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THREE MEN AND A DOG

Abdel Rahman Fahmy

The hero of this story follows a folk custom in composing brief poems -- always couplets in the original --to express the mood of the occasion as it arises. The custom has been transmitted to the Spanish, and it is said that the Spanish Copls, with an emphatic repetition of the second line, form the original of the authentic blues form of New Orleans.

A cold wind howled outside and the ring of three men drew closer to the flames of the fire they had made out of the bits of wood left behind by the builders. The huge dog crouching amongst them barked. Abdel Megid looked at the shadows of his two companions that were dancing with the flames on the bare unplastered walls, and his coarse voice sang the praises of broad-leafed lettuce:

"O food of princes, the lovely moisture of a virgin's soft lips, as sweet as musk."
He stopped his singing to take a sip of the tin jug. The huge dog barked and wagged patted its back and resumed his singing:

So fresh the greenness they sowed at sunrise
And sold at market before the dusk :
O lettuce tasty..

Asham interrupted him with a laugh:

"You're in a very good mood tonight, Abele! Megid. Is it because of the gallabeya the proprietor gave you?”
Abdel Megid sang in answer:

A king you are tonight Abdel Megid.
Kneel down you scum -- I'm passing on my steed.

Asham laughed sarcastically. The dog barked so loud that Hassib gave him a kick, shouting:

"Why don't you shut up? You've given us all headaches, damn you!"

The dog's bark turned into a pained yelp, and it rubbed its head against the thigh of Abdel Megid who began to sing again, stroking the dog's head:

You can bear for a while
A yokefellow who's vile,
When you know that the yoke
Will that summer be broke.

He ended his song with a long sigh that was abruptly stifled by a slap from Hassib.

***

The men had spent two days practically without seeing the sun that had been blotted out by thick clouds which endlessly poured down rain sometimes mingled with hail. A cold, cruel north wind blew with devastating force and there were no doors or windows to protect them against it. In the room where they gathered, the doors and windows were merely gaping openings without shutters or panes of glass. Its walls were bare and unplastered. Its floor was dust mixed with bits of cement that had dropped from the builders as they carried it in. The building was still under construction. They themselves were a des¬perate lot. Two of them were linked together by having the same home¬town and the same work - Asham and Hassib. They had 'emigrated' from Upper Egypt to Cairo and became part of what people call the 'labour force'. Their life consisted mainly of using their muscles to carry bricks and cement from the bottom of the building to the highest point the masons had reached. At night they became watchmen and guarded the contractor's building equipment against thieves. Asham was small, his eye-sockets deep and his looks malicious. He had a sad voice. Hassib was a giant, his neck as thick as a mule's and his thick lips always viciously parted. His large eyes cast fatuous looks at you, and his only means of expression were a kick or a slap: he would give you one of them long before his tongue had a chance to utter a word.

Abdel Megid, their companion, was an entirely different type. He had nothing to do with construction and builders. He was a street vendor who roamed the Cairo streets peddling his lettuce. He had not fared well. The owner of the building had taken pity on him when he had seen him, and had appointed him the caretaker of it and of the piles of ironmongery, wood, and building material littered in front of it. That is how he came to join the other two. Naturally, they consi¬dered him an intruder and they persecuted him. He suffered the vileness of Asham and the brute force of Hassib and he looked back with regret at the days when he had sold lettuce. He spent his nights reciting the songs he had sung when he had sold lettuce in the streets. He even continued to wear the clothes he had worn as a costermonger : a torn gellabeyya that was black in colour, or that had been black, an old shawl wound around his waist and a skull-cap around which he wrapped a length of green cloth which, he claimed, was a turban that gave him the cachet of a holy one, and so helped him obtain a free dinner on saints' days and at festivals in honour of the Prophet.

The fourth of the group was a stray dog whose size and viciousness and made it impossible to tame it. It roamed the roads by day scavenging for food in the piles of garbage strewn up narrow lanes. At nightfall, it sought shelter in the unfinished building, against the cold and the wind. The three men had got used to it and the dog had taken to them. They never attempted to chase it off. They allowed it to squeeze between them as they huddled round the fire each night, and when they stretched themselves out to sleep, at different spots on the floor, the dog looked for a corner of the building in which it too went to sleep..

***

Excerpt from: Three Men and a Dog, by Abdel Rahman Fahmy. Arabic Short Stories, 1945-1965, ed. Mahmoud Manzalaoui. The American University in Cairo, Press, 1985. pp 193-195.