David sat slightly apart from the rest. From within the cloud of heavy smoke, illuminated by the red lights of the club, his father’s fez appeared again, red hot, like the floating barrel that bobbed among the waves at Sporting Beach. At his side were several other fezzes — the old men spoke emphatically, their faces businesslike and their wrinkles vibrating. With dreamy, covetous eyes, David watched the frantic curves of the dancer Shakra Roomy. Her twitching navel hypnotized him into intoxication. Her protesting breasts, demanding to remove the burden of the golden brassiere, decorated with glass necklaces and jingling coins, also swirled in circles through the air, and in a moment of delusion he imagined them rubbing his burning face. The raki, that Turkish anise spirit, diluted with a drop of water, created hot steam inside his head, thickening clouds of fog before him, and through it all, the sounds of rhythmic eastern music, going round and round in endless cadence … In his blurry mind, David wondered if the girl had a price. He was once told that every woman had a price, but, in his natural decency, refused to believe it. Women like his mother, for instance, could not be bought. Suddenly it occurred to him that women like Robby’s sister could not be bought either, and the thought sobered him, like a broom sweeping away the cobwebs of merciful drunkenness. He quickly brushed the thought away and returned to his expedition around Shakra Roomy’s jiggling belly.
Shakra wasn’t an Arab. Her parents had migrated to Alexandria from the Balkans, possibly in the same period that Joseph and Emilie Hamdi-Ali and Robby’s parents arrived as well. David once read a book, perhaps by the great Flaubert, a travel book about 19th century Egypt, in which Turkish belly dancers, who in Egypt served as high-end prostitutes, shaved the pubic hair off their romantic triangle. The thought sent a tremble of lust through him. A woman, white from head to toe (in his excitement he forgot the brownish-pink halos around her nipples), a little girl, blown-up. He’d often seen little girls in the nude. In his virginal imagination, he tried to illustrate this metamorphosis, but he couldn’t conjure up a clear image of a shaved woman, which served only to further ignite his elusive lust. This Shakra must also have a price. Distractedly, he rummaged through his pockets, feeling some bills and coins. Had his father not been with him, he would have tried to discuss a more intimate meeting with her. He looked at his father, and though the latter was conversing with the other men and paying no attention to his son’s endeavors, David blushed and curled up in his corner.
“Hamdi-Ali, ya omri, my soul!” one fat Armenian in a fez tried sweet-talking Joseph. “Ya Hamdi-Ali, my brother, who knows better than you that the God above gives only one chance, whether you’re a wise man or a fool, you only get one. The wise man jumps at it, grabbing it like … like a woman’s breasts. While the fool …” He waved the thought away.
Joseph said nothing. His eyes were dark and stubborn. Once in a while, he glanced at his son, glad that David wasn’t listening to this shameful conversation he was forced to have with his friends. His friends! One trainer and two bookies. The trainer, his old Greek friend, Panayotti Helikos, who’d been Ahmed Al-Tal’ooni’s trainer and business manager for a long time. He was a small man, with a shiny black mane and a hooked mustache that looked as if it were painted over his thin top lip with pencil liner. He spoke with exhausting speed, switching languages to create a mélange of Turkish, Greek, French and Arabic, with a few English words to spice things up. With his will of steel, he’d decided to turn his employer into a champion, no matter what, even recruiting the support of the two craftiest bookmakers in Alexandria, the Armenian twins, Toto and Sisso Georgian.
How dire, that Joseph was forced to sit here, at his age, with his flawless reputation, like a city under siege, suffocated with smoke, attacked from all directions. He wanted to go out to the night air, stand by himself, lean beneath the yellow glow of a streetlamp and smoke his cigarette quietly, his cigarette alone, inhaling only its smoke, without the nauseating mixture of smoke and hot breath, turning the air inside the club into an unbearable mush. The repetitive rhythmic music, looping endlessly, pounded inside his head like a stubborn hammer.
For a moment, he thought he was going to have a heart attack: sudden suffocation, grotesque spasms, his eyes popping out of their holes, panic … doctor! Is there a doctor in the house?
He gritted his teeth and prayed it wasn’t happening to him. Not here, not here, surrounded by his so-called friends, Panayotti, Toto and Sisso, the three men he’d joined countless times in this club so favored by the racing industry. He’d often joked around with them, enjoying their company, and truly thought they were his close friends. But Joseph Hamdi-Ali never had true friends, and therefore had no point of reference.
Toto worked him with his slick tongue, and then Panayotti tried his luck with quick rhetoric, and finally Sisso delivered a short series of threats. But Joseph was firm in his opinion — not for all the money in the world.
The three men saw this as an invitation to raise their offer. They exchanged quick looks of consultation, a crooked smile to signal that every man had his price, and righteous Joseph was no exception. Toto named a higher price than before. Joseph chuckled and said, “No!” They could not believe that modest, bashful Joseph, whom they thought of as a simple, naive lamb, dared demand a higher price than they’d offered, and never imagined that here was a gullible man, honest to the point of boredom, who could not be tempted with money.
Joseph laughed silently. He thought: my son must be a real star if these three vultures, may their names and memories be wiped from eternity, are willing to pay, and in advance, no less, so certain are they that my son is going to win. Thank you for the vote of confidence, gentlemen!
While he pondered this, he heard Panayotti name a new, dizzying price. Joseph pictured hundreds of Egyptian pound notes swirling through the wind in front of his tired eyes. He hoped with all his heart that David heard nothing. He could not guess his son’s reaction to such an offer.
Luckily, David’s eyes were captivated by the charms of the beautiful, snow-white odalisque. The Turks like ivory flesh. Joseph looked at him, then at her, and thought, why not? His son wants her, and he shall get her, no matter the price. David is a prince, and a prince deserves it all. This was also a chance to escape from the three predators and their shameful offer. He waved over to the waiter, his old friend, a Maltese man with a quiet face and a paternal look, gestured toward Shakra and asked, “How much?”
The Maltese shook his head as if to say, You couldn’t afford it, ya ahi, these kind of goods are for the pashas and the beys and the diplomats.
But Joseph insisted, and a price was named. “Does she take checks?”
“From you, ya sidi, certainly.”
“Let’s go, ya ibni,” said Hamdi-Ali, dragging along his amazed son.
23. IVANHOE
The next day was the day of the race.
The entire household was in attendance, except for Robby and Victor, of course. Even Salem went, wearing his Sunday best, a calm and solemn expression on his face. As did the Murad sisters, in new dresses and wide-brimmed straw hats, laughing ceaselessly. Only Robby’s sister didn’t take part in the excitement. Early in the morning, before the rest of the house woke up, she left for a picnic and a bicycle ride in the Nuzha Gardens with Maître Ramzi.