* I Felt
• I saw a lady haggling over the purchase of a kilo of apricots, and the minuteness of the bargaining between the buyer and the seller caught my attention. The latter was calm and patient, which helped them reach agreement on the price.
The lady asked for a paper bag to put the fruit in. The seller answered her that the bag cost five piasters and that she could buy one from the bag-sellers in the same place. Here a long, broad wrangle broke out over the paper bag and over who was obliged to pay for it — the seller or the buyer... The matter ended with the seller agreeing to supply the bag at his own expense...
The lady then began feeling the apricots on the tray, turning them over, pressing them with her fingertips, and picking out the big ones, in so irritating a fashion that it aroused the seller's displeasure. I saw him try to help the said lady by hurrying her along in putting the fruit into the bag, to rescue his goods from the meddling and the inspection. At this the lady grew furious and began to "fume" and shout in the seller's face, taking back out of the bag the fruit the seller had put in, saying to him: "I choose for myself..." The seller flared up, his patience at an end; he snatched the bag from the lady's hand and emptied the apricots in it back onto the tray, sharply inviting her to go to Souk al-Franj to get what she needed...
The lady moved on to another seller and left the place, while the seller muttered phrases of indignation and curses...!
And I asked myself: Is it right for this lady to behave in the manner I witnessed — after she had haggled the price down to the utmost and forced the seller to supply the paper bag at his own expense besides?... And this seller, who overstepped the courtesy supposed to exist among sellers and merchants — was he in the right in what he did?...
The answer to that... lies in Souk al-Franj... where the price is steep but the goods are fine... and whoever pays the price has the right to pick and choose!
• There has been much talk of Umm Salim and her miracles in casting the mandal, opening fortunes, uncovering the secrets of the future, and untangling the riddles of ill luck and happiness, love and marriage and divorce, and all the rest of the affairs of life, public and private.
Naturally, Umm Salim has a certain following of women in this country and elsewhere in the neighborhood. These look upon Umm Salim in all earnestness, put their trust in her, and await deliverance by her means.
Space is too short here to enumerate the curious facts and silly incidents, with all the sequels and complications that follow them — laughable at one moment and turning to tragedy at another...
In a gathering that brought together a handful of ladies and young ladies, chatting and passing the evening over all manner of subjects, one of them proposed that Umm Salim be invited to an evening tabbouleh party and persuaded of the necessity of holding the "ceremonies" of casting the mandal, to reveal what the situation in the country will come to and to learn which side will triumph over its adversary..!!
Umm Salim is known for knowing how to preserve her standing, by the "loftiness" and "dignity" with which she surrounds her profession, by the reservations she displays and the calculations she prepares — all of them bound up with the sun and the moon, the stars and the planets and the celestial sphere, the days of the week and the seasons of the year, tallness and shortness, the letters of heaven and the color of the eyes — which drives those women whom the publicity leads to seek out Umm Salim into intense credence and firm conviction, believing every word uttered by this discloser of the unseen and opener of the unseen, this Umm Salim..!
No sooner did those present hear the name of Umm Salim than talk of everything else stopped, and an atmosphere of earnestness... and dignity settled over the room; the ladies and young ladies craned their necks and gathered close to listen to the author of the proposal... And so the evening stretched on and the night grew short, but the talk of Umm Salim did not end.
So I left the place before I should fall into the hysteria of believing and crediting what I had heard of extravagance
in the recounting of stories, superstitions, and legends about Umm Salim and her miracles.
I went out lamenting this portion of our sick society... a society that still grows up with the mentality of the man of the Middle Ages...
Gently, good people... You are, no doubt, among those women afflicted with ignorance... so no blame falls upon you... But now that we live in a civilized century rich in sciences and arts, there is no longer any place under the sun for Umm Salim and her like among the practitioners of charlatanry and fraud. Man has sounded the depths of the earth, measured the planets and the stars, destroyed millions of plagues and microbes, performed surgery on the heart and the arteries, dived into the depths of the waters, made the clouds of the sky give rain, devised and invented and unraveled thousands of the marvels and knots of medicine, industry, agriculture, natural science, physics, and chemistry — not by relying on Umm Salim and her like, but by way of genuine science, statistics, art, and research...
A person in full possession of his mind cannot be taken in by the drivel of Umm Salim... So do not let the saying "woman has but half a mind" prove fit to be believed!...
• It was morning, and I was sitting in one of the buses, joy filling my breast, on my way to settle accounts with one of the advertising companies that deal with The Woman's Voice — and collecting money in these hard days inevitably moves a man to gladness, cheer, and relief.
While I was intent on reaching the company's offices at the appointed time, a girl of comely bearing and lovely face climbed onto the bus and sat in a seat in front of me. A glance of hers happened to turn my way, and she fixed her eyes upon me in a manner that seemed, so it appeared, alluring in the extreme. Her glances multiplied until I fancied that this young woman had been dreaming of my phantom all night long, and here she was now, finding me on the bus alive and breathing!! She aroused my interest and drew my feelings toward her, as she shot me the arrows of her two captivating eyes, her mouth looking as though it wished to utter something, halfway between speech and smile!! I melted with vanity, strutting with joy and delight; I remembered the days of early youth and persuaded myself that I still possessed some measure of attraction and allure!!
And my inner voice kept repeating the words of the late Ahmad Shawqi: "A glance... then a smile... then a greeting... then talk... then a promise... then a meeting"... Such is love, or nothing at all!!
I did not come to myself until the bus had reached the end of the line and turned back... and still the girl eyed me with speaking glances... and whenever one of us tried to smile at the other, some inner reversal came over us and we turned our faces away from each other — in bashfulness!
So here I was, returning whence I had come, in the same car — and the girl returning with me too... so much so that the driver's assistant noticed it. I overcame my weak will and got off the bus — and behold, the young woman followed me!...
And now the lips of this "houri" parted in a sweet smile, and she came up to me saying: "Aren't you Estefan the shoemaker in Souk al-Jamil?..." And before I could recover from my stupefaction, she went on: "Well then, if you don't want to make me the pumps... do me a favor and give me back what I paid... Why do you keep dodging me?..." I returned to my natural state. I took hold of my nerves, pulled out my identity card, and showed it to the "fairy," with a few phrases I uttered to save the situation... the situation of the two of us, which had begun to turn comical...
I hurried back to the advertising company's offices by taxi, cursing "passion and youth and the longed-for hope..." I climbed the stairs panting with exertion and vexation — and the company's office boy received me with the words: "Nobody's in the office... today is Saturday... never mind... honor us next Saturday"!..