Fathers are born to disappear; your own died in his sleep one night. In his bed, like Nasser, just when everyone was beginning to think he was immortal. Your mother didn’t realize until the next morning. She rarely woke up before him. Believing he must still be sleeping next to her, she hadn’t dared rouse him. His face in death was as rigidly impassive as the one he’d worn in life. There was no reason to suspect he had crossed the threshold.
With your messy hair and shirt sullied by the roof of a Cairene bus, it was hard to imagine that your appearance justified the honorific, but you received the salutation with a smile. The room was a long hallway with scattered tables. Ali briefly vanished, shouldering his way through the cloud of smoke obscuring your view of the back of the room. For the first time that evening, you had fleeting thoughts of Mira, of the meal she had cooked you in vain, the fact that it was getting late and you had no idea where you were or how you might get back to your car. A coffee cup full of alcohol that you had not ordered pulled you from these thoughts; a second was placed down beside it. You didn’t know whether you were supposed to pay right away, but you were given a sign to show that there was no rush. There was no rush at all. Ali came back with his hair somewhat fixed. He traced a circle with his finger, a gesture that meant. Do you like what you see, all this, here? You liked it here. He smiled. You took a first sip and looked around the room. Two men were kissing on the lips. It was hard enough to imagine any kissing in public in Egypt; you could never have dreamed that you would one day see two men embrace.
So life would start later. The here and now was not life but something else: a waiting, a respite, perhaps a drawn-out preparation, but for what? More precisely, what were you being prepared for? You had always preferred the company of adults to children your own age. You were in awe of people who never hesitated. The ones whose every action seemed to confirm their grasp on the whole and entire truth. The ones who could with equal aplomb criticize a president, a law, or a soccer team. The ones who could, with a snap of their fingers, answer the thorniest of questions: Palestine, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Aswan Dam, the nationalizations. So that was adulthood, stamping out doubt in every shape and form.
One day it would dawn on you that there were few real adults in the world. That no one ever truly gets over their original fears, adolescent complexes, unfulfilled need to take revenge for their first humiliations. If we still find ourselves surprised when someone we know reacts immaturely, it is naive. There are no childish adults, just children who have reached an age where doubt becomes a source of shame. Children who begin to conform to expectations, stop questioning authority, make confident statements without a quiver of doubt, grow intolerant of difference. Children with raspy voices, white hair, a weakness for alcohol. Years later you would learn to flee such people, at any cost.
