Stealth (New Directions Paperbook) Read online

  Stealth

  Sonallah Ibrahim

  Translated from the Arabic by Hosam Aboul-Ela

  A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK

  Chapter One

  My father stops for a second at the door to the house before we step into the alley. He raises his hand to his mouth, twisting the curved ends of his grey moustache upwards. He makes sure that his fez tilts slightly to the left. He removes the black, burnt-out cigarette from the corner of his mouth. Brushes off ash that has dropped on to the front of his thick black overcoat. He wipes his face to smooth the wrinkles in his forehead and forces a smile across his lips. He grabs hold of my left hand. We feel our way forward in the light of the sunset.

  We head towards the right, the only way out of our alley, picking our way to the winding main street with its crowds of people and shops. At the market, Hajj Abdel ’Alim, the sheikh of the quarter, calls to us from his shop: “Please, stop in for a while, Khalil Bey.”

  My father answers him quietly: “We’ll pass by on our way back.”

  The chemist. His shop is clean and gives off a smell of phenol. A glass bowl is piled high with chocolates and sweets. I pull my father’s hand towards it and he scolds me.

  The shoe shop. A shoeshine man sits at the bottom of a raised chair. A newspaper rack stands in front and a huge radio at the back.

  The fez press. It has a long brass base and a big brass molding on top.

  Then finally, the square.

  Its light is pale in the first few minutes of evening. The picture of the king is lit by lamps. Posters congratulate him on his birthday. Billboards for cinemas. The film Hassan the Brave is playing in living color. The Black Knight is playing at Cinema Miami, with Arabic subtitles. I feel a cool breeze slapping at my bare knees between the bottoms of my shorts and the tops of my long woolen socks. My left hand feels warm in my father’s strong grip. Tram number 22 with its open cars and wooden benches. I race beside the tramcar with the children running along its left side. I jump on it at the last second to show we can escape the ticket collector, almost falling underneath its rows of metal wheels.

  We board the second car, and he squeezes me down in the corner so I’ll look younger than I am. He pulls eight millimes out of his breast pocket for the ticket. We get off at Sayyida Square, flooded with lights. The Swaris bus is pulled by two skinny mules. Its passengers fill out its benches facing each other and spilling on to its back steps. The driver’s whip lashes across the backs of the two animals. An old, fat woman squats on the floor around a tray of cigarette butts. In a cramped space at the end there is a small desk behind a glass partition. An old, hunchbacked man with a thick beard. My father takes his round pocket watch out of his breast pocket. The old man eyes it carefully until he puts it aside and puts down his money.

  Again, the busy street. The lottery seller hangs his tickets on the wall. My father takes out two tickets and his reading glasses. He compares his numbers to the register of the seller. He tears up the two tickets and throws them aside. He buys two new tickets, a red one and a blue one.

  A row of hawkers selling used goods, and shoeshiners. A stack of old eyeglasses on a newspaper on the ground. The salesman wears prescription glasses with a broken bridge in the middle, soldered together with a big piece of tin. My father bends over and shuffles through the glasses. He chooses one and asks me to try them on. I put the glasses over my eyes and look around. I try another pair. A third pair has thin, oval frames made from gilded metal. I can tell that my vision is better now. Father haggles for a while over the price then buys them.

  I put the glasses on and follow father to the spice shop.

  He buys cinnamon, crushed black pepper, and cloves. I can see clearly now.

  Again, we take the tram with the open car. We go to the back and ride the covered car at the end with the single bench facing backwards. We shoot like an arrow past the empty stations that no riders have asked for. Sparks flick off the contact pole. I put my hand over my glasses, scared that they might fly off. We rumble slowly into Al-Zahir Square. The open-air Cinema Valery has closed for winter. My mother is in a colored dress. Her head is covered by a silk sash that wraps around her face. Her shoes are blue and white. They have a medium high heel and closed toe. She sits in a chair with wicker arms. I try to sit on her lap but she pushes me away. My father takes me between his knees. A hawker passes by wearing a clean gallabiya and carrying a basket covered with a cloth. My father buys each of us a sameet, a pretzel with sesame seeds. The hawker gives us each a slice of Egyptian Romano cheese in a bite-sized wrapper.

  The covered car rocks back and forth. My father pulls me to him to protect me from the cold wind. I shrink into his hug. His odor of stale tobacco swallows me. I fight off drowsiness. I feel an urge to get up and turn the brake arm, just to see what happens to the wheel on the tracks. I wish I could be in bed already. I am on a mat stretched over a rug in the guest room next to the servant woman. The room is dark and the door is cracked open just enough to see through to the hall. There is a ray of light from the electric lamp in the dining room. The servant sings along with the radio: “Oh, your coal black eyes . . .”Her soft voice whispers next to my ear. Her hand plays with my hair and touches my head. She finishes the song and tells me the story of Hassan the Brave. In the darkness, the seats turn into mountains, stallions, and castles. Hassan the Brave suckles at the breast of a ghoul, who says to him: “You took a little milk from my right breast and became like my child Sama’ain, and you took a little milk from my left breast and became like my child Soleiman.”

  The tram slows as it approaches the square. We get off and cross back over the track. Father stops at the butcher’s. He has a huge frame and fine dark black moustache. He wears a white gallabiya dappled with spots of blood. Father asks for a pound of boneless meat that will make a good kamuniyya stew.

  The butcher rolls up the sleeves of his gallabiya to show a wool undershirt that is sort of beige-colored. He looks over the different chunks of meat hanging on the hooks. He grabs one of them. He throws it on to a round wooden chopping block and rains blows down on it with a wide cleaver. Then he switches to a short knife to cut the meat off the bone. He lifts a piece of the meat up in the air in front of our eyes. Father asks him to trim off the fat and gristle. He puts the piece on to the scale of the brass measure. He moves it to the chopping block and grabs a long knife with a shiny blade. He cuts it into evenly sized pieces.

  Father asks him about the health of his father, Mu’alim Nasehy, and says he has not seen him in a while. The butcher avoids my father’s stare as he says: “Fine, praise God.”

  I sneak away from my father and move around the chopping block. The butcher moves the meat away from its edge. He takes it and starts to roll it into thick, grey wrapping paper. He pushes at a piece until it drops on the ground, then he leaves it there. I want to make father see it, but when he takes up the roll I follow him out of the shop.

  I let him know what I saw. He laughs and says it is just the way butchers are. There is no hope for them. He has to be happy just being able to find the cut he wants. He says that he has been dealing with the butcher’s father for twenty years. He would make special trips to see him from the house in Al-Barad Street where Nabila was born.

  We head towards the dairy shop. We buy two dishes of mehlabbiya for dessert. We cross the square again. We pause in front of a cart with a tall pile of green ful beans. Father asks how much they cost. He buys a pound. We head towards our street. The chemist is closed and my father says that he usually closes around al-’ash’a, the last prayer of the day.

  We enter Hajj Abdel ’Alim’s shop and find him at a desk in the back, sitting under a big picture o
f the king. He looks skinny in his thick brown overcoat over his woolen robe. There’s a white kaffiyeh around his neck and he is wearing a fez. He lets out a choppy cough every few minutes. He pushes to his feet to greet father. Father seems short next to him. He puts our shopping bags on top of the desk and sits in the chair next to him. I stand between my father’s knees. In front of me, a poster hangs on the wall with calligraphic writing that says: “Credit is forbidden, and anger overridden.”

  Father says hello to Salim, who stands behind a sales counter. He is wearing a gallabiya with a yellow overcoat that looks like the ones worn by janitors and office boys. He has a small woolen skullcap on his head, and his face is very pale. He answers my father in a voice that is cold and weak.

  Abdel ’Alim says: “Young Abbas is all ready. Do you want to move the furniture tomorrow?”

  My father nods his head to say yes: “It just better not be ruined by all the grease and butter.”

  “Not at all. I put all your things out of the way.” He calls out: “Abbas! Where’ve you gone? You better not be dipping into that sauce of yours again.”

  A dark, barefoot man appears at the entrance to the shop. His eyes are bloodshot. He’s wearing a dirty gallabiya and cap. He is moving slowly and he reeks.

  “Move the rest of Khalil Bey’s furniture from the warehouse tomorrow morning.”

  Abbas stammers: “I’m busy.”

  Abdel ’Alim says with more force: “It’s a couch, two chairs and a table.” He turns to father: “And I found a nice maid living nearby. She cleans and cooks and takes her salary by the month.”

  “How much?”

  “Give her a pound.”

  Father asks him about the man that has moved into the vacant room next to ours. Abdel ’Alim plays with the tips of his moustache for a while, then says that he is a police constable.

  “Is he married?”

  “No.”

  Father asks Salim for ten eggs, fifty dirham worth of cheese, fifty dirham of halva, a box of Sheikh Al-Shareeb tea, a piece of Nablus soap, and a block of dark kitchen soap.

  Salim asks rudely: “On your account?”

  Father nods his head. Salim opens a large register and records our order in it, and father warns him: “Only fresh eggs, no rotten ones.”

  “Yes, of course, only fresh. We have butter from buffalo milk too.”

  Father shakes his head and asks for a pound of clarified butter instead. Salim asks in the same rude tone: “Do you have anything to put it in?”

  “No.”

  His brother yells at him: “Just put it in a glass jar.” He places our groceries in two paper bags, and my father gathers them up against his chest. We leave the shop. I ask him if I can carry one of the sacks. He tells me no because I’ll drop it. The reading textbook. Sirhan in the Field and at Home. He puts the eggs in his pockets and they are crushed. He tries to ride the lamb but it will not move. He drags the duck by a leash and chokes it to death.

  We head back to the alley. I ask him why he didn’t buy butter. I like it with honey or molasses. I love the murta.

  He tells me that Salim puts salt in the butter cones to cheat on the price, and that his brother Hajj Abdel ’Alim had warned him many times to stop doing it but it had not made any difference.

  We go carefully into our darkened alley. We walk slowly. Weak light from the slats in the wooden shutters on the balconies. The blinds in the balcony of the house in front of ours are open, but the glass panels and the thin curtains behind them are closed. We stumble at the front of the house. We go up our couple of worn, broken-down steps. The darkened door to our apartment is to the right of the stairs that lead up to the higher floors. To the left, a black opening leads to the grocer’s storehouse. I try not to look at it.

  He hands me one of the bags and says: “Hold tight.” He unbuttons his overcoat and pulls it to the side. Feels for the key in his coat pocket. He puts the key in the keyhole of the door and turns it. He pushes the door. I cling to his coat. We walk in cautiously.

  He mutters a few times: “God protect us from Satan, the curséd. In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” He feels around with his hand until he finds the light switch. A weak ray of light comes from the dirty electric bulb that hangs from the middle of the ceiling. The light shines on a hall with a rectangular dining table. We stop in front of the door to the bedroom by the front door. Father takes another key out of his pocket. He leads me inside, and turns on the light.

  He puts his bag on the desk, then turns his attention to my bag, gesturing to me as he takes it from me and puts it beside the other one. I sit on the edge of the large iron bed frame. To my right is the shuttered door to the small balcony. In front of me is the slanted wooden wardrobe. It rests on three wooden balls, each the size of a pomegranate, under its three corners. The fourth ball was lost during the move, so father put a small piece of wood under that corner. Still, the left flap would not close all the way, so it stays open a crack. A wooden clothes rack next to it, and the door is next to that. To the left, the desk is squeezed between the bed and the wall with the door.

  He takes off his overcoat and hangs it on one of the rails of the clothes rack. Then he hangs his suit coat. On its buttonhole, there is a round patch that is bronze-colored and has the words “Quit Egypt!” written on it. He puts his fez over the top of the clothes rack, showing the balding top of his head surrounded by hair that is almost all white. He puts on a skullcap made of goat’s wool, camel colored, with a wide border turned up to its tip. He keeps on the grey woolen waistcoat with wooden buttons. He puts on his brown robe and ties it up with a thin red rope belt. He wraps a wide scarf, made from the same material as the skullcap, around his neck and chest.

  I untie my shoes and set them down next to the door. I put on my slippers without taking off my socks. I take off my coat and throw it over the back of the office chair. I do the same with my sweater and my shirt, then I shudder from the cold. After I put on my pyjamas, I put the sweater back on. He grabs a canvas bag nearby on the desk and takes out a loaf of twice-baked bread. A small black cockroach hops out of the bag. I stumble back, away from the desk. He asks me if I would rather have cheese or halva. My eye is stuck on the spot where the cockroach crawled out. I say I’m not hungry. He says: “Shall I make you an egg with dates?” I shake my head. He puts the loaf back in the bag.

  I start to get my school bag ready. I make sure I have my blotting paper and ink bottle. I notice he is still wearing his trousers and shoes. I ask him: “Why don’t you undress?”

  He says: “I want to sauté the meat first.”

  “Leave it till morning.”

  “Then it’ll spoil.”

  He bends over and pulls back the bed sheet used as a dust cover. Shoes, plates, cartons, and metal pots. Syringe for an enema. He grabs a metal pan. He looks around for its lid until finally he finds it. Then he leaves the room and I follow him. He takes hold of the package of meat and empties it into the pan. He heads towards the start of the dark hallway in front of our room. The toilet with its door hanging open and a sickening smell coming out. A large bathroom is closed, its door held shut by a wooden latch. A metal sink has a faucet mounted on the wall above it. He washes off the meat well. He walks to the kitchen at the end of the hall. He enters with me hanging on his clothes from behind. He picks up a box of matches and lights one of them. The light falls on the side of the wall covered in water. There is a wooden table with a kerosene primus lamp on it. He squashes a big red cockroach with his foot. He presses on the primus lamp several times, then lights a match and moves it close to the opening that lets the fumes out. The flame flickers. I grab on to him and blink. The beauty dangles the long braids of her hair from the window so that Hassan the Brave can climb them. Suddenly, the ghoul can be seen coming from far away. It is a big blur that looks like a huge bale of hair riding the wind as it covers wide spaces, kicking up dust and gravel around it. It stops under the window and cries up to the woman: “Unfasten your
self and let down your long braids; take in the ghoul from the heat, give him shade.”

  The stove crackles. The colors of its flame spread out. He turns the meat over with his spoon. He lifts up the pan and pours out its juice into the sink.

  I ask: “Isn’t it done yet?”

  He says the meat has to come to a hard boil to get rid of all the microbes. He opens a jar of liquid butter, digs out two spoonfuls, and throws them in the pan. He flips the meat a few times, then adds the water. He throws in a pinch of salt, then another of black pepper, then covers it.

  He goes with me to the small bathroom to pee. When I complain about the smell, he says the plunger is broken. I recite the Quranic “verse of the throne” the way he taught me. He gives me a gentle shove to help me up on to the base of the stone toilet. I resist and he climbs up with me to stand by my side. He holds me by my shoulders while I undo the buttons on my underpants. I look up at the wall. Rays of weak hall lighting beam down on the big black spots. Suddenly a black spot comes flying up. I cling to my father’s clothes, but he tells me: “Don’t worry. It’s just a house spider.”

  We go back to the kitchen. He flips the meat and adds more water. He waits until the water boils, and then he turns off the flame. He carries the pan to the hall while I hang on to him. He leaves it on top of the sideboard. We go back to the hallway and he washes his hands with soap.

  We go into our room and he closes the door carefully. The door to the balcony shakes violently and father says that it is the winds of the month of Amsheer with its dust devils and whirlwinds. He grabs an old gallabiya from one of the hangers and uses it to plug the open crack between the door and the bare tiled floor. He puts another piece of cloth under the door of the balcony. He places his head on the floor and studies the empty space between the wardrobe and the wall, then bends down again and stares at the long narrow open space between the base of the wardrobe and the floor tiles. He pulls open the two doors of the wardrobe and takes a look inside. Lifts up the end of the bed sheet. By now, he is panting from the effort. He takes off his robe and hangs it on a knob of the rack. He recites: “There is only one God, none but Him, the Living, the Eternal, Who takes not slumber, nor rest.”