Nabil Sits Down

by Omar Sharif, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

The Thursday game at the Rosette Club began at four, and at ten to four Nabil Girgis had the tea glasses on the brass tray, the mint washed, the sugar bowl filled to the line he had drawn inside it with his eye thirty-four years ago, and the score pad squared on the green baize beside the doctor's place, because the doctor kept the score and did not like to look for the pad.

The club was two rooms above a pharmacy on Rue Fouad. In the first room there was a billiard table nobody had played on since the old Greek died, and a photograph of King Farouk which someone had once turned to the wall and someone else had turned back. In the second room there were four card tables, and on Thursdays only one of them was used, the one by the window, where the light came in off the street with the noise of the traffic and a smell of bread from the bakery opposite.

At five past four Dr. Fouad Rizk came up the stairs with his stick, and behind him Madame Yvette Haddad, who was eighty and wore gloves to climb the stairs and took them off finger by finger at the top, and behind her Mr. Ara Kevorkian, who had a jeweller's shop in the Attarine and smelled faintly of the oil he cleaned watches with. They sat. The doctor took the north chair, as always. The south chair was empty.

"Selim is in Montreal," said Mr. Kevorkian. "His granddaughter is marrying a Canadian. An engineer of some kind. Selim is very unhappy."

"Selim is always unhappy," said the doctor. "That is why he plays so badly."

Madame Haddad said nothing. She had been Selim Bishara's opponent for twenty-two years, and she was fond of him, and she knew, as everybody in the room knew, what the doctor said to Selim across the table after every board that went wrong, in a voice that was not loud but carried, like a surgeon's voice in a theatre. Selim's hands had begun to shake in the eighth year. In the fifteenth he had started to pass with good cards, because a man who passes cannot be wrong.

"We will telephone Wagdi," said Mr. Kevorkian.

"Wagdi is dead," said the doctor.

There was a pause in which a car horn in the street went on for a long time and stopped.

Then Madame Haddad turned in her chair and looked at Nabil, who was standing by the door with the tray, and she said, in French, which was the language she used for things that mattered: "Nabil. You know the game."

It was not a question, and it was not quite a statement either. The Rosette Club had a rule, written in the minutes of 1958 in a hand nobody living could identify, that the staff did not sit at the tables. Nabil had never sat. He had stood behind every chair in the room. He had watched, at a rough count he had once made on the back of a receipt, something over sixty thousand hands. He had watched the doctor's hands most of all, because the doctor's chair faced the door and the doctor was always the one who wanted more tea.

"The rule," said Mr. Kevorkian, without conviction.

"The rule was written by people who are all dead," said Madame Haddad. "Like Wagdi. Sit down, Nabil."

The doctor looked at Nabil for a long moment over his glasses. Then he turned over the first card of the new pack, which was the six of clubs, and said, "Well? Are you going to stand there holding the tea?"

So Nabil put down the tray, and served the tea, three sugars for the doctor, none for Madame, lemon for Mr. Kevorkian, and for the first time in his life he pulled out the south chair and sat in it.

The baize was warmer than he had imagined. That was the first thing. He had touched it ten thousand times, brushing it, but he had never sat at it, and it had the warmth of a table where people have been sitting for a long time.

---

The first hour went the way first hours go. Nabil played carefully, too carefully, the way a man walks on a floor he has polished himself. He went one down in three hearts because he took a finesse he did not need, and he knew before he had finished the hand that he had not needed it, and he felt the heat come into his face. He waited for the doctor's voice.

The doctor said, "Three hearts, one down. Fifty to them," and wrote it on the pad.

That was all. Nabil looked up. The doctor was not looking at him. He was looking at the pad, and his mouth was tight, and Nabil understood that it had cost the doctor something to say only that, and that the doctor did not himself know why he had paid it.

On the fifth board the doctor played four spades. Nabil laid down the dummy and sat back, and because he was dummy, and dummy may only watch, he watched. He had seen the doctor play perhaps four thousand contracts. He knew that the doctor always drew trumps at once, as a surgeon closes a wound, because loose trumps offended him; and he saw, before the doctor had played to the second trick, that on this hand drawing trumps at once would cut him off from the long diamonds in the dummy. He saw it the way you see a glass about to go over at the edge of a table, with your hand already moving. But dummy may not speak. He sat with his hands flat on the baize, and the doctor drew three rounds of trumps, and the diamonds died in the dummy one by one, and the contract went one down.

There was a silence. Mr. Kevorkian cleared his throat. Madame Haddad gathered the cards with her bare old fingers and did not look at anybody.

The doctor was looking at the diamonds in the dummy. He was a clever man; he had seen it now, too late, the way one always sees it, and Nabil watched the knowledge arrive in his face, and watched him prepare to be told.

"Bad luck, doctor," said Nabil. "The spades were three-one. With two-two you are home." He picked up the doctor's empty glass. "More tea?"

The spades had been three-one. It was true, and it was also not the reason, and all four of them knew it was not the reason. The doctor looked at him. Nobody at that table had ever said bad luck to Dr. Fouad Rizk, because he had never said it to anybody, and a man who never says a thing is rarely given it.

"Yes," said the doctor, after a moment. "Thank you. More tea."

---

The last hand of the afternoon came at a quarter to seven, when the light from the street had gone yellow and the bakery had closed its shutters. Nabil picked up his cards and sorted them, and then sorted them again because he did not believe them.

He held the ace and two little spades, the ace-queen and two little hearts, a single small diamond, and the ace, king, queen, jack and ten of clubs. Twenty points. He opened two no-trumps. The doctor, without any change in his face, bid six no-trumps, and everybody passed, and Madame Haddad, on Nabil's left, led the nine of spades.

The doctor laid down his hand. King and two small spades. Three small hearts. The ace, king, queen and two of diamonds. Three small clubs.

Nabil did not touch a card from the dummy. He sat back and looked at the twenty-six cards he could see, and he counted, as he had watched the good players count for thirty-four years, silently, with their lips quite still. Two spade tricks. One heart. Three diamonds. Five clubs. Eleven. He needed twelve.

The twelfth was the king of hearts. If Mr. Kevorkian held it, Nabil could lead a heart from the dummy toward his ace-queen and put in the queen, and the queen would win. Half the time it would work. Half the time it was where you went when you did not want to think.

He had stood behind the good players for thirty-four years, and the good players did not choose between half-chances. They arranged matters so that somebody else had to choose. The doctor had four diamonds to the ace, king, queen. If Madame Haddad held the long diamonds as well as the king of hearts, then she was guarding two things, and she had only thirteen cards to guard them with. And if she did not, if the king was with Mr. Kevorkian after all, then the finesse would still be waiting at the end, and the cards would have told him by then which it was.

Nabil won the ace of spades. He had one trick to lose and he chose to lose it now, while it cost nothing: he played a small heart and let it go. Mr. Kevorkian won with the nine and, after a long moment, pushed out the queen of spades, and Nabil took it with the dummy's king. Then he led a club from the dummy to his ace and began to play his clubs.

On the ace Madame Haddad followed with her only club. On the king she let go a little spade, on the queen the ten of hearts, on the jack a little diamond, easily, with her bare fingers, the way you let go of things you do not want. The dummy followed three times and then threw its last spade. Now Nabil held the ten of clubs, the ace-queen-five of hearts, a little spade and his single diamond; and in the dummy the four diamonds waited, ace, king, queen and the two, beside two small hearts.

He played the ten of clubs.

It is a terrible thing to watch, and also the most beautiful thing in the game. Madame Haddad held six cards, and she needed all six. If she threw a diamond, the dummy's little two would become a winner when the ace, king and queen had swept the rest away. If she threw a heart, her king would stand alone, and Nabil's ace would take it, and his queen would follow it home. She had guarded both doors all afternoon, and now there were not enough of her to stand in both. Nobody had touched her hand. Nobody needed to.

She sat with her cards held close against her blouse for a long time. Mr. Kevorkian looked at the ceiling. Then she drew out the jack of hearts and laid it on the table, very gently.

Nabil threw a heart from the dummy. Nabil played his diamond to the ace, and the dummy's king, and its queen, and Madame Haddad followed to all three and still had a diamond left, so that the little two was not good. She had kept her diamonds, then. Nabil let go his spade and the five of hearts, and counted once more, with his lips still. Three spades she had shown, one club, five diamonds, three hearts. Thirteen less twelve. One card, and it was a heart.

He led the dummy's last heart. Mr. Kevorkian played the two. Every heart in the pack was accounted for now, except one.

He did not take the finesse. He put up the ace, and Madame Haddad's king fell under it like a man sitting down, and the queen of hearts took the last trick.

Twelve tricks.

Nobody spoke. Madame Haddad looked at her king lying under the ace, and then at Nabil, and smiled, the smile of a woman who has been beaten properly and prefers it to the other thing.

The doctor wrote on the pad. Then he put down the pencil, and got up out of the north chair, leaning on his stick, and went round the table to the tray by the door, where the pot was still warm under its cloth. He poured a glass of tea. He put in no sugar, because he had watched for thirty-four years, it seemed, without knowing he was watching, and he knew how Nabil took it, and he carried it round the table, the glass rattling a little on the saucer in his hand, and set it down on the green baize in front of the south chair.

THE END

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, Kalendīs Octōbribus (1 October 2026), ab Omare Sharīfō per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

Omar Sharif, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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