Alaa al Aswany was born in Egypt in 1957. A dentist by profession, for many years he practised in Cairo in the Yacoubian Building, the setting for his internationally bestselling novel of the same name. He has written for Egyptian newspapers on politics, literature and social issues. His latest novel, Chicago, was published by Fourth Estate in 2008.


This story is taken from Aswany’s first collection of short stories, Friendly Fire (Fourth Estate, £10.99), which is published this June. The book also contains his novella “The Isam Abd el-Ati Papers,” which was banned in Egypt for a decade. The translator is Humphrey Davies, winner of the 2006 Banipal prize for Arabic literary translation.

1961

On Sundays my father would take me with him to her house. The building, which was immensely tall, was situated halfway down Adly Street. The moment we went through the main door a waft of cool air would meet us. The lobby was of marble and spacious, the columns huge and round, and the giant Nubian doorkeeper would hurry ahead of us to call the elevator, retiring, after my father had pressed a banknote into his hand, with fervent thanks. From that point on, my father would wear a different face from the one I knew at home. At Tante Zitta’s house, my father became gentle, courteous, playful, soft-spoken, tender, afire with emotion.

Written in French on the small brass plaque at the door of the apartment were the words “Mme Zitta Mendès,” and she would open the door to us herself, looking radiant with her limpid, fresh, white face, her petite nose, her full lips made up with crimson lipstick, her blue, wide, and seemingly astonished eyes with their long, curling lashes, her smooth black hair that flowed over her shoulders, and the décolleté dress that revealed her ample chest and plump, creamy arms. Even her finger and toe nails were clean, elegant, carefully outlined, and painted in shiny red.

I shall long retain in my memory the image of Zitta as she opened the door—the image of the “other woman” enhanced by the aroma of sin, the svelte mistress who draws you into her secret, velvety world tinged with pleasure and temptation. Tante Zitta would receive me with warm kisses and hugs, saying over and over again in French, “Welcome, young man!” while behind her would appear Antoine, her son, who was two years older than I—a slim, tall youth whose black hair covered the upper part of his brow and the freckles on whose face made him look like the boy in the French reading book we used at school.

Antoine rarely spoke or smiled. He would observe us—me and my father—with an anxious look and purse his lips, then make a sudden move, standing or going to his room. He always seemed to have something important on his mind that he was on the verge of declaring but which he’d shy away from at the last minute. Even when I was playing with him in his room, he would apply himself to the game in silence, as though performing a duty. (Just once, he stopped in the middle of the game and asked me all of a sudden, “What does your father do?” I said, “He’s a lawyer” and he responded quickly, “My father’s a big doctor in America and when I’m older I’m going to go there.” When I asked him disbelievingly, “And leave your mum?” he gave me an odd look and said nothing.) Antoine’s disconcerting, difficult nature made my father and me treat him with caution.

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