Tales of Yusuf Tadros. Adel Esmat

and emerging years later in my paintings.

      I wished I could paint the terror of the day of the accident to rid myself of it, but that’s contrived. Terror became my friend, trifling with me and playing hide-and-seek. Sometimes it seems that I’ve rid myself of it, but it’s there, undying. I even discovered it appears in the eyes of the cats I paint. Facing death is important—a person should do it at least once to understand the meaning of life. Facing death is like the dream of resurrection. It takes you to the edge and lets you peer into the abyss.

      You know those children’s tricycles? On the corner of Ghayath Street, Amm Rizq would rent them out and take a deposit to make sure we brought them back in good shape. That day I rented one and started racing with the boys. The streets were empty then—this was the 1960s. We came out into al-Nahas Street, the cold air buffeting my face. I loved doing tricks, like letting go of the handlebars and raising my hands in the air or putting my fingers in my mouth and letting out our standard whistle. I raised my eyes to the road and saw a monster coming. Don’t look at me like that. Really, I saw a monster bearing down on me. You know those old trucks? They had a long nose that looked like a ghoul. I saw the devil in that moment. Finally, the wind started to subside. I wanted to resist the monster, but it pounced on me before I could. I was finished. I died. You can see the scars, this long line on the side of my face, starting at the hairline above my forehead.

      I was seven years old. The fractures mended and the long line on my face is no longer noticeable. It became as you see it now, as if it’s one of the wrinkles on my forehead. But something in my soul was consumed, or fried, like kids say today.

      I’ll tell you what I think after all these years. I think the accident blew out some coping center. A kind of fear settled inside me, like part of my flesh, coating my soul in a shiny shell of oil. I smell it, believe me. I smell it whenever something unexpected happens. I smelled it a lot when I’d take the train to teach at the Kafr al-Zayyat School. Painting rescued me from these fears. Look closely at the cats in my paintings and you’ll understand the degree of terror I’m talking about.

      I smell the scent of fear a lot these days. Whenever I get on the bus and see ever more women with covered faces. Whenever I hear a dog bark. The fear surrounds me, like a mood inseparable from one’s features, hand gestures, and tone of voice. You know that tone I use to tell you “Bye-bye, mate”? That’s fear: a wretched attempt to get close to people, and false as well because it’s a plea, not a real desire for intimacy.

      I’ll tell you what’s even stranger. My eyes were green like my mother’s, but now look, they have no definite color. You can’t tell if they’re green or gray. That gray phantom came with the accident. I thought I died, you say. No, I did die, and was reborn. I’ve dreamed often of that moment, and every time I do, I wake up wanting to paint the dream, but I can’t. It creeps in and inhabits all my paintings. The monster swallowed me in his maw, and when I returned to life, I was resurrected from the maw of fear. I’m the son of fear. Maybe I’ll always be afraid. Don’t worry, I’ve grown accustomed to my fears and befriended them like amusing little pets. I find them teasing me good-naturedly and looking out at me from inside my paintings.

      They told me later that my mother was taking a bath. They knocked on the door and told her, “Your son Yusuf’s been hit by a car.” At that moment, her hair crackled and the roots dried up. She threw on her clothes and ran. After she came back from the hospital, she caught herself in the mirror. Her hair had gone white. As for our old pal Khawaga Tadrus, the fog settled over his eyes, but because of his pride he’d never admit it was the accident that later made him unable to manage his business. Until the day a bailiff showed up to sequester the shop.

      The world changed course because of a coincidence. On that day, Futna came running from al-Sayyid al-Badawi Square, her scarf still in her hand. She gave the bailiff five pounds and stopped the seizure. Two days later, she took my father and sat him down at his desk. Then she grabbed the boy Sadiq by the collar and without speaking she head-butted him and cracked open his skull. The blood gushed over the hand that gripped his collar.

      Dragging him into the street, she said for all to hear, “You cheat! You son of cheats! You bite the hand that fed you? Not you and not the snake that put you up to it will ever get the exchange!”

      The debt was one thousand pounds, at that time an enormous sum. Did you know that a kilo of meat cost fifty piasters at the time? At the lawyer’s, she learned of the plot hatched by Sadiq and another trader to take the shop. My father’s looped signature was on a promissory note. The next day, she sat on the chair in front of the desk.

      “Did you sign a promissory note?” she asked my father.

      He raised his head. “Me, sign a promissory note? Never.”

      “But it’s your signature exactly, and your handwriting. I saw the note myself. The spitting image of your handwriting.”

      Silent, he looked away. He knew he had never signed a promissory note, and it kept eating at his heart. His life was thrown into confusion and he could no longer think. For him, the problem wasn’t the thousand pounds. It was how someone could have imitated that signature he’d prided himself on his whole life. It was the first time his self-confidence had taken such a dive. He turned himself over to Fatin that day and let her close the shop and escort him to the chickpea stand on the other side of the square.

      Futna sent for me, asking me to take my father home. At first he refused to take my arm, but when I walked next to him, he leaned on my shoulder. It was the first time we were so close. We crossed al-Athar Pass to al-Sa‘a Square. He had become so slim and short that I felt he’d shrunk in the years separating the fog’s descent on his eyes and the appearance of the promissory note. A few short years had worn him out.

      At the square, empty on that summer night, we heard the clamor of moviegoers leaving the last show, their voices loud as we entered Aziz Fahmi Street. I noticed he was mumbling something. Forgetting the small boy leading him, he was talking to himself.

      “Just hold tight, Tadrus. You’re not one to be broken by a debt of a thousand pounds.”

      He was leading me now. When I tried to walk on Taha al-Hakim Street, he gripped my shoulder and led me forward, continuing his mumbling. When we reached the alley, he couldn’t enter the house.

      “Get me a chair, Yusuf, my son,” he told me. It was the first time I’d heard him speak my name: Yusuf, my son.

      He sat on the chair in front of the house, still whispering to himself, his crisis at its peak. No matter how they tried to persuade him, he wouldn’t agree to go back to carrying a seal tied to a woven string in his vest pocket. For him there could be no business without his signature. He began to doubt his ability to carry on with the trade. His end came when his faith in his signature collapsed.

      He continued to leave the house every morning, imperious and wanting to rely on himself. The daylight helped him find his way in streets and alleys he knew every inch of. Workers at nearby exchanges would help him open up his shop and sit there. Fatin would come running from the square.

      “When are you going to stop this, Khawaga?” Fatin would tell him. “Listen, pack in the business and come work with us—with me and my husband.”

      He’d answer with his oft-repeated response: “Your husband’s greedy. He’d eat up my money and then wipe the bowl clean with me.”

      In the end, he was compelled to quit his business and do what Fatin urged. He finally submitted to his fate, saying in a low voice, “Futna’s right.”

      Yusuf Tadrus says:

      The alley where I grew up is like a courtyard, closed on itself. My father bought it in the late 1940s, a house with some outlying rooms. He used it to store goods, and then he started renting out the rooms to small families. So each room became an independent house, but it preserved the feel of one home. The people of the alley were one family whose center was the house of Khawaga Tadrus. That was the world I was born into. My mother said the women used to spirit me away as a child, and at the end of the day she wouldn’t know which house to fetch me from. That’s the part of