That Smell and Notes From Prison Read Online Free PDF Page A

time I saw him he
was bare-chested, walking with slow steps and occasionally raising a finger to
fiddle with his mustache. In those days, world leaders sported a variety of
mustaches and it was no accident that each was distinct from the others. These
mustaches turned out to be a trick. The men who wore them were gone and so was
their fashion. They left nothing in the heart. They never had. And he began to
beat his head against the steel door until it nearly split, crying.
    Through the window I saw a girl in the house opposite embrace
another girl, kissing her on the lips. Then a girl who was blind in one eye came
into the room and cried and while she cried, Sakhr stroked her hair with his
hand. And Mona’s mother said that the girl was like that, that as soon as she
saw a man, she cried. Finally, Mona came home from school. I said to her, I’m a
friend of your father and she gave me a suspicious look. I took her to the club.
There were other children there and I asked them to take her into the water with
them, since I didn’t know how to swim, and they took her away. She ran and
played and was happy. There was a piece of wood that helped with swimming and
she grabbed onto it. But another little girl, a fat girl, took the piece of wood
from her and floated on top of it. Mona held on to the piece of wood. The little
fat girl grabbed her hair and pushed her away from the piece of wood, taking the
piece of wood and swimming on top of it. Mona was a long way from the edge of
the pool. I ran quickly toward her. She was bobbing up and down in the water and
gasping for air and her eyes were wide with fear and I called out to her but she
sank beneath the water and didn’t reappear. One of the swimmers swam to help her
and dragged her up, carrying her to me, and I took her home. While we were
climbing the stairs, she said, If someone is there, I’m going to say you’re my
father. Don’t say you aren’t. We went into the house. Her mother was getting
dressed, so I waited. Then my eyes fell on the wall clock. I jumped up and
rushed for the door and rushed into the street. The policeman would arrive at
any moment. I reached my room, gasping for air, and found a letter waiting for
me. I checked to see who had sent it. It was from Nagwa. I read the letter
slowly, then I lit a cigarette and stretched out on the bed and read the letter
again. She was wondering if we might meet again after all these years. I closed
my eyes to see what I could remember of how she looked: her affectionate eyes,
her tender mouth. The bell rang and I got up to open the door. It was the
policeman. I asked him to wait and came back to the room with the notebook for
him to sign. He left and I kept the notebook in my pocket for next time. The
bell rang again. When I opened the door Nagwa was there. I embraced her. She
hugged me back violently, pressing her whole body against my body. But I didn’t
press against her, I pushed her away to look at her. Then I led her into the
room and turned off the light and sat on the bed and pulled her down next to me.
Then I pulled her toward me and kissed her on her lips. She pulled her face away
and said, Talk to me. I didn’t want to talk. I stroked her face. It was hot and
soft. She pulled her face away, saying, Talk, say what happened. I put my hand
over her mouth and pulled her head toward me and kissed her, gripping her lips
between my lips. She bit me back in the same way, rough and unpracticed. Then
she pulled away.
    This is how it always was. The first time I kissed her, she
acted shy. I was sitting next to her and the light was falling on her cheek and
we had stopped talking. I rested my head on her shoulder and she didn’t object.
I kissed her on the cheek, then on the lips. When we’d gathered a little more
courage, she gripped my lower lip and bit down on it hard. It hurt. I wanted to
feel her soft lip in my mouth. I couldn’t get enough of it. If I could have held
her in my arms all day, I would have. I