"There's nothing wrong in having a job."
"Naturally. But my father… The fact is that we're all agreed on this. I won't work."
As his emotions cooled down, he became pensive. He commented, "So be it. I'll work."
In a voice that she seemed deliberately to be making more tender than usual she said, "Mr. Ahmad, let's postpone this discussion. Give me time to think it over."
He laughed dispiritedly and responded, "We have looked at the question from every angle. Don't you really need more time to draft your rejection?"
She said bashfully, "I must talk to my father."
"That goes without saying. But it should have been possible for us to reach an understanding first."
"I need some time, even if it's not very long."
"It's June now, and you'll be going off to your summer resort. We won't meet again until next October at school."
She insisted, "I must have time to think about it and to consult my family."
"You just don't want to commit yourself."
Then she suddenly stopped walking and remarked with determined resolve, "Mr. Ahmad, you're trying to force me to speak. I hope you'll take my words the right way. I've thought about marriage frequently, not with regard to you but in general terms. I've concluded and my father agrees with me that my life won't be successful and that I won't be able to maintain my standard of living unless I have no less than fifty pounds a month."
He swallowed this disappointment, which hurt more than he could ever have expected, even allowing for the worst possible outcome. He asked, "Does any working man, I mean one of an age to marry, make a salary that vast?" When she did not respond, he declared, "You want a rich husband!"
"I'm very sorry, but you have forced me to be blunt."
He answered gruffly, "That's better, at any rate."
"Sorry," she murmured.
Although furious, he made a sincere effort to stay within the bounds of polite behavior. Feeling an overwhelming desire to be blunt with her, he asked, "Would you allow me to give you my frank opinion?"
She shot back, "Certainly not! I know many of your ideas. I hope that we can stay friends."
In spite of his anger, he pitied her condition, an inevitable one for a life that had not been transformed by love. A lady who eloped with one of her servants acted naturally but by traditional standards was judged a deviant. In an imperfect society, a healthy man seems sick and the sick one healthy. He was angry, but his unhappiness was greater than his anger. At any rate she would guess what he thought of her, and there was some consolation in that. When she stretched out her hand to take leave of him, his hand took hers and kept hold of it until he had said, "You claimed you didn't enroll in the University to obtain a job. That's a lovely notion in and of itself. But how have you benefited from the University?"
She raised her chin inquisitively. In a slightly sarcastic tone he concluded, "Forgive my foolish behavior. Perhaps the problem is that you haven't fallen in love yet. Goodbye."
He turned on hisheels and walked away rapidly.
ISMA'IL LATIF said, "Perhaps bringing my wife to Cairo to have the baby was a mistake. The air-raid siren goes off every night. In Tanta we know almost none of the terrors of this war."
Kamal replied, "These are just symbolic raids. If they really wanted to harm us, no force would be able to stop them."
This was the second meeting for Riyad Qaldas and Isma'il Latif after their introduction the year before. Riyad laughed and told Isma'il, "You're talking to a man who doesn't know what it means to be responsible for a spouse."
Isma'il asked Riyad sarcastically, "And do you know what it's like?"
"I am a bachelor too, but at least I'm not a foe of matrimony."
They were walking along Fuad I Street early one evening. The darkness was relieved only by the meager amount of light escaping from the doors of commercial establishments. Even so, the street was crowded with Egyptians and British soldiers from different parts of the Empire. There was the damp breath of autumn in the air, but people were still wearing summer clothes.
Riyad Qaldas saw some Indian soldiers and commented, "It's sad that a man should be transported such a long distance from his homeland to kill for someone else's sake."
Isma'il Latif mused, "I wonder how these wretches can laugh."
Kamal answered resentfully, "The same way we can in our bizarre world that reeks of liquor, drugs, and despair."
Riyad Qaldas chuckled and observed, "You're going through a unique crisis. Your whole world is corning apart at the seams. It appears to consist of nothing but a vain grasping at the wind, a painful debate between life's secrets and the soul, ennui, and ill health. I pity you."
Isma'il Latif advised Kamal with great directness, "Get married. I felt the same kind of ennui before I married."
Riyad Qaldas exclaimed, "Tell him!"
As though to himself, Kamal remarked, "Marriage is the ultimate surrender in life's losing battle."
"Isma'il was mistaken in thinking our situations comparable," Kamal mused. "He's a well-behaved animal. But not so fast. … Perhaps you're just conceited, and what's there to be conceited about when you're resting on a dunghill of disappointment and failure? Isma'il knows nothing of the world of thought, only the happiness a man derives from his work, spouse, and children. But isn't happiness right to mock your disdain for it?"
Riyad commented, "If I eventually decide to write a novel, you'll be one of the main characters."
Kamal turned toward him with boyish excitement and asked, "What will you make of me?"
"I don't know, but try not to get angry. Many of the readers who find themselves in my stories become irate."
"Why?"
"Perhaps because each of us has an idea he has created of himself. When a writer strips us of that self-image, we object angrily."
Kamal inquired anxiously, "Are you holding back some secret opinions about me?"
His friend immediately reassured him: "Certainly not. But a writer may begin with someone he knows and then forget all of that person's characteristics in creating a new specimen of humanity. The only relationship between the two may be that the first inspired the second. You seem to be an Easterner teetering uncertainly between East and West. He goes round and round until he's dizzy."
"He speaks of East and West," Kamal thought. "But how could he know about A'ida? It may well be that misery has many faces."
Isma'il Latif said as bluntly as before, "All your life, you've made problems for yourself. In my opinion, books are the source of your misfortunes. Why don't you try living a normal life?"
They reached the corner of Imad al-Din Street and, on turning down it, almost ran into a large group of British nationals. Isma'il Latif said, "To hell with them! Why do they look so optimistic? Do you suppose they actually believe their own propaganda?"
"It seems to me," Kamal observed, "that the outcome of the war has already been determined. It will be over by next spring."
Riyad Qaldas said resentfully, "The Nazi movement is reactionary and inhumane. The world's suffering will increase dramatically under their iron rule."
Isma'il replied, "Be that as it may, what's important is to see the English subjugated in the same manner that they subjugated so many of the weaker areas of the world."
Kamal commented, "The Germans are no better than the English."
Riyad Qaldas said, "We have learned to live with the English, and British imperialism is well into its dotage. It is tempered, perhaps, by some humane principles. With the Germans tomorrow, we'll have to deal with a youthful, greedy, conceited, wealthy, and bellicose imperialism. What will we do then?"
Kamal laughed in a way that suggested a change of mood and suggested, "Let's have a couple of drinks and dream of a united world ruled by a single just government."
"We'll definitely need more than two drinks for that."
They found themselves in front of a new bar they had never seen before. It was probably one of those infernal establishments that spring up overnight during a war. Glancing inside, Kamal noticed the proprietor was a woman with a fair complexion and a voluptuous Eastern body. Then his feet froze to the pavement. He was unable to move, and his companions had to stop to see what he was looking at.
"Maryam!" Kamal whispered to himself. "It's Maryam, no one but Maryam. Maryam, Yasin's second wife. Maryam, the lifelong neighbor. Here, in this bar, after a long disappearance. Maryam, who was thought to have gone to join her late mother…."
"Do you want to go in here? Let's do. There are only four soldiers inside."
He hesitated, but his courage was not adequate for the occasion. When he had recovered from his astonishment, he said, "Absolutely not."
He cast a parting glance at the Maryam who reminded him now of her mother toward the end of that woman's life, and they proceeded on their way. When had he last seen her? It had not been for at least thirteen or fourteen years. She was a landmark of his past, and he would never forget her. His past, his history, and his essence they were all a single entity. She had received him in the apartment in Palace of Desire Alley one last time before Yasin divorced her. He could still remember how she had complained about his brother's deviant behavior and reversion to a life of shameless wantonness. On that occasion he had not foreseen the consequences this complaint would have, for it had landed her in thishellish tavern. She had once been the darling daughter of Mr. Muhammad Ridwan and Kamal's friend, as well as a source of inspiration for boyish dreams. His old house had then appeared to be a setting that overflowed with tranquillity and delight. Maryam and Aisha had been roses, but time is an indefatigable enemy of flowers. He could easily have bumped into her at one of these brothels, just as he had first encountered Madam Jalila. If that had happened, he would have found himself in an indescribable quandary. Maryam, who had begun her flirtations with the English, had ended up with them.
"Do you know this woman?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"She's one of those women… Perhaps she's forgotten me."
"Oh, the bars are full of them: old whores, rebellious servants, every kind of woman."
"Yes…."
"Why didn't you go in? She might have welcomed us warmly for your sake."
"She's no longer young, and we have better places."
He had grown old without noticing it. He was halfway into his fourth decade. He seemed to have squandered his share of happiness. When he compared his current misery to that of the past, he did not know which was worse. But what importance did life have, since he was fed up with living? Death truly was the most pleasurable part of life. But what was this sound?
"Air raid!"
"Where shall we go?"
"To the shelter at the Rex Cafe."
Since there was no place to sit in the shelter, they remained standing in the crowd of Egyptian gentlemen, foreigners, women, and children. People were speaking a number of different languages and dialects. Outside men from the civil defense forces shouted, "Turn off your lights!" Riyad's face looked pale. He hated the ringing sound of the anti-aircraft guns.
Kamal teased him, "You may not get a chance to play with my character in your novel."
Laughing nervously as he gestured toward the other people, Riyad answered, "There's a representative sample of humanity in this shelter."
Kamal observed sarcastically, "If only they would band together in good times the way they do when they're frightened…."
Isma'il cried out nervously, "Right now my wife must be groping her way down the stairs in the dark. I'm thinking seriously of returning to Tanta tomorrow."
"If we live that long."
"The people of London are really to be pitied."
"But they're the source of all the trouble."
Riyad Qaldas's face grew even paler, but he tried to hide his discomfort by asking Kamal, "I once heard you inquire the way to death's station, so that you could disembark from life's boring train. Will it really seem so trivial to you now if a bomb blasts us to bits?"
Kamal smiled. He was listening with increasing anxiety, for he expected, from one moment to the next, to hear the anti-aircraft guns fire with a deafening sound. He answered, "Of course not". Then he continued in a questioning tone: "Perhaps from fear of pain?"
"Is there still some obscure hope for life stirring within you?"
Why did he not kill himself? Why did his life wear a fasade of enthusiasm and faith? For a long time his soul had been torn between the two extremes of hedonism and asceticism. He would not have been able to bear a life devoted entirely to the tranquil satisfaction of his desires. Inside him there was also something that made him shy away from the notion of a passive escape from life. Whatever that thing was, perhaps it was what kept him from killing himself. At the same time, the fact that he clung to the agitated rope of life with both hands contravened his lethal skepticism. The resulting condition was a tormented anxiety.
Suddenly the anti-aircraft guns burst forth with a continuous volley that scarcely left the chest time to breathe. People did not know what they were seeing or saying. Yet, by the clock, the shooting lasted only two minutes. Afterward everyone awaited the odious return of the frightful noise.
Terror gripped their souls, and there was a heavy silence. Isma'il Latif asked, "When do you suppose the raid will be over? I can imagine all too well the state my wife is in now."
Riyad Qaldas asked, "When will the war end?"
Shortly thereafter the all-clear siren sounded, and the shelter's denizens voiced a profound sigh of relief Kamal said, "The Italians were just teasing us."
They left the shelter in the dark, like bats, as doors emitted one ghostly figure after another. Then a faint glimmer of light could be seen co tiling from windows, and the world resumed its normal commotion.
In this brief moment of darkness, life had reminded careless people of its incomparable value.
OVER THE course of time, the old house assumed a new look of decay and decline. Its routine disintegrated, and most of the coffee-hour crowd was dispersed. These two features had been the household's soul and lifeblood. During the first half of the day, when Kamal was away at his school, Amina was off on her spiritual tour of the mosques of the Prophet's grandchildren al-Husayn and al-Sayyida Zaynab, and Umm Hanafi was down in the oven room, al-Sayyid Ahmad would stretch out on the sofa in his room or sit in a chair on the balcony while Aisha wandered aimlessly between the roof terrace and her bedroom. The radio's voice was the only one heard in the sitting room until late in the afternoon, when Amina and Umm Hanafi met there. Aisha would either stay in her room or spend part of the coffee hour with them. Al-Sayyid Ahmad did not leave his room, and even if Kamal returned home early, he retreated to his study on the top floor. At first, the confinement of al-Sayyid Ahmad had been a source ofunhap-piness, but then he and the others had become accustomed to it. Aisha's grief had been most distressing, but eventually she and the others had grown used to it too.
Amina was still the first to wake. After rousing Umm Hanafi, she performed her ablutions and her prayers. The maid, who was by and large the healthiest of them all, headed on rising for the oven room.
Opening heavy eyes, Aisha would get up to drink successive glasses of coffee and to light one cigarette after another. When summoned to breakfast, she would take only a few morsels. She had allowed her body to waste away to a skeleton covered with a faded skin. Her hair had started to fall out, and she had been forced to consult a doctor to avoid going bald. She had fallen victim to so many ills that the physician had advised having her teeth removed. All that remained of the old Aisha was her name and the habit of looking at her reflection in the mirror, although not to adorn herself. It was simply a custom allowing her to scrutinize her sorrows. Occasionally she seemed to have resigned herself gracefully to her losses, as she sat for longer periods with her mother, took part in the conversation, allowed her withered lips to part in a smile, visited her father to ask after hishealth, or strolled around the roof garden, tossing grain to the chickens.
On one such occasion her mother said hopefully, "It does my heart good, Aisha, to see you like this. I wish you were always so cheerful."
Drying her eyes, Umm Hanafi said, "Let's go to the oven room and make something special."
But at midnight the mother awoke to the sound of weeping from Aisha's room. She rushed to her daughter, taking care not to wake al-Sayyid Ahmad, and found Aisha sitting up and sobbing in the darkness. Sensing her mother's presence, Aisha grabbed hold of Amina and cried out, "If only I had the baby from her belly as a reminder of her… a bit of her! My hands have nothing to hold. The world is empty."
Embracing Aisha, the mother said, "I know more about your sorrows than anyone else. They are so great that any attempt at consolalion is meaningless. I would gladly have given my life for theirs. But God's wisdom is lofty and exalted. What point is there to this sorrow, my poor dear?"
"Whenever I fall asleep, I dream of them or of my life in the old days."
"Proclaim that God is one. I've had my own taste of suffering like yours. Have you forgotten Fahmy? Even so, an afflicted Believei' asks God for strength. What has happened to your faith?"
Aisha exclaimed resentfully, "My faith!"
"Yes, remember your religion and entreat God for merciful relief, which may come from some totally unexpected source."
"Merciful relief! Where is it? Where?"
"His mercy is so vast it encompasses everything. For my sake, visit al-Husayn with me. Put your hand on the tomb and recite the opening prayer of the Qur'an. Then your fiery suffering will be changed into a refreshing peace just as Abraham's fire was" (Qur'an, 21:69).
Aisha's attitude toward her health was equally mercurial. She would visit doctors diligently and regularly for a time, leading people to think that she had regained her interest in life. Then she would neglect herself and scornfully disregard everyone's advice in a virtually suicidal fashion. Visiting the cemetery was the only custom from which she never once deviated. With happy abandon she spent the income from her husband's and her daughter's bequests on the grave site, transforming it into a lush garden of flowers and fragrant herbs. The day Ibrahim Shawkat came to complete the formalities of the bequest, she had laughed hysterically, telling her mother, "Congratulate me on my inheritance from Na'ima."
Whenever he sensed that she was calm, Kamal would visit her and stay for lengthy periods, humoring her affectionately. He would gaze at her silently for a long time, sadly remembering the exquisite form God had bestowed upon her and examining what had become of it. She was emaciated and sickly, to be sure, but also heartbroken in every sense of the word. The striking similarity between their misfortunes did not escape him. She had lost her offspring, and he had lost his hopes. If she had ended up with nothing, so had he. All the same, her children had been flesh and blood, and his hopes had been deceptive fictions of the imagination.
One day he suggested to them, "Wouldn't it be better if you all went to the air-raid shelter when the siren goes off?"
Aisha replied, "I won't leave my room."
His mother said, "These raids don't harm anyone, and the guns sound like fireworks."
His father called out from the bedroom, "If I were able to go to the shelter, I would go to the mosque or to Muhammad IfFat's house instead."
On another occasion, Aisha rushed down from the roof, all out of breath, to tell her mother, "Something amazing has happened!"
Amina looked at her with hopeful curiosity, and Aisha, who was still panting, explained, "I was on the roof, watching the sun go down. I felt more wretched than ever before. All of a sudden a window of glorious light opened up in the sky. At the top of my lungs I shouted, Lord!'"
The mother's eyes grew wide in amazement. Was this the desired merciful relief or a new abyss of sorrows? She murmured, "Perhaps it's our Lord's mercy, daughter."
Her face radiant with joy, Aisha said, "Yes. I shouted, Lord!' and light filled the whole world."
They all brooded about this event and, with obvious anxiety, kept careful track of developments. Aisha stood for hours at her post on the roof, waiting for the light to break through again. Kamal finally asked himself, "I wonder if this is a finale compared to which death would seem trivial". But fortunately for all of them, she appeared to forget the matter in time and stopped mentioning it. Then she became ever more deeply involved with a private universe of her own creation. She lived there by herself, a solitary figure, whether in her room or sitting beside them, although at infrequent intervals she would come back to their world, as if returning from a voyage. Shortly thereafter she would resume her imaginary travels. She developed a new habit of speaking to herself, especially when no one else was present. This made her family quite nervous, but when she spoke to the dead she recognized that her loved ones had passed away. She did not think that they were present as specters or ghosts. This compromise with reality was a source of some comfort to those around her.
"HOW COLD it is this winter! It reminds me of the one people used as a point of reference for years after. I wonder which it was? My Lord, where is the memory for it, where? My old heart yearns for that winter even though I can't remember the date - since it's part of the past and such memories coax my tears from their hiding places."
In those dayshe had awakened early, taken a cold shower even in winter, filled his belly, and then burst forth into the world of people, activity, and freedom. He knew nothing of that world today, except for the reports people gave him, and even these seemed to refer to life on the far side of the planet.
More recently, when he had been able to sit on the sofa in his room or in a chair on the balcony, confinement to the house had seemed irksome. Although he had been free to go to the bathroom when it was necessary and to change his clothes by himself he had cursed staying home. One day a week he had been permitted to leave the house supported by his stick or riding in a carriage on a visit to al-Husayn or to the home of a friend. Still, he had often prayed for God to deliver him from this house arrest.
Now he could not get out of bed. The boundaries of his world extended no further than the edges of his mattress. The bathroom came to him, instead of the other way around. He had never imagined such a squalid eventuality, and having to cope with this left a resentful pout on his lips and a bitter taste in his mouth. On the same mattresshe stretched out during the day and slept at night. He took his meals on it and answered the calls of nature there, he who had once been proverbial for his neatness and fragrant cologne. This household, which had always yielded to his absolute authority, now looked askance at him, granting him pitying looks when he asked for something or scolding remarks fit for a child. His beloved friends had departed from life in rapid succession, as if by prior arrangement. They had gone, leaving him alone.
"God's compassion on you, Muhammad Iffat!"
Al-Sciyyid Ahmad had seen him for the last time one night during Ramadan at a party held in the men's parlor overlooking the garden. After bidding Muhammad Iffat farewell, he had started off, accompanied to the door by his friend's noisy laughter. He had scarcely made it back to his room when someone had knocked on the door. Ridwan had rushed in, saying, "Grandfather has died, Grandfather."
"Glory to God… When? … And how? … Wasn't he laughing with us just a few minutes ago? … But he fell flat on his face as he headed for bed. That was how a lifelong friend disappeared. It took Ali Abd al-Rahim three whole days to die. His repeated bouts of coughing were so severe that we had no choice but to pray that God would grant him a peaceful end and relieve our friend of his pain, and thus my soul mate Ali Abd al-Rahim vanished from my world."
He had been able to say farewell to these beloved friends but uot to Ibrahim al-Far. The severity of his own ailments had kept him in bed, preventing him from paying a sick call on al-Far, whose servant had eventually come to announce his master's death. Al-Sayyid Ahmad had not even been able to attend the funeral. Yasin and Kamal had paid last respects to the man for him.
"To the compassion of God, you most charming man!"
Even before them, Hamidu, al-Hamzawi, and tens of other friends and acquaintances had died, leaving him alone, as though he had never known anyone. No one visited him. No one paid him a sick call. There would not be a single friend to see him off at his funeral. He was prevented even from praying, for he could maintain the necessary state of ritual purity for only a few hours after a bath, and his guardians granted him one very infrequently. He was denied access to prayer when, plunged into oppressive solitude, he was in the greatest need of communion with God the Compassionate.
His days passed in this manner. The radio played, and he listened. Amina came and went. She was very feeble but had never developed the habit of complaining. She acted as his nurse, and what he feared most was that she would soon need someone to care for her. She was all he had left. Yasin and Kamal would sit with him for an hour and then depart. He wished they would stay with him all the time, but this was a wish he could never express and they could never grant. Only Arnina never tired of him. If she went to al-Husayn, it was solely to pray for him. In every other respect, his was an empty world.
For him, the day of Khadija's visit was definitely worth the wait. She would bring Ibrahim Shawkat, Abd al-Muni'm, and Ahmad. They would fill the room with life and dispel its desolation. He would not have much to say, but they would.
Once Ibrahim had requested, "Give the master a rest from your chatter."
But al-Sayyid Ahmad had scolded him: "Let them talk…. I want to hear them!"
He prayed that his daughter would have good health and a long life and made similar invocations to God on behalf of her husband and sons. He knew that she would have liked to supervise his care herself. The affection he could see in her eyes defied description.
One day, with jovial curiosity and avid interest, he asked Yasin, "Where do you spend your evenings?"
Yasin answered bashfully, "Today the English are everywhere. It's like the old days."
"The old days!" he mused. "The days of power and strength, of laughter that shook the walls, of convivial evenings spent in al-Ghuriya and al-Gamaliya, and of people of whom nothing is left but their names. Zubayda, Jalila, and Haniya___I wonder if you remember your mother, Yasin…. Here's Zanuba and her daughter, Karima, sitting beside Karima's father…. You'll never be able to ask for God's mercy and forgiveness often enough."
"Of the people we used to know, who is still at the ministry, Yasin?"
"They've all retired. I no longer have any news of them."
"Nor do they have any of us," he thought. "All our close friends are dead. Why should we ask about acquaintances? But how lovely Karima is! She's more beautiful than her mother in her day. And she's only fourteen. Na'ima was outstandingly beautiful too."
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