there for years. I know Paris as well as I do Cairo.”
“They say Paris is beautiful.”
“Beautiful? The whole world’s to be found in Paris!”
“So why didn’t you go on living there?”
“That’s a long story.”
“Tell me. It’s not as though we’ve got any appointments to keep.”
She laughed to lighten his mood and he laughed too, for the first time. Then she moved closer and asked him affectionately, “Go on. Why didn’t you live in France?”
“There are lots of things I should have done with my life that I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. When I was your age, I used to think that I could do whatever I wanted. I used to make plans for my life and I was sure about everything. When I got older, I discovered that man controls almost nothing. Everything is fate.”
He felt himself getting melancholy so he sighed and asked her with a smile, “Would you like to travel?”
“Of course.”
“Where would you like to go?”
“Any place far away from this hole!”
“You hate Egypt?”
“Of course.”
“How can that be? Is there anyone who hates his own country?”
“I never got anything good from it to make me love it.”
She averted her face as she said this sentence. Zaki responded excitedly, “A person has to love his country because his country is his mother. Does anyone hate his mother?”
“That’s all songs and movies. Zaki Bey, people are suffering.”
“Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t be patriotic. Most of Egypt’s nationalist leaders were poor.”
“All that was in your day. Now people are really fed up.”
“Which people?”
“Everyone. For example, all the girls who were with me at commercial school wanted to get out of the country any way they could.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Of course.”
“If you can’t find good in your own country, you won’t find it anywhere else.”
The words slipped out from Zaki Bey, but he felt that they were ungracious so he smiled to lessen their impact on Busayna, who had stood up and was saying bitterly, “You don’t understand because you’re well-off. When you’ve stood for two hours at the bus stop or taken three different buses and had to go through hell every day just to get home, when your house has collapsed and the government has left you sitting with your children in a tent on the street, when the police officer has insulted you and beaten you just because you’re on a minibus at night, when you’ve spent the whole day going around the shops looking for work and there isn’t any, when you’re a fine sturdy young man with an education and all you have in your pockets is a pound, or sometimes nothing at all, then you’ll know why we hate Egypt.”
A heavy silence reigned between them and Zaki decided to change the subject, so he rose from his seat, went over to the tape recorder, and said gaily, “I’m going to play you the most beautiful voice in the world. A French singer called Edith Piaf, the most important singer in the history of France. Have you heard of her?”
“I don’t know French to start with.”
Zaki made a gesture with his hand indicating that that didn’t matter and pressed the button of the recorder. Lilting piano music emerged and Piaf ’s voice, warm, powerful, and pure, rose up as Zaki nodded his head to the rhythm and said, “This song reminds me of beautiful times.”
“What do the words say?”
“They speak of a girl standing in the midst of a crowd and then the people push her against her will in the direction of a man she doesn’t know, and as soon as she sees him she feels a beautiful feeling for him and wishes she could stay with him all her life, but suddenly the people push her far away from him. In the end she finds herself on her own and the person she loved is lost forever.”
“How sad!”
“Of course it’s got another meaning, which is that one can spend his whole life looking for the right person and, when he finds them, lose them.”
They were standing next to the desk, and as he spoke he moved toward her and placed his hands on her cheeks. Her nose filled with his coarse, ancient smell and he said, gazing into her eyes, “Did you like the song?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“You know, Busayna, I really needed to meet a woman like you.”
Busayna said nothing.
“You have very beautiful eyes.”
“Thank you.”
She whispered this, her face burning, and she let him come close enough to feel his lips on her face. Then he folded her in his arms and very soon she felt the acrid taste of the whisky in her mouth.
“Where are you off to, doll?” Malak asked her impertinently as he crossed her path in the morning in front of the elevator. Avoiding his eyes, she answered, “I’m going to work.”
Malak let out a loud laugh and said, “It looks like the work agrees with you.”
“Zaki Bey is a good man.”
“We’re all good people. What have you done about that other thing?”
“Nothing yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t had a chance yet.”
Malak knitted his brow, looked at her with something like anger, grabbed her hand hard, and said, “Listen, princess. This isn’t a game. He has to sign the contract this week. Got it?”
“All right.”
Freeing her hand from his grip, she got into the elevator.
The student protests had been going on in most faculties since early morning. They interrupted studies, closed the lecture halls, and then started moving around in large numbers shouting and carrying banners condemning the war in the Gulf. When the call to the noon prayer sounded, about five thousand male and female students lined up to perform the prayer in the forecourt in front of the auditorium (boys in front, girls behind), led by Brother Tahir, emir of the Gamaa Islamiya. Then the congregation said the prayer for the dead for the souls of the Muslim martyrs in Iraq. Shortly afterward Tahir climbed to the top of the stairs facing the auditorium and stood there in his white gallabiya and impressive black beard, his voice emerging loud from the PA system.
“Brothers and sisters, we have come today to stop the killing of Muslims in our sister country Iraq. Our Islamic nation is not yet dead, as its enemies would wish. The Messenger of God — God bless him and give him peace — has said in a sound hadith, ‘Good fortune will remain with my nation till the Day of Resurrection.’ So, brothers and sisters, let us say our word, loud and clear, so that those who have placed their hands in the filthy hands of our enemies, polluted with the blood of Muslims, may hear. Youth of Islam, as we speak, the rockets of the unbelievers are pounding our sister Iraq. They pride themselves that they have devastated Baghdad and turned it into ruins, saying that they have sent Baghdad back to the Stone Age by destroying the generating stations and water plants. Now, brothers and sisters, at this very moment, Iraqi Muslims are being martyred, their skins shredded by American bombs. The tragedy was made complete when our rulers submitted to the orders of America
