Author’s Note for “Nocturnal Games”

I’m a man of many regrets. I hate that my mother emotionally blackmailed me into attending my graduation when I had the lowest GPA among my peers. I wish I had put more effort into learning French, even though my motives are flimsy at best. I don’t have the nerve to sit down and write my dream novel because I believe I have not yet mastered Arabic at the level that would enable me to write my generation’s maqamat. However, chief among my endless list of regrets (the above is only a sample) is a love scene that takes place in a story titled “Two O’clock on a Tuesday Afternoon,” part of my debut collection of short fiction, Nobody Mourns the City’s Cats. The scene reads as follows:

“The next day he passed by her workplace during lunch. She asked him to accompany her to a friend’s place nearby—she, her friend, was out of town and had asked her to feed her cat. He went with her, and as soon as they entered the apartment he grabbed her wrist, pulled her towards him and kissed her. He bit her lower lip, she moaned, he backed away and apologized and told her she was his first. He blushed when she said she didn’t believe him. He was five years younger than she was, and in his flustered vulnerability he seemed to her almost like a child. An overwhelming tenderness consumed her. She pressed herself against him and kissed him, and he kissed her, and they made love—on the cold tiles of that small apartment in Garden City, they made love for the first time.”

Seems harmless at first glance. But, upon reading this paragraph, my girlfriend at the time—currently my wife and also the translator of my work—asked me: “Who fucks like that on their first time?” I dismissed her concern under the claim of “artistic reality,” but for months her question kept bugging me. I combed through my memories, trying to remember—since I hadn’t experienced it myself—if I’d ever heard anyone relay a similar experience of their first time. I came up with nothing but a vague recollection of a love scene—probably featuring one of the Fiennes brothers—from a Hollywood film whose name I’ve entirely forgotten. What I also managed to recall was sleeping on the floor of a friend’s apartment in downtown during the 2011 Revolution after I failed to fall asleep on the asphalt in Tahrir Square. It was probably the worst couple of hours I had spent pretending to be asleep in my entire life; my body was just aching for a bed. So, not only was my love scene fake, it also carried a whiff of needless romanticization. Was I simply reproducing a new shade of American cinema’s superficial fantasies about sex?

I stayed irritated about this for quite some time, and my irritation was fueled by the frequency with which this story in specific was praised. I knew I had to do something about it, but I didn’t know what that could be. Until it finally dawned on me: I was going to take a shot at writing the ultimate anti-love scene.

As brief as love scenes usually are in films or literature, they’re often deeply impactful. Mostly they aim to encapsulate, in mere moments, the depth of two lovers’ enchantment with one another—magic at work. Whatever the dynamic between the couple is, sex is almost always represented the same way: conquerors and conquered. My aim was to explore the act through anxiety, flusteredness, intimacy tested, and comedy. Another choice I consciously made was locating the scene in the Holy Month of Ramadan. Muslims and sex don’t have the reputation of being a great duo, but in my attempt, I’m trying to place the ephemeral at the heart of the ethereal and vice versa.

I guess I could say that by publishing this story I have, for once, put an end to an old regret of mine. My only hope is that I won’t regret publishing it in a couple of months.

Thank you for reading.