Sleeping in Front of Al-Gomhorya Cafe
By Mai Al-Maghribi
Translated by Marwa Meselhe Mohamed
I stood in front of a large stainless-steel pot full of rippling black oil, its surface dotted with pieces of shriveled green. My instinct told me this has to be the sea. Reaching the sea meant I was no longer lost, and I could start over. Now, I wondered what it was I’d accomplished.
I left Al-Gomhoriya Café, headed toward the Memorial of the Unknown Soldier, in search of a microbus to Raml Station so I could get a ride home to El-Agamy. Surrounded by loneliness and the mixed smells of rain and grease, I felt dizzy—maybe I even vomited on my walk home. I was oblivious to how long it took, but aware that a new sun had risen by the time I reached the apartment’s front door. So, I went down again, riding the first microbus from Hannoville to the college at El-Shatbi. I flashed my first-year ID card at the gate, even though I’m in my third year—I can find better things to spend the fifty-pound card-renewal fees on. I decided to ghost classes as soon as I walked in and searched for a smoking spot. I went over to Al-Manshia, where I found the green cafe. A cigarette peddler led me there while I was in pursuit of two goals: the first was a budget-friendly, concealable pack of cigarettes, and the second was a smoking spot where there was no chance of either being hit on or seen by my parents, specifically my father. Instinct told me he’d smack me if he found out, and he had ways of knowing all about me without asking: the places I went, the people I was with, and what time I’d be back. His ability to track my slightest whereabouts chilled me.
Over time, a watchtower grew over my shoulder, yellow and dry, with windows on both sides, and my father was the security guard who watched my every move. The tower dragged at my footsteps, but it also helped me map out the places that were unfit for loafing around: here, my father might smoke shisha; there, we once sat; this street crosses with another where his friend lives; and those are the cafes my father usually visits. He smokes shisha for breakfast, too, then brews a pot of coffee to read a book. No wonder my capacity for sloth cowered in the face of him! All doors of goofing around in El-Agamy were shut in my face by the conservative cafe menus clearly stating, “no women allowed,” “smoking isn’t permitted for women,” or “this is a family café.” My father used to wake me up at four a.m. to invite me to join him over some fateer bread and papers from Al-Bitash. Then we’d go to Abu Yussef, a cafe named after one of the local families, where we’d sit right in the middle. My father would hold the tip in his mouth and the shisha pipe in both hands. He’d watch me grip a piece of fateer and a cup of Nescafe, concealing my wooziness by pretending to enjoy the game of backgammon. I made myself an easy opponent, trying not to expose my hustle. All my focus was wasted on this trick; I locked myself up before he got the chance to do it first, and I ended up a prisoner near my house. Brutally outplayed by his tricks, he smoothly narrowed my margins for dawdling.
That’s how I gained experience in handling cafes at a young age. I learned the ways of ordering shisha, its types of coal and flavors, along with playing backgammon and dominos. But that experience didn’t extend to finding a suitable type of cigarette for my budget and my lungs, nor a safe place to smoke it. My chest wheezed from the “Pine” cigarettes, which tasted worse than insecticide, but conveniently cost me only 13 pounds. Like any other pack of cigarettes, it had annoying square and sharp edges that poked through a person’s clothes.
Back then, I hadn’t heard of Selim’s slender, easily concealable cigarette packs. I spotted them with a cigarette peddler in Al-Manshia who was in front of the CIB bank, and his spot resembled a glass hidey-hole with hanging heat lamps and pens. The pack’s pink color, strawberry drawings, and the “Oris” inscription drew me in. I pictured the pack securely stashed under my t-shirt. I pointed it out, and the peddler said that they were smuggled, strawberry-flavored Chinese cigarettes. Good God, it seemed that everything in Al-Manshia was fake and smuggled! Al-Manshia itself couldn’t be real—just look at Al-Gomhoriya Café, where everything was green: the chairs, the tables, their plastic linens, and even the shisha bases. If you walked like a peddler, then Al-Gomhorya was just one cigarette and two spits away from the chaotic Courtes Complex. Yes, it was the peddler who unintentionally led me there. Defying gravity, he carried a board on his shoulder stacked with all types of smuggled Chinese cigarettes. There, I found Oris, the pack I had madly searched for in vain. This peddler was fast; I tried stopping him all the way from Raml Station to Al-Manshia. I lost him near the family court. I also lost my mind chasing him: knocking over a display case of shells, shouldering through the crowd, staggering over sleeping bodies on the pavement, and jolting them awake. On the same pavement, the peddler finally looked back and lowered his board for me. I bought a two-week supply of Oris without even considering how I’d hide all those packs. I stood in front of the huge green café called Al-Gomhoriya, with the two people I had stepped over lying beneath my feet, yawning slowly between loads of cardboard sheets and blankets. Why did some prefer sleeping here in front of Al-Gomhorya?
I stepped in without invitation and sat down without acknowledgement from a single soul. People were busy drinking orange Fanta out of white plastic cups. I ordered the same and started smoking. Depending on the time, Al-Gomhoriya served either as a café or as a restaurant. It was a shady law office until five p.m., then a restaurant for decent families until nine p.m. I never lasted past that hour, to figure out what it turned into next. There was no TV nor clock, only a cashier beside a refrigerator full of soft drinks and a glass panel that separated the cafe from the kitchen, which included a long countertop with deep pots and stainless-steel pans. They contained black oil with bits of green floating on the surface and pieces of kidney and liver at the bottom. I was seized by the fact that no one minded a solitary girl smoking. Maybe they assumed that she was waiting for the lawyer, or had just finished her meeting with one. Either way, she must be deeply distressed.
I was there during the first shift, when the hallway lawyers managed to lure clients from the courthouse or the public notary stairs, inviting them over to Al-Gomhoriya for negotiations or consulting. On a daily basis, I witnessed a certain lawyer inquiring, promising, cashing in, and arguing only to fail clients and move on to land others. He would bait them with orders of liver and Fanta. Other defeated clients would enter, freshly lured from the courthouse gates, embarking on the same journey others had just concluded.
With a look of fake despair plastered on my face, I stayed in the left corner, leaving Al-Gomhorya’s outdoor space for those in extreme rush, and the indoor space for those in extreme despair. My father would never come here. In fact, none of my acquaintances would either—a fact that was bittersweet. My acquaintances would prefer an official law office. I felt hungry, and I knew the lawyer I was watching was the reason. He had visited the cafe almost five times in the same company. Once they finished eating liver, they would leave, then return to consume the same words and food all over again. This must be the perfect depiction of hunger. In front of the cashier, I ordered two liver sandwiches and waited for them in front of the stainless-steel pot. Something told me this had to be the sea. I couldn’t remember what time I left or when I returned to the cafe. However, here I was, watching the lawyer repeating the same scene, and I decided that this was hunger itself. When I ordered two liver sandwiches, looked at the pot, and sensed something telling me, “this has to be the sea,” I slapped my own face.
Al-Manshia is unreal, I told myself, now certain of the boring and tiresome dilemma I was stuck in. Al-Manshia is unreal, I said, while trying to walk in a different direction only to end up back at Al-Gomhorya Café with a smuggled Chinese cigarette in my hand and the mixed smells of rain and grease in my nose. My shoes had been stained by the wails of the two sleepers I’d unintentionally stepped over and jolted awake in front of Al-Gomhorya. The dilemma continued. The next day, I intentionally stepped over them, entered the cafe, but neither smoked nor order Fanta. I attempted to resist feeling hunger, but watching the lawyer defeated me. When I had to stand in front of the pot, I tried to look away or close my eyes, but something inside me insisted that I must open them and look inside the pot.
I relived that day in different forms for over 30 years. I always ended up at the cafe, wondering about the way out. I know that the beginning is the moment I stand in front of the sea. All this holds a sense both of failure and lightness. Even the watchtower on my shoulder started crumbling, year after year.
When I turned 31, I stopped tracing the source of my cigarettes or my status at the university. This had to be exhaustion. I went to the pot without passing by the cashier, looked inside, and gazed at the black oil. There I found out that the part involving the sea, walking home, or chasing the cigarette peddler was no longer in the routine. Today began with buying cigarettes in front of Al-Gomhorya, my feet halfway in the air as I considered stepping over the two who were lying on the pavement to wake them up, or stepping carefully around them, to leave them deep in their beauty sleep.
Mai Al-Maghribi 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.
Marwa Meselhe Mohamed is an Egyptian translator and proofreader.