Whether that was the reason or whether he had picked up on how tight a spot I was in, he didn't reply when I tried to strike up a conversation by complaining of the heat.

I put out my cigarette, dropped the b.u.t.t in the bra.s.s ashtray by the door, and leaned back against the wall. Unable to think, I looked ahead of me through the window, aware that I was staring out into nothingness.

After about half an hour the porter suddenly got up as though a secret message had reached him. He disappeared into the hall, reappeared at once, and signaled me to go in.

I entered nervously, hesitantly, hardly able to put one foot in front of the other. I stopped in the face of the stares surrounding me.

The old maid addressed me with her habitual graciousness, "What have you decided?"

"I don't have anything to add. I hope you appreciate the difficult, unnatural circ.u.mstances that hemmed me in," I said.

Suddenly ferocious, she said angrily, "Have it your own way then."

The chairman put some of the papers aside and said slowly, "Your intransigent att.i.tude leaves us unable to find any rationalization for mercy or for granting your pet.i.tion. Because of that-in our opinion-you deserve the harshest punishment on the books. This is our unanimous decision."

Some of them stood up and the others followed suit. They gathered their papers, pushed their chairs back, and headed for the inner door behind them. One after another they left the hall.

I continued watching their backs until the last of them had disappeared. I was alone-I, that picture of Stubby the ugly, and the funeral wreaths from all corners of the world.

I heard a noise at the main door to the hall. When I turned around I saw the porter looking at me questioningly. I walked toward him lethargically.

I stood outside until the porter had finished straightening up the hall and closing the windows. The moment he appeared in the doorway, I hurried over to offer him a cigarette and light it.

"Could you tell me the Committee's harshest punishment?" I asked him.

He shook his head and said firmly, "The Committee isn't a court."

"I know. What I'm looking for is the harshest punishment from their point of view."

"That depends on a lot of things."

"Naturally."

"Each situation is unique."

"Of course."

"In your case, which I have followed with great inter est, there is no punishment more severe or rigorous than consumption."

Astonished, I asked, "Consumption? Who consumes and wzat does he consume?"

He looked at me a while, then getting up, said deliberately, "You consume yourself."

He and his chair disappeared into the hall. He closed the dcor behind him, leaving me alone in the dimly lit corridor. I waited for him to return in order to ask for more information, but he was gone a long time, so I decided to leave. I pa.s.sed through empty anterooms, my footsteps echoing behind me, until I had left the building.

I took off aimlessly through the streets, my gaze wandering among pa.s.sersby, storefronts, and entrances to houses. Even so, I was able to notice how most of the pa.s.sersby had caught the urge to seek wealth and happiness. Crates of Coca-Cola were everywhere. Everyone stood behind them, grocers, doorkeepers, carpenters, and even pharmacists.

I felt thirsty and stopped in front of one of the vendors, whose shop was stocked exclusively with crates of these bottles. He had put a large, lidless cooler on the sidewalk. The thirsty crowded around it.

The cooler was full of bottles floating in water. Snatc-zing one up, the vendor seemed in seventh heaven as he held it toward the outstretched hands. Before any hand grabbed it, he would remove the cap with the opener held ready in his other hand, then hurriedly pick up another one.

I noticed his hand holding a bottle out toward me. I quickly intervened before he popped the cap, asking, "Is it cold?"

Looking at me disapprovingly, he said, "As ice."

I touched the bottle and found it warm, so I said, "No, I'd like a cold one."

While making his displeasure with me clear, he held out the bottle toward the crowd. I reached out and rummaged among the bottles. I discovered that not only were most of them warm, but there was no sign of ice in the water. The vendor kept his eyes on the thirsty, who were wiping sweat from their brows and panting in the heat. He ministered to them with the warm bottles.

I watched them drink the magic liquid. They touched the bottles as though to a.s.sure themselves of their ability to distinguish hot and cold. Then, resigned, they swallowed the contents to the last drop and paid the price the vendor demanded. He had doubled the listed price on the pretext of the imaginary ice. He scowled and everyone paid it submissively.

I transferred my attention to the vendor, who was moving energetically and somewhat aggressively. I guessed he would attain his ambition quickly; the store would soon be filled with foreign cigarettes and candy, then with other imported commodities, including ca.s.settes, tape recorders, and canned goods.

I was caught up in my thoughts and didn't notice what was happening until there was a warm opened bottle in my hand. I automatically raised it to my lips.

I paid the price the others had paid and continued walking in a leisurely fashion to the bus stop. I stood with the others until the "Carter" bus came.

The rationale behind using the name of the American president for this type of bus can't be attributed to its particular shape, which resembles a long, sad-faced worm, or to its unusual length, or to the great roar it makes as it runs, or to its higher fares (five times the usual fare), or to its being made in the USA. Rather, it has to do with the insignia on its side, right next to the door, which consists of an American flag emblazoned with two hands clasped in friendship.

In all likelihood, this insignia is the source of the people's delight in the buses' appearance during the last two years or so. They consider the buses the herald of the promised prosperity, which has been so long in coming. They seem prepared to overlook the noise on the grounds that noise is something commonplace in an underdeveloped country like ours. Higher fares are overlooked on the grounds that world prices are rising, and the thick polluting exhaust on the grounds that environmental pollution is only a problem in developed countries. The absence of bars and straps, which leaves the standing pa.s.sengers swaying and dancing, is excused on the premise that our dull life needs some recreation.

However, it wasn't a week before the buses developed strange symptoms. Their interior support had begun to collapse and the rivets holding the walls to pop out. The automatic doors stuck open and the wall panels fell off. The rubber gaskets in the windows were torn and the screws holding the dashboard came off, revealing the inner workings.

The longer the papers remained silent about these wondrous phenomena, the more the explanations proliferated. They ranged from citing poor maintenance as the cause, to citing the hard use buses are put to in our country and the drivers' inadequacy and carelessness.

But other makes of buses that were in circulation along with the "Carter" bus were still in good condition, although it had been years since they were put into operation. Some of them were even a.s.sembled in Egyptian workshops. All this cast doubt on the soundness of these inferences.

Perhaps because of the frustration the common peo ple felt at their inability to explain this phenomenon or perhaps because in every time and place people alter nouns and adjectives so that their vocabulary matches their level of education and limited awareness, they soon called the buses mentioned above "Tartar."

This linguistic development drew my attention at the time. I consulted dictionaries until I found that "tartar" is among the oldest words in Arabic and means false pride. From this derives the word "taratur," meaning a conical dervish hat, which is also a slur applied to a weak wretch. But "tartar" as a noun means filtered wine dregs and thence, generally, has come to mean colloquially "to take a leak."

In light of what had happened to me lately, which stimulated my mind and drew me into probing phenomena and attempting to explain them, it is natural that my interest shifted from the linguistic aspect to the essence of this phenomenon itself. I intended to get on the "Tartar" several times, and while riding, painstakingly examine its makeup. But my findings made things more ambiguous.

I discovered the bus was made of the worst and cheapest components, from the outer frame and right down to the nails used to hold down the floorboards. It didn't make sense that the bus would be allowed to operate in this condition on the streets of New York, even in the black ghettos. Nor would it make sense for it to be produced especially for us. Like the foreign drugs, I couldn't imagine that the industry of the world's richest and strongest country could produce, even by design, such a poor-quality product. Even if the United States sent us the motors and nothing else, and the buses were then a.s.sembled in our country, this would still not be an explanation, since we've had industrial a.s.sembly since the '60s. A fortunate few still hold on to powerful, st.u.r.dy buses produced in Egyptian factories.

At this thought, my nose, well trained by the odor of old newspapers, began to quiver in excitement.

However, the developments in my relationship with the Committee wouldn't give me the opportunity to reach significant conclusions. To me, as to others, the matter became an unfathomable mystery.

I remembered all this as I worked my way in between jostling pa.s.sengers near the back exit of the bus. I searched in vain for something to hold onto while boarding. There was an enormously fat woman in front of me. She climbed on with difficulty and found a spot inside. I was behind her when the bus suddenly set off and she lost her balance.

She reached out to cling to one of the metal poles, but it bent under her weight so that she almost fell on her face. She clung to me. Meanwhile I was busy taking out the fare the conductor demanded. I had spread my legs to brace myself and avoid falling.

The woman regained her balance and moved forward. She moved in spite of herself because of the bus' motion and the vibration of the floorboards, which had cracked and separated each from the other in many places.

Lately, preoccupied, I had not left my apartment much. I had not had a chance to ride the "Tartar" even once. I noticed immediately how the pa.s.sengers' reactions had changed.

Early in the bus' service, the dancing motion that occurred had called forth a shy smile from all the riders, whether sitting or standing.

Today I noticed that the violence of the dance had increased, tearing the bus apart, breaking up the walls and floor, and completely destroying the riders' delight in the dancing.

Since they were looking, oblivious, at the ads decorating the streets, it appeared to me that they were preoccupied with other things. These ads were about international inventions in all fields. They looked at the late-rr_odel cars equipped with new features to protect pa.s.sengers from noise, dirt, heat, cold, and the eyes of others, so that the vehicles resemble small armored cars.

I continued to look around at the thin, exhausted faces, stopping at a middle-aged man absorbed in some less-than-cheerful thought which was reflected on his features. He was smoking nervously. Beside him sat a youth with straightened hair and a gold chain around his neck. Another man clasped his hands greedily over a pa.s.sport. There was a woman with wide-framed gla.s.ses, violet colored to match her dress, and a wrist.w.a.tch shaped like a s.p.a.ceship.

Sitting beside her was a sad-faced man proudly holding a package from which wafted the aroma of fish. He must have gotten it on sale in some corner of the city. Behind him, a neatly dressed man was nodding off, even though he was armed with all the modern devices: gla.s.ses with tinted lenses, a watch with a calculator, an annual calendar and alarm, and a Samsonite briefcase.

My eyes stopped on two female pa.s.sengers sitting next to each other. As though withdrawing completely from our miserable world, their bodies were swathed from head to foot in dark baggy clothes with holes for the eyes. They seemed more like owls, or two frightened aliens from outer s.p.a.ce.

I decided that all of them were oppressed and humiliated, but had remarkable powers of endurance. Absorbed in thinking about this aspect of the situation, I didn't notice someone had come up beside me until he stepped on my toes.

I was standing next to a plump, middle-aged woman. Almost plastered against her back was a giant in a shirt partially unb.u.t.toned so as to show off his chest. He was looking out the window, feigning absentmindedness. The woman moved ceaselessly in an effort to keep away from him, which made her b.u.mp against me.

I made as much room for her as I could in the crowd. I watched-as did most of those around us-the minute s.p.a.ce between his leg and her behind. He had bent his knee forward a little to aggravate her. I could only raise my eyes to him in complete disapproval.

I'm the first to admit I have a thing for that protruding part of the female body and am an aficionado of stolen moments in a crowd. From my point of view, this behavior, which some may condemn and which arises from our reality and independent character, is nothing other than an Arab subst.i.tute for Western dancing in which people pursue such business face-to-face.

But our national subst.i.tute fulfills a more complex role than the mere release of repressed desires. It is a successful way of fighting the boredom arising from overcrowding and frequent long delays in streets jammed with private cars. Likewise, for me, it is an important means of releasing tension and one method of acquiring knowledge.

A woman is a mysterious creature, the object of a thousand speculations, especially if she appears haughty and hostile, until, at the light brush of a leg, she suddenly reveals herself by indicating her consent or objection.

However, for this practice I set myself an important rule which distills the essence of the ensuing pleasure. This rule was also in accordance with one of the moral principles I had imposed on myself: to avoid hurting others. The first or second brush of my leg against anyone's behind suffices for a connoisseur like myself to tell whether the woman shares my secret pleasure. If not, I lose interest in her.

My principle made me disapprove of his behavior toward the woman. More than once she had indicated in no uncertain terms that she disliked the proposition the giant was making by repeatedly brushing her with his leg.

It was apparent he subscribed to other moral principles. He ignored her distress and attempts to avoid him. Indeed, he persisted in touching her, which made her protest openly.

She suddenly turned to him and said agitatedly, "I wish you'd cut it out."

He was astonished, then exploded loudly, "Cut what out, lady?"

"You know what I mean!" she snapped.

Silence fell in the bus. The pa.s.sengers glanced to ward them, smiles of amus.e.m.e.nt and enjoyment on most lips.

The man raised his hand, slapped her face roughly, and shouted, "You wh.o.r.e!"

The woman sank onto the pa.s.senger beside her, pressed her hand to her cheek, and burst out sobbing. None of the pa.s.sengers moved a muscle.

The giant spoke without addressing anyone in particular, "The way some people behave these days!"

I don't usually let myself get into situations I'm not physically up to. However, since the morning when I hadn't been able to speak my mind to the Committee, I had been seething and I hadn't even benefited from my meekness. On top of that, I hadn't been able to turn the tables on the Coca-Cola vendor who had robbed me. Likewise, the crowd and the heat grated on my nerves. In short, matters came to a head.

It's not inconceivable that I drew courage from facing one person rather than the whole Committee. Since they had been following the matter from the beginning and knew full well what had happened, I may also have been encouraged by imagining that all the pa.s.sengers would leap to my aid. Perhaps out of religious or moral considerations they would condemn the giant's s.e.xual behavior, or disapprove of his striking a defenseless woman, or simply stand by the truth.

I found myself unexpectedly addressing the giant, "The woman has a valid complaint."

He stared in disbelief and asked threateningly, "What are you getting at?"

I said firmly, "I saw you plastering yourself against her. When she didn't respond, you should have left her alone."

"Liar!" he screamed. "I think you two are in cahoots."

I looked at the bystanders and persisted, "I'm not the only one who saw what happened."

Suddenly everyone looked the other way, some at things along the route, whereas others just turned their backs. My adversary didn't wait for anyone to take his part, but decided to finish the matter quickly. He threw a knockout punch and hit me in the face, throwing me onto some seated pa.s.sengers.

Before I could recover from the effects of this blow, which made me see stars and made the world spin before my eyes, he pulled me by my forearms and shoved me again. My shoulder hit one of the metal poles. I lost my balance. I saw I would fall on my face, so I stretched out my right hand. My weight landed full on it as I hit the floor.

I felt a sharp pain in my forearm. The giant had plunged headlong after me, cursing my forefathers. Two of the pa.s.sengers got between us. Several tried to soothe him, as though it was I who had acted unjustly.

I heard someone say to him, "Calm down. A cat in heat and a f.a.g. Your virility aroused them and they picked a quarrel with you. Why sweat blood over them?"

While this exchange was going on, the bus came to a stop. The pa.s.sengers freed me and pushed me toward the door saying, "Get off while the getting's good."

Automatically I got off the bus and stood in the street looking at my disheveled clothing. When I tidied myself up, the pain shooting up my arm made me notice the strange position it was in, twisted at the elbow. The bones of the joint were visibly out of place.

I hurried to look for the nearest hospital where I could have it treated cheaply at an outpatient clinic. I found one, but the doctor wasn't in. I waited so long I got fed up. If it hadn't been for the pain that seared through my forearm at the slightest movement, I would have gone home without thinking twice about its strange position.

After almost an hour, a medic approached me and let me know that it was too late for the doctor to show up. If I urgently needed him, he was now at his nearby private practice.

I tipped him for his advice and went at once to the doctor's clinic. After paying five pounds at the door, I entered a fashionable, air-conditioned room where soft European music played.

Having examined me thoroughly, the doctor relieved my mind by saying that the bones had shifted out of position at the elbow but that it was not at all serious. By pressing with his hand, which hurt, he pushed the bones back into place, then wrote me a prescription for some pain killers.

I set off for my apartment, climbed wearily to the seventh floor, and immediately took refuge in bed. I gave myself up to a deep sleep until the pain in my arm drew me back to consciousness. I tried some of the pain killers, to no avail. Although the pain wasn't extreme, it was persistent. I had a lot of things I needed to do right away, which, thanks to the little time left me, required my total concentration. When the pain continued into the next day and prevented me from thinking, I was forced to go back to the doctor.

I was surprised when the medic who admitted the patients asked me to pay one pound. I said, "But I paid a whole five pounds only yesterday."

"I know," he said. "That was the fee for the exam. What I am asking now is the fee for a consultation."

"This is the first time I've heard of charging for a consultation," I said in amazement.

He didn't bother to answer me, but merely pointed his finger at a sign on the wall without even turning his head.

The sign-which I hadn't noticed before-proclaimed that patients are allowed one follow-up visit within a week of the diagnosis at a fee of one pound.

I said agitatedly, "But this is exploitation, pure and simple!"

He took no notice of my argument, but said coldly, "This is our system. Take it or leave it."

The patients and their companions, seated nearby, had silently followed our discussion. Their poker faces betrayed no shadow of their thoughts. In front of them I was embarra.s.sed to appear so concerned with such a paltry sum as one pound, so in the end, humiliated, I paid what was requested.

Because my visit was for advice and not a diagnosis, my turn came quickly. I stalked into the doctor's cubicle and sat next to his desk. At once I noticed his pallor and the strange l.u.s.ter of his skin.

He surprised my by saying, "So in your opinion I'm a profiteer?"

I was amazed at how he could know what his a.s.sistant and I had talked about. My heartbeat sped up immediately, but I didn't back down. I answered, "Do you have some other name for what you do?"