The Scene
Hisham Bustani
Translated, from the Arabic, by Thoraya El-Rayyes
And so, she stormed out of his office with a throbbing forehead.
And so, he hung up on her yelling voice and gazed at the floor.
“Those vile reins that tighten around my neck, pulled by a hand I can’t quite see at the end of that long strap.”
“He told me: ‘You want the leading role? Show me what you’ve got. Onstage, the body is crucial. I have to test the passion in your performance myself.’ At the moment of penetration, I held in the humiliation that tried to escape as a tear. But the times after that, there was a distant pleasure. Echoes of pleasure I barely heard, I was more focused on the lines I had to memorize.”
“At the moment of penetration, I become one with my role. I wear it, it wears me. He screws that woman he wrote. And as for me… As for me, I am not quite sure who I am.”
“His voice was louder than the thick smell of smoke in his office. Louder than the dust buried inside the rug in his room. I remember that I kept sneezing, but his voice drowned out the bursts of air coming out of my lungs. ‘You want to cut me out of the deal, little chick?’ he would say. I don’t know why he decided to call me little chick. It’s true he is a cock, but I hatched a long time ago. He’d given me grants for my plays before– he takes a standard cut. ‘What I am taking is public money,’ he said. ‘The public is entitled to a share of public money,’ he added. ‘If I – with my big heart, and my cloak that shelters everyone – isn’t a member of the general public, who is?’ he pontificated, as he put the money in his pocket.”
“His office is next to the office of His Excellency, and he was the first to come out into the corridor at the sound of the resounding slap that the Minister gave me. It was The Representative of the General Public who convinced me to yell in his face – His Excellency’s face – so he would fear a scandal and order an increase to my budget (and, of course, an increase in the share he’d split with me). His advice was on the ball, despite the slap that I quickly forgot. A slap worth five thousand dinars, money that helped bury the whole incident forever. I know of people who get their asses fingered by state intelligence in return for 30,000 dinars a year in salary bonuses. I will consider it when I get a daily column in the newspaper.”
“I didn’t know what to think when an artist friend of my husband’s told me that he sells unsigned paintings to people who scribble their signatures on them. A month later, they become a news story spread out over six columns of the culture section and after that, you read reviews praising their achievements, their sensitivity, their unique ability to interrogate their subjects on canvas. ‘Two hundred dinars for each painting’ he told me ‘each takes me an hour or two of work. But if there is a specific request, like a certain theme for the paintings, the price doubles – even though it takes the same amount of time. Twenty paintings finished in thirty hours becomes four thousand dinars in my pocket. Worth my while.’ That is what he said. Worth my while.”
“After my husband divorced me – we didn’t last long – I started to look for some sort of a space where I could regain my balance. I thought: I’m not lacking in anything. I’m still an attractive, beautiful woman and there are plenty of perverts around. All you need is a well calculated look or a casual touch, to lean in enough to show a little cleavage or cross your legs to show some thigh. They start to drool and then succumb. There’s no need to have sex with them. It’s better to keep them on the edge, hoping for sex. That way they stay keen, their interest doesn’t cool. When despair creeps into their lust, I pull them back in with that look/ touch/ lean, and so they return and congregate at the opening of my exhibition. Yes, I’ve become a painter– with some help from my ex-husband’s friend. He gives me special prices, thankful for the days when he used to eat and drink at our place. When I started looking for more fame, in the world of acting, it was more complicated.
“ ‘You’re nothing but a whore. Wait, wait… what’s wrong with a whore? At least she’s honest with herself and her clients. As for you…’ I didn’t let him continue, I stormed out of his office with a throbbing forehead. And when he called me, I yelled: I have more honor than you, you pimp. Do you remember the special gifts you used to send His Excellency? And when he would ask for more, you would say: Of course, Your Excellency, no one likes dick more than an actress. You sick scumbag. You pervert. And he hung up on me.”
And so, he called her back scratching his chin.
And so, she went back to his office dragging her feet.
HISHAM BUSTANI is an award-winning Jordanian who is acclaimed for his bold style and unique narrative voice, often experimenting with the boundaries of short fiction and prose poetry. Much of his work revolves around issues related to social and political change, particularly the dystopian experience of postcolonial modernity in the Arab world. His fiction and poetry appeared in journals and anthologies including the Kenyon Review, New England Review, The Georgia Review, Guernica, The Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, World Literature Today, and The Best Asian Short Stories. His book The Perception of Meaning (Syracuse University Press, 2015) won the University of Arkansas Arabic Translation Award, and his most recent book is The Monotonous Chaos of Existence (Mason Jar, 2022).
THORAYA EL-RAYYES is a writer, award-winning literary translator, and political economist based in London, England. Her translations of contemporary Arab literature have appeared in publications including the Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, World Literature Today, and Words Without Borders, among others. Thoraya’s translations have received awards from the Modern Language Association and the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas.