Friendly Fire by Alaa Aswany (best e book reader TXT) 📗

of paper on which I’d written down Jutta’s address in case I forgot. I walked for ten minutes to get to the office.

It got so hot that I removed my jacket and undid the buttons of my shirt. The house looked as it had that morning, with the same sign saying “Yusri Mustafa. Import-Export.” This time I hoped that the doorkeeper would stop me as I crossed the entrance to the building. As of yesterday, I had become a strong master. I would repel him confidently and powerfully. No one tried to stop me and when I entered the office my heart was beating hard. I would see Jutta now. Should I rush up to her, embrace her, and cover her face with kisses in front of her colleagues? I put off thinking about that. The office opposite the door was empty. A pack of cigarettes and an open newspaper indicated that the employee who sat there had left on some errand and would be coming back. In the corner of the room was a young girl with her hair covered; she was typing. I stood for a minute in front of the empty desk, then turned toward where the girl was sitting. She stopped typing and raised her face to me. She was beautiful but the way she looked at me was empty of any expression, as though she did not know me and did not welcome me but, at the same time, my presence neither surprised nor bothered her. If she hadn’t returned my greeting with a slight nod of the head, I would have thought that she hadn’t seen me.

“May I see Miss Jutta, please?”

“Who?”

“Miss Jutta, the German lady.”

The girl smiled. Later, when I thought over that smile, I understood everything.

“There’s nobody by that name working here.”

“No. She does work here, I’m certain. I have an appointment with her. Please be so kind as to tell her that Isam is waiting for her.”

This time she didn’t turn toward me. She went on striking the keys with her hands. Her indifference to my presence annoyed me so I went up to her and shouted, “You, Miss! Can’t you hear? I’m telling you to inform Jutta that I’m here.”

She raised her head and looked at me in silence. Then she resumed her typing. I lost all control of my nerves. I started shouting and was soon insulting her and then I shoved her on the shoulder. I felt the solidity of her shoulder bone against my hand. With the noise, a few employees emerged and a thin, bald man of about forty wearing a smart gray suit and with wide, powerful eyes came toward me. He took hold of my arm and asked me roughly what I wanted. I answered him that I wanted to see Jutta, and when he replied as had the girl with the covered hair, I exploded in his face. All he did was to tighten his grip on my wrist until it hurt so much I was completely paralyzed. I started shouting and cursing them all and in my ears cries of ‘crazy’ and ‘police’ mixed with one another and I found myself being dragged by the man in the gray suit toward the door. Then he gave me a powerful push on my back with his hands that expelled me from the apartment.

I staggered and almost fell on the stairs and he quickly and violently closed the door to the office.

I rushed down the stairs and into the street as fast as I could. I didn’t feel anger or surprise. I was like someone who wants at the last moment to prevent a certain disaster. I started running down the street. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the passersby stopping and staring in amazement. After a few minutes, I reached Jutta’s house. I stopped for a moment in front of it. I was panting and copious sweat was flowing over my face and neck. I started to cross the entrance when a deep voice took me by surprise.

“Where do you think you’re going, buddy?”

His tone was impertinent and it occurred to me as I turned to face him that it must be Shaaban, Shaaban with his beard and the dark spot on his forehead and his baseness, Shaaban whose coarse skin oozed grease and malevolence. I rushed toward him and fell on him with a blow to the face that connected perfectly, making his huge body stagger. Before he could stand straight, I got in another quick blow and kicked him hard in the belly, then pushed him so that he fell to the ground. I threw myself upon him and proceeded to beat him on the head until I felt the stickiness of blood on my fingers.

The plot was well laid, and when I now review these events and details in tranquility, I am possessed by admiration for their skill and careful planning.

Truly, they’d set things up perfectly. At the investigation, Shaaban said that he didn’t know me and that there was no preexisting hostility between us. He said he had seen me going into the building the previous night but had been afraid to question me as he had realized that I was under the influence of alcohol and was afraid I might harm him. He denied emphatically—as did the residents, owner, and doorkeeper of the building—that a German girl lived there. Similarly, Yusri Mustafa (the owner of the office and the bald man with the gray suit) accused me in his deposition to the investigation of being insane and denied that any German girl had ever worked in his office. Even the waiter from the Semiramis bar, when summoned by the police, said that I had spent the evening in the bar the previous day and that I had drunk a lot but denied that a foreign girl had been with me. He emphasized that I had arrived alone and left alone, at half-past one in