The Yacoubian Building

by Alaa Al Aswany

  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 marriage, she worked things out minutely. She would give the Hagg her body in return for her son’s expenses. She never touched the dowry that Hagg Azzam gave her but deposited it in Tamir’s name in the bank so that it would triple in ten years. The days of emotion were over and the whole thing was now calculated—one thing in return for another, by agreement and mutual consent. She would sleep with this old man for two hours everyday, leave her son in Alexandria, and collect her wages.

  True, she’s rent with longing for Tamir and at night often feels his place next to her in the bed and cries scalding tears. The other morning when she walked in front of an elementary school and saw the children in their school uniforms, she thought of him and cried and was wracked by sorrow and longing for days. She saw herself carrying his warm little body from the bed and washing his face for him in the bathroom and dressing him in his school clothes and getting his breakfast ready and playing tricks on him to make him drink up all his milk. Then she would leave with him and they would ride the tram to school.

  Where is he now? How she worries about him! He’s on his own and far away and she’s in this large, cold, detestable city where she knows no one, living on her own in a large apartment in which she owns nothing, hiding from people like a thief or a loose woman. Her sole function is to sleep with this old man who every day lies down on top of her and suffocates her with his exhausted, dangling impotence and the touch of his smooth, disgusting body. He doesn’t want her to go to Tamir, and when she speaks to him about it, his face darkens and he appears jealous, while she longs for her son at every second and wants to see him now and hug him hard and smell his smell and stroke his smooth, black hair. If only she could bring him to live with her in Cairo! But Hagg Azzam will never agree to that and has made it a condition from the beginning that she leave the boy behind. He said to her clearly, “I’m marrying you on your own without children. Are we agreed?” She recalls his cold, cruel face at that moment and hates him from the depths of her heart but convinces herself once more that everything she’s doing is for the sake of Tamir and his future. What use would it be to him to live in his mother’s arms while both of them begged from friends and strangers?

  She ought to thank Azzam and be grateful to him, not hate him. At least he has married her properly and taken her expenses in charge. This direct, practical idea governs her relations with the Hagg. He has rights over her body as per the legal agreement. He has the right to come to her whenever and however he wishes, and it is her obligation always to be ready, waiting for him every day after having made herself up and put on perfume. It is his right to remain unaware of her coldness toward him and that she should never make him feel his impotence or his shortcomings in bed.

  Consequently she now had recourse to a trick that she had learned by instinct to save him embarrassment. Gasping and scratching his back with her nails and pretending to reach climax, she hugged his ruined body and threw her head on his chest as though drugged by the orgasm. Soon afterward she opened her eyes and started kissing him on his beard and neck and massaging his chest with her fingers. Then she whispered in an insinuating voice, “By the way…where’s my treat for your success in the elections?”

  “Of course, my dear. A nice big present.”

  “God preserve you for me, my darling! Look, I’m going to ask you a question and you have to answer me frankly.”

  The Hagg propped his back against the end of the bed and looked at her with interest, keeping his hand on her bare shoulder. She said, “Do you love me?”

  “Lots, Souad, and Our Lord knows that for a fact.”

  “So if I asked for anything in the world you’d do it for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay, don’t forget to keep your word.”

  He looked at her uncertainly, but she had decided not to confront him this evening, so she said, “I’m going to tell you about something important. Next week, God willing.”

  “Go on. Tell me this evening.”

  “No, my darling. Let me make sure first.”

  The Hagg laughed and said, “It’s a riddle?”

  She kissed him and whispered in a seductive voice, “Yes…a riddle.”

  Homosexuals, it is said, often excel in professions that depend on contact with other people, such as public relations, acting, brokering, and the law. Their success in these fields is attributable to their lack of that sense of shame that costs others opportunities, while their sexual lives, filled as they are with diverse and unusual encounters, give them deeper insight into human nature and make them more capable of influencin
g others. Homosexuals also excel in professions associated with taste and beauty, such as interior decoration and clothing design; it is well known that the most famous clothes designers in the world are homosexuals, perhaps because their dual sexual nature enables them to design women’s clothes that are attractive to men and vice versa.

  Those who know Hatim Rasheed may differ about him but are bound to acknowledge his refined taste and his authentic talent in choosing colors and clothes. Even in his bedroom with his lovers, Hatim deems himself too good for the camp taste that many homosexuals affect. He tries rather, with practiced touches, to bring out the feminine side of his beauty. He wears transparent gallabiyas embroidered with beautiful colors over his naked body, is clean-shaven, applies an appropriate and carefully calculated amount of eye pencil to his eyebrows, and uses a small amount of eye shadow. Then he brushes his smooth hair back or leaves stray locks over his forehead. By these means he always attempts, in making himself attractive, to realize the model of the beautiful youth of ancient times.

  Hatim applied the same sensitive taste when he bought new clothes for his friend Abduh—tight pants that showed off the strength of his muscles, shirts and undershirts in light colors to illuminate his dark face, and collars that were always open to reveal the muscles of his neck and the thick hair on his chest. Hatim was generous with Abduh. He gave him lots of money, which Abduh sent to his family, and got him a recommendation to the camp commander so that his treatment improved and they granted him holidays one after another, all of which he spent with Hatim, as though they were newlyweds on their honeymoon. They would wake up in the middle of the morning and enjoy having nothing to do and being lazy, eating in the best restaurants, watching movies at the cinema, and shopping. Late at night they would go to bed together and, after satisfying their bodies, would lie in each other’s arms in the dim light of the lamp, sometimes talking until the morning—moments of tenderness that Hatim would never forget. His thirst for love quenched, he would cling like a frightened child to Abduh’s strong body, nuzzling his coarse brown skin like a cat and telling him about everything: his childhood, his father and his French mother, and his first beloved, Idris. The amazing thing was that Abduh, despite his youth and his ignorance, was capable of sympathizing with Hatim’s feelings and became more accepting of their relationship. The first aversion disappeared, to be replaced by a deliciously sinful craving, plus the money and the respect and the new clothes and fine food, and the high-class places that Abduh had not dreamed he would one day enter; and, at night, in the street, when he was coming back in Hatim’s company, Abduh loved to pass by the privates of the Central Security forces with his elegant appearance and greet them from a distance, as though proving to himself that he had become for a time something different from those poor wretches standing long hours, for no good reason or purpose, in the sun and the cold.

  The two friends lived days of pure bliss. Then came Abduh’s birthday, an occasion which Abduh assured Hatim was of no importance to him since, in Upper Egypt, they celebrated only weddings and circumcisions but which Hatim insisted on celebrating all the same. Taking him out in the car and smiling, he said, “I’ve got a surprise for you tonight.”

  “What kind of surprise?”

  “Be patient. You’ll know soon,” murmured Hatim, his face wearing an expression of childlike playfulness as he drove the car in an unaccustomed direction. He proceeded along Salah Salim and entered Medinet Nasr, then turned off and took a small side street. The shops were closed and the street almost completely dark but a metal kiosk, newly painted and gleaming in the dark, appeared. The two got out of the car and stood in front of the kiosk. Then Abduh heard a jingling and saw Hatim take out a small chain of keys. He held these out to Abdah and said lovingly, “Here. Joyeux anniversaire, happy birthday. This is my present for you. I’m praying you’ll like it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Hatim let out a raucous laugh and said, “You Sa’idis! You’re thick as planks. This kiosk belongs to you. I used a lot of influence and got it from the governorate for you. As soon as you finish your army service, I’ll buy you some stock and you can just stand here and sell it.”

  Then he drew closer and whispered, “This way, my darling, you can work, make money, and support your children, and at the same time I make sure that you’ll stay with me forever.”

  Abduh let out a loud shout and started laughing and hugging Hatim and mumbling thanks. It was a beautiful night. They dined together in a fish restaurant in El Mohandiseen. Abduh on his own ate more than a kilo of shrimp with rice, and while eating they drank a whole bottle of Swiss wine. The bill came to more than seven hundred pounds, which Hatim paid with his credit card. When they were together that evening in bed, Hatim almost wept with the delicious pain. He felt as though he was hovering in the clouds and wished time would stop, right there. After the lovemaking they remained as usual clinging to each other in bed, the dim light from the tall candle dancing and throwing its shadows on the wall opposite, which was covered in decorative wallpaper.

  Hatim spoke at length of his feelings toward Abduh, who stayed silent, looking ahead, his face suddenly serious. Hatim asked him anxiously, “What’s wrong, Abduh?…What is it?”

  “I’m afraid, Hatim Bey.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Of Our Lord, Almighty and Glorious.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Our Lord, Almighty and Glorious. I’m afraid He’ll punish us for what we do.”

  Hatim said nothing and gazed at him in the dark. It seemed odd to him. The last thing he would have expected his lover to talk to him about was religion.

  “What kind of talk is that, Abduh?”

  “Sir, all my life I’ve been God-fearing. In the village they used to call me ‘Sheikh Abduh.’ I always prayed the proper prayers at the proper time in the mosque and I fasted in Ramadan and all the other times I’m supposed to…till I met you and I changed.”

  “You want to pray, Abduh? Go ahead.”

  “How can I pray when every night I drink alcohol and sleep with you? I feel as though Our Lord is angry with me and will punish me.”

  “You think Our Lord will punish us because we love one another?”

  “Our Lord has forbidden us that kind of love. It’s a very big sin. In the village there was a prayer leader called Sheikh Darawi, God have mercy on his soul, who was a righteous, holy man, and he used to say to us in the Friday sermon, ‘Beware sodomy, for it is a great sin and makes the throne of heaven shake in anger.’”

  Hatim could no longer contain himself and he got out of bed, turned on the light, and lit a cigarette, looking with his handsome face and the flimsy nightgown over his naked body somewhat like an angry woman. He blew out cigarette smoke, then suddenly cried, “Really, Abduh, I don’t know what to do with you. What can I do for you more than this? I love you and I’m concerned for you and I try always to make you happy—and instead of thanking me, you, you go and make life miserable for me like this.”

  Abduh continued to lie on his back in silence staring at the ceiling with his arm under his head. Hatim finished his cigarette and poured himself a glass of whisky, which he tossed off in a single gulp. Then he went back and sat next to Abduh and said quietly, “Listen, my darling. Our Lord is big and He has true mercy, nothing to do with what the ignorant sheikhs in your village say. There are lots of people who pray and fast and steal and do harm. Those are the ones Our Lord punishes. But us, I’m sure that Our Lord will forgive us because we don’t do anyone any harm. We just love one another. Abduh, please, don’t make things miserable. Tonight’s your birthday and we’re supposed to be happy.”

  On this Sunday evening Busayna had spent two weeks in her new job, during which Zaki el Dessouki had taken all the preparatory steps: he had put her in charge, first of all, of certain chores—making a new telephone list, paying the electricity bill, and sorting out some old papers; then he had started to talk to her about himself and how lonel
y he felt and how sometimes he regretted not being married; he had complained to her about his sister Dawlat and said that he was sad at the way she’d behaved with him; he had started asking her about her family and her younger brothers and sisters; and from time to time he would flirt with her, complimenting her on her smart dress and her hairdo, which showed the beauty of her face to advantage, looking for a long time at her body—all in all a lot like a skilled player of billiards who directs his shots with confidence and calculation. She would receive his signals with a complicit smile (the contrast between her large salary and her trivial duties was enough to make her expected role quite clear). The hinting back and forth had gone on for several days, until he had said to her once as she was preparing to leave, “I feel so comfortable with you, Busayna. I do hope we can stay together forever.”

  “I’m at your service,” said Busayna without hesitation, to clear the way for him. Then he took her hand and asked, “If I asked you to do something, would you do it for me?”

  “If I could, certainly.”

  He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them, to confirm what he meant, and then whispered, “Tomorrow, come later in the day…so we won’t be disturbed.”