The Smiles of the Saints: A Modern Arabic Novel

By Ibrahim Farghali

“I have returned to settle my account. . . .”

Told through the voices of a group of close friends and spanning a generation, The Smiles of the Saints is an epic story condensed into a short, intricate novel. Twenty-year-old Haneen has just returned to Egypt after an absence of fifteen years spent mostly in a Parisian boarding school, cut off from all family save for sporadic visits from her father, Rami. She has been summoned back by her father’s twin sister, who gives her an envelope containing his diaries, the last section of which is missing. Reading Rami’s account of the passionate love affairs and tortured spiritual adventures of his youth, Haneen begins to unravel the riddle of a family she has barely known.
Herself the child of a Muslim–Christian marriage, Haneen, in love with a Jewish man, is considering adding a further religious dimension to her family. But someone is carefully watching the proceedings, a figure from the past. Who exactly is this, and what stake does he have in Haneen’s return?
Couched in a pervasive air of mystery, Ibrahim Farghali’s novel is resonant with observations on the intricacies of human entanglements.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781617972003

Ibrahim Farghali

Ibrahim Farghali was born in Mansoura in the Nile Delta in 1967 and grew up in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. He has written two collections of short stories and three novels. He is a journalist with al-‘Arabi magazine in Kuwait.

Book preview

Ibrahim Farghali

Translated by Andy Smart

and Nadia Fouda-Smart

The American University in Cairo Press

Cairo   New York

First published in 2007 by

The American University in Cairo Press

113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt

420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018

www.aucpress.com

Copyright © 2004 by Ibrahim Farghali

First published in Arabic in 2004 as Ibtisamat al-qiddhin

Protected under the Berne Convention

Translation copyright © 2007 by Andy Smart and Nadia Fouda-Smart

Papa words and music written by Paul Anka. Published by Chrysalis Standards Inc ©. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Dar el Kutub No. 3296/07

ISBN 978 977 416 107 0

Dar el Kutub Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Farghali, Ibrahim

The Smiles of the Saints / Ibrahim Farghali; translated by Andy Smart and Nadia Fouda-Smart.—Cairo-The American University in Cairo Press, 2007

p.       cm.

ISBN 978 161 797 200 3

I.Arabic fiction                  I. Smart, Andy (tran.)         II. Fouda-

Smart, Nadia (tran.)         III. Title

813

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12    12 11 10 09 08 07

Designed by Souad Barchini/AUC Press Design Center

Printed in Egypt

The time of love is neither great nor small; it is the perception of all times, of all lives, in a single instant. It does not free us from death but makes us see it face-to-face.

Octavio Paz, The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism

Ibrahim Farghali

Errata

chapter title Phantoms in the Tunnel

    should read Running Races

chapter title Phantoms in the Tunnel

    should read The Final Peal

chapter title Phantoms in the Tunnel

    should read Mysteries of the Spirit

Part One

An Inner Whisper

At the sound of the mobile phone she opened her eyes and reached for the slim little device that lay on the chiseled surface of the rectangular Indian table. The blue glow lasted long enough for her to see that the screen said six thirty. She closed her eyes again but the turmoil inside her head made it impossible to go back to sleep.

Slowly she got out of bed, lowering her legs to the floor, searching for her slippers, her eyes still half closed, following the pale light that filtered through the shutters of the open window. Her attention was caught by the twittering of birds that had gathered in the early morning, and her memory flickered with moments that breached the barriers of time.

To get to the bathroom she had to cross the hall that occupied the center of the apartment and which gave access to the five rooms. This was where her father had placed the television, since for him it had been the living room. At the same time he had transferred the dining room furniture from this central area to the room with the great balcony overlooking Talaat Harb Square. She walked down the corridor by the side entrance of the apartment, passing—on the left-hand side of the corridor—a fridge, a deep freezer, a washing machine, and a small basin beneath a tall mirror. At the end of the corridor an open door revealed the bathroom, while on the right of the corridor, through a doorway, was the spacious kitchen.

She washed her face several times, gazing at eyes still puffy with sleep and exhaustion. She was struck by how the bags under her eyes were more swollen than usual, and this image remained even after she had closed them again to thrust her head under the shiny new silver tap, letting the water fall until her relatively short pitch-black hair was soaked and the tickling of the cold water had fully woken her. She pulled the towel that hung beside the pink basin toward her and dried her hair and face as she made her way to the kitchen.

It took her a while to find the kettle. She filled it from a bottle of mineral water, switched it on, and went back to the bedroom. There she opened the big suitcase, searching its contents until she found the bag she had bought from the duty free shop after she had completed the arrival procedures. She took out the bottle of her favorite Three Barrels brandy and headed back to the kitchen. Glancing through the open door of the salon that faced the main entrance to the apartment, she noticed a huge stereo on a bookcase just inside the door. She went over to the collection of CDs stacked beside it, chose one by Paul Anka, opened the three-disc panel, inserted the CD, closed the panel, and pressed the button. Before she had left the room the deep heart-rending voice was pouring out the famous Papa. Normally this would have had a powerful effect on her but now she turned away from me, heading for the kitchen with a heavy step, the dark green towel over her shoulders, wearing a white t-shirt that only partially covered her black underwear.

She made her coffee as she did every day, the same way she would have ordered it in Paris or anywhere else—strong and black, without sugar but with a capful of brandy. Then, sitting on the plush, deep pink velvet couch that occupied the middle of the hall, she took a cigarette from a packet of Gauloises—its distinctive red tipped with purple—lit the cigarette and, after breathing in the aroma of coffee laced with brandy, took a sip.

She seemed despondent as she gazed in my direction, not seeing me of course, but allowing me to contemplate the features of her face. She was not fair-skinned like her mother but she did have her large, dark gray eyes whose fierceness was accentuated by long lashes and wide, beautifully arched eyebrows. She had her father’s wheat colored skin and his thick dark hair, with a softness inherited from her father’s sister, her aunt Nadia.

I knew she could not see me, and I realized she was thinking of her father and wondering what had made her aunt invite her here to Mansoura for the first time since she had left for Paris fifteen years earlier.

As Paul Anka started for the third time, she replayed her life, recalling distant times with her mother and father in Mansoura or Alexandria. Those misty memories, viewed in black and white, were in contrast to the sharply colored scenes with her father in Paris or Dubai.

She was staring at her mother’s picture that was framed in magnificent gold and hanging on the wall before her. Tears welled up, which she held back as she gazed at her mother’s features that seemed so contemporary despite the years that had passed—her wide blue eyes, her face encircled by light chestnut hair with touches of almost gold, and a smile that set off her looks even though the delicate lips were closed beneath a small finely chiseled nose of a beauty that met any criteria.

She jumped up as if suddenly remembering something and went to the bedroom that lay between the dining room and the salon, returning after a few minutes with a CD by someone called Anastacia (who must be new, as I had never come across her in my former life) and replaced Paul Anka.

The strong voice had a huskiness that reminded me of wonderful singers I had known like Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Donna Summer, and even Whitney Houston. She started dancing rhythmically, smiling, and I could read her mind as she remembered someone called David. When he had first heard Anastacia he had said there was nothing like a black voice and had been astonished when she had told him that Anastacia was not black. He had believed her only when he saw the video of one of her songs. She must have black blood in her, he had asserted. She shook her head irritably, annoyed at being reminded of David.

She sipped her coffee as she moved toward the balcony. Suddenly she stopped and turned back to the bedroom to fetch a long, creamy-white satin dressing gown from the suitcase. When she went out onto the balcony, where the movement on the quiet street had increased a little, she was shocked by the changes that had taken place.

She noticed the new building that towered opposite her, where the empty lot had been. Abutting it on its left was a building of more modern design, painted in a range of browns and grays. The little row of shops had disappeared. She struggled to bring them to mind while my own memories resurfaced: Amm Mohamed the ironing man, and the roastery for pips and peanuts with its shop opposite that Amm Sanad used to shuttle between, now long closed and turned into a fuul and tameya restaurant. There had also been a little kiosk behind the shops, where Umm Hamdi used to serve up her tea and coffee to passersby and to shopkeepers on the square like Amm Bakr the grocer, who was separated from Amm Mohamed’s grocery by two other shops of identical trade—Amm Fawzi who tailored men’s shirts and Amm Higazi who specialized in women’s garments. Then there was Amm Abdu the