The Angel of History by Alameddine Rabih Read Free Book Online

three weeks after my mother had rediscovered her popularity, Auntie Badeea offered her the opportunity of a lifetime, Come with me to Cairo, work in our house, become acclaimed by real gentlemen for a change, and you don’t have to veil your face outdoors, you can wear whatever you wish, it is most modern, in Cairo, God wipes the tears off His children’s faces. We hardly had time to unpack the one colorful satchel before we were crossing the Red Sea in a rickety boat covered in dust and salt and engine soot, off to the great modern city we went, to Auntie Badeea’s house.
    Faulkner once said that the best job ever offered to him was in a brothel, that it was the best milieu for an artist towork in, Baudelaire agreed of course, and I learned about poetry in the whorehouse. My mother, with me in tow, was welcomed probably for the first time in her life. Being pretty, kind, generous, she was well liked by both the establishment and its customers; being delusional, slightly unhinged, an indiscreet romantic, she fit right in with the rest of my aunties, she finally found a home. If you ask me, those were the happiest days of my life, hard to believe, I know. We lived in a house with other women who came in all colors and cultures and, like the brothel’s furniture, came in all shapes and sizes, my lovely aunties, short and tall aunties, white and black, voluptuous and boyish, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Uzbek, Indian, Yemeni. Most of them, my mother included, sat around in a daze under the hanging lamps, spent half their time in hope and half in waiting, waiting for a miracle that never visited, waiting for something or someone to fly them out of their adopted life. For my mother, that someone was my father, someday her emir would come, and he didn’t, of course, and she forever forgave him, or I think she did.
    Auntie Badeea, on the other hand, didn’t wait for a miracle, she loved her life, and she loved me, older than my mother though not by much, she took me under her wing, more precisely under her skirt, no, not sexual, Doc, I was much too young and she didn’t have that much sex in any case, that’s why she had the time to look after me. She was dark, darker than me, and overweight, which at one point was popular with clients, primarily Egyptians and other Arabs, but as Russians and Europeans began to frequent the house, she was less desired, she lay beyond their longings. Though she went through the prescribed motions every evening, it was merely gesture, a performance for performance’ssake, the motions including painting her face while the men were already in the room, she was the only one who did that. About one hour after evening prayers, she descended the unbanistered stairs into the salon, splayed herself on a duchesse brisée whose bright canary-yellow color clashed with every single thing in the room except for the caged pale-orange canary that rarely sang if there were more than two people around. Once completely comfortable, her heft proportionally distributed about the unusual chaise longue, a Rubenesque odalisque, Auntie Badeea languidly applied her makeup, none of which was store-bought, all natural, organic even, crushed fruits and berries were the lipstick, in a small wooden bowl she mixed galena and other powders for the kohl before her rapt audience, outlined her eyes with a pencil-shaped stick of ivory. European men, Eastern and Western, weren’t the only ones dazzled by the theater, Americans soon joined them, and I too stood mouth open, eyes wide, nostrils flaring, enraptured by beauty and ignored by the men.
    I mention your countrymen, Doc, not to make you feel terrible, but for whatever reason they visited us in disproportionately large numbers, and truly, pleasing them became the main thrust of our establishment, they always overpaid, and because of their lumpen tastes, they weren’t difficult to please. Your people and the Europeans loved watching Auntie Badeea, were mightily entertained, made