‘Can We Get in Touch with You?’ Short Fiction by Mai Al-Maghribi

Can We Get in Touch with You?

By Mai Al-Maghribi

Translated by Meriem Essaoudy

Salting,
milking,
sprinkling plaster and lime,
then pounding—Mahmoud’s role comes after that.

This was after my uncle saved me from the art galleries of Zamalek. Yes, after his uncle saved him—since he too is an artist, a tanner who spent his youth skinning animal hides, saving them up, and making deals with the Giza Zoo until he owned a small tannery and a leather shop in front of the Mamluk Aqueduct. What’s important is that he saved me from starting my day with the stench of rot and from walking over piles of garbage, trying to avoid the sheep that fed on it.

I would start my morning with a few squirts of Otrivin, to numb the nerves in my nose and eyes, until I got out of Ahmed Orabi Street. No, he didn’t save you from these morning rituals. But he did save me from the borrowing and begging I put myself through to buy the tools for my projects, or to get from my home in Umm Bayoumi, out in Shubra El-Kheima, to the Faculty of Applied Arts in Dokki. I consoled myself by saying things like, “It’s just a matter of time. I’ll become a great artist, exhibiting my paintings in a gallery in Zamalek, giving lectures, speaking about my art.” You’ve never even been to Zamalek. No, I haven’t. I plan to go as an artist, exhibiting my paintings at the Hamasat Gallery. I came across them on Instagram, where they comment on artists’ posts—any artist’s posts—with, “Can we get in touch with you?”

Why don’t you take the initiative yourself?
Yes, that’s what I thought. Why don’t I take the initiative?

The painting is an 80×80 oil on canvas of a buffalo with snakes slithering out of it, each of them carrying blue and black garbage bags with their tongues. I worked hard on it. I worked so hard painting the snakes’ scales that I started to hear them hiss. I worked so hard detailing the buffalo’s hairs—you won’t even see them unless you get up close to the painting, but they’re there. And they rejected you. Yes, they rejected me, just like they rejected me at the Youth Salon. In fact, they were about to spit on my painting. They said it lacked context and wouldn’t sell. They didn’t take their eyes off my shoes the whole time they spoke.

In return, I looked at their shoes—they were leather. A different kind of leather, not like my uncle’s and mine, not like the leather of anyone I knew.

Sons of bitches, they pressured every artist to exhibit there—half-baked artists making pottery, contemporary artists scribbling on walls, even those forgotten ’80s artists who we only know because they’re members of the syndicate. They all displayed their crap at Hamasat and made sales there. But the moment I showed them my buffalo and snakes, they suddenly remembered they had artistic taste.

And here comes your uncle’s role, just like in movies.

“What’s wrong, kid?”

I tell him, and I show him the painting. He looks at it, his ears pricking like a wolf’s. He sits beside me and talks to me, a substitute for my father and mother. If there were a father and mother, your uncle wouldn’t have had a role. True, and he tells me he’s got a job for me, an artistic one, too. He’s opening a store in Nasr City to sell leather and floor coverings. “Draw for us,” he says. “Forty pounds per sketch, and the tools are free.” After I agree, he asks me to redraw the rejected painting on paper and send it to him via WhatsApp so the workers can execute it. He gives me 200 pounds as an advance.

I couldn’t imagine what it would look like—animals drawn on animal skin. There’s some paradox there, or a joke or maybe a philosophical idea, but I don’t dwell on it. Instead, I focus on photographing the carpet that hangs in front of the Mamluk Aqueduct. It feels like an open exhibition space, like divine compensation. I take a deep sniff from the Otrivin bottle and start imagining new sketches.

The first ten pieces I design are cowhide, framed by a blurred border of natural buffalo hide in its original color, mixed with shades of gray. They produce twenty throws from my designs, and, when they all sell out, I take an even deeper pull from the Otrivin.

Salt is sprinkled on the fresh animal hide, still dripping with blood, and then, after two days, it’s washed. Then it’s treated with lime and alum and washed again two days later. Afterward, it’s pounded and becomes ready for cutting, trimming, and patching.

My role begins when my uncle hands me the required measurements and the available types of leather.

I don’t know where the souls of animals go after they die. Tanning preserves parts of them for as long as possible. But why must a horse remain a horse, and when it dies, its soul simply vanishes? Why can’t it return as a horse-cow hybrid? Again, there’s a joke, or maybe a philosophical idea, but I don’t dwell on it. My uncle’s thoughts occupy me instead.

We sit at a café, and he tells me any random kid could do my job without even sketching it on paper. Then he asks, “Where’s the art you’re studying in college?”

For my second attempt, I draw variations of a cow patterned with interlocking squares bordered by horsehide. My uncle is thrilled.

“Yes! That’s what I’m talking about—give me the real thing!”

I grasp his taste and produce more sketches: horsehide featuring cowhide shaped like a lotus flower. Once, I draw cowhide shaped like the Kaaba. It becomes the store’s bestseller, hanging in front of the Mamluk Aqueduct for six months, dazzling passersby. I even find it on the “Mimzawy” meme page, captioned “Hajj Mabrmoooo.”

Despite the lame joke, I’m thrilled—my art is being seen. I ask my uncle to put my signature on the animal skins to protect my intellectual property. He agrees.

I feel like I’m running in circles. My uncle rejects designs that resemble buffalo or snakes but embraces kitsch. I move away from flowers and mosques, eventually designing cowhide fused with foxhide.

I am the cow. My uncle is the fox.

I sketch a cowhide piece that transitions into horsehide, as if the horse is mating with the cow.

I am the cow. My uncle is the horse.

No—I am a buffalo.

You haven’t even reached the level of a buffalo. You’re just discarded animal skins piled on top of each other.

But my uncle saved me.

Saved you? You’re still stepping over garbage on your way to college. But at least now, I have enough money to be in Zamalek, even if my art isn’t shown there.

While working with my uncle, I tried to connect with other artists. I would send them pictures of my paintings on Messenger or post them as comments on their posts on Facebook. I waited for a response—not to find out whether my art was good or bad, but to hear that it was normal to stage conversations in your head. That’s just how artists are.

Somehow, Otrivin calmed my thoughts—it drowned them in a sticky substance and shut them up. But the smell of Umm Bayoumi and her trash still clung to me.

And every time I try to befriend someone from the Zamalek art world, they recoil.

The last time, I met Hamza, a third-year sculpture student I knew from Facebook. We met downtown, at El Fallah Café. We talked about art and my work with my uncle. He looked at me with disgust, then stared at my shoes in horror.

I thought he might appreciate that what I do is literally “sculpting,” but he went on looking at me with disgust and horror.

As I’m on my way back to Umm Bayoumi, my uncle sends me a voice note:

“A zebra died at the zoo, and it’s mine now. Listen, Mahmoud, I need you to prep two zebra pieces: one, 100 by 80, packed with abstract patterns; the other, 90 by 150, a zebra-cow fusion—do it however you like.”

I don’t know why, but after hearing that message, I threw up.

My uncle usually writes down these details, but hearing them spoken out loud made me feel sick.

“How did it die?” I typed angrily on WhatsApp.

He scoffed and replied with a laughing emoji.

But I had to know how it died. I saw myself in it—a zebra taken, caged, and told it was being rescued. Then, it dies, and the leather artisans claim its hide, turning it into a carpet for strangers to step on with their shoes.

I drew a zebra’s face with teardrops shaped like buffalo hide. A fox-skin hand peels away the zebra’s face, revealing mine beneath. I colored in all the white areas—whether in the background or the zebra’s stripes—by mixing acrylic white with my own semen. It was a painting, not a sketch.

I finished it in a week, photographed it, and posted it on Instagram and Facebook with the caption: “I Am the Zebra.” Then I went to sleep.

My uncle called me fifty times. I woke up just to text him, saying I needed more time. When I turned off my phone, he came to the house and slapped me. I told him I didn’t want to work with him anymore.

I don’t know how many days I’ve slept.

When I finally checked Facebook, there was one comment under my painting from a classmate: “Bless your hands, Abu Amu.”

And 1.1k likes. Between the laughter emojis, hearts, and hugs, I scroll down.

On Instagram, there are hundreds of comments and messages. Including one from Gallery Hamasat.

“Can we get in touch with you?”
“Can we get in touch with you?”
“Can we get in touch with you?”

I took a deep sniff from the bottle of Otrivin and fell back asleep.

Mai El Maghraby is a writer and journalist from Egypt. She graduated from the Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University, Department of Psychology. She has published a number of poems, texts, critical articles, and dialogues in various websites and newspapers, including Mada Masr, The Markaz Review, Maazef, and ArabPop. She received the Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy grant to produce her first novel, الخروج من غيط العنب (Leaving Ghait Al Enab), in 2023.

Meriem Essaoudy is an online English teacher, currently pursuing a degree in English Studies and Translation at Hassan I University, Morocco. She is also a Spring 2025 intern with ArabLit.