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By Root 292 0

and dwarf palms, couples moved like marionettes controlled by a madman. She saw her father sitting in the governor’s box, separated by a railing from the rest of the guests. The governor was holding court before her father, two men she didn’t recognize (they did nothing but nod their heads in a sign of agreement), and a well-known singer, who according to rumor had been the governor’s mistress for the last several months. Her name was Om Khaldoun, and she was old, fat, and as hideously made-up as a pharaoh’s mummy; she’d escaped ruin thanks to the narcissism of certain men of standing in the city. To be the lover of a famous singer was a chance to show off their fortune—the word was that she charged these archaeologists of the flesh a pretty penny. Every time she saw Om Khaldoun, Soad wondered how any man—however philistine and lacking in aesthetic sensibility—could make love to such a withering, flabby creature for vanity alone. Once the singer had been her father’s mistress, and the girl still held painful memories of the time. That was when her hatred for her father grew into insurmountable disgust; she wouldn’t let him near her anymore, let alone touch her. He seemed contagious to her; he exuded the stench of old lady, like the stench of rot. Even after he broke things off with the singer, it was a long time before the girl could look at him without repulsion.

Soad’s father epitomized the greedy, power-hungry bourgeoisie who reigned over the city like a pack of jackals ripping into a carcass. He restricted his associations to his own kind—but only the more servile among them, people he could lord it over and put down as he pleased. He was insolent, disdainful—even with the governor. Soad, powerless and mortified, had listened for years as her father cut people down with the precision of an executioner. Nothing escaped his peremptory judgments or his furious condescending outbursts. These usually happened in the middle of the receptions he hosted in his sumptuous villa, as vast as a palace and swarming with servants. He’d start by welcoming his guests as if their very arrival was a humiliation to be avenged as soon as possible. Then, after shaming his visitors, he’d stir up bitter arguments about business and politics. Nobody dared contradict him: the virulence of his rejoinders was legendary. His way of carrying on a conversation—he would submit his interlocutor to a stream of scathing invective—attracted the city’s elite in droves; each came to see the others insulted. But his daughter he treated with a careful, almost timid benevolence. Her rebellious temperament frightened him; he suspected that a full-scale revolt was in the making. All he asked was for her not to cause a scandal. That was what panicked him: scandal. He trembled at the thought of her getting pregnant, dreading the prospect like nothing else. And Soad knew it; every day she could see him staring at her stomach, as if expecting to see it swell with that terrible scandal. But having settled on this obsession, he paid no further attention; apart from that, he knew nothing about her.

Heykal’s silhouette emerged from the lights of the disco, and she watched him walk toward her on the promenade, long and slim and superb, like an enigmatic god emerging from the void. She leaped to her feet but didn’t run toward him; she waited valiantly until he was in front of her before throwing her arms around his neck and hanging from him, bouncing up and down and sighing hugely and happily, like a child who has been given a fantastic toy and can’t believe her luck. He endured her caresses with tender indulgence. He was susceptible to these signs of adoration, to the rush of inarticulate words like the babbling of a drowning victim come back to life—in short, the frenzied behavior of a young girl in love. She continued kissing him and rubbing up against him, shameless in her desire, clearly hoping to lure him onto the sand. Finally Heykal freed himself from her clutches and pulled away gently.

“All right, little girl, that’s enough for now,” he said.

“You’re