Free The House of Jasmine by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid Page A

instead of guns. You’re on your knees, blindfolded, and your hands are tied behind your back. Ready. . . Aim. . . Fire! The target is the July 23rd Revolution known as Hassanayn! Ready! Load! Beat!” We almost fell off our seats with laughter. Magid has the face of an innocent child. He seems serious most of the time, and if you thought about it, you would think that he was altogether too serious about most things. But, on the other hand, when he jokes he jokes with all his heart.
    I got up and stretched my back, which was beginning to ache from all that laughing. The other customers were giggling at our hilarity, and so was the waiter, Muhsin, who almost never laughed, which made us laugh even harder. They say that Muhsin has been depressed since he got married. Three months after the marriage there were strange changes in the voice and body of his wife, who finally turned into a man!
    â€œYou were the one who described yourself as the July 23rd Revolution,” ‘Abd al-Salam said to Hassanayn, whose face had turned quite red. I found myself calmly asking Hassanayn, “By the way, why does your company make such ugly shoes?”
    â€œA shortage of molds, Shagara,” he replied. Magid was no longer sitting among us. He was bent over, holding his belly, and exploding with laughter. The strangers sitting around us were staring at the strange scene. I had deliberately asked the question seriously, and Hassanayn answered in the same manner. Both the question and the answer became a complete farce.
    I’m indeed happy to have paid my debts, opened a bank account, ended the scandal, and escaped punishment. I had firmly decided to begin looking for a wife. Now it seemed impossible that I had been the cause of my mother’s death or that God was punishing me. I had escaped many evils with ease, which meant that He was on my side. I thought of wandering around the branch administration offices, away from my office where I was besieged by files and dust, in order to sniff out members of the opposite sex. Now, sitting here at the café, I realized that I knew all the female employees in the administration offices, and that they were all either married or engaged. It had been five years since any new employees were hired, and it isn’t reasonable to expect that a girl would stay unmarried for five years after she starts working. Furthermore, most of the female employees have been working for longer than that. After Magid sat back down, ‘Abd al-Salam said, “We must be going crazy. All this laughing is unnatural.”
    â€œWhy should we go so far?” asked Magid, struggling to keep from laughing further and wiping the tears from his eyes, having taken off his glasses. “Dr. Musa, who works with me at the pharmacy, is constantly swearing at the country and the people, and wondering why people never get well, and why the nation doesn’t just kill them and get it over with. He also says that he will not rest until he has a chance to work abroad, specifically in Kuwait.” Then he laughed again, and we struggled to restrain ourselves from joining in.
    â€œYou must be working with Dr. Hitler without knowing it,” said Hassanayn, and this time we didn’t laugh. ‘Abd al- Salam said, “By the way, I have decided to go work in Iraq.” We all fell strangely silent, as though we hadn’t been laughing our hearts out only a few minutes earlier.

7
    A baby was born with a tail—a perfectly ordinary event that could happen. A week later, Alexandria found out that it had happened again, and people started talking about it. Just one week later, it was rumored that a woman had had a third child with a tail, and it soon became known that Shatbi hospital was filled with newborn babies with tails. Every pregnant woman hoped for a miscarriage, and some of them died trying to abort themselves. It was said that the year was cursed, so people stopped getting married.