The Book of Safety. Yasser Abdel Hafez

she introduced herself to us.

      Since she’d first rung Dmitri’s bell, I’d been sure that we would meet again—and not a chance encounter, not a fleeting glance and a greeting. But she had gone about it the wrong way. She should have followed me, so as not to waste weeks on a journey whose final destination had lain only ten minutes away. Yet her tardiness in joining us didn’t detract from her achievement. She had the right to list her name as the first woman to penetrate this male world, beating every feminist group to it and thereby being the paragon they could boast of. What did cast doubt on Talia’s achievement, however, was that it might not have been an entirely solitary effort. I draw attention to this somewhat reluctantly, since I am not the type to deny people their accomplishments based on unsubstantiated rumor. But anyway, even supposing she was Ashraf al-Suweifi’s lover, does that mean we only accepted her as a favor to him? Certainly not. What kind of people would we be if that were the case?

      Ustaz Fakhri waited for one of those moments when she was watching us, unable to turn her face quickly enough to the street (which she did whenever one of us took notice of her):

      “Please join us.”

      She thanked him with a slight nod of the head, failing to appreciate the sheer scale of the concession he had made with such an invitation. His vanity and pride knew no bounds, and he was no lover of womankind to put the status quo at risk for the sake of a female who was more girl than grown adult. Even so, he would subsequently prove her champion, defending her rights before the waiter:

      “It doesn’t matter whether she drinks it or not, Sayyid, she’s free to do as she pleases!”

      In the normal course of events, an argument to determine the fate of a new customer was unavoidable. As a member of the inner circle here, there was no need to go to the trouble of ordering. Your drink would come minutes after your arrival, as though you were some creaking aristocrat in a gentleman’s club, whose every habit the barman knew like the back of his hand. But of course you were no aristocrat, and this was no gentleman’s club. That understood, and so long as you were here, you were expected to show keen awareness that all the money in the world did not give you the right to impose your own rhythm.