The Automobile Club of Egypt

12

Try as he might, Mahmud could hardly finish his seventh plate of kushari. His eyes bulged, and his head lolled forward as he wheezed like an exhausted bull. Both Fawzy and Mahmud felt sick from overeating and both secretly regretted ever having come up with the bet. But that damned Sidqi al-Zalbani ordered an eighth round and immediately started eating it, so Fawzy and Mahmud did not have a moment to catch their breath. They continued cramming kushari into their stuffed bellies, desperately trying to keep up. Sidqi cleaned his plate and seemed delighted at the sight of his competitors struggling.

Suddenly, Mahmud threw his spoon down onto the plate with a clang. He let his big head roll forward and put his hands on his stomach, crying out, “Oh, my stomach. My stomach. My stomach’s killing me.”

Fawzy was in no better shape, though it showed on him differently. He was having difficulty breathing, he felt dizzy and rivulets of sweat were running down his face.

Sidqi just looked at the two of them and laughed. “Tough luck, guys. I’ve won.”

“How do you know?” said Mahmud, still holding on to his stomach.

Sidqi looked at him almost sympathetically and said, “All right, Mahmud. Let’s carry on with the ninth round.”

“Can’t,” said Mahmud, giving a large groan, and Fawzy’s silence confirmed their defeat.

Sidqi laughed again and said, “Well, that means you’ve got to pay the bill, and don’t forget you each owe me a pound.”

They remained silent until Fawzy cleared his throat and said in a friendly way, “Of course. We have to pay, but unfortunately we weren’t expecting to.”

“What do you mean by that?” Sidqi shot back at him.

“Please, Sidqi,” Fawzy whined, “could you pay the bill and, God willing, we’ll pay you back as soon as we can?”

“If you can’t pay, why did you make the bet?”

“Don’t get all uppity with us!”

“I’ll get however I want with you!”

“Oh, do I have to teach you some manners?”

Fawzy was trying to turn it into an argument because he was sure that he and Mahmud, in spite of being completely exhausted and stuffed to the gills, could take Sidqi on in a fight. Then this tricky situation would be just a quarrel that sooner or later would end with a truce. There was the added complication, however, that the waiter had overheard them discussing the bill and scuttled off to tell Hagg Subhi, the owner of the café, who rushed over to them panting and shouting, “The bill, gents! You’ve had twenty-four large plates of kushari.”

Mahmud said nothing, but Fawzy smiled and answered, “Of course Mr. Subhi. We’ll pay the bill immediately, with a kiss on top of it.”

“Forget the kiss, you waste of space. I want what I’m owed!” Hagg Subhi snarled, looking as if he was about to pounce.

But feigning a jovial air, Fawzy replied, “Don’t worry. The bill is going to get paid, God willing. Believe me. Of course, you know Mr. Sidqi al-Zalbani?

Hagg Subhi glowered at them, appearing unwilling to allow the conversation to move away from the topic of the bill.

Fawzy gestured at Sidqi, saying, “Hagg Subhi. I’d like you to meet our friend Sidqi, son of Hagg Muhammad al-Zalbani, owner of the famous al-Zalbani sweet factory. Naturally, you will have heard of him…”

Hagg Subhi barked back at him, “Listen, sunshine! I’ve never heard of al-Zalbani, or al-Talbani for that matter. You owe me for twenty-four large plates of kushari!”

Fawzy smiled and wincing at his tone said, “Give us a moment, sir. Our brother Sidqi al-Zalbani is going to pay right away.”

Sidqi had already stood up and said in a loud voice so that everyone could hear, “Listen, Hagg Subhi. Let’s settle this like gentlemen.”

Hagg Subhi roared back at him, “Oh, so you want to settle this like gentlemen?”

“Yes. Have I made any sort of arrangement with you?”

“No.”

“All right then, Hagg. The bill will be paid by these two who made the arrangement with you. Good-bye.”

Sidqi dropped this bombshell and walked away. Fawzy called after him despairingly, “Wait! Sidqi. Come back. I want to tell you something.”

But Sidqi ignored him and left the restaurant.

Hagg Subhi turned to Fawzy, shouting, “All right now. You made the arrangement, you have to pay the bill.”

“Mr Subhi, I’ll pay it. I promise you. But please give me twenty-four hours.”

“Twenty-four hours, my arse!”

That was the signal for five enormous waiters and busmen to gather around the table. They had been trained for such a situation, and they performed beautifully. The owner, Hagg Subhi, grabbed Fawzy by the collar, jerking his head back and bellowing,“Either you pay now or you’ll regret that your father ever met your mother!”

In a final attempt to calm the waters, Fawzy asked Hagg Subhi to let him go with the restaurant’s employees to his father’s shop on al-Sadd Street, where the elder Hamama would gladly pay the bill. Hagg Subhi gave this some thought, although his glowering face did not change one iota. He gave a signal, and his men clustered around Mahmud and Fawzy, who were so large and muscular that each required three of the restaurant men to frog-march him out of the restaurant. On the street, they were stopped repeatedly by people asking them, with thinly veiled curiosity and feigned concern, “Is everything all right? What’s going on?”

When the employees explained what had happened, some passersby just laughed, and others dished out suggestions as to what should be done with the boys. A skinny man in his fifties wearing slippers and a faded and old blue galabiyya almost in tatters around his shoulders listened to the story with a scowl; he looked at the pair and said timidly, “What a pair of filthy swindlers!” And then, out of nowhere, he walloped Fawzy’s face, to which the fettered lad responded with a torrent of obscenities as Mahmud tried to wriggle out of his captors’ hold to retaliate. But they held him all the tighter, dragging them all the way to Ali Hamama’s shop.

It was almost three in the afternoon, and Ali Hamama was sitting, as always, behind the shabby counter. As the group entered, silence fell in the shop, and the customers cleared a path for them. Ali Hamama was squinting wildly to try to make out what was happening before his eyes, and at last he shouted hoarsely, “What’s this all about, Fawzy?”

Fawzy, too stunned to speak, just stood there looking rueful while the restaurant staff gripped him ever more tightly. One of the café men volunteered to tell the tale, which he did in a voice loud and clear enough for everyone in the shop to hear. Old Ali Hamama listened without showing any further emotion. His face wore that impassive expression with which he usually met the world. He stood up slowly and walked over to the group, deliberately, as if he were going to the toilet, and then, standing face-to-face with Fawzy, he gave him an enormous and loud slap on the face.

“So, it’s not enough for you to fail at school and be a general disappointment! I just have to sit here and you go out losing me money! There’s not a brain in that skull of yours, you bloody moron.”

Bedlam broke out as all the customers started jostling forward to try to calm the situation. But Ali Hamama, having now slapped Fawzy and Mahmud a few times over, turned to the café employees and asked them, “How much did they eat?”

“Twenty-four large plates.”

Old Ali Hamama squinted in disbelief, “How many?”

“Twenty-four — large ones.”

The old man raised his hands into the air as if about to do a jig, while making obscene gestures with his fingers and crying out, “I’d like to try to understand this, please God! I wasn’t born yesterday. How can three boys eat twenty-four plates of kushari? Explain!”

The employees tried to explain the bet to Ali Hamama, but he refused to listen and kept insisting that he simply could not believe they had eaten so much. Some arduous negotiations followed, which kept coming up against this dead end, and whereupon the customers intervened to get them moving again. At last, Ali Hamama announced that he would pay for ten plates but no more. The café men, enraged, rejected the offer, but Ali Hamama simply retreated quietly to his seat and cocooned himself in silence, leaving them to continue clamoring. Finally, he said calmly, “Either you take the money for ten plates or you can take these boys to the police station and let the law teach them a lesson.” Then waving off Fawzy and Mahmud, he said, “Now, you two, get out of my sight and let me get on with earning a living.”

For half an hour Ali Hamama gave no further thought to the kushari problem. He directed his shop assistant that business carry on as if nothing had happened. From his seat behind the counter, Ali did likewise, reeling off the items for purchase so the cashier could tally them. This retreat achieved its aim, and one of the café men scurried back to the café to ask Hagg Subhi’s opinion about the offer proposed by Ali Hamama. He sped back with Hagg Subhi’s consent to accept payment for ten plates, allowing that God would somehow compensate them for the rest. At this point, Ali Hamama progressed to stage two of his plan and announced that for the moment he was short of petty cash but that as a trustworthy man who put the worship of God above that of men, he would pay them in kind. There was a further wringing of hands and rumble of protestation, but eventually the café men left the shop with three small pots of honey and various packages of cheese, butter, dried beef slices and pickled cucumbers.