Miramar by Naguib Mahfouz

Author:Naguib Mahfouz [Mahfouz, Naguib]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9780385264785
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

4. Sarhan al-Beheiry

The High-Life Grocery. What a brilliant spectacle for the gourmet and the epicure—bright lights playing over jars of hors d’oeuvres, pots of pickles, and tins of sweets, the cold meat and smoked fish, the bottles and flasks of all shapes sparkling with wines from every corner of the earth. Willy-nilly, my feet want to stop in front of every Greek grocery in the city.

This time, as the ripe autumn breeze brings a heady aroma wafting into my nostrils I stand there watching a fellaha at the counter and thinking, “Blessed be the land that fed those cheeks and those breasts of yours!” I’d seen her as I was scrutinizing the prices on the wine bottles in the window: my eyes passed over the barrel of olives, slipped through a space between a Haig & Haig and a Dewar’s, hopped across the ham slicer, and lit on the profile of her nut-brown face, which was tilted up toward the grocer with his big Balkan mustachios. She carried a straw bag full of groceries and the tip of a bottle of Johnnie Walker was just peeping out at one corner.

I stood in her way as she left the shop. Our eyes met, mine smiling with admiration but hers severely questioning, then I followed close behind her, paying tribute to her country beauty. At the Corniche we were met by squalls of autumn wind, tinged with the faltering rays of the sun. She walked on in quick straight steps and when she turned in at the entrance to the Miramar building she looked back quickly: honey-brown eyes, exquisite but rigidly noncommittal.

I remembered the cotton-picking season at home.

I’d almost forgotten her when I saw her again at the end of the week. She was buying the papers at Mahmoud’s stall.

“What a lovely morning!”

It was Mahmoud who responded to my greeting, but she glanced at me and I looked her straight in the eyes, staring like a hawk, mesmerically. She hurried away, but in my senses the way she moved had already laid a charge.

“You lucky devil!” I said to Mahmoud, who laughed innocently. “Where does she come from?”

“She works in the Pension Miramar,” he said indifferently.

I paid back some money I’d borrowed from him to send home and walked around the fountain waiting for Engineer Ali Bakir.

What a sweet fellaha, absolutely delicious: there she goes, pulling my vitals after her. The whole world delighted me—the excitement of my own desires, the softness of the sunlight, with the multitude of faces I saw waiting around me. And I remembered again the cotton-picking season at home.

—

Ali Bakir turned up about ten. I took him to my flat in Sharia Lido in Mazarita. Safeya was ready and we went to the Metro cinema. At one in the afternoon we came out. They went straight on to the flat, while I went to the High-Life to get a bottle of Cyprus wine.

At the counter shopping, as my fantastic dreamlike good luck would have it, stood the fellaha, again.

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