November 2, 2020

Hanono

My friend Karen is at my door. She lives three blocks away. She knows knocking on my door will get my attention faster than a phone call.

“Do you want to play poker tonight?”

I make a face. Karen plays in a lot of games. I am not crazy about all of her people. 

She has anticipated my reaction.

“This is a really good game,” she says, countering whatever excuse I was about to make. “One of the partners at my firm, this guy Sami, has a regular home game. Stakes are decent. Really nice guys. Very laid back. Everyone plays well. And he has great desserts.”

I have no plans. I have already eaten my frozen pizza. I could really go for some good dessert. I say “Ok.”

She says “Come now. Oscar is already in the car.” She knows better than to give me time to change my mind.

I say “Fine. Let me just go pee.”

The first thing Oscar says when I get in the car is “Did Karen tell you?” Now this could mean a lot of things. Karen likes to operate on a need to know basis.

Karen says “I didn’t even need to.” Turning to me she says “I had a proverbial ace up my sleeve.”

I say “You know, you use proverbial way too much. What is your ace?”

“They are Egyptians,” she says, knowing my parents were from Egypt. “It is an Egyptian poker game!”

“Really? I used to love playing poker with Egyptians.”

And Karen says to Oscar “See! I told you he would like it.”

An Egyptian poker game. It will give me the chance to use my Arabic.

Now, I don’t speak Arabic.

Although my parents were born in Egypt and spoke it fluently, we spoke mainly French and then English in the house. But I used to play in a poker game at the Hemispheres condo building in Hallandale with my late Uncle Henri and his crew of octogenarian Egyptians. So, while I did not know how to speak Arabic, I could play poker in Arabic. I had picked up about two dozen words and expressions.

And I was determined to use one of them.

In truth, the actual poker was played mostly in French with a smattering of English. The cards, neuf de pique, valet de carreaux, were all described in French. The poker hands were a little more polyglot. A full house was a full, although pronounced much like the fava bean dish which was a staple of Egyptian life. A flush was a flush. But a straight was a quinte, which is French, while the rare straight flush, was a quinte flush, a French/English hybrid. Finally, a really lousy hand earned the Arabic designation of ‘khara’ - just shit. If the actual poker terminology was a little pedestrian, the banter and trash-talk were anything but.

Most of the men in this group had played together since they were teenagers. Their insults, in Arabic and French, had not changed. Which meant they were, by and large, juvenile and puerile. But, with age and maturity came the addition of Arabic idioms and expressions. Some of them were beauties.

I had some favorites. When someone had no clue what they were doing, invariably it was the hapless but loveable Edward Shweck, my uncle Andre would say “Al atrash fil alzifa.” Which literally means ‘like a deaf man at a wedding’.

Raymond Ben-Simon had the reputation of almost never playing a hand unless he had great cards. So he folded almost all of the time. On those rare occasions when he finally played a hand but lost, Tico was ready with his taunt.

“Sam Sam Sam ou fitir àla bassala.”

He fasted fasted fasted and had breakfast with an onion.

Sometimes, the introduction of one idiom would bring a rash of others; seemingly unrelated non-sequiturs.

When my Uncle Henri scooped a pot after making a big bet which went unchallenged, he would wag his finger at me, often I wasn’t even in the hand, and say:

“El hekaya labsa melaya.”

Literally it means the story is wearing a bedsheet. It is used to say there’s more to it than it seems. More to the story than meets the eye.

El hekaya labsa melaya.

I love that. Would make for a great book title.

It would be repeated with nodding heads and wry smiles. They looked a lot like our poker group does when we reminisce about the 1981 Springsteen concert.

There were others, but my all-time favorite was not an idiom. It was a single word. It was usually used, or at least instigated, by my uncle Henri and most often directed at his childhood friend Tico. Tico, may he rest in peace, was a very conservative player and generally took a long time to throw a chip in the pot. My uncle Henri would berate him by saying “Tico, ne sois pas hanono.” Tico, don’t be cheap. The French sentence with the Arabic last word which was our family trademark.

Hanono.

It was a great word. In a sentence or as a stand-alone. Hanono. I never said it. I never had the guts. It was not my place. Not with this group. I would have loved to have used it in some of my games in Toronto - there was no lack of deserving recipients - but nobody there spoke Arabic. But tonight, I would be playing poker with Egyptians. Now, I am not foolish enough to direct it at complete strangers. Karen and Oscar, on the other hand, though truthfully the furthest thing from cheap, are fair game. I just need to find the right moment. I just need one of them to make a bad fold.

Karen was right. Sami and his three friends, all Egyptians, are really nice and very good poker players to boot. The stakes are reasonable but just large enough to have to make decisions, and everyone plays well and quickly. Along with Sami, there is Sayed, Maurice, and Whalid. Sami is the Uncle Henri of the group. Clearly the leader, he is prone to making big bluffs and even bigger insults. Sayed is the conservative mild-mannered Raymond Ben-Simon. He mostly folds and nervously eats sunflower seeds. I don’t think anyone could be Tico but Whalid comes a little close. He has a cloud over his head, loses a bunch of close hands, and is generally the brunt of most of the jokes. Mostly, they call him ‘humar’, which is donkey. He seethes when he loses a hand and Sami uses an expression I had heard with my own Egyptian group.

“Fokak men nafsak.”

Unscrew yourself from yourself.

In other words, take it easy. Sami explains it to the table. “That is a great expression,” says Oscar. Karen glares at me and I glare back. I am waiting to use my own great expression. But the cards are not helping.

An hour goes by and Karen and Oscar have barely folded a hand. Karen is actually raking in most of the pots and Oscar is holding his own. I have had plenty of opportunity to throw in a ‘mabruk’ (congratulations) after a won pot or a ‘moosh raali’ (not expensive) after calling a bet, or an ‘abadan’ (I have nothing), when caught in a bluff, but no, I have abstained. I am locked in to ‘hanono’.

By hour two, I am getting a little desperate. When the moment comes, it does not even rise to the level of anything. It is just a fold. There is a small raise and everyone calls except for Karen, who folds and a second later asks “Where is the restroom?” But between the time she said “fold” and the time she said “Where is the restroom?” I managed to triumphantly shout out “hanono!”

Everyone looks at me. Each with a quizzical look on their face. So I say it again: “hanono.”

Karen says “What does that mean?”

And I reply “It means cheap in Arabic.”

And Sami says “I don’t think it does.”

And I say, to the four Egyptians “Yes it does.” And, thinking maybe my pronunciation was off, repeat it again slowly: “ha-no-no”.

Sayed, who is a pediatrician says “I don’t think that is a word in Arabic.” He says it in a very kind and gentle manner, like he is speaking to one of his patients.

I say “My family is from Cairo. From Heliopolis. I used to hear it all the time.”

Sayed says “I am also from Heliopolis. But I have never heard that word.”

And Sami says “I’m sorry. In Arabic cheap is ‘Rakhis’. There are a few other adjectives and colloquialisms. But I have never heard of hanono. Sorry.”

I say “Oh. I’m sorry.”

And Karen says “I’m not cheap, I just had to go to the bathroom.”

The table falls quiet.

Sami says maybe this would be a good time to have dessert.

Again, Karen was right. The desserts are delicious. They had been made by Sami himself, apparently the chef in the family. The table has pistachio and honey-laden Konafa, basbousa, which is semolina cake soaked in syrup, and zalabya, the fried balls of dough which my cousins and I knew would be waiting for us every time we visited our Tante Racheline. Were it not for the hanono debacle I would tell Sami and Sayed, the Heliopolis native, that dessert is almost as good as the pastries at Om Met Kek on Rue Ismaili Pasha.

The game resumes without incident. It is still fun but the air has gone out of the room. In the car on the way home Karen says “What was that all about?”

I say “I don’t know.”

She says “I thought you could speak some words in Arabic?”

And I say “So did I.”

The next day, I call my Tante Odette.

“Comment ça va?” I ask.

As usual, she answers “Zay el zift, merci.” I am shit, thank you.

“Dis moi, tell me. When Henri called Tico hanono. What did it mean?”

“Hanono? Hanono meant he was calling him cheap.”

I say “In Arabic?”

Odette says “No.”

“Not in Arabic?”

And Odette says “No.”

“Is it French?” Although I know it isn’t.

And Odette says “No.”

I say “So what language is it?”

Odette says “What language? It isn’t any language. It is his name.”

“Whose name?” I ask.

She says “Marcel Hanono. He was at school with your father and uncle in Cairo. Il était très avars. He was very cheap.”

Marcel Hanono. My all-time favorite Arabic word is not Arabic at all.

I say “Ok thanks.”

She says “Yallah bye,” and hangs up.

I sit in silence for a few seconds then scream out “Fuuuuuuck!!”

I just hope it isn’t someone’s name.

The end.