Chicago

by Alaa Al Aswany

  Chris hesitated a little, then, encouraged by the expert’s presentation, she asked, “What’s the difference between a clitoral orgasm and that of the G-spot?”

  The expert smiled and said, “An orgasm achieved by the G-spot is much stronger and takes place over long, successive waves. Most women who try it regret that they hadn’t known about it earlier.”

  Silence fell again; she asked if Chris had any other questions and Chris said she didn’t, so the expert sighed and said as she got up, “Great. Come and choose your new friend.”

  The expert, followed by Chris, went through a small door to a side room and stood in front of a glass display case filled with different models of vibrators. The expert put her hand on Chris’s shoulder and asked in a friendly tone of voice, “May I ask how much you’re willing to spend on a vibrator? We have models ranging from ten dollars to two hundred dollars.”

  “I can pay. It should be a good model though.”

  “This makes my job easier.”

  The expert bent and took out a gadget in the shape of a long, large penis with a bent part that looked like a tree branch jutting out on the side. On the bottom was a white round part that, Chris figured out, was the housing for the battery. Pointing to it proudly, the expert said, “This model is called the new and improved Impulse Jackrabbit; in my opinion, it is the best in the world. You’ll see how it takes you to heaven. It will cost you a hundred and fifty dollars plus twenty dollars for a box of cleaner. Is the price okay?”

  Chris nodded. The expert explained the component parts of the vibrator and the way to use it, and then she took out a DVD and said, “Before using it, I advise that you watch this DVD. Is it going to be cash or charge?”

  The expert swiped Chris’s card then gave her the receipt to sign. Then she wrapped the vibrator, the box, and the DVD carefully and put them in an elegant bag bearing the store’s logo. She handed it to her and said, “I wish you happiness with the Impulse Jackrabbit. You can call me any time if you have any questions. Consultation is free for a month. I’ll think I’ve done a successful job not only when you use the device, but also when you’ve got rid of the slightest embarrassment when you do it. Always remember that you’re exercising your right to sexual fulfillment. Please consider the vibrator like a shaver or hair dryer, just a device that makes our life easier and more beautiful.”

  BUT CHRIS DIDN’T GET OVER her embarrassment easily. It wasn’t exactly embarrassment, but a sort of strange feeling. She took the train with the Impulse Jackrabbit resting in its elegant bag. At the beginning, she felt that the hand holding the bag was somehow separate from her body. Then she fell prey to the fear that the bag would fall to the floor or tear suddenly, revealing the vibrator, and all the passengers on the train would discover that the dignified lady in the dark green suit and dark glasses had bought a gizmo so that she could have fun with her vagina. Chris resisted the worries, assuring herself that the bag was sturdy and impossible to tear. She recalled what the expert had said and told herself: I am not doing anything shameful. My body belongs to me and I have a right to enjoy it in the manner that pleases me. It’s not fair that I should suffer deprivation just because Salah is unhappy with his life. I am not going to deny my desires or bury myself because after thirty years, he discovered that he did the wrong thing by immigrating to America. I have a right to enjoy sex as much as I want.

  The logic of her thoughts was convincing but it did not reflect the whole truth. There was something missing that she knew but ignored. Her sexual problem was only the scab on her wound. There were profound sorrows burdening her heart. Salah was asking for a divorce? After all the years they’d lived together, he wanted to leave her? Just like that? Shake her hand and go? He wanted to turn into a person from the past, from memory, a picture in an album that she’d look at sometimes and return to the drawer? Why had he stopped loving her? Had he fallen in love with another woman? Had he lost interest in her because she was getting older? Had she, without knowing it, turned into a boring, talkative old woman? Had she neglected her appearance? Did Arab men always need younger women and was that why they had more than one wife? Had Salah kept an Oriental man’s mentality in spite of the years he’d spent in America? Or was the truth that he had never loved her? Had he deceived her all those years? Had he married her to get an American passport? To enhance his social status? To be the successful immigrant university professor married to an American woman? If that was true, why had he stayed with her all those years? Had he left her after getting his American citizenship, it would have been easier. She would’ve been able to forget, even forgive him. She was young then and could’ve started all over again. But now it was as if he had used her all those years then decided to throw her in the garbage. How could he bring himself to hurt her so much? Even if he didn’t love her. They had lived together a whole lifetime and he couldn’t undo that in just one moment. He had no right to do that. Those thoughts kept boring into her like bouts of chronic pain; her feelings of misery doubled her need for pleasure. She was instinctively driven to confine her consciousness to her body to escape the heavy burden of her sorrow.

  Chris took a hot bath then went back to her room, where she had been sleeping alone ever since Salah left her. She turned on the laptop, inserted the DVD, and followed the operating instructions attentively. Then she lay on the bed, took out the vibrator, and felt it with her fingers. Its head was extremely smooth; the stem was studded with protuberances like pointed beads. Why was it called “rabbit”? Was it because it looked like a rabbit or because it was obedient and amicable? She slipped under the covers and rubbed the vibrator with the moisturizing liquid according to the instructions then gently inserted it. For the first time she felt how large and hard it was. As soon as she pushed the operating button, she felt an urgent desire to urinate. That feeling left her little by little, leading to strong, exciting, and escalating sensations: waves of devilish tremors that shook her whole body relentlessly. She bit the pillow in order to prevent herself from screaming. The pleasure was fierce and brutal, without fantasy, affection, or a partner. It was pure, wicked, burning pleasure that kept hitting her hard, as if it were a whip or a bolt of lightning, delivering her in the end into the throes of a mighty orgasm that shook her in successive waves then left her exhausted with delight.

  In the morning, under the stream of a hot shower, she felt her body invigorated, as if born anew. Her head was clear and her muscles were rid of tension, as if she had slept soundly for a whole day. The Impulse Jackrabbit had catapulted her into soaring orbits of pleasure that she had not known even in her wildest nights with Salah. Day after day she celebrated nightfall, taking care of her body then bringing the rabbit to it as if it were a real lover, as if she were in love with it. She was going to love anything that gave her all that happiness, even if it was a battery-operated device. She treated it kindly, cleaned it carefully, rubbed it with the liquid with extreme care, and wrapped her fingers around it softly, as if afraid of hurting it or causing it pain.

  After spending several nights with the rabbit, she began to introduce new variations. She would begin with watching a pornographic movie, fondling herself, then inserting the rabbit; that way she could have two, sometimes three orgasms. She also let herself go totally unconstrained: she screamed loudly with pleasure until she got hoarse. She no longer worried that Salah might hear her. She was sure their life together was over. He had breakfast alone and lunch out and closed his office door to avoid seeing her. So what if he heard her nightly screams? Or even saw her sleeping with the Impulse Jackrabbit? She no longer cared about him. Actually, she overdid the screaming bit, motivated by a deep inner desire that he hear her. She wanted to tell him, “Here I am getting the pleasure you’ve deprived me of! Here is my body, which you have abandoned and tormented with your impotence, enjoying pleasure and being liberated time after time!”

  Dr. Salah, however, did not hear her. Not only because the basement was isolated and far off, but also because he
was no longer there, because he had crossed over to the other side. He had discovered an enchanted world hidden deep in an Arabian Nights vault to which he stole at night to enjoy beauty before being assailed by the hostile, ugly daylight. He no longer cared about day-to-day life. He stopped thinking about Chris, divorce, his sexual impotence, or even his job. He spent his days half there, in a casual and nonchalant manner, waiting for the moment of release. At midnight he would begin his trip: he would take a bath and wear cologne as if going on a date. Then he would go downstairs to the basement and put on his 1970s clothes. He had found a good tailor who restored his old clothes to a new life by taking them out to his new measurements for a fee that would have been enough for a brand-new wardrobe. Before starting his nightly journey, he locked himself in, perhaps to feel completely isolated from the outside world or perhaps for fear that Chris might open the door; if she did, she would be certain that he had gone crazy. He wouldn’t be able to explain what he was doing. He himself did not understand it. His overpowering desire was stronger than understanding or resistance. The clothes carried within their folds his history, the scent of his real days. Every piece of clothing brought back a different memory: those were the light cotton Shurbagi shirts that he used to buy from the Swailam store in downtown Cairo; the white sharkskin suit that he wore during summer evening special occasions; the blue suit for Thursday outings; and that was the striped black suit that he had bought especially to celebrate Zeinab’s birthday. They had dinner at Le Restaurant Union in front of the High Court building then went to the Cinema Rivoli, where they watched the movie My Father Is up the Tree. In the inner jacket pocket he found a folded piece of paper that had been in the same place for thirty years: the stub of a ticket for an Umm Kulthum concert that he had attended in 1969. An idea occurred to him, so he left the basement and came back carrying a tape recorder. He put on the song “al-Atlal” and sat listening to it wearing the same suit that he was wearing when he heard it for the first time.

  There, he was finally going back to his true self, riding the time machine described by H. G. Wells in the famous novel. He began to hum with Umm Kulthum and shout in ecstasy and cheer at the cadences exactly as he had done at the concert. Now he was listening to Umm Kulthum every night, and when it got close to 2 a.m. Chicago time, 9 a.m. Cairo time, Dr. Muhammad Salah turned off the recorder, put on his reading glasses, opened his telephone book, and began to call his old friends and acquaintances. All Cairo’s telephone numbers had changed: all the five-digit numbers were changed to seven-digit numbers. The numbers beginning with 3 now became 35 or 79. Every time he dialed, there were surprises. It was as if he were one of those cave sleepers at Ephesus, as if he had been asleep for thirty years then woke up and went back to his city. He dialed many wrong numbers, probably because the people he knew had moved. Sometimes he found the right number and then discovered that the person had died. Sometimes he reached those he was calling, whereupon he would say enthusiastically right away, “Don’t you remember me? I am Muhammad Salah, your colleague at Cairo University College of Medicine 1970.”

  They all remembered him, some immediately and the others after a little thought. There would be shouts of greeting and laughter, and then he would go on, “I’m now a professor in a medical school in Chicago.”

  “That’s great.”

  After the surprise and the shouting and the remembering of bygone days, there was bound to come a moment when the warmth of the conversation wore off. As if the person on the other end were asking, “What reminded you of me now? Why are you calling me?” He had to offer an answer. He would lie by talking of a fictitious reunion of the Class of 1970 of the College of Medicine at Cairo University, or claim that there was a cooperative project between doctors in Illinois and Egypt. He talked fast and lied with an enthusiasm that surprised even him, aiming to distract the other person so that he wouldn’t think how bizarre the conversation was and so that he wouldn’t pity him. They should not find out that nostalgia had crushed him, that he had discovered, after turning sixty, that he had made a mistake leaving his country, that he regretted emigration to death. He should not show them his weakness and sorrows. All that he wanted was for them to talk to him a little about the past, to remember with them his real life.

  Salah spent the late hours of the night making calls until the morning. Then he would take a bath and drink several cups of coffee and go to the university. Every two or three days his nervous system collapsed and he slept like a log until the following morning then once again resumed his journey to the past. He stumbled upon a true treasure when he discovered, on the Internet, a complete Cairo telephone directory. He gave up the old telephone book and started using the directory. Now he was able to make direct hits: he would remember the full name, then look it up in the Internet directory until he found the number and call. He was able to reconnect with a group of old acquaintances until he got to his target, his destination, the name that had persistently pressed itself on him from the beginning but which he had avoided, the name that he had exerted strenuous effort to dismiss from his mind, but finally gave into. He sat at the computer, opened the directory then tapped: “Zeinab Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Radwan.” He looked at the screen, panting with anticipation. A few seconds later the answer came: “Sorry, name not found.”

  He looked at the letters on the screen, crushed by disappointment. He thought: Zeinab was five years younger; she must have been married for quite some time. The telephone must be in her husband’s name, if she were still alive. He felt a lump in his throat: Was she dead? Suppose she had died, how could that concern him? Wasn’t it ironic that he should grieve for her death thirty years after he had left her? He remembered that there was a professional directory that gave work numbers. He found it and typed her full name then clicked on “search.” A few moments later his heart almost jumped for joy. Her name appeared with “Planning Controller, Ministry of Economy” next to it, then her office numbers. Has Zeinab now become a high-ranking government official? Has she kept her revolutionary ideas or had she turned into an ordinary woman, a government employee who punches the clock, curries favor with her bosses, engages in office intrigues against her colleagues, then rushes home to cook before husband and children return? What did Zeinab look like now? Has time been kind to her and left her some of the old charm? Or has she turned into a fat, veiled woman like the tens of thousands crowding Cairo streets that he saw on television? How sad that would make him. “I still cherish you in my memory, Zeinab, as you sat next to me in the Orman garden! How beautiful you were! Can we go back as we were, Zeinab? There must be a way of going back.”

  It was now ten in the morning Cairo time, a good time to call. Perhaps she went to the office a little late, like big shots. He waited another half hour to make sure she would be there, and then he called. He exerted an extraordinary effort to control his emotions. The secretary answered in a soft voice. He asked her about Ustaza Zeinab. She asked for his name. His voice was choking with emotions as he said, “I am an old colleague of hers and I am calling from America.”

  “Just a moment,” she said and left him with a musical tune that kept playing endlessly. Finally the music stopped and her voice came on. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning. It is Muhammad Salah, Zeinab.”

  Chapter 28

  Not a day passed without Tariq Haseeb dipping into the spring of happiness. He would finish his studying, take a hot bath, and as soon as he looked at his naked body in the mirror and imagined what he would do in a few moments, his desire would blaze. He would comb his hair from right to left to hide his baldness then spray some expensive Pino Silvestre cologne on his neck and upper chest. Then he would bolt out of his apartment, take the elevator to Shaymaa’s apartment, ring the bell, and she would open the door so quickly he would think she had been waiting for him behind it. He would rush to her, embrace her, and shower her with kisses. She would whisper in a soft, chiding voice, “Enough, Tariq.”

  “No.”
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  “Do we have to meet every day?”

  “Of course.”

  “Isn’t what we do on Saturday enough?”

  “I want you every minute.”

  “We have to watch it. Finals are approaching.”

  “This time we will do better on the tests than before.”

  “God willing.”

  The daily love encounter didn’t last more than half an hour. Tariq called it “the quick salute to love,” after which he would return to his apartment, take another bath, and sleep like a baby. On Saturdays, the “salute” was not quick; they lived like a real couple. They did their shopping for the week, then went to the movies, then went back to Shaymaa’s apartment, where he would put on the pajamas that he had left there especially. He would get to the bed before her and watch television until she finished her bath. He would feel breathless with desire when he saw her approaching slowly, her face rosy from the hot water. In bed she would take off all her clothes except her panties (which they agreed to consider a red line that should never be crossed under any circumstances). She would cleave to him as a wife anxious to please her husband. When they were done with their peculiar way of lovemaking, they would have an affectionate, pleasant, comfortable conversation during which they didn’t feel the passage of time. Sometimes they spent the whole day in bed, sleeping naked, with her panties on — the red line, of course — in each other’s arms, and then they would wake up, eat, and drink tea and make love more than once.