16

As the thin layer of mist that surrounded everything cleared, I started to breathe the fresh and invigorating air. In Qasr al-Aini Street I noticed a coffee shop in an alleyway that was still accepting customers at this hour. The first sip of coffee jolted my head and I wondered what I was doing there and whether I should go back home to bed, and if I did go back how I would punish her and show her how angry I was. How would it be if people were born without fathers or mothers? I didn’t think that would be too hard for the creator of this complex and ingenious universe to arrange.

Before finishing my cup of coffee I remembered that I had an old friend living nearby, a young Nubian called Omar Nour. I had met him again by chance about two months earlier, not far from the coffee shop, and after some hesitation I went off with him because I wanted to discover him. After taking the ancient elevator to the top floor of the building, we walked up a spiral metal staircase to the roof, where he rented a tiny apartment—a bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room that was in fact smaller than the large bathroom in our apartment.

As we drank tea at his place he started talking about politics, the state of the country, and things I had never taken any interest in. I nodded, pretending to be following him, while I looked around absentmindedly, looking for anything beautiful in his house and finding only reproductions of Picasso, Matisse, and Juan Miró paintings. After two sips of tea, I was bored with sitting there and with his prattle, which reminded me of those discussion programs on television. On that occasion I took my leave of Omar, because I felt uncomfortable and embarrassed at the way he lived. He assured me that his door would always be open to me, and in order to set the right seal on this invitation he kissed me on both cheeks and brought his lips very close to mine. I smiled to myself in the elevator and told myself there was no harm in putting him on the list of reserves, because who knows?

I suddenly decided to go to his place that morning, maybe to punish Mother or simply to get away from her for a while. I dragged myself to the apartment block, my eyelids drooping. I was yawning at regular intervals, and all I wanted to find at his place was a clean, warm blanket.

Omar’s family had been our neighbors when we lived in Abdin, and we used to see each other on the way to school—where he was two years my senior—or in the mosque at Friday prayers or outside the European-style bakery in the evening. He was always tall and thin and smiling like an idiot. Then we left Abdin and I forgot him. We remembered each other immediately when we met once in the Hurriya coffee shop. We exchanged greetings and told each other what we’d been up to. Most of his group of friends were artistic, political, or in journalism. I wasn’t very comfortable sitting with them, but he often joined my group of friends. He joined in the conversation intelligently, gradually let down his guard, and by subtle signals began to disclose to me that he had ambiguous tendencies and wavered between desires for women and for men. He seemed sensible and serious, despite the politics that had turned his head. On the surface he looked like a completely normal man. Nothing in his clothes, his gait, his body language, or the way he spoke suggested that his sexual inclinations were uncertain. Even so, if one watched him closely for a while—his delicately featured face and his deportment in general—you could detect something pliant in his glances and gestures, something suppressed like a shy orange glow under the surface of his soft brown skin.

He opened the door, rubbing his eyes. I thanked God that he hadn’t gone out early, because I had an insanely urgent desire to sleep. He recognized the person standing in front of him, smiled, and stood aside to let me in. Waving me inside, he peppered me with greetings. Nothing had changed in the place since my only previous visit, but I was grateful to have four walls around me, and for the breadsticks and the tea he made on a small one-ring stove. It reminded me of the tiny old Primus stove that my grandmother Sakina was so proud of owning. She told the world she was outraged when she found out that my mother had sold it to the junk man. “Do you remember my grandmother Sakina?” I asked Omar, who looked calm and slightly puzzled. He suddenly laughed so much that he choked on a mouthful of tea, and started to cough and wheeze until his chest cleared and he got his breath back.

Still laughing, he said, “May God have mercy on her soul. Several times she gave my mother hell for bizarre reasons.”

After a short conversation about our old days in Abdin, Omar realized I had come to stay for some time, so he got up and fetched a thick, warm, apricot-colored woolen cloak. I came out of the bathroom and found him rolling a joint. At the time I didn’t like hashish, and on the few occasions when I had tried a puff or two it made me feel nauseous and reminded me of my panic attacks. I was “aqueous,” as we call people who like to drink. I respect alcohol’s magical power to rid the spirit of fears and worries and relax the body, so that it dances and leaps into life like a bird in paradise. Even so, when he hesitantly offered me the joint, I took it in the hope that it would make me sleep deeply despite being in a strange bed in a strange room. After the first puff, I said straight out, “My mother’s finally started to suspect me.”

We started laughing again, although my eyes were wet with tears. Omar came close to me and patted me on the shoulder. Omar was a friend to me then, even if only for a limited time. He was my friend as much as it mattered because he patted me on the shoulder and pulled me toward his slim body, which was warm and comforting. When I tried clumsily to share some of my confused thoughts with him, he pressed his lips to mine and shut me up completely.

I spent two days in Omar’s apartment without leaving it, and I liked the seclusion, especially in the hours when I was alone, when Omar went to work at the magazine and the world fell still and I could hear my thoughts clearly. He would soon be back, impatient as a newlywed, bearing bags with basic necessities, as well as beer and hashish. I felt a slight pang of vanity at his impatience and his simple joy at having me stay, as I knew I didn’t deserve all this and that he might hate me if I told him some of what I thought of him.

I decided to go home on my third day as Omar’s guest, out of pity for my mother, and also because I was simply bored by the place. I missed my comforts—hot water in the shower, my clean clothes, soft sheets, and the many little pillows that I always hug in my sleep. I may have been bored with Omar too. Despite all his affection and kindness, after a while even his interest in me and his solicitude for me became stale and artificial. He pretended I was his partner, and on that basis tried to please me in every possible way, although he doubtless knew deep down inside that that was not what I was. We pretended to be satisfied with the gentle, pleasant sex that we had over and over, like two buck rabbits that think they can have children if they try hard enough, so they exhaust each other to no avail.

I told him I had to go home before my mother went mad with anxiety. He said he had been expecting me to come to this decision when I was ready, although he was happy I had stayed with him. He insisted I promise to keep in touch with him, at least so that we could carry out some joint projects we had dreamed up over those two days. We were to read and discuss certain important books, and I would show him some of my old poems and writings. I might get enthusiastic about writing again. I promised him all that, insincerely. Inside I felt contempt for his naivety and innocence and his dream of a decent world for everyone, even those who would stone him to death if they found out his secret.

Later I traced my aversion to him to its origins inside me. He was honest. He lived almost without masks or roleplaying. He lived as he wished and as he chose. He had clear principles, even if they were strident—a word that sounded strange to me then, and maybe still does. He was still in journalism school and working as a stringer for independent magazines and leftist newspapers, living almost at subsistence level. But he didn’t have nightmares or panic attacks. He spoke without thinking and laughed heartily for the simplest reason.

After I left him on the third day we met sporadically, sometimes by agreement and sometimes by chance, but we never slept together again. Our affection for each other was unaffected, however. Sometimes he would drag me to meetings of intellectuals and artists, seminars and discussions, though I never managed to get used to them. Most of the people there didn’t have Omar’s simplicity and honesty. They spoke a lot but did very little. They always tried to disguise their real selves, living on coffee and cigarettes, and beer and hashish in the evening. Omar introduced me to a novelist who was said to be important. At a party in that old writer’s downtown apartment he kept looking at me, smiling and nodding. When I got up to fetch a beer he followed me into the kitchen. He came up behind me and hugged me, and his breath smelled horrible. I slipped out of his grasp carefully to avoid making a stupid scene in front of the other people, but he grabbed my hand and put it on his pants over his penis. I grabbed one of his testicles and squeezed until he squealed and pushed me away, muttering, “That’s a real faggot"—the same horrible word that had blighted the world for me after I heard my mother say it, the word that sent a shiver down my spine whenever I heard it in the street, even as a lighthearted insult between friends.

I didn’t bother to tell Omar what had happened, but just left without offering an explanation, and I didn’t go back to meet those friends of his after that party. However, I didn’t lose my relationship with Omar himself. I was grateful for the beneficial effect he had on me, because he had encouraged me to start reading again, this time with the appetite of a hungry man who discovers a tunnel under his room leading to Wonderland and becomes addicted to going down into that underground world almost every night, at least to give myself some relief from the domestic dramas and the frenzy of running after men. I left the real world behind me through beautiful novels, and identified with the personalities of the protagonists in my own world. I began to discover new books by myself, without recommendations by Omar, and because I was good at English I read books that hadn’t been translated into Arabic. I realized the extent to which translation diminishes our enjoyment. I dug around until I came across many books about gay people, including short stories, sentimental romances, and sexual adventures. Although the amount of material available was not enormous, it was enough for me to access this other world, which was so far beyond our wildest dreams. The most we could hope for was to read about this world or see it on screen. Books started to proliferate around the house like cobwebs, although I was careful to get rid of books I had finished reading, unless they were masterpieces. I’ll never forget that it was Omar who gave me the first novel I ever came across where the hero had homosexual tendencies. It was a Japanese novel called Confessions of a Mask. I forget the name of the author. I started reading it during my brief stay at Omar’s place, and he gave it to me while I was preparing to leave. Then I found it dull and thought the hero was strange, so I didn’t even finish it when I was back at home.

When I left we exchanged a long kiss at the door and I took off the apricot-colored cloak that was steeped in my smell, to go back to my fine clothes and my English coat, which had been hanging on the wall all this time like a European tourist stunned into immobility by the slums of Cairo. I felt a double joy: that I had been able to get away from my mother, if only for two and a half days, for the first time in my life and without her knowing anything about where I was, and that I would finally be leaving Omar’s place, despite his generosity and the slow-burning sexual pleasures we had enjoyed together.