two. But it seemed most probable, with the greater part of his life behind him, that madness was the closer. Maybe it was the Friday ritual alone that held his breakdown at bay.
I was a Trojan horse brought to life. I wasn’t sufficiently aware at the time to perceive that the virus first took root when I began to recount the stories that had suddenly unfurled before me out of a cave whose existence I had never guessed at. A gullible traitor, handing over the keys and only understanding what he was embarked on once his mission was at an end. I spoke with pride: what are we but a set of stories we tell or hear? And as I weakened before temptation, the crack in the window widened, and the street, with all its myriad details, slipped in to claim more territory for itself.
When did I first become aware of my betrayal? From the breadstick seller! That’s it! That half-turn, that look he gave me. Around five o’clock, quite unhurried, he would open the café door (one quarter wooden, the remainder glass), the rasp it made disturbing those present, who would plead with him to hurry it up, some waiting for that moment to test out newly minted wisecracks about the man’s lack of speed. The robe and headdress never changed. Maybe he had more than one outfit in the same faded hues, the same coarse fabric, the same length that granted sight of a skinny shank terminating in a vast and flattened foot trussed up in a peculiar kind of sandal that seemed to have been plaited from strips of a hide which had lost its color and whose original nature could not be guessed at. Similar strips were tied to the basket of breadsticks and roundels, passing across his chest while the basket itself swayed on his back. He’d lift these straps, the basket would lift over him and, as he turned with a dancer’s grace, would suddenly be in front. He would hold it, lower it to the ground, and set to: moving around the café’s tables, distributing his wares to the customers without a word being spoken. Not a day went by without my observing the whole performance. Before plunging in he would stand by the door for a few seconds, as though tallying up his enemies before the charge. Spellbinding, the slow pace at which he proceeded. It wasn’t frailty or weakness. It wasn’t age forcing him to keep that beat. He was healthy enough—you saw it in the rigid, upright body and the two sweating hands: it was just that he was like a man walking through a graveyard, taking care lest he wake the dead. A sinister rhythm that brought back fears I’d long discarded: of death and what comes after.
When the man was done, and everyone had taken their share of breadsticks, he would sit alone in a corner and sip the tea that Amm Sayyid brought him. Half an hour, then he’d set off again. He’d perfected all this an age ago, and every motion now took place according to a system and routine that none dared contemplate altering, each one of us operating in his private world, satisfied with his appointed station.
Ashraf al-Suweifi would watch the breadstick seller for the time it took him to close the door, then return to his papers, a stack comprising almost every sheet of print journalism that had ever been published. It was an assignment he had taken on sincerely and devotedly after completing his studies in the faculty of engineering. He’d gotten the message early on, but his father would continue to repeat the famous line in his hearing: “Finish your studies, and after that you’re free.”
Now Amm Sayyid’s voice rose up to puncture the tranquil calm, telling al-Suweifi of his discovery of a suspicious shortfall in the storeroom’s sugar supply, and making insinuations about his nemesis Fathi, who stood at the counter reckoning up the orders. Al-Suweifi had no liking for the particulars that Sayyid was obliged to share with him—the supplies running out, the number of cups they’d lost. He lacked his father’s ability to discuss work-related matters without getting dragged in. His response brought the conversation to an end.
“Please, Sayyid, don’t bother me with these silly things.”
And once Sayyid had withdrawn, thrilled with this further proof that his word held sway in the café, al-Suweifi let out an exasperated sigh:
“Haven’t I lost years enough to stupid trifles?”
The customers sympathized with his bitterness. They would attempt to soothe him by suggesting that they, too, had lost many years against their will. Most things in life were stupid trifles.
“God’ll make it up. Others have lost more.”
Anwar al-Waraqi would voice despair at his circumstances, and at the eons he’d spent in marital disputes, which had at times prevented him coming to the café—until the separation had set him free.
And what was it they did, to make them regret this lost time? The question preoccupied me, and the breadstick seller had sensed it, telling me, “You don’t belong here. . . .”
I spent nights plotting to get rid of him before he exposed me. I’d murder him in one of Shubra’s serene nighttime streets and around his body I’d spell out some devastating line of Mustafa’s—in breadsticks. The patrons dealt gravely with anything that concerned mixing with the outside world. A shared faith with no prior consultation and no proselytizing necessary.
Ashraf al-Suweifi had returned home, disgusted, from the faculty of engineering to find his father preparing to leave his office and take his siesta, a routine only altered in exceptional circumstances, irresistible circumstances before which one could only surrender to the rhythm of the outside world. For instance, that one’s son had fallen into a fresh trap.
The father had never protested his son’s absences. What was left to him in this world was too precious to waste in argument. In his private corner, which he would subsequently bequeath to his offspring, he had made use of every minute. He was not far from the window, but the daylight didn’t reach him and the passersby couldn’t see him: a miraculous spot, as though a giant creature were shielding him with its shadow. Of course, closer inspection was enough to solve the riddle: that corner was the beginning of a long, dark passage at the end of which lay a large room for storing the café’s supplies. The corridor’s shadow cast its full weight on the father’s corner to set the daylight, no matter how bright it became, at defiance. A space like this had to be used for the purpose it was made for, and he would sit in silence for hours, watching, his memory picking out millions of images for use in his report to the heavens on what went on down here. He was the founder of the League of Watchers, and the memory of him and his like had to be preserved.
When he passed from this world, his son immortalized him in one corner of his corner:
The al-Suweifi Museum for the Defiance of Death and Forgetting
To wit, a wooden cabinet containing his possessions: some books and old magazines, his spectacles, a tarboosh missing its tassel, an antique radio, and—at the heart of the display—a small statue by a long-forgotten artist, a patron of the café, notable for a Mona Lisa-like gaze of exaggerated effect. Such a distinctive feature in such a poor piece got on the nerves of the customers: it seemed to be observing their presence. Indeed, it started to affect them after they’d departed.
“It’s following me in my sleep.”
Before tributes turned into an endless orgy of satire at ‘Big Brother’s’ expense, al-Suweifi shifted the cabinet so that it was facing the street, explaining to his deceased father that since his gaze had always extended to the outside world, he could now continue doing what he had loved. All thought the idea a good one, avoiding the statue’s gaze as they walked past and reveling in the discomfort of the passersby.
The younger al-Suweifi inherited his father’s faith, but expressed through a different rite whose performance he never shirked; he scorned criticism till he had proved that it was not worldly concerns that interested him, unlike those professional perusers of newspapers and magazines who become machines that churn out information and analysis. Al-Suweifi never spoke of what he’d read. No explosions of irritation from him. The politics page, the crossword, the obituaries: the same calm, the same posture for each. No sooner finishing one paper than dropping it at his feet to start the next—without a pause: a grueling marathon.
I’d arrive at noon to find a respectably sized heap on the floor. If time was pressing, he’d speed up, adjusting his pace to a biological alarm clock that let him know when his next appointment was approaching.