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NASSER IRAQ to establish an independent household with a loving husband who might fulfil their need for passion and children. On my first night in Dubai, Mansour invited us – Hassan and myself – to dinner at Restaurant Daniel, overlooking Dubai Creek. Mansour drove the car with the confidence of someone who knew the roads and streets by heart, as though he had been living in the city for years. But he had arrived in Dubai just eight months earlier, contracted to work as an arts editor for Al-Bayan, the newspaper he had worked for as a correspondant in Cairo. After graduating, Mansour had worked for almost four years as an arts editor at Al-Ahali. He had been remarkably successful during this time, exposing the machinations of senior officials at the Ministry of Culture by bringing to light documents which proved that one deputy minister had received a bribe of more than five million pounds from contractors working with the ministry. No sooner did the story appear in the pages of Al-Ahali than a storm broke out in the media, turning Mansour into a star and making it inevitable that he would be offered the chance to travel to Dubai and work for Al-Bayan on a generous contract. Mansour had agreed to the trip without a moment’s hesitation. His grief over his wife’s death was unbearable and he had wanted to leave Cairo and travel far away.When the opportunity presented itself, he seized it immediately. “And your friends, Mansour?” “What about them?” Glancing around, I whispered: “I’m talking about your colleagues in the secret society!” “I told them I wanted to travel and dedicate myself to journalism,” he said, offhandedly. “Did they mind?” “Who cares? I do what I like!” Then he had looked at me, and, in a voice broken with pain and heartache he had cried: “The memory of Safaa surrounds me everywhere I go! I can’t bear it any longer! I want to get away!” I had never seen such weakness in my cousin. It was worse even than the time he discovered the fix Hind had put us in. Did he feel such remorse because he’d been unable to save Safaa? I have no idea.What was certain was that he had loved her very much, and that I had been wrong in thinking that he had either forgotten her or his wounds had healed when, two weeks after her drowning, I watched him laughing away with Badr al-Minyawi and his wife while we watched the movie “Ghazal alBanat” at his house. 122 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
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2012 INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION Yes, I have to confess that I failed to understand my cousin, or, rather, I failed to understand the true extent of his grief for the wife and lover who had been taken from him in the blink of an eye. I had assumed that his regular attendance at rehearsals for the play Badr was directing at the Shubra al-Kheima Cultural Palace and his late nights at the director’s house afterwards, constituted a return to normal life after Safaa had drowned. I remember going with him to these rehearsals on more than one occasion. Afterwards, Badr al-Minyawi would take us to his home. We would eat supper while they discussed the play and then we’d watch a foreign film or an Arabic one or listen to classical music, which Badr would so carefully explain to us. At all these gatherings, I saw Mansour acting quite light-heartedly – at least, that’s what I believed – although when we made our way home in the early hours his silences would last longer than usual. For his part, Badr al-Minyawi was clearly determined that Mansour should come to rehearsals every evening. I’d seen him myself; insistent, then grabbing Mansour’s hand and taking him off home. It was obvious he was trying to help Mansour forget his wife’s tragic death and, as I reckoned, he had been completely successful. It appears that I was wrong, that I never realized the scale of my cousin’s sadness and the frustration that possessed him. Anyway, within a few weeks of starting work at Al-Bayan Mansour had achieved dazzling success in the Dubai press. In Restaurant Daniel, I was overwhelmed by a crushing sense of the wretchedness that clutched us by the throat in Egypt. Tables, laden with food of every kind and colour, covered a seemingly endless expanse. I stood there, bewildered, not knowing what to do about the Filipino waitress with the painted smile, who spoke to me in English.To my surprise, Mansour dealt with her calmly and confidently and she led us to a table in a secluded corner. “Are you a regular here?” asked Hassan, lighting a cigarette from a packet whose brand I didn’t recognise. Mansour smiled: “I sometimes have lunch here with Salah Ghandour, the head of our arts desk.” The cleanliness of the place was remarkable and the unflustered movements of the customers fascinated me.There was not a sound except for soft music that emanated from some source I couldn’t make out and the clink of forks and spoons against plates. I peered at the faces of the people lining up at the main table to choose the dishes they wanted and saw that they formed a microcosm of different races – Iranian, European, Indian, Chinese, Syrian, Iraqi and Palestinian. At least, that’s the assumption I BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 123

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NASSER IRAQ

to establish an independent household with a loving husband who might fulfil their need for passion and children.

On my first night in Dubai, Mansour invited us – Hassan and myself – to dinner at Restaurant Daniel, overlooking Dubai Creek. Mansour drove the car with the confidence of someone who knew the roads and streets by heart, as though he had been living in the city for years. But he had arrived in Dubai just eight months earlier, contracted to work as an arts editor for Al-Bayan, the newspaper he had worked for as a correspondant in Cairo.

After graduating, Mansour had worked for almost four years as an arts editor at Al-Ahali. He had been remarkably successful during this time, exposing the machinations of senior officials at the Ministry of Culture by bringing to light documents which proved that one deputy minister had received a bribe of more than five million pounds from contractors working with the ministry. No sooner did the story appear in the pages of Al-Ahali than a storm broke out in the media, turning Mansour into a star and making it inevitable that he would be offered the chance to travel to Dubai and work for Al-Bayan on a generous contract. Mansour had agreed to the trip without a moment’s hesitation. His grief over his wife’s death was unbearable and he had wanted to leave Cairo and travel far away.When the opportunity presented itself, he seized it immediately.

“And your friends, Mansour?” “What about them?” Glancing around, I whispered: “I’m talking about your colleagues in the secret society!”

“I told them I wanted to travel and dedicate myself to journalism,” he said, offhandedly.

“Did they mind?” “Who cares? I do what I like!” Then he had looked at me, and, in a voice broken with pain and heartache he had cried: “The memory of Safaa surrounds me everywhere I go! I can’t bear it any longer! I want to get away!”

I had never seen such weakness in my cousin. It was worse even than the time he discovered the fix Hind had put us in. Did he feel such remorse because he’d been unable to save Safaa? I have no idea.What was certain was that he had loved her very much, and that I had been wrong in thinking that he had either forgotten her or his wounds had healed when, two weeks after her drowning, I watched him laughing away with Badr al-Minyawi and his wife while we watched the movie “Ghazal alBanat” at his house.

122 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

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