Stealth (New Directions Paperbook) Read online

  I climb up into the high metal bed before him. He follows me. I slide over to my place next to the wall. He bends over and wraps the covers around me while he keeps reciting. He finishes up the verse of the throne, then follows it up with another. His voice becomes softer and softer until the words become faint. He brushes my face with his warm hand. My eyelids fall in surrender. The ghoul smells the scent of Hassan the Brave, then says: “Fee, fi, fo, fum; I smell the putrid scent of a human.”

  He raises his hand and I open my eyes. He puts his hand back. I close my eyes. He lifts his hand again and I open my eyes again. Hassan the Brave and the beauty jump at the chance to escape when the ghoul goes out. The beauty paints everything in the castle with henna and forgets about the drums. The ghoul comes back and calls out to the girl, then the objects painted in henna start to spin around her. The sieve calls out in a beautiful singsong voice in harmony with its movements: “Straaaain, straaaain, straaaain.” The quern says: “Griiiind, griiind, griiiind.” The cutting board sings: “Choppp, choppp, choppppp.” But the forgotten drum takes revenge for itself by crying: “Hassan the Brave, took her and flew away!”

  I follow his movements. He stands up straight. He bends over. He rubs his knees. He pulls off the wool wrap, the robe, and the vest. He slips his braces off his shoulders. He sits on the edge of the bed. He pulls off his socks and shoes, then puts on long woolen stockings. He lifts his right leg and pulls on his trousers, then slips on the other leg. He gets back up. He pulls off his tie and his shirt. All that’s left is the woolen undershirt with its long sleeves and the woolen long johns. He presses his feet into his clogs. Puts his clothes on the hanger. He bends over and spreads his legs out. He has a hard time untying the laces of the hernia belt between his thighs. He strains to get out of it and throws it on the desk then gasps with relief. He rubs his knees and then lets loose a loud fart.

  He puts on a striped flannel gallabiya. Tosses the shawl over his shoulders and chest. He stretches his hand to his mouth and pulls out his teeth, then he puts them in a cup of water on the desk. He drinks out of a jug in a metal pan on the ground. Wipes his mouth and his moustache with the back of his hand. He fills a cup with rusty nails up with water, so he can have a drink as soon as he gets up. He raises his hands to his head and presses on the skullcap. Takes two steps. He stretches his hand out toward the dresser. He puts out the light. Climbs up next to me. He tucks himself under the sheets and blankets, and rolls over to me to make sure that I’m also covered. His hand stays there on top of me. My mother’s round face draws near. She rocks me while she sings the song coming out of the radio: “Sleep o love of my soooul.”

  In the beauty of the spring, your birthday draws near,

  You are more splendid than spring, and more dear.”

  We repeat the chorus behind the music teacher. A big colored handkerchief dangles out of the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He will be coming with us to Abideen Palace for the king’s birthday. They give us sandwiches made from yellow cheddar cheese. We also get a piece of halva made from crushed sesame. Monday will be a half day. The English teacher writes the date at the top of the blackboard. I can see clearly what’s written, thanks to my glasses. A rumbling starts up in the back rows of the class. The teacher turns around and goes to his chair. His clothes look all fancy and expensive. The cuffs of his trouser legs are wide, in the style of the day. They are stiff over the fronts of his shoes and cover his heels at the back, down to the point where they touch the floor. He says without looking up at any of us: “Whoever doesn’t want to have a lesson, please help himself to the exit.”

  The older students in the back rows get up and leave the room. I take my six-shooter out of my drawer and I follow them. The outer hallway runs down to the empty courtyard. A total calm has settled over the school. The way is empty. I bend over so I can pass underneath the windows of the ongoing classes. Another classroom. The teacher’s lounge. Its door is closed. I put my eye against the keyhole. There’s a rectangular table with a bare-headed man sitting at the end. He’s bald. His fez is in front of him on top of several notebooks. I manage to recognize that he is the science teacher. He looks strange with no fez and no hair. He picks up one of the notebooks. He’s staring disapprovingly at the corner of the table. I can see a number of hands playing cards at the edge of my vision.

  I catch up with some students on the stairs. We sneak out to a courtyard at the back where an annexe to the school is being built. They all spread out behind the piles of sand and gravel. They take out their handkerchiefs, fold them once, spread them over their noses, then tie them at the back of their heads. I take off my glasses, which have given me the nickname “Gandhi,” then I tie my own handkerchief over my nose before I put them back on. I squat down behind a pile of gravel, holding on to my six-shooter. The courtyard of the old school is surrounded by tall black fencing so we can’t see out. I buy a yam with hot pepper from a small opening in its side. We find an old staircase with worn out steps leading down. A student says that the schoolhouse used to be the palace of an emir. He’s sure that there’s a magic well underneath it. We are scared but go down anyway. We stumble upon a lizard. My mother tells me it’s a princess in disguise.

  I stay in my place behind the pile of gravel without anyone calling for me. The bell rings. We go back up to our Arabic grammar class with heavy steps. The teacher has a skinny build. He has a long neck with a thick kaffiyeh wrapped around it. His shoulders are constantly wiggling inside his suit coat. We all know that he just stopped wearing his jubbah and turban less than a year ago.

  I change places with Fathi so I can sit next to Maher. He has a ring full of keys, a Biro ballpoint pen, a Waterman fountain pen, and a soft, fat eraser. He puts them in a row in front of him on the surface of his writing desk. The teacher explains to us, without standing up, the rules of the stem form of the verb, the derivative stem forms, and the phonetic verbs. He doesn’t bother to stand in front of the board because he is so short. He asks one of the taller students to write on it: “The prince of poets addresses the young men.” We open up the book, Selections of the Masters. We read, along with him, a poem by Ahmad Showqi. He scolds us for our ignorance. In my notebook I write down what the words mean. I spell a word wrongly. I try to rub it out with my dried up, cheap eraser. I borrow Maher’s soft one.

  The bell rings. I lift the tabletop of my desk. I take out the textbooks and notepads that I need for tomorrow’s homework. I put them in my satchel. I let down the desktop, take out my key, and lock it.

  No sooner have I walked out into the open-air hallway than a cold wind slaps against me. I bury my neck under my kaffiyeh, and I shrink inside my clothes. It’s hard to drag my feet along. I move along the pavement outside the school, and I put off crossing the main street until I get to the square. I notice a little rectangle of iron. I want to kick it along my way, but then I remember my father’s warnings about bombs that explode at no more than a touch and that look like a medicine bottle, a fountain pen, or a toy. I look at it carefully then move away from it.

  A pavement of multicolored gravel. A fenced-in villa with steel grating. I steal a look from between the poles. A wooden table and two chairs are at the side of the garden. The door to the villa is shut. I start walking again. The Jewish school. It’s made from pink bricks. There’s no outer wall surrounding it, like at our school. A flier calls for aid for Palestinian refugees. A black banner reads: “No negotiations without complete British withdrawal!” Another says: “Hey diddle diddle!” The school’s windows are at street level. Long halls with rows of dining tables behind them. The students eat and make noise. I keep walking to the corner, then I turn left. I pass next to the wall of the school. The road gets a little bit steep and it has more trees. The red and yellow flowers that started to bloom at the beginning of the summer have dried and fallen over the pavement now that it’s autumn. We try to hunt the sparrows with our bows and arrows, but we don’t get a single one.

  I find myself in front
of our old home. It’s also of pale yellow brick. The iron door is the first thing you see. Around the door is an old crumbling house. In front of it, there’s a big crater made by a bomb dropped by German planes. I put my satchel on the ground and lean against the wall of the school.

  The house sits at the fork between two streets divided by a nasty open space surrounded by fencing made of metal poles. It used to be a storage house for the tram. The metal poles of the fencing are secured at the bottom by railings barely raised a foot off the ground. We stand on the railings between the poles and puff up our cheeks, then we toot our horns and drive.

  The first street heads towards a shanty town and the second towards a factory that makes fezzes next to a square where the fair to celebrate the prophet’s birthday takes place. At the point of coming together, there’s a row of carriages with the heads of their attached horses buried in sacks of straw. The two streets come together where there’s a little bit of a downhill slope in the road, beginning past our house and going down to the street that leads to the square. At the corner, there’s a nursery with flowers for sale.

  The place where we live takes up the first floor and has two windows looking down on to the street. The curtains cover one of them, but in the other, only the glass is closed. It reflects the trees and the blue sky. With my finger I trace my name and the names of my father and mother in the condensation that’s covered the closed window. I think to myself about the workers rushing to the factory, each one carrying a snack in his handkerchief. There are small children among them. The morning whistle of the factory blows, then I leave our house. I am met by the smell of exhaust from burners. I lift my head towards the window and see my father in his round white skullcap following me with his eyes from behind the glass. I cross the road to the pavement in front of the Jewish school. I pass by an old man with a big red turban, leaning on a walking stick with one of his hands while resting his back against the school wall. I give him two millimes as my father has taught me. I turn to see him in the window one last time. I adjust the book pack on my back and push my cold hands far down into the pockets of my jacket. I wind my way through the crush of students from the Jewish school. Boys and girls dressed in blue. I bounce towards the main street that goes to my school. The fog that I love so much swallows me.

  I carry my satchel and I turn to follow the road. I move into a small passage. A shop to help find a maid. A wooden partition has little openings between the panels. Behind them there’s a bench with girls sitting on it. One of them wears a black headcloth and a gallabiya. Next to her a girl is dressed like the fellah women. I come out to Farouk street. I wait for the signal from the traffic policeman. I walk in front of the Abdelmalik bakery and the Alsabeel pharmacy. I read its sign: “The acting manager is Helmy Rafael.” A few steps farther and I have entered Al-Nuzha Street that leads to our new house.

  Father puts on his robe. He opens the glass door to the balcony. He pushes the wooden shutter to the outside. He fastens it to the metal loop in the wall with its hook. The pale light of the morning sneaks into the room. He closes the glass pane and studies the balcony across the way.

  I cough and complain to him that my throat is sore. He touches my forehead. He probes underneath my ear, feeling for my tonsils. Then he leaves the room and throws himself into making a plate of fava bean paste with hot oil.

  He puts the plate on to the wooden four-sided table that Abbas has brought out from storage. The table’s at the same level with the bed and spread almost all the way across it are the plate of beans, the piece of white cheese wrapped in paper, the loaf of bread, and the split key lime. He takes a small onion from under the bed and puts it down between the door and the wall without bothering to peel it. He pulls the door into the room then pushes with it against the onion a little bit. He puts the door back where it was and catches the onion before it falls down. He takes out its heart, which has started to stick out, and he throws the outer skin to the side. He says it’s the best way not to lose its taste and to stay healthy.

  He sits down cross-legged on the bed. I drag over the desk chair and sit in front of him. He squeezes lime juice over the beans. I dip in a small piece of the bread. I chew an end of it without really caring. I say that I don’t like fava beans. He says that when he was a schoolboy, he would grab his breakfast from a pot of cold leftovers from the night before. His mother would call down to him from the upper floor each morning: “There’s a pot of leftovers in the skylight.”

  We finish breakfast. We go out of the room and rinse the dishes at the wash basin. The doorbell rings. He opens the door for the milkman. He brings a small pan and takes a gallon. He lights the fire and puts the pan over it until the milk boils, then puts a metal pitcher in its place to make the cinnamon. He keeps standing next to it until the cinnamon water has come to the boil several times. He pours me a cup then adds the milk to it. I bring the cup to my mouth. I notice a smell of gas. I give the cup back to him. He gets mad and sits drinking from his cup quietly.

  The doorbell rings again. I rush to the door and open it. Um Nazira comes in. Short and skinny. Her hair is wrapped in a black scarf tied over her forehead with white hairs hanging from the sides. Her face is pale and her eyes are sunken. She takes off her black sandals and leaves them by the door. She puts a bag of vegetables on the dining table. She says she was late because the women who volunteer with the cholera service stopped her on her way and took her to the inoculation center.

  Father gives her the leftovers from our breakfast. When she sits down on the floor, he tells her she can sit on one of the dining-room chairs. He asks about her husband and children. He pays her for the vegetables she brought. He makes himself a cup of Turkish coffee over a Sterno can in the small brass coffee pot. He pours it into a hand-painted china cup and carries it by its saucer. I follow him to our room and he sits cross-legged on the bed. He sips at the coffee slowly. I put the chair back in its place at the desk. I sit and take out my math notebook.

  I start to solve my homework questions. I get stuck on one of the problems. I look up at him. He can add, subtract, multiply and divide without even using a pen and pad, but the scowl on his face scares me from asking for help. He lights his black cigarette. I try to think of a trick. I remember the vocabulary lesson from Arabic class. I ask him what type of house we have. I list off on my fingers the types I have learned: a palace, a castle, a hermitage, a cellar, a shack. He shakes his head and says our house is in its own class. I show him my math problem and he solves it for me.

  I put on my glasses and walk out of our room and into the living area. Um Nazira lines up the dishes she has just washed on the marble surface of the sideboard. I pause in front of the door of the constable’s room. I steal a glance through the keyhole but I can’t see anything but the edge of a bed with its covers all ruffled in a stack. I put my ear to the hole, but I can’t hear any movement.

  I go back behind the dining table. I move away from the glass door that leads to the skylight where the cold wind is leaking inside. I turn around again and stop in front of the door of the third room. I turn the doorknob and go in. It has a worn and ragged wooden floor full of holes. Our old furniture: a rocking chair made of wicker with one side torn off, two armchairs and a couch. One of the armchairs has a sunken seat.

  The room is cold. The paint on the walls is cracked, showing the plaster underneath it. Some of the cracks are covered with colored paper. I walk up to them. They’re pages from a green photography magazine fastened with staples. A picture of King Farouk when he was young and pretty, with short trousers and a fez. Another picture shows him in a convertible with his three beautiful sisters. Another shows him next to his father, King Fuad, with his pointy moustache and its long handlebars curving upwards. I reach with my hand to touch the shiny surface of the pictures. The dry plaster behind it falls off. Um Nazira calls me to come out so she can sweep the room.

  Father sits on the bed with his prayer beads in his hand. The blinds of the balcony across from
us are open, but the lace curtains hang down behind the glass door. It’s small and narrow like our own balcony and the ones on the first floor. Above it are two big balconies next to each other in the same apartment. A clerk lives there who is married to two wives, each with her own balcony. One of them is open, its covers spread out over the ledge to take the sun. The other is closed up. That means he spent the night there. Today, it will be the other balcony’s turn.

  I stand behind the glass. I press my cheek against the pane so I can see the house on the corner. Sabry Effendi’s window is open. His wife appears for an instant then disappears. Short and fat. Her face is covered with pock marks from heat rash. Also her children: Siham, the oldest girl, Soha, the middle girl, then Selma, the youngest girl, and Samir, the youngest of them all.

  Um Nazira calls us and tells us to leave the room so she can sweep and mop it. Father rocks himself off the bed. He puts his feet into his clogs. She opens the door to the balcony, drags the rug out, and spreads it over the ledge. She sweeps the floor. We watch her from the doorway between the room and the hall. He’s scared that she’ll try to get in the pockets of his clothes hanging on the rack.

  She finishes sweeping and puts her swath of sackcloth into the mop bucket, then she takes it out and flings the water around over the surface of the floor. She bends over at the waist to wipe the floor with it. Her gallabiya comes up over her bony knee caps. She wrings out the cloth in the bucket. She dries the floor, then straightens up, panting.

  She picks up the bucket and gets ready to leave the room. Father stops her. He points to a wet patch near the balcony. She says she didn’t see it, but anyway it’ll be dry in no time if we leave the balcony door open. He screams at her: “Do what I tell you!” She obeys but doesn’t really want to.