“Everything’s ready for tonight?” Heykal asked Karim.
“Yes, everything’s ready,” Karim replied. “I made an appointment with some friends and they’re supposed to join me here soon. We’ll form groups and divvy up the neighborhoods.”
“Excellent. You’ve been wonderful!”
“When I think about the posters I pasted up a few years ago, attacking the government…”
“And now you’re praising it. What a nice change!”
“I’ll come along,” Khaled Omar proposed. “I want to put up at least one.”
“Not a good idea,” said Heykal.
He didn’t say why, but he was thinking that Khaled Omar’s wild getup and booming laugh would attract attention to the group.
“I bow to your orders,” said the businessman, not in the least put out.
Heykal smiled at him. Then said:
“You must excuse me — I have to go.”
He walked over to the pile of posters and took one, stared at it for a while, then folded it up and slipped it into the breast pocket of his jacket.
“I might need it tonight,” he said enigmatically. “Goodbye!”
He left the warehouse and walked out into the empty street, happily inhaling the invigorating scent of the sea.
8
The scent of the sea mingled with the perfume with which Soad had doused her wispy, half-developed adolescent body. She rolled on the sand, striking lewd poses as if to seduce the stars; no one else was in sight. She was on the beach at the end of the deserted casino promenade, in a sheltered spot away from the twinkling lights of the open-air disco. By the time it reached her, the music’s deafening beat had died down, acquiring a ghostly resonance as ethereal as her own presence on this abandoned stretch of sand. She froze for an instant, her face set in a childish pout; then she scooped up a fistful of sand and let it sift over her hips, enjoying the sensation of it pressing down on her, heavier and heavier, massaging her like a deep caress. She repeated this trick a few more times, hovering on the brink of ecstasy, resisting the desire that flooded through her body. Suddenly she stopped; with a supple flick of the hips, she shook the sand from her dress and turned to look at the lights of the disco.
The world at the end of the deserted promenade looked eerie and vaguely fantasticaclass="underline" she could have been watching the scene from a planet thousands of kilometers away. On the dance floor, surrounded by greenery, fountains, and dwarf palms, couples moved like marionettes controlled by a madman. She saw her father sitting in the governor’s box, separated by a railing from the rest of the guests. The governor was holding court before her father, two men she didn’t recognize (they did nothing but nod their heads in a sign of agreement), and a well-known singer, who according to rumor had been the governor’s mistress for the last several months. Her name was Om Khaldoun, and she was old, fat, and as hideously made-up as a pharaoh’s mummy; she’d escaped ruin thanks to the narcissism of certain men of standing in the city. To be the lover of a famous singer was a chance to show off their fortune — the word was that she charged these archaeologists of the flesh a pretty penny. Every time she saw Om Khaldoun, Soad wondered how any man — however philistine and lacking in aesthetic sensibility — could make love to such a withering, flabby creature for vanity alone. Once the singer had been her father’s mistress, and the girl still held painful memories of the time. That was when her hatred for her father grew into insurmountable disgust; she wouldn’t let him near her anymore, let alone touch her. He seemed contagious to her; he exuded the stench of old lady, like the stench of rot. Even after he broke things off with the singer, it was a long time before the girl could look at him without repulsion.
Soad’s father epitomized the greedy, power-hungry bourgeoisie who reigned over the city like a pack of jackals ripping into a carcass. He restricted his associations to his own kind — but only the more servile among them, people he could lord it over and put down as he pleased. He was insolent, disdainful — even with the governor. Soad, powerless and mortified, had listened for years as her father cut people down with the precision of an executioner. Nothing escaped his peremptory judgments or his furious condescending outbursts. These usually happened in the middle of the receptions he hosted in his sumptuous villa, as vast as a palace and swarming with servants. He’d start by welcoming his guests as if their very arrival was a humiliation to be avenged as soon as possible. Then, after shaming his visitors, he’d stir up bitter arguments about business and politics. Nobody dared contradict him: the virulence of his rejoinders was legendary. His way of carrying on a conversation — he would submit his interlocutor to a stream of scathing invective — attracted the city’s elite in droves; each came to see the others insulted. But his daughter he treated with a careful, almost timid benevolence. Her rebellious temperament frightened him; he suspected that a full-scale revolt was in the making. All he asked was for her not to cause a scandal. That was what panicked him: scandal. He trembled at the thought of her getting pregnant, dreading the prospect like nothing else. And Soad knew it; every day she could see him staring at her stomach, as if expecting to see it swell with that terrible scandal. But having settled on this obsession, he paid no further attention; apart from that, he knew nothing about her.
Heykal’s silhouette emerged from the lights of the disco, and she watched him walk toward her on the promenade, long and slim and superb, like an enigmatic god emerging from the void. She leaped to her feet but didn’t run toward him; she waited valiantly until he was in front of her before throwing her arms around his neck and hanging from him, bouncing up and down and sighing hugely and happily, like a child who has been given a fantastic toy and can’t believe her luck. He endured her caresses with tender indulgence. He was susceptible to these signs of adoration, to the rush of inarticulate words like the babbling of a drowning victim come back to life — in short, the frenzied behavior of a young girl in love. She continued kissing him and rubbing up against him, shameless in her desire, clearly hoping to lure him onto the sand. Finally Heykal freed himself from her clutches and pulled away gently.
“All right, little girl, that’s enough for now,” he said.
“You’re so mean to me,” she moaned.
She was distraught, on the verge of tears, pouting like a child who’s been mistreated by an adult. But it was an act, a way of playing the victim to get his sympathy. She never knew if he was happy to see her or not. He never told her he loved her. He was always impassive, even in the throes of passion, with the same wry smile on his lips, the same expression of bottomless pride — not so much remote as willful and controlling.
“You really are mean to me,” she said again, pounding at his chest with her fists.
Heykal laughed.
“Come now, let’s stop the theatrics,” he said, taking her by the arm and escorting her along the beach.
The truth was, he didn’t want to make love to her there because he was afraid of ruining his clothes. He had to be in the casino soon, on a mission requiring utmost discretion; an unkempt outfit would make him stand out. And at the moment, anyway, he felt an excitement that was quite different from carnal desire as he contemplated the web he had woven for the governor and the inevitable repercussions of the postering campaign.