Classic Short Fiction: East Is East
East Is East
(Inspired by Paris)
By Fouad Elshayeb
Translated by Amr M. El-Zawawy
He stood bewildered at the crossroads, not knowing which way to take. Before him lay the road that led to the broad boulevard; behind him, the side street from which you could see the Odéon’s façade . To his right was the only passage where the curve of the restaurant could just barely just be glimpsed; to his left was the narrow alley into which he would sometimes slip, alone, hands in his pockets, where he’d enter one of the offices. It was a sorrowful alley, like his own lost soul.
He stood perplexed, uncertain how to go on, even though, when he had gone down the hotel stairs, he had known why he was going out that afternoon and what he intended. Yet now, desires and thoughts crowded in on his mind, spoiling the clarity of his choice. From the moment the sunlight touched his face, he seemed astonished, delighted, and lost amid a thousand calls. Every voice summoned him toward pleasure, delight, life. He thought to go to the Odéon and watch the posters in the arcades, about the play to be performed that evening. Yet the books in a nearby shop window were calling him, winking and beckoning. And although his hunger was half forgotten, his gaze still drifted toward the restaurant. But what did he truly crave? He lowered his head and tried to discover his heart’s desire.
Perhaps he wished for a fair-haired girl to walk at his side on this languid and sunny autumn afternoon—such as Paris seldom grants—so that he might take her arm and wander with her into the Luxembourg Gardens, passing a few hours idly throwing breadcrumbs to the tame sparrows that descended in flocks upon the strollers’ benches. He smiled at these luscious, ripening visions, then turned toward the shop window, imagining a voice coming from it, saying: “Come… come… didn’t you promise me yesterday that you would take me today? Didn’t you promise to pay my price and rescue me from this cold display, so I might live in your pocket or on the mantelpiece in your room?”
The young man smiled again, as though apologizing, then tried to move his feet, hesitated, and remained where he was.
Suddenly a taxi passed, slowing at the intersection. The driver thrust out his head and arm and shouted to the young man standing there: “Hey, you Eastern cow! Haven’t you finished your dreaming?” The young man started violently, and the car sped past him while he heard the driver’s laughter. Soon, he himself laughed and told himself: A cow indeed! He must have recognized me from my features, and from how I chose this spot to stand in, as though I were a cow crouching in a green meadow, ruminating and casting wide, dreamy glances all around me. Then he chose his way: toward the restaurant.
His companions were waiting for him there every day. He felt ashamed to enter public places alone, for this new life dazzled and confused him. It was as though he felt a great intimacy with his compatriots, his fellow students, whenever he saw them gathered as a single unit—in the university, the café, or the restaurant—forming an Arab circle with an Arab tongue and an Arab character. He soon joined them.
There were three of them, and each had invited a companion to lunch. They motioned to the young man, who grew even more confused within this noisy circle. As soon as the young ladies sensed the slowness of his movements, they began to tease him, pelting him with question after question. The new guest was neither ugly nor dull, yet he felt himself the ugliest of faces and the dullest of minds. One of his companions said, suppressing a laugh: “Ladies! Our friend is from one of the noble Arab families and is one of our brilliant young men.”
One of them jumped in: “There’s no need for introductions, my friend. His brilliance is evident in his eyes.” All of them burst into laughter at once.
Meanwhile, a pretty girl approached the table, books tucked under her arm. She greeted everyone without ceremony, and the friends welcomed her after shaking hands with her one by one.
One of them said: “Won’t you eat?”
“No.”
“Very well. Will you drink a glass?”
“No, thank you.”
“Excellent,” another said. “But if you sit, at least, we’ll present you the finest of young men—our new friend.”
When the girl looked closely at the young man, they told her: “This is Ahmad.” She smiled, and he rose to greet her and shook her hand. Then she took a seat at the table beside him, showing pleasure at this new acquaintance, and the circle returned to its chatter and jesting.
Lucy was the third girl he had come to know since arriving in Paris. The first had not been entirely blonde, and the second was blonde but talkative, laughing at the slightest thing. Although he could not precisely define the ideal of beauty he longed for, he felt it dimly within himself. He had encountered many girls in the Latin Quarter who had captivated his heart and approached the image in his imagination—companions, dance partners, fleeting acquaintances—yet he had no more than five minutes with them, more or less, like shadows cast in a certain direction at certain hours of the day, or like a taxi ride shared by strangers. Lucy was the third girl with whom he had really spoken. He marveled at himself—how fluently he spoke to her—and marveled at her—how attentively she listened. She restored his confidence.
He loved Lucy—indeed, he felt himself ready to love her. She was something out of his dreams: fair-haired, refined, not mocking his loneliness, nor interrupting his reflections. Her mouth was wide, but her smile was enchanting, and her teeth were dazzlingly white, as though each tooth laughed separately with warmth and delight.
Why should he be so excessive in his choosing and criticism? He had spent a long time in utter deprivation, vainly trying to connect with a woman. In Damascus, he could fast for a year or two. But in Paris, there was no such possibility; the world there seemed to agree that one must live in pairs and nests. What a strange city! People embraced one another everywhere—under the sun, under the policeman’s nose, in hotels, in queues, in churches—without embarrassment or caution, standing or sitting, morning, evening, noon, before eating, after eating, before sleep, and upon waking. Women were everywhere his gaze fell: the hotel proprietress, the manageress, the maids; the woman in the shop where he bought his handkerchief; the one in the store where he purchased his tobacco; in cafés, restaurants, schools; in cars, trams, and the métro; selling newspapers, sweeping the streets, pulling carts in the fruit and vegetable markets.
If the young man was precise and sensitive in observing women, and amazed by their nature, it was because his eyes had never been accustomed to such ubiquity. He often imagined that a woman, being within reach, was a common possession like air and water; yet he soon grasped a harsh truth: that the woman herself chooses before the man—especially if he is shy in his ways.
His disappointment had been painful two nights earlier, when he heard a woman accost him, saying: “Come, my love… will your arms not wrap around me, my dear?” He realized she was a prostitute, and he remembered that others were beyond his reach. His pride flared, and he fled.
He suffered, ached, and felt the bitterness of loneliness and the desolation of exile. He imagined himself returning to his homeland on the first ship—how else could he live in a paradise where the trees were all forbidden, offering him only fallen fruit?
Then Lucy stepped into his life, rising from the horizon of his dark despair, illuminating his world like the sun of Paris after a long eclipse. Now he walked with her eagerly and lightly through the Luxembourg Gardens, living one of his beautiful dreams.
She was blonde like the evening sun, light as willow branches, cheerful and laughing like a lake, comforting and delightful like the dearest of books. Beside her, he felt himself singing, as though she were the song itself and the voice issuing from his inner longing. Whenever he parted from her—whether in the evening or at noon—he would rush to the room of one of his compatriots, recounting in detail all that had passed between him and Lucy, seeking guidance and advice. His friend would say: “Don’t be a coward, Ahmad. Try to bring her to your room. Often a woman has already yielded when she agrees to be alone in a man’s room.”
But Ahmad would tell himself: Why be in such a rush? What does it mean? How can he invite her to his room the way spiders invite flies? Why should he pounce upon beauty as though devouring or assassinating it? Why not enjoy the blessing slowly, gently? was it fitting, when one tasted beauty, to swallow it whole without savoring its flavor? Why devour it like a serpent when one might peck at it lightly like a bird?
Lucy truly admired Ahmad. Yet she did not speak words of love. She listened to his discussions of law and literature as though hearing a diligent student in whom signs of intelligence had appeared. One secret of her fascination with him was his modesty and shyness; his eyes, which never stared without lowering themselves again, embodied everything that attracted a woman to a fresh, modest man, full of love and on fire with ideas. She longed for the arm of this gentle dreamer as the weary long for a patch of ground upon which to lie down and rest. Thus, she was to him like a drop in drought, and he to her like a gift in a desert of despair.
Their brief acquaintance quickly led to a happy understanding. Yet his companions would ask him each time they saw him: “What have you done, Ahmad? Has Lucy been in your room?” He would recoil in disgust and avoid their nonsense. For he saw in Lucy nothing yet but two blue eyes—pure, created in the image of his imagination and the model of his dream. It was enough for him that he could warm himself in her presence and bathe drowsily in the gentle aura that emanated from her being.
One evening, with the tone of one who had discovered a treasure, Ahmad said: “Lucy, let’s spend tonight at the Odéon Theatre.” She replied, studying the childlike joy in his eyes: “What’s at the Odéon, Ahmad?”
“A play—Tristan and Isolde—the noblest and most passionate love the world has known, more profound than Romeo and Juliet.”
She murmured: “Very well… But I don’t like such tragic, annihilating love.”
For the first time she confronted him with cold truths: “My soul churns when I watch such plays, as though I were eating overly sweet baklava or drinking thick, heavy Eastern coffee.” Then she asked: “Have you heard of Crime and Punishment?”
“Of course,” he replied. “I have read Dostoevsky and loved him.”
“Then tonight we shall see Crime and Punishment at the Montparnasse Theatre.”
During the performance, she whispered, gripping his hand: “The actor playing Raskolnikov seems to be going mad.” Later she reflected: “Don’t you think that the life a person lives eventually imposes its own taste upon him, even against his own?”
That night she was restless and sharp, and she did not refuse his invitation to his room.
There, as she lay upon his bed, he thought she was offering herself. Yet when he approached, he saw her eyes closed and motionless, as if she were asleep. He stood contemplating her calm face, his conscience trembling with a gentle joy. Should he take her in his arms? She was asleep. Should he touch her? She was fragile. Should he erupt upon her like a storm? No—this delicate flower dreamed in peace. How could he disturb her? Instead, he covered her with a cloak.
She woke, apologized, and left abruptly.
The letter that arrived read:
“Sir,
“I was visiting my aunt in the suburbs and returned today to find your kind letter, to which I now reply without delay.
“All I ask of you is that you stop thinking of me, searching for me, pursuing me, or writing to me. I have my reasons—you may not understand them; it is all the same to me. I do not say that I do not love you. I say something harsher: I detest you. My soul churns and my insides revolt when I see you, as though I had eaten too much sweet baklava or drunk thick Eastern coffee. I believe that if I were to go out with you again, I would feel like one lost in a desert, comforted only by the tinkling of bells hung on camels’ necks. As for the mill that crushes your bones—I dance upon it and grow more intoxicated with delight.
“My lungs, poor man, have grown accustomed to smoke; I long for it when it is absent. How I pity you! Do not wait, do not hope, do not think of me—for I shall not return.
“Permit me to return your most beautiful photograph, which you once presented to me with such eloquence: ‘To you, my angel… I offer the portrait of a man.’
“Alas, dear sir—I am no angel.
“And you… you are no man.
“Farewell.”
Image: Place Vendôme à Paris dans les années 1920 (musée de l’aventure Peugeot de Sochaux).
Foaud Elshayeb (1911-1970) is considered the second pioneer of the short story after Ali Khalqi, who published his only collection, Spring and Autumn, in 1931. Al-Shayeb’s first story, “The Widow’s Son,” appeared in the Lebanese magazine Al-Duhur after winning first prize in a short story competition held to mark the magazine’s launch on January 1, 1934. In the same year, another story of his, “Maktoub,” was published in two parts in the November and December issues. This story, however, was overlooked by all references discussing al-Shayeb and was not included in his collected works. In 1943, the Lebanese magazine Al-Adib published his story “The Spinster” in its December issue. A year later, his only collection, The History of a Wound, was released by Dar al-Makshouf in Beirut, featuring ten stories. He also wrote fourteen unpublished stories that were later included in his complete works issued posthumously by the Ministry of Culture.
Amr El-Zawawy is Professor of Linguistics and Translation, Faculty of Education, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt. He has also practiced written and simultaneous translation for more than 20 years now. He contributed important articles to different international scholarly journals, including but not limited to Babel (John Benjamins), Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, California Linguistic Notes and Advances in Language and Literary Studies. He published a number of books and translations, including Studies in Contrastive Linguistics and Stylistics (Novika, USA), Exploring the Cognitive Processes of Simultaneous Interpreting (Lexington Books, USA), Seminal Studies in Linguistics and Translation (Cambridge Scholars, UK), Selections from Arabic Poetry (Kindle, Amazon), and English-Arabic Dictionary of Rare and Difficult Words (Lincom).
Other stories in the Classic Short Fiction series, curated by Amr El-Zawawy:
Fouad Elshayeb’s “The Funeral of the Machine”
Ameen Rihani’s ‘The Crown of Disgrace’
Mohammed Hussein Heikal’s ‘The Atonement of Love’
Mohammed Hussein Heikal’s ‘The Second Family’
Ibrahim Abdelkader Al-Mazni’s ‘On New Year’s Eve’
Mahmoud Saif al-Din al-Irani‘s ‘The Last Bullet’
Mahmoud Saif al-Din al-Irani’s ‘My Secret Picture’
Ibrahim Al-Mazni’s ‘Eve and the Viper’
Muhammed Taymour’s ‘The Eid Whistle’
Muhammad Taymour’s ‘A Boy Who Became a Man’
Marouan Abboud’s ‘Among the Problems of the Village’
Mahmud Taymour’s ‘The Grand Funeral’
Ibrahim Abdelkader Al-Mazni’s ‘Mimi’