Daily Concerns

An official government communiqué has stated that construction is booming.

That certainly explains why the rent for a simple room in a popular neighborhood is the equivalent of a month’s salary for a low-level civil servant. No one has any idea where people who aren’t civil servants manage to live. Maybe there are lots of holes-in-the-wall in the center of the city for people who can’t afford to pay such rents.

All around the city, workers were perched on top of scaffolding. The building in front of the café was almost finished. It had been whitewashed, and now people were waiting for the installation of doors downstairs for the shops and windowpanes.

“If God provides for you,” the waiter told a customer, “no one can prevent you from making a living.”

“I used to know the owner,” he went on. “He was poor and needy like everyone else. Now look at him, just five years later. He bought that entire lot very cheap. Nobody can even begin to guess how much he’s going to make off that new seven-storey building.”

“Get me another drink,” the customer asked. “As the old saying has it, ‘Fate smiles on some and rains on others.’”

The customer, a low-level civil servant, noticed a colleague whom he knew very well; he was at exactly the same level. That colleague of his managed to change cars every other month and had two wives; somehow he could pay the rent for both homes. One of the wives made no attempt to hide what she did. The husband wasn’t bothered; the only thing he cared about was changing cars and frequenting bars. Even so, the money rained down on him.

“If God provides for you,” he heard the waiter telling him again, “no one can prevent you from making a living.”

“Exactly,” the customer replied with a nod, and then shook his head at the row of shoeshine boys and the beggars who were crowding around him. Another waiter came over and sternly told the shoeshine boys and beggars to move; however, he did allow three shoeshine boys to take a turn around the café.

The customer watched as the man with two wives left his car and walked over to the café. But then he changed his mind and went to another café. The customer was thinking about his colleague with two wives, while the stern waiter, who by now had given up chasing beggars away, was having other thoughts as he sat down and stared at the stools all around the counter.

Meanwhile, throughout the city loads of construction workers were still perched on scaffolding.

“It’s twelve o’clock,” one of them working in the eastern part of the city said to another. “Let’s get something to eat. Do you have any money? Go get some bread and butter. I don’t have anything on me. Yesterday I had to give everything I had on me to cover the cost of my son’s insurance and school books.”

“You’re crazy!” his fellow-worker replied. “Why on earth did you pay for the insurance? They’ll expel him next year anyway. That’s what they did to my only son last year.”

He continued singing his favorite Hawziya song, while his fellow-worker was thinking about what he’d just said. In fact, that was not his only problem (I mean the man whose son had been kicked out of school). He had another problem, but it was one he never discussed with anyone. His daughter was spending her youth in prison. She’d been arrested while leaving a baby in an abandoned area. Even though she’d told the court that she was hungry, her father was unemployed, and she had no choice but to do what she did, she’d still been sentenced to twenty years without parole. Now her father was singing his Hawziya song, trying to forget it all. Meanwhile, the other worker perched on the scaffolding beside him was still thinking about today’s lunch and other things as well, some of them possibly important.

“You really enjoy your drink!” the waiter told the customer.

At that moment the other waiter, who had been so stern with the shoeshine boys, was glowering at the customer. When their gazes met, the waiter reluctantly lowered his eyes. The customer now noticed a little girl and assumed she was the waiter’s daughter coming to look for him.

“Fate smiles on some and rains on others,” he repeated. “We agree. Get me another drink!”

The waiter served him, then went over to the corner of the bar.

“All right,” he thought to himself. “You may be right. Let’s assume that Fate does smile on some and rain on others. That means it’s all your own fault, you idiot. You’ve been coming here for years, assuming that somehow luck would smile on you. Now start acting like the people fate has smiled on. Aren’t you ashamed, you jackass? You’ve got three children, and yet you still get drunk every day.”

Sitting by the bar, the waiter kept talking to himself. “So, thank God, I used to be a shoeshine boy, but now I own three buildings and a grocery store. But what about you, you jackass? What do you own?”

“I must have sex today,” the customer told himself while he was still drinking. “Life’s so beautiful, and there are lots of pretty young girls.”

The stern waiter was up again, wrestling with a strong beggar. When people saw the waiter fall to the floor, they intervened and the fight came to an end.

“He’s as strong as a mule,” one customer said to another. “Why doesn’t he get a job?”

The beggar heard what he said.

“Shut up, you jackass,” he yelled, “or else I’ll flatten you the way I did him.” He was pointing at the waiter.

The man was afraid of making a fool of himself, so he said nothing. However, a plainclothes policeman who was not afraid of making a fool of himself walked right up to the beggar with a confident stride.

“How would you like to spend the night there?” he asked the beggar.

The beggar knew full well what he meant by ‘there,’ and left the café.

“He always comes here,” the nicer of the two waiters was telling a customer. “There are way too many of them. Thousands of them come by here every single day.”

“If you traveled, you’d see worse,” the customer replied laconically. “In the countryside, people have no idea what to do with themselves.”

“They have land,” the waiter suggested, “so why don’t they work it? They’re just lazy.”

“You seem to have things straight,” the customer said. “You must be smart. But don’t forget: ‘Fate smiles on some and rains on others.’”

What he didn’t say out loud but thought to himself was: “That applies to you as well, you ass, mule, jackass,” and so forth, on and on.

While the customer was talking to himself, most of the workers came down to have lunch, bread and butter, and maybe tea as well. At the same time people at fancy tables were thinking about one thing only: How could they get more money, build more villas, marry off their children to noble families with yet more real estate and stocks?

The father had taken his hat off, so his bald pate was shining in the blazing sun that filtered into the room through the wide windows. “Listen, my daughter,” he told her. “That young man’s no good for you. I suggest so-and-so, who’s currently studying in France. This year he’s going to get his PhD in chemistry.”

“But he’s not good-looking,” the girl’s mother said.

The girl stood up. She was a real woman indeed, slender and tall. Turning round, she headed angrily toward the lounge.

“I’ve told you a thousand times,” the mother told her husband in exasperation. “Don’t talk to her about it while we’re eating.”

“I’m sorry,” the wealthy bald man replied. “I won’t do it again.”

The mother stood up, went to the lounge, and brought her daughter back, wiping away her tears. She didn’t feel like eating any more.

On the other hand, the two workers coming down the scaffolding were famished. The loaf of bread and the small packet of butter they’d bought with it were obviously not enough.

“Thank God,” one of them thought to himself.

Hundreds of cars of all makes were filling the streets with the noise of their engines and going in different directions. Where do they all come from and how do their owners manage to make so much money? At the same time vagrants of all kinds are hell-bent on begging for alms, because in just a short while the streets will be empty.

“It’s lunchtime now.” That’s what one of the beggars told his female comrade, who was carrying a baby she’d rented from her blind neighbor and dragging along with her two scruffy little boys, who kept on kicking each other.

“You should stick around that café,” he told her. “I’ll stay here at this one. When I give you the signal, we’ll switch places.”

Snot was dripping on to the lips of one of the little boys and onto the woman’s arms as well. He swallowed it because he was so hungry.

The nice waiter kept very busy, filling glasses for customers lined up by the counter; he was looking delighted.

Behind the line of customers a poor man blurted out, “And who confounded all mankind . . . ,” but the stern waiter was ready. Grabbing him by the arm, he shoved him outside. “Damn it!” he said. “Let people drink in peace.”

The waiter was frowning as he came back in. Sitting down again, he started looking at the customers, one after the other.

It all came in an official communiqué from the government.