Friendly Fire by Alaa Aswany (best books to read for students .TXT) 📕

weak and return to the fray. Each step that brought me closer to the entrance to the building was like treading on his stupid huge head. Jutta was waiting in the entrance. She looked happy and asked me gaily as we mounted the stairs to her apartment, “What did you do to him? Didn’t he try to stop you?”

Proudly I answered, as though what had happened was a trivial matter, “I treated him the way an Egyptian ought to be treated.”

The door opened and the apartment received us with a smell of damp. Jutta put out her hand and turned on the light. There was a large reception room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and an inner room separated from the reception room by a long corridor. The furniture—as is usually the case with furnished apartments—looked old, used, and noticeably pieced together, as though it were a mediocre set for some play. I sat on a long red couch with a table in front of me on which I saw scattered papers, banknotes, coins, and a German magazine, which was open. Jutta smiled and said in a voice that showed that from now on she would be feeling like a hostess, “I don’t have anything to drink except two bottles of red wine. What do you say?”

“Great.”

She went into the kitchen, then returned after a few minutes with a tray on which were a bottle of wine and two glasses. As she poured me a glass, she said, “Red wine is supposed to be drunk warm but I prefer it cold. I hope you don’t mind?”

“It’s fine,” I said as I sipped from my glass and watched her. As she poured the wine, her long blonde hair falling in front of her eyes so that she had to raise it with the side of her wonderful, delicate hand, she looked as though she were part of a rosy dream too beautiful for anyone to believe. The wine had a delicious bite to it. Jutta asked me, her face serious again, “Do you expect Shaaban will call the police?”

“What?”

She burst out laughing, then smiled apologetically and said, “Don’t think I’m weak. I’m not a coward, but I don’t like problems and I know what fanatics are like. They’re all the same. We have fanatics like Shaaban in Germany too.”

“Do you mind if we forget about Shaaban completely?”

I asked her with a smile and she answered with a nod and then immediately said gaily, “You know, Isam, our meeting tonight is one of the strangest things that’s happened to me in my life.”

She laughed and I said nothing, so she went on, resting her back against the chair, “I’m not ‘a good girl’ in the normal sense of the words. I often get involved in relationships just because I’m feeling bored or because some man attracts me in some particular situation. These are what we call one-night stands. All the same, this is the first time I’ve jumped into bed with a man so fast. Just think, a few hours ago we didn’t know one another and now here you are spending the night in my apartment, and I feel as if I’ve known you for ages.”

The wine had expelled any remaining fear and I got up, went over to her, took her hand, kissed it, and leaned my face against hers. She, however, drew away, laughing, and said, “No. Not that fast. It would be too comic if we went through the door of the apartment straight into the bedroom.”

I sat down, poured myself another glass, and thought that what was happening was so beautiful that I wanted to stretch it out so as to savor every detail. I always rush to the climax, and when I reach it, it burns brightly and then is extinguished and all that’s left is a distant warm memory. Then I am overcome with melancholy and I blame myself for making so much haste to get through the pleasure, when I could have nurtured it at length in my hands.

“Are you aware that your appearance is deceiving?” she said.

“In what way?”

“At first I thought you were shy and had no daring, but then I discovered you were the opposite.”

“Your first impression was correct. My behavior tonight amazes me. In fact, I’m a weak person and usually incapable of confrontation.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“At least, that’s the person I was a few hours ago.”

Smiling and drawing close to me with a flushed face, she said, “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I behaved bravely tonight because I was with you.”

She came closer and whispered, “I love your words.”

I kissed her and then she drew her head back and said, “I’m feeling lazy. Will you get up and fetch the other bottle of wine?”

I kissed her as I rose. I felt the texture of her cheek as it gave under my lip and I covered her with kisses as she submitted to my embrace. Then she smiled, stretched out her arms, and said, “See what you’ve done to me?”

The skin of her arms was all goose bumps.

I said, “What does that mean?” and she laughed and said, “It means something extremely important.”

I kissed her again, no longer capable of making out what my eyes were seeing. I buried my nose in her hair, everything dissolving into a magical beauty, and she whispered to me, laughing, “What do you say we make an agreement? You fetch the bottle from the kitchen and I’ll go ahead of you to the bedroom.”

The light of three candles flickered in the darkness of the room. The dark and the light mixed with the taste of the wine, the heat, and a calm, good smell that emanated from her body, and I gathered her to me, my feelings expanding, their roots digging in as I returned to a real moment that I had known once, long ago, then lost, and to which I had now returned. I wished I could whisper to her what I