The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail Read Free Page B

feeling that a building is going to be demolished.”
    Mustapha filled a new glass and said, “We won’t let the building be demolished.”
    Omar leaned toward him and asked, “What do you think is wrong with me?”
    “Exhaustion, monotony, and time.”
    “Will diet and sports be enough?”
    “More than enough, rest assured.”

           
THREE
    F rom now on you’re the doctor and you’re free. Freedom of action is a type of creativity, even while you’re struggling against the appetites. If we say that man was not created to gorge himself with food, then with the liberation of the stomach the spirit is free to soar. Thus the clouds grow limpid and the August storms thunder. But how oppressive are the crowds, the humidity, and the smell of sweat. The exercise exhausted you and your feet ached as though you were learning how to walk for the first time. Eyes stared as the giant slowed his steps and, overcome by fatigue, sat down on the nearest bench on the Corniche. After a quarter of a century’s blindness, you looked at people again. Thus had the shore witnessed the birth of Adam and Eve, but no one knows who will emerge from paradise. As a tall, thin youth, the son of a petty employee, he’d walked the length and breadth of Cairo without complaint, and generations of his ancestors had bruised their feet struggling with the land and had collapsed in the end fromfatigue. Soon the past will emerge from prison, and existence will become more of a torment.
    “Othman, why are you looking at me like that?”
    “Don’t you want to play ball?”
    “I don’t like sports.”
    “Nothing except poetry?”
    Where can one escape your piercing glance? What’s the use of arguing with you? You know that poetry is my life and that the coupling of two lines begets a melody which makes the wings of heaven dance.
    “Isn’t that so, Mustapha?”
    The balding adolescent stated, “Existence itself is nothing but a composition of art.”
    One day Othman in a state of revelation proclaimed, “I found the magic solution to all our problems.” Trembling with fervor, we raced up the heights of Utopia. The poetry meters were disrupted by convulsive explosions. We agreed that our souls were worthless. We proposed a gravitational force, other than Newton’s, around which the living and dead revolved in an imaginary balance; none rising above or falling beneath the others. But when other forces opposed us, we preferred comfort to failure and thus the giant climbed with extraordinary speed from a Ford to a Packard until he settled in the end in a Cadillac and was on the verge of drowning in a quagmire of fat.
    The umbrellas with their tassels touching each other formed a huge multicolored dome under which seminude bodies reclined. The pungent smell of perspiration dispersed in the bracing sea air under a sun which had renounced its tyranny. Buthayna stood smiling, a slim wet figure with red arms and legs, her hair shoved under a blue nylon cap. He himself was almost naked, the bushy blackhair of his chest exposed to the sun. Jamila was sitting between his legs building a sand pyramid. Zeinab reclined on a leather chaise longue stitching rose petals on an embroidery frame, her healthy bulk and swelling breasts inviting the stares of imbecilic adolescents.
    Dear Mustapha,
    I read your weekly review of the arts. It was superb—both witty and provocative. You say you’re a mere vendor of melon seeds and popcorn, but your inherent discernment and your long experience as a serious critic are evident. Even in jest you write with style. Thanks for your letter inquiring about us, but it was distressingly brief. You probably consider letters secondary to your articles, but I’m in urgent need of a long talk. Zeinab is well. She sends you her regards and reminds you of the medicine she’d asked you to get from one of your colleagues traveling abroad. I think her intestinal problems are simple, but she’s fond of medicine, as you