Inner Voice - Short Story - Chapter 5

Inner Voice - Short Story * * * CHAPTER 5

    I climbed the center’s stairs nervously until I reached the first floor, the reception area where an employee who is responsible for stamping attendance cards with today’s date, and beside him was the iron-barred payment window, but I didn’t find Miss Hanaa behind it! My nervousness grew worse, and I waited for a few moments, then moved right and left searching for her, while the employee couldn’t be bothered to explain anything to me, until I tried speaking to him and my hands trembled as I pointed instead of talking, so he said coldly:

- Go sit in the big hall till she comes

Postponing the confrontation is a million times worse than the confrontation itself. Curse all the deer websites. I entered the big hall, which I hadn’t entered since last year, because the first session's students are few in number; the small hall is enough for them. I met my friend Mostafa, who welcomed me with forced warmth despite being sincere, and he told me that Mr. Fadl’s secretary was taking Miss Hanaa’s place during the second session.

    Compared to Mostafa and the rest of my classmates, I looked thirteen years old even though I was seventeen. When I’m at home, lost in my imagination, I sometimes forget that I’m less than others, in appearance, build, and in everything, although life never stops reminding me of that daily through different situations with people and classmates. I remained silent and uneasy amid the students’ noise before Ali entered. Tall, broad, and with a thick beard, unlike my smooth face and tiny, skinny body, Ali was busy with his phone, but once he stepped through the door he searched for us with his eyes, and when our eyes met he smiled with a trace of mockery. He sat beside me and Mostafa and shook my hand, saying:

- Our missing brother... how’s your mom doing?

- Chicken

The moment he touched my hand, he commented:

- Can a man’s hands really be this cold?

- And a Sa‘idi man too! *(An Upper Egyptian man who is supposed to be manlier than the civilized ones)*

That was Mostafa. I said:

- It’s normal

- No, normal is when girls’ hands are cold because they lose blood during their period

I laughed so he wouldn’t think I was upset.

- I swear I miss you, when are you getting married?

- Bet he won’t even invite us to the wedding

- True, this guy never tells us “come over” to his house

- But Alaa is a decent man, isn't he?

- Invite us and we’ll take good care of you... we’ll stick our fingers in gently

He meant a strange Egyptian custom, where the groom’s friends stick their fingers inside him at his wedding because he’s going to sleep with a woman that night, and they refuse to let him feel superior to them.

- I’m trying to imagine you in a relationship, and if the girl sent you nudes what would you send her?

Ali said it laughingly, and Mostafa replied:

- Send her a picture of your ass

- Yeah, tell her “I’m a Sa‘idi from Kafr El-Tawayez” *(An Upper Egyptian man from Asses Hamlet — he’s referring to a joke from an Egyptian TV show)*

We all laughed, and I had to get up and face my fate, but when I approached the door, Habiba and her friend Mai entered. Habiba was fair-skinned and veiled, with a round face, wearing a bright blue dress and medical glasses hanging low over her nose. Her invasive eyes met my uneasy ones, so I looked away from her and passed beside her to leave through the door, while she kept staring at me shamelessly. Everyone had changed, Habiba, Ali, and me. What happened changed everyone. Habiba became bold and intrusive, Ali became someone who never stopped mocking me, and I transformed from merely a person who struggled to speak at the beginning into someone incapable of saying his name.

    I stood before a grim secretary with heavy makeup and half her hair escaping her veil. The sounds around me were nearly muted. My eyes were fixed on her while at the same time avoiding meeting her eyes. She looked at me irritably when she found me silent. I tried to speak, but my tongue kept striking the back of my incisors, making it sound as though I were speaking quietly, so she said harshly:

- Speak up

I looked at her as though I had only just realized she was in front of me, and remained silent with my jaws clenched shut for a few moments. She pursed her lips without taking her eyes off mine. My silence dragged on and my eyes clung to the registration notebook, and when I lost hope in my ability to speak, I tried forcing myself to do anyway. My entire face tightened, and strange movements escaped my lips and jaw. I don’t know how my face looks in those moments, but I see it reflected in the eyes of whoever stands before me. I heard my jaw crack from the strain before I finally uttered:

- Al......al...o

She kept staring at me blankly while I tried to complete the name, then I said in a muffled voice:

- Al...aa

- Alaa what?

She said it with infuriating ease, and without breathing I said:

- Moh..... El-Sayed

- Alaa El-Sayed?

- Alaa... Mah..Mah...m (my lips trembled and formed the shape of an O in a spasm) ...moud

She wrote down the name indifferently. I exhaled deeply. A strong whistling sound overtook every other sound in my ears, and my mind drifted away. I fought it so I could take the new card to the employee, who stamped today’s date onto it mechanically before I entered the hall...