The results of the elections had been announced officially on Thursday evening, Hagg Azzam winning the People’s Assembly Workers’ seat for Kasr el Nil and scoring a sweeping victory over his opponent Abu Himeida, who obtained only a very few votes (El Fouli had decided that his defeat should be overwhelming and ringing, as an example to anyone else who might disobey his instructions in the future). Hagg Azzam felt a genuine, deep gratitude to God, Almighty and Glorious, who had supplied him, of His bounty and His support, a clear victory. He performed more than twenty prostrations in thankful prayer the moment he heard the news and issued his instructions for the slaughter of the bullocks. He also secretly distributed more than twenty thousand pounds to poor families whose needs he himself took care of and gave a further twenty thousand to Sheikh el Samman to be spent on charitable purposes under his supervision, not to mention the twenty golden guineas he donated to Sheikh el Samman on this occasion.
A different feeling toyed with Hagg Azzam’s heart when he thought of Souad: how should he celebrate his fabulous win with her that night? He reviewed the details of her soft, warm body in his mind’s eye and felt that he truly loved her. He said to himself that the Messenger of God — God bless him and give him peace — was right when he described women as bringers of good fortune. There were indeed some blessed women whom a man had only to take as a partner for him to be inundated with good fortune, and Souad was one of them. She had brought victory and blessing and here he now was, triumphant and about to enter the People’s Assembly. Verily, there was nothing more wonderful than divine providence! He was now the People’s Assembly member for the residents of the constituency of Kasr el Nil, who at one time had held out their shoes to him for him to clean, and looked down on him from above, and generously given him their pennies. Now he was the Honorable Member, enjoying legal immunity, which prevented anyone from taking action against him without the Assembly’s permission. From now on his picture would appear in the press and on television and he would meet every day with the ministers and shake their hands, equal to equal. He was no longer merely a rich businessman, he was a statesman and he would have to deal with everyone on that basis. Starting from now, he would begin the great work that would catapult him to the level of the giants. The next step would take him to the summit; he would be one of the five or six movers and shakers in the whole country provided the deals he was planning in order to move him from the millionaire to the billionaire bracket went through. He might in fact become the richest man in Egypt and become a minister. Yes indeed! Why not? When God is willing, nothing is impossible; hadn’t he dreamed of becoming a member of the People’s Assembly? Money makes short work of problems and brings the distant goal within reach. One day he might achieve a ministry, just as he had the Assembly.
He remained sunk in his ponderings until the call to the afternoon prayer rang out and he led the store’s employees in prayer as usual, even though (and he asked God’s forgiveness for this) his mind did wander more than once as he was praying to Souad’s body. As soon as he had finished the prayer and said his beads, he hurriedly left, entered the Yacoubian Building, and rode the elevator to the seventh floor. What deliciously insistent, burning desire he felt as he turned the key in the door and found before him Souad, exactly as he had imagined her, waiting for him in the red robe that showed off her stunning charms, and that smell of perfume that stole into his nose and tickled his senses! She came toward him with a vampish gait and passion took possession of him as he listened to her footsteps and the rustling of the robe on the floor. Then she took him in her arms and whispered, her lips brushing his ear, “Congratulations, my darling! A thousand congratulations!”
At rare and exceptional moments Souad Gaber appears as she really is. A look suddenly flashes from her eyes like a spark and her face recovers its original appearance, exactly as an actor returns to his own character on finishing a role, takes off his costume, and wipes the makeup off his face. On such occasions, a serious, slowly awakening look suggestive of a certain degree of hardness and determination appears on Souad’s face and reveals her true nature. This may happen at any time — while she’s eating with the Hagg or chatting with him of an evening; even while she’s with him in bed, she may be twisting and turning in his arms as she does her best to rouse his feeble virility and that spark will flash in her eyes confirming that her mind never stops working, even in the heat of passion.
Often she astonishes even herself with her newfound capacity to take on fake roles. She was never a liar before. All her life long she has been used to saying whatever’s on her mind — so where did all this acting come from? She plays with skill the role of the jealous, compassionate, yearning, loving wife and like a professional actor has learned to control her emotions perfectly: she cries, laughs, and gets angry whenever she decides to do so. Right now, in bed with Hagg Azzam, she is playing out a scene — that of the woman who, taken unawares by her husband’s virility, surrenders to him so that he may do with her body whatever his extraordinary strength may demand, her eyes closed, panting, and sighing — while in reality she feels nothing except rubbing, just the rubbing of two naked bodies, cold and annoying. With that sharp, lurking, unblinking awareness of hers, she contemplates Hagg Azzam’s exhausted body, whose brief last hurrah came to an end and whose feebleness manifested itself after one month of marriage, and averts her eyes from the whiteness of his old, wrinkled skin, the few, scattered hairs of his chest, and his small, dark nipples. She feels nauseated whenever she touches his body, as though she were putting her hand on a lizard or a revolting, slimy frog and each time she thinks of the slim, hard body of Masoud, her first husband, with whom she knew love for the first time.
Those were beautiful days. She smiles when she thinks how much she loved him and how she longed to see him, her body burning with his touches and the feel of his hot breath on her neck and breast. She would make love with him hotly and melt, swooning in pleasure and, when she recovered herself, feel shame. She’d turn her face well away from him and spend a while avoiding looking at his face, while he’d roar with laughter and say in his strong, deep voice, “My oh my! What’s the matter with you, girl, that you’re so shy? Did we do something naughty? It’s God’s Law, you silly girl!”
How lovely that time had been and how far away it seemed now! She had loved her husband and all that she’d wanted from the world was for them to live together and raise a boy. She swore she didn’t want money and she didn’t have any demands. She was happy in her small apartment in El Asafra South next to the railway tracks doing the washing and cooking, preparing Tamir’s feeds, and mopping the floor. Then she would take a shower, put on makeup, and wait for Masoud at the end of the day. She thought her home was as spacious, clean, and well-lit as a palace, and when he informed her that he had got a work contract in Iraq, she had rejected the idea, flaring up and fighting and banning him from her bed for several days in order to dissuade him from traveling. She had shouted in his face, “You’d go off abroad and leave us on our own?”
“A year or two and I’ll be back with lots of money.”
“That’s what everyone says and they never come back.”
“So you like being poor? We’re living day to day. Are we going to go our whole lives borrowing money?”
“Soon enough the little one will be grown up.”
“Only in this country! Here everything’s backward! Here it’s the old who go on living and the young who die. Money begets money and poverty begets poverty.”
He spoke with the calm of one who has made up his mind. How she regrets now that she obeyed him! If only she’d fought him to the last, if only she’d walked out on him, he would have given in and dropped the idea of traveling — he had loved her and couldn’t bear to be far away from her. But she had surrendered easily and let him go. Everything is fated and decreed. Masoud had gone away and never come back. She was sure he had died in the war and that they had buried him over there, and everyone had written him off as vanished. It had happened like that to many families that she knew in Alexandria. It wasn’t possible that Masoud would have abandoned them and left his son. Impossible! It could only be that he’d died and gone to God and left her to bear her bitter lot alone.
The time of love and passion and shame and beauty had ended. She’d endured hardship and gone hungry to raise her son and though men all had different faces, bodies, and clothes, their look was always the same — violating her, undressing her, and promising her everything if she’d say yes. She had resisted fiercely and with difficulty and feared that one day she might get tired and give in. Her job at Hannaux’s was exhausting. The wages were poor, the child’s expenses grew, and the burden was as heavy as a mountain. All her relatives — even her brother Hamidu — were poor, living like her from one day to the next, or creeps who would help her out with nice words and excuse themselves with spurious arguments from lending her money.
She lived through years so hard that she almost lost faith in God and more than once weakened and was on the verge of falling into sin out of an excess of despair and need. And when Hagg Azzam asked for her hand in legal
