A Game of Chance

Mustafa’s hands worked deftly, his palms flipping the wrapped package over as his fingers intertwined the string to create a series of crisscross patterns that circled around the package and culminated in a tight bow at the center. He handed the package to the customer with a trained smile and received his tip with a magician’s sleight of hand.

It was Thursday evening about nine o’clock, and the pastry store was lit up and crowded. Out of the corner of his eye, Mustafa could see two young women wearing headscarves, eating gelato. They were chatting and giggling, their faces animated with some secret joy. He would’ve liked to eavesdrop on their conversation, but the noise in the shop was too loud. An older woman with two young children was trying to place an order as her children tugged at her dress pointing to the chocolate cream puffs and strawberry tarts. But the woman was on the other side of the store ordering a tray of assorted baklava, konafa, and basboosa, the traditional Egyptian honey-soaked sweets. As Mustafa wrapped her package, he watched her negotiate with the insistent children whose desire had led to tears and the threat of screams. With a heavy breath, he saw her surrender and order a miniature éclair for each of them. As he handed her the package of pastries, the wrapping carefully tucked around it and held only by the elaborate design of strings, he knew his tip would be smaller because of her reluctant last purchase.

The two young women finished their gelato and followed the mother and children out of the store. Mustafa could hear the volume of noise decrease in the shop. There were only a few men left, most of them sent by their wives with orders to pick up sweets for the next day, Friday, the one guaranteed holiday each week. The day off seemed to relieve people from the necessary frugality of their lives, so business always picked up on Thursday. The male customers were the easiest. Usually they ordered a single tray of one kind of pastry: the round konafa of shredded wheat filled with either sweet cream or a mixture of nuts, the rectangular tray of basboosa made with semolina so the texture soaked with honey dissolved in the mouth, or the standard baklava often shaped into small bird’s nests stuffed with pistachios.

Mustafa took each cardboard tray of delicate sweets, and, with a quick turn and twist, he wrapped the glossy paper over and under, tightening it with a repeated pattern of strings till it held its inner prize securely. Like a master chef who flips the dough into the air and catches it effortlessly as it free-falls from the sky, Mustafa’s movements were hypnotizing. The package seemed to be doing somersaults of its own free will. It was impossible to follow his exact actions, to know where he folded the paper or how he twined the string into an even pattern over it. His packages always held tight, whether the customer carried them by the knotted string in the middle or like a platter from the bottom; even if they were tilted in the carrying, the sweets would emerge whole and centered.

The men were consistent with their tips, usually fifty piasters, respectable but not generous. It was the women who were more erratic. The one with the two children gave him only twenty-five piasters. The wealthier Egyptian women usually gave him one pound. The foreigners were inconsistent too. They always seemed nervous, ill at ease, looking over their shoulders as if they thought someone was about to snatch them. The ones who could speak a little Arabic were often stingier, giving him no more than fifty piasters. But the ones who were clearly tourists took out a wad of bills, unaccustomed to the art of tipping discreetly. They gave him as much as three or four pounds, handing him one pound at a time, unsure of when to stop, trying to calculate the equivalent in dollars. The foreigners always bought the Egyptian sweets, their eyes...