Arabian Stories

Sami was lolling in the garden of the Nile’s island that lays in front of the Egyptian Opera House. He was surrounded by tall buildings and big boats that threw a blue glow on the calm waters of the river, lighting it up at night. In the background, he could hear the deafening music that was always blaring out of the speakers installed inside the boats, which took not only tourists but also locals for a brief trip along the Nile; they gave all those racked with pain a short break from their everyday lives. For almost half an hour, they could lose the crosses they had to bear onshore. Sami, however, was not paying heed to the music of the boats. He had his headphones on and was listening to music he had downloaded from the Internet, which acted as a magical world of sorts. It stood in stark contrast to the real world where one was forced to comply with the allotted default setting when listening to music, when ...Read more →

One day, the elder, the town’s sheikh, announced:

“The day after tomorrow a high-ranking government delegation will be visiting our town in order to send word of our trials and tribulations to the decision-making centers. We will host a large reception in their honor, larger than any event this town has ever staged. For the occasion we will slaughter a cow ‘bright in color and pleasing to the eye’.”

In response to the sheikh’s notification, the town’s fool asked, “And where do we find such a cow, venerable sheikh?”

“What an excellent question! I see you are smarter than most wretched scoundrels from around this neck of the woods,” the sheikh remarked.

After a moment’s thought, he spotted the hoary old widow. She was toiling up the cliff path with the donkey her sterile late husband had bequeathed to her.

As if he were Archimedes and had just puzzled out a conundrum in the bathtub, the sheikh suddenly squawked, “Eureka! Eureka! Eureka!”

He then turned to the town’s fool and said, “Listen, this is what we’re going to do. The hoary old ...Read more →

My city earned a place in the history books when the first strike from a pickax was delivered to dig the Suez Canal. The city became famous not only among Egyptians, but also among foreigners, who started to arrive at it, wound up living in it, and eventually died in it. On the western side of the city, close to where the “beautiful” beach begins to stretch, one may bump into the fence of the old cemetery of Port Said. It is divided into different sections: one for the deceased who hailed from the Commonwealth, another for those who were Catholic, and yet another for those who were Orthodox Christians. Besides that, there are five sections for deceased Muslims. It has recently been expanded to include five new sections in the suburban slums of Abu Auf.

Upon accessing the foreigners section of the cemetery, I saw a heart-rending epitaph written on one of the tombstones. It read: “Dear son, rest in peace in this foreign land, which lies so far away from your loved ones who grieve for ...Read more →

Roughly thirty years ago, on an otherwise seemingly ordinary afternoon, he looked different. His narrow chest, gruff voice, and steely eyes struck me that day as belonging to someone else, someone one would have expected to find at the Mansoura Corniche of the ’80s. Even as the schoolboy I was back then, I was able to tell he had quite suddenly become barely recognizable. I felt a sense of distance from him. As I sauntered alongside my father, I suddenly felt that he was no longer the man he used to be. From time to time, we stopped walking and our eyes drifted over to the opposite shore.

A foreign-sounding voice cut through the silence. “That is the al-Banna mosque.”

I looked to the place where his eyes were lingering. The mosque’s dome shimmered in the fading sunlight. It glowed green and majestic, standing in stark contrast to the darkness that had already descended over Talkha, the neighborhood where it was located. His voice was soft, much softer than what I knew it to ...Read more →

Like any other employee at the buffet, I obey the orders of my plump boss, whose rotundity I am sure more than one or two people must have mistakenly ascribed at some point or another to some fatal disease. He shadows me relentlessly, watching my every move. He is probably more thorough at said task than an actual shadow would be, for even shadows, I am sure, must get tired of being gummmed to a person’s ass and wind up cutting their enslaved owners some slack. As soon as the diners lay down their cutlery, I clear all the empty plates from the tables in the hall and head toward the rudimentarily furnished kitchen, which nobody has bothered to equip with the implements needed to get the dishes properly scraped clean.

“Screw them!” I think to myself and then carry on heaping “praise” of that ilk on them, while fetching dish after dish with my work-roughened hands. For the life of me, I can’t say why I keep putting up with ...Read more →

The diaspora of my people began in 1948. The story of the ordeal I was subjected to when forced to abandon my home dates back to the same year. I was sitting with my children around the hearth while sipping tea to warm up when someone banged on the door so fiercely that for a moment I thought they were intent on busting it down. My wife and children hid further inside the house and I opened the door. In front of me stood a group of Israeli soldiers. Even before I could ask what I owed the pleasure of their visit to, one of the soldiers instructed me in Arabic to evacuate the house. My heart skipped a beat. What would I tell my kids? Where were we supposed to go?

I apprised my wife of what had happened and she started crying. So I did the only thing I could at the moment. I patted her on the shoulder and comforted her. “Have faith in God and be patient, for one day we will return.”

We weren’t given ...Read more →

“In our town everything is organized. Everything is where it should be: the river, the trees, the old rural houses . . . All the elements that assemble our reality complement one another and establish an ideal symbiosis that rounds out the ensemble. The goldfinches sing beautifully while jumping from branch to branch, the morning breeze caresses the basil fields and wafts their sweet fragrance all over the place, dewdrops shine on the leaves of the trees . . . I seriously doubt there has ever been an artist—or ever will be, for that matter—as dexterous as to be able to match the beauty of this scenery with a painting.

“Everything is as peaceful as peace itself. I dare say even the notion of peace has more noise to it than the one reigning over this Paradise on earth. Even the trees observe the peace, for their sake and for the sake of the villagers. It is only the children who break the overall peace, snapping off twigs from the ...Read more →

The crackle of gunfire blares like a storm. The blistering heat is suffocating. The wind churns up the sand in this sour drama staged at the Sinai Peninsula by an army checkpoint south of Sheikh Zuweid. The small building is shored up with sand bags as if it were a fort. Muffled pants and groans can be heard coming from inside. As one approaches the scene, one sees an ailing soldier scrunched down on the floor with his hand pressed against his stomach. His blood is gushing out, soaking his vest and caking the dusty pavement. Another comrade in arms lies next to him in the same position, but he has already lost his life. Half his brains rest at the bottom of an eerie dark red pool. The wounded soldier gazes in fear and bewilderment at the young general who lies stretched out on the ground in front of him. You can see he is scared stiff by the way he clasps his machine gun, as if he could wring some ...Read more →

His cart is brimming with neatly baked cookies and pies, which are covered by a thin insect-screening mesh. Every morning, he sets out at dawn while the city is still sleeping to earn his daily bread. He trundles his wheelbarrow toward the al-Boukharia market in downtown Amman. He pushes it through several neighborhoods before reaching the narrow corridors of the bustling market. To get his pies to be, bar none, the most delicious in town, he follows a secret recipe, which he has devised and fleshed out over the years with what his usual struggle to make ends meet has taught him on a daily basis and with what he has discovered tickles taste buds while simultaneously triggering sweet memories.

Bater’s father is already sixty years old, but his face is always wreathed in smiles that camouflage the signs of fatigue he accumulates throughout the work day. He greets everyone cheerfully as he plies his habitual route through the big market, whose shops are filled wall to wall with fine textiles, lustrous embroideries, and ...Read more →

The legs of the old man lying on the pavement were always in the way, but he never had the chance to chide him for it, because every time he stumbled over him, he was in a bit of a hurry trying to shake off his pursuers. It should be noted that the secret to mastering the craft of pickpocketry resides in having nimble fingers and in knowing how to become invisible. The scarf that covered the lower part of his face served the latter purpose. Apparently, the old man had no misgivings whatsoever about where on the pavement to plunk himself down in downtown Amman. He only feared that, by indulging his itch for settling in a fixed location, he would be making it easy for Ahed to find him.

He begged on the streets for a living, a trade for which the ability to become invisible can also come in handy. Usually, he could be found at the groceries market with a taqiyah placed over his sunburned face when he was conked out. At times ...Read more →