The Arabic Professor

The Arabic Professor               

              The air smells like onions, chopped, and the flies swirl about the hanging, skinned cow, her legs tensing as her corpse dangles. I only see eyes with finely-tattooed eyebrows between two rough cuts of black cloth; black gloves caress the fruit as she searches for the ripe ones. A man honks from his tuk-tuk with two girls in the back, giggling with rigid modesty, as another youth—a boy—sits at the end, next to them, far from them metaphorically, as they say, his eyes under a furrowed eyebrow. The chickens do not cluck; they just stare back at me; they are next to the ducks which extend their necks out of the cages only to retract in remorseful regret. A Quran plays from somewhere, elsewhere, everywhere. The dust picks up surrounding the donkey’s cart, and the long black eyelashes of the animal shut briefly but in slow motion, so that even with all the bustle surrounding his weak and emaciated frame, he still trusts us, his masters; his tail swats at the flies occasionally with a kind of limpness of being weary but not old yet. A dog’s tail meets the air just as the baker throws with grace the sesame seeds upon the dough, letting the dots of life fall where they fall, even if they miss the dough; these will burn and he’ll throw them away, yet he with a form of grace slides the extended pan of bread into his brick oven and then turns to the veiled woman who stands with henna twirling in the winds of her fingers. She begins to yell, flipping over her hand so that her palm is up and accusative of the baker whose eyebrows are arched in sarcasm. Her voice fills that corner and people turn; some children in jeans and books—from the university—take out their phones; they smirk at the scene on their phone, watching through that filter. A cat licks herself and then blinks at the enraged woman’s inclining voice, and then she returns to licking herself, upset that the distraction was momentary. A priest picks up his gallabah as one of the boys’ soccer ball shoots towards him, and he smiles at them from underneath his sunglasses; for some reason, he checks his headcovering after letting his garbs rest back against him, and his eyes look up, unwavering, while many stare at him. Dust brings a cough from me, and finally, I’m here. A boy runs shoving tea before pashas who, in the middle of the day, have nothing to do but sit cross-legged and watch the streets that live more than them. A dog follows a grandmother who gives bread to the birds; a man rebukes her for feeding the birds when there are children who sleep under the stars and are hungry; he wears a beard and his head is marked with a symbol of his religiosity or rather something else for others. His mouth twists when she does not listen. Another car won’t stop honking at the youth with the camera; the driver needs to make it into the narrow, ancient alley with his European car; they are on their way to the pyramids, and they wanted to see the people. A book falls from my hand and hits the ground, the dust rising towards me instantaneously—

            “So, Professor—you would say also that Cairenes experience, in modernity, loss and isolation?”

            In a room seemingly empty, the professor responds, “Sure. Let’s say that.”

            Laughter scatters against the walls, but the professor’s eyes are glazed, darkened, elsewhere, again.

            “Great,” says the student-moderator, looking at the crowd. “Thank you all for coming and hearing from our panelists this evening. Remember our Modernity and the Self series will continue next week, and we’ll be heading to China with another fantastic panel of scholars and dinner will be served from Bayat Moustafa! Yes, I know! So please come out. And please, another applause for our panelists today.”