The Automobile Club of Egypt

2

The morning call to prayer sounded, and Ruqayya opened her eyes and whispered the profession of faith. Then she slid out of bed and shut the bedroom door quietly behind her in order not to wake up her husband, Abd el-Aziz Gaafar. She went to the bathroom and lit the boiler, then walked to the kitchen. She prepared a tray with breakfast for the guests and made sandwiches for the children to take to school. By the time she went back to the bathroom, the water was hot, so she laid out her clothes for the day and took her morning shower as she had done every morning since getting married.

At that time, she was living in Upper Egypt with her mother-in-law (may God have mercy on her soul), who used to observe whether she took a shower in order to know if she had had sex with Abd el-Aziz the night before. From then on, a morning shower was Ruqayya’s way of covering up her private life. Over time she just got used to starting her day with the feeling of being refreshed. After showering, she would carefully dry herself and put on a clean, ironed galabiyya, go upstairs carrying the breakfast tray covered with a napkin and put it down outside the guest room on the roof, which was reserved for relatives who had come to Cairo from Upper Egypt for one reason or another — for medical treatment, to get some official papers or on business.

The guest room was spacious and had a sink, a toilet and a separate staircase. Abd el-Aziz’s house was always open to relatives, and he considered putting them up just as much his duty as he did taking care of his own children. Ruqayya would then set about waking up the children. Mahmud, the difficult one, would always require a few attempts because he would just go back to sleep each time. She was patient with him, forgiving whatever mischief he’d get up to. Some months after his birth, she had noticed that he was a bit sluggish and had taken him to a renowned doctor in Aswan who told her that the boy would have developmental problems. Thus it was no surprise that Mahmud kept having to repeat a year at school. At the age of seventeen, he was big and bulky, since he spent all his free time and energy lifting weights.

After her first attempt to wake Mahmud, Ruqayya would go and wake his older brothers, Said and Kamel. Kamel was stick thin, and the moment he felt her touch on his head, he would open his eyes, sit up and kiss her hand. Then he would wake up his brother Said. Ruqayya liked to leave Saleha until last, to let her have a little more sleep. After the children washed and dressed, they would sit around the table. Ruqayya always tried to make them a delicious breakfast: eggs, cheese, fava beans and fresh bread with tea and milk. Then she would sit cross-legged on the sofa with her left hand holding the string of ninety-nine prayer beads as her children lined up and bowed to her one after another. She would place her hands on their heads and utter a Quranic verse over them to keep them safe.

She would not let them leave the house together for fear of the evil eye. People might look at them and say, “There go the Gaafar children,” and some disaster or illness might strike them. She insisted that they leave the house one by one, none setting out until the one before had reached the end of the street. Said would always wriggle out of taking his sister, Saleha, to school, whereas Kamel willingly walked with her to the Suniyya school and then took a bus to the university.

Mahmud was always the last to leave. His mother would make him swear by the holy Quran that he would really go to school and not go off to play football in the street or to the cinema. He never argued with his mother. All her children had inherited the light-brown Gaafar skin tones except Mahmud. He was coal black, like a Sudanese. At school when students teased him for being a dullard and for the color of his skin, he would fight back and beat them up. On those occasions, he hardly knew his own strength. The previous year he had been in two fights, splitting the brow of the first boy and breaking the arm of the second. This led to the headmaster’s warning Mahmud’s father that the next fight would mean expulsion. That was a day from hell. Abd el-Aziz gave Mahmud a good beating, shouting at him, “It’s not enough for you to be too stupid to get anywhere at school, but you have to go around strutting like some tough. I swear by God Almighty that if you touch another student I’ll come to school myself and show all your friends how I beat you.”

She never forgave her husband for doing that. Poor Mahmud. He was simpleminded and needed to be handled gently. Every morning, before he left the house, she would kiss him, say a few providential words of prayer over him and give him the same advice, “If someone upsets you, don’t start a fight! Just walk away from him and say the fatiha in your head.”

Mahmud would agree and embrace her. Feeling the power of his muscles, she could not help but be a little proud. After her children had left, she had time to herself until nine o’clock, when she had to wake up Abd el-Aziz. During her free time, she would prepare herself a cup of mint tea and sit by the window. She would listen to the cries of the hawkers and the sounds of the cars in the street below, as well as the voices of the children and office workers. But on this particular morning, she was exhausted. She had not slept well the night before. She sat staring out the window without seeing anything. She did not even notice the taste of the tea. She realized that in two weeks’ time she would have lived in Cairo for five years. Good Lord, how quickly it had passed. The day she left Daraw for Cairo had been a great event. People said that, apart from the time that the great nationalist leader Sa’ad Zaghloul famously made a visit to Upper Egypt, the train station at Daraw had never been so crowded as on the day she and her four children left for Cairo. On that day the people come to bid them farewell clustered both inside and outside the station, at the entrance, in the station hall and on the platform. All the important families of Daraw had members to bid her farewell: the Mahjubs, the Abd el-Maquds, the Oways and Shayba families, even the Balams in spite of the tense relations with the Gaafar family due to an ongoing dispute over some date palms to the east of the town — their sense of duty had overcome past bitterness, and they sent ten men with their wives and children to take part in the farewell formalities. They were all fond of her. Her husband and first cousin was Abd el-Aziz Gaafar, one of the foremost residents of Daraw. He had inherited property and money from his father and was renowned for his decency and respectability, always doing his utmost to help out his relatives, neighbors, in fact anyone from the town. Alas, his debts had started piling up, and he had to sell off his land bit by bit. Now, over forty years old and almost penniless, he had to move to Cairo in search of whatever work he could find. There was great sympathy from the people of Daraw, since whenever they had needed money, Abd el-Aziz had given them loans from the goodness of his heart, as well as helping them in other ways. They all felt partially responsible for his bankruptcy. Ruqayya saw expressions of deep sympathy and love on the faces of those who had come to see them off. To them, she was the very model of an authentic Upper Egyptian woman, sticking by her husband come what may, supporting him with the same determination in good times and bad.

All those feelings were present on the day of their departure, like a large cloud casting its shadow on the scene. Ruqayya got out of the carriage with a big beautiful smile on her face, a smile of fortitude and complete acceptance of her fate and what more might come. The younger children, Saleha and Mahmud, were clutching the hem of her black outer coat, and the two older boys, Said and Kamel, walked along behind her. Each of them was carrying a suitcase and a basket on his head. The largest suitcase was being carried by her brother Bashir on his shoulders. The people thronged toward her, surrounding her, and she started greeting them and thanking them one by one. She shook the men’s hands and embraced and kissed the women. Some of the women were crying, while others gave Mahmud and Saleha honey and sesame sweets. Mahmud ate them up straightaway, but Saleha, more clever and with better manners, waited until her mother gestured her permission. Then she took out one of the sweets and said in a clear voice, “Thank you, uncle!”

Ruqayya was making slow progress. The moment she finished shaking one hand, more hands appeared. Then they started addressing her in the traditional manner, as the mother of her eldest son, “We hope all goes well, Umm Said!”

“Have a good trip and come back safe and sound, in sha Allah!”

“Give our regards to Abd el-Aziz!”

It took Ruqayya ages to reach the platform, where the train was already waiting. She made her way with her children trailing behind her and her brother scurrying along with the suitcase on his shoulder. She pulled herself together amid the well-wishers and caught sight of some women from the Balam family. She made her way toward them and embraced them warmly, and still holding the hand of the clan leader Abd el-Al’s wife, she said loudly so all could hear, “Thank you so much for coming. It means so much to me.”

Abd el-Al’s wife was so overcome by Ruqayya’s kind words that she embraced her again, looked her in the face, and with her voice full of feeling, she said, “God knows how much I love you, Ruqayya.”

“And I love you too.”

“You Gaafars are the cream of our town.”

“No, you Balams are the ones who have done the most for us all. It was Satan, may God curse him, who came between us. May God guide us all. Kith and kin may have squabbled with each other, but blood is thicker than water.

“May God preserve and look after you, Ruqayya.”

At that moment, Bashir came over to his sister, Ruqayya, and whispered something in her ear. She nodded and carried on talking to Abd el-Al Balam’s wife. It would not have been right for her to bring the conversation to an abrupt end. She knew that her every gesture with Abd el-Al al-Balam might be misinterpreted and could reignite the family feud again.

She carried on talking to the woman for a few minutes more and then moved off to greet some other people. This time, however, Bashir, almost hauled her by her galabiyya toward the train whose angry whistle and thick smoke augured its imminent departure. The onlookers all started shouting, and Ruqayya grabbed Saleha and Mahmud, and with Said and Kamel and Bashir following behind, she started running as fast as she could.

Ruqayya sipped her tea and a smile appeared on her face as she remembered how, due to the throngs of well-wishers, she missed the train that day. Whenever she recalled that to her neighbor Aisha, she would laugh heartily, joking about the stupidity of the Upper Egyptians. Bashir had to reserve new tickets for them on the next day’s train and then had to go around to all the houses in Daraw asking them not to come to the station again. All complied except for Abd el-Barr, son of her cousin Oways, who insisted on coming to see them off again. When her brother tried to dissuade him, he flushed with anger and said, “Just as she is your sister, Ruqayya is my cousin. I swear to God that even if she were to miss the train a hundred times, I would go to the station to see her off.”

Abd el-Barr indeed went to the station again, and Ruqayya was grateful to him for that. They had grown up together, and there had even been talk of marriage, but fate is fickle, and she knew that his insistence on seeing her off was not entirely innocent. Abd el-Barr might still have been in love with her after all this time, but she did not even dare to think about that out of respect for her husband, Abd el-Aziz, who meant everything to her. After twenty-five years of marriage, she could still recall her wedding as if it had happened the day before. That night there had been a huge feast, and celebratory gunshots had reverberated all over Daraw. The feasting went on for a whole week, and people commented enviously that the camel carrying her to her husband’s house was groaning from the weight of all the gold that her bridegroom had given her. It was a sight to remember. In Daraw she had a large house with a spacious sitting room, a garden with date palms, servants, jewelry, horses, camels, cattle and poultry, and, most important, a wonderful husband. He never behaved badly toward her or beat her. He never put her down, and she knew that he would never cheat on her. When at first she could not get pregnant, his mother (may God have mercy on her and forgive her) started urging him to take a second wife. She would say to him, within Ruqayya’s earshot, “You’re a man. You have to produce a son. Take another wife alongside Ruqayya. It is what God commands.”

Any other man would just have taken another wife. Had he done so, no one would have blamed him. He refused, however, and announced that he would have only Ruqayya, even if she could never have children. How could she forget such magnanimity? When his mother asked Shaykh Mash’al to make an amulet to help her get pregnant, Abd el-Aziz received him coolly and said, “You can keep your amulet. I will not do anything the Prophet forbids. Whether we have children, live or die, or manage to support ourselves — they are all matters over which we can never argue with God.”

He fell silent for a short while and then added sarcastically, “If you are such a good friend of the genies, Shaykh Mash’al, why don’t you ask them to cure the rheumatism eating away at your bones?”

After two years of trying, they were blessed by God with six children, of whom two died, leaving them with four. Then came the great ordeal of her husband’s bankruptcy. Praise be to God. The Lord chooses some men to receive his bounty and exposes others to catastrophes. Who ever thought that she would end up starting a new life in Cairo? Abd el-Aziz worked his fingers to the bone to provide them with a decent living: he rented a spacious flat in al-Sadd al-Gawany Street in the Sayyida Zeinab district. It had four rooms and a sitting room, plus a room on the roof with a separate entrance and staircase. The rent was high, and the needs of their children cost a fortune, not to mention the cost of looking after the ever-present guests, as well as the expenses of food, tobacco and clothing from time to time. God gave him strength, and somehow he managed to find enough money and to cope with his menial job — even though his whole life long he had been a property owner in Daraw. When he handed over to Ruqayya his first set of work clothes, a yellow uniform with brass buttons, to be ironed, he just said, “I work as a storeroom assistant, and this is my uniform.”

At that time she made a huge effort to hide her feelings. She prattled on about inconsequential matters and laughed as she carefully ironed his uniform. She folded it into a small case, said good-bye as he went out the front door and then burst into tears. Would Abd el-Aziz Gaafar, a man from a decent family, have to do a menial job for all eternity?

God be praised for everything. She stopped daydreaming, glanced at the clock in the sitting room and noticed that it was after nine. She rushed into the bedroom, opening the door quietly, and looked at Abd el-Aziz’s face as he slept. How she loved this man. She loved him for his strength, his determination and his pride. How could he cope with all these ordeals? Many other men would have given up the ghost, but Abd el-Aziz was a believer and accepted whatever God dealt out to him. She shook him gently to waken him, and he got out of bed. He took a shower and made his ablutions before saying his morning prayers and getting dressed. As he was sitting down to his breakfast, she set her plan into motion. She sighed and said, “May God give you the strength to support us all, dear Abd el-Aziz. May he grant you sustenance so you can sustain us.”

There was silence. Abd el-Aziz carried on carefully cracking his boiled egg, and as he laid the pieces of shell on his plate, he asked her calmly, “Is there something you want?”

Ruqayya sighed and whispered slightly apologetically, “The ration book for the cooperative shop…”

“At the end of the week, God willing. Anything else?”

“By God, I’m a little ashamed to mention it. You know how troublesome Said can be, but he has set his heart on buying a new shirt.”

“Whatever.”

He finished eating, lit a cigarette and sipped his coffee. Ruqayya seized the opportunity and moved the subject on a little. She smiled and said, “I have a request, my darling Abd el-Aziz, and please, I beg you by the Prophet, don’t embarrass me for asking you.”

“Well?”

“I want to sell two of my bracelets and buy a Singer sewing machine. You know I have always loved making clothes. I could buy a sewing machine and do some piecework. Even if I don’t earn a fortune, at least I will be sitting respectably in my own home, and every extra piastre will help us.”

Abd el-Aziz looked at her. He gave her that familiar look of someone who does not like what he has heard. He responded in a tone of sour derision, “You want me to come home from work and find you busy with customers?”

“A bit of work never hurt anyone.”

“So the Gaafar house will become a seamstress’s workshop for all eternity?”

She knew he would never agree, but she did not lose hope.

“All right. Let’s forget the sewing machine. Now, Saleha…”

“What’s the matter with Saleha?”

“If she were to leave school and stay at home, we’d save the school fees.”

“Shame on you, woman. So I should work my fingers to the bone to pay the school fees for Mahmud, who is stupid and keeps failing, and we should keep our brilliant and clever Saleha at home and throw away her future?”

“Her future is to get married and have children.”

“As long as she wants to keep studying, that’s what she must do.”

“I’ve got another thought.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, Umm Said!”

He spoke the latter words as he stood up and unhooked his tarboosh from the peg, and as he was straightening it on his head, he said, “Don’t worry, Ruqayya. We’ll see, by the grace of God. I’m certain.”