The sheikh turned to Taha welcomingly and said, “Welcome, welcome. How are you, my boy? I’ve heard a lot about you from your friend Khalid.”
At the police station, the battle heated up.
Hamid Hawwas accused Malak Khilla in an official report of usurping occupancy of the room and demanded that the matter be referred to court, while for his part Malak affixed to the report a copy of the rental contract for the room and insisted on making a second report in which he accused Hamid Hawwas and Ali the Driver of physically assaulting him and requested that his injuries be officially noted. As a result, they sent him with a policeman to the Ahmad Mahir Hospital, from which he returned with a medical report. This too was affixed to the report, Ali the Driver denying absolutely that he had assaulted Malak and accusing him of faking his injuries.
So much for the legal cut and thrust. As for the psychological war, each plunged in after his own fashion. Hamid Hawwas, for instance, never for a second stopped presenting legal arguments relating to the common resource of the residents of the roof, citing among other things various Court of Cassation rulings, while Abaskharon pleaded with the officer (after pulling up his gallabiya as was his custom in times of disaster to show off his amputated leg) with loud repeated wailing cries of, “Mercy, Your Honor, mercy! We just want to make a living, and they throw us out and beat us up!”
Malak’s own performance in police stations was unique. He had worked out long ago that police officers evaluated a citizen on the basis of three factors — his appearance, his occupation, and the way he spoke; according to this assessment, a citizen in a police station would either be treated with respect or despised and beaten. Given that Malak’s modest people’s suit could not be expected to leave any special impression on the officers and, equally, that his occupation of shirtmaker would not guarantee him sufficient respect, all that remained was how he spoke. As a result, Malak had become accustomed when for any reason he entered a police station to adopt the manner of a businessman preoccupied with urgent and serious affairs who was extremely perturbed at being detained in this fashion and would speak to the officers in a language approaching the classical tongue that would make them hesitate before underestimating him. He would say any old thing and then shout in the officers’ faces to stress the point, “You, sir, are apprised of this and I am apprised of this! The honorable station chief is apprised of this! The esteemed District Chief of Police is likewise apprised of this!”
The use of the classical plus the mention of the district chief of police (as though he were an intimate acquaintance whom he intended to contact) were effective ways of making the officers grudgingly draw back from treating Malak with contempt.
So there they all were — Abaskharon and Malak and Hamid Hawwas standing in front of the officer and yelling without let-up, while behind them the drunkard Ali the Driver, like an old hand on the bass who knows how to make his contribution to the music, kept repeating in his deep, husky voice, over and over again, the same words: “Sir, there are women and families on the roof! We can’t have apprentices violating the sanctity of our families, sir!”
The officer had become completely fed up with them and, were it not for his fear of the consequences, would have told the goons to hitch them all to the bastinado and beat them. In the end, however, he endorsed the report for referral to the public prosecutor and the contestants stayed in the detention room till the following morning, when the public prosecutor issued an order permitting Malak to have the use of the room “and the injured parties to have recourse to the courts.” Thus, Malak returned victorious to the roof, men of goodwill subsequently intervening and reconciling him with his opponents Ali the Driver and Hamid Hawwas (who made a show of accepting the reconciliation but never stopped writing — and conscientiously pursuing — complaints against him).
The prosecutor’s order was, however, a springboard for Malak, who in one week transformed the appearance of the room. He closed the door that opened onto the roof and opened a large door onto the main stairwell, where he hung a large plastic sign on which he wrote in Arabic and English Malak Shirts. Inside he placed a large cutting table and some chairs for waiting customers and on the wall he hung a picture of the Virgin Mary along with a copy of an article in English from the New York Times with the headline “Malak Khilla, Superb Egyptian Tailor,” in which the American journalist spoke for a whole page about the skill of Master Craftsman Malak Khilla; in the middle was a large picture of Malak with the tape measure around his neck completely absorbed in cutting a piece of cloth and apparently unaware that he was being photographed.
If anyone asks him about the article, Malak tells them that a foreigner (who later turned out to be the Cairo correspondent of the New York Times) came one day to have some shirts made and that Malak had been astonished to find him returning the following day with foreign photographers and they had written this piece about him because they were so amazed at his tailoring skill. Malak tells this story in an ordinary way, then steals a look at his listeners. If he finds them fidgety and dubious, he moves on to talk of something else as though he’d said nothing. If they appear to believe him, however, Malak will continue, emphasizing that the foreigner had insisted vehemently that he should go with him to America to work there as a shirtmaker at any salary he cared to name but that he, of course, had refused the offer because he hated the idea of living away from Egypt. Malak brings his set piece to an end by saying complacently and confidently, “Everyone knows that all those foreign countries are sniffing around for clever shirtmakers.”
The truth of the matter is that Basyouni, the photographer in Ataba Square, can run anyone up a newspaper piece talking of his skill for any newspaper on demand — ten pounds for Arabic and twenty for foreign. It takes Basyouni no more than the name of the newspaper and a picture of the client plus a ready-made article that he has in which the writer speaks of his great surprise at coming across in the streets of Cairo the workshop of the brilliant tailor so and so, or the establishment of the great kebab cook so and so. All of these Basyouni puts together in a certain way in the photocopier so as to make the copy come out looking as though it has been taken from the newspaper.
But what does Malak do in his new place? He makes shirts, of course; but tailoring doesn’t account for more than a small part of his daily activities because, in short, he works at anything that might yield a profit, from trading in currency and smuggled liquor to brokering real estate, land, and furnished apartments, to arranging the marriage of elderly Arabs to young peasant girls whom he brings in from certain villages in Giza and Fayoum, to sending workers to the Gulf against two months’ wages.
This multifaceted enterprise has made him avid for any information he can get about people and for knowledge of their most minute secrets, since anyone is a potential candidate to have dealings with him at any moment, and a little bit of information may help him at any given instant and have a decisive impact on those dealings, allowing him to sew things up the way he wants. Every day from mid-morning to ten at night, every type of humanity makes its way to Malak’s workplace — poor customers and rich, elderly Arabs, brokers, maids and girls for the furnished apartments, and small traders and commission agents; and in the midst of all these Malak comes and goes, talking and shouting, laughing and wheedling, losing his temper and quarreling, swearing a hundred false oaths and making deals, like a well-known and illustrious actor performing with relish his role in a play he has rehearsed so long he has perfected it.