Read I Think of You: Stories for Free Online

terribly displeased with you,” then, “Daddy won’t speak to you for weeks.” Withdraw all your love, I thought. I won’t go back. They went against their principles: “You won’t get any more pocket money.” It was still no good.
    Every morning my parents went to the university and my sister and brother to school. I would draw up my father’s large armchair in front of the television, carry up some toast and butter, and watch the races. Or I would switch on my Phonotrix and dream. Or read. The whole house was my territory from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon and I lived my private life and was impervious to the cold, disapproving atmosphere that pervaded the evenings. After a couple of weeks they gave up.
    One day I discovered a secret cache of books hidden in my parents’ bedroom. Fanny Hill, The Perfumed Garden of Sheikh Nefzawi, and the Kama Sutra. My rebellion had paid off in grand style. I spent my fifteenth year in a lotus dream, sunk in an armchair, throbbing to the beat of the Stones, reading erotica.
    And I passed my exams.

Returning

    T he little red car came speeding along the road and turned abruptly to park under a tree in front of a three-story house. Nobody got out. The engine did not die. Then the car moved again; it backed out of the parking place, made a sharp U-turn, and headed back the way it had come.
    “I need those books,” Aisha told herself. “I’m teaching a course and I need those books.” She drove to the main street, then took a right turn. She drove straight on until she came to the roundabout. She circled the roundabout and came to a vast square. She knew she had come the right way, but she did not recognize this square. She remembered a green garden with spreading trees and flower-beds and paths of red sand. She sawinstead a construction site. In the foreground was a large, squat yellow mosque. On it was a placard, and on that in big green letters were written the words THE MOSQUE OF ISMAIL. She wondered who Ismail was and what degree of importance or wealth had got for him the planning permission to set up his mosque right here, in the middle of an area obviously designed as a recreation ground for the houses around it.
    The red car went slowly up the east side of the square. Behind the mosque another building was coming up. The floors that had been completed were already graying as the rest were piled on top of them. A placard proclaimed the project: THE FIRST ISLAMIC INSTITUTE IN THE GOVERNORATE OF GIZA .
    Between them, the Mosque of Ismail and the Islamic Institute took up five-sixths of the garden. Aisha looked at the strip that was left. The few trees were dusty and the grass was sparse and yellow. The whole place was strewn with bricks, cement, steel rods of varying lengths, and mounds of sand. There was no one about. It felt more like a demolition than a construction site. She wondered about the frogs they used to hear at night. And the crickets. Where had they gone? Had they all moved into the sixth of semi-garden that was left? And what did they do about territorial rights? How could they coexist in such a drastically reduced space? But then, maybe they didn’t. Maybe the strong had overcome the weak and a race of superfrogs was now living in the remains of the garden. The builders of the Mosque of Ismail and the First Islamic Institute in the Governorate of Giza were helping evolution along.
    The road was bumpy and dotted with potholes. Some of the potholes were full of stagnant water. Aisha looked around her. She remembered a bright winter day, a motor scooter wobbling under her as she tried to ride it down a smooth road. Finally it had collapsed on its side and she had fallen, one leg caught under the little Vespa. Everyone had run to her, but she had picked herself up and tried again. She looked around. You’d be mad to try to learn to ride a motor scooter down this road now.
    She arrived at the top of the square. Six years ago their house had been