The Automobile Club of Egypt, Page 3

  The fundamentalists went all over Mannheim furiously uttering their imprecations: “You who believe in Jesus! This new carriage is not an invention but a trick sent by Satan, who will not rest until he has tempted the faithful and shaken their belief in God. Karl Benz is neither a man of learning nor an inventor. He is a swindler who, along with his wife, summons evil spirits. But Satan’s snares are weaker than a spider’s thread, as the Lord Himself has confirmed, and you will see for yourselves how these tricksters will meet a terrible end, in time the same punishment of all those who sell their souls to Satan.”

  The hubbub about the Benz carriage only grew until the naysayers and the yea-sayers, together with the merely dubious, were all swept along in a storm that engulfed all other topics of conversation in Mannheim.

  By the appointed hour, Karl and Bertha had prepared everything meticulously. Karl had cleaned and polished the carriage until it gleamed all over, and the two then brought the carriage out of the workshop and set it in front of their residence. The whole street filled with onlookers, thronging the roads leading to the Benz residence until there was so much pushing and shoving that the police had to come and restore order. At one o’clock exactly, Karl Benz appeared accompanied by his wife. He was wearing a light-gray suit with a white shirt and a deep-red bow tie. Bertha was wearing an elegant sky-blue dress, bought especially for the occasion, and a matching blue hat with white ribbons.

  The whispers started to turn into a clamor as the couple edged their way through the assembled throng toward the covered vehicle. Then with one flick of his hand, Karl pulled off the tarpaulin. Some shouts and nervous laughs rang out from the spectators. Karl stood looking at the crowd, as if he were about to speak. When the crowd had quieted down, Karl spoke out in a shaky voice:

  “Ladies and gentlemen! I would like to thank you for coming here today, and I should like to confirm that you are about to witness the beginning of a new era, a moment that will change the world. One day you will tell your grandchildren that you saw the first Benz motor wagon. Here is a carriage that has no need of a horse and is propelled entirely by means of a rear-mounted engine. It is also easy to handle, as you shall now see for yourselves.”

  Karl placed his right foot on the step attached to the undercarriage and climbed into the driver’s seat. There was almost total silence as people jostled forward to see exactly what would happen. They held their breath and stared at Karl, who struggled to keep smiling as he held on to the steering handle with his right hand and grasped the black leather drive belt with his left hand. He gave the latter a violent pull, and the carriage gave out a loud, angry roar, puffing out thick smoke and then lurching forward. The crowd shrieked in unison as if they were aboard a wildly swaying ship sinking into the ocean, and as if, until that moment, they had been absolutely convinced that what was happening in front of their eyes was real. The carriage set off down the street, the crowd running after it, shouting and clapping and cheering, with Karl in perfect control of the machine, steering it easily and capably like a masterful rider bending his steed to his will. As the carriage sped forward, Karl steered it onto the main road, the people still running along behind it. Karl was doing so well that a triumphant smile appeared on Bertha’s face as she watched.

  Karl managed to follow the road until he came to a large tree, where he pulled on the metal brake arm. He gave it a few sharp pulls, but unfortunately, it did not respond. Karl was struggling to control the steering handle, but the vehicle, now moving at full throttle, as if in defiance, started to meander wildly before mounting the sidewalk, where it crashed into a tree and overturned. Thus ended the excursion, with the carriage upturned and its wheels hissing and turning as the motor whined and blew out thick smoke. The carriage looked like a giant nightmarish insect lying on its side, unable to right itself. And Karl was stuck underneath it, choking from the smoke and coughing loudly. He finally managed to wriggle free, his face, hands and elegant suit all covered in oil. There was complete and utter silence. The stupefied onlookers needed a few moments to absorb what had just happened, but their feelings, momentarily suppressed, all burst out at once, and they started shouting, jumping and laughing like madmen. Karl left the carriage where it lay and, with his head downcast, walked back to his house with Bertha following him as he endured the mockery raining down on him from all sides like poisoned darts.

  “Oy, Mr. Benz! At least a horse doesn’t overturn our carriages!”

  “You want us to give up our horses and ride a carriage of death?”

  “Thanks for the comedy show, Mr. Benz. You should do it in a circus!”

  “That’s your due for challenging God’s laws.”

  “Tell your spirits to make you one that doesn’t flip over next time!”

  The following days saw the couple subjected to more grief and gloating. Benz’s carriage became a laughingstock in Mannheim, and no sooner had the newspapers expressed encouragement for the invention than their tune changed to trenchant sniping. Karl felt unable to go out in public. Worst of all were the drunken layabouts who would fill up on wine in the tavern and then, having nothing else to do so early, go to Karl Benz’s house to gawk at the carriage. Some plucked up the cheek to knock on his door and pretend to want to see the horseless carriage as a serious customer thinking of buying one might do. Karl realized that they were probably nothing of the kind, but on the slightest chance that they were, he would lead them to the workshop anyway, and no sooner would he start describing it to them than they would start bombarding him with stupid questions and comments. Only when dead certain that they were making fun of him would he walk to a chair in the corner, where he would sit quietly until they had had their fun and left. Karl bore all of these travails, and Bertha did her best to ease his anguish either with sincere words of consolation or else by ignoring the subject and carrying on as usual. But his disappointment was like a heavy black cloud casting a shadow over the couple wherever they went.

  One hot August day, Bertha suggested that they take their supper in the garden. She had prepared Karl’s favorite dish of roast chicken, and they drank a bottle of chilled, refreshing rosé. She tried to make the dinner enjoyable, or at the very least ordinary, by speaking about anything other than the carriage and the failed demonstration. Everything was going well until a man in his late forties in a white shirt and blue trousers suddenly appeared at the garden gate. They wished him a good evening, whereupon he said in a loud voice, “Excuse me, sir. Are you Karl Benz, who invented the horseless carriage? If it’s no trouble, I’d like to see it.”

  Karl said nothing for a moment and in a deep voice replied, “I’m very sorry, but there’s nothing to see.”

  “What do you mean? I’d like to see the carriage you invented.”

  Karl looked down for a moment and then raised his head toward the man before quietly repeating his response, “There’s nothing to see.”

  The man kept looking at him and then with a bow politely said, “All right, Mr. Benz. I’m so sorry to have disturbed you. Have a nice evening.”

  That night, the couple lay stretched out near each other in bed, in the dark, saying nothing. Bertha put her arm around him, and as if on command, he shifted his body a little and laid his head on her chest. She asked him gently, “Why wouldn’t you show the carriage to that man?”

  He said nothing for a few seconds, then sighed and in a weak voice, as if speaking to himself, replied, “I’m just tired of being taken for a fool, Bertha. I just can’t stand any more of those skeptical glances, the preposterous questions and the gloating laughter.”

  “They are the fools. They have no idea of the value of your invention.”

  “Stop it, Bertha, my darling, I have failed. That’s the truth of the matter, and I have to face up to it. I have been building a castle in Spain, chasing a chimera.”

  He said nothing for a little and then continued in a whisper, “Bertha, please swear as God is your witness that you won’t talk to me about the carriage ever again.�
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  His head was still on Bertha’s bosom. They fell back into silence, and she felt his body start to tremble. Her Karl was weeping. She thought her heart would break, and she held him firmly. They stayed like that, clinging to each other, until she heard his breathing become regular, and she could tell that he had fallen asleep. Gently, she placed his head back on the pillow.

  She stayed sitting up in bed, wide-awake and musing away in the darkness. By the time the first glimmer of light came through the open window, she had made up her mind. She tiptoed to the wardrobe and took some clothes out in the dark, went downstairs and got dressed in the sitting room. She then woke up her two sons, Richard and Eugen, who were fourteen and fifteen years old, respectively. She asked them to get washed and dressed as quickly as they could. When they asked her where they were going, she thundered back, “I’ll tell you later.”

  She carefully opened the front door to avoid its squeaking and then stopped as if she had just remembered something. Leaving the children standing there, she went to the kitchen and on a large piece of paper in large letters she wrote, “Karl. Don’t worry about us. We’ve gone to visit my mother. Back tomorrow.”

  She pinned the note where he would see it when he woke up. Then she went out and locked the front door. Holding her children by the hand, she walked them to the workshop, where the three of them pushed the carriage onto the street. Then she helped them in, sitting between them on the seat. She grabbed the leather drive belt with both hands and jerked it as hard as she could. At that moment, the motor growled and gave off a puff of smoke, and the carriage lurched forward.

  2

  The morning call to prayer sounded, and Ruqayya opened her eyes and whispered the profession of faith. Then she slid out of bed and shut the bedroom door quietly behind her in order not to wake up her husband, Abd el-Aziz Gaafar. She went to the bathroom and lit the boiler, then walked to the kitchen. She prepared a tray with breakfast for the guests and made sandwiches for the children to take to school. By the time she went back to the bathroom, the water was hot, so she laid out her clothes for the day and took her morning shower as she had done every morning since getting married.

  At that time, she was living in Upper Egypt with her mother-in-law (may God have mercy on her soul), who used to observe whether she took a shower in order to know if she had had sex with Abd el-Aziz the night before. From then on, a morning shower was Ruqayya’s way of covering up her private life. Over time she just got used to starting her day with the feeling of being refreshed. After showering, she would carefully dry herself and put on a clean, ironed galabiyya, go upstairs carrying the breakfast tray covered with a napkin and put it down outside the guest room on the roof, which was reserved for relatives who had come to Cairo from Upper Egypt for one reason or another—for medical treatment, to get some official papers or on business.

  The guest room was spacious and had a sink, a toilet and a separate staircase. Abd el-Aziz’s house was always open to relatives, and he considered putting them up just as much his duty as he did taking care of his own children. Ruqayya would then set about waking up the children. Mahmud, the difficult one, would always require a few attempts because he would just go back to sleep each time. She was patient with him, forgiving whatever mischief he’d get up to. Some months after his birth, she had noticed that he was a bit sluggish and had taken him to a renowned doctor in Aswan who told her that the boy would have developmental problems. Thus it was no surprise that Mahmud kept having to repeat a year at school. At the age of seventeen, he was big and bulky, since he spent all his free time and energy lifting weights.

  After her first attempt to wake Mahmud, Ruqayya would go and wake his older brothers, Said and Kamel. Kamel was stick thin, and the moment he felt her touch on his head, he would open his eyes, sit up and kiss her hand. Then he would wake up his brother Said. Ruqayya liked to leave Saleha until last, to let her have a little more sleep. After the children washed and dressed, they would sit around the table. Ruqayya always tried to make them a delicious breakfast: eggs, cheese, fava beans and fresh bread with tea and milk. Then she would sit cross-legged on the sofa with her left hand holding the string of ninety-nine prayer beads as her children lined up and bowed to her one after another. She would place her hands on their heads and utter a Quranic verse over them to keep them safe.

  She would not let them leave the house together for fear of the evil eye. People might look at them and say, “There go the Gaafar children,” and some disaster or illness might strike them. She insisted that they leave the house one by one, none setting out until the one before had reached the end of the street. Said would always wriggle out of taking his sister, Saleha, to school, whereas Kamel willingly walked with her to the Suniyya school and then took a bus to the university.

  Mahmud was always the last to leave. His mother would make him swear by the holy Quran that he would really go to school and not go off to play football in the street or to the cinema. He never argued with his mother. All her children had inherited the light-brown Gaafar skin tones except Mahmud. He was coal black, like a Sudanese. At school when students teased him for being a dullard and for the color of his skin, he would fight back and beat them up. On those occasions, he hardly knew his own strength. The previous year he had been in two fights, splitting the brow of the first boy and breaking the arm of the second. This led to the headmaster’s warning Mahmud’s father that the next fight would mean expulsion. That was a day from hell. Abd el-Aziz gave Mahmud a good beating, shouting at him, “It’s not enough for you to be too stupid to get anywhere at school, but you have to go around strutting like some tough. I swear by God Almighty that if you touch another student I’ll come to school myself and show all your friends how I beat you.”

  She never forgave her husband for doing that. Poor Mahmud. He was simpleminded and needed to be handled gently. Every morning, before he left the house, she would kiss him, say a few providential words of prayer over him and give him the same advice, “If someone upsets you, don’t start a fight! Just walk away from him and say the fatiha in your head.”

  Mahmud would agree and embrace her. Feeling the power of his muscles, she could not help but be a little proud. After her children had left, she had time to herself until nine o’clock, when she had to wake up Abd el-Aziz. During her free time, she would prepare herself a cup of mint tea and sit by the window. She would listen to the cries of the hawkers and the sounds of the cars in the street below, as well as the voices of the children and office workers. But on this particular morning, she was exhausted. She had not slept well the night before. She sat staring out the window without seeing anything. She did not even notice the taste of the tea. She realized that in two weeks’ time she would have lived in Cairo for five years. Good Lord, how quickly it had passed. The day she left Daraw for Cairo had been a great event. People said that, apart from the time that the great nationalist leader Sa’ad Zaghloul famously made a visit to Upper Egypt, the train station at Daraw had never been so crowded as on the day she and her four children left for Cairo. On that day the people come to bid them farewell clustered both inside and outside the station, at the entrance, in the station hall and on the platform. All the important families of Daraw had members to bid her farewell: the Mahjubs, the Abd el-Maquds, the Oways and Shayba families, even the Balams in spite of the tense relations with the Gaafar family due to an ongoing dispute over some date palms to the east of the town—their sense of duty had overcome past bitterness, and they sent ten men with their wives and children to take part in the farewell formalities. They were all fond of her. Her husband and first cousin was Abd el-Aziz Gaafar, one of the foremost residents of Daraw. He had inherited property and money from his father and was renowned for his decency and respectability, always doing his utmost to help out his relatives, neighbors, in fact anyone from the town. Alas, his debts had started piling up, and he had to sell off his land bit by bit. Now, over forty years old and almost penniless, he had to move to Cairo in search
of whatever work he could find. There was great sympathy from the people of Daraw, since whenever they had needed money, Abd el-Aziz had given them loans from the goodness of his heart, as well as helping them in other ways. They all felt partially responsible for his bankruptcy. Ruqayya saw expressions of deep sympathy and love on the faces of those who had come to see them off. To them, she was the very model of an authentic Upper Egyptian woman, sticking by her husband come what may, supporting him with the same determination in good times and bad.

  All those feelings were present on the day of their departure, like a large cloud casting its shadow on the scene. Ruqayya got out of the carriage with a big beautiful smile on her face, a smile of fortitude and complete acceptance of her fate and what more might come. The younger children, Saleha and Mahmud, were clutching the hem of her black outer coat, and the two older boys, Said and Kamel, walked along behind her. Each of them was carrying a suitcase and a basket on his head. The largest suitcase was being carried by her brother Bashir on his shoulders. The people thronged toward her, surrounding her, and she started greeting them and thanking them one by one. She shook the men’s hands and embraced and kissed the women. Some of the women were crying, while others gave Mahmud and Saleha honey and sesame sweets. Mahmud ate them up straightaway, but Saleha, more clever and with better manners, waited until her mother gestured her permission. Then she took out one of the sweets and said in a clear voice, “Thank you, uncle!”