ON SUNDAY EVENING TARIQ HASEEB woke up from his siesta and said to himself that he’d finish the statistics assignment then go out to do his week’s shopping. He applied himself to solving the problems, thinking hard and writing down the numbers then eagerly checking the back of the book, hoping every time that his answer would be correct. Suddenly the alarm sounded throughout the building and a voice came over the public address system warning that there was a fire in the building and demanding that the tenants leave their apartments immediately. Tariq’s mind was full of numbers, so it took him a few moments to realize what was happening, and he jumped up and rushed down the stairs in the midst of the panicked students. The firefighters spread throughout the building, making sure that every floor had been evacuated, and then they pushed certain buttons on the walls and immediately nonflammable steel doors were lowered in place. The students gathered in the lobby; they were excited, laughing nervously and whispering anxiously. Most of them had gone out of their apartments in their sleepwear, which gave Tariq (despite the gravity of the situation) a rare chance to check out the girls’ bare legs. Three persons appeared, coming from the farther end of the lobby, and little by little their features became recognizable: two Chicago policemen, one white on the short and heavy side, the other a tall, muscular black man. Between them walked Shaymaa Muhammadi in the flannel gallabiya she had had no time to change. They reached the reception desk and the white policeman took out a sheet of paper and said loudly in a formal tone of voice, “Young lady, this is an affidavit that you will sign to be responsible for any damages that might come to light in the future because of the fire you caused. You also have to sign a pledge that this won’t happen again in the future.”
Shaymaa stared at the white policeman as if she didn’t understand, whereupon the black policeman, looking like someone about to tell a biting joke, said, “Listen, my friend, I don’t know what kind of food you eat in your country but I advise you to change your favorite dish because it almost burned down the building.”
The black policeman laughed unabashedly while his partner tried to decorously hide his smile. Shaymaa bent and signed the paper in silence. Before long the two policemen exchanged a few words and left. A short while later it was announced that the danger was over, and students began to go back up to their apartments. Shaymaa, however, remained standing in front of the reception office. She looked deathly pale and kept shaking and breathing heavily. She was trying to compose herself, as if she had just awakened from a terrifying nightmare. She felt that she was no longer in possession of her soul, that everything that was happening was unreal. She felt particularly humiliated that the firefighter had hugged her, and her back still hurt from the pressure of his hands. Tariq Haseeb stood scrutinizing her slowly, then circled around her twice, exploring, as if he were an animal sniffing another animal of an unknown species. From the first moment he felt attracted toward her, but his admiration, as usual, turned into extreme resentment. He knew her name and had seen her before in the histology department, but he enjoyed pretending that he didn’t know her. He approached slowly and when he was right in front of her he fixed her with a scrutinizing, disapproving, suspicious glance that he used to use on Cairo Medical School students as he proctored them during their written exams. Before long he asked her haughtily, “Are you Egyptian?”
She answered with a nod from her tired head. Then his questions, bulletlike, rang out in quick succession: What do you study? Where do you live? How did you cause the fire? She kept answering in a soft voice, avoiding looking at his eyes. Silence fell for a moment, which Tariq thought was appropriate after his lightning attack. He said sharply, “Listen, sister Shaymaa. Here you are in America and not in Tanta. You have to behave in a civilized manner.”
She looked at him in silence. What would she tell him? What she’s done is proof of her stupidity and backwardness. She was about to answer him when he approached her, ready to pounce on her, to silence and totally crush her.
Chapter 4
Professor Dennis Baker raised his hand in favor of admitting the new Egyptian student, as did Dr. Fried-man, who counted the votes with a cursory glance and bent over the paper to record the department’s vote to admit Nagi Abd al-Samad. The meeting was adjourned and the professors left. Ra’fat Thabit got in his car to drive home. He felt so vexed at the result of the vote that he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and sighed in exasperation. He thought: Egyptians will ruin the department. That’s the truth. Egyptians cannot work in respectable places because they have many negative qualities: cowardice and hypocrisy, lying, evasiveness and laziness, and an inability to think methodically. Worse than that: they are disorganized and tricky. This negative view of the Egyptians is in line with Ra’fat Thabit’s own history. He emigrated from Egypt to the States in the early 1960s after Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the glass factories owned by his father, Mahmud Pasha Thabit. And despite the iron fist of the regime at that time, he was able to smuggle a large sum of money out of Egypt with which he financed his new life: he went to school and got a doctorate and taught in several American universities in New York and Boston. He then settled in Chicago thirty years ago and married a nurse, Michelle, obtained American citizenship, and became American in every respect: he no longer spoke Arabic at all, thought in English, and spoke it with a cleverly acquired American accent. He even shrugged his shoulders and gestured and made sounds while speaking exactly like Americans. On Sundays he’d go to baseball games about which he had become such an expert that his American friends often consulted him if they had disagreements about its rules. He would sit in the park, wearing his cap backward, following the game intensely and enthusiastically while sipping beer from the large glass that never left his hand. That was the image that he loved of himself: to be a complete genuine American, pure and without blemish. At receptions and on social occasions, when someone asked him, “Where’re you from?” Ra’fat would promptly answer, “I’m from Chicago.”
Many people accepted this answer simply, but some of them, sometimes, would look at his Arab features suspiciously then ask, “Where were you before coming to America?”
At that point he would sigh, shrug his shoulders, and repeat his favorite sentence that had become a slogan for him: “I was born in Egypt and I fled the oppression and backwardness to justice and freedom.”
This absolute pride in everything American coupled with contempt for everything Egyptian explains everything he does. Because Egyptians are overweight and they lead unhealthy lives, he stays svelte. And even though he is sixty, he still cuts an attractive figure: tall with a graceful, athletic build. He has only a few wrinkles in his smooth complexion and his hair is discreetly dyed in a convincing manner by leaving some gray in the temple area and the front of the head. The truth is, he is handsome with an inherited aristocratic bearing that shows in his clothes and the way he moves. He resembles to a great extent the actor Rushdi Abaza, except for a tentativeness and sluggishness that detract from the magnetism of his face. Because he is proud of his country’s accomplishments, Dr. Thabit avidly acquires the latest American technology, starting with his late model Cadillac (the down payment for which he paid with his honorarium for some lectures he gave last winter at Harvard), the latest cell phone, a shaver that sprays aftershave, and a lawn mower that plays music while trimming the grass. In the presence of Egyptians in particular, he loves to show off his modern gadgets and then ask them sarcastically, “When will Egypt be able to produce a machine like this? After how many centuries?” Then he bursts out laughing in the midst of the embarrassed Egyptians. When an Egyptian student in the department excels, Ra’fat must needle him. He goes up to him, shakes his hand, and says, “Congratulations for excelling in spite of the wretched education you’ve received in Egypt. You must thank America for what you’ve achieved.”
After 9/11 Ra’fat came out publicly against Arabs and Muslims, using language that most fanatical Americans might be reluctant to use. He would say, for instance, “The United States has the right to ban any Arab from coming in until it is certain that such a person is civilized and does not think that killing is a religious duty.”
Hence the admission of Nagi Abd al-Samad was a personal defeat for Dr. Thabit. In a short while, however, he decided to forget the whole matter. He lifted his right hand from the steering wheel and pushed the button of the CD player to listen to the songs of Lionel Richie, whom he adored. He thought of spending a quiet evening with his wife, Michelle, and his daughter, Sarah. He remembered the special bottle of Royal Salute scotch that he had bought a few days earlier and decided to open it tonight because he needed a good drink. After a while he arrived at his house, a handsome white two-story building with a beautiful garden and a backyard. He was met by his German shepherd, Metz, who barked loudly for a long time. He went around the house as usual to reach the garage. To his surprise he saw the lights on in the dining room, which meant they had company. He was annoyed, since Michelle had not told him that she was expecting anyone for dinner. He pressed the remote and the car locked automatically, then he closed the garage door and pulled the bolt to make sure it was securely locked. He walked
