughter lovingly and admiringly. Somewhat boastfully he said, “Rasha is our only daughter and we’ve done all we could to give her the best upbringing and education. Praise God, all her life she was in language schools, from nursery to secondary school.”

Tariq looked at him with his bulging eyes for a few moments then asked him with a mocking smile on his flushed face, “Pardon, pasha, what school exactly did Mademoiselle Rasha attend?”

The general fell silent for a moment, taken aback by the question, then answered smiling, still willing to be tolerant, “Amon School.”

Thereupon, Tariq found himself in front of the goal, so he kicked the ball hard. With a light laugh on his face that he tried to hide in order to double its impact, he said, “Pardon, General. Amon School was never a language school. Amon is an experimental school, that is, a regular government school but with nominal fees.”

The general’s face showed signs of distress which soon turned into resentment, and he got into a heated debate with Tariq about the difference between experimental and exclusive language schools. Tariq’s mother tried to intervene with pacifying words and secretly gestured to her son several times with her eyebrows and lips to be quiet. But his viciousness was out of his control. He cruelly started to refute the arguments of the father of the bride, having decided to deliver a final, crushing blow. Sighing, as if he had already tired of discussing self-evident platitudes, he said, “With all due respect, sir, what you’re saying is absolutely wrong. There’s a big difference between Amon School and language schools. Language schools in Egypt are few and well known and one cannot enroll in them easily.”

“What do you mean?” asked the general, his face now red with vexation. Tariq took some time before delivering his coup de grace. “I mean exactly what I said.”

Several moments of silence passed during which the general exerted a great effort (almost audible as hyperventilation) to control his anger. Finally he turned to Tariq’s mother sitting to his left and said in a tone of voice fraught with meaning as he fidgeted, indicating the end of the visit and the engagement, “We are blessed and honored, dear lady.”

The return trip seemed too long. There was heavy silence in the taxicab. Tariq’s mother had put on her best outfit for the engagement: a long dark blue suit and a bonnet of the same color adorned with sequins and crystal beads. She wanted her son to be engaged before he traveled on the scholarship, but every time he behaved like this and ruined the engagement. She had given up on giving him any advice; she had told him many times that he was a respectable and highly regarded catch, that many a girl would love to have him as her husband, but that his combative ways left people with the impression that he was aggressive and strange, so they were afraid of him for their daughter.

“Did you see these liars, Mother? They called Amon School a language school!” he said suddenly, as though he sensed what his mother was thinking.

His mother looked at him for a long while then said in a soft voice in which were mixed rebuke and kindness, “It wasn’t worth all the fuss, my dear. The man just wanted to brag about his daughter, which is natural.”

Tariq interrupted her sharply. “He can brag as much as he likes, but he shouldn’t lie to us. When he says that Amon School is a language school, it means that he has little regard for our minds. I cannot let him get away with that.”