GG Fahmy

Mahmoud Fahmy blends musk and amber for visitors and for those who know to ask for the back shelf. The bazaar taught him this before school got near fractions. He plays in the hour before it opens, when the corridor is empty and the light comes in at one end only, two fast games against the same opponent he has had for three decades, both of them done and packed away before a single shutter is up. Anyone who suggests an evening session is told, politely, that the evenings are for selling. He also names the scent you are wearing before the board is set, off nothing but a greeting, and claims two errors in his whole career. The regulars call it a party trick. He calls it the back shelf.