“If you promise never to do it again, I’ll promise not to tell your father,” she said, ignoring Victor once more.
Robby quickly promised and swore silently to keep his word. In his imagination, he pictured himself standing before his father’s steel gaze, a combination of contempt and disappointment. The image was too much for him to bear. He was grateful to his mother for saving him from this, for it was easier for her to handle it discreetly. Robby was a responsible child, and he decided to be worthy of this special treatment. He hated Victor Hamdi-Ali for dragging him into this mess in the first place, and left the room with his mother without giving him so much as another look. Victor stayed put, pulling up his loose underwear. His attitude was practical: if the lady told only his mother, he’d be scot-free. If she should choose to tell his father, or worse yet, his brother … but he quickly waved off these possibilities. He knew women were more comfortable settling such delicate matters among themselves. Of course, Emilie Hamdi-Ali could also decide to share this matter with her husband or her eldest son … but Victor viewed this option as highly unlikely. His merciful mother would be so scared of their harsh reactions that she would prefer to handle this matter on her own. And he would work things out with her somehow. When he weighed the matter further he became certain that his mother would be too embarrassed to even acknowledge the problem at all; she would turn a blind eye and pretend to know nothing. Encouraged by this series of conclusions, he grabbed his fishing rod and went out to the hall. Robby was already wearing his pants again. Victor didn’t even invite him to the beach. He only smiled condescendingly. Robby gritted his teeth and said nothing.
30. ARABESQUE
When Joseph Hamdi-Ali returned from the tracks that day, he lay on his bed and refused to drink coffee. Exhaustion filled his body, as if some chilly serum had dripped and become absorbed into his marrow. He welcomed the illness, or at least accepted it with a fatalistic greeting. There’s something about being ill that liberates you from all trivial obligations. Suddenly it is the focal point, pushing away other hardships. The sick man becomes familiar with his body and intimate with his soul, knowing that on that final long journey he will not be joined by wife, children or doctors. What would he say when he’d come face-to-face with his maker? Years ago, he turned his back on the religion of his fathers, following his heart, his whims … Is it Allah sitting up there in the heavens, upon a high throne, floating in the Nile of paradise, or is it the God of the Jews? It’s not to be excluded that they’re one and the same God, just as Abraham was the father of both Isaac and Ishmael, one father for us all, one God, each man seeing Him through his own eyes, one with the eyes of a Jew, another with the eyes of a Christian, another yet with the eyes of a Muslim. Then one man would say to another, “You see? I was right, God is Jewish!” And the other would say, “No, I was right! God is Christian, can’t you see His halo?” “That’s a skullcap, you’re blind!” the Jew would call out, laughing. Then the Muslim would stand up and declare, “Neither a halo nor a skullcap. What you see is the headband that holds his kaffiyeh in place.” And the three would go on arguing through eternity. Joseph laughed bitterly— there is no certainty, even up there! Even up there we are deceived by our senses; even up there, those damned wars of faith carry on. Impatiently, he pushed away the bothersome thought and saw that same patriarch, that wondrous father of all peoples, smiling at him and saying pleasantly, Yusef, you are my son, and whether you call me Allah or Jehova, or even le bon Dieu, I am one in Heaven and on earth, and there is no other but Me. I’ve had many prophets. Just like this delta, which is one river splitting into many arms. Each arm says, Only I belong to my father, the river. But the birds in the sky know that the river has many children, and that these tributaries are but one. The truth has many faces, but it is only one truth …
Yusef Hamdi-Ali’s father was a clerk at the courthouse in Izmir. He made his living writing letters of appeal to the court for the illiterate. Sometimes he wrote love letters for them in decorative handwriting. Sometimes he would amuse himself by embellishing people’s letters with complex and ravishing arabesques. Yusef remembered the legendary creatures his father would conjure up so easily on yellowing paper. In his few free hours he would read and interpret to his son the mysterious contents of these compositions, which contained the essence and life of Islam.
Why was he remembering these calligraphic acrobatics of the virtuoso scribe now, of all times? For a moment he dozed off and saw himself trapped in the curlicues of one such arabesque, trying to free himself of the thicket of letters.
The dream was short, a blink of an eye, perhaps no time at all, perhaps eternity. Outside the window, an unreal sky winked at him. Joseph’s eyes were wide open, and a serenity he’d never experienced before descended upon him.
Leila strode slowly and sensually among fields and clouds, and Yusef settled on her bare back and was carried away on the wings of a dream.
31. IN A FOREIGN LAND
Once, long ago when Joseph Hamdi-Ali was young and Leila enjoyed fame, the jockey and his mare were invited to race against the best jockeys and horses in Europe, at the Royal Ascot race in Berkshire, England. King George himself was to grace the event held each June with his royal presence. All of Britain prayed for mild weather, for in this faraway, northern land, it rained even in summer.
During the ten-day journey by ship to the British Isles, Leila was already restless. Joseph hired a special veterinarian to escort them. Those days, Joseph was rich and famous, and though he was never handsome, he had a seductive Eastern allure. Many women were prepared to join him in bed, especially on those long days of sea and sky. But he turned them all down with glum zealotry and remained faithful to his Emilie, and to his Leila. The veterinarian saw nothing out of the ordinary and reassured Joseph, jokingly telling him that a mare taken from her habitat would have a natural tendency toward depression, just as can occur in the best human families, and that Joseph had nothing to worry about.
Some time later, Joseph recalled those days of bright sun and flickering water, those days spent deep in the darkness of Leila’s special cabin, wondering what made her spirits so low and what was preventing her from eating. When he remembered all this, he knew for certain that Leila already foresaw what was in store for her in that foreign land of heavy clouds, and was sending him a silent warning, but he took no notice, purposely ignoring her desperate cry for help. He would not give up the promise of fame and fortune.
He, Joseph, left his homeland in his youth, turning his back on tradition, and went in search of greener pastures. He wandered across land and sea, never feeling that dull pain at the spot where his roots were torn from the ground.
But his mare did. Quick, easy, vulgar adaptation is not the way of nobility. Several years earlier, when she was uprooted from the great desert landscape and trapped among the fences of the giant tracks at the Gezira Sporting Club in Cairo, it took her weeks and months before she agreed to make do with an enclosed space, even though the tracks were so big that from certain angles the fence was nowhere to be seen. Joseph knew that when Leila felt stifled she stared longingly at the horizon of yellow desert dunes, encompassing endless space. At first Leila was rebellious and melancholic, and indifferent at best. Joseph was desperate. He’d spent his savings on her, hoping to rebuild a fortune off her, and had been bitterly disappointed. He often asked himself why he’d been tempted to purchase her at all. He even entertained the thought of selling her, despite the financial loss. But then, one bright morning, without any warning, she grew wings and spread them with nobility and grace, and overwhelming power.
Now Joseph sat at her side in the gloomy cabin of the ship and told himself, She’ll pull through … she’ll pull through …
The weather in Ascot was gray and dreary. Tiny drops of rain floated like dust through the heavy, hot air. Jockey and mare were somber, their heads hanging low. Yusef didn’t cheer up even when his promised payment was received. He and his mare were exiles. On the decisive day the gr
assy tracks were slippery and treacherous. Joseph expected the race to be cancelled or postponed due to the weather, but when black umbrellas began popping up like mushrooms, he realized that Europeans did not change their plans due to a drizzle. The race would be held as planned.
Did she slip on the muddy ground, losing her footing? Did she trip, taking an incautious step?
Everyone knows what happened next. Leila died in that foreign, unforgiving land. Leila died and the rain fell harder and harder and the ladies and gentlemen of Ascot fled from the storm. Leila was dead and no shipping company agreed to transport the carcass of a mare all the way to Egypt. Joseph was forced to leave Leila behind, and return to Alexandria alone.
This happened long ago, and one might assume it had been forgotten. After all, she was only a mare.
The illness lasted three days and three nights.
32. EYEWITNESS
His leaving the house suddenly on the morning of the race made everyone suspicious and restless. Why did Joseph Hamdi-Ali choose to leave the house that morning, of all times? For three days he had laid in bed as if in another world, cavorting with angels, as if everyday matters were beyond him, the smile of death hovering over his face, and now suddenly he’d jumped out of bed, put on a clean, ironed shirt, a short jacket, his fez, and left with haste. Not just for a stroll, people would say after the fact. It was the exit of a determined man.
“He was seen walking into the pharmacy on the corner,” Madame Marika would say decisively.
General protest: Seen by whom? God save us from gossip! Que Dieu nous protège des mauvaises langues!
“I heard it from my Vita,” Madame Marika said to absolve herself of responsibility for her accusatory statement.
“And who did your Vita hear it from?” several voices asked at once. Some believed and wanted to know how Vita found out, certain that neither Vita nor Renée Marika invented the story. Others saw the entire tale as irresponsible slander, and asked the question ironically. They weren’t expecting an answer, but rather a shrug. But a woman like Marika was not one to give in to pressure. She quickly quipped, “From his sister, from Victoria herself.”
“And Victoria—where from?”
“Yes, Victoria, who did she hear it from?”
“Did she see Joseph?”
“Was she what you’d call an eyewitness?”
“Or did she hear it from someone else as well?”
“Why don’t you go and ask her yourselves!”
Someone made the effort to go to the Sporting neighborhood and ask Victoria herself. It turned out that her servant, Gamila, had seen a short, skinny man in a fez walking into the pharmacy.
“And is Joseph Hamdi-Ali the only short, skinny man who wears a fez in all of Alexandria?”
They interrogated the boy who worked at the pharmacy, a bespectacled Syrian whose French was vraiment impeccable. He answered the female contingent with perfect manners, but they couldn’t glean much from his words. In his generosity and graciousness he might have even tried to agree with those who claimed that Joseph wasn’t at the pharmacy that morning, as well as with those who claimed he was. Upon leaving, the ladies could agree only on one thing – the man was certainly charmant, but none of them could say he gave a clear answer.
No one knew anything. We asked our late grandmother, when she was still alive, and she couldn’t answer such a seemingly simple question either: Did Joseph Hamdi-Ali visit the pharmacy that summer’s day? And if so, did he buy a toothbrush or some brilliantine for his hair, or perhaps something else … something which was later presented in court as Exhibit A?
Grandma told us there were people who tried to jump to conclusions and judge Joseph Hamdi-Ali by the way his life ended, and who said that what he did afterward proved it all: Had he not known he was guilty, why would he have acted the way he had?
Grandma disputed this view. Grandma, illiterate but shrewd, disputed this by asking a simple question: Since when is everything we do a result of our previous actions? She didn’t ask it quite this way, of course, having spoken Ladino, a language in which things sound differently. At any rate, no matter how we look at it, we find ourselves returning once more to Leila, striding calmly among the clouds, wavy and graceful as silk, almost feline, eternal.
33. STAIN
His deterioration began after Leila’s death. Joseph would not replace her. Cards and raki, and perhaps other women, who knows? Emilie certainly didn’t know. He’d disappear for entire days, sometimes nights too, and when he’d return, worn out and ragged, nerves shot, Emilie would welcome him as if nothing happened, as if everything was as it always had been. She cooked him food which he barely touched. She tried to make love to him, usually unsuccessfully. She told him of the child’s accomplishments at school. She didn’t tell him that their money, not only the large fortune he’d accumulated in his years as a jockey, but even the insurance money they’d received upon Leila’s death, was running out. Some say Victor was conceived on one of those tortured nights, and that this is the cause of his strangeness. Who knows?
One fine morning, when David was seventeen, his father came to school, pulled him out of class, ignoring the teacher’s protests, and took him away. He bought him a mare and paid with a check, not knowing it would bounce. When Emilie found out she ran to her father and groveled at his feet, threatening to kill herself. The shocked old man pulled out his wallet. Joseph began training his son in riding the new mare, called Esperance, for she represented hope. David learned quickly. He’d inherited his father’s agility on horseback, though he clearly lacked that passionate devotion on the tracks. It didn’t take long before the Hamdi-Ali team began making waves. Money slowly began flowing back to the family. Emilie returned her father’s loan and never told her husband a thing. She smiled happily: God hadn’t let her down. Now everything would be as it once was, before Leila had died. She was sure Esperance would take Leila’s place. The bad years were over. Maybe one or two white hairs. A five-year-old child clinging to her leg. She had a special affection for that boy, or perhaps it was pity. His heart-wrenching ugliness, the strangeness of his manners. But he was only a baby. When he grew up things would work out, Emilie told herself, though deep inside she resigned herself to a different fate for him. It was clear he would never be like David. And so what? Did all children have to be like David? She watched her eldest son with pride as he leaned into the mare’s back, a reflection blurred by dust and speed. She would sit in the loge wearing a small brimmed hat, ruffles cascading against her eyes. She followed her son through small binoculars. A seventeen-year-old boy, and that giant horse obeyed him as if he were God. One day they’d be rich again thanks to that boy. Joseph expected it to happen within three, or maybe four years …
Three years, four years, five—she wasn’t getting any younger, but she had no complaints. Once more he sat there bent over the horse, and it was clear he would win. Emilie had no doubt about it. She brought the binoculars to her eyes.
The horses stood in a row, every muscle flexed and prepared. The jockeys bent over them, their visors turned back. Any unnecessary protrusion could set them back. A horse and a jockey must be one aerodynamic unit, like a bullet shot from a gun. The row of horses at the starting line is long, the competition great, but all minds and hearts are set on only two contestants. They all know only two are battling today. A tournament of two.
Al-Tal’ooni’s black eyes looked ahead stubbornly. Emilie’s binoculars fixed on her son’s bright blue eyes, which wandered around with bored indifference. They all awaited the signal. Flies swarmed around the moist corners of the patient horses’ eyes. One might wonder what makes them run, these slender beasts? They know nothing of the bets placed and pending in the hot, stifling air of an Alexandrian summer’s day. Is it an innate sense of competition that shoots adrenaline into their hooves? They cannot be moved by external forces only, by the spurs in their sides and the reins around their necks. Perhaps it’s the brotherhood of man and beast? Or maybe this
love, this sensual love that turns the wheels of the world, which also animates this graceful, magical gallop, making your breath speed and your throat let out cries of excitement you’d never dare sound in a respectable salon, sitting down to a game of cards.
Al-Tal’ooni must have been certain that the bond between him and his horse was the main factor in his success on the track. They said that Ahmed had never loved a woman. Even if the rumors about him and the consul’s wife were true, it clearly wasn’t love. They said he never loved his mother and his father, and that he despised his many brothers. He loved the desert, but even that love he abandoned for greener pastures. The track was a small-scale desert for him. Occasionally he disappeared from the city, riding out to the dunes. He’d often been seen on the beaches of Lake Mariout, riding around, his white gown blowing in the breeze. Some said he did it for the newspapers, as a form of public relations, creating the image of a legendary hero from Arabian Nights, his life filled with mystery and fantasy. Leila loved the desert too, Joseph thought to himself and shook his head, as if trying to push away a disturbing thought. Ahmed and his horse, Al Buraq, named for the mythical steed that transported the prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem, were like one being, perfection; no one could tell where the man ended and the horse began. That’s just the kind of thing people used to say about him and Leila. Is it any wonder, then, that the day Leila left him, flying off to gallop in the eternal fields of heaven, Joseph retired from the track and never rode again?
Not David. He did not see the mystical, romantic side of things. He loved Esperance and could have said (and if he didn’t dare, we would say it for him) that in his affinity toward her he sometimes experienced emotions and exultation close to that felt with a beloved woman. But this cult of the animal was nowhere near a bond of love, mon vieux! Joseph turned to horse racing because his soul could find peace nowhere but on the track. David turned to horse racing because his father had been in the trade before him, and because he admired his jockey father as a child, and because he was promised he could get rich.
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