The Picture

Amal's eyes came to rest on the spray that left behind it, !'against the horizon, a zigzag thread of sunrays in the colours of the rainbow: a marvellous spectrum which could scarcely be seen unless one tilted one's head at a particular angle and looked hard. She pointed it out to her husband facing her across the table in the Casino overlooking the meeting‑place of sea and Nile at Ras al-Barr. He could not see it. If only he could have. The spectrum disappears when it's really there, then one imagines it to be there when in fact it has disappeared with the waves rolling away from the rocks of the promontory known as The Tongue which juts out at this spot. The waves of the sea start butting against the rock once more and the spray resumes its upward surge.

'There it is, Izzat,' Amal shouted in her excitement, and her son Midhat grasped the hem of her dress and followed her gaze.

'Where?--Mummy, where?' he said in disjointed words that didn't ripen into a sentence.

The look of boredom faded from Izzat's eyes and he burst out laughing. An effendi, wearing a tarboosh and suit complete with waistcoat, shouted: 'Double five, my dear sir, double five,' and rapped the board with the backgammon pieces, at which the fat man swallowed his spittle and pulled aside the front of his fine white damascene galabia to mop away the sweat. An old photographer wearing a black suit jogged his young assistant, who was taking a nap leaning against the developing bucket. The seller of tombola tickets, brushing the sand from his bare feet, called out: 'Couldn't you be the lucky one?' Amal gave her shy, apologetic smile and then she was overcome by infectious laughter so that she burst out laughing without knowing why. Suddenly she stopped as she realized she was happy.

'Daddy‑food‑Mummy‑ice cream!'

Izzat turned round in search of the waiter. His gaze became riveted to the Casino entrance and he smiled, turning down his thick, moist lower lip. His hand stretched out mechanically and undid another of the buttons of his white shirt, revealing a wider expanse of thick hair on his chest.

The table behind Amal was taken over by a woman of about thirty who was wearing shorts that exposed her white rounded thighs, while her blonde dyed hair was tied round with a red georgette handkerchief decorated with white jasmine, and another woman of about fifty the front of whose dress revealed a brown expanse of wrinkled bosom. Izzat clapped his hands energetically for the waiter who was actually close enough to have come at a mere sign.

'Three‑three ice creams!'

Amal was horrified at her husband's sudden extravagance.

'Two's enough, Izzat,' she whispered, her face flushed. 'I don't really want one.'

Izzat gave no sign of having heard her. He kept repeating, 'Three ices-ice creams, mixed--got it?' in an excited voice.

When the waiter moved away, Izzat called him back again and said, stressing every syllable:

'Make one of them vanilla. Yes, vanilla. Vanilla ice cream!'

Amal relaxed, smiling triumphantly. 'Where is it all coming from?' her mother had asked her. 'Surely not from the fifteen pounds a month he earns? Have you been saving? No wonder, poor thing, your hands are all cracked with washing and you're nothing but skin and bone. What a shame he doesn't understand and appreciate you properly. He's leading you a dog's life while he gallivants around.'

Amal pursed her lips derisively. She and Izzat together, at last, really on holiday at a hotel in Ras al-Barr! A fortnight without cooking or washing or polishing, no more waiting up for him, no more of that sweltering heat. She bent her head back proudly as she swept back a lock of jet black hair from her light brown forehead. She caught sight of Izzat's eyes and felt her throat constrict: once again the fire was in those eyes that had become as though sightless, that hovered over things but never settled on them. He had begun to see, his eyes sparkling anew with that fire that was both captivating and submissive, which both burned and pleaded. That glance of his! She had forgotten it, or had she set out intentionally to forget so that she would not miss it? The fact was that it had come back and it was as if he had never been without it. Was it the summer resort? Was it being on holiday? Anyway it was enveloping her once again in a fever of heat.

Amal noticed Izzat's dark brown hand with its swollen veins and she was swept by an ungovernable longing to bend over and kiss it. The tears welled up in her eyes and she drew Midhat close to her with fumbling hands and covered him with kisses from cheek to ear, hugging him to her, and when the moment of frenzy that had stormed her body died down she released him and began searching for the spectrum of colours through her tears as she inclined her head to one side. She must not be misled: was that really the spectrum, or just a spectrum produced by her tears? . . . 'Tomorrow you'll weep blood instead of tears,' her mother had told her, and her father said: `You're young, my child, and tomorrow love and all that rubbish will be over and only the drudgery will be left.' Amal shook her head as though driving away a fly that had landed on her cheek and murmured to herself: `You don't understand at all... I ... I've found the one thing I've been looking for all my life.' Her eyes caught the spectrum and she awoke to a metallic jarring sound as the glass of ice cream scraped against the marble table.

'Three ice creams, two mixed and one vanilla.'

'I'll look after the vanilla, old chap. Vanilla will do me fine,' said Izzat, carefully enunciating his words and giving a significant smile in the direction of which direction? A suggestive female laugh came back in reply. In reply to the smile? Amal cupped the iced glass in her hands and turned round as she watched him. White vanilla, strawberry, pistachio, and the yellow ice? Would it be mango or apricot? Colouring, mere colouring. It can't be, it can't be.

'Why don't you eat it?' asked Izzat.

She took up the spoon and was about to scoop up the ice cream when she put it down and again cradled the glass in her hand.

Izzat spoke to his son.

'Ice cream tasty, Midhat?'

'Tasty! '

'As tasty as you, my little darling.'

A second laugh rang out behind Amal. Her hands tightened round the iced glass from which cold, icy steam was rising, like

smoke. She raised her eyes and reluctantly turned her head without moving her shoulder, slowly lest someone see her, afraid of what she might see. She saw her, while as a wall, a candle, white as vanilla ice. For a fleeting moment her eyes met those of the white-skinned woman in the shorts. Her lower lip trembled and she looked back at her glass, drawing herself up. She sat there stiffly, eating. The woman in the shorts took a cigarette from her handbag and left it'dangling from her lips until the woman with the bare expanse of bosom had lit it for her. She began to puff out smoke provocatively in Amal's direction, but Amal did not look at her any more. She was a loose woman. Izzat hardly said a word without her laughing. Obviously a loose woman and lie wasn't to blame.

Midhat finished eating his ice cream and began glancing around him listlessly, his lips pursed as though he was about to cry.

'The Tongue, I want to go to The Tongue.'

Amal sighed with relief: a great worry had been removed. This loose woman would be removed from her sight for ever more. She bent her head to one side, smiled, and said carefully as though playing a part before an audience,

'Certainly, darling. Now. Right now Daddy and Mummy'll take Midhat and go to The Tongue.'

She pushed back her chair as she gave a short affected laugh.

'Where to?' said Izzat with unwarranted gruffness.

'The child wants to go to The Tongue.'

'And where are we going after The Tongue? Surely we're not going to suffocate ourselves back at the hotel so early?'

Midhat burst out crying, trammelling the ground with his feet. Amal jumped up, clasping the child to her nervously. Izzat? Izzat wants to--it's not possible--good God, it's not possible--Midhat, irked by the violence with which he was being held, intensified his howling.

'Shut up!' Izzat shouted at him.

When Midhat didn't stop, his father jumped up and seized him from his mother's arms, giving him two quick slaps on the hand. Then Izzat sat down again and said, as though justifying himself

' I won't have a child who's a cry‑baby!'

Amal returned to her chair, and the tears ran silently from Midhat's eyes and clown to the corners of his mouth. As though she had just woken tip, the woman in the shorts said in her drawling husky voice:

'Come along, my sweetheart. Come along to me.' She took a piece of chocolate wrapped in red paper out of her pocket. 'Come, my darling! Come and take the chocolate!'

Amal drew Midhat to her. The woman in the shorts put her head to one side and crossed her legs. Smiling slightly, she threw the piece of chocolate on to the table so that Midhat could see it. Amal cradled Midhat's head against her breast, patting his hair with trembling hands. Midhat lay quietly against his mother's breast for a while; then he lifted an arm to wipe away the tears, and, peeping from under his arm, he began to steal fleeting glances at the chocolate. The woman in the shorts beckoned and winked at him, and Amal buried his head in her breast. It's not possible, not possible that he would go to her--IZzat-Midhat--not possible that Izzat would want her. With a sudden movement Midhat disengaged himself from his mother's grasp and ran to the neighbouring table. The lewd laugh rang out anew, long and jarring.

' Go and fetch the boy!' Amal whispered, her lips grown blue.

Izzat smiled defiantly. 'Fetch him yourself!'

'We're not beggars,' she said in a choked voice.

'Where does begging come into it? Or do you want the boy to turn out as timid as you?'

Amal didn't look at the table behind her where her son sat on the lap of the woman in shorts eating chocolate and getting it all over his mouth and chin, hands and shirt. She wished that she could take him and beat him till he, but what had he done wrong? The fault was hers, hers alone.

'Good for us; we've finished the chocolate and now, up we get and wash our hands,' the woman in shorts drawled in her husky voice.

Amal jumped to her feet, white faced. The woman in the shorts went off, waggling her hips as she dragged Midhat along behind her.

Putting a hand on his wife's shoulder, Izzat said softly:

'You stay here while I go and fetch the boy.'

Amal remained standing, watching the two of them: the woman with Midhat holding her hand, the woman and Izzat following her. She watched them as they crossed the balcony of the Casino anti--through glass--as they crossed the inner lounge and were lost bchind the walls of the building, the woman's buttocks swaying as though detached from her, with Izzat following her, his body tilted forward as though about to pounce. For step after step, step hard upon step, lewd step upon lewd step. ' No, Izzat, don't be like that. You frighten me, you frighten me when you're like that, Izzat.' She had spoken these words as she dropped down exhausted on a rock in the grotto at the Aquarium. Izzat had been out of breath as he said: 'You can't imagine, you can't imagine how much I love you, Amal,' with pursed lips and halfclosed eyes, heavy with the look of a cat calling its mate, a look that burned and pleaded. Izzat and the other woman, and the sane look that burned and pleaded . . . It can't be, it can't be.

'A picture, Madam?'

Amal had collapsed exhausted on the chair, waving the old photographer away. 'No, Izzat--no, don't put your hand on my neck like that! What'll people say when they see the photo? They'll say I'm in love with you--No, please don't.' 'Here you are, Milady, the picture's been taken with my hand on your neck and now you'll never be able to get rid of me.'

'A postcard size for ten piastres and no waiting, Madam.'

'Not now, not now.'

The man went on his way repeating in a listless, lilting voice, 'Family pictures, souvenir pictures,' while behind him the barefooted tombola ticket-seller wiped his hand on his khaki trousers. 'Why shouldn't yours be the winning one? Three more numbers and we'll have the draw. A fine china tea set for just one piastre. There's a bargain for you!' ' I'm so lucky, Mummy, to have married a real man.' 'A real man? A real bounder, you mean. Work! Work, he says--funny sort of an office that's open till one and two in the morning!' That's what Saber Effendi, their neighbour, had said, and Sitt Saniyya, pouring out the coffee, had remarked, 'You see, my poor child, Saber Effendi's had forty years in government service and there's not much that escapes him.'

Lifting Midhat on to his lap, Izzat said softly:

'The child went on having tantrums before he would wash his hands.'

Amal gave him a cold searching look as though seeing him for the first time. She bent her head and concentrated her gaze on a chocolate stain on Midhat's shirt. Izzat appeared to be completely

absorbed by teaching the child to count up to ten. Midhat stretched out his hand and put it over his father's mouth. Izzat smiled and leaned towards Anal.

'You know, you look really smart today--pink suits you wonderfully,' he said.

Her throat constricted as she gave a weak smile. Again the old photographer said

`A picture of you as a group, sir. It'll be very nice and there's no waiting.'

' No thanks,' said Izzat.

Amal spotted the woman in the shorts coming towards them with her swinging gait.

'Let's have a picture taken,' she said in a choked voice.

`What for?'

Aloof, the woman passed her, looking neither at her nor Izzat. She sat down and started talking to her woman friend.

Amal leaned across to Izzat, the words tumbling from her mouth:

'Let's have a picture taken--you and me--let's!' She pointed a finger at him, a finger at herself, and then brought the two fingers together. With a shrug of his shoulder Izzat said:

`Take your picture, old chap.'

When the photographer had buried his head inside the black hood, Amal stretched out her hand and took hold of her husband's arm; as the photographer gave the signal her hand tightened its grip. Waiting for the photograph, Izzat did not look at the woman, nor she at him. When the photographer came back with the picture, Izzat stood up searching for change.

Amal snatched eagerly at the photograph. She held it in her hand as though afraid that someone would seize it from her. Izzat at her side, her lover, her husband.  The woman in the shorts pushed back her chair violently as she got to her feet. Passing near to their table, her eyes met those of Amal for a brief instant, fleeting yet sufficient--Amal let the picture fall from her hands. It dropped to the ground, not far from her. Without moving from where she sat she propped her elbows on her thighs and her head in her hands, and proceeded to gaze at it with a cool, expressionless face. The picture of the woman looking up at her was that of a stranger, a feverish woman grasping with feverish hand at the arm of a man whose face expressed pain at being gripped so tightly.  Slowly, calmly, Amal stretched out her leg and dragged the toe of her shoe, and then the Heel, across the photograph. Drawing back her leg and bending clown again, she scrutinized the picture anew. Though sand had obliterated the main features, certain portions still remained visible: the man's face grimacing with pain, the woman's hand grasping the man's arm. Amal stretched out her leg and drew the picture close to her chair with her foot till it was within arm's reach. She leaned forward and picked it up.

Modern Arabic Short Stories Sel./Trans. By Denys Johnson-Davies.  London: Oxford UP, 1967.