Hagg Hassan, shoe shine man

Hagg Hassan was an elderly shoe shine man who walked the streets of Maadi looking for work. He had a set schedule, as also went to regular customers homes to clean their shoes. His meticulous schedule always took him down Road 17 precisely at 430 pm. His excellent time table and precision was however his down fall. My brother and I would lie in wait for him. We would lie along the irrigation ditch holding our breath waiting for the scuffling sound of his trotting bare feet to go by us. We took delightful glee in jumping out of the hedges and dancing around him lie wild things chanting in a sing-song way “shoo shine shoo shine youuuuu wanta shoooo shhhhhinnnnne!” and as we chanted we stuck our bare feet in is face. Hagg Hassan was a man of great forbearance. He calmly ignored us and kept on trotting down the road. That did not matter to us. We found it extremely funny. After a few days, Hagg Hassan did not pass our ditch. We lay there waiting and he did not come, nor did we see him.


The days past. Kirk and I did other things. One day Kirk came bursting into my room. "You’ll never guess" he cried out gesturing towards the door.

"What! You died so I could make you leave my room!"  I yelled angrily.

“No stupid” he fumed…”the old geezers’ going down road 20 now. Come on lets go!”

We were off running down road 81. Ahmad (Zaynab’s husband who now lived in a cardboard box along 81) came out and threaten to tell our fathers that we were harassing Hagg Hassan. Kirk threw him the finger and we kept running. We met Hagg Hassan at the corner of 20 and 81.

“Shooo shine shoo shine youuuuuwanta shoo shhhhine” we chanted breathlessly. Hagg Hassan’s face screwed up in anger. He was an old man, with a craggy like wizened face and when he got mad his wrinkles got thicker. It was one of the few times that he even looked up as he trotted along carrying his shoe shine box. Hagg Hassan however did nothing. He kept trotting along going to his next destination.

The next day Kirk and I lay in wait for him at the corner of 18 and 20, but he did not appear. As we walked back home, Ahmad (Zaynab’s husband) laughed at us and said that Hagg Hassan went the normal way today. We were mad. We saw it as our personal right to torment this old man.

Three days later, Kirk and I were sitting on the stoop drinking “Asir Lemoon” (lemonaide) when we saw Hagg Hassan coming up the road. He head was not down and he seemed to be looking for us. We flew out of the garden gate and out into the street.

“Shooooo shine shooo shine” we chanted. We chanted our chant and stuck our feet into his face laughing at him for three blocks. As soon as we turned right onto Sharia Orabi, Hagg Hassan dropped his shoe shine box. His usually slow, bent over body rose and whirled around with such agility and speed that my brother and I were amazed. “youstuuupidfuckinsheeet!!!!” he yelled at us. Kirk and I stared at him in utter amazement. We fell down laughing. Hagg Hassan calmly picked up his little box and continued trotting down Sharia Orabi. Kirk and I remained in the middle of the road laughing, the tiny tree helicopter-seed floated into our hair making us the comical site.

We finally got out of the road and walked back to the house. We never spoke of tormenting Hagg Hassan again, and as if by mutual agreement we never appeared near our garden gate at 430 either.

Hagg Hassan won.