The Automobile Club of Egypt

40

The lights went out, and Mahmud could not see a thing. Alarmed, he called out, “What’s going on?”

In the darkness, Fawzy laughed. “You frightened? Pull yourself together, Mr. Mahmud!”

“But what’s wrong with the lights?”

“Didn’t I just tell you that Tafida has got a surprise for us!”

“And is that surprise,” asked Mahmud sarcastically, “leaving us in the dark?”

“Just be patient, man!” Fawzy laughed.

A few minutes passed in the pitch-black. Mahmud flicked his cigarette lighter, which gave off a dull light as he groped his way toward the front door.

“Look, Fawzy. You and Tafida can play around as much as you like, but I’m going.”

“Just wait a moment!” Fawzy shouted back.

Mahmud hesitated, and before he could decide what to do, the lights suddenly came on. Mahmud shut his eyes, and when he opened them again, he saw a strange sight. Tafida al-Sarsawy was standing in the middle of the room dressed as a belly dancer. Two skimpy pieces of cloth decorated with beads and sequins covered her chest, and she had a piece of cloth tied around her waist as a belt, showing off her scrawny body. The sight of her, nearly naked, in the belly dancer costume was pitiful. Her tired face caked with makeup, her bony body with its sagging flesh and flat chest were all a rather sad memory of femininity. It looked as if she had not been able to find a costume in her own size and was swimming in this one. Mahmud was beset by conflicting emotions as he watched Tafida in her outfit. He let out a laugh, which Tafida interpreted as one of admiration as she continued her little show. She held her arms up and twirled around.

“What a temptress! You’re such a tease!” Fawzy called out.

Mahmud burst out laughing, and Tafida looked at him.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“It’s beautiful,” replied Mahmud, trying to suppress his laughter.

Fawzy got up and poured two glasses of whiskey, one for himself and one for Mahmud, then went over to Tafida, patting her on the backside.

“I want to watch you dance!”

Tafida walked over to the gramophone and put on a record, and Fawzy started clapping enthusiastically. It was a piece that Samia Gamal used to dance to, but as Tafida nervously quivered through it, it was as if she were in spasms. Fawzy was clapping in time with the music and looking at Mahmud, egging him on to join in. Mahmud clapped feebly, but he could not help sitting back in the chair and laughing. Tafida was now in the full swing of her show and kept dancing until the record was finished. Sweat was running down her face, and she was out of breath. Fawzy and Mahmud applauded as Tafida made a stagy bow and then turned the record over and started dancing again. Mahmud had stopped laughing and was starting to find the whole spectacle rather tedious. The music stopped, and Fawzy jumped up.

“Go easy on us, you naughty, naughty lady!” he said ironically. “You’re killing us with your sex appeal!”

He took her in his arms, but she wriggled out of them.

“Darling, I’m a little sweaty from the dance,” she said with all the femininity she could summon up. “Let me go and take a shower.”

She darted off down the corridor to the bathroom as Fawzy poured himself another whiskey, which he downed in one go. He sighed and his face flushed. Then he picked up his packet of cigarettes and the lighter and smiled proudly at Mahmud.

“By your leave, Mr. Mahmud!”

Fawzy made his way to the bedroom to wait for Tafida. Mahmud’s impression of the ridiculousness that had just transpired now turned to deep gloom. He was furious at Fawzy for having forced him to watch this nonsense. What did he have to do with Tafida? She was Fawzy’s mistress. And why had Tafida left them sitting in the darkness before she appeared as a bag of bones in a belly dancer outfit? Watching that old hag flaunt herself had made him feel angry and humiliated. He was furious and cursed Fawzy silently but still managed to convince himself, “In spite of all the goings-on, I’ll be a decent guy and won’t walk out on Fawzy tonight. I’ll wait for him, but I swear by God that it’s the last time I come here.”

Mahmud wandered around the sitting room, looking at the photographs on the wall. Tafida had been really beautiful when young, but how she had changed. In the old photographs, she looked like a film star. There was a picture of her at the seaside, another in a garden and one of her wearing an evening dress and sitting at a dining table with a group of glamorous men and women. Had he met Tafida when she was young, he might have fallen for her, but now she simply aroused his disgust. Mahmud went out onto the balcony, lit a cigarette and with his elbows on the railing stood there looking at the traffic below. Suddenly, he heard a strange sound. He turned around and found Fawzy standing there completely naked.

“Mahmud. Help! Come quickly!”

“What’s happened?”

Fawzy did not reply but rushed back to the bedroom. Mahmud tossed his cigarette over the balcony and ran after him. They ran down the corridor. The bedroom door was open, and the light was on, but the moment Mahmud went into the room, he saw a terrifying sight. Tafida was sprawled on a corner of the bed, completely naked, her eyes closed, her head lying limp next to a pillow.

“What’s the matter with her?” Mahmud shouted hoarsely.

“I was giving it to her,” Fawzy answered in a state of agitation. “She was doing just beautifully, but suddenly she screamed and then this…”

“Do you think she has fainted?” Mahmud asked tremulously.

Fawzy muttered under his breath and went over to her. He placed her head on a pillow and then started tapping her on the cheek and calling her, “Tafida…Get up! Stop playacting.”

Tafida didn’t stir. She was supine on the bed, her eyes tightly shut. For the first time, Mahmud noticed the red nightdress lying on the floor. After a few moments, Fawzy tried calling her name again, but she remained silent and motionless. Fawzy leaned over her head and held his fingers in front of her nostrils for a while. Then, his face ashen, he turned to Mahmud and whispered, “I think she’s dead.”

“Oh, hell!” Mahmud cried.

Fawzy looked down and said nothing.

“Tafida, dead?” Mahmud started wailing. “We’re both done for. We’re done for.”

Fawzy said nothing. Then he had an idea. He grabbed Mahmud by the hand and told him forcefully, “Pull yourself together and act like a man. Tafida was over seventy. Her time was up. What could we do about it? People don’t live forever. When their term ends, they cannot live a single hour longer…”

But he could not remember how the verse from the Quran ended. Not only that, but he realized it was a strange moment to be relying on the holy book. Still stark naked, he continued speaking in a low voice, as if addressing himself, “She can’t have been well to start off with. I think she exhausted herself by dancing, and then I was giving it to her so hard that she couldn’t cope and just kicked the bucket…”

Mahmud stared at Fawzy, sweat running down his face. As he was picking up the nightdress from the floor, he called out, “Come on, help me. We have to get her into the nightdress and make it look like she was in bed as normal…”

Mahmud helped Fawzy to sit the corpse upright, and he held her by the shoulders so Fawzy could get her into the nightdress and lay her back down again. Fawzy then got dressed quickly and dragged Mahmud down the corridor.

“We can’t leave any trace,” he said as they reached the sitting room.

Fazwi took out a white handkerchief and started wiping any surface which might have their fingerprints on it. The glasses, the door handles and table. This activity, which was straight from the movies, only served to increase Mahmud’s anxiety. He felt he had turned into a criminal like the ones he had seen at the cinema. Fawzy finished wiping down everything, put the handkerchief back in his pocket and started giving Mahmud precise instructions: throw the cigarette butts out of the window, wash the ashtrays, dry them carefully and put them back where they were, put the food back in the fridge, wash the plates and put them back on the rack in the kitchen.

The two friends busied themselves doing all that for about half an hour, and then Fawzy cast a beady eye around the room and said “The last step is the doorman…I’m sure that he didn’t see us coming up here.”

“Even if he didn’t see us coming in,” Mahmud said despairingly, “he’ll see us going out.”

“Would you just listen to me!”

Mahmud’s feeling of terror returned.

“God sees everything,” Mahmud cried. “I’m done for, and it’s all your fault.”

“If you carry on wailing like an old woman,” Fawzy warned him, “the neighbors will hear, and they’ll call the police.”

The word “police” was enough to silence Mahmud immediately.

“The door of the doorman’s cabin,” he continued calmly, “is sometimes open and sometimes just a little ajar. We can’t take the lift down because the moment he hears the lift, he will open his door. We’ll go down the stairs, and if his door is open, we’ll wait until he shuts it, but if the door is just a little ajar, we’ll be able to slip out onto the street.”

These details just went in one of Mahmud’s ears and out of the other. He said nothing, becoming so overcome with terror that he could hardly breathe until he thought he was going to pass out.

“If you want to get out of this mess,” Fawzy tried to encourage him, “do as I say.”

At the front door of the apartment, Fawzy took out his handkerchief and wrapped it round the knob before opening the door. Then he did the same to shut the door behind them. The stairwell was dark, but Fawzy took care not to turn on the light. They walked slowly and gingerly downstairs in the dark, trying as hard as they could not to make a sound or trip. Tafida’s apartment was on the fourth floor, and it was now past one in the morning. They had the luck not to bump into anyone on the stairs. Then they had another stroke of luck in finding the doorman’s door open only a crack.

“God help us,” groaned Mahmud.

“Now walk behind me and don’t make any noise,” said Fawzy.

Mahmud walked behind Fawzy as he headed to the front door of the building. Fawzy walked quietly past the doorman’s cabin with Mahmud almost frozen behind him. The two walked across the wide lobby, and when they reached the front door, they realized that they had done it. Fawzy gave a huge sigh of relief.

“Thank God! Now just walk as if there’s nothing wrong,” he told Mahmud.

Mahmud nodded and walked along slowly, looking ahead as if just taking a stroll. They had only gone a few steps before they heard the sound of someone screaming behind them. Mahmud froze, but Fawzy turned to face him and shouted, “Run, Mahmud!”

The two start running as fast as their feet would take them as the shouts of their pursuers became shriller and shriller.