Chicago

by Alaa Al Aswany

  He saw before the lovers a small table on which was a white plate filled with something resembling soft white sand. Jeff rolled a piece of paper into the shape of a straw, raised it, and inserted it into his nostril and took several successive hits on it. He raised his eyes slowly and looked at the ceiling, and then closed his eyes, his features contracting, as if he were overcome with sudden pain. Then he gave the funnel to Sarah and she took one hit and sank back into the sofa, seemingly relaxed. They snorted once again and suddenly Jeff turned to Sarah and hugged her hard. They began to kiss slowly and lustfully. He began to lick her ear then moved down to her neck, kissing it voraciously. She opened her mouth, as if moaning. He put his hand inside her gown, in exciting, pleasurable slow motion, and then took out her breasts and began to squeeze them with his hands. Then he began to speak to them while smiling, as if he were rocking a child while she screamed from sheer pleasure. The two seemed to be in an acute condition of arousal, as if they wanted to enjoy sex before the effect of the drug wore off or as if, somehow, inexplicably, they felt as if they were being observed and so they deliberately showed off their passion to the hilt. Jeff kept biting her breasts and licking them and sucking her nipples until she pushed him gently and he lay on his back. At that moment they seemed to be moving according to a well-established, mutually agreeable rhythm. She bent over him and reached out, undid his zipper, took out his organ and stared at it lustfully. She licked it several times then began to suck it delightedly. Ra’fat found himself rushing unaware toward the door. He rang the bell hard and nonstop. He pounded on the door and kicked it as hard as he could. A long interval passed, then he heard footsteps approaching. The outside light was turned on, then the door opened and Sarah appeared, having put on a silk robe over the nightgown. She looked at him with frightened eyes, as if in disbelief. She opened her mouth to say something, but he didn’t give her a chance: he slapped her hard on the face then kicked her in the belly. She screamed at the top of her voice as his own thundered while he stormed into the house, “You junkie whore! I’m going to kill you!”

  Chapter 18

  Shaymaa banged the tray down hard on the table. Some bits of Umm Ali scattered out of the plate. She looked at Tariq combatively and said, agitated, “How dare you permit yourself to touch me?”

  His face turned completely pale and he mumbled in a soft voice, “I’m sorry.”

  “Listen, Tariq, if you think I’m an easy girl, you are mistaken. If you misbehave again you will never see me again. Do you understand?”

  He remained silent and bowed his head, as if he were a naughty child who had broken a very expensive vase. He took his leave and she followed him with a reprimanding look until he closed the door behind him. Her body kept shaking as she still felt his hand touching hers and his hot breath on her face. His sudden move had shocked her, so it had taken her a moment to figure out what had happened and to quickly move away from him, but that moment also sent her into new territory in which she had never been before, a secret area filled with delicious and titillating sensations that she had known only stealthily in her forbidden dreams. That immediately brought to her mind her mother’s warnings as if they were air raid sirens. She recalled the stern words she had heard a thousand times since her first monthly period took her by surprise during geography class in her first year in preparatory school: “Men, Shaymaa, only want a woman’s body. They would do anything to get it. They seduce girls with sweet talk, selling them the illusion of love until they have their way with them. Your body is your honor, Shaymaa, and your father’s honor. Your body is the whole family’s dignity. If you are lax with it we will spend the rest of our lives humiliated, in shame. Your body is a trust that God Almighty has placed in your hands to preserve, sound and pure, until you hand it over to the man who marries you in accordance with God’s commandments and the Prophet’s way. Know, Shaymaa, that a man never marries a woman who yields any part of her body to him. A man has no respect for an easy woman and he can never trust her with his honor and his children.”

  After Shaymaa recalled these principles she had grown up with, she felt content that she had stopped Tariq in his tracks. After a while she thought more calmly: even though he had made a monstrous mistake by trying to embrace her, he, on the other hand, has declared his love for her, which meant that he respected her and wanted to marry her.

  She sat down to study, determined to give it her all. She said to herself, Our love should give us an added impetus to work hard and get the degree, so we can go back to Egypt and marry. When she finished studying, she went to the bathroom, where she performed her ablution. She performed the obligatory night prayer and the recommended extra prayers. Then she turned off the light and went to bed in the dark. She kept staring at the dark and then something happened that surprised her: she recalled what Tariq had done and did not disapprove of it and was not angry with him for it. To the contrary, she was swept by an overpowering affection for him. He was in love with her and wanted to embrace her as all lovers did. That was all. Could she have exaggerated her anger? Once again her mother’s harsh warnings came back to her mind, but for the first time in her life, she found herself rethinking them.

  If what her mother was saying was true, then a girl who was lax with her body, even just a little bit, could never marry. But she knew many stories proving the opposite of that. She knew girls who had given men liberally of their bodies and yet ended up with excellent marriages. Her friend Radwa, instructor in the pathology department in Tanta Medical School, became her professor’s mistress, and their illicit relationship was the talk of the whole school for a long time. In the end the professor divorced his wife, the mother of his children, and married Radwa and had children with her. What about her neighbor in Tanta, Lubna? Did she not go out with several young men and tell her in person about physical relations with them? Kisses and hugs and more, things that Shaymaa could not even imagine. What had happened in the end? Was Lubna’s reputation sullied and her life ruined? Was she cursed and despised forever? On the contrary, she married Tamir, son of the millionaire Farag al-Bahtimi, owner of the famous candy factories. And Tamir was now madly in love with her and wouldn’t refuse her anything. That same Lubna whose body was handled freely by young men was now living like a princess in a palace-like villa on the outskirts of Tanta, a happy wife and mother of two children. And why should she go far for examples? How about she herself? Hadn’t she lived chastely? Hadn’t she reached her thirties untouched by a man? All her life she had acted properly and had not permitted anyone at school to go beyond the bounds of collegiality; even her professors she had treated with much reserve. Her reputation at school and in the neighborhood was unblemished. So why wasn’t she married yet? Why hadn’t suitors beaten a path to her door for the sake of her superior morals?

  All these instances disproved what her mother said. Was her mother exaggerating or was she talking about the morals of a bygone era? Couldn’t a girl’s permissiveness (within limits) with the man she loved be a clever way to entice him to marry her? Wasn’t it possible that if he kissed and hugged her that he would get more attached to her? Despite her medical study she knew nothing about men’s feelings. Wasn’t it possible that a man’s love for a woman made him, against his own will, think about her body? Besides, if every relationship outside marriage was a horribly shameful and forbidden sin and those committing it were unequivocally cursed, then why didn’t God damn those Americans, most of whom lived in sin? Those young men and women that she saw on weekends at train stops and parks, exchanging passionate kisses publicly and sometimes going even further, doing openly what she would be ashamed to do with the husband she had lawfully married in a closed room. Why didn’t God’s wrath befall such wanton sinners?

  The months that Shaymaa had spent in Chicago made her think about her life differently. She began to have doubts about the established principles that she grew up holding to be sacred. Was God going to judge us Muslims one way and judge Americans another way? Those Ameri
cans were committing all the great sins: they fornicate, gamble, drink liquor, and engage in all kinds of deviant acts, but God Almighty didn’t seem to be angry with them; instead of punishing them for their sins, he was giving them so much wealth, knowledge, and power that they had become the greatest and strongest country in the world. Why does God punish us Muslims when we commit sins, while going easy on the Americans?

  “I take refuge in God away from Satan who deserves to be stoned. I ask God for forgiveness and I repent,” she repeated, being frightened at where her thoughts had gone. She turned on her side and pressed the pillow against her head to stop the flow of thoughts, but when she closed her eyes, a final, deep-rooted fact revealed itself to her: Tariq loved her and respected her and he meant her no harm. He wanted to embrace her to express his feelings, no more and no less. The whole episode did not justify her behavior toward him. She had been cruel to him. She was now remembering his beloved pale face as he mumbled his apology in shame. She fell asleep feeling profound sympathy for him. The first thing she did when she got up in the morning was to call him. He sounded awkward, as if he expected her to chide him again, but she started talking lightheartedly to prove to him that she had forgotten the matter. They planned their day as usual and the week passed uneventfully, except that their relationship became more intimate, as if what had happened had brought them closer. A new feeling came into play in their relationship: whenever their bodies got close to each other, even for a moment, unintentionally, a great tension arose between them, whereupon they got confused and stammered and her face turned red, as if he had suddenly opened the door while she was naked. When Saturday came around they started to plan to spend it together as usual. Tariq said, “Let’s go to the movies and then I’ll treat you to dinner at the pizza place I discovered. What do you think?”

  She didn’t seem thrilled and said, “Frankly, it’s cold outside and I am tired of taking the L. Listen, we’ll have dinner in my apartment. I’ll make a pizza that’s a hundred times better than the restaurant’s. What do you say?”

  He seemed at a loss to understand what was happening. He stared at her face, which turned red suddenly as she laughed nervously. What exactly did she want? He tried to embrace her and she made a scene. So why was she inviting him to her place again? Tariq was so totally confused and unable to concentrate that he could not understand the new biochemistry lesson. And, strangely enough, that did not disturb him much. He said to himself as he closed the book: I’ll try to understand it later on. He threw himself onto the bed and crossed his legs (his favorite posture for thinking) and then asked himself what he was going to do with Shaymaa. The answer came right away: I’ll go to her place and come what may!

  At the appointed time exactly he stood before her door. He was wearing his sharpest outfit: dark blue jeans, a white woolen turtleneck, and a black leather jacket. As soon as he stepped inside, the smell of the dough baking in the oven greeted him. He sat watching television until Shaymaa finished cooking. She set the table and called out to him in a voice that rang soft and affectionate in his ear. She was wearing a blue brocade Moroccan gown. His heart skipped several beats when he noticed that it was closed by a long zipper from top to bottom. Her body was completely covered, but the thought that one pull of the zipper would render her totally naked began to peck at his mind, just as a bird did to a leaf until it finished it off. He was so overcome by wild sexual fantasies (all beginning with the undoing of the zipper) that he became a nervous wreck. The pizza was delicious. They sat eating and talking about different topics and her voice was melodious and deep. There were warm and mysterious signals in it that so charged the atmosphere that his ability to concentrate was diminished to the extent that he didn’t hear most of what she said. After dinner he insisted on carrying the dishes to the kitchen himself. He washed them well, dried them, and returned them to the shelves. He rinsed the kettle, filled it with water, and placed it on the stove to make tea. He was surprised when she came into the kitchen. She came close to him and said in a soft, hoarse voice that sounded strange to him, “Would you like some help?”

  He didn’t answer. He felt his heart beating as if it were a drum. She came closer and stood next to him. He felt the soft fabric of the gown on his hand and his nostrils were filled with her strong perfume. He found it hard to breathe and lost his ability to focus. He felt his stomach contracting, and it occurred to him that he might be about to faint.

  * * *

  We drank and talked. Wendy told me about her family. Her mother was a social worker and her father a dentist. She lived with them in New York until she got the job at the Chicago Stock Exchange. She was living by herself in a studio near Rush Street. She said that she loved Chicago but that sometimes she felt lonely and depressed. She thought sometimes that her life had no meaning. She asked me, “Do you think I should see a psychiatrist?”

  “I don’t think so. These are normal sad moods that all people have at one time or another, especially since you’re living by yourself. Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

  “I found true love once, and it was wonderful, but unfortunately it ended last summer.”

  I took comfort in her answer and began to tell her about myself and about my love of poetry. She said, somewhat diffidently, “Unfortunately I don’t read literature; I don’t have the time.”

  “You yourself are a beautiful poem.”

  “Thank you.”

  She picked up her purse and said, “I must go. I have work in the morning.”

  “Would it bother you if I called you?”

  “Not at all.” I called her twice during the week and then I invited her on Friday to coffee at the school cafeteria (to minimize expenses). On the subsequent Saturday, following the instructions of the sage Graham, I invited her to dinner. This time she seemed to have paid more attention to her appearance. She wore black silk pants, a sleeveless white blouse, and a red jacket with a red flower pin on the lapel. Her simple attempt at dressing elegantly was touching and sincere. We had dinner in an Italian restaurant downtown. We talked and laughed as if we were old intimate friends. I actually felt very comfortable in her company. I told her everything, about my mother and my sister, my problem at Cairo University and my love of poetry. She asked me, “Do you dream of becoming a famous poet one day?”

  “Fame is not a measure of a poet’s success. There are famous poets whose work has no value and great poets that people don’t know about.”

  “So, why do you write?”

  “I write because I have something to say. What matters to me is not fame but appreciation, that what I write reaches a number of people, no matter how few, and changes their thoughts and feelings.”

  “Ever since I was a child, I’ve dreamed of meeting a real poet.”

  “You are sitting with one.”

  I held her hands across the table. I raised them slowly to my lips and kissed them. She looked at me with a captivating smile. We went out to the street, tipsy from the wine. The sound of her footfalls next to me gave me joy. She asked me suddenly, “Where are we going now?”

  My heart raced and I said, “I have a great documentary about Egypt. Would you like to watch it with me?”

  “Of course. Where is it?”

  “In my apartment.”

  “Okay.”

  We walked to the L station. I hurried my steps, as if I were afraid she might change her mind. We took the Blue Line. I sat in the seat opposite her. I studied her features slowly. She seemed extremely tender and sweet. I thought that my strong attraction to her was probably due to the problems I had encountered since arriving in Chicago. I definitely needed a woman’s affection. When we arrived at my apartment we sat next to each other on the sofa in the living room. We drank wine and talked. I was worried, afraid I might be too precipitous and ruin the occasion. I put my arms around her as she spoke. Her face tensed for a moment and I felt her body warm and vivacious. I was one step away from happiness and I knew from experience that it was a decisive moment
, that if it slipped out of my hand, everything would be lost. We stopped talking suddenly and I felt her hot breaths warming me. She seemed to be breathing heavily and I thought she was about to cry. I took her in my arms and began to kiss her passionately on the face and neck. I felt her body contract, then relax little by little. I extended my hand spontaneously to her back to undo her bra. She pulled away gently and planted a quick kiss on my cheek, then whispered tenderly as she got up, “I’ll go to the bathroom and I’ll be back in a moment.”

  As soon as she appeared, naked, I eagerly embraced her. We made love a first time, strong and hard, as if getting rid of our pentup feelings, or as if we had suddenly discovered the possibilities of pleasure and started devouring them in disbelief. Afterward I lay down breathing heavily next to her on the bed and strangely enough I felt desire looming in the distance. That was quite rare, for my chronic problem with women was that weariness that came over me after lovemaking. As soon as I reached orgasm, the fog of lust would be dispelled and I’d lose my awareness of beauty. With Wendy it was different. I looked at her naked body and it looked capable of seducing me endlessly. I felt blood rushing through my veins as if I hadn’t satisfied my desire only a few moments ago. She rested her head on my chest and said in a melodious, content voice, “You know something, the first time I saw you, I was sure we’d end up in bed.”