A Palace in the Old Village Read Online Free PDF Page A

eastern Europeans. He went into a bar and asked for a nonalcoholic beer. The waiter, who had his back turned, replied, We don’t carry that stuff here! Thinking he’d made a gaffe, Mohammed ordered a Coke. Still busily cleaning glasses, the waiter said without turning around, With ice, lemon, or nothing? Nothing . The man slid a can of Coke down the bar to Mohammed, who would have liked a straw but didn’t dare ask for one. Making an effort, he said softly, Omelet, I’d like an omelet. The waiter came over, looked him in the face, and shouted, An omelet how? Your choices are country ham and cheese, Parisian ham and button mushrooms, Spanish ham and cheese, Italian prosciutto …. I’d like just an omelet, with nothing else. I don’t eat pork…. Ah! You’re a Muslim! But with a plain omelet, a little glass of white would go very nicely! No, Idon’t drink alcohol either. So it’ll be a plain omelet! Not even aux fines herbes ? Plain, yes, just eggs and a bit of butter.
    He’d rarely eaten an omelet as good as that one. It was nothing special, but he had done something out of the ordinary, so everything seemed wonderful to him. He told himself he ought to have this sort of escapade again.
     
    And yet, as he left the bar he felt strange. He was having trouble digesting the eggs and all that butter. He thought about his wife, who was probably starting to worry; he could have phoned but didn’t know what to say to her. He was incapable of lying, of coming up with credible scenarios. He would have been ashamed to admit he’d taken off like that because he’d felt dejected and wanted to play a trick on his routine.
    He took the train back in the other direction, reaching his neighbourhood forty minutes later. It was evening . Families were watching television. A few young people were hanging around here and there. One called out to him: Hey, Pops, you in the market for the real thing, some good homegrown? If you don’t use, at least give some to your kids! Just joking, you old fart!
    Old fart! He’d heard that insult many times before, but never directed at him. As he walked home, head hanging, he wondered if he really looked like an old fart. What is an old fart? Must be a pathetic guy, someone who doesn’t fight back, who endures life, and the day he decides not to go through the same motions, he runs into a fresh kind of hostility. He has never found where he belongs. Outside of the painting shop at the plant,he’s in the way, he feels unwanted, and at home the routine is even more painful because of occasional small scenes with the children. Perhaps he’d rather have lived at the plant, where he was needed, where the assembly line depended on him for its smooth operation. He’d noticed behind the foreman’s desk a little corner that he’d have really liked to make his own, his home, his bed, his refuge, but he would have missed the children, even if he was beginning to get the idea that they didn’t miss him much; in any case, they kept their feelings hidden. They’d become little Europeans, looking out for themselves, pushing their parents into the background.
    The guy who murdered his wife and three children but botched his own death—he must be “an old fart.” There’d been a lot about him on TV. To kill and then attempt suicide because of debts or regret over a wasted life, that was something Mohammed did not understand . Suicide was forbidden in Islam. And anyone who commits suicide is punished by God for all eternity, forced to repeat his action forever. Just imagine a guy who hangs himself: until the end of time he’ll be hanging himself, maybe not from the same tree but in houses, stores, right in the middle of a wealthy family’s living room….
    Mohammed suddenly thought, Wait: will there be houses and stores in the afterlife? I know, no one has ever returned to tell us what goes on there. Kill? That’s horrible, I’d never do that! At the celebration of Eid al-Kebir , I used to refuse