Beer in the Snooker Club Read online

  We killed a certain Zaki Bey. I don’t remember who was in power then, I think Nokrashi Pasha, but I know Zaki Bey was head of the police and he came, together with fifty half-starved policemen, to the faculty of medicine. They had a dilapidated tank with them. After a lot of mechanical repairs and consultations, the tank’s gun was pointed at us who were on the roof of the faculty’s building, and an explosion took place. Some of us extended our hands, trying to catch whatever was emitted from the tank; but it never reached our outstretched hands. It fell, instead, with a thud, on a car belonging to my aunt which I had borrowed that day without permission. This made me very angry indeed. My aunt was bound to know I had taken the car, considering there was now a hole in its roof. I therefore helped catapult a bomb which had just been manufactured on the roof, and Zaki Bey died.

  I don’t remember which party I voted for, but we were given whisky and salted pea-nuts, after which we were taken in Cadillacs to vote with our thumbs. (Apart from Kamal, none of us was of voting age.)

  It was only when I went home that I learnt why Zaki Bey had died. He had ordered the Kasr-el-Nil bridge to be opened while a student demonstration was crossing it, causing death to six. A handsome funeral march, comprising half the police force and thousands of civilians was organized for him next day. Photographs of the procession were mournfully published in all the evening papers. Among the civilians in the photographs I noticed the presence of a few future brilliant scientists, including Kamal. They were the ones who had manufactured the bomb on the roof of the faculty of medicine the day before.

  The usual two-months’ closing of the faculty was ordered and most of us went to the beaches of Alexandria.

  The university reopened and again I had to choose a political party to belong to. Roughly, there were the following: the Wafd, the Ikhwan (Moslem Brotherhood), the Communists, and the anti-Wafd.

  The Wafd paid well provided you were a good orator and organizer of strikes. They gave you a car and, I was told, free drinks at the Arizona or the Auberge – I forget which. The Ikhwan was a fearsome thing to belong to. You could be ordered to shoot anyone at any time in cold blood; they paid you with promises both earthly and otherwise, and you had to be active even when the university was closed (as a Copt, I would not have been able to join that one anyhow). The Communists were the respectable though secretive ones; the hard-working, the intelligent, the quiet. No rewards, only risk of imprisonment and misery to the family. The anti-Wafd was the most popular, and was joined by socialists, anarchists, university-closing fans, semi-idealists, progressives, and most of the middle class.

  I didn’t join any party, but contented myself with being devoted to ‘evacuation’ and was always the first home whenever a strike was suggested as a blow to British imperialism.

  Kamal came to the lab one afternoon wearing a three-weeks’ beard, which meant that he had become a member of the Ikhwan.

  ‘Infidel,’ he said, ‘can you steal the chemistry storeroom’s key today?’

  I replied that my examinations were next day and that anyhow I would have nothing to do with the Ikhwan. He said that although he had recently joined the Ikhwan, this was a job for the last party to which he had belonged. He then wrote down seven examination questions, telling me to expect them in next day’s paper. I started to tell him that I didn’t need the questions, thank you very much, then I gave a bit of a start; the questions he gave me were all very different from those I had bought for twenty-five pounds the day before. Furthermore, it would have taken me at least three days to prepare the answers to the questions he had just given me. A mistake, it seemed, had been made. Rewards had been given to the wrong students.

  Next morning I walked rather dejectedly to the examination hall; I would barely be able to answer three out of the seven questions. I was greeted with the news that the examination hall had been burnt down and that examinations would be postponed for ten days at least.

  Kamal’s picture next appeared in the procession consequent to the killing of Nokrashi Pasha, and also in that following the killing of Sheikh-el-Banna, head of the Ikhwan. Just before the revolution Kamal owned two cars, a villa on the Pyramid Road, and a flat in town. I met him once after the revolution. He was riding a number six tram to Shubra, a handkerchief round his neck to protect his collar, wearing an old brown suit and brown plimsolls.

  ‘My market has been closed,’ he said sadly after a flowery greeting. ‘You infidel,’ he added with a smile.

  Font and Jean came back from the pub they had chosen. I asked Font whether he remember Kamal.

  ‘Which Kamal?’

  ‘Kamal Hassan.’

  ‘Kamal Hassan? … oh, Kamal Hassan in our first university year. Yes; what, is he here?’

  ‘No, no. I was thinking of him.’ But Font appeared worried and wasn’t paying much attention.

  ‘What’s the matter, Font?’ We were walking behind the others on our way back to the Dungates’ house.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Jesus, Font; here we are, London and everything. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You look so perplexed.’ We walked for a while in silence.

  ‘You know, Ram, that wound I received from a bloody Englishman in Suez?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jean was telling me how good the English really are and that I shouldn’t listen to what people – or “foreigners” – said. So I showed her my scar and told her how I got it.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She said she was very sorry I had been wounded, and then told me her cousin, a girl, had been caught and raped by several Egyptians in Suez and her body was found naked near a stream.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well? Isn’t it enough for you?’

  ‘What are you talking about, Font?’

  ‘Isn’t it horrible we can do such things?’

  ‘We? Have you gone mad, Font? What damned business was it of hers being there when she knew quite well she wasn’t wanted?’

  ‘There is a difference between harassing the British troops at Suez and murdering a woman.’

  I didn’t see why Font wanted to spoil a nice day with such things.

  ‘It’s a wonder they’re so hospitable to us after what happened,’ he said.

  ‘After what happened?’

  ‘Their cousin murdered.’

  ‘A wonder? It’s a wonder we speak to them at all.’ I was getting a bit angry with Font. ‘Have you forgotten all those who died while with us in Suez? I suppose you are all set to becoming something like my cousin Mounir.’

  ‘No, no. Don’t be stupid, but …’

  The others waited for us to catch them up so we stopped talking. But for the first time a rift had appeared between Font and me.

  We left after lunch. John had talked to me for an hour on how to try for an extension of our stay, and Font was to go drinking with Jean later in the evening.

  ‘Well, Font, what do you think?’ What Font thought was, that if in the next election the Labour Party came into power, there wouldn’t be any more trouble in Suez.

  ‘I don’t mean that, Font. I mean today and meeting the Dungates and all that.’

  ‘I think we should read the New Statesman with more attention. It does reflect the views of many …’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Font. I’m not talking politics. Just being there and going to the pub and the lunch and all that.’

  ‘Jean was telling me Mr Bevan often goes to their house.’ I didn’t speak any more until we reached the hotel.

  ‘What about Jean?’

  ‘She’s nice; but I’ve taykin’ a fancy ter Brenda.’

  I went to Edna’s room and lay on her bed. I put my hands behind my head and closed my eyes. I saw myself in a large pub, a pint in my hand, giving a speech to hundreds of Johns and Jeans and Brendas. It was a beautiful speech full of witticisms and quotations, telling them all about the cruelty and the misery the English have inflicted upon the millions; and my pass
ion rose so much that I push my pint away untouched, and all their faces were watching, intent and ashamed. And, after a fiery condemnation of their acts, I said: the English are a race apart. No Englishman is low enough to have scruples, no Englishman is high enough to be free from their tyranny. But every Englishman is born with a certain power. When he wants a thing, he never tells himself he wants it. He waits until there comes to his mind, no one knows how, a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who possess the thing he wants … and then he grabs it. He is never at a loss for an effective moral attitude to take. When he wants a new market for his adulterated goods, he sends a missionary to teach the natives the gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary, the Englishman flies to arms in defence of Christianity, fights for it, conquers for it, and takes the market as a reward from heaven.

  This speech wasn’t Bernard Shaw, but my own spontaneous composition. And at the end there was a colossal silence and then a phenomenal ovation with tears in some eyes and all the women begging me to be their lover. But I walked away, disgusted and lonely in the misty night with the burden of all injustice weighing on my heart. But no sooner had I reached my squalid and dingy room, than Edna was there, rushing into my arms full of love, telling me she had listened to my speech.

  The door opened. Edna came in, and sat on the bed.

  ‘How is your visa, Ram?’

  ‘Quite well, thank you, how is yours?’

  ‘I never have trouble with visas.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My father is very rich.’

  ‘No; it’s because you’re Jewish.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Is an Egyptian Jew ever refused a visa to France or to England?’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘You know why?’

  ‘Why?’

  I pulled a book from under the bed, written by someone in the British military hierarchy: ‘Furthermore, the Jewish colony in Egypt would support any attempt to re-occupy the country’. He gave this as an additional reason for the occupation of Egypt.

  ‘I haven’t brought you here to pick up racial prejudice,’ she said.

  The ‘haven’t brought you here’ didn’t penetrate for a while.

  ‘Turn to page sixty,’ I said. ‘You’ll find: “And, no doubt, the Coptic population would more than welcome it.” ’

  ‘There are thousands of such stupid books,’ she said.

  ‘I haven’t brought you here’ I remembered. In ordinary circumstances I wouldn’t have thought about it. But today was different. I was acquiring a taste for analysis.

  ‘Why did you bring us here?’

  ‘Because you have been raving about coming to England for a whole year.’

  ‘Europe,’ I said.

  ‘Europe, then. Don’t worry, you’ll see much more of it before you return.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, after a slight hesitation. ‘Perhaps you should make the most of your next days here. You may have to leave soon.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘I can manage to stay if I want. I can also pull strings if I wish.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, standing up. ‘This is not Egypt, you know.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ I said. I could see myself being nasty. It was a new thing to me. To be naturally angry was not new; but to be deliberately nasty was a new sensation.

  ‘What’s the matter, Ram?’

  Having met what I took to be intellectuals, I was now going to use some of their jargon.

  ‘I’m fed up with being patronized,’ I said.

  She was hanging her coat up as I said that. I saw her stand still for a moment. Then she hung her coat and came back to the side of the bed.

  ‘I am sorry, Ram. It is true. I am patronizing you both. I didn’t imagine you would pay any attention to such things.’ She made me feel cheap again; the second time since I said ‘a rich girl’s gimmick’ the first night we met.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  She hesitated, then said she couldn’t explain why.

  ‘Are you angry?’ she asked.

  I didn’t answer. She took her comb out of her handbag and gave it to me. To comb her hair was becoming a sexual fetish between us.

  It was strange, to me, that being nasty had paid a reward. She loved me that afternoon. Is there anything more wonderful in this world than to possess the woman you love in the afternoon and after a sleep, to bath and dress and go out hand in hand?

  We took the Underground to Aldgate and walked in Commercial Road, looking for the W. W. Jacobs’ people. ‘How can an Egyptian,’ I asked Edna, ‘who loves W. W. Jacobs be refused permission to stay in England?’

  She kissed me and said Font and I had read more books than was good for us.

  Font didn’t return that night. He came at eight o’clock in the morning.

  ‘ ’Allo, ’allo, ’allo,’ I said; ‘wot ’ave you been hup to, lad? Ah wouldn’t ’ave thought yer capable ov it.’ Which was a mixture of Cockney and North Country to me. I was pleased that morning. Edna had been passionate at night and I felt she was on the verge of loving me.

  ‘I am an’ all, you know.’

  ‘With Jean?’

  ‘I’m a bit ashamed, Ram.’

  ‘You haven’t raped her, have you?’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t use that word. I mean being offered such hospitality at her father’s and then sleeping with her.’

  ‘Ho ho ho … ha ha ha. You’re nothing but a backward fellah. Edna,’ I shouted across the bathroom, ‘come and listen to this.’

  She came barefoot in her nightdress and jumped into Font’s empty bed.

  ‘What?’

  I told her.

  ‘Sweet Font,’ she said. ‘It is you I should love. You haven’t abused them at all … she did want you?’

  Font blushed.

  Sweet Font.

  The maid suddenly came in and said: ‘Oo, ’xcuse me.’

  ‘Not at all, luv,’ I said. ‘Come in, we’re one short.’

  She went out saying, ‘goings on’, and then said ‘wogs’ which angered Font and Edna but made me burst out laughing.

  ‘You’ve changed, Ram,’ Font said.

  John Dungate had given us a list of things to do about our visas. He had telephoned a friend of his who had something to do with the Home Office.

  When we had left Egypt, it had been to all intents and purposes, for three months only. Why I did what I did just before leaving, I don’t know. I took my school and university certificates and shoved them in the bottom of my suitcase.

  ‘Font,’ I said, ‘by some fluke, I have my certificates here which are going to be very useful today. You don’t, by any chance, have yours here, too?’

  He looked at me for a while in silence.

  ‘Yes, Ram, by a similar fluke, I also have mine here.’

  ‘Font, we are leaving at the end of the three months.’

  ‘Don’t be a hypocrite,’ he said.

  Edna was waiting downstairs. We went to the Home Office – Aliens Department – the first of many humiliating and nasty interviews. If ever we felt we were getting too fond of the English, all we had to do was to go to the Aliens Department and dissipate all our illusions.

  We waited two hours for our turn, and when we finally did reach a polite clerk it was only to explain what we wanted, be given a number, and wait for another hour or so. Coming from Egypt, we couldn’t complain of waiting. It was the expression of the fifty or so people waiting with us which affected us. They were mostly Persians, Irakis, Greeks and Italians. We were not, we felt, in a government department or even a police station; this was an institution, something Kafkaesque in essence, where, for no reason at all, Almighty God waited to penetrate into your brains and desires, prove your inferiority, and shred you to pieces. It was the pleading expression on the faces there which affected us. We spoke to a Greek and to an Iraki. It was the Greek’s third time there in two weeks. He w
as emigrating to Australia, but his papers hadn’t come through to Australia House yet. They always refused to extend his visa more than a few days at a time and each time he was told not to expect a further extension. ‘I have money,’ he said, ‘what for I cannot stay one month?’ The Iraki was in the London School of Economics. For six months his parents had been sending him fifteen pounds a month instead of thirty. The Home Office considered this inadequate for his needs and was therefore refusing to extend his visa or permit him some part-time job. ‘I have been here three years,’ he said, ‘and have letters from all my professors saying I am an excellent student. But all to no avail.’ I was getting depressed listening to them.

  Our number was called, and we were led to a long corridor lined with many doors. We waited outside one of them.

  ‘Come in,’ someone drawled.

  We went in and said ‘good morning’ to a young man of thirty or so stretched comfortably behind a desk.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘We have a transit visa, and …’

  ‘That’s enough. If you have a transit visa we allow you to stay here for ten days. If you are a day or two late in leaving, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘I am not going to have any more discussion. Please leave the room.’

  I pulled Font out quickly before he said anything. Outside I told Edna what had happened and we went straight to a pub. Font wanted to leave the country that very day.

  ‘I have a confession to make,’ I told Font. ‘John’s lawyer friend advised against going to the Home Office; he said it was staffed with the rudest people on earth. But I took you there on my own initiative.’

  ‘No, Font,’ Edna said, ‘it was I asked Ram to go to the Home Office.’

  That was true. The evening before I had told Edna we were not to go to the Home Office, but would send our passports by post in which case they would remain there at least three weeks, thus giving us three more weeks in England whether they granted us visas or not. But she begged me to go. ‘It is part of your cherished England, you ought to know it,’ she had said.