The Colors of Infamy Read Free

and the hardship of her charmless existence. Th is face expressed the pain of immutable poverty, but, even more so,
resignation and shame, and it was not at all attractive to Ossama; still, he was
always compassionate and friendly with the girl. Aware that she was hatching
some romantic scheme that concerned him personally, he was trying to protect
himself by pretending to be corrupt and without a future.
    â€œIt’s unbelievable!” Safira suddenly exclaimed, as if she were in
raptures over some miracle. “When I went out today, I was sure I was going to
run into you. Isn’t that amazing?”
    â€œI’m as delighted as you are,” Ossama answered, suspecting that
the girl had traveled the entire city to find him. “Believe me, I bless the good
fortune that set me on your path.”
    By adopting this exaggeratedly warm tone, Ossama was simply hoping
to establish an affectionate mood of honest camaraderie. Unfortunately, this
mischievous cordiality, despite its excess, contributed to encouraging Safira’s
modest quest for requited love. She lived in the Shoubra district with her
mother in a rear basement apartment, in total isolation and poverty. To obtain
the few piasters needed daily to sustain them in the chaos, Safira had nothing
but the sole means offered to the proletariat living under governments that
starve their people: she could continue seeking work that did not exist and die
of malnutrition, or she could become a cut-rate prostitute — Safira was still
too naïve to appreciate her body’s true worth. Ossama had slept with her on the
evening they met, and in exchange she had asked for a sum so modest that this
lack of venality in a prostitute had surprised and embarrassed him. Sexual
relations that were all but free surely had to be hiding a trap; from then on he
had refrained from renewing that episode of distraction, yet without denying the
girl his friendship. She seemed to have attached herself to him like a drowning
girl to a wisp of straw — Ossama considered himself in these cases even slighter
than a wisp of straw — perhaps because she saw him as an outcast as unhappy as
she. Th e young man had told her he was a thief and
therefore, in his way, a pariah living on the fringes of society and this — in
her ignorant mind — seemed the essential ingredient of a love affair. Th e fact that she was so easily resigned irritated
Ossama and had a devastating effect on his spirits. So much bitterness, so much
criticism had accumulated in her gaze that she stifled any desire he had to
laugh. In truth, his compassion for the girl prevented him from viewing her
through his usual prism of ridicule and condemned him to seeing a reality whose
tragic aspect he normally actively denied. At times she would give herself over
to the eagerness and teasing of girls her age; then, suddenly, she would become
fierce, almost frantic, as if the crude images of her life suddenly loomed out
of her memory in their basest details, casting a cloud over any brief moment of
youthful enthusiasm.
    All the while praising the girl’s attire, Ossama never took his
eyes off the club’s entrance in the hope that his day would not end in emptiness
and melancholy. Th is did not escape Safira, who
started to get up, and, in a humble tone colored with suffering, said:
    â€œYou seem to be waiting for someone, so I’ll be going. Perhaps
I’ll have the good fortune to see you again.”
    â€œOn your mother’s life, stay put. I’m not waiting for anyone.”
    â€œSpeaking of my mother, I should mention she’s very fond of you.
Yesterday she told me she was praying to Allah for you to stay safe and never be
arrested. Don’t you think that’s very kind of her?”
    â€œIndeed! You mentioned me to your mother?”
    â€œWhen she asked me where I had gotten these beautiful shoes” —
Safira stretched out her legs and in the shade of the