He tried to say something, but I took the briefcase firmly from his hand.
5
People in al-Sadd al-Gawany Street consider it their moral and religious duty to settle quarrels between married couples. The moment a husband and wife on the street start arguing, be it day or night, their neighbors rush over, listen carefully to the facts from both sides and try to suggest a solution based on the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet, not leaving the couple alone until the storm has died down. There was one exception to this rule: the arguments between the grocer Ali Hamama and his wife, Aisha. No one ever tried to keep them apart during a quarrel. Perhaps that was because, in spite of the ferocity of their arguments, they never resorted to physical violence or attempted to kill each other or commit suicide as other couples did. In fact, their arguments had a somewhat festive and entertaining character, with Ali Hamama and his wife exchanging hilariously filthy curses. As far as the people who lived in the street were concerned, Uncle Ali Hamama and his wife, Aisha, were not quite based in reality. They generally behaved like ordinary people, but they had this other side to them that was close to the rough-and-tumble of street puppet theater.
Ali Hamama! The name on his birth certificate was actually Ali Muhammad Hanafi, so how did he come to be known as Ali Hamama? There were many explanations. People said that when he came to Cairo as a ten-year-old from his village (Ashmoun in the governorate of Menoufiya) to work for Yunus the kebab man in Sayyida Zeinab Square, he was noted for his ability to run faster than anyone else, and so they called him Hamama (“the pigeon”). A competing story was that the nickname was owing to the blue pigeon-shaped tattoo that had been inked on his temple when he was a small boy, as is traditional among the rural people. After being teased mercilessly about it by the people in Cairo, he went to a tattoo parlor and had it removed, but the nickname stuck. There was a third much more enthralling story claiming that when he was young, he used to carry out circumcisions on boys, and the name arose because in Egyptian folklore, the pigeon symbolizes the male member. He used to carry the tools of his trade in a briefcase and go from village to village in the vicinity of Cairo, offering his services, negotiating his fees and carrying out the procedure on the sons of poor peasant farmers.
One day, completely stoned from having smoked a bit too much hashish, he set off to circumcise a child in Qalyubiya, disguising his telltale bloodshot eyes with some eyedrops. The house was decked out with lamps and little flags in celebration of the child’s circumcision. The moment Ali Hamama stepped inside, he was met with a storm of ululation from the crowd of women who seemed to be everywhere— in the hallway, on the roof, in the bedrooms and in the living room, where Ali slurped down a glass of rose sherbet before being led to the room where the boy was waiting. After the women left the room, the father and uncle placed the little boy on the bed, and although he struggled hard to get away, they managed to remove his shorts and spread his legs apart, exposing the pertinent area to Ali Hamama, who, as always before carrying out the procedure, uttered the phrases, “In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful” and “There is neither progress nor might except through Allah,” and then positioned himself in front of the child. He took the boy’s penis in his left hand, and the sharp blade glinted in his right. He pulled the penis toward him, but due to the effects of the hashish, instead of removing the foreskin with one deft cut as usual, Hamama accidentally cut directly into the penis. The boy let out an ear-splitting shriek as blood spurted out like a fountain onto the bed and floor. All hell broke loose as word of the dramatic bleeding spread to the boy’s relatives standing outside, and they rushed into the room in a panic, the women howling and wailing as if the boy had died.
Ali Hamama made some reassuring gestures, but then he sighed, smiling broadly, and nodded as if this were absolutely normal. Trying to sound cheerful, he said, “By the way, the boy has a rosy future. His foreskin is off. Do you know what that means?”
“What does it mean?” asked the boy’s father, scowling with worry.
Hamama forced out a laugh and said, “It means that the kid will grow up to have a thick one that will drive women crazy. For sure!”
He shook his head in jest, but no one smiled at his attempt to mollify them. The child’s screams reverberated through the air like an incessant siren, and rivulets of blood kept streaming down his thighs. Ali Hamama noted the grim faces on the relatives crowding around him and realized that their anxiety would soon turn to fury. Calmly and politely, he asked them to fetch him coffee grounds from the kitchen to staunch the wound while he nipped out to purchase a special cream from the nearby pharmacist. When they suggested that one of them could go and buy it, Ali Hamama insisted that there were a number of preparations with the same name, and they might end up buying the wrong one. Then, having made sure to allay their suspicions and having purposefully left his case of medical instruments behind, Ali Hamama set out toward the pharmacist. He walked with a slow and steady gait in case anyone might be watching from the window, but the moment he was out of sight, he started running as fast as his legs could carry him until he reached a taxi stand, where he paid a driver to take him to Cairo (throwing away money as never before and never since). He thanked the Lord and his lucky stars that the family of the victim had not come looking for him, though perhaps they had expected him to take the train and went in pursuit to the railway station. Moreover, they knew neither his full name nor where he lived.
After that sorry episode, Ali Hamama never again carried out a circumcision, instead setting himself up in the small dark grocer’s shop he bought opposite the tram stop at the beginning of al-Sadd Street. He would work all day behind the dilapidated counter wearing his old tarboosh with its slightly battered top and, over his striped galabiyya, a khaki raincoat that made him look like a plainclothes agent from the Ministry of the Interior. He owned three striped galabiyyas, because he believed, for some reason, that striped cotton was the last word in style. He could sit there for hours saying nothing except when absolutely necessary, for as is typical with serious hashish users, he was more inclined toward introspection than any form of movement or activity. His sullen face never bore any expression. As he sat there, his narrow eyes would blink incessantly, and on occasion he would open them wide and try to make out what was going on around him (there was a rumor that he had lost his spectacles years ago and that, as he was too cheap to buy a new pair, his eyesight had become even worse).
Despite his taciturnity, his poor sight and shabby appearance, Ali Hamama was always aware of what was going on. Like a dormant microbe, he lay in wait, saving his energy for the right moment, watching everything in his shop, as customers reeled off orders and as products were fetched, weighed, wrapped and handed over. He watched as money was exchanged and put in the drawer, as the women living in the flats above called down and lowered their shopping baskets on a rope from their balconies and as the serving boy grabbed the money from the baskets and replaced it with their purchases and their change. Ali Hamama watched all this activity with a sensory perception that made up for his poor eyesight. If an argument broke out, he would intervene immediately. What naturally made him angriest was when a customer tried to ask for credit, since, in order to avoid a misunderstanding, he had hung a sign over the doorway that read, “Do not ask for credit as a refusal often offends.” He found that a troublesome customer did not generally make his intentions known from the outset but rather would order, for example, a quarter pound of cheese or a halvah sandwich, and once the items were in hand, he would grin idiotically and say, “I’ll pay you tomorrow, please God.”
At that moment, the normally taciturn and placid Hamama would suddenly spring into action, shocking the customer by barking, “Oh no you won’t. You’ll pay now or never, buster! Goods exchanged for payment only.”
At that moment, the well-trained shop assistant would grab the package from the customer’s hands. If the customer was the sort of lowlife who tried to argue, he would find Ali Hamama inching toward him to settle the matter by other means.
Ali Hamama was renowned as a miser and an unusually brusque one. He never uttered pleasantries or took account of people’s feelings,
