Beer in the Snooker Club Read online

  “By hiding us from others,” Ocatvio Paz had warned the Third World’s intellectuals, “the mask also hides us from ourselves.” But such self-deception wasn’t Ghali’s burden. In his ability to see through private and political impostures, and to violate the genteel protocol of much fiction produced by the postcolonial bourgeoisie, he has no peers, not even Naipaul and the great Cossery, who had intuited early the curse of underdevelopment in Egypt. Rather, Ghali’s cruel fate was to pay in his own life the devastating psychic costs of a near-permanent political impasse.

  Threatened with arrest for being a communist, Ghali had been forced to leave Egypt in 1958. His passport expired in London. Unable to return to Egypt or stay in England, he went into exile in Germany, where he wrote Beer in the Snooker Club while working in a factory. He began a second novel, ostensibly about the misery of being a “guest worker” in Europe’s greatest postwar “miracle” economy, on his return to London in 1966; but he never finished it. Whatever happened in Egypt—and by the late 1960s, the spell of Nasser over the Egyptian masses had broken—or Europe, history was going to remain a nightmare for him; his attempt to awaken from it would never succeed. All he could hope to do was douse the ferociously warring impulses inside him.

  “What are you, Ram?” Edna asks at one point in Beer in the Snooker Club. He replies, “I am insincere, but honest.” The confession—substituting authenticity for sincerity—is the key to the novel, its author’s tormented life, and the manner of his death. On the night of Boxing Day 1969, Ghali wrote in his diary:

  I am going to kill myself tonight.… The time has come. I am, of course, drunk. But then sober it would have been very very very difficult. (I acknowledge the drunken writing myself.) But what else could I do, sweethearts? loved ones? Nothing, really. Nothing.

  A scrupulous observer to the last of his innermost turmoil, Ghali swallowed twenty-six sleeping pills, then wrote: “And the most dramatic moment of my life—the only authentic one—is a terrible let-down.” But Ghali knew, in this terrible instant of perfect lucidity, that he finally had his only chance of moving out of the stalled dialectic of insincerity and honesty, and into a much-longed-for peace. “I have already swallowed my death,” he added. “I could vomit it out if I wanted to.” But:

  Honestly and sincerely, I really don’t want to. It is a pleasure. I am doing this not in a sad, unhappy way; but on the contrary, happily and even (a state of being and a word I have always loved) SERENELY … serenely.

  Pankaj Mishra

  2014

  PART I

  Rather, we aim at being personalities of a general … a fictitious type.

  DOSTOIEVSKY

  I watched my aunt signing papers. Three hundred or more in a neat pack in front of her, her secretary standing behind her taking one sheet at a time as it was signed, and forming another neat pack of signed sheets. She gave me a look in between signatures. I must have disturbed her.

  She was giving away three acres of land at each signature, and an acre of land in our country is a lot of money. Her name would be in the papers next day for kindness and generosity to the poor. And it should be, too, when she was giving all that away.

  I had a cigarette but no matches. I put it in my mouth and tried to attract the secretary’s attention. I waited, my courage increasing. I decided to wait until she had signed another ten thousand pounds’ worth before asking for a match. One … two … three … four … about five thousand pounds; five … six … seven … ‘May I have a light, Hassan Effendi?’

  She didn’t hear me, neither did Hassan Effendi. He didn’t even look round. There on the table was a lighter, a big silver Ronson – Aladdin’s lamp. I edged towards the table. One step and I was there. In another instant it was in my hands. Tick tick. It didn’t work. She murmured something to Hassan Effendi. He put his hand in his pocket and gave me a new box of matches.

  I looked at the clock. Twenty past nine. In another ten minutes I would have been there for an hour and a half. I smoked. The pack of signed sheets increased, the other pack decreased. About fifty more, I estimated. She must be tired, poor woman, signing a thousand papers a day and this her third day. I felt for her; a woman with ten thousand acres to look after – but happily the régime allowed her only two hundred now. I remembered how, once, in Europe, she gave me a five-pound note.

  Then Marie came in. She is a good soul, Marie, a good friend of the family: helps here and there during receptions, always present during illness, always remembering birthdays. She doesn’t know when my birthday falls, or that of my mother, but then we have never told her.

  ‘Hello, Ram,’ she said, sitting beside me, ‘what are you doing here?’

  ‘Come to borrow money.’

  She didn’t say anything. She has money of her own, and when you are in my situation, it’s best to speak out, specially to those who have money. It makes them feel closer knit to each other and all that, and then, of course, you can never tell.

  I felt sorry for Marie. She wants to speak very much; to tell me she hopes I get the money and to ask me why I want it – particularly to ask me that. But her position is delicate. She bought a new Cadillac two days ago and it would be vulgar to mention money right now. I looked at her and smiled.

  ‘How is your mother?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s very sick,’ I lied.

  This was bound to keep her quiet for another ten minutes at least. I was more interested in my paper-signing aunt. The way I looked at it, if she was giving away a million pounds’ worth of land to no matter whom, she’d give me a thousand pounds. Particularly if I hinted that I’d leave the country if I had that much.

  I looked at my aunt, then at the clock, and finally at Marie.

  ‘Hello, Marie,’ I said. ‘You’re-looking-very-well-how-is-your-new-car?’

  She looked at me with tenderness. ‘You’re so thoughtful, my sweet. It’s not bad. The other one was costing me so much in petrol, I simply couldn’t afford it. Had to buy a new one.’

  A small commotion at the desk. The signing had ended for the day.

  ‘Tiens,’ said my aunt. ‘I didn’t notice you come in, Marie. Ouf! I am fed up with this signing. You must be tired too, Hassan Effendi. But it is the least we can do for these poor devils, the fellaheen.’ That was good. I tried to look as much fellah as possible.

  ‘Wait a minute, Marie, I’m coming back in a moment.’ My aunt went out, followed by Hassan Effendi carrying a thousand sheets worth a million pounds; or perhaps not quite a million pounds, because she was selling cheap and pretending to the government she was giving the land to the poor.

  ‘Hello, hello, Marie’, I said again.

  ‘Tell me,’ she asked, ‘are you in business now?’

  I told her I had discovered a brand-new way of exploiting the fellah. All I needed was capital.

  ‘You mustn’t joke about such things, dearie,’ she said.

  My aunt came back and said the price of bread had increased by half a piastre. This affected them both very much because they buy bread every day. I tried to be as helpful as possible and told them of a baker I know who sells bread wholesale and by weight. Then I told them how to heat stale bread in the oven, but got muddled trying to deduct the price of the gas used to heat the oven from the money they would save by heating the stale bread. I was going to tell them how to jump off the tram at Abbasieh and not pay for a ticket, but thought better of it. I went outside the room for a moment and stuck my ear to the keyhole.

  ‘Be careful,’ Marie was telling my aunt, ‘he’s come to borrow money.’

  ‘I know, my dear. That’s why I telephoned you. He won’t dare ask me in your presence.’

  I left and went to Groppi’s. I drank whisky and ate peanuts, watching the sophisticated crowd and feeling happy that my aunt had refused to give me the money. I had asked simply because my conscience was nagging. It was something I vaguely had to do but had kept putting off. Soon Omar and Jameel came in, then Yehia, Fawzi and Ismail. Groppi’s is pe
rhaps one of the most beautiful places to drink whisky in. The bar is under a large tree in the garden and there is a handsome black barman who speaks seven languages. We drank a bottle of whisky between us and I watched them fight to pay for it. Yehia paid, then we all left together. They each possess a car.

  I am always a bit bored in the mornings because they are all either at the university or working. Sometimes I go and play snooker with Jameel at the billiards’ club. You can find him there anytime – in fact he owns it. I would go there more often if it weren’t for Font. Whenever I reproach myself for drinking too much, I tell myself it’s Font who is driving me to drink. ‘Font,’ I told him once, ‘just tell me what you want me to do?’

  ‘Run away, you scum,’ he answered. So I went to Groppi’s and drank more whisky. There you are, although, of course, I still read The New Statesman and The Guardian and mine is perhaps the only copy of Tribune which comes to Egypt.

  ‘Font,’ I said another time, when I was nicely oiled and in a good mood, ‘Font,’ I said, ‘you’re about the only angry young man in Egypt.’ And I laughed. It struck me as very funny.

  ‘Go,’ he replied. ‘Go and sponge some more on these parasites.’

  It was I who made Font work in the snooker club. Jameel thought I was joking when I told him it was the only thing would keep Font off the streets. In fact I had to show him Font with his barrow in Sharia-el-Sakia. Jameel was shocked to see one of his old school-friends on the street. It was all I could do to stop him from offering Font enough money to live on for the rest of his life. Font would have spat on him and probably hit me.

  There he was then. Selling cucumbers. Cucumbers of all things. Of course I understood. He was Jimmy Porter. We had seen the play together in London and there he was, a degree in his pocket and selling cucumbers. There were other barrows too; lettuce, onions, sunflower seeds, beans. We stopped the car in front of Font and looked at him.

  ‘Get going,’ he said.

  I said I wanted to buy cucumbers but that I didn’t trust his weights.

  ‘Scram,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll break your rotten face if you don’t scram.’ (This is typical Font. He’ll be sarcastic to the other boys but when it’s me, he’s infuriated.) Jameel told him he needed someone to look after the snooker place for him.

  ‘He’s too much of a snob,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t like to be seen working where his old school-friends might come in.’

  ‘Do you think I give a damn about you idiots,’ Font screamed. Jameel is a quiet fellow and told him he really needed someone. Font might have accepted if I had not been there, so he looked at me with his ‘you dirty traitor’ expression instead.

  ‘Font,’ I asked in English, ‘what do the other barrow boys think of Virginia Woolf?’

  He fell into the trap and answered in English.

  ‘You making fun of them? They never had a chance to go to school, you scum. Has that parasite beside you ever read a book in his life? With all his money he’s nothing but a fat, ignorant pig.’

  Jameel is so docile he doesn’t mind being called a fat, ignorant pig at all. However, by then the other barrow boys were approaching. Font, dressed in Arab clothes, looking after a barrow and speaking in English, awoke their curiosity. ‘What’s that? What’s that?’ they asked.

  ‘He’s a spy,’ I told them and they immediately became threatening. ‘We’ll deal with that son of a dog,’ they shouted. Font became incoherent with rage. We pulled him into the car and drove away quickly.

  I had to leave the car soon afterwards to escape Font’s wrath, but a week later he was brushing the snooker tables with the Literary Supplement.

  I went from Groppi’s to the snooker club. It is a large place with thick carpets in between the tables, a cosy bar and deep leather armchairs. It impresses with its subdued luxury and, one feels, bad manners would be sacrilege there. Jameel’s father having accepted defeat in educating his son, gave way to the boy’s passion for snooker and built this place for him; which turned out to be excellent business. He is a strange man, Jameel’s father. Believe it or not, he’s a sincere socialist, a genuine one. Not a rich ‘Liberal’ nor a wealthy The Nation reader; no, he is active in his ideas and was once imprisoned by Farouk’s gang. He often comes for a game: a tall, lean, elegant man who had a French education and who writes to L’Express of France. I like Dr Hamza; as a matter of fact I’d like to be like him: well-dressed and soberly aristocratic and having been imprisoned for socialist views. I would not like to go to prison, but I’d like to have been. Of course Font isn’t going to be patronized and Dr Hamza isn’t going to be patronizing; so there is a layer of sympathy separating them.

  As I said, I went to the snooker club. I went behind the bar and watched Font run the vacuum cleaner over the carpets. There is a perpetual look of amazement on Font’s face which makes one want to answer an unasked question. The way he works the vacuum cleaner over the carpets with his eyebrows uplifted and his eyes wide, probing into the difficult turns and corners between tables, gives the impression that if he could only get the machine into that particular corner, he’d find the answer to whatever was puzzling him.

  ‘Draught Bass, Font?’

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  I opened two bottles of Egyptian Stella beer and poured them into a large tumbler, then beat the liquid until all the gas had escaped. I then added a drop of vodka and some whisky. It was the nearest we could get to Draught Bass.

  There is a street off the Edgware Road in London, where a gang of Teddy boys, Irish labourers and other odds and ends used to play dice on the pavement. We Egyptians are gamblers. Wherever Egyptians are gathered, you can be sure that sooner or later they’ll start gambling. It’s not that we want to win money or anything, we just like to gamble. We’re lazy and we like to laugh. It’s only when gambling that we are wide awake and working hard. Font and I won a lot of money on that pavement once, and went to a silversmith in Edgware Road and bought the two silver beer mugs we now keep behind the snooker club bar. We had our names engraved on them and vowed to drink nothing but Draught Bass from them. I now poured my concoction into the mugs and waited for Font to switch the sweeper off.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ Font said. ‘How much did you make?’

  ‘About two pints each.’

  ‘I’m going to be nicely boozed all day.’

  ‘I’ll spend the day here, too,’ I said.

  If Font hadn’t been so lonely, he would never have spoken to me. But he is lonely and he wants to discuss something with me; I knew that, or I would have known better than to come and chat with him.

  ‘The real trouble with us,’ he said (when Font says ‘us’ for him and me, it means he’s exceptionally kindly disposed towards me), ‘is that we’re so English it is nauseating. We have no culture of our own.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ I said. ‘I can crack jokes with the best of Egyptians.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said. ‘Perhaps our culture is nothing but jokes.’

  ‘No, Font, it isn’t. It’s just that we have never learnt Arabic properly.’ That is the way I have to speak to Font. I have to contradict him, at least in the early part of any day we are to spend together, and I have to speak slowly or he’ll accuse me of trying to be eloquent instead of carrying on an ordinary conversation.

  ‘Then what do you mean by saying that cracking jokes is culture?’

  ‘What I mean is,’ I replied, ‘that jokes to Egyptians are as much culture as calypso is to West Indians, or as spirituals and jazz to American Negroes. In fact,’ I continued, saying whatever came to my mouth, for that is the way to coax Font into trusting my sincerity, ‘it is no less culture than playing the organ is culture.’

  I filled our beer mugs again and started preparing some more Bass. Font pondered over what I had just said. I sometimes say such things and then a moment later they sound less silly than they do when I utter them.

  It was past eleven, and the first two customers came in; Arevian and Doro
mian, two rich Armenians who own the shoe-store downstairs. Two fat and greasy individuals with a sense of humour.

  ‘Good day, good day, professors,’ they said to Font and me (Font’s degree is a source of great amusement to them). ‘We have come to play marbles for your amusement, Herr Doctor Professor Font. It is the ambition of our humble life to divert your knowledgeable eyes with our childish efforts, thus allowing your brain to dwell upon lofty matters.’ They bowed down to Font and made as though to kiss his hands – an ancient custom in government circles.

  ‘Look at them,’ Font said, ‘they pay that miserable man downstairs six pounds a month to work twelve hours a day for them, and then they come here and gamble for thousands as though for peanuts.’

  ‘Forgive us, forgive us, Herr Doctor,’ Doromian sang. ‘If our Hassan had so much as a minor degree from Heidelberg or the Sorbonne, we would give him … eight pounds.’

  When I said they owned the shoe-store downstairs, I wasn’t quite exact. One of them owns it and the other has lost it. They play for fantastic amounts of money, and when money has been exhausted, they play for their share of the shop. They never lend money to one another. I remember Doromian losing everything including his car, and Arevian refusing to lend him the price of the tram home.

  Font started laying out the snooker balls for them. I finished two pints of this Bass which makes me comfortable and allows my Oriental brain to wonder over non-Oriental things such as Font, and other Fonts I’ve known, and even the Font that I am myself at times. Fonts who are not Keir Hardies but Jimmy Porters in the Egyptian Victorian age; Fonts who are not revolutionaries or leaders in the class struggle, but polished products of the English ‘Left’, lonely and without lustre in the budding revolution of the Arab world.