At Maxim’s, Zaki el Dessouki feels at home. No sooner has he crossed Suleiman Basha Square to the small passage opposite the Automobile Club, pushed open the small wooden door with the glass panes, and passed through the entranceway, than he feels as though a magic time machine has carried him back to the beautiful years of the 1950s. Everything at Maxim’s — from the brightly painted white walls hung with original works by great artists, the quiet lighting emanating from elegant wall lamps, the tables covered with gleaming white cloths on which plates, folded napkins, spoons, knives, and glasses of various sizes are set out in the French manner, and the way into the bathroom that is concealed from sight by a large blue folding screen to the small, chic bar at the far end to the left of which stands an ancient piano on which Christine, the restaurant’s owner, plays for her friends — bears the stamp of the elegant past in the same way as do old Rolls-Royces, ladies’ long white gloves, hats decorated with feathers, gramophones with horns and gold needles, and old black-and-white photos in wooden frames that we hang in the sitting room and forget about and which, when from time to time we do look at them, make us feel tender and melancholy. The owner of Maxim’s, Madame Christine Nicholas, is of Greek origin, born and raised in Egypt. She draws, plays the piano and violin excellently, and sings exquisitely. She has married a number of times and lived a gay and boisterous life. Her relationship with Zaki began in the 1950s with a passionate love that burned itself out and left behind a deep, unbudgeable friendship. Zaki will be preoccupied and go without seeing her for many months, but as soon as he feels oppressed or things are not going well for him, he goes to her and always finds her waiting for him. She listens attentively, gives him sincere advice, and commiserates like a mother.
Today, no sooner did she see him entering through the door of the bar than she let out a cry of joy and embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks. Then she took his hands, leaned back, and examined him for a short while with her blue eyes, saying, “You look worried, my friend.”
Zaki smiled sadly and almost said something but remained silent. Christine shook her head as though she understood, then invited him to sit at his favorite table next to the piano and ordered a bottle of rose and cold hors d’œuvres. Just as dried flowers retain something of their old fragrance, Christine still bore traces of her former beauty. Her body was neat and svelte, her hair dyed and swept back, and tasteful makeup gave her lined face a dignified, refined cast. When she laughed, her face would fluctuate between the tenderness and tolerance of a kindly grandmother and that old coquetry that would sometimes return in a momentary flash, then disappear. Christine tasted the wine as the traditions of the table require, then made a sign to the ancient Nubian waiter and he poured out two full glasses. As he sipped the wine, Zaki told her what had happened. She listened attentively, then said dismissively, pronouncing the French words in her own specially smooth and musical way, “Zaki, you’re exaggerating. It’s just an ordinary quarrel.”
“Dawlat threw me out.”
“Just an impulsive act born of too much anger. In a day or two, go and apologize to her. Dawlat has a short temper, but she’s good-hearted. And don’t forget, you did lose her valuable ring and any woman in the world will throw you out if you lose her jewelry.”
Christine said this light-heartedly, but Zaki remained gloomy and said sorrowfully, “Dawlat has been planning for a long time to throw me out of the apartment and the loss of the ring has given her the excuse. I offered to buy her a new ring, but she refused.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Dawlat wants to get her hands on the apartment for herself.”
“Why?”
“My dear friend. I’m not religious, as you know, and there are things I never give any thought to, such as the estate and the division of bequests.”
Christine looked at him questioningly and he went on to explain, pouring himself another glass, “I have never married and I have no children. When I die, my possessions will go to Dawlat and her children. She wants to secure everything for her children right now. Yesterday, during the quarrel, she said to me, ‘I will never let you squander our rights.’ Imagine! Just like that, in the clearest way possible! She considers everything I own to be her children’s by right, as though I were just the steward of my wealth. She wants to inherit from me before I die. Do you understand now?”
“No, Zaki.”
Christine, who seemed to have become a little inebriated, shouted the last words, and when Zaki tried to speak, she interrupted him heatedly, “Dawlat could never think that way!”
“After all these years, you’re still naive. Why are you amazed at evil? You think like a child. You think that the good people should be smiling and jolly and the bad ones have ugly faces with thick, matted eyebrows. Life’s a lot more complicated than that. There’s evil in the best of people and in those closest to us.”
“My dear philosopher, you exaggerate. Listen. Let’s bet a large bottle of Black Label. I’ll call Dawlat tonight and make peace between you. Then I’ll make you buy the bottle and don’t you dare go back on your word!”
Zaki left Maxim’s and wandered aimlessly around Downtown. Then he returned to his office, where Abaskharon (who was aware of what had happened) met him with an appropriately sad expression on his face and prepared his drink and snacks quickly and fervently, as though offering condolences. Zaki took his drink out onto the balcony, still at that point harboring some hope of making up with Dawlat. He felt that in the end she was his sister and she couldn’t do him harm. Half an hour passed and then the telephone rang. He heard Christine’s voice, sounding embarrassed, say, “Zaki. I called Dawlat. I’m sorry. She seems to have really gone mad and is set on expelling you from the apartment. She said she’s changed the lock and she’ll be sending you your clothes tomorrow. I can’t believe what’s happened. Can you imagine, she talked about legal measures she’s going to take against you?”
“What legal measures?”
“She didn’t explain, but you’d better be careful, Zaki. Expect anything from her.”
The following day Abaskharon appeared with a lad from the street carrying a large suitcase in which Dawlat had sent all Zaki’s clothes. This was followed by a series of summonses from the police station, as Dawlat had made a number of reports with the intention of proving her legal right to possession of the apartment and had got an undertaking of non-harassment from Zaki. Friends tried to act as go-betweens to arrange a reconciliation between the two, but Dawlat refused. Zaki called her several times on the telephone, but she hung up in his face and eventually he consulted a lawyer, who told him that his position while not bad was not especially good, since the apartment was rented in his father’s name and it was Dawlat’s right to live in it. He also stressed to him that the law moved slowly and that the proper thing to do in such situations was to use force. He ought — it was most unfortunate — to hire some thugs, throw Dawlat out of the apartment, prevent her from going back in, and let her go to court; this was the only way to settle such disputes.
Zaki agreed to the lawyer’s idea and suggested that the door be broken and the lock changed on Sunday morning, when Dawlat normally went to the bank. He affirmed to the lawyer that neither the doorkeeper nor any of the neighbors would prevent him from carrying out the plan. He spoke enthusiastically and seriously but in his heart knew very well that he would never do any of it. He would never hire thugs, he would never throw Dawlat out, and he would never take her to court. He couldn’t do it.
Is he afraid of her? Maybe. He never confronts her. He always backs down in front of her and he’s not a fighter by nature; from the time he was little, he has hated conflicts and problems and avoided them at any cost. And in addition, he’ll never throw her out because she’s his sister. Even in the event that he should recover the apartment from her and throw her out onto the street, he wouldn’t be happy. His struggle with her saddens him because he cannot bring himself to think of her as a vicious and wicked person, whatever she might do. He cannot forget the way she once was, which he loved. How delicate and shy she used to be, and how she’s changed! He’s sad because his relationship with his only sister has deteriorated to this point and he thinks of what she has done and asks himself where she acquired this cruelty. How could she have brought herself to throw him out in front of the neighbors? And how was she able to sit in front of the officer at the police station and make out a report against her brother? Doesn’t she even once consider that he’s her brother and that he’s never done anything to her bad enough to deserve such a reward? And again, is a little property worth the loss of one’s family? True, the land that he’d recovered from the land reform has increased several times over in value, but all of it will go back to Dawlat and her children on his death in any case, so why all the problems and disrespect?
Zaki felt the melancholy spreading little by little and throwing its black shadow over his life and he spent whole nights unable to sleep, during which he would stay up on the balcony till morning, drinking and smoking, and going over in his mind the events of the past, sometimes thinking that he had been unlucky from the time he was born. Even the timing of his birth had been inauspicious, and if he’d been born fifty years earlier, his whole life would have been different. If the Revolution had failed, if King Farouk had made haste to arrest the Free Officers — who were known to him by name — the Revolution would never have taken place and Zaki would have lived the life he was supposed to — Zaki Bey, son of Abd el Aal Basha el Dessouki. He would have made minister for sure, perhaps prime minister — a great life, truly befitting him, instead of a life of aimlessness and humiliation. A prostitute drugs him and robs him and his sister throws him out and exposes him to scandal in front of the neighbors and he ends up sleeping in his office with Abaskharon. Is it bad luck or a failing in his character that always drives him to make the wrong decision? Why did he stay in Egypt after the Revolution? He could have gone to France and started a new life, as many children of the big families had done. There he would certainly have attained a position of note as friends had done who were less than he in all respects. But he had stayed in Egypt and started to acclimatize himself to the deteriorating situation little by little until he had sunk to these depths. And then… why hadn’t he married? When he was a young man, many rich and beautiful women had wanted him, but he’d kept refusing marriage until the chance was gone. If he had gotten married, he would now have grown-up children to take care of him and grandchildren to play with and love. If he’d had even just one child, Dawlat would not have done all that to him, and if he’d married, he wouldn’t feel that killing, agonizing loneliness, that pitch-black sense of mortality that sweeps over him whenever he hears of the death of one of his friends. The unanswerable question that comes to him every night as he takes refuge in his bed is, “When will death come, and how?” He thinks now of a friend of his who prophesied his own death. He was sitting with him on the balcony of the office and directed a strange look at him, out of the blue, as though he had noticed something on the horizon. Then he said quietly, “My death is close, Zaki. I can smell it.”
The strange thing was that his friend did indeed die a few days later even though he wasn’t sick. This incident makes him wonder (when depressed or downcast), does death have a special smell that a person exudes at the end of his life, so that he becomes aware of his approaching end? And how will the end be? Will death be like a long sleep from which one never wakes up? Or is there a resurrection, a reward, and a punishment, as the religious believe? Will God torture him after his death? He isn’t religious and he doesn’t, it’s true, pray or fast. But he has never hurt anyone in his life, he hasn’t cheated, he hasn’t stolen, he hasn’t deprived others of their rights, and he’s never been slow to help the poor. Apart from alcohol and women, he doesn’t believe that he’s committed crimes in the true sense of the word.
These dispiriting thoughts took possession of Zaki for many long days after he had spent about three weeks living in the office — three weeks of worry and care, which ended one morning with a pleasant surprise that drove away his sorrow just as a long night dissolves in one magical moment. Zaki will always remember the happy sight, rehearsing in his mind hundreds of times, accompanied by cheerful music, how he was sitting on the balcony sipping his morning coffee, smoking, and watching the crowded street when Abaskharon appeared swinging on his crutch with, on his face, instead of its usual ingratiating cast, a mysterious, cunning smile.
“What do you want?” Zaki Bey accosted him with distaste in a warning growl. But something exceptional and quite certain gave Abaskharon an unaccustomed confidence and he came up to his master and bent down and whispered, “Excellency, my brother Malak and I have something to talk about.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Something about you, Excellency, as it were.”
“Speak out, you donkey! I’m in no mood for your nonsense. What is it?”
At this Abaskharon leaned over him and whispered, “We have a seccaterry for Your Excellency. A very nice young girl. Excuse the boldness, but Your Excellency in these bad circumstances is in need of a seccaterry to take care of Your Excellency.”
Zaki started paying attention and directed a deep, penetrating look at Abaskharon as though he had received a special coded message or heard a sentence in a secret language that he understood. He answered quickly, “And why not? Am I to see her?”
In response to the desire to torture his master a little, Abaskharon at first said nothing. Then he said slowly, “Your Excellency would like to see her?”
The Bey nodded his head quickly and pretended to look at the street to hide his excitement. In the manner of a conjurer revealing his surprise at the end of the trick, Abaskharon turned around, moved away banging the floor with his crutch, and disappeared for ten minutes. Then he came back with her.
This is the moment Zaki will never forget — when he saw her for the first time. She was wearing a white dress covered with large green flowers that clung to her body and revealed its details, her plump, soft arms emerging from the short sleeves. Abaskharon led her forward by the hand and said, “Miss Busayna el Sayed. Her late father was a good man and he lived with us here on the roof. God have mercy on him, he was more than a brother to me and Malak.”
Busayna advanced with her small, swinging, undulating steps. Then she smiled, her face lighting up in a way that stole Zaki’s heart, and said, “Good morning, Excellency.”
Those who knew Taha el Shazli in the past might have difficulty in recognizing him now. He has changed totally, as though he had swapped his former self for another, new one. It isn’t just a matter of the Islamic dress that he has adopted in place of his Western clothes, nor of his beard, which he has let grow and which gives him a dignified and impressive appearance greater than his real age, nor of the small space for prayer that he has set up next to the elevator in the lobby of the building, where he takes turns in giving the call to prayer with another bearded brother who is an engineering student and lives on the fifth floor. All these are changes in appearance. Inside, however, he has been possessed by a new, powerful, bounding spirit. He has taken to walking, sitting, and speaking to people in the building in a new way. Gone forever are the old cringing timidity and meekness before the residents. Now he faces them with self-confidence. He no longer cares a hoot for what they think, and he won’t put up with the least reproach or slight from them. He’s no longer interested in those small banknotes that they used to give him and which he used to save in order to buy his new things, in the first place because of his firm faith that God will provide for him and secondly because Sheikh Shakir has got him involved in the sale of religious books — small errands that he undertakes in his spare time and which bring him in a reasonable amount.
He is now training himself to love or hate people “in God.” He has learned from the sheikh that men are too despicable and lowly to be loved or hated for their this-worldly characteristics. On the contrary, our feelings toward them should be determined by the degree to which they observe God’s Law. This has changed the way he looks at many things. He used to like a number of the residents because they were good to him and gave generously. Now he has started to hate them “in God” because they don’t pray and some of them drink alcohol. He has come to love his brethren in the Gamaa Islamiya so much that he would sacrifice his life for them. All his old, worldly standards have crumbled like an ancient fragile building and their place has been taken by a true, Islamic evaluation of people and things. The power of faith has filled his heart and made him into a new being, liberated from fear and evil. He no longer fears death or holds any created being in awe, no matter what its strength or influence. He no longer fears anything whatsoever in his life except that he disobey God and merit His anger.
The credit for this is due to God, Great and Glorious, and next to God, to Sheikh Shakir who has provided him whenever they meet with increased faith in God and knowledge of Islam. Taha has come to love him and cling to him and has become one of those who are so close to him that after a while the sheikh granted him permission to visit him at his home at any time, an intimate status the sheikh grants to only his most trusted associates.
Only one thing remains of the old dispensation in Taha’s soul — his love for Busayna. He has tried hard to subject his feelings for her to his new way of thinking, and failed. He has striven to convince her of the need to follow God’s Law. He took her the book Dress Modestly Lest Ye Be Judged and pressured her to read it and kept on at her until he got her to accompany him to the Anas ibn Malik mosque, where she listened with him to Sheikh Shakir’s sermon. To his astonishment and disappointment, however, she was not impressed. Indeed she told him frankly that it was boring, which led to a quarrel. They have started quarreling a lot when they meet, with her always provoking him so that he gets angry and goes away each time determined to make a final break with her, seeing in his mind’s eye the calm, beaming smile that Sheikh Shakir gives him whenever he speaks to him of Busayna, and of his words, “My boy, you will never guide to righteousness those whom you love, but God will guide to righteousness those whom He wills.” The sheikh’s words reverberate in his thoughts and he promises himself never to see her again, then he goes back on his word after a few days, distressed and yearning for her. But every time he comes back to make up with her after a quarrel, her coldness toward him increases.
Today, though, he did not go to the university, specifically so that he could see her. He waited for her at the entrance to the building as she came out in the morning and accosted her, saying, “Good morning, Busayna. I want a word with you, please.”
“I’m busy.”
Such was her uncivil answer as she ignored him and proceeded for a few steps. He, however, could not control himself and pulled her by the hand, though she resisted for a moment before yielding and whispering in panic, “Let go of my hand! No scenes!” The two then walked silently and warily among the people in the street till they got to their favorite place in Tawfikiya Square. As soon as they sat down, she burst out angrily, “What do you want from me? Do you have to make problems every day?”
Strangely, his own anger disappeared rapidly, as though it had never been, and he waited for a moment. Then he said in a voice that he tried hard to make calm, as though he wanted to conciliate her, “I beg you, Busayna, don’t be angry with me!”
“I’m asking you, what do you want from me?”
“I want to confirm something I heard.”
“Confirmed.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning everything you’ve heard is true.”
She was challenging him and pushing the conversation to the edge.
“You’ve left Talal’s store?”
“I left the job at Talal’s and I’m working for Zaki el Dessouki. Is that bad, or a sin, Your Reverence?”
In a weak voice he said, “Zaki el Dessouki has a bad reputation.”
“Sure, he’s got a bad reputation and he likes women, but he pays me six hundred pounds a month. And seeing that I have a family to support and seeing that your good self can’t pay me the cost of schools, food, and drink, it’s none of your business!”
“Busayna, fear God! You’re a good person. Take care you don’t make Our Lord angry! Do what’s right and leave it to God to provide!”
“I agree, it’s up to God to provide. Unfortunately, we just aren’t finding enough to eat.”
“I can find you a respectable job.”
“Find yourself a job, sweetheart! I’m perfectly happy with mine.”
“That’s how you want it?”
“Yes, that’s how I want it. Anything else?”
She asked him this sarcastically, then irritation swept over her again, so she got up and stood in front of him and said, arranging her hair in readiness to depart, “Listen, Taha. I’m telling you — bottom line, it’s over between us. Each one goes his own way. And there’s no call for us to meet again, if you don’t mind.”
Then she smiled ambiguously and said as she moved away, “You’ve even grown your beard and become observant, and I wear short skirts and go about uncovered. We don’t look right together.”
Sheikh Shakir’s apartment is cramped and humble. The house consists of two stories built of red brick in a narrow alley in Dar el Salam. In the two bedrooms and a parlor live Sheikh Shakir, his two wives, and his seven sons and daughters, who are at different stages of their schooling. The sheikh and his student visitors have agreed on a signal by which he can recognize them — three knocks with spaces in between.
This was the knock that Taha el Shazli used, and he heard the voice of the sheikh saying from inside, “Coming!” Then he heard a sound which told him that the women had gone into the farther room and the slow, heavy footsteps of the sheikh and the sound of him clearing his throat were audible. After a short while the sheikh opened the door, saying “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate” as he did so.
“Taha! Welcome, my boy.”
“Sorry to disturb you but I want to talk to you a little.”
“Come in, please. You didn’t go to the university today?”
Taha sat on the sofa next to the window and recounted what had happened with Busayna. He told everything and described his feelings to the sheikh, who listened carefully, playing with his prayer beads. The talk was interrupted for a few minutes when the sheikh got up to bring the tea tray, after which he continued to listen until Taha had finished talking. He thought for a while, and then said, “My boy, the True Religion does not forbid love so long as it is legitimate and does not lead to disobedience to God’s Law. Indeed, the noblest of God’s creations, the Chosen One — blessings and peace be upon him — loved the Lady Aisha and spoke of this in sound reports whose validity is generally accepted. The difficulty lies in choosing the woman deserving of your emotions. What should the specifications of this woman be? The Prophet — God bless him and give him peace — said, ‘A woman may be taken in marriage for her beauty, her wealth, or her religion. Take you the religious woman, and, God willing, wealth will follow’ (God’s Prophet has spoken truly). A proper Islamic upbringing would have prevented you from falling into a difficulty such as that from which you are now suffering. You and all the children of your generation did not receive an Islamic upbringing because you grew up in the secular state and received a secular education. Thus you grew accustomed to thinking in a way that excludes religion. Now you have returned to Islam with your hearts, but your minds will take a while before they rid themselves of secularism and are purified for Islam. Learn, as I have said to you so many times, how to love in God and hate in God, for otherwise your Islam will never be complete. The distress from which you are now suffering is a natural and inevitable result of your distance from God, even though this be in only one aspect of your life. If you had asked yourself at the beginning of your relationship with this friend of yours how observant she was, if you had made her adherence to Islam a condition for your having a relationship with her, you would not find yourself where you are now.”
The sheikh poured out two glasses of tea and offered one to Taha. Then he placed the pot on the metal tray, whose color had been transformed by age, and said, slowly sipping his tea, “God knows how much I love you, my boy, and I hate you to come to your sheikh in sorrow only for him to give you a lecture instead of consoling you. But, by God, my sincere advice to you is this: forget this young woman, Taha, because she’s gone astray. You are an observant young man, a believer, and a girl who is a Muslim like you would be better for you. Force yourself to forget and seek help in prayer and the recitation of the Qur’an. It will be difficult at the beginning but will get easier for you later, God willing. Then again, have you forgotten your religion, Taha? What’s become of gihad, Taha? What’s become of your duty to Islam and the Muslims? Yesterday the filthy war began, with our rulers allowing themselves to be forced into fighting Muslims and under the command of unbelievers. It is the duty of all young Muslims in Egypt to rise up against this unbelieving government. Are you willing, Taha, to hang back in aiding the Muslims, who are being killed in their thousands every day, and occupy yourself with an erring young woman who has deserted you in favor of abomination? God, Mighty and Glorious, will not ask you on the Day of Resurrection about Busayna, but He will hold you to account for what you did to support the Muslims. What will you say to God on the day of the Great Gathering?”
Taha hung his head and appeared moved. Then he said in grief and shame, “I have promised God more than once that I’d forget her, but unfortunately I start thinking of her again.”
“Satan will not give your soul up easily and you will not achieve true devotion in one go. The gihad of the soul, Taha, is the Greater Gihad, as the Messenger of God — God bless him and give him peace — called it.”
“What should I do, Master?”
“You must pray and recite the Qur’an. Apply yourself constantly to them, my boy, until God brings you relief and promise me, my boy, that you will not see this young woman again, whatever the circumstances.”
Taha looked at the sheikh and said nothing.
“This is an undertaking between you and me, Taha, and I’m confident that you’ll keep it, God willing.”
The sheikh then rose, opened the drawer of the old desk, took out some pictures from foreign newspapers and threw them in Taha’s lap, saying, “Look at these pictures. Examine them well. These are your Muslim brethren in Iraq whose bodies have been torn apart by the Coalition’s bombs. Look at how the bodies have been rent apart, including those of women and children. This is what they do to Muslims and their children, and our traitorous rulers participate with the unbelievers in their crimes.”
Then the sheikh picked out a photo and held it in front of Taha’s eyes and said, “Look at the face of this Iraqi child, ripped open by American bombs. Is not this innocent child as much your responsibility as your sister and your mother? What are you doing to aid her? Is there still a place in your heart for sorrow over your erring friend?”
The photo of the disfigured child was extremely upsetting and Taha said bitterly, “The children of Muslims are slaughtered in this hideous way, while Egyptian television is crawling with scholars from el Azhar affirming that the Egyptian government’s position is sound in Islamic Law and claiming that Islam supports the alliance with America to strike Iraq.”
For the first time the sheikh showed excitement and his voice rose. “Those scholars are hypocrites and evildoers. They are the pet jurists of the sultans and their sin in God’s eyes is great. Islam absolutely forbids us to participate with unbelievers in the killing of Muslims, whatever the reasons. Any schoolchild doing their first class in the Law knows the authorities for this.”
Taha nodded in agreement with the words of the sheikh, who suddenly said, as though he had just thought of something, “Listen. Tomorrow, God willing, our brothers are organizing a big demonstration at the university. I hope you won’t stay away.”
He was silent for a moment, then went on, “I shan’t be able to lead the demonstration myself, but your brother Tahir will be your commander tomorrow, God willing. The assembly point is in front of the auditorium after the noon prayer.”
Taha nodded, then stood up and asked permission to leave, but the sheikh asked him to wait and disappeared inside for a little. He returned smiling and said, handing him a small book, “This is the Islamic Action Charter. I’d like you to read it, then we can discuss it later. This book, Taha, will make you forget, God willing, all the bad thoughts that haunt you.”
The animals were slaughtered on the Friday morning — three huge bullocks that had spent the night next to the elevator in the lobby of the Yacoubian Building. At the call to the dawn prayer, five butchers fell on them, trussed them, and slit their throats; then they spent hours flaying them, cutting them up, and loading the meat into bags, ready for distribution. No sooner had the noon prayer come to an end than the crowds in Suleiman Basha swelled with troops of people making their way to the Azzam stores. They were extremely poor: beggars, privates in the police force, barefoot boys, and women garbed in black carrying or dragging behind them their small children. All came to take their share of the sacrificial meat that Hagg Azzam was giving away to mark the occasion of his victory in the elections. In front of the main entrance to the store stood Fawzi, Hagg Azzam’s eldest son, in a white gallabiya, taking the bags of meat and throwing them to the people, who had formed a surging crowd and were shoving one another to get at the meat. Fights broke out and injuries occurred, and the store’s employees were obliged to make a cordon and beat the surging people back with their shoes to keep them away from the glass display windows before they broke under the weight of their bodies. Inside, Hagg Azzam sat at the front wearing a smart blue suit with a white shirt and a crumpled red tie, his face beaming with joy.
The results of the elections had been announced officially on Thursday evening, Hagg Azzam winning the People’s Assembly Workers’ seat for Kasr el Nil and scoring a sweeping victory over his opponent Abu Himeida, who obtained only a very few votes (El Fouli had decided that his defeat should be overwhelming and ringing, as an example to anyone else who might disobey his instructions in the future). Hagg Azzam felt a genuine, deep gratitude to God, Almighty and Glorious, who had supplied him, of His bounty and His support, a clear victory. He performed more than twenty prostrations in thankful prayer the moment he heard the news and issued his instructions for the slaughter of the bullocks. He also secretly distributed more than twenty thousand pounds to poor families whose needs he himself took care of and gave a further twenty thousand to Sheikh el Samman to be spent on charitable purposes under his supervision, not to mention the twenty golden guineas he donated to Sheikh el Samman on this occasion.
A different feeling toyed with Hagg Azzam’s heart when he thought of Souad: how should he celebrate his fabulous win with her that night? He reviewed the details of her soft, warm body in his mind’s eye and felt that he truly loved her. He said to himself that the Messenger of God — God bless him and give him peace — was right when he described women as bringers of good fortune. There were indeed some blessed women whom a man had only to take as a partner for him to be inundated with good fortune, and Souad was one of them. She had brought victory and blessing and here he now was, triumphant and about to enter the People’s Assembly. Verily, there was nothing more wonderful than divine providence! He was now the People’s Assembly member for the residents of the constituency of Kasr el Nil, who at one time had held out their shoes to him for him to clean, and looked down on him from above, and generously given him their pennies. Now he was the Honorable Member, enjoying legal immunity, which prevented anyone from taking action against him without the Assembly’s permission. From now on his picture would appear in the press and on television and he would meet every day with the ministers and shake their hands, equal to equal. He was no longer merely a rich businessman, he was a statesman and he would have to deal with everyone on that basis. Starting from now, he would begin the great work that would catapult him to the level of the giants. The next step would take him to the summit; he would be one of the five or six movers and shakers in the whole country provided the deals he was planning in order to move him from the millionaire to the billionaire bracket went through. He might in fact become the richest man in Egypt and become a minister. Yes indeed! Why not? When God is willing, nothing is impossible; hadn’t he dreamed of becoming a member of the People’s Assembly? Money makes short work of problems and brings the distant goal within reach. One day he might achieve a ministry, just as he had the Assembly.
He remained sunk in his ponderings until the call to the afternoon prayer rang out and he led the store’s employees in prayer as usual, even though (and he asked God’s forgiveness for this) his mind did wander more than once as he was praying to Souad’s body. As soon as he had finished the prayer and said his beads, he hurriedly left, entered the Yacoubian Building, and rode the elevator to the seventh floor. What deliciously insistent, burning desire he felt as he turned the key in the door and found before him Souad, exactly as he had imagined her, waiting for him in the red robe that showed off her stunning charms, and that smell of perfume that stole into his nose and tickled his senses! She came toward him with a vampish gait and passion took possession of him as he listened to her footsteps and the rustling of the robe on the floor. Then she took him in her arms and whispered, her lips brushing his ear, “Congratulations, my darling! A thousand congratulations!”
At rare and exceptional moments Souad Gaber appears as she really is. A look suddenly flashes from her eyes like a spark and her face recovers its original appearance, exactly as an actor returns to his own character on finishing a role, takes off his costume, and wipes the makeup off his face. On such occasions, a serious, slowly awakening look suggestive of a certain degree of hardness and determination appears on Souad’s face and reveals her true nature. This may happen at any time — while she’s eating with the Hagg or chatting with him of an evening; even while she’s with him in bed, she may be twisting and turning in his arms as she does her best to rouse his feeble virility and that spark will flash in her eyes confirming that her mind never stops working, even in the heat of passion.
Often she astonishes even herself with her newfound capacity to take on fake roles. She was never a liar before. All her life long she has been used to saying whatever’s on her mind — so where did all this acting come from? She plays with skill the role of the jealous, compassionate, yearning, loving wife and like a professional actor has learned to control her emotions perfectly: she cries, laughs, and gets angry whenever she decides to do so. Right now, in bed with Hagg Azzam, she is playing out a scene — that of the woman who, taken unawares by her husband’s virility, surrenders to him so that he may do with her body whatever his extraordinary strength may demand, her eyes closed, panting, and sighing — while in reality she feels nothing except rubbing, just the rubbing of two naked bodies, cold and annoying. With that sharp, lurking, unblinking awareness of hers, she contemplates Hagg Azzam’s exhausted body, whose brief last hurrah came to an end and whose feebleness manifested itself after one month of marriage, and averts her eyes from the whiteness of his old, wrinkled skin, the few, scattered hairs of his chest, and his small, dark nipples. She feels nauseated whenever she touches his body, as though she were putting her hand on a lizard or a revolting, slimy frog and each time she thinks of the slim, hard body of Masoud, her first husband, with whom she knew love for the first time.
Those were beautiful days. She smiles when she thinks how much she loved him and how she longed to see him, her body burning with his touches and the feel of his hot breath on her neck and breast. She would make love with him hotly and melt, swooning in pleasure and, when she recovered herself, feel shame. She’d turn her face well away from him and spend a while avoiding looking at his face, while he’d roar with laughter and say in his strong, deep voice, “My oh my! What’s the matter with you, girl, that you’re so shy? Did we do something naughty? It’s God’s Law, you silly girl!”
How lovely that time had been and how far away it seemed now! She had loved her husband and all that she’d wanted from the world was for them to live together and raise a boy. She swore she didn’t want money and she didn’t have any demands. She was happy in her small apartment in El Asafra South next to the railway tracks doing the washing and cooking, preparing Tamir’s feeds, and mopping the floor. Then she would take a shower, put on makeup, and wait for Masoud at the end of the day. She thought her home was as spacious, clean, and well-lit as a palace, and when he informed her that he had got a work contract in Iraq, she had rejected the idea, flaring up and fighting and banning him from her bed for several days in order to dissuade him from traveling. She had shouted in his face, “You’d go off abroad and leave us on our own?”
“A year or two and I’ll be back with lots of money.”
“That’s what everyone says and they never come back.”
“So you like being poor? We’re living day to day. Are we going to go our whole lives borrowing money?”
“Soon enough the little one will be grown up.”
“Only in this country! Here everything’s backward! Here it’s the old who go on living and the young who die. Money begets money and poverty begets poverty.”
He spoke with the calm of one who has made up his mind. How she regrets now that she obeyed him! If only she’d fought him to the last, if only she’d walked out on him, he would have given in and dropped the idea of traveling — he had loved her and couldn’t bear to be far away from her. But she had surrendered easily and let him go. Everything is fated and decreed. Masoud had gone away and never come back. She was sure he had died in the war and that they had buried him over there, and everyone had written him off as vanished. It had happened like that to many families that she knew in Alexandria. It wasn’t possible that Masoud would have abandoned them and left his son. Impossible! It could only be that he’d died and gone to God and left her to bear her bitter lot alone.
The time of love and passion and shame and beauty had ended. She’d endured hardship and gone hungry to raise her son and though men all had different faces, bodies, and clothes, their look was always the same — violating her, undressing her, and promising her everything if she’d say yes. She had resisted fiercely and with difficulty and feared that one day she might get tired and give in. Her job at Hannaux’s was exhausting. The wages were poor, the child’s expenses grew, and the burden was as heavy as a mountain. All her relatives — even her brother Hamidu — were poor, living like her from one day to the next, or creeps who would help her out with nice words and excuse themselves with spurious arguments from lending her money.
She lived through years so hard that she almost lost faith in God and more than once weakened and was on the verge of falling into sin out of an excess of despair and need. And when Hagg Azzam asked for her hand in legal marriage, she worked things out minutely. She would give the Hagg her body in return for her son’s expenses. She never touched the dowry that Hagg Azzam gave her but deposited it in Tamir’s name in the bank so that it would triple in ten years. The days of emotion were over and the whole thing was now calculated — one thing in return for another, by agreement and mutual consent. She would sleep with this old man for two hours everyday, leave her son in Alexandria, and collect her wages.
True, she’s rent with longing for Tamir and at night often feels his place next to her in the bed and cries scalding tears. The other morning when she walked in front of an elementary school and saw the children in their school uniforms, she thought of him and cried and was wracked by sorrow and longing for days. She saw herself carrying his warm little body from the bed and washing his face for him in the bathroom and dressing him in his school clothes and getting his breakfast ready and playing tricks on him to make him drink up all his milk. Then she would leave with him and they would ride the tram to school.
Where is he now? How she worries about him! He’s on his own and far away and she’s in this large, cold, detestable city where she knows no one, living on her own in a large apartment in which she owns nothing, hiding from people like a thief or a loose woman. Her sole function is to sleep with this old man who every day lies down on top of her and suffocates her with his exhausted, dangling impotence and the touch of his smooth, disgusting body. He doesn’t want her to go to Tamir, and when she speaks to him about it, his face darkens and he appears jealous, while she longs for her son at every second and wants to see him now and hug him hard and smell his smell and stroke his smooth, black hair. If only she could bring him to live with her in Cairo! But Hagg Azzam will never agree to that and has made it a condition from the beginning that she leave the boy behind. He said to her clearly, “I’m marrying you on your own without children. Are we agreed?” She recalls his cold, cruel face at that moment and hates him from the depths of her heart but convinces herself once more that everything she’s doing is for the sake of Tamir and his future. What use would it be to him to live in his mother’s arms while both of them begged from friends and strangers?
She ought to thank Azzam and be grateful to him, not hate him. At least he has married her properly and taken her expenses in charge. This direct, practical idea governs her relations with the Hagg. He has rights over her body as per the legal agreement. He has the right to come to her whenever and however he wishes, and it is her obligation always to be ready, waiting for him every day after having made herself up and put on perfume. It is his right to remain unaware of her coldness toward him and that she should never make him feel his impotence or his shortcomings in bed.
Consequently she now had recourse to a trick that she had learned by instinct to save him embarrassment. Gasping and scratching his back with her nails and pretending to reach climax, she hugged his ruined body and threw her head on his chest as though drugged by the orgasm. Soon afterward she opened her eyes and started kissing him on his beard and neck and massaging his chest with her fingers. Then she whispered in an insinuating voice, “By the way… where’s my treat for your success in the elections?”
“Of course, my dear. A nice big present.”
“God preserve you for me, my darling! Look, I’m going to ask you a question and you have to answer me frankly.”
The Hagg propped his back against the end of the bed and looked at her with interest, keeping his hand on her bare shoulder. She said, “Do you love me?”
“Lots, Souad, and Our Lord knows that for a fact.”
“So if I asked for anything in the world you’d do it for me?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, don’t forget to keep your word.”
He looked at her uncertainly, but she had decided not to confront him this evening, so she said, “I’m going to tell you about something important. Next week, God willing.”
“Go on. Tell me this evening.”
“No, my darling. Let me make sure first.”
The Hagg laughed and said, “It’s a riddle?”
She kissed him and whispered in a seductive voice, “Yes… a riddle.”
Homosexuals, it is said, often excel in professions that depend on contact with other people, such as public relations, acting, brokering, and the law. Their success in these fields is attributable to their lack of that sense of shame that costs others opportunities, while their sexual lives, filled as they are with diverse and unusual encounters, give them deeper insight into human nature and make them more capable of influencing others. Homosexuals also excel in professions associated with taste and beauty, such as interior decoration and clothing design; it is well known that the most famous clothes designers in the world are homosexuals, perhaps because their dual sexual nature enables them to design women’s clothes that are attractive to men and vice versa.
Those who know Hatim Rasheed may differ about him but are bound to acknowledge his refined taste and his authentic talent in choosing colors and clothes. Even in his bedroom with his lovers, Hatim deems himself too good for the camp taste that many homosexuals affect. He tries rather, with practiced touches, to bring out the feminine side of his beauty. He wears transparent gallabiyas embroidered with beautiful colors over his naked body, is clean-shaven, applies an appropriate and carefully calculated amount of eye pencil to his eyebrows, and uses a small amount of eye shadow. Then he brushes his smooth hair back or leaves stray locks over his forehead. By these means he always attempts, in making himself attractive, to realize the model of the beautiful youth of ancient times.
Hatim applied the same sensitive taste when he bought new clothes for his friend Abduh — tight pants that showed off the strength of his muscles, shirts and undershirts in light colors to illuminate his dark face, and collars that were always open to reveal the muscles of his neck and the thick hair on his chest. Hatim was generous with Abduh. He gave him lots of money, which Abduh sent to his family, and got him a recommendation to the camp commander so that his treatment improved and they granted him holidays one after another, all of which he spent with Hatim, as though they were newlyweds on their honeymoon. They would wake up in the middle of the morning and enjoy having nothing to do and being lazy, eating in the best restaurants, watching movies at the cinema, and shopping. Late at night they would go to bed together and, after satisfying their bodies, would lie in each other’s arms in the dim light of the lamp, sometimes talking until the morning — moments of tenderness that Hatim would never forget. His thirst for love quenched, he would cling like a frightened child to Abduh’s strong body, nuzzling his coarse brown skin like a cat and telling him about everything: his childhood, his father and his French mother, and his first beloved, Idris. The amazing thing was that Abduh, despite his youth and his ignorance, was capable of sympathizing with Hatim’s feelings and became more accepting of their relationship. The first aversion disappeared, to be replaced by a deliciously sinful craving, plus the money and the respect and the new clothes and fine food, and the high-class places that Abduh had not dreamed he would one day enter; and, at night, in the street, when he was coming back in Hatim’s company, Abduh loved to pass by the privates of the Central Security forces with his elegant appearance and greet them from a distance, as though proving to himself that he had become for a time something different from those poor wretches standing long hours, for no good reason or purpose, in the sun and the cold.
The two friends lived days of pure bliss. Then came Abduh’s birthday, an occasion which Abduh assured Hatim was of no importance to him since, in Upper Egypt, they celebrated only weddings and circumcisions but which Hatim insisted on celebrating all the same. Taking him out in the car and smiling, he said, “I’ve got a surprise for you tonight.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“Be patient. You’ll know soon,” murmured Hatim, his face wearing an expression of childlike playfulness as he drove the car in an unaccustomed direction. He proceeded along Salah Salim and entered Medinet Nasr, then turned off and took a small side street. The shops were closed and the street almost completely dark but a metal kiosk, newly painted and gleaming in the dark, appeared. The two got out of the car and stood in front of the kiosk. Then Abduh heard a jingling and saw Hatim take out a small chain of keys. He held these out to Abdah and said lovingly, “Here. Joyeux anniversaire, happy birthday. This is my present for you. I’m praying you’ll like it.”
“I don’t understand.”
Hatim let out a raucous laugh and said, “You Sa’idis! You’re thick as planks. This kiosk belongs to you. I used a lot of influence and got it from the governorate for you. As soon as you finish your army service, I’ll buy you some stock and you can just stand here and sell it.”
Then he drew closer and whispered, “This way, my darling, you can work, make money, and support your children, and at the same time I make sure that you’ll stay with me forever.”
Abduh let out a loud shout and started laughing and hugging Hatim and mumbling thanks. It was a beautiful night. They dined together in a fish restaurant in El Mohandiseen. Abduh on his own ate more than a kilo of shrimp with rice, and while eating they drank a whole bottle of Swiss wine. The bill came to more than seven hundred pounds, which Hatim paid with his credit card. When they were together that evening in bed, Hatim almost wept with the delicious pain. He felt as though he was hovering in the clouds and wished time would stop, right there. After the lovemaking they remained as usual clinging to each other in bed, the dim light from the tall candle dancing and throwing its shadows on the wall opposite, which was covered in decorative wallpaper.
Hatim spoke at length of his feelings toward Abduh, who stayed silent, looking ahead, his face suddenly serious. Hatim asked him anxiously, “What’s wrong, Abduh?… What is it?”
“I’m afraid, Hatim Bey.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of Our Lord, Almighty and Glorious.”
“What did you say?”
“Our Lord, Almighty and Glorious. I’m afraid He’ll punish us for what we do.”
Hatim said nothing and gazed at him in the dark. It seemed odd to him. The last thing he would have expected his lover to talk to him about was religion.
“What kind of talk is that, Abduh?”
“Sir, all my life I’ve been God-fearing. In the village they used to call me ‘Sheikh Abduh.’ I always prayed the proper prayers at the proper time in the mosque and I fasted in Ramadan and all the other times I’m supposed to… till I met you and I changed.”
“You want to pray, Abduh? Go ahead.”
“How can I pray when every night I drink alcohol and sleep with you? I feel as though Our Lord is angry with me and will punish me.”
“You think Our Lord will punish us because we love one another?”
“Our Lord has forbidden us that kind of love. It’s a very big sin. In the village there was a prayer leader called Sheikh Darawi, God have mercy on his soul, who was a righteous, holy man, and he used to say to us in the Friday sermon, ‘Beware sodomy, for it is a great sin and makes the throne of heaven shake in anger.’ ”
Hatim could no longer contain himself and he got out of bed, turned on the light, and lit a cigarette, looking with his handsome face and the flimsy nightgown over his naked body somewhat like an angry woman. He blew out cigarette smoke, then suddenly cried, “Really, Abduh, I don’t know what to do with you. What can I do for you more than this? I love you and I’m concerned for you and I try always to make you happy — and instead of thanking me, you, you go and make life miserable for me like this.”
Abduh continued to lie on his back in silence staring at the ceiling with his arm under his head. Hatim finished his cigarette and poured himself a glass of whisky, which he tossed off in a single gulp. Then he went back and sat next to Abduh and said quietly, “Listen, my darling. Our Lord is big and He has true mercy, nothing to do with what the ignorant sheikhs in your village say. There are lots of people who pray and fast and steal and do harm. Those are the ones Our Lord punishes. But us, I’m sure that Our Lord will forgive us because we don’t do anyone any harm. We just love one another. Abduh, please, don’t make things miserable. Tonight’s your birthday and we’re supposed to be happy.”
On this Sunday evening Busayna had spent two weeks in her new job, during which Zaki el Dessouki had taken all the preparatory steps: he had put her in charge, first of all, of certain chores — making a new telephone list, paying the electricity bill, and sorting out some old papers; then he had started to talk to her about himself and how lonely he felt and how sometimes he regretted not being married; he had complained to her about his sister Dawlat and said that he was sad at the way she’d behaved with him; he had started asking her about her family and her younger brothers and sisters; and from time to time he would flirt with her, complimenting her on her smart dress and her hairdo, which showed the beauty of her face to advantage, looking for a long time at her body — all in all a lot like a skilled player of billiards who directs his shots with confidence and calculation. She would receive his signals with a complicit smile (the contrast between her large salary and her trivial duties was enough to make her expected role quite clear). The hinting back and forth had gone on for several days, until he had said to her once as she was preparing to leave, “I feel so comfortable with you, Busayna. I do hope we can stay together forever.”
“I’m at your service,” said Busayna without hesitation, to clear the way for him. Then he took her hand and asked, “If I asked you to do something, would you do it for me?”
“If I could, certainly.”
He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them, to confirm what he meant, and then whispered, “Tomorrow, come later in the day… so we won’t be disturbed.”
The next day, while Busayna was in the bathroom removing the unwanted hair from her body, polishing her heels with pumice, and putting moisturizer on her hands and face, she thought about what had happened and it occurred to her that bodily contact with an old man like Zaki el Dessouki would be a bit strange and peculiar. She recalled that sometimes, when she came close to him, she would smell, along with the penetrating smell of cigarettes that his clothes gave off, another smell, coarse and ancient, that reminded her of the one that used to fill her nostrils when she was small and would hide in her mother’s old wooden clothes chest. She thought too that she felt some affection for him because he was well mannered and treated her with a certain délicatesse, and that he was indeed to be pitied, living alone at his age without wife or children.
In the evening, she went to him in the office and found that he had sent Abaskharon away early and had sat down on his own to wait for her. In front of him, there were a bottle of whisky, a glass, and a container of ice. His eyes were a little red and the smell of alcohol filled the room. He rose to greet her, then sat down and emptied what was left in the glass into his mouth and said sadly, “Have you heard what happened?”
“No, what?”
“Dawlat is bringing a case to have me declared legally incompetent.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that she’s asked the court to prevent me from disposing of my property.”
“Oh no! Why?”
“So that she can inherit from me while I’m still alive.”
Zaki said this bitterly, pouring himself another glass. Busayna felt sorry for him.
“Brothers and sisters often get angry with one another, but they never stop caring for one another,” she said.
“That’s what you think. All Dawlat can think of is money.”
“Perhaps if you spoke to her, sir?”
Zaki shook his head, meaning “There’s no point” and to change the subject asked her, “What will you drink?”
“Nothing, thank you.”
“You’ve never had a drink?”
“Never.”
“Just try one glass. It tastes bitter at first and then you feel good.”
“No thanks.”
“A pity. Drinking is very nice. Foreigners understand the importance of drinking more than we do.”
“I’ve noticed that you live just like a foreigner, sir.”
He smiled and gazed at her with love and tenderness, as though she were a precocious little girl. “Please, don’t call me ‘sir.’ I know I’m old, but you don’t have to keep reminding me. It’s true, I’ve spent my whole life with foreigners. I was educated in French schools and most of my friends were foreigners. I studied in France and lived there for years. I know Paris as well as I do Cairo.”
“They say Paris is beautiful.”
“Beautiful? The whole world’s to be found in Paris!”
“So why didn’t you go on living there?”
“That’s a long story.”
“Tell me. It’s not as though we’ve got any appointments to keep.”
She laughed to lighten his mood and he laughed too, for the first time. Then she moved closer and asked him affectionately, “Go on. Why didn’t you live in France?”
“There are lots of things I should have done with my life that I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. When I was your age, I used to think that I could do whatever I wanted. I used to make plans for my life and I was sure about everything. When I got older, I discovered that man controls almost nothing. Everything is fate.”
He felt himself getting melancholy so he sighed and asked her with a smile, “Would you like to travel?”
“Of course.”
“Where would you like to go?”
“Any place far away from this hole!”
“You hate Egypt?”
“Of course.”
“How can that be? Is there anyone who hates his own country?”
“I never got anything good from it to make me love it.”
She averted her face as she said this sentence. Zaki responded excitedly, “A person has to love his country because his country is his mother. Does anyone hate his mother?”
“That’s all songs and movies. Zaki Bey, people are suffering.”
“Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t be patriotic. Most of Egypt’s nationalist leaders were poor.”
“All that was in your day. Now people are really fed up.”
“Which people?”
“Everyone. For example, all the girls who were with me at commercial school wanted to get out of the country any way they could.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Of course.”
“If you can’t find good in your own country, you won’t find it anywhere else.”
The words slipped out from Zaki Bey, but he felt that they were ungracious so he smiled to lessen their impact on Busayna, who had stood up and was saying bitterly, “You don’t understand because you’re well-off. When you’ve stood for two hours at the bus stop or taken three different buses and had to go through hell every day just to get home, when your house has collapsed and the government has left you sitting with your children in a tent on the street, when the police officer has insulted you and beaten you just because you’re on a minibus at night, when you’ve spent the whole day going around the shops looking for work and there isn’t any, when you’re a fine sturdy young man with an education and all you have in your pockets is a pound, or sometimes nothing at all, then you’ll know why we hate Egypt.”
A heavy silence reigned between them and Zaki decided to change the subject, so he rose from his seat, went over to the tape recorder, and said gaily, “I’m going to play you the most beautiful voice in the world. A French singer called Edith Piaf, the most important singer in the history of France. Have you heard of her?”
“I don’t know French to start with.”
Zaki made a gesture with his hand indicating that that didn’t matter and pressed the button of the recorder. Lilting piano music emerged and Piaf ’s voice, warm, powerful, and pure, rose up as Zaki nodded his head to the rhythm and said, “This song reminds me of beautiful times.”
“What do the words say?”
“They speak of a girl standing in the midst of a crowd and then the people push her against her will in the direction of a man she doesn’t know, and as soon as she sees him she feels a beautiful feeling for him and wishes she could stay with him all her life, but suddenly the people push her far away from him. In the end she finds herself on her own and the person she loved is lost forever.”
“How sad!”
“Of course it’s got another meaning, which is that one can spend his whole life looking for the right person and, when he finds them, lose them.”
They were standing next to the desk, and as he spoke he moved toward her and placed his hands on her cheeks. Her nose filled with his coarse, ancient smell and he said, gazing into her eyes, “Did you like the song?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“You know, Busayna, I really needed to meet a woman like you.”
Busayna said nothing.
“You have very beautiful eyes.”
“Thank you.”
She whispered this, her face burning, and she let him come close enough to feel his lips on her face. Then he folded her in his arms and very soon she felt the acrid taste of the whisky in her mouth.
“Where are you off to, doll?” Malak asked her impertinently as he crossed her path in the morning in front of the elevator. Avoiding his eyes, she answered, “I’m going to work.”
Malak let out a loud laugh and said, “It looks like the work agrees with you.”
“Zaki Bey is a good man.”
“We’re all good people. What have you done about that other thing?”
“Nothing yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t had a chance yet.”
Malak knitted his brow, looked at her with something like anger, grabbed her hand hard, and said, “Listen, princess. This isn’t a game. He has to sign the contract this week. Got it?”
“All right.”
Freeing her hand from his grip, she got into the elevator.
The student protests had been going on in most faculties since early morning. They interrupted studies, closed the lecture halls, and then started moving around in large numbers shouting and carrying banners condemning the war in the Gulf. When the call to the noon prayer sounded, about five thousand male and female students lined up to perform the prayer in the forecourt in front of the auditorium (boys in front, girls behind), led by Brother Tahir, emir of the Gamaa Islamiya. Then the congregation said the prayer for the dead for the souls of the Muslim martyrs in Iraq. Shortly afterward Tahir climbed to the top of the stairs facing the auditorium and stood there in his white gallabiya and impressive black beard, his voice emerging loud from the PA system.
“Brothers and sisters, we have come today to stop the killing of Muslims in our sister country Iraq. Our Islamic nation is not yet dead, as its enemies would wish. The Messenger of God — God bless him and give him peace — has said in a sound hadith, ‘Good fortune will remain with my nation till the Day of Resurrection.’ So, brothers and sisters, let us say our word, loud and clear, so that those who have placed their hands in the filthy hands of our enemies, polluted with the blood of Muslims, may hear. Youth of Islam, as we speak, the rockets of the unbelievers are pounding our sister Iraq. They pride themselves that they have devastated Baghdad and turned it into ruins, saying that they have sent Baghdad back to the Stone Age by destroying the generating stations and water plants. Now, brothers and sisters, at this very moment, Iraqi Muslims are being martyred, their skins shredded by American bombs. The tragedy was made complete when our rulers submitted to the orders of America and Israel and instead of the armies of the Muslims turning their weapons on the Zionists who have usurped Palestine and befouled the el Aqsa Mosque, our rulers have issued orders to Egyptian troops to kill their Muslim brothers and sisters in Iraq. My brothers and sisters in Islam, raise high your voices with the word of Truth. Speak it loud and clear, so that those who have sold the blood of the Muslims and piled up their looted wealth in the banks of Switzerland may hear it.”
The slogans rang out from all sides, chanted by students carried on others’ shoulders and taken up with huge enthusiasm by thousands of throats:
“Islamic, Islamic! Not socialist and not democratic!”
“Khaybar, Khaybar, all you Jews! Muhammad ’s army will return!”
“Rulers, traitors, men of straw! How much did you sell the Muslims’ blood for?”
Tahir made a sign and they fell silent, his voice rising, thundering with anger, “Yesterday television screens around the world showed an American soldier as he was preparing to fire a rocket to kill our people in Iraq. Do you know what the American pig wrote on the rocket before he fired it? He wrote ‘Greetings to Allah’! Muslims, they mock your God. What then will you do? They murder you and violate your women. They ridicule your Lord, Almighty and Glorious. Do your self-respect and your manhood count for so little with you? Gihad! Gihad! Gihad! Let everyone hear what we say! No to this dirty war! No to the killing of Muslims by Muslims! By God, we shall die before we let the nation of Islam become a tasty morsel in the mouths of its enemies! We will not be shoes that the Americans can put on and off as they please!”
Then in a voice choking with emotion Tahir chanted, “God is Most Great! God is Most Great! Down with Zionism! Death to America! Down with the traitors! Islamic, Islamic. ”
The students raised Tahir onto their shoulders and the huge throng turned toward the main gate of the university. It was the demonstrators’ goal to get out onto the street so that other people could join the demonstration, but the Central Security forces were waiting for them in front of the university and the moment the students went out into the square, the soldiers, armed with huge sticks, helmets, and metal shields, attacked them and started beating them savagely. The screams of the female students rose and many students fell and were beaten, their blood flowing over the asphalt, but the masses of students kept pouring in huge numbers through the gate and many got away, bursting out and running far from the soldiers, who chased after them. These students managed to get past the square in front of the university and reformed at the bridge. Additional platoons of Central Security soldiers fell on them, but they charged in their hundreds toward the Israeli embassy and there large numbers of Special Forces troops started firing tear gas grenades at the students, the pall of gas rising till it covered the whole scene. Then the sound of heavy gunfire rang out.
Taha el Shazli took part in the demonstrations throughout the day and at the last minute was able to escape as the Security forces at the Israeli embassy started seizing students. Following the plan Taha went to the Auberge Cafe in Sayeda Zeinab Square where he met up with some of the brothers, among them Emir Tahir, who presented a review and evaluation of the day’s events. Then he said in a sad voice, “The criminals used tear gas grenades as camouflage and then fired live ammunition at the students. Your brother Khalid Harbi from the Law Faculty achieved martyrdom. We resign ourselves to God’s will for him and ask Him to forgive him all his sins, enfold him in His mercy, and reward him generously in Paradise, God willing.”
Those present recited the Fatiha for the martyr’s soul, all feeling fearful and oppressed. Brother Tahir then explained the tasks required of them for the following day — contacting the foreign news agencies to confirm the martyrdom of Khalid Harbi, tracking down the families of the detainees, and organizing new demonstrations, to start from a place the Security forces did not expect. Taha was charged with the task of writing wall posters and putting them up early in the morning on the walls of the faculty. He had bought for this purpose a number of colored pens and sheets of sturdy paper, and he shut himself into his room on the roof and devoted himself to his work, not coming down to the prayer area to pray the sunset or evening prayers, which he performed on his own. He designed ten posters, wrote them out, and did the drawings for them, finishing after midnight, at which point he felt extremely tired. He told himself that he had a few hours ahead of him in which to sleep, since he was supposed to go to the faculty before seven in the morning. He prayed the two superrogatory prostrations then turned off the light, lay down on his right side, and recited his customary prayer before sleeping: “O God, I have raised my face to You, placed my back under Your protection, and entrusted my affairs to You, in desire for You and in awe of You. There is no refuge from You or escape from You but through submission to You. O God, I believe in Your Book that You sent down and in Your Prophet that You sent.” Then he fell into a deep sleep.
After a little, thinking he was dreaming, he awoke to confused noises, and, opening his eyes, could distinguish shapes moving in the darkness of the room. Suddenly the light was turned on and he saw three huge men standing by the bed. One of them approached and hit him hard across the face. Then the man seized his head and turned it violently to the right and Taha saw for the first time a young officer, who asked him jeeringly, “Are you Taha el Shazli?”
He didn’t respond, so the goon struck him hard on his head and face. The officer repeated his question and Taha said to him in a low voice, “Yes.”
The officer smiled challengingly and said, “Playing at being the big leader are you, you son of a bitch?”
This was a signal and the blows rained down on Taha. The strange thing was that he didn’t protest or scream or even protect his face with his hands. His face remained expressionless under the impact of all these surprises, and he submitted totally to the blows of the goons, who took a firm grip on him and pulled him out of the room.
Of the dozens of customers who fill the Oriental Restaurant of the Gezira Sheraton, you will find very few who are ordinary citizens such as might accompany their fiancees or wives and children on their day off to eat some delicious kebab. Most of the patrons are well-known faces — leading businessmen, ministers, and present and former governors who come to the restaurant to eat and meet, far from the eyes of the press and the curious. As a result, police details were everywhere, as well as the private guards who come along with any important personage.
The kebab restaurant at the Sheraton has come to play the same role in Egyptian politics as that played by the Royal Automobile Club before the Revolution. How many policies, deals, and laws that have left their mark on the life of millions of Egyptians have been prepared and agreed to here, in the Sheraton’s kebab restaurant, at the tables groaning beneath the weight of grilled meats! The difference between the Automobile Club and the Sheraton’s kebab restaurant accurately embodies the change that the Egyptian ruling elites underwent between, before, and after the Revolution. Thus, the Automobile Club perfectly suited the aristocratic ministers of the bygone epoch with their pure Western education and manners, and there they would spend the evenings accompanied by their wives in revealing evening gowns, sipping whisky and playing poker and bridge. The great men of the present era, however, with their largely plebeian origins, their stern adherence to the outward forms of religion, and their voracious appetite for good food, find the Sheraton’s kebab restaurant suits them, since they can eat the best kinds of kebab, kofta, and stuffed vegetables and then drink cups of tea and smoke molasses-soaked tobacco in the waterpipes that the restaurant’s management has introduced in response to their requests. And during all the eating, drinking, and smoking, the talk of money and business never ceases.
Kamal el Fouli had asked for a meeting with Hagg Azzam at the Sheraton kebab restaurant. The latter came a little early with his son Fawzi and they sat and smoked waterpipes and drank tea until Kamal el Fouli arrived with his son Yasser and three bodyguards, who looked the place over. One of them then said something urgently to El Fouli, who nodded his head in agreement and said to Hagg Azzam, after embracing him in a warm welcoming hug, “Excuse me, Hagg. We have to move. The guards object because the place is too exposed.”
Hagg Azzam agreed and he and his son rose with El Fouli and they all moved to a distant table picked out by the guards in the farthest part of the restaurant closest to the fountain. They sat down and the bodyguards settled at a nearby table at a distance calculated to permit them to protect the other table without allowing them to hear what was said at it. The conversation started with generalities — mutual inquiries as to each other’s health and children and the usual complaints about how exhausted they were from work and increasing responsibilities. Then El Fouli said to Hagg Azzam in an affectionate tone of voice, “By the way, your campaign in the People’s Assembly against indecent television advertising is excellent and has struck a chord with people.”
“All credit to you, Kamal Bey — it was your idea.”
“I wanted people to get to know you as a new member of parliament. Praise God, all the newspapers have written about you.”
“God grant us the capacity to repay your favors!”
“Think nothing of it, Hagg. You are a dear brother to us, God knows.”
“Do you think, Kamal Bey, that the television will respond to the campaign and forbid these disgusting advertisements?”
With “parliamentarian eloquence,” El Fouli roared, “They will respond whether they like it or not! I told the minister of information at the meeting of the Political Bureau, ‘This outrage cannot go on! It is our duty to protect family values in this country! Who can accept his daughter or sister watching the dancing and shamelessness that go on on television? And where? In the land of el Azhar!’ ”
“Those girls who appear half-naked on television, I wonder what their parents think they’re doing? Where is the father or the brother of a girl like that, that they allow her to appear in that filthy way?”
“I don’t know whatever happened to self-respect. Anyone who lets his womenfolk go about naked is a complacent husband and the Messenger of God — God bless him and grant him peace — has cursed the complacent husband.”
Hagg Azzam nodded his head sagely and said, “The complacent husband, above all, is destined to go to Hell — a dreadful fate, God save us!”
This conversation acted as a kind of overture, pulse-taking, and sharpening of the faculties, like the warm-up exercises that soccer players perform before a match. Now that any shyness had disappeared and the company was in good fettle, Kamal el Fouli leaned forward, smiled, and said in a meaningful tone, twiddling the mouthpiece of the water-pipe between his fat fingers, “By the way, I forgot to congratulate you.”
“Thank you. On what?”
“On getting the Japanese Tasso car agency.”
“Ah.”
Azzam responded in a low voice, his eyes gleaming with a sudden attentiveness. Then he hung his head and took a slow pull on the water-pipe to give himself a chance to think. Weighing each word carefully, he said, “But the matter isn’t settled yet, Kamal Bey. I’ve just recently put forward a request for the agency and the Japanese are making inquiries about me. They may agree and give me the agency or they may refuse. Just say ‘O Lord!’ and pray for us, for the Prophet’s sake.”
El Fouli let out a loud laugh and slapping the Hagg’s knee with his hand he said, “Get on with you, old timer! Do you think I’m going to fall for that stuff? My dear fellow, you got the agency this week and you got the fax with the agreement on Thursday, to be precise. What do you say?”
He looked at Azzam in silence, then went on in a serious tone, “Look, Hagg Azzam. My name’s Kamal el Fouli and I’m as straight as a sword.” (He made a gesture indicating straightness with his hand.) “I don’t go back on my word. I think you’ve tried me out.”
“May Our Lord preserve your favors!”
“Shall I tell you the bottom line? That agency, Hagg, has profits of three hundred million a year. Of course, God knows I wish you well, but a mouthful like that is a bit much for you to swallow all on your own.”
“Meaning what?” exclaimed Azzam with a touch of sharpness in his voice.
El Fouli answered, looking at him hard, “It means it won’t do for you to eat it all, Hagg. We want a quarter.”
“A quarter of what?”
“A quarter of the profits.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
El Fouli laughed loudly and said, “What kind of a question is that, Hagg? You were born and bred here and you know the score.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to say that I’m speaking for the Big Man. The Big Man wants to be your partner in the agency and take a quarter of the profits. And as you know very well… what the Big Man wants, he has to get.”
“Troubles never come singly” is what goes through Hagg Azzam’s head whenever he thinks of that day.
He left the Sheraton at around ten o’clock that evening having agreed to Kamal el Fouli’s demand. He’d had no choice but to agree, since he knew the power of the Big Man, even if he was still seething with rage at the idea of giving him a quarter of the takings. There he was, exhausting himself and slaving over and spending millions on big profits and along comes the Big Man and expects a quarter of the profits on a plate? Foul play and thuggery, he told himself rancorously, making up his mind that he’d do his best to find a solution that would put an end to this injustice.
The car was making its way back to his home in El Mohandiseen when Hagg Azzam turned to his son Fawzi and said, “Go up to the apartment and tell your mother that I’ll be spending the night out. I have to talk to people about the Fouli business.”
Fawzi nodded in silence and got down at the apartment after kissing his father’s hand. Hagg Azzam patted him on the shoulder and said, “Tomorrow we’ll meet early, God willing, at the office.”
Hagg Azzam leaned back on the car seat and felt more comfortable. He asked the driver to take him to the Yacoubian Building. He hadn’t seen Souad for days because he’d been busy with the Japanese agency. He smiled as he pictured her surprise at seeing him. How would he find her? What would she be doing on her own? How he needed a night with her, a night when he could rid himself of worry and wake up refreshed! It occurred to him to call her on the car phone so she could get ready for him but decided in the end to drop in on her without warning to see how she would receive him.
The driver changed his route, and Hagg Azzam went up to the apartment, quietly turned the key, and entered the reception room, where he heard a voice coming from the direction of the living room. He approached slowly, and there he found her, stretched out on the couch, wearing red pajamas and with her hair up in curlers and her face covered with cream. She was watching television, and as soon as she saw him, she cried out a welcome, jumped up, and embraced him, saying reproachfully, “Is this any way to treat me, Hagg? You might at least have called me so I could get myself ready, or do you like to see me looking dreadful?”
“You look great,” whispered the Hagg. He glued himself to her and gave her a hard hug. She felt the jab of his desire and pulled her head back, saying in a saucy voice as she slipped out of his grasp, “My oh my, Hagg, what a grabby boy we are! Wait till I’ve been to the bathroom, and I’ve made you something to eat.”
They spent the night as usual. She prepared the charcoal and the waterpipe for him and he smoked a number of pipes of hashish while she got herself ready in the bathroom. Then he undressed, took a shower, put his white gallabiya on over his bare body, and slept with her. He was one of those men who rid themselves of their anxieties through sex and his performance with her that night was unaccustomedly ardent and lavish — so much so that, when they had finished, she kissed him and whispered, rubbing her nose against his, “It’s the old chickens that’ve got the fat!”
Then she let out a loud laugh, leaned her back against the end of the bed, and said merrily, “I’ve got a riddle for you.”
“What kind of a riddle?”
“Ouff! You’ve forgotten already? The riddle, Hagg. The thing you’re going to do to prove that you love me.”
“Oh yes, right. Sorry. My mind’s full of things tonight. Go on, my dear. Ask me the riddle.”
Souad turned to face him and looked at him without saying anything. Then a broad grin appeared on her face and she said, “On Friday I went to the doctor.”
“The doctor? Is everything all right?”
“I wasn’t feeling well.”
“I’m sorry.”
She laughed loudly and said, “No. It turned out to be a good sickness.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Congratulations, my darling. I’m two months pregnant.”
The big van stopped in front of the Yacoubian Building. It was completely closed apart from a few small wire-covered openings. The soldiers led Taha out, beating him and kicking him with their huge boots, and before pushing him inside the van, they put a tight blindfold over his eyes. They pulled his hands behind his back and put them in handcuffs, and he felt his skin break under the pressure of the steel. The van was crowded to the utmost with detainees, who throughout the journey kept up a constant chant of “There is no god but God! Islamic… Islamic.!” as though through their cries they might get the better of their fear and tension.
The soldiers let them chant, but the van drove at top speed so that more than once the students fell down on top of one another. Then it stopped suddenly and they heard the grating of an ancient iron gate and the van moved forward slowly for a little. Then it stopped again, the back door was opened, and a troupe of soldiers shouting insults burst in on them. They had taken off their boots and used these to beat the students, who fell from the van screaming. Next, they heard the barking of police dogs, which quickly fell upon them. Taha tried to get away by running, but a huge dog pounced on him, pulled him to the ground, and started snapping at his chest and neck with its teeth. Taha turned over where he lay to protect his face from the dog’s fangs. It occurred to him that they wouldn’t let the dogs kill them but that if he did die he would go to Paradise. He hung on and started reciting verses from the Qur’an under his breath and thinking of bits from the sermons of Sheikh Shakir. He discovered that his bodily pain would reach a certain peak, which was terrible, but that after that his awareness of it would slowly diminish.
The dogs suddenly went away as though at a signal and they remained lying in the courtyard for a few minutes. Then the soldiers launched a new round of vicious beating, after which they started to lead them away one by one. Taha felt that he was being pushed down a long corridor. A door opened and he went into a large room full of cigarette smoke. He could make out the voices of seated officers, talking and laughing normally among themselves. One of them came up to him, struck him hard on the back of his neck, and shouted in his face, “What’s your name, momma’s boy?”
“Taha Muhammad el Shazli.”
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Taha Muhammad el Shazli.”
“Louder, you son of a bitch!”
Taha shouted at the top of his voice, but the officer slapped him and asked him again. This was repeated three times. Then blows and kicks poured down on him till he fell to the ground. They pulled him up and for the first time a deep, quiet voice arose, speaking confidently and slowly — a voice that Taha would never forget.
“Enough, boys. That’s enough beating. The lad looks sensible and intelligent. Come here, lad. Come closer.”
They pushed him in the direction of the source of the voice, who Taha was sure must be their boss and must be sitting at a desk in the middle of the place.
“What’s your name, lad?”
“Taha Muhammad el Shazli.”
He spoke with difficulty and could feel the acrid taste of blood in his mouth. The boss said, “Taha, you look like a good kid and from a decent family. Why are you doing this to yourself, son? See what’s happened to you? And that’s nothing. You still haven’t seen a thing. You know those soldiers? They’ll keep beating up on you till nighttime, then they’ll go home to eat and sleep and other soldiers will beat you till the morning. And in the morning, the soldiers who went home will come back and beat you again till nighttime. You’ll go on that way forever, and if you die from the beating, we’ll bury you here, right where you’re standing. It makes no difference to us. You’re not a match for us, Taha. We’re the government. Are you a match for the government, Taha? See what a mess you’ve got yourself into, Taha? Listen, kid. Would you like me to let you out right now? Would you like to go home to your folks? Your mum and dad must be worried by now.”
He spoke the last sentence as though he was genuinely upset. Taha felt a great shudder go through his whole body. He tried hard to hang tough but failed and a high-pitched sound like the howl of an animal escaped from him. Then he abandoned himself to a hot, uninterrupted bout of weeping. The officer came over to him and patted his shoulder, saying, “No, Taha. No lad, don’t cry. I swear to God I really feel sorry for you. Listen, there’s a good boy. Just give us some information about your organization, and I swear on my honor I’ll let you go right now. What do you say?”
Taha shouted, “I don’t have an organization!”
“So why do you keep a copy of the Islamic Action Charter?”
“I was reading it.”
“Son, that’s organization literature. Out with it, Taha, like a sensible lad. Tell us what your responsibilities are in the organization.”
“I don’t know any organizations!”
The blows rained down anew and Taha felt that his pain had gone beyond its terrible peak once more, turning into something more like an idea that he grasped from the outside. The officer’s voice came to him, as quiet as ever, “What are you trying to do to yourself, sonny? Just say what you know and get yourself out of this.”
“I swear to Almighty God, sir, I don’t know anything.”
“It’s up to you. I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself. Just remember I’m the only good one here. Those other officers are unbelievers and criminals and they don’t just beat, those guys do really nasty things. Do you want to talk or not?”
“I swear to Mighty God, I don’t know anything.”
“Okay. It’s up to you.”
As though this were a secret signal, no sooner had the officer finished saying the words than the blows rained down on Taha from all sides. Then they threw him facedown on the ground and several hands started to remove his gallabiya and pull off his underclothes. He resisted with all his might, but they set upon him and held his body down with their hands and feet. Two thick hands reached down, grabbed his buttocks, and pulled them apart. He felt a solid object being stuck into his rear and breaking the tendons inside and he started screaming. He screamed at the top of his voice. He screamed until he felt that his larynx was being ripped open.
With the coming of winter Abduh started his new life.
His national service term with Central Security came to an end and he took off his military uniform, forever swapping it for Western clothes, and he started work at the new kiosk. It wasn’t long before he sent for his wife Hidiya and his son Wael, who was still a babe in arms, to come from Upper Egypt. They lived together in a room on the roof of the Yacoubian Building that Hatim Rasheed rented for them. Abduh’s health improved, he put on weight, and he seemed settled. Having lost the miserable, underfed appearance of the conscript, he looked more like a successful young Cairo shopkeeper full of self-confidence and energy (even though he kept his heavy Sa’idi accent, his nails remained long and dirty, and his teeth — which he never brushed — continued to be stained yellow with cigarette smoke and the accumulated effects of food). He made a reasonable income selling cigarettes, candy, and soft drinks and the people of the roof accepted him and his family just as they did any new neighbor, with a welcome shrouded in reserve and curiosity. As the days passed, however, they came to like Abduh’s wife Hidiya with her trim, slim figure, her black gallabiya, her dark complexion, the dark tattoo beneath her chin, her Sa’idi dishes (millet bread and okra), and her Aswan accent that they loved to imitate.
Abduh told his neighbors that he worked as Hatim Rasheed’s cook, but they didn’t believe him because they knew about Hatim’s homosexuality and because he would spend the night with him at least twice a week. Among themselves, they would joke about these “midnight feasts” that Abduh would prepare for his master, knowing the truth and accepting it. In general their behavior with any deviant person depended on how much they liked him. If they disliked him, they would rise up against him in defense of virtue, quarrel bitterly with him, and prevent their children from having anything to do with him. If, on the other hand, they liked him, as they did Abduh, they would forgive him and deal with him on the basis that he was misled and to be pitied, telling one another that everything in the end was fate and that it was not unlikely that God, Almighty and Glorious, would set him on the straight path — and “How many others have been worse than that but Our Lord set them straight and inspired them and they became saints.” They would say this smacking their lips and nodding their heads in sympathy.
Abd Rabbuh’s life proceeded virtually without problems, but his relationship with his wife Hidiya remained tense. She was happy with her cosseted new life, but something deep and sharp continued to smolder between them — it would flare up, then die down and sometimes disappear from sight, but it was always there. When he came to her after a night spent with Hatim, he would be shamefaced and irritable, avoiding her eyes and rounding on her furiously for the least mistake. She would meet his outbursts with a sad smile that provoked him even more, so that he’d scream, “Say something, you dumb cow!”
“God forgive you,” Hidiya would answer him in a soft voice and leave him alone till he had calmed down. When they were together in bed, at a moment of passion, Abduh would often think of his lover Hatim and then feel as though she were reading his thoughts and bury his worries in her body, making love to her extremely violently, as though he were trying to stop her thoughts or assaulting her to punish her for knowing about his homosexuality. When he had finished, he would lie on his back and light a cigarette and stare at the ceiling of the room and she would lie at his side, the sharp thing suspended between them, impossible either to ignore or to acknowledge.
Once Abduh responded to a mysterious inner urging. He was sick of the pretense of ignorance and the oppressive weight of the matter on his heart, and in the depths of his soul he wanted a confrontation with Hidiya instead of this painful equivocation. If she would just burst out in his face and accuse him of being a sodomite, he would be freed of the burden and tell her everything and point out to her quite simply that he couldn’t do without Hatim because he needed the money; so he said to her suddenly, “You know, Hidiya, Hatim Bey is a very kindhearted man… Why don’t you say something?”
“Because he isn’t kindhearted or anything of the sort. It’s just that you’re honest and he depends on your work.”
This was the argument she always used in front of the neighbors, and she spoke sharply because he had violated that pretense of ignorance that allowed her to avoid embarrassment. He repented a bit of his outburst and said to her calmingly, “All the same, wife, he’s to be thanked because he did us all these favors.”
“There are no favors. Everyone does what’s in his best interest. You understand and I understand. God forgive us for Hatim and for Hatim’s job and for every day we’ve spent with him.”
Her words hurt him so he took refuge in silence and turned his face toward the wall, which made her pity him. She moved close to him and took his hand between hers, kissed it, and whispered tenderly, “Abu Wael, may Our Lord preserve you for us and send you our daily bread by honest means. I wish you’d put aside a little money that we could use so you could open your own kiosk and wouldn’t owe anybody anything. Not Hatim or anybody.”
Like some great colonial power, Malak Khilla’s objective is extension and control. An insistent inner force drives him to take possession of whatever is to hand regardless of its value and by any means.
Since arriving on the roof he hasn’t stopped expanding in all directions. It started with a small abandoned latrine that lay to the right of the entrance. As soon as Malak saw it, he started to take it over. He put empty cardboard boxes in front of it, then started storing some of them inside the bathroom, and eventually locked it with a big padlock whose key he put in his pocket with the excuse that the items inside were liable to be stolen if the latrine remained open.
Following the latrine, he took over a large area of the roof that he filled with old, broken tailoring machines, informing the residents (who were naturally upset at this development) that these machines were waiting for someone or other to take them at the first opportunity and fix them. However, this person would always miss his appointment and contact Malak at the last moment by telephone that something or other had cropped up and assure him that he was definitely coming after a week, or two weeks at the most, to take the machines. By this means, Malak kept delaying until he was able to impose a fait accompli. The big bay formed by the wall of the roof, on the other hand, he took at one fell swoop, bringing in three carpenters who in less than an hour had made a wooden door that covered the bay and put a padlock on it whose key he kept. This way he acquired out of thin air an extra cupboard for storing his stock.
During these battles Malak, like a seasoned politico, would absorb the anger and objections of the residents by any means possible, from appeasement, through playing down the issue, all the way if necessary (though this was seldom) to violent fights. He was assisted in this by the fact that, to his good fortune, Mr. Hamid Hawwas had eventually succeeded, after sending complaints to virtually every official in the government, in having his arbitrary transfer to Cairo annulled and had returned to his home in El Mansoura. This relieved Malak of a stubborn foe capable of thwarting his expansionist plans on the roof.
However, the small victories, such as the bathroom and the cupboard, could only satisfy Malak’s lust for real estate in the manner that a victory at chess might satisfy a great military leader. He was dreaming of a major coup that would earn him a huge sum: a nice piece of land, for example, that he could get hold of by force of possession, or a large apartment whose occupant had died that he could take over. This last situation was widespread in Downtown: an aged foreigner would often die single and without family and the closest Egyptian to him — his laundryman or his cook or his maid’s husband — would take over his apartment. This person would rush to take up residence in the apartment and make a report asserting that he was resident there; he would change the locks, send himself registered letters as supporting evidence, and arrange for false witnesses to affirm before the court that he’d been living there all along with the deceased foreigner. Then he would commission a lawyer to followup the long, slow court case against the owner of the building, who usually in the end would be forced to accept a settlement that was much less than the apartment’s real worth.
The hope of some such stroke of luck kept playing with Malak’s dreams as the breeze plays with the branches of the trees. He reviewed the apartments in the Yacoubian Building that might be possessable and found that the one most within his reach was Zaki el Dessouki’s (six rooms plus reception, two bathrooms, and a large balcony looking out onto Suleiman Basha). Zaki was an old single man who might die at any moment, and the apartment was rented and rented property could not be passed on to one’s heirs. Likewise the presence of his brother Abaskharon in the apartment would facilitate Malak’s taking possession of it at the critical moment.
After much thought and extensive legal consultations, Malak settled on his plan — a contract with a nonexistent company that he would sign along with Zaki el Dessouki and register at the public notary’s office. Then he would hide it away until Zaki died, when Malak would produce the contract. This would make it impossible for him to be thrown out of the apartment, given his status as a commercial partner of the deceased. But how to get Zaki to sign the contract? This was when he started to think of Busayna el Sayed. Zaki el Dessouki was helpless before a woman and a clever one could sucker him into signing the contract without realizing. Malak had offered Busayna five thousand pounds to get Zaki el Dessouki to sign and given her two days to think about it. He suffered no doubts that Busayna would agree, but he didn’t want to appear too eager for her agreement. As he had expected, she had agreed, but she had asked him directly and clearly, “If I bring you the contract with Zaki el Dessouki’s signature on it, what guarantee do I have that you’ll pay?”
Malak had his answer ready and said quickly, “It’s on a give-and-get basis. Keep the contract with you until you get the amount in full.”
Busayna smiled and said, “Then we’re agreed. If there’s no money, there’s no contract.”
“Of course.”
Why did Busayna agree?
Why should she refuse? Five thousand pounds is an excellent sum, with which she can cover the needs of her brothers and sisters and buy what she needs to get her trousseau ready. Likewise Malak will get the apartment after Zaki el Dessouki is dead, and he will know nothing about what she has done and she won’t be doing him any harm because he will be dead. And even if it did harm him, why should she pity him? In the end, he’s just a doting old man with a roving eye and deserves whatever he gets.
She had lost her compassion for people and a thick crust of indifference had formed around her feelings — that disgust that afflicts the exhausted, the frustrated, and the perverted and prevents them from sympathizing with others. She had succeeded, after repeated attempts, in ridding herself of feelings of remorse and buried forever the guilt that had afflicted her when she took off her dress in front of Talal and washed off his defilement, then put her hand out to him to collect ten pounds. She had become crueler, and more bitter and daring, and she no longer even cared what the residents of the roof told one another about her reputation. She knew enough of their own shameful acts and scandals to make their pretense of virtue something to laugh at. If she had got into a relationship with Talal because of her need for money, she knew other women on the roof who cheated on their husbands just to get some pleasure. And at the end of the day she was still a virgin and could marry any respectable man and would cut out the tongue of anyone who spoke ill of her.
Busayna had started working on Zaki el Dessouki, waiting for the right time to trick him into signing the contract, but it wasn’t an easy matter because he wasn’t the hateful old man that she’d imagined. On the contrary, he was kind and well mannered and treated her with respect. She never felt with him that she was performing a job that she’d been paid for as she did with Talal, who would strip her of her clothes and play around with her body without addressing a single word to her. Zaki was sensitive with her. He had got to know her family and loved her little brother and sisters and bought them lots of expensive presents. He respected her feelings, listened to what she said with interest, and told her engrossing stories about the old days.
Even their encounters in bed didn’t leave her with the feeling of disgust that Talal did. Zaki would caress her gently, as though he feared that the touch of his fingers might hurt her and as though he were toying with a rose whose petals might tear under the least pressure. He would kiss her hands a lot (and it had never occurred to her that a man might kiss her hands), and on the first night, when their bodies met, she had whispered gently in his ear as she held him tight, “Be careful. I’m a virgin.”
He had laughed softly and whispered, “I know.”
Then he kissed her and she felt her body melt completely in his arms. He had his own magical way of making love. He substituted experience for vigor, as though he were an old player who made use of his exceptional skills to compensate for his lack of suppleness. In herself, Busayna wanted the husband to whom she would one day be tied to be as gentle as he was. However, her growing admiration for him irritated her somewhat because it called up inside her feelings of guilt. He was kind to her and she was betraying him and hurting him. This good man, who was tender to her and made a fuss of her and told her the secrets of his life, could not for a moment imagine that she was preparing to take over his apartment after his death. When she thought of it, she despised and hated herself and she felt as sorry for him as a surgeon would for his wife or children if he were to perform an operation on them. She had set about getting his signature on the contract more than once when he was under the influence of alcohol but had drawn back at the last moment. She would be unable to go through with it and then later, to her amazement, would blame herself greatly and feel exasperated with herself for her feebleness. The fact is that her pity for the old man Zaki and her feelings of guilt on the one side and her implacable desire for money on the other continued to struggle with one another inside her with equal force, until eventually she summoned up all her will and decided to settle the matter and trick him into signing at the earliest opportunity.
“See how all my suits are winter suits. I used to attend parties in the winter and in the summer I would go to Europe.”
They were sitting in Maxim’s after eating dinner. It was around midnight and the place had emptied of customers. Busayna had put on a new blue dress that revealed her shining throat and cleavage, and Zaki was sitting next to her sipping whisky and showing her a collection of old photographs. He appeared in the pictures as a smart, handsome young man, smiling and holding a glass in a group of men wearing evening dress and beautiful women wearing revealing evening gowns; in front of them were tables crammed with food and bottles of superb wine. Busayna looked at the pictures with passionate interest, then pointed to one of them and burst out laughing, saying, “What’s that? That’s a very weird-looking suit!”
“That’s evening dress. In the past every occasion had its special costume: morning dress was different from afternoon dress, which was different from evening dress.”
“You know, you looked nice. Like Anwar Wagdi.”
Zaki guffawed loudly. He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I lived through beautiful times, Busayna. It was a different age. Cairo was like Europe. It was clean and smart and the people were well mannered and respectable and everyone knew his place exactly. I was different too. I had my station in life, my money, all my friends were of a certain niveau, I had my special places where I would spend the evening — the Automobile Club, the Club Muhammad Ali, the Gezira Club. What times! Every night was filled with laughter and parties and drinking and singing. There were lots of foreigners in Cairo. Most of the people living downtown were foreigners, until Abd el Nasser threw them out in 1956.”
“Why did he throw them out?”
“He threw the Jews out first, then the rest of the foreigners got scared and left. By the way, what’s your opinion of Abd el Nasser?”
“I was born after he died. I don’t know. Some people say he was a hero and others say he was a criminal.”
“Abd el Nasser was the worst ruler in the whole history of Egypt. He ruined the country and brought us defeat and poverty. The damage he did to the Egyptian character will take years to repair. Abd el Nasser taught the Egyptians to be cowards, opportunists, and hypocrites.”
“So why do people love him?”
“Who says people love him?”
“Lots of people that I know love him.”
“Anyone who loves Abd el Nasser is either an ignoramus or did well out of him. The Free Officers were a bunch of kids from the dregs of society, destitutes and sons of destitutes. Nahhas Basha was a good man and he cared about the poor. He allowed them to join the Military College and the result was that they made the coup of 1952. They ruled Egypt and they robbed it and looted it and made millions. Of course they have to love Abd el Nasser; he was the boss of their gang.”
He spoke bitterly, his voice rising in excitement. Realizing this, he forced a smile and said, “What did you do wrong that I should be haranguing you on politics? How about listening to something nice? Christine, viens s’il te plaÎt.”
Christine was sitting at her small desk next to the bar. She had put on her glasses and was absorbed in going over the accounts, purposely leaving them alone together. Now she came over wearing a wide smile. She loved Zaki so much that she was genuinely overjoyed whenever she saw him happy, and she had taken a liking to Busayna. Zaki cried out in drunken French, holding his arms out to her, “Christine, we’re old friends, n’est-ce pas?”
“Of course.”
“So… you have to do anything I say right away, right?”
Christine laughed and said, “That depends on the nature of the request.”
“No matter what the request, you have to carry it out!”
“When you’ve drunk half a bottle of whisky as you have tonight, I have to beware of your requests!”
“I want you to sing for us, now.”
“Sing? Now? Out of the question!”
This conversation of theirs always followed the same pattern, as though it were a necessary rite. He would ask her to sing, she would excuse herself; he would insist, she would protest and make excuses; and then in the end she would accept.
After a few minutes, Christine sat down in front of the piano and began stroking the keys with her fingers, scraps of tunes emerging. Then all of a sudden she raised her head as if she had heard some inner voice for which she had been waiting and she closed her eyes, her face tensed, and she started playing. The music rang out through the place and her voice rose loud and pure as she sang, exquisitely, Edith Piaf ’s song:
At the end of the evening they crossed Suleiman Basha Street on their way to the office. Zaki was completely inebriated so Busayna put her arm around his waist to hold him up as he described to her, his speech slurred, what the square had looked like in the old days. He stopped in front of the closed-up shops and said, “There used to be a lovely bar here with a Greek owner. Next to it there was a hairdresser’s and a restaurant, and here was the leather shop La Bursa Nova. The stores were all fantastically clean and had goods from London and Paris on display.”
Busayna listened to him and watched his steps anxiously in case he should fall down in the street. They proceeded slowly until they got to the Yacoubian Building, when Zaki stopped and shouted, “See the wonderful architecture! This building was copied to the last detail from a building I saw in le Quartier latin in Paris.”
Busayna tried pushing him gently so they could cross the street, but he went on, “You know, Busayna, I feel as though I owned the Yacoubian Building. I’m the longest resident in it. I know the history of every individual and every square meter in the building. I’ve spent most of my life in it. I lived my best days in it and I feel as though it’s a part of me. The day this building’s demolished or something happens to it, that’ll be the day I die.”
Slowly and with difficulty, they managed to cross the street and climb the stairs and eventually they reached the apartment.
“Lie down on the couch,” said Busayna. He looked at her, smiled, and sat down slowly. He was breathing noisily and it seemed to take him a lot of effort to focus. Busayna forced herself to stop hesitating and, pushing her body against him, said in a seductive voice, “I have a service to ask of you. Do you think you could do it for me?”
He tried to reply but was too drunk to say anything. Instead he stared ahead and sighed, and the thought came to Busayna that he might die then and there. However, she pulled herself together and said, “I’m applying to the Ahli Bank for a small loan, ten thousand pounds. I have to pay it off over five years, plus interest. They need a guarantor. Could you please be my guarantor?”
She had put her hand on his leg and spoke in such a seductive and thrilling voice that, drunk as he was, he stuck his face to her cheek and kissed her. She took this as an expression of consent and cried out joyfully, “Thank you! The Lord preserve you!”
She rose and got the papers quickly from her bag and handed him the pen.
“Sign here, please.”
She had got real loan application papers ready and stuck Malak’s contract in the middle. Zaki started signing, while she held his hand to help him, but suddenly he stopped and mumbled in a slurred voice, his face looking sick, “The bathroom… ”
She didn’t say anything for a moment as though she hadn’t understood. He waved his hand and said with an effort, “I want the bathroom!”
Busayna put the papers aside and helped him stand up with difficulty and supported him on her arm until he got into the bathroom. She had closed the door, turned round to go back and was halfway across the hall when she heard a loud crash behind her.
That night Groppi’s tea garden on Adly Street was full to overflowing with customers, most of them the kind of young lovers who feel comfortable in the dim lighting of the garden lamps that hides their faces so that they can exchange sweet nothings undisturbed and without attracting curiosity.
A man in his fifties entered, well built and sturdy and wearing a dark baggy suit and white shirt without a tie, his clothes seeming too large and not well matched to his body, as though they didn’t belong to him. The man sat down at the table next to the door, ordered a cup of Turkish coffee without sugar, and sat in silence, observing the place and looking anxiously from time to time at his watch. After about half an hour a thin, dark-skinned young man arrived wearing a track suit and directed himself toward the large man. The two embraced warmly, then sat talking in low voices.
“Praise God you’re all right, Taha. When did you get out?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“You’re being watched for sure. Did you do as Hassan told you when you were on your way here?”
Taha nodded his head and Sheikh Shakir continued, “Brother Hassan is completely secure. Use him to contact me and he’ll tell you where and when to meet. Usually we choose places that don’t arouse suspicion. Like here, for example. It’s crowded and dark, which makes it suitable. We meet in parks too and restaurants and sometimes in bars. But… don’t get used to sitting in bars!”
Sheikh Shakir laughed, but Taha remained unsmiling and a heavy silence took over. The sheikh continued bitterly, “The National Security Investigation Bureau is now launching a criminal campaign against all Islamists. Detentions, torture, murder. They open fire on our unarmed brothers while arresting them, then accuse us of resisting the authorities. Real massacres are committed every day. Verily, they will come back on the Day of Resurrection with the blood of these innocents on their hands. I’ve been compelled to leave my residence and stop going to the mosque and I’ve changed the way I look, as you can see. Speaking of which, what do you think of Sheikh Shakir in his Western getup?”
The sheikh let out a loud laugh, attempting to create an atmosphere of good humor, but in vain. An unbudgeable, dark shadow stretched between them, to which the sheikh soon submitted, sighing and saying “God forgive me!” Then he said, “Cheer up, Taha. I know what you’ve been through and appreciate your pain, my son. I wish you to think of everything the unbelievers did to you as going to your account with Our Lord, Almighty and Glorious. Verily, He will reward you for it with the best of rewards, God willing. Know that Paradise is the reward of those who are tortured for God’s cause. Everything that happened to you is but a paltry tax that those who struggle pay gladly for the sake of raising high the word of the Truth, Sublime and Magnificent. Our rulers are fighting for their interests and their ill-gotten wealth, but we are fighting for God’s religion. Their stock in trade finds no buyers and is of no worth, but God has promised us His aid and He will never betray His promise.”
As though he had been waiting for the sheikh’s words to unburden himself of his sorrows, Taha said in a husky voice, “They humiliated me, Master. They humiliated me till I felt the dogs in the street had more self-respect than me. I was subjected to things I never imagined a Muslim could do.”
“They are no Muslims. Nay, they are unbelievers, according to the consensus of the jurists.”
“Even if they were unbelievers, wouldn’t they have an atom of mercy? Don’t they have sons and daughters and wives that they care for and have pity on? Had I been held in Israel, the Jews wouldn’t have done to me as they did. Had I been a spy and a traitor to my country, they wouldn’t have done those things to me. I ask myself what offense could merit that horrible punishment. Has the observance of God’s Law become a major crime? Sometimes in detention I’d think what was happening before me wasn’t real, that it was a nightmare that I’d wake up from to find it was all over. Were it not for my faith in God, Sublime and Magnificent, I would have killed myself to escape from that torment.”
The sheikh’s face registered his pain and he remained silent. Taha made a fist and said, “They blindfolded me so that I wouldn’t know who they were. But I have made an oath and committed myself before God to hunt them down. I will find out who they were and take revenge on them one by one.”
“I advise you, my son, to put this painful experience behind you. I know what I ask is difficult, but it’s the only thing to do in your situation. What happened to you in detention is not something peculiar to you. It is the destiny of all those who speak the truth openly in our unfortunate country. Those responsible are not just a few officers but the criminal and unbelieving regime that rules us. You must direct your anger against the whole regime and not particular individuals. The Almighty has said in His Noble Book, You have had a good example in God ’s Messenger (God has spoken truly). The Chosen One — God bless him and give him peace — was fought against in Mecca and abused and hurt so much that he complained to his Lord of his weakness and the contempt with which people treated him. Yet despite this he did not consider his struggle to be a personal feud with the unbelievers. On the contrary he directed his energy to spreading the Call and in the end, when God’s religion was victorious, the Messenger pardoned all the unbelievers and freed them. This is a lesson you have to learn and act upon.”
“That was the Messenger — God bless him and grant him peace — and the best of His creation, but I’m not a prophet and I’m not capable of forgetting what those criminals did to me. What happened to me pursues me without rest. I’m unable to sleep. I haven’t been to the mosque since I got out and I don’t think that I shall go. I spend all day alone in my room speaking to no one, and sometimes I think I’m losing my mind.”
“Don’t give in, Taha! Thousands of Muslim youth have suffered detention and been subjected to ugly tortures but left detention more determined than ever to resist injustice. The regime’s true objective in torturing Islamists isn’t just to hurt them physically. What they want is to destroy them psychologically so that they lose their capacity to struggle. If you surrender to melancholy, you will have realized the objectives of these unbelievers.”
The sheikh looked at him for a moment, then grasped his hand on the table and said, “When will you return to the mosque?”
“I will never return.”
“No, you must return. You are an outstanding student who is committed to the struggle and a glorious future awaits you, God willing. Trust in God, forget what happened, and go back to your studies and your faculty.”
“I cannot. How can I face people after…?”
Taha suddenly fell silent. His face crumpled and he groaned out loud.
“They violated my honor, Master.”
“Stop!”
“They violated my honor ten times, Master. Ten times.”
“I told you to stop, Taha!”
The sheikh shouted these words vehemently, but Taha struck the table with his fist, shaking and rattling the cups. The sheikh rose quickly from his place and whispered agitatedly, “Pull yourself together, Taha! Everyone’s looking at us. We must leave immediately. Listen, I’ll be waiting for you in front of Cinema Metro in an hour. Take precautions and make sure no one’s watching you.”
Over two months Hagg Azzam used persuasion, temptation, intimidation, and violence. He tried every method on Souad, but she adamantly refused the very idea of an abortion. Soon their shared life came to a complete standstill — no endearments, no tasty food, no pipes of hashish, and no times in bed. The only thing they had left was the subject of abortion. He would come every day and sit in front of her. He would talk to her gently and calmly. Then little by little he would lose his temper and they would fight. He would shout, “You made an agreement and you went back on it.”
“So hang me.”
“From the start we said no pregnancy.”
“You think you’re God, so you can allow things and forbid things?”
“Be sensible and get me out of this fix, for God’s sake.”
“No.”
“I’ll divorce you.”
“Divorce me.”
He said “divorce” with feigned casualness because deep down inside he wanted to keep hold of her, but the idea of having a child at his age was impossible. Even if he allowed it himself, his sons would never allow it, and even though Hagga Salha, his first wife, didn’t even know about his second marriage, how would he keep it from her if he had a child?
When Hagg Azzam gave up on persuading Souad, he left her and went to Alexandria where he met with her brother Hamidu and told him what had happened. Hamidu hesitated and bowed his head in thought for a while. Then he said, “Listen to me, Hagg. We’re both decent people and doing the right thing shouldn’t upset anyone. It’s true I’m her brother, but I can’t ask her to have an abortion. Abortion is forbidden by religion and I’m a God-fearing man.”
“But we made an agreement, Rayyis Hamidu.”
“We made an agreement and we broke it. We’re in the wrong, my friend. We started things on a friendly basis and we should finish them on a friendly basis. Give her her rights according to God’s Law and divorce her, Hagg.”
Hamidu’s face at that moment looked to him ignoble, mendacious, and hateful and he wanted in fact to slap him and hit him, but in the end his good sense prevailed and he left, boiling with rage. On the way back to Cairo an idea suddenly came to him and he said to himself, “There’s only one person left I can trust to save me.”
The war in the Gulf was keeping Sheikh el Samman extremely busy.
Every day he organized lectures and seminars and wrote lengthy articles in the press to explain the legal justification for the war to liberate Kuwait. The government brought him to speak on television numerous times and called on him to deliver the Friday sermon in the largest mosques in Cairo, and the sheikh set about presenting to the people all the legal reasons for the correctness of the Arab rulers’ position in inviting American troops to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion.
Hagg Azzam spent three whole days searching for Sheikh el Samman before he was finally able to meet with him at his office in El Salam mosque in Medinet Nasr. The first thing he said to him as he anxiously scrutinized his face was, “What’s wrong with you, Master? You look exhausted.”
“I’ve hardly slept since the war began. Every day seminars and meetings and in a few days I leave, God willing, for Saudi Arabia to attend the emergency conference of Muslim scholars.”
“It’s too much, Master. You must look after your health.”
The sheikh sighed and muttered, “Whatever I do is less than I should. I ask God, Sublime and Magnificent, to accept my work and place it in the scale among my good deeds.”
“Can you postpone going to Saudi Arabia and rest a little?”
“God forbid that I should fall short in my efforts! It was Sheikh el Ghamidi, an outstanding scholar — we give precedence over God to none — who contacted me. I shall participate with my brother scholars there in issuing a legal ruling that will silence the arguments of the strife-makers and demonstrate to everyone the incoherence of their arguments. We shall mention in the ruling, God willing, the legal reasons for the permissibility of seeking the help of the Western Christian armies to save the Muslims from the criminal unbeliever Saddam Hussein.”
Hagg Azzam nodded his head in agreement with the sheikh’s words and there was a moment of silence. Then the sheikh patted him on his shoulder and asked him affectionately, “And how are you? I think you came to me to discuss something.”
“I don’t want to add to your worries.”
The sheikh smiled and leaned his well-padded body back in the comfortably upholstered chair, saying, “You are the last person who could cause me worry. Please, tell me.”
When Hagg Azzam and Sheikh el Samman got to Souad’s apartment in the Yacoubian Building, they found her wearing house clothes. She greeted Sheikh El Samman with reserve and quickly disappeared inside, returning a few minutes later with her hair covered and carrying a silver tray on which were glasses of iced lemonade. The sheikh took a sip of his drink, closed his eyes appreciatively, and, as though finding the right point of entry to the subject, turned to Hagg Azzam and said laughingly, “Wonderful lemonade! Your wife’s an excellent housewife. Praise God, my dear chap, for such a blessing!”
Azzam picked up the thread and said, “A thousand praises and thanks, Master. Souad’s a good housewife and a good-hearted, righteous wife, but she’s obstinate and annoying.”
“Obstinate?”
Sheikh el Samman asked the question with feigned astonishment and turned to Souad who seized the initiative and said to him in a serious tone of voice, “Of course, the Hagg will have told you about the problem.”
“May Our Lord never bring problems! Listen, my daughter. You’re a Muslim and follow God’s Law, and Our Lord, Glorious and Almighty, has commanded the wife to obey her husband in all matters of this world. The Chosen One — God’s blessings and peace be upon him — has even said, in a sound hadith, ‘Were any of God’s creatures permitted to prostrate itself to another of His creatures, I would have commanded the wife to prostrate herself to the husband’ (the Messenger has spoken truly)!”
“Is the woman supposed to follow her husband’s orders with regard to what is right or what is wrong?”
“God protect us from what is wrong, my daughter! There can be no obedience to a creature who disobeys the Creator.”
“So tell me, Master. You want me to have an abortion?”
There was silence for a moment. Then Sheikh el Samman smiled and said calmly, “My daughter, you agreed with him from the beginning that there would be no children and Hagg Azzam is an old man and his circumstances do not allow such a thing.”
“Fine. So let him divorce me according to God’s Law.”
“But if he divorces you while you’re pregnant, he’ll be responsible legally for the upkeep of the child.”
“So you agree that I should abort myself?”
“God forbid! Abortion is of course a sin. However, some trustworthy jurisprudential opinions affirm that termination of the pregnancy during the first two months is not abortion because the soul enters the fetus at the beginning of the third month.”
“Where does it say so?”
“In authenticated legal opinions delivered by the great scholars of religion.”
Souad laughed sarcastically and said bitterly, “Those must have been American sheikhs.”
“Speak politely to the reverend sheikh!” Hagg Azzam chided her.
Fixing him with a furious glance, she said challengingly, “Everyone had better be polite.”
The sheikh intervened in a conciliatory tone, saying, “God protect us from His anger! Souad, my daughter, don’t let your temper get the better of you. I’m not discussing the matter on the basis of my own opinion, God forbid. I’m simply passing on to you a well-regarded legal point of view. Some reliable jurisprudents have affirmed that aborting the fetus before the third month should not be considered murder, if there are extenuating circumstances.”
“So if I abort myself it won’t be a sin? Who could say such a thing? There’s no way I could believe you even if you swore on the Qur’an!”
At this Hagg Azzam stood up, went over to her, and shouted angrily, “I’m telling you, be polite when you speak to the reverend sheikh!”
Souad rose and shouted, waving her arms, “What reverend sheikh? Everything’s clear now. You’ve paid him off to say a couple of stupid things. Abortion’s okay in the first two months? Shame on you, Sheikh! How can you sleep at night?”
Sheikh el Samman, taken unawares by this sudden attack, assumed a glowering expression and said warningly, “Mind your manners, my daughter, and watch you don’t overstep your bounds!”
“I don’t give a damn for your overstepping! You’re a farce! How much did he pay you to come with him?”
“You filthy bitch!” shouted Hagg Azzam and he slapped her on her face. She screamed and started wailing, but Sheikh el Samman grabbed him, dragged him away from her, and started talking to him in a low voice. Soon the two of them left, slamming the door behind them.
Souad saw them off with abuse and curses. She was shaking with anger at what Sheikh el Samman had said and at Azzam, who had struck her for the first time since they had gotten married. She could still feel the pain of the slap on her face and she made up her mind to get her own back. All the same she felt a secret relief that she had reached the point of open confrontation with him. Any tie that might have obligated her or embarrassed her had been severed. He had struck her and abused her, and from now on she would express her contempt and hatred for him in the clearest possible form. In fact, her ability to fight and use abuse was something new to her, as though the rancor that was in her had suddenly exploded. Everything she had suffered and that had tortured her had accumulated and now the time had come for a reckoning. Now she was ready to kill him or be killed by him rather than have an abortion.
When she had calmed down a little, she asked herself why she cared that much about her pregnancy. She was of course religious, and abortion was a sin, and she was also terrified of the operation itself because many women died during it. All these were genuine considerations, but they were secondary. A deep-seated, instinctive desire drove her to fight ferociously in defense of her pregnancy. She felt as though if she bore the child, she would recover her self-respect. Her life would acquire a new and decent meaning. She would no longer be the poor woman whom the millionaire Azzam had purchased to enjoy himself with for a couple of hours in the afternoon but a real wife who could not be ignored or slighted. She would be the child’s mother, going in and out with the Hagg’s son in her arms. Wasn’t that her right?
She had gone hungry, begged, and tasted humiliation, and a hundred times refused to go astray, and in the end she had given her body to a man as old as her father, had put up with his dullness, his gloominess, his wrinkled face, his dyed hair, and his flagging manhood, had pretended that she was fulfilled and that her body was aching with desire, just for him to come to her and go away again in secret, as though she were a mistress; she had done all this only to sleep on her own in a cold bed and a huge, frightening apartment where she was forced every night to turn on the lights in order to dispel the lonesomeness and every day to weep out of yearning for her son; and then, when Azzam’s appointed time came, to do herself up for him and play out the role for which she had been paid. Wasn’t it her right after all that humiliation to feel that she was a wife and a mother? Wasn’t it her right to bear a legitimate son who would inherit the wealth that would protect her from the horrors of poverty forever? God had granted her this pregnancy as a just reward for her long patience and she wouldn’t give it up at any price.
Such were Souad’s thoughts. Then she went into the bathroom and took off her clothes, and as soon as the hot water gushed over her naked body, a strange and new feeling came over her that her body, which Azzam had used and defiled and abused for so long, had suddenly been liberated and become her property alone. Her hands, her arms, her legs, and her breasts — every part of her body — breathed freely and she could feel a beautiful light pulse beating inside her, a pulse that would get bigger and grow and fill her day after day until the time came and it emerged as a beautiful child that would look like her, would inherit its father’s wealth, and would restore her self-respect and her proper station. She finished her shower, dried herself, and put on her night things. Then she performed the evening prayer and the additional extra prostrations and sat in bed reading the Qur’an until drowsiness overcame her.
“Who’s there?”
She woke from sleep at the sound of movement and muttering outside the room. She thought that a thief had slipped into the apartment, and, quaking with terror, decided to open the window and call to the neighbors for help.
“Who’s there?”
She screamed again in a high-pitched voice and strained to hear as she sat on her bed in the dark; the sounds, however, had ceased and quiet reigned. She decided that she would investigate herself and put her feet down on the floor, but fear paralyzed her limbs. She convinced herself that it was just her imagination and got back in bed and put a pillow over her head and for a few moments tried to plunge back into sleep. Then suddenly the door of the room opened so forcefully it banged against the wall and they fell on her.
There were four or five of them. Their faces didn’t show in the dark. They pounced on her and one of them smothered her mouth with the pillow while the others grabbed her hands and feet. She tried with all her strength to slip out of their clutches and to scream at the top of her voice and she bit the hand of the man who was gagging her, but her resistance failed because they had tied her up tightly, completely paralyzing her movements. They were strong and well trained and one of them rolled up the sleeve of her pajamas and she felt something like a sharp thorn being stuck into her arm. Little by little her body began to weaken and relax. Then her eyes closed and she felt everything around her moving away and dissolving into nothing, like a dream.
The newspaper Le Caire was established in Cairo a hundred years ago in the same old building that it still occupies in Galaa Street, and since its founding it has been published every day, in French, for residents of Cairo who speak that language.
When Hatim Rasheed graduated from the Faculty of Humanities, his French mother was able to find him work on the newspaper. He proved his aptitude for journalism and was quickly promoted till he was appointed to be editor-in-chief at the age of forty-five. He introduced sweeping changes to the newspaper and added an Arabic-language section aimed at the Egyptian reader. During his time distribution rose to thirty thousand copies daily, which was a huge number in comparison to the other small local newspapers. This success came as a natural and just result of Hatim’s efficiency, his assiduity, his effective contacts with varied milieux, and his amazing capacity for work, which he had inherited from his father.
If one remembers that over seventy individuals (administrative staff, reporters, and photographers) work under his direction at the newspaper, the first question that comes to mind is, Do they know about his homosexuality? The answer, of course, is yes, because people in Egypt are interested in the personal lives of others and delve into them with persistence and focus. Homosexuality is impossible to hide and all the employees at the paper know that their boss is homosexual. Despite the revulsion and contempt this arouses, Hatim Rasheed’s perversion remains merely a distant, pale shadow to his forceful, compelling professional image. They are aware of his homosexuality but do not feel it in any way in their daily dealings with him because he is serious and stern (more perhaps than is necessary) and, while he spends most of the day with them, not the slightest movement or glance that might hint at his tendencies escapes him.
A few vulgar incidents have of course occurred during his time as head of the newspaper. Once there was a lazy and unsuccessful journalist on whom Hatim made a number of negative reports in preparation for his final removal from the newspaper. The journalist knew the chief editor’s intention so decided to get his revenge and exploit the presence of all the reporters at the weekly editorial meeting. He asked for the floor and when Hatim gave him permission, he addressed him, saying in a sarcastic tone, “I wish to propose to you, sir, the idea of an investigative piece on the phenomenon of homosexuality in Egypt.”
There was a tense silence and the writer could not conceal a smile in his eagerness to insult Hatim, who said nothing but bowed his head and stroked his smooth hair (as was his custom when surprised or nervous). Then he leaned back in his chair and said calmly, “I don’t think the subject concerns the readers.”
“On the contrary, it concerns them a great deal, because there’s been a major increase in the number of homosexuals and some of them now occupy leadership positions in the country, and scientific studies show that the homosexual is psychologically unfit to lead the work of any institution because of the psychological aberrations that homosexuality causes.”
The attack was harsh and sweeping and Hatim determined to respond with violence, so he said firmly, “Your outmoded style of thinking is one of the reasons for your failure as a journalist.”
“Has homosexuality now become a progressive behavior?”
“Neither that nor is it the national issue in our country. My dear educated gentleman, Egypt has not fallen behind because of homosexuality but because of corruption, dictatorship, and social injustice. Likewise snooping into people’s private lives is a vulgar way of behaving that is inappropriate for a long-established newspaper like Le Caire .”
The writer tried to protest, but Hatim cut him off sharply: “The discussion is closed. Kindly remain silent so that we may discuss the other topics.”
Hatim thus won the first round deftly, demonstrating to all his strength of personality and refusal to bow to blackmail. On the other embarrassing occasion, which was even more vulgar, a trainee journalist harassed him. Hatim was standing among the workers in the print shop supervising the production of the paper when the journalist, on the pretense of talking to him about something, came up to him and pointing to something among the papers on the table pushed himself against him from behind. Hatim immediately understood the meaning of the act and moved away, quietly, resuming his rounds of the print shop in a normal way. When he got back to his office, he sent for the journalist, dismissed the other people in the room, and then left the man standing for several minutes while he looked through his papers in front of him without letting him sit or paying him any attention. Eventually he raised his head, looked at him for a while, and said slowly, “Listen. Either you behave decently or I throw you off the paper. Understand?”
The journalist tried to make a pretense of surprise and innocence, but Hatim said in a decisive voice before going back to his papers, “That’s a final warning. No further discussion is called for. Get out. The interview’s over.”
Hatim Rasheed is not merely then an effeminate but also a talented and inquiring individual who has learned much from experience and whose competence and intelligence have brought him to the pinnacle of professional success. Moreover, he is an exquisite intellectual, who speaks a number of languages (English, Spanish, and French, as well as Arabic) fluently and whose wide and deep reading has introduced him to socialist thinking, which has influenced him greatly. He has made efforts to become friends with the leading Egyptian socialists and as a result at the end of the 1970s was once summoned to an interview with National Security investigators, who interrogated him; however, he was released after a few hours after they had recorded in his file that he was “a sympathizer and not an organizer.” His socialism has caused his name to come up several times for enlistment in the secret communist organizations (the Workers’ Party, the Egyptian Communist Party) but his known homosexuality has dissuaded those in charge from going ahead.
Such is Hatim Rasheed’s genuine but public persona. His secret life, on the other hand, is a kind of locked box full of forbidden, sinful, but pleasurable, toys that he opens every evening to play with, then locks again and tries to forget. He strives to reduce the homosexual space in his life to the narrowest possible, living his daily life as a journalist and an executive and practicing his pleasure for a few hours in bed at night. He tells himself that most men in the world have some special pastime that they use to relieve life’s pressures. He has known men in the most elevated positions — doctors, councelors, and university professors — who were devoted to alcohol or hashish or women or gambling and this never lessened their success or their self-respect. He convinces himself that homosexuality is the same sort of thing.
This idea appeals to him greatly because it brings him relief, balance, and respect. This is why he is always looking for a stable relationship with a permanent lover so that he can satisfy his needs safely and restrict his homosexuality to his nighttime hours in bed, for when he is alone, without a lover, temptation seizes him and his importunate lust pushes him into ignominious situations. He has had days of pain and distress when he was driven to defile himself with criminal types and the scum of society in order to pick out from among them a lover with whom to satisfy his need for just one night, never to be seen again. Again and again he has been subjected to theft, insult, and blackmail. Once they beat him horribly in a public bathhouse in the quarter of El Hussein and took his gold watch and wallet.
In the aftermath of such insane nights, Hatim Rasheed would hole up at home for a few days, seeing and speaking to no one, drinking a lot, passing his whole life in review, and remembering his father and mother with resentment and hatred. He would say to himself that if they had made a little time to look after him, he would never have sunk this low, but they were preoccupied with their professional ambitions and had devoted themselves to achieving wealth and glory so they left him and his body to the servants to play around with. He never blames Idris or doubts for one moment that he loved him truly, but he longs to see his father, Dr. Hassan Rasheed, rise from his grave just once so that he can tell him what he thinks of him. He would stand in front of him and face down his powerful glances, huge frame, and awe-inspiring pipe. He wouldn’t be afraid of him at all and he would say to him, “Great scholar, since you’d dedicated your life to civil law, why did you get married and have children? You may have been a genius at law but you certainly didn’t know how to be a real father. How many times in your life did you kiss me? How many times did you sit down with me so that I could tell you about my problems? You always treated me as though I were a rare art object or painting you’d acquired because it had taken your fancy; then you’d forgotten about it, and from time to time, when your crowded work schedule permitted, you’d remember it, look at it for a while, and then forget about it again.”
His mother, Jeanette, he would also confront with the truth. “You were just a barmaid at a small bar in le Quartier latin. You were poor and uneducated and your marriage to my father was a bigger social leap than you’d ever dreamed of. Despite this, you spent the next thirty years despising my father and blackmailing him because he was Egyptian and you were French. You played the role of the cultured European among the savages. You kept grumbling about Egypt and the Egyptians and treating everybody coldly and haughtily. Your neglect of me was part of your hatred for Egypt. I think you were unfaithful to my father more than once; in fact, I’m sure of it, at least with Monsieur Benard the embassy secretary, whom you used to spend hours talking to on the phone, lying on the couch, hugging the receiver, and whispering, your face contorted with desire, sending me off to play with the servants. You were just a whore like the ones anyone could catch by the dozen in the bars of Paris simply by sticking out his hand.” In these black moments, despair seizes Hatim, his sense of humiliation tears at him, and he surrenders himself to weeping like a child. Sometimes he thinks about suicide, but he lacks the courage to carry it out.
Right now, however, he is in the best of form: his relationship with Abd Rabbuh has kept going and settled down and he has succeeded in linking Abduh’s life to his own by means of the kiosk and the room he has rented for them on the roof. He has guaranteed his physical satisfaction and stopped going altogether to the Chez Nous and other homosexual meeting places. He is urging Abduh to complete his education so that he can become a respectable, educated person capable of appreciating his feelings and ideas and worthy of his permanent friendship.
“Abduh. You’re intelligent and sensitive and you can improve your circumstances through your own efforts. You’re earning money now, your family is taken care of, and your life is stable. But money isn’t everything. You have to get an education and become a respectable man.”
They’d finished the morning love session and Hatim got out of bed, naked, and took a dreamy, dancing step on the tips of his toes, his face full of contentment and animation as it usually was after he’d had his fill of lovemaking. He started to pour himself a drink while Abduh, stretched out on the bed, laughed and said jokingly, “Why do you want me to get an education?”
“So you can be respectable.”
“You mean I’m not respectable?”
“Of course you’re respectable. But you have to study and get a certificate to bear witness to that.”
“ ‘There is no god but God’ is the only witnessing I’ll ever do!”
Abduh laughed uproariously, but Hatim looked at him reproachfully and said, “I’m serious. You have to make an effort. Study, get the Intermediate and the Secondary, and go to a major faculty, like law, for instance.”
“ ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ as the old saying goes.”
“No, Abduh. Don’t think that way. You’re twenty-four years old. Your whole life’s ahead of you.”
“Everything’s fate and destiny.”
“That backward stuff again? You can make your destiny in this world on your own. If there were any justice in this country, someone like you would get educated at state expense. Education, medical treatment, and work are the natural rights of every citizen in the world, but the regime in Egypt is determined to abandon the poor like you to ignorance so it can rob them. Have you noticed that the government selects the Central Security troops from the poorest and most ignorant recruits? If you were educated, Abduh, you’d never agree to work for Central Security, in the worst conditions and for pennies. And at the same time the big men steal millions from the people’s pockets.”
“You want me to stop the big men from stealing? I couldn’t stand up to the major who commanded the camp and now you want me to take on the big men?”
“Start with yourself, Abduh. Make an effort and teach yourself. It’s the first step toward getting your rights.”
Hatim looked at Abduh for a while, then said lovingly, “ And who knows? Maybe one day you’ll be Mr. Abd Rabbuh the lawyer.”
Abduh got off the bed, went up to him, took hold of his shoulders, kissed him on the cheek, and said, “And who’ll pay for my education? And who’ll open me an office when I graduate?”
Hatim’s feelings suddenly took fire and he put his face close to Abduh’s and said in a whisper, “I will, my darling. I’ll never leave you and I’ll never be stingy with you.”
Abduh hugged him and the two of them lost themselves in long, hot kisses. However, a distant sound reached them and gradually they became aware of repeated loud knocks on the door. Hatim looked at Abduh anxiously and they rushed to put on their clothes any old how. Hatim preceded him in the direction of the door, preparing his face with an annoyed and haughty expression for whomever he might find there. He peered through the peephole and said in surprise, “It’s your wife, Abduh.”
Abduh came forward quickly, opened the door, and shouted angrily, “What’s the matter, Hidiya? Why are you here at this hour? What do you want?”
Pointing to her child, who was sleeping in her arms, she said, “Help me, Abduh! The boy’s burning hot and he keeps throwing up. He’s been crying all night long. Hatim Bey, I beg you, get us a doctor or take us to the hospital!”
When Busayna opened the door of the bathroom, she found Zaki el Dessouki stretched out on the floor, his clothes covered with vomit, and unable to move. Bending down, she took his hand and found it was as cold as ice.
“Zaki Bey! Are you ill?”
He muttered some incomprehensible words and continued to stare into space. She brought a chair, took him in her arms, sat him down on it (discovering at the same time how very light his body was), removed his soiled clothes, and washed his face, hands, and chest with hot water. Soon he started to come round a little. He was able to stand and walk, leaning on her, and she put him to bed and went up to her room on the roof and quickly returned with a large glass of hot mint, which Zaki drank before surrendering to a deep sleep. She spent the night next to him on the couch and examined him several times. She checked the heat of his brow with her hand and put a finger under his nose to make sure that his breathing was regular. She stayed awake and determined to call a doctor if his condition got worse. As she contemplated his aged sleeping face, he appeared to her, for the first time, in simple reality, as just a good-hearted, drunk old man, frail, mild-tempered, and deserving of compassion, like a child.
In the morning, she made him a light breakfast with a glass of warm milk. Abaskharon had arrived and discovered what had happened and he stood before his sick master with his head bent in sorrow, saying over and over in an agonized voice, “A thousand wishes for your recovery, Excellency!”
Zaki opened his eyes and made a sign for him to leave. Then he got up with difficulty, leaned against the wall, and taking his head in his hands grumbled in a low voice, “I’ve got a terrible headache and my stomach hurts a lot.”
“Do you want me to call a doctor?”
“No. It’s nothing. I drank too much. This has happened to me so many times. I drink a cup of Turkish coffee without sugar and I’m fine.”
He was putting on a show of holding up and being tough and she laughed and said, “So listen. That’s enough machismo. You’re an old man now and your health is weak. No more drinking and staying up late. You’re supposed to go to bed early like old people your age.”
Zaki smiled and looking at her gratefully said, “Thank you, Busayna. You’re a good and loyal person. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She put her hands on his face and kissed his brow.
She had kissed him often before, but this time she felt the touch of his face differently. She felt as she pressed her lips to his brow that she knew him well, that she loved his old, coarse smell, and that he was no longer that Bey, who, far removed from her, told her about the old days. He wasn’t any longer even that rebarbative male lover who was different from her. Now he was close to her, as though she had known him for ages, as though he was her father or her uncle, as though he carried the same smell and blood as she. She wanted to hug him hard so that she could take his weak, fragile body in her arms and fill her nostrils with that old, coarse smell of his that she loved.
She thought that what was happening between them was strange and unexpected. She remembered that only yesterday she’d tried to trick him and get hold of his signature, and she felt ashamed. It occurred to her that the trick she’d played on him yesterday had been her last try at resisting her real feelings toward him. Inside she’d wanted to flee from her love for him. She’d have been more comfortable in a way if she had limited her relationship to him to sex and money — he wanted sex and she wanted money, that was how she had pictured the relationship — but she had overstepped the bounds.
Now she is facing her true feelings and she understands them clearly. She wants to stay with him, to take care of him, and to respect him, gratefully confident that he will understand anything she may say to him. She will tell him about her life, her father and her mother, and her old love for Taha; she’ll even tell him the sordid details of her relationship with Talal and she won’t be ashamed with him. She will feel at peace once she’s told him, as though she has relieved herself of a heavy burden. How she warms to the sight of his aged face listening attentively to her as he asks her to explain some detail of her stories, then comments on them!
She cannot describe her feelings with any other word than love. It wasn’t the hot, burning love she’d felt for Taha but another different kind of love, calm and deep-seated, something closer to peace of mind, and confidence, and respect. She loved him, and having worked that out she was freed forever from her misgivings. She began to live carefree and happy and started spending most of the day and a good part of the night with Zaki Bey.
One small, sharp, pointed thing, however, pricks her conscience whenever she remembers that she had been going to betray him. She had put pressure on him to sign the contract so that Malak could get hold of his apartment. She had exploited his confidence in her to do him harm. Wasn’t that what had happened? Hadn’t that been her goal? To make a fool of him and get his signature while he was drunk and get five thousand pounds from Malak in payment for her betrayal? Whenever that word resounded in her mind, she would remember his kindly smile and his interest in her and his concern for her feelings. She would remember that he had always treated her gently and that he had given her his entire trust. At those moments, she would feel she was vile and treacherous and would despise herself and enter a whirlpool of self-reproach.
These feelings continued to torture her until one morning she suddenly went to Malak. It was early and he had just opened his shop. There was a glass of tea with milk in front of him from which he was sipping in a leisurely fashion. She stood in front of him, greeted him, and said to him straight off before her courage could seep away, “Mr. Malak, I’m sorry. I won’t be able to do what we agreed on.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That business of the signature I’m supposed to get from Zaki Bey. I’m not going to do it.”
“Why?”
“That’s just how it is.”
“Is that your last word?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Fine. Thanks.”
Malak spoke calmly and sucked up a sip of tea. He turned his face away from her, and she thought as she left him that she had liberated herself from a heavy worry, though she was surprised all the same that he had accepted her apology without fuss. She’d expected him to get angry and blow up, but he’d stayed calm, as though he’d been expecting that or had something or other in mind. This thought disquieted her for a few days, but she soon rid herself of her misgivings and felt for the first time a deep contentment because she had stopped betraying Zaki and had nothing left to hide from him.
At 8 A.M., Sheikh Shakir and Taha el Shazli took the Metro in the direction of Helwan. They had been engaged over several days in long discussions during which Sheikh Shakir had tried to persuade Taha to forget what had happened and pick up his life again. However, Taha remained so vengeful and angry that he seemed more than once to be on the verge of collapse. Finally, at the end of a long debate, the sheikh shouted in his face, “What do you want then? You don’t want to study and you don’t want to work and you don’t want to see any of your colleagues or even your family. What do you want, Taha?”
“I want to take revenge on the people who assaulted me and humiliated me.”
“And how will you know them, since you didn’t see their faces?”
“From their voices. I could distinguish their voices from a thousand. I beg you, Master, to tell me the name of the head officer, who supervised my torture. You told me before that you know his name.”
Sheikh Shakir was silent, thinking.
“I beg you, Master. I won’t be at peace till I know his name.”
“I can’t be certain as to his identity. But torture at National Security generally takes place under the supervision of two men — Colonel Salih Rashwan and Colonel Fathi el Wakil. They’re both unbelieving criminals destined for Hell — How evil a homecoming! But how does it help you to know the officer’s name?”
“I shall take revenge on him.”
“Nonsense! Are you going to spend your life looking for someone you never set eyes on? An insane enterprise, destined to fail.”
“I’ll go after him to the end.”
“You’re going to fight on your own a whole regime, with an army and a police force and huge quantities of terrible weapons?”
“You say that, when you’re the one who taught us that the true Muslim is a nation unto himself? Has not the Truth, Blessed and Almighty, said, How often a little company has overcome a numerous company, by God ’s leave! (God has spoken truly)?”
“God indeed speaks truly but your fight with the regime will cost you your life. You’ll die, my son. They’ll kill you the first time you confront them.”
Taha was silent and looked into the sheikh’s face, for the mention of death had had its effect on him. Then he said, “I’m dead now. They killed me in detention. When they trespass on your honor laughing, when they give you a woman’s name and make you answer with your new name and you have to because of the savagery of the torture… They called me Fawziya. Every day they used to beat me and make me say, ‘I’m a woman and my name is Fawziya.’ You want me to forget all that and go on living?”
He spoke bitterly and bit his lower lip with his teeth. The sheikh said, “Listen, Taha. This is my last word, to clear my conscience before Our Lord, Mighty and Glorious: getting involved in fighting this regime means certain death.”
“I’m not afraid of death any longer. I’ve made up my mind to be a martyr. I hope with all my heart to die a martyr and enter Paradise.”
There was silence between them and suddenly the sheikh got up from his place and went over to Taha and looked at him for a short while. Then he hugged him hard and smiled and said, “God bless you, my son. This is what real faith does to those who have it. Go home now and pack your bag for a journey. Tomorrow morning I’ll come and go with you.”
“Where to?”
The sheikh’s smile broadened and he whispered, “Don’t ask. Do as I say and you’ll find everything out in due course.”
Taha deduced that the sheikh’s opposition to him at the beginning had been a stratagem to test the strength of his determination. Now, the following day, they were sitting next to each other in silence in the crowded metro car, the sheikh looking out of the window while Taha stared without seeing at the passengers, a disturbing question repeating itself in his mind: Where was the sheikh taking him? Of course, he trusted him, but fear and misgivings afflicted him all the same. He felt as though he was proceeding to some perilous point of no return that would be fundamental in his life. He felt a shudder when the sheikh said to him, “Be ready to get out at the next station, Turah el Asmant.”
The station bears the name of the cement company that the Swiss built in the twenties and which was then nationalized after the Revolution and increased its production to become one of the biggest cement factories in the Arab World. Thereafter, like the other major companies, it had been subjected to the Open Door Policy and privatization, with foreign companies buying numerous shares. The metro line goes right through its middle: on the right are the administrative buildings and the giant furnaces and on the left stretches the vast desert, bounded by mountains throughout which are scattered the quarries where the huge rocks are blasted with dynamite, then moved onto large transporters to be incinerated in the cement kilns.
Sheikh Shakir got down, Taha with him, and they crossed the metro station in the direction of the mountains and walked out into the desert. The sun was hot, the air laden with the dust that covers the whole area, and Taha felt a dryness in his throat and a low, continuous pain in the top of his stomach, followed by nausea and coughing. The sheikh said jokingly, “Sweet patience, champion! The air here is polluted with cement dust. You’ll get used to it soon. Anyway, we’re almost there.”
They stopped in front of a small rocky hillock and waited a few minutes. Then the sound of an engine reached their ears. A large rock-moving truck approached and stopped in front of them. The driver was a young man dressed in workers’ blue overalls that were worn and faded with use. He exchanged greetings quickly with the sheikh, who looked at him appraisingly and said, “God and Paradise,” to which the driver replied with a smile, “Patience and Victory.”
These were the passwords, and the sheikh took Taha’s hand and climbed up with him into the driver’s cabin. The three said nothing and the truck proceeded along a mountain track. Other transporters belonging to the company passed them until the driver turned off onto a narrow unmetaled sidetrack on which they drove for more than half an hour. Taha almost confessed his anxiety to the sheikh, but he saw that the latter was absorbed in reciting the Qu’ran from a small copy in his hand. Eventually, there appeared in the distance indistinct shapes that gradually became clearer and turned out to be a group of houses built of red brick. The truck stopped, Taha and the sheikh got down, and the driver bade them farewell, then turned and went back.
The streets had the look of any urban slum — conspicuous poverty, puddles of water in the dirt lanes, chickens and ducks running around outside the houses, small children playing barefoot, and veiled women sitting at the doors. The sheikh strode out with the confidence of one who knows a place well and entered one of the houses, Taha behind him. They went through the door into a spacious room empty but for a small desk and a blackboard that hung on the wall. On the floor were spread large yellow rush mats on which were sitting a group of bearded young men in white gallabiyas who all jumped up to greet Sheikh Shakir, embracing him and kissing him one after the other. The oldest among them, a huge, tall man aged around forty with a large black beard and wearing a dark green sash over his white gallabiya hung back a little. He had a scar extending from his right eyebrow to the top of his forehead like the remains of a large old wound and this prevented him from fully closing his eye. On seeing Sheikh Shakir, the man whooped with joy and said in his husky voice, “Peace be upon you! Where have you been, Master? We’ve been waiting for you two whole weeks.”
“Only urgent necessity has kept me from you, Bilal. How are you and your brothers?”
“Praise God, we’re fine, God willing.”
“And how is your work?”
“As you will have read in the newspapers — from success to success, thanks be to God.”
Sheikh Shakir put his arm around Taha and told the man, smiling, “This is the Taha el Shazli whom I spoke to you about, Bilal. A fine example of the courageous, pious, observant young man — and we give precedence over God to none.”
He brought Taha forward to shake the man’s hand and Taha felt the man’s strong grip and looked at his disfigured face as Sheikh Shakir’s words resounded in his ears, “Taha, God willing, I introduce you to your brother in God, Sheikh Bilal, the commander of the camp. Here with Sheikh Bilal you will learn, God willing, how to take what is yours and how to wreak vengeance on all the tyrants.”
Souad woke up and opened her eyes with difficulty. She had stomach pains, nausea, and a headache, and her throat was dry and hurting her. Little by little she realized that she was in a hospital. The room was large, the ceiling high, and there were old chairs and a small table in the corner. The double doors with two round glass portholes looked like those in an operating theater in an Egyptian movie from the forties. Next to the bed stood a stout nurse with a snub nose. She bent over Souad and put her hand on her face, then smiled and said, “Praise God you’re fine. God’s been good to you. You hemorrhaged badly.”
“Liar!” shouted Souad in a strangled voice. The nurse leaped back. “You aborted me by force. I’ll see you get hell!”
The nurse left the room. An insane anger swept over Souad and she started kicking her feet and shouting in a loud voice, “Criminals! You aborted me! Get me the Emergency Response Police! I’ll put you all in jail!” The door soon opened and a young doctor appeared. He came up to her, the nurse following. Souad shouted, “I was pregnant and you aborted me by force!”
The doctor smiled, obviously lying and scared. He said in an embarrassed voice, “You had a hemorrhage, Madame. Calm yourself. Excitement’s not good for you.”
Souad exploded again. She shouted and abused them and wept. The doctor and the nurse left. Then the door opened again and her brother Hamidu appeared, with Fawzi, Hagg Azzam’s son. Hamidu hurried in and kissed her. Clinging to him, she burst into passionate tears.
Hamidu’s face crumpled and he shut his mouth tight and said noth ing. Fawzi calmly pulled up the chair from the end of the room and sat down beside the bed. Then he leaned back and said in measured tones, enunciating the words clearly as though he were giving a lesson to children, “Listen, Souad. Everything is fated and allotted. Hagg Azzam agreed with you about something and you broke the agreement and ‘the one who begins is the more unjust.’ ”
“God take revenge on you and on your father, you criminals, you sons of bitches!”
“Shut your mouth!”
Fawzi shouted these words angrily, his face frowning and looking stern and cruel. Then he said nothing for a little, sighed, and resumed his lecture.
“Despite your rudeness, the Hagg has dealt with you as God’s Law requires. You had a hemorrhage and you would have died, so we took you to the hospital and the doctor was forced to carry out an abortion. The hospital paperwork is on file and the doctor’s report is on file. Tell her, Hamidu.”
Hamidu lowered his head in silence and Fawzi’s voice rose again.
“My father, Hagg Azzam, is a God-fearing man. He has divorced you and given you more than your rights, God recompense him. The deferred payment and the support money we have calculated as God’s Law requires, and there’s something extra as a gift from us. Your brother Hamidu has a check for twenty thousand pounds. The hospital bill is paid and we’ve taken all your things from the house and we’ll send them to you in Alexandria.”
A deep silence prevailed. Souad, broken now, was weeping quietly. Fawzi got up. At that moment, he appeared strong and decisive, as though everything in the world depended on whatever utterance he might make. He took two steps in the direction of the door. Then he turned as though remembering something and said, “Captain Hamidu. Get your sister to calm down; she’s a bit unbalanced. The whole thing’s over and done with and she’s got what she’s owed to the last cent. We started on a friendly basis and we’ve finished on a friendly basis. If you and your sister make problems or start talking, we know how to put you in your place. This country is ours, Hamidu. We have a long reach and we have all kinds of ways of dealing with people. Choose the kind you want.”
He walked slowly and deliberately away until he exited the room, the flaps of the door slapping behind him.
As a man will flick off with his fingers a few flecks of dust that have clung to the breast of his smart suit and continue on his way as though nothing had happened, so Hagg Azzam got rid of Souad Gaber and was able to erase his affection for her. It was the memory of her delectable, hot, supple body that kept coming back to him and he made a massive and painful effort to forget her, recalling deliberately her savage, hateful face during the final scene and imagining the problems and scandals that would have plagued him if he hadn’t got rid of her. He consoled himself with the thought that his marriage to her, while providing him with wonderful times, hadn’t cost him a great deal. He also thought that his experience with her might be replicable. Beautiful poor women were in good supply and wedlock was holy, not something anyone could be reproached for.
By means of such thoughts he had tried to wipe the image of Souad from his memory, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing, and he had thrown himself into the maelstrom of his work in order to forget. With the opening of the Tasso automobile agency due in a few days he had set up an operations room in his office with his sons Fawzi and Quadri. As though going to war, he had overseen the preparations for the huge party at the Hotel Semiramis, personally inviting all the big shots in the city. All had come — present and former ministers, high ranking civil servants, and editors-in-chief of the main national newspapers, their friendship costing him dozens of cars that he gave away free or for a symbolic price. This was done with the agreement of the Japanese officials and sometimes at their suggestion.
The party went on to a late hour with the television broadcasting bits of it as paid advertisements and the newspapers giving it full coverage. A well-known economic columnist at al-Akhbar newspaper wrote a piece presenting the opening of the Tasso agency as a courageous, patriotic step, boldly undertaken by the authentically Egyptian businessman Hagg Azzam to break the monopoly by Western cars. The columnist urged all Egyptian businessmen to choose the same righteous, difficult path as Hagg Azzam for the sake of Egypt’s rebirth and the health of its economy. For two whole weeks the newspapers were filled with pictures of Hagg Azzam and statements by him. The picture that was published of the signing of the contract for the agency was exceptionally expressive in that it showed Hagg Azzam with his huge body, plebeian face, and darting, cunning glances and sitting next to him Mr. Yen Ki, chairman of Tasso’s board with his slight Japanese build, his straightforward look, and his serious, refined face — as though the difference between the two men epitomized the vast distance between what happens in Japan and what happens in Egypt.
From the first months the agency realized incredible sales exceeding all expectations, the profits pouring down on Hagg Azzam, who received his Lord’s grace with gratitude, paying out from them tens of thousands of pounds in charity. The Japanese side offered Azzam additional projects for service stations in Cairo and Alexandria and Hagg Azzam lived his most glorious days ever with only one thing to spoil them, something he had tried to ignore but in vain. El Fouli had hounded him for a meeting and Azzam kept putting him off till he could do so no longer. In the end, he agreed and went to meet El Fouli at the Sheraton, having prepared himself ahead of time for a difficult interview.
The hallway, dark in the middle of the day and crowded to overflowing, appeared more like the third-class car of a train to Upper Egypt than the reception area of a hospital: the women were standing, loaded with their sick children, the smell of sweat was stifling, the floor and walls were filthy, the few male nurses who were organizing entry to the examination room were abusing the women and shoving them, and there was endless fighting, screaming, and tumult. Hatim Rasheed and Abduh, along with Hidiya, arrived carrying the child, who never stopped crying. They stood for a while in the crowd and then Hatim went up to one of the nurses and asked to meet the director of the hospital. The nurse looked at him with annoyance and told him the director wasn’t there. Abduh almost got into a fight with him when the nurse told him that he had to wait his turn for the child to be seen. Hatim then went out to the nearest public telephone and called several numbers from the small notebook that he always kept in his pocket with the result that the hospital’s deputy director came out to them and received them warmly, apologizing for the absence of the director. The deputy director was a fat man with a pale complexion whose face gave an impression of good-heartedness and straightforwardness. He examined the child carefully, then said in an anxious voice, “Unfortunately, the case is advanced and critical. The boy is dehydrated and feverish.”
He wrote out some papers, which he gave to Abduh, who was a nervous wreck, smoking incessantly and railing at his wife. Then he took the child in his arms and ran with the nurse, to whom the doctor’s concern over the case had transmitted itself, and they put the child in the intensive care ward. Glucose tubes were put into his small arms, but his face was extremely pale, his eyes sunken, and his crying was getting softer. Everyone felt heavily despondent. In response to Abduh’s question, the nurse said, “The treatment will begin to show results after at least two hours. Our Lord is merciful.”
Silence reigned again and Hidiya started to cry quietly. Hatim took Abduh aside, thrust a bundle of banknotes into his pocket, and patted him on the shoulder saying, “Take these, Abduh, for the hospital charges and if you need anything, please call me. I have to go to the paper. I’ll call you to find out how you’re doing tonight.”
“I wish I’d met you a long time ago!”
“Why?”
“My life would have been completely different.”
“You’re still alive. Go ahead and change it.”
“Change what, Busayna? I’m sixty-five years old. ‘The End,’ you know.”
“Who says? You could live another twenty, thirty years. It’s God that decides how long people live.”
“That would be nice. One would really like to live another thirty years, at least.”
They laughed together, he in his husky voice, she in her repeated, melodious chirrups. They were lying naked on the bed and he was holding her in his arms enjoying the touch of her smooth, thick hair on his arm. They had freed themselves utterly from any feeling of the privacy of each other’s bodies and would spend hours completely naked. She would make him coffee and prepare his glasses of whisky and hors d’œuvres and from time to time they would sleep together. He might make love to her, but often they would just lie like that. He would turn off the light in the room and watch her face in the low, tremulous light that came from the street. At such moments she appeared unreal to him, a beautiful apparition, a night creature that with the first light of dawn would disappear as suddenly as it had come. They would talk, her voice in the darkness sounding deep, sweet, and warm. In a serious tone she said, staring at the ceiling, “When are we leaving?”
“Leaving for where?”
“You promised me we’d go somewhere together.”
Gazing at her face, he asked her, “You still hate this country?”
She nodded her head, looking at the ceiling.
“I can’t fathom your generation. In my day, love for one’s country was like a religion. Lots of young people died struggling against the British.”
Busayna sat up and said, “You made demonstrations to throw out the British? Okay, they went. Does that mean the country’s all right?”
“The reason the country’s gone downhill is the absence of democracy. If there were a real democratic system, Egypt would be a great power. Egypt’s curse is dictatorship and dictatorship inevitably leads to poverty, corruption, and failure in all fields.”
“That’s big talk. I dream in my own size. I want to live comfortably and have a family. A husband who loves me, children to raise, and a lovely, comfy little home instead of living on the roof. I’d like to go to a decent country, where there’s no dirt, no poverty, and no injustice. You know, the brother of one of my friends failed the general secondary exam three years in a row. Then he went off to Holland, married a Dutch woman, and settled down there. He tells us that overseas there’s no injustice and doing people out of what’s theirs, like here. There everyone gets what’s his and people respect one another. Even the sweeper in the street gets respect. That’s why I want to go abroad. I want to live there and work and become really respectable. Earn my living from my work instead of going to the storeroom with someone like Talal so that he’ll give me ten pounds. Just think — he used to give me ten pounds a time, the cost of two packs of Marlboros. I was really stupid.”
“You were in need and when you’re in need you don’t think. Busayna, I don’t want you to live in the past. Everything that happened to you is a page that’s been turned and is done with. Think of the future. We have each other now and I’ll never leave you.”
There was silence for a moment. Then Zaki went on gaily, to dispel the gloom, “A month or two from now I’ll be getting a big sum of money and I’ll take you abroad.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“Where will we go?”
“France.”
She screamed and clapped her hands like a child. Then she said, joking slyly, “But you just pull yourself together and watch out for your health so you don’t flake out on me there. That would be a real mess!”
When she laughs, the muscles of her face contract, sweat stands out on her forehead, and she looks somewhat wild and strange as though she’d been taken by surprise by happiness and decided to grab it hard so it couldn’t get away. Zaki took her in his arms and whispered, “Okay? Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
He started with her hands. He began kissing her fingers one by one, then moved to her palm and arms and full, smooth chest. When he reached her neck and raised her thick hair to take her lovely small ears in his mouth, he felt her body burn with desire beneath his.
It started with a whisper. “Whisper” is the right word — a very slight sound that came suddenly and then was cut off while Zaki was devouring Busayna’s lips in a heated kiss. Seconds passed while they embraced, and then the sound was repeated, clearly this time. The door to the room in which they were sleeping was open and it came to Zaki’s mind in a flash that someone was moving around in the reception room. He leaped up naked from the bed and Busayna let out a high-pitched scream, leaping to put her clothes on any old how over her naked body. Then followed terrifying, nightmarish scenes — tense moments that Zaki and Busayna would never forget. The light went on in the room and a uniformed police officer appeared, police goons behind him. Dawlat came forward from among them, a malign, gloating smile on her face. In a moment her voice was raised, high-pitched and hateful as death: “Scandal and shamelessness! Every day bringing a prostitute and spending the night with her. Enough filth, my good man! Shame on you!”
“Shut your mouth!”
Zaki shouted this in his first reaction. He had gotten over his astonishment and appeared extremely agitated, his whole naked body shaking and his eyes bulging with rage. Unconsciously he put out his hand to take his pants, shouting as he put them on, “What’s going on? What’s this farce? Who gave you permission to enter my office? Do you have a warrant from the prosecutor?”
Zaki shouted this in the face of the young officer, whose features from the start were hostile, and who replied in a calm, challenging tone, “Are you teaching me how to do my job? I don’t need a warrant from the prosecutor. This lady is your sister and lives with you and she presented a complaint against you for practicing indecency in her house and requested an official inspection as she’s bringing a case for sequestration against you.”
“Nonsense. This is my private office and she does not live with me here.”
“But she opened the door with her keys and let us in.”
“Even if she has a key, it’s my office, in my name.”
“Then you can prove that in the report.”
“Prove what? I’ll see you get hell! You’re going to pay the price for violating the sanctity of people’s homes.”
“The sanctity of prostitutes, if you want the truth!” cried Dawlat, her eyes staring, and she moved toward him warily.
“Shut your mouth, I tell you!”
“You shut your mouth, you dirty old man!”
“Silence, madame, if you please!” shouted the officer at Dawlat, faking anger to mask that he was on her side. Then he turned to Zaki and said, “Listen, mister. You’re an old man and there’s no need for unpleasantness.”
“What exactly do you want?”
“We’ll just make our inspection and take a couple of words from you.”
“What’s to be inspected? Tell me you’ve been put up to this. That lizard put you up to this.”
“You seem to be a rude person. Listen, because I’m telling you for the last time. Give yourself a trouble-free evening.”
“You’re threatening me. I just have to talk on the telephone and I’ll teach you your place.”
“Is that so? Okay, I apologize,” replied the officer furiously. Then he said, “Come along, momma’s boy, down to the station, you and your prostitute.”
“I warn you not to use words you’ll be held to strict account for later. And you don’t have any right to arrest us.”
“I know whether I have the right or not.”
The officer turned and said to his goons, “Bring them.” The goons had been waiting for these words like a secret code and fell on Zaki and Busayna. Zaki resisted and started uttering threats and shouting in protest, but the men grabbed him firmly, while Busayna screamed, beat her cheeks, and pleaded with them as they dragged her outside.
In the beginning Taha felt constrained, but this went away as the days passed and as he got used to the camp’s strict regime — rising at dawn, performing the prayer, reciting the Qur’an, breakfast; then three hours of nonstop, demanding exercise (physical fitness and martial arts). After this, the brothers gathered to take classes (jurisprudence, exegesis, Qur’anic sciences, hadith) given by Sheikh Bilal and other scholars. Afternoons were devoted to arms training. The brothers would board a large bus (on which was written Turah Cement Company of Egypt) and go into the heart of the mountains where they practiced shooting and making and using bombs. The camp’s rhythm was exhaustingly rapid and Taha had no time to think. Even in the hour set aside for chatting, after the evening prayer, the conversation of the brothers usually turned to discussion of religious issues, during which the legal proof for the infidel nature of the regime and the necessity of fighting and destroying it would be presented.
When the time came to sleep, the brothers separated. The married ones went to the family dwellings at the foot of the mountain, while the bachelors slept in a small building set aside for them. Only then, after the lights had been extinguished and silence reigned, would Taha lie on his bed in the dark and recall with total lucidity the events of his life, as though an amazing, illuminating energy were suddenly released from his memory, and he would see Busayna el Sayed and be overwhelmed with tenderness. Sometimes he even smiled as he remembered their good times. Then anger would sweep over him as her face contemplated him for the last time and she said contemptuously, “It’s over between us, Taha. Each of us goes his own way.” All of a sudden memories of his detention would rain down on his head like incessant blows — the beatings and the abuse; the feeling after each occasion on which they violated him sexually that he was weak, exhausted, and broken; his breaking into tears and pleading with the soldiers to stop inserting the thick stick into his body; his soft, stammering voice when they told him to say, “I’m a woman” and then beat him again, and again asked him his name, to which he would reply, in a dead voice, “Fawziya,” causing them to laugh loudly, as though they were watching a satirical film. Taha would remember all that and lose his ability to sleep. He would stay awake, re-opening his old wounds. His face in the dark would crumple, his breath speed up. He would gasp as though running and an intense hatred would possess him which would not abate until he thought of the voices of the officers, categorizing, distinguishing, and storing them away carefully in his memory. After this a desire so burning that his body almost shuddered with the pressure would sweep over him, as he hankered for revenge and pictured himself exacting exemplary punishment from those who had tortured and violated him.
This thirst for revenge took him over and drove him on, so that he made amazing strides in the camp’s training exercises. Despite his youth he learned to beat many who had greater experience of physical combat than he, and within a few months he excelled at using regular rifles, semi-automatics, and automatics, and had learned how to make hand grenades easily and well. His rapid progress amazed all the brothers. Once, after he had completed a shooting exercise in which he had missed only one out of twenty shots, Sheikh Bilal came up to him, patted him on the shoulder, and said, his eyebrow scar twitching as usual when he was excited, “God bless you, Taha. You’ve become a crack shot.”
“So when are you going to let me participate in the gihad?” Taha replied boldly, taking advantage of the opportunity to ask a question that had been occupying his mind. Sheikh Bilal was silent for a moment. Then he whispered affectionately, “Don’t rush things, my son. Everything in its own time.”
He left quickly, as though to cut the conversation short, leaving Taha unhappy with the ambiguous answer. He was thirsting for his revenge and felt he was totally ready to go on operations, so why all this delay? He wasn’t any worse than his colleagues who went out to gihad, then returned to the camp full of what they’d done and received the congratulations of their brothers. After that Taha went to Sheikh Bilal more than once to urge him to send him out on an operation, but the latter continued to put him off with ambiguous answers until, on the final occasion, Taha got angry and shouted vehemently, “‘Soon, soon.’ When is this soon going to come? If you think I’m no good for gihad, why don’t you tell me and I’ll leave the camp.”
Sheikh Bilal’s smile spread, as though he was happy at Taha’s enthusiasm, and he said, “Be on your way, Taha, and you’ll hear good news, if God wills.”
And indeed, not a week went by before one of the brothers informed him that Sheikh Bilal was asking for him. As soon as he had finished the noon prayer, he rushed to the sheikh’s office — a cramped room containing an old desk, a number of worn-out chairs, and a rush mat on which the sheikh was sitting reciting the Qur’an. He was deeply absorbed in his chanting and only became aware of Taha’s presence next to him a few moments later. He smiled in welcome and sat him down beside him.
“I have sent for you about an important matter.”
“I’m yours to command.”
“It is for God alone to command. Listen, my son, we’ve decided to give you a bride.”
The sheikh said this suddenly and laughed, but Taha didn’t laugh. His dark face grew stern and he said warily, “I don’t understand.”
“You’re going to get married, my son. Don’t you know what marriage is?”
At this, Taha’s voice rose: “No, Master, I don’t understand. I don’t understand how I can beg you to give me permission for gihad, and you talk to me of marriage! Did I come here to get married? I don’t understand it at all, unless you just brought me here to make fun of me.”
For the first time, the sheikh’s face contracted with anger and he shouted, “It is inappropriate for you, Taha, to talk to me in that fashion, and I would be grateful if you would keep a hold on yourself in the future or I shall lose my temper with you. You are not the only one whom they have tortured at National Security. They have tortured thousands of brothers. I myself bear the traces of torture on my face as you see, but I don’t go out of my mind and scream every day in the faces of my sheikhs. Do you think that I am stopping you from going to gihad? As God knows, my son, the matter is not in my hands. I do not have decision-making power over operations. In fact, I don’t even know about them till the very last minute. I am a camp commander, Taha, and I am not even a member of the Gamaa’s Consultative Council. Please take that in and give us both a rest. I am not the one who will make the decision. All I can do is put your name forward to the brothers on the Gamaa Council. I have been persistent in doing that and I have written a number of reports on your courage and your progress in training, but they have not decided to send you yet. So it’s not my fault as you think, even though on the basis of my experience I believe that they will send you soon, God willing.”
Taha said nothing and bowed his head for a little. Then he said in a low voice, “I apologize, Master, for my excitable manner. God knows how I love and respect you, Sheikh Bilal.”
“Don’t worry about it, my son,” muttered Sheikh Bilal, who went on telling his prayer beads. Taha continued in an affectionate tone, as though he wanted to wipe out the traces of the tiff, “But I really do find the marriage business strange.”
“What’s strange about it? Marriage is one of God’s customs for His creatures. He, Glorious and Almighty, made it lawful for the sake of the righteousness of the individual and of Islam. You are a young man and have natural needs. Your marriage is an act of obedience to God and His Messenger for which you will be rewarded, God willing. The Chosen One — God bless him and give him peace — said in a sound hadith, ‘He among you who is capable of marriage, let him marry.’ And he has commanded us — God bless him and give him peace — to facilitate and expedite marriage in order to protect the Muslims from abomination. Here we live and die according to the path laid down by God and His Messenger and we do not deviate from it one jot, God willing. I propose for you a righteous, virtuous sister — we give precedence over God to none.”
“I have to marry a woman I don’t know?” responded Taha without thinking.
Sheikh Bilal smiled and said, “You’ll get to meet her, God willing. She is Sister Radwa Abu el Alaa, an outstanding example of the Muslim woman. She was married to Brother Hassan Nur el Din from Asyiut. When he achieved martyrdom, God have mercy on him, she was pregnant with her small son and she came to live the life of Islam here with us.”
Taha said nothing and seemed unconvinced, so Sheikh Bilal went on, “God forbid, my son, that I should impose anything on you. You’ll meet Radwa and see her face and talk with her, as the Pure Law requires. Then you may take your decision with complete freedom. I hope, Taha, that you will review the book Marriage in Islam that we distributed to you in class. You should know too, my son, that marriage to the widow of a martyr and taking care of his orphan son will double your reward, with God’s permission.”
Close to midnight, the child’s condition got worse and the indicators on the screens in intensive care started to register disturbances in the breathing and pulse. The doctor on duty was called and she quickly came and prescribed an intravenous injection. The nurse gave this to the child and his condition improved a little, but after less than an hour it deteriorated again and he soon departed this life. The nurse burst into tears, covered his little face with the sheet, and came out of the room.
As soon as Hidiya saw her, she let out an agonized, high-pitched scream that resounded throughout the hospital. Then she squatted on the ground, covered her head with her hands, and started wailing. As for Abd Rabbuh, his dark face crumpled and he ground his teeth so hard that they made an audible sound. He crushed the pack of cigarettes in his hand and ripped it to shreds, so that the tobacco scattered between his fingers like dust. He made a superhuman effort not to cry, but the tears flowed from his eyes in spite of himself; then he surrendered completely and sobbed out loud. Everyone there wept — cleaners and nurses and patients’ families. Even the doctor took off her glasses to wipe away her tears. Abd Rabbuh and his wife Hidiya were obliged to keep the child’s corpse in the hospital’s mortuary till it could be buried in the morning and this created another painful scene, for when the small body was placed in the midst of the adult corpses, the aged mortuary operator (who by virtue of the nature of his work was accustomed to the sight of death) could not contain himself and started repeating in a trembling, agitated voice “There is no god but God” and “We are from Him and to Him we shall return.”
The residents of the Yacoubian Building roof had heard the news somehow and all stayed up. They opened the doors of their rooms and waited in silence with bowed heads as though at a wake. Some of them (those who owned tape recorders) played recordings of the Noble Qur’an at high volume, so that it echoed around the roof.
A little before the dawn prayer, Abd Rabbuh and Hidiya appeared on the roof, worn-out with pain and exhaustion, and all the residents rushed to give them their condolences, the sorrow rekindled. The men embraced Abduh and squeezed his hand (they were all sincere in their reaction, including even the most ferocious and aggressive among them such as Ali the Driver, from whose mouth the smell of cheap alcohol wafted as usual but who cried as hard as a lost child). As soon as El Shazli, the old doorkeeper, with his white mustaches and tall, emaciated figure, approached the grieving father and shook his hand — the two were bound by a special affection — Abduh embraced him hard, buried his face in his white gallabiya, and said with his Sa’idi accent, “My boy’s gone, Uncle!”
The women knew how to give expression to disaster. Their high-pitched cries broke out, shattering the peace, and many beat their cheeks hard till they fell to the ground. Little by little, the outpouring of grief grew quiet, and as usually happens on these occasions the men insisted to Abduh that he take his wife to rest a little as they had a hard day ahead of them, and in the end the two complied and went into their room. Their light remained lit, however, till the morning, as they did not sleep. In fact, they became wrapped in a long conversation that soon turned angry and eventually became a bitter and violent fight whose echoes could be heard all over the roof. Hidiya’s voice could be heard raised in reproach and challenge, while Abduh’s voice grew lower and lower until it became completely silent. On the following day, once the burial and mourning procedures were over, the roof people were taken aback to find a large truck pull up at night in front of the building. Then they saw Abduh helping the workers to move the furniture from their room. The residents inquired anxiously and Abduh informed them that they were moving to another room, in Imbaba. His face was dejected and his manner so off-putting as to stop them from showing their surprise or even from bidding him farewell with appropriate warmth.
“You’ve got off to a bad start, Azzam.”
“God forbid, Kamal Bey! I stand by my word, but the matter needs time.”
They were sitting in the Sheraton restaurant and the atmosphere was tense. Azzam started by talking about something else, but Kamal el Fouli frowned and said sharply, “Don’t try to distract me with other things! I’m not a child. You made an agreement and you went back on your agreement. I gave you the contract three months ago for you to sign with the Big Man and you’re playing for time.”
“Kamal Bey, shame on you to say so! I have to pass the matter by the Japanese partner and I’m waiting for the right moment.”
“What have the Japanese got to do with it? The contract’s between you and the Big Man for a percentage of the profits.”
“My dear sir, the Japanese have to know everything. If I did anything behind their back, they might cancel the agency agreement.”
Kamal el Fouli took a long draw on the waterpipe, then placed the big mouthpiece on the table and stood up suddenly. His son and the guards at the neighboring table rose too. He said resolutely, as he adjusted his clothes prior to leaving, “You’re playing with fire, Azzam, and I’m surprised, because you’re an intelligent man. You have to understand that the ones who put you into the People’s Council can take you out of it.”
“Are you threatening me, Kamal Bey?”
“Take it any way you like.”
Hagg Azzam rose and held out his arms to grasp El Fouli’s shoulder in an attempted embrace, saying, “My dear sir, please, don’t make a big thing of this.”
“Goodbye.”
El Fouli turned to leave, but Hagg Azzam held on to his shoulder and said, “My dear sir, everything’s give and take. I swear to Almighty God, I’m going to keep my promise.”
El Fouli shook his arm off angrily, but Azzam moved closer and whispered almost pleadingly, “Kamal Bey, listen to me, please. I have a request that will make things easier for both of us.”
El Fouli looked at him questioningly, the anger still on his face. Azzam said, “I want to meet the Big Man.”
“The Big Man doesn’t meet anyone.”
“Kamal Bey, please help me. I’d like to meet His Excellency and explain the situation myself. By the bread and salt we’ve eaten together, old fellow, don’t refuse my request.”
El Fouli stared at him with a deep, searching look, as though probing his depths for the last time. Then he said as he left, “We’ll see.”
It wasn’t easy for Hagg Azzam to just give up a quarter of the agency’s profits, but at the same time it wasn’t in his power to refuse outright. His assessment was that they would not start to attack him as long as they had a hope, even if it was small, that he would pay. He had requested a meeting with the Big Man and insisted, firstly to gain time, and secondly because he had a strange but firm feeling that if he could meet the Big Man face to face, he would succeed in persuading him to lower the percentage. He also had a final, important objective: he wanted to be sure that there really was a Big Man. Wasn’t it a possibility that El Fouli was using the Big Man’s name without his knowledge? Only a slight possibility, of course, but it was there.
It took a few months and a number of telephone calls in which Azzam put pressure on El Fouli to fix an appointment for him with the Big Man and then one morning the telephone rang in Azzam’s office and he heard the secretary’s smooth voice saying, “Hagg Azzam? Greetings. Kamal Bey will speak to you.”
He heard El Fouli’s terse voice saying, “Your appointment with the Big Man is Thursday at ten in the morning. Be ready in your office and we’ll send you a car to take you.”
Dawlat had laid her plan carefully and been able by means of influence and bribes to get all the officers on her side. As a result, they treated Zaki el Dessouki with the utmost boorishness and impertinence. They prevented him from using the telephone and exchanged comments at his expense: “He fancies himself a Valentino!”
“So you must be the famous Drinking Sheikh then!”
“I bet the equipment’s kaput and you have to do it by hand!”
They let out loud laughs, followed by a clearing of throats and bursts of coughing, Dawlat joining in the laughter to flatter and encourage them, and to gloat. Zaki said nothing. He didn’t reply to them. The wall that he had tried to maintain around himself had fallen and it was all over, and he realized that if he resisted, it would only increase their vile behavior. He also felt extremely sorry for Busayna, who never stopped sobbing. The officer who had arrested them said to him spitefully, “What do you say, Mr. La-di-da? Are you going to mend your ways?”
Zaki answered him in a low voice, “Your conduct is unlawful and I shall make a complaint against you.”
The officer shouted, “Still playing the big shot? You’re a real big-mouth. Have some shame, man! One foot in this world and the other in the next! Someone your age ought to be spending all his time at the mosque, not being brought in naked from on top of a prostitute — and still you have the gall to talk back?”
Busayna tried to plead with the officer, but he rebuked her sharply, saying “Shut your mouth, whore, or do you want me to make you out a morals charge right away?”
The two gave up completely and answered the officer’s questions. Zaki affirmed in his statement that the complaint was deceitful and that Dawlat was not living with him in the office. He explained Busayna’s being with him by saying that she was the daughter of a friend of his, that she’d quarreled with her family, and that he’d invited her to his apartment so that he could make peace between them. Then he signed the police report, as did Busayna and Dawlat (the plaintiff), who left after thanking the officers and satisfying herself that things were going properly. After all these insults Zaki swallowed his pride and started pleading with the officer until in the end the latter permitted him, grudgingly, to use the telephone. He called a friend of his who was a former Appeals Court judge and asked for help. The judge came quickly, his face still showing traces of sleep, and went to the office of the station head. The latter summoned Zaki, invited him to sit down, insisted on ordering him a cup of coffee, and gave him a cigarette (he had left his behind in the office during the brouhaha). Then the station head looked at him and said smilingly, in a quiet voice, “Naturally, I apologize for any affronts that my colleagues may have committed, but as you know the incident touches on morality and it’s a tricky thing. The officers here are jealous of our traditions and we’re all religious people, praise God.”
Zaki didn’t say a word. He smoked, staring at the officer, while the judge broke in to say, “I do hope, sir, we can clear all this up. I’d be very grateful.”
“Your Excellency’s requests are my command, but unfortunately the report has been entered already with a serial number and it can’t be deleted. Your Excellency knows the procedures as well as I do. All we can do is let him and the girl go tonight, and when they turn up tomorrow morning to go before the magistrate, I’ll talk to him and have him suspend the investigation, God willing.”
Zaki and Busayna signed an undertaking to appear before the magistrate, and when they left the station Zaki shook his friend the judge’s hand and thanked him. The other said, “Zaki Bey, we’re brothers. You don’t have to thank me. By the way, it’s clear your sister Dawlat has influence and all the officers are in her pocket. The head of the station could have torn up the report in front of us if he’d wanted to.”
Zaki smiled sadly and the judge said to comfort him, “Don’t worry about it. First thing tomorrow I’ll call the District Chief of Police’s office and hopefully everything’ll be okay.”
Zaki thanked him again and walked beside Busayna in the direction of the Yacoubian Building. The light of morning had started to seep into Suleiman Basha, which was empty but for the municipal workers sluggishly sweeping and a few people who either had risen early for some reason or were returning from a long night out. Zaki felt extremely tired, dizzy, and nauseous. He was neither inclined to action nor angry. All he felt was that his stomach hurt, his mind was empty, and his thoughts were scattered. Slowly he became seized by the notion that heavy sorrows were bearing down on him, like the clouds that gather swiftly before a storm. Later he will go over a hundred times the insults and abuse that they directed at him; he will never forgive himself for having meekly submitted to them; he will make a comparison — so as to hurt himself cruelly — between the respect he had known all his life and the bruising contempt with which he had been treated at the police station, where they had treated him as though he were a pickpocket or a pimp. What really wrung his heart was that he had surrendered totally. He wouldn’t have protested if they had beaten him. Why had he given up and turned into a limp rag in their hands? How had it come about that he had lost his willpower, and his self-respect had collapsed to such a degree? He ought to have resisted to the end, come what may, if not in defense of his honor, then in defense of Busayna’s reputation, which they had ruined. What would she think of him now and how would he be able to meet her eyes, after he had failed to protect her or even defend her with a word?
He turned to look at her. She was walking silently next to him. Suddenly he heard himself saying in a hoarse voice, “Come on. Let’s have breakfast at the Excelsior. You must be hungry.”
She didn’t say a word but followed him in silence into the large restaurant that faced the Yacoubian Building. It was totally empty at that time in the morning except for the cleaners, who were absorbed in washing the floor with soap and water, and a single elderly foreigner in the farthest part of the place, who was drinking coffee and reading a French newspaper. They sat facing each other at a table next to the window that looks out onto the intersection of Suleiman Basha and Adly streets. Zaki ordered two thes complets (with cake), and a heavy, painful silence hung over them until, having taken a sip from his cup of tea, he started speaking slowly, feeling his way: “Busayna, I beg you not to be upset. In life, one is subjected to many stupid situations and it would be wrong to dwell on them. Police officers in Egypt are like rabid dogs. Unfortunately, their powers are great because the Emergency Law… ”
What he was saying seemed ridiculous and inappropriate and Busayna continued to hang her head. The cup of tea and cake remained untouched in front of her and Zaki grasped just how downcast she was. He said, “I’d just like to know where Dawlat got a key to the office. She planned the whole filthy move to get me declared incompetent, but she’ll lose the case. The lawyer assures me she’ll lose.”
He was using his chatter to hold his emotions at bay, trying to turn the painful situation into mere words, possibilities, and suppositions, in the hope that this would succeed in getting them out of the misery that oppressed them.
“The lawyer explained to me the legal conditions for incompetence. It’s a complicated area and the courts don’t make decisions lightly. Dawlat in her ignorance thinks it’s easy.”
His attempt failed and Busayna remained silent and didn’t utter a word, as though she’d lost her capacity to hear or speak. Zaki leaned toward her across the table and for the first time, in the light, noticed her drawn, pallid color, her reddened eyes, and some scattered scratch marks on her face and neck that were the result of her struggle with the police. He smiled lovingly, took her hands in his, and whispered, “Busayna, if you love me, forget the whole stupid affair.”
His tenderness was more than she could bear, as though it were the last light touch that the mountain, cracked and barely holding together, was waiting for before crumbling. She began to cry and said in a low voice, “All my life I’ve had bad luck in everything.”
Taha met with Radwa in the presence of the sisters. He saw her without her veil and talked to her at length. He learned that she was three years older than he, and her deep knowledge of religion and her mild, calm way of talking pleased him. She told him about herself and her former husband, Nur el Din, and how they had killed him. She said, “In the papers they wrote that he fired at the officers and they’d been obliged to kill him, but God knows that that night he didn’t fire a single shot. They knocked on the door and as soon as he opened it they fired several rounds with automatics. He was martyred immediately and three brothers with him. They killed them deliberately, and if they’d wanted they could have taken them alive.”
Taha’s face registered sorrow and he commented bitterly, “The new instructions are for them to kill as many Islamists as they can. They call it the ‘blow to the heart’ policy. If this infidel regime had dealt with the Jews that brutally, Jerusalem would have been liberated long ago.”
Radwa hung her head and a heavy silence prevailed. Then she went on, as though she wanted to narrate everything that had happened in her life, “After the martyrdom of my late husband, my family tried to marry me to someone else and I found out that the groom they had in mind was a rich engineer, but he’d given up praying. My family tried to convince me that he would become observant once we got married, but I refused. I explained to them that a man who has abandoned prayer is an unbeliever in the eyes of the Law and it is not permitted for him to marry a Muslim woman, but they pressured me so hard my life became hell. The problem is my family isn’t observant. They are good people, but unfortunately they are still in the Age of Ignorance. I feared I would face discord over my religion and I wanted my son Abd el Rahman to grow up in obedience to God, so I contacted Sheikh Bilal and begged him to allow me to live in the camp.”
“And what did your family do?”
“I sent someone to tell them I was all right and I’ll go and visit them as soon as possible, God willing. I pray God to forgive me if I’ve done them harm.”
Listening to her, he felt she was truthful and he liked a certain serious, sincere expression that appeared on her beautiful face while she was talking, as though she were a guilty child confessing frankly. He noted too that her body was full and well proportioned and her breasts swelling and firm (after which he reproached himself for the thought and asked God’s forgiveness).
A few days later, Sheikh Bilal summoned him to his office and shook his hand in welcome. Then he looked at him for a moment with a mysterious smile on his face and said in a deep voice, as though resuming a conversation in which they had been engaged, “So… what do you think?”
“About what?”
The sheikh let out a loud laugh and said, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, Sheikh Taha? I’m talking about Radwa, man.”
Taha said nothing and smiled in embarrassment. The sheikh patted him on his shoulder and said, “Congratulations, my boy.”
As soon as the evening prayer was over on Thursday, the brothers hovered around Taha congratulating him, while joyful ululations rang out from the room set aside for the women. For two days the women had exhausted themselves getting the bride ready and putting together her trousseau. After a quarter of an hour of ululations and congratulations, Sheikh Bilal sat down to perform the marriage ceremony. Radwa deputized Brother Hamza (like her, from Asyut) to conclude the marriage contract and other brothers volunteered themselves as witnesses. Sheikh Bilal made the normal short speech about marriage in God’s Law, then placed Taha’s hand in Hamza’s and pronounced the words of the contract, which they repeated after him. When they had finished, Sheikh Bilal murmured “O God, make their union blessed, guide them in obedience to You, and provide them with righteous offspring!” Then he placed his hand on Taha’s head, saying, “God bless you and your marriage and join you and your wife in good fortune!”
The brothers then all rushed to embrace the groom and congratulate him and the ululations rang out loud and the sisters started singing, while beating on tambourines,
Taha was seeing the Islamic style of wedding celebration for the first time and was much affected by the joy of the sisters and their songs and by the enthusiasm of the brothers in their congratulations. Next the sisters accompanied the bride to her new home — a single spacious room leading to a small separate bathroom in the large building set aside for married couples (and which originally, in the days of the Swiss, had been a dwelling for the cement company’s quarry workers; it had been left abandoned and completely forgotten about until some of the Islamist workers in the company took it and made it into a secret camp for the Gamaa). The women left and the mosque was quiet. The brothers sat with the groom and there was merry conversation interspersed with loud laughter. Then Sheikh Bilal stood up, saying, “Off with us then, brothers.”
Taha tried to detain him, but the sheikh laughed and said, “On your wedding night you mustn’t dissipate your energy in conversation!” Laughing comments showered down from the brothers as they left the mosque. Taha bade them farewell and they departed. Left on his own, he began to feel terrified. He had imagined what he would do on the wedding night in numerous ways, then in the end he’d gone ahead and decided to let things proceed as God ordained, though the idea that he had no experience of women while his wife did have previous experience, perhaps making her hard to please, continued to make him anxious. As though reading his thoughts, Sheikh Bilal had taken him aside the day before the wedding and spoken to him of marriage and his wife’s rights in the Law, stressing to him that there was nothing for a Muslim to feel shy about in marrying a woman who was not a virgin and that a Muslim woman’s previous marriage ought not to be a weak point that her new husband could exploit against her. He said sarcastically, “The secularists accuse us of puritanism and rigidity, even while they suffer from innumerable neuroses. You’ll find that if one of them marries a woman who was previously married, the thought of her first husband will haunt him and he may treat her badly, as though punishing her for her legitimate marriage. Islam has no such complexes.”
These were all indirect messages, as Taha understood, about how he should treat Radwa. The sheikh reviewed with him what takes places between a man and a woman and explained to him the verse from The Cow chapter, Your women are a tillage for you; so come unto your tillage as you wish, and forward for your souls, expounding at length on the Qur’anic expression “and forward for your souls” through which the Lord, Sublime and Glorious, teaches us how to have intercourse with women in a gentle and humane fashion. The sheikh had an ability to talk about even the most precise details of sex in a serious and respectable way that did not offend one’s modesty. Taha benefited from what he said and learned many things that he had not known before, which made him love the man even more, so that he thought to himself, “Even if my father himself were with me, he would not have done more for me than Sheikh Bilal has.”
Now the wedding ceremonies were over and the brothers had left him on his own to face the critical moment. He climbed the stairs and knocked on the door and then entered the bride’s room, where he found her sitting on the edge of the bed. She had taken her headscarf off. Her hair was black and smooth and reached her shoulders, and its blackness, next to the rosy whiteness of her skin, was fascinating. For the first time, Taha noticed her beautiful neck, her small hands, and her delicate fingertips. With his heart beating hard, he cleared his throat and said in an embarrassed voice, “Peace be upon you.”
Radwa smiled, bowed her head, and whispered gently, blushing, “And upon you be peace and the mercy of God and His blessings.”
Hatim Rasheed heard the news the next day. He had stayed late at the paper until the first edition was out and returned exhausted to the house about 4 A.M., telling himself, “I’ll sleep, then check on Abduh in the morning.” He woke late, showered, put on his clothes, and left to go to the hospital. In the lobby of the building he met El Shazli the doorkeeper, who said to him tersely, “Abduh’s left you the keys of the room and the kiosk.”
“What?” exclaimed Hatim, taken aback. The doorkeeper informed him of the death of the child and what had happened afterward. Hatim lit a cigarette and asked, making an effort to appear calm, “Did he tell you where he was going?”
“He said he was going to live in Imbaba and he refused to leave a new address.”
Hatim went back, climbed up to the roof, and started asking the residents for Abduh’s new address. He put up with their insolent looks and hostile responses (whose hidden message was “Leave Abduh alone. You’ve done enough to him.”) but in the end got nowhere. In the evening he sat in his car in front of the locked kiosk on the off chance that Abduh might have forgotten something and come back to get it with the spare key that he kept. He went to the kiosk three days running but Abduh never showed up.
Hatim did not give up. He went on searching for him everywhere and with everyone who knew him but in vain. After a long week of searching, it became clear to him that Abduh had gone forever and a raging wave of sorrow and despair swept over him. Painful and conflicting feelings engulfed him: he missed Abduh — his ardor, his strong hard body, his good nature and purity, his husky voice and Sa’idi accent. He brimmed with compassion for him too because he knew how much he had loved his son and how much his death would grieve him. He felt regret that he had left him that day at the hospital and gone to the paper, telling himself, “I could have postponed the work to be with him at that difficult time. He needed me beside him but was ashamed to ask.”
Day by day Hatim’s agony increased. A sense of being truly unlucky possessed him. He had spent many years in misery and suffering before finding a biddable and sensitive companion who didn’t cause problems, and as soon as his life had begun to settle down, the child had died and Abd Rabbuh had disappeared, leaving Hatim to start his wretched journey over again. He would have to cruise the streets of Downtown every night to pick up a Central Security recruit who might turn out to be a thief or a criminal who would beat him up or rob him, as had happened many times before. He would have to return to the Chez Nous in search of a barghal and to the Gebelawi baths in El Hussein to pick up some adolescent with whom to satisfy his lust, only to have to put up in return with his vulgarity and greediness. Why had he lost Abduh after he had loved him, and grown to feel at ease with him and planned their life together? Was it really so difficult for him to enjoy happiness with a lover over time? If he were religious, he might have believed that his tribulations were a punishment for his homosexuality, but he knew at least ten homosexuals who lived quiet, carefree lives with their lovers. Why should he, specifically, lose Abduh?
Bit by bit his mood deteriorated. He lost his appetite for food, started drinking a lot, and kept to the house. He stopped going to the paper except for the most pressing of emergencies, which he would resolve and then hurry back home, where everything was silence, sorrow, and memories: Abduh used to sit here, and eat here, and put out his cigarette here, and… here he used to lie next to him, while Hatim stroked his black body, kissing every part of it and whispering in a voice trembling with the heat of desire, “You’re mine, only mine, Abduh. You’re my beautiful black stallion.”
Hatim spent entire nights wallowing in his memories and going over his relationship with Abduh minute by minute till one night from amid the clouds of drunkenness and despair, an idea emerged that flashed in his mind like lightning. He recalled that Abduh had said once jokingly, “A Sa’idi can’t live without other Sa’idis. You know, if I go any place I have to ask where’s the cafe that the Sa’idis hang out.”
Hatim pulled himself together and looked impatiently at his watch. It was past 1 A.M. He dressed hurriedly and in half an hour he was asking people on the street in Imbaba where the Sa’idi cafe was. In another half hour, he’d found it. In the short distance he traversed between the car and the entrance to the cafe, he felt the sweat pouring off his brow, and his heart was beating so hard it almost stopped.
The cafe was cramped and filthy. Hatim hurried in and looked around him impatiently. Later he would ponder the relation between our extreme desire for something and our ability to realize it — was what we wanted inevitably brought about if we wanted it enough? He longed so much to find Abduh that he did in fact find him. He was sitting in the farthest part of the cafe smoking a waterpipe, wearing a capacious, dark-colored gallabiya and had a large Sa’idi turban on his head. At that moment he looked enormous and imposing, like a magic dark-skinned jinni that had materialized from the world of the imagination. He looked too as though he had returned to his true self, to his origin and his roots; as though he had taken off along with his Western clothes his whole contingent and exceptional history with Hatim Rasheed. The latter stood before him for a moment in silence, looking at him closely as though confirming, verifying, laying hold of, his presence, lest he disappear again. An instant later he rushed toward him and exclaimed in a gasping voice that made the customers turn their heads in his direction, “Abduh. At last.”
Their intercourse on the first night was simple and spontaneous, as though she had been his wife for years. The rose opened to the touch of his fingers and he watered it more than once till it was quenched. This amazed him and he took to asking himself as he recalled the details of their wedding night how was it that he had succeeded easily with Radwa when he had never touched a woman before? Where had his apprehension, hesitation, and fear of failure gone? Perhaps it was because he felt at ease emotionally with Radwa, or because he had applied all Sheikh Bilal’s advice, or because his wife had encouraged him with her experience and shown him the secret sources of pleasure. This she had done skillfully and adeptly, though without abandoning her natural modesty as a Muslim woman.
Taha thought about all this and came to the conclusion that his marriage to this woman was a great benison from Our Lord, Glorious and Mighty, because she was a woman who was refined, honest, and sincere in her Islam. He loved her and felt at ease with their daily routine. He would leave her in the morning and spend the whole day at the camp. Then he would return after the last prayer of the day to find the room tidy and clean and delicious hot food waiting for him. How he loved to sit with her at the low round table to eat their dinner! He would tell her what had happened during the day and she would recount to him her conversations with her sister Muslims and give him a summary of what she had read in the newspapers (which he didn’t have time to read). They would laugh together at the antics of little Abd el Rahman and his mischief, which would only be put to a stop when he fell all of a sudden into the clutches of sleepiness, at which point Radwa would carry him to the bed she had prepared for him on the floor, returning to remove the remains of the food and carefully wash the dishes.
Then she would excuse herself to go into the bathroom and Taha would get straight into their old iron bed to wait for her, stretched out on his back, gazing at the ceiling, his heart brimming with that delicious, nervy passion that he had come to know and love and to which he looked forward every night — his implacable longing for her; her enchanting body, refreshed by the hot water, naked but for a large towel that enveloped her as she emerged from the bathroom; the tense, thrilling, silent moments, gravid with desire, while she turned her back to him and prettied herself before the mirror; and the confused words, empty of meaning, that she spoke in a hushed, gasping voice as she made a pretense of conversing on any subject, as though to conceal her desire for him. He would understand the signal and grant her no delay, crushing to himself her supple, tall, slender body and tickling her with his kisses and his burning breath till his sweetness overflowed and he emptied himself in her embrace of all his feelings — his sorrows, his memories, his frustrated hopes, his unstilled desire for revenge and his savage hatred for his torturers; even those blazing, obscure sexual yearnings that had so often swept over him and made him ache in his room on the roof — all this he would empty into Radwa’s body, to emerge liberated, at rest, the fire damped and replaced by a calm, steady affection that grew more firmly rooted every night.
Once they had made love he would gaze at her with genuine gratitude and cover her hands, face, and hair with kisses. He had become an expert in the topography of her body and learned its language so well that their lovemaking would last for hours, during which Radwa’s face would light up at times with intoxication.
Months passed in his life with her in which he tasted happiness. Then one night he was with her in bed when his performance unexpectedly faltered and he grew confused and finally desisted. Silence reigned and suddenly he jumped up, shaking the bed beneath them, and rushed over to switch on the light. She gathered together her clothes to cover her naked body and asked him anxiously, “What’s the matter?”
He stayed silent and seated himself on the couch. Then he slowly doubled over and put his head in his hands, his faced creasing as though something was hurting him. Greatly distressed, she hurried over to him and asked, “What’s wrong with you, Taha?”
Affected perhaps by her genuine concern for him, he moved restlessly, heaved a great sigh, and then said, avoiding her eyes, “Please don’t misunderstand me, Radwa. I’m happy of course with our marriage and I thank God a thousand times over for having provided me with a godly wife like you. But I didn’t join the camp to get married. I came with Sheikh Shakir for a particular purpose, to struggle for God’s cause. I’ve been here for a year, I’ve finished all the different types of training, and till now they haven’t entrusted me with a single mission. I’m scared that my determination will weaken as time passes.”
He was speaking in a soft, sad voice. Then he struck his leg with his hand and cried bitterly, “If it were all about getting married, I would have married you anywhere but in the camp. Every day I ask myself a hundred times, ‘Why am I here?’ Why, Radwa? I’m sure that Sheikh Bilal married me to you to distract my mind from the struggle.”
Radwa smiled like a wise, understanding mother and putting her arm around his shoulder said affectionately, “Seek refuge with God and chase these thoughts from your head because they’re the whisperings of Satan. Sheikh Bilal is an honest man and never lies. If he thought you weren’t worthy of gihad, he would have expelled you from the camp, just as he would never marry you to a corrupt woman who would divert you from your religion” (and here her voice took on a reproachful tone). “I’m your wife, Taha, and I’m the first to encourage you in gihad and I’ll be the first to feel proud of you if you attain martyrdom, which I pray God I may attain alongside you. But I know from my experience with the late martyr Hassan that military operations are not a game and that they are governed by precise considerations that are known only to the brothers on the Gamaa Council.”
Taha opened his mouth to object, but she quickly and gently laid her hand on it as though to stop him speaking and whispered, “Be patient, Taha, be patient. Surely God is with the patient .”
At exactly ten o’clock on Thursday morning, a black “Phantom” Mercedes pulled up in front of the Yacoubian Building. A smartly dressed man in his forties descended and made inquiries until he was conducted to Hagg Azzam’s office, where he greeted the latter and haughtily presented himself, saying, “Gamal Barakat, from the Basha’s office.”
Hagg Azzam sat next to him in the car, but throughout the journey they exchanged no more than a few compliments, after which Azzam busied himself with telling his prayer beads and saying prayers. He knew that the Big Man lived on the Mariyut Canal, but he’d never imagined that his house would look the way it did — a vast palace, reminiscent of the royal palaces he’d seen as a child, set on a high hill which made it look like an impregnable citadel, and surrounded by not less than fifty acres of land, all of it under cultivation.
To cover the distance between the outer gate and the door of the palace, it took the car about half an hour, during which it traveled along a long highway amid gardens and trees. Three times it came to a halt in front of a security barrier where it was inspected by security men. They were enormous and dressed in three-piece suits with matching ties. Large pistols hung from their belts and in their hands they held electrically operated batons that whistled and which they carefully examined the car with, proceeding thereafter to scrutinize Hagg Azzam’s identity card, comparing its details with the permit that the secretary presented to them. This happened three times and annoyed Hagg Azzam so much that on the last occasion he came close to objecting. However, he suppressed his anger and kept silent and eventually the car mounted a broad, winding driveway that took it to the door of the palace. There the security procedures were repeated with the same care and thoroughness, and this time they opened and went through Hagg Azzam’s briefcase and then asked him to go through a metal detector. The annoyance showed clearly on his face and the secretary came up to him and said rudely, “The security procedures are essential.”
The secretary then asked him to wait in the lobby and disappeared. Hagg Azzam remained waiting for a while, during which he looked at the marble columns, the Persian designs on the luxurious carpets, and the giant crystal chandeliers that hung from the high ceiling. Slowly he started to feel annoyed and insulted and thought that they must be using this long wait and the exaggerated security procedures deliberately to humiliate him. “They treat me with contempt at the same time that they rob me of my money. They want to get a quarter of the profits on a platter and don’t utter a word of thanks, the impudent thugs!” Azzam’s resentment grew, his face darkened, and he felt a strong urge to pull out of the meeting; he felt like summoning the secretary then and there, and telling him that he was leaving, come what may, but in his heart he knew that that was impossible; even if they left him waiting the whole morning, he wouldn’t dare say a word in protest. He was swimming with the big fish now and one mistake could be the end of him. It was his responsibility to prepare his gambit and draw on all his experience so as to ensure that the Big Man felt sorry for him and to convince him to reduce the percentage to less than a quarter. That was the utmost he could do and any stupidity he might commit he would pay for dearly and immediately.
Finally he heard footsteps behind him and was seized by such terror that he found himself bereft of the strength to turn around. One of the guards appeared and made a sign to him to follow him. They walked down a long corridor, their footsteps ringing on the polished marble floor, and ended up in a spacious hall, with, facing the door, a large oak desk and a large conference table around which ten chairs were lined up. The guard signaled to Azzam to sit and said insolently as he departed, “Wait here till the Basha calls you.”
Azzam was perturbed by the use of the word “call.” Did that mean that perhaps the Big Man was not actually there? Why hadn’t he contacted him to cancel the appointment and save him all this trouble and why had they left him waiting so long? Suddenly, he heard a voice echoing loudly throughout the hall saying, “Welcome, Azzam!”
Seized by terror, he leaped to his feet and looked around, searching for the source of the voice, which uttered a gentle laugh and continued, “Don’t be scared! I’m somewhere else, but I’m calling you and I can see you. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time. Let’s get to the point. Why did you ask to meet me?”
The Hagg pulled his wits together and made an effort to raise his voice and say the things that he’d prepared over the past two weeks, but he was so rattled that the ideas evaporated in his head. After a few moments he was just able to get out, “I’m at your service, sir, and Your Excellency’s to command. Your graciousness overwhelms me and your goodness embraces the whole nation. May Our Lord keep you for us and preserve you for Egypt! I live in expectation that Your Excellency will regard my case with mercy, sir. I have many responsibilities and I’ve got households to support, God knows. Twenty-five percent’s a great burden for me, sir, really.”
The Big Man said nothing, so Azzam was encouraged and he went on, “I am covetous of your Excellency’s generosity. For the sake of the Prophet, don’t send me away brokenhearted! If Your Excellency could lower the percentage to an eighth, for example, I’d be most grateful.”
Another moment of silence passed. Then the voice of the Big Man rang out irritably, “Listen, Azzam. I don’t have time to waste on you. That’s the set rate and it’s the same for everyone. We go into any big business like your agency as partners for a quarter of the profits. We get that percentage in return for our work. We protect you from the tax office, the insurance office, the safety standards office, the audit office, and a thousand other offices that could bring your project to a halt and destroy you in a flash. And anyway, you especially should thank God that we’re willing to work with you at all, because you’re in a dirty trade.”
“Dirty?”
Azzam repeated the word in a loud voice and a murmur of denial escaped from him that provoked the Big Man even more, for his voice rose warningly as he said, “Are you really an idiot or are you just pretending to be one? Your basic profit comes from a dirty trade that has nothing to do with the Japanese agency. Bottom line is, you deal in hard drugs and we know all about it. Sit at the desk and open the file with your name on it. You’ll find copies of the reports on your activities — investigations by National Security, the Narcotics Squad, and Central Criminal Investigations. We have everything. We’re the ones who have put a hold on them and we’re the ones who can activate them at a moment’s notice to destroy you. Sit down, Azzam, and don’t be silly — read the file. Study it and learn it well, and at the end, you’ll find a copy of our partnership contract. If you feel like signing it, sign it. It’s up to you.”
The Big Man let out a derisive laugh and the voice was cut off.
Abduh greeted him with distaste. He shook hands with him coldly without rising, then averted his face and occupied himself with his waterpipe. Hatim smiled and said affectionately, “What kind of a way to greet someone is this? At least order me some tea!”
Without looking at him Abduh clapped his hands and ordered a glass of tea from the waiter. Hatim began the conversation by saying, “My condolences, Abduh. You believe in Our Lord and His power. But does grieving over your son have to stop you from seeing me?”
Abduh suddenly exploded, “Stop it, Hatim Bey! God forgive us, my son died because of me.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning Our Lord punished me for sinning with you.”
“So everyone whose son dies is being punished by God?”
“Yes. Our Lord, Glorious and Mighty, ‘delays but does not forget.’ I offended greatly with you and I deserve to be punished.”
“Who made you believe that? Your wife Hidiya?”
“What business is it of yours if it was Hidiya or anyone else? I’m telling you it’s over between us. Each one goes his own way. I don’t see you and you don’t see me ever again.”
His voice was agitated and strangled and he was shouting and waving his hands as though to push himself past the point of no return. Hatim said nothing for a while, then started to talk calmly with a changed plan in mind.
“Okay, old chap. We’re agreed. You’ve left the roof and the kiosk and you want to end our relationship, and I agree. But where are you going to find the money for yourself and your wife?”
“God provides.”
“Of course God provides. But it’s my duty to help you, even if our relationship is over. Despite your ill treatment, Abduh, I still care about you… Listen. I’ve found you a great job so you’ll remember me kindly.”
Abduh remained silent and seemed to be hesitating. He took a long draw on the waterpipe as though to hide his confusion.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what the job is?… I’ve recommended you for the post of doorkeeper at the French Cultural Center in El Mounira. It’s a decent and easy job and the pay is five hundred pounds a month.”
Abduh remained silent, neither accepting nor objecting. Hatim, sensing his success, went on, “You deserve the best, Abduh. Here.”
He took a pen and a checkbook from his purse, put on his glasses, wrote a check, and said, smiling, “This is a check for a thousand pounds to cover your expenses till you take over the new job.”
His hand remained extended for a moment until Abduh slowly stretched out his hand and took the check, saying in a low voice, “Thank you.”
“Abduh, I never forced our relationship on you. If you’ve decided to leave me, leave me. But I have one last request to make of you.”
“What request?”
Hatim leaned toward him until they were touching, put his hand on Abduh’s leg, and whispered in a passionate voice, “Stay with me tonight. Just tonight, and it’ll be our last. I promise, Abduh, if you come with me tonight, you’ll never see me again after that. I’m begging you.”
They sat next to each other in the car wrapped in a tense silence. Hatim was putting his plan into effect with precision and reckoned that in the end he would be able to keep Abduh, who would be incapable of resisting the attractions of the money and the new job, just as he would resume their relationship as soon as he had tasted the pleasure once again. Abduh for his part had justified his acceptance of Hatim’s invitation as something unavoidable imposed on him by his circumstances: since leaving the kiosk, he’d been unable to find the money to support himself and his wife, taking even his tea and tobacco on credit from the owner of the cafe, who was from his home village. He had borrowed three hundred pounds in less than two months from his Sa’idi acquaintances and he was fed up with his fruitless search for suitable work. He had worked as a day laborer, but he couldn’t stand it and left after a few days. It was no longer in his power to endure that kind of hard work, carrying the heavy basin of mortar on his back up and down all day long for a few pounds, half of which were stolen by the contractor, to say nothing of the insults and indignities. What was he to do, then? The job that Hatim was offering him was respectable and decent and would keep the wolf from the door forever. So why shouldn’t he sleep with him just tonight, do what he wanted just this once, and then cash the check, pay off his debts, cover his immediate needs and the moment he started his new job break off the relationship and close this dirty chapter in his life? He was confident that God would forgive him and accept his repentance and he would go at the first opportunity once this was over and make the pilgrimage so that he could return purified of all sin, just as his mother had borne him. It would be the last night for him to commit the sin and the next day he would announce his repentance and sin no more. Abduh decided privately that he would not inform Hidiya that he had seen Hatim because if she knew she would make his life hell. In fact, she hadn’t gone a day since the death of the child without fighting with him and abusing him and calling God’s wrath down upon him. The sorrow had caused her to lose her mind and she had become a heavy burden on his nerves, treating him as though he had murdered his son with his own hands. The sad thing was that the feeling of guilt had seeped into him from her and taken him over, often preventing him from sleeping. All that would come to an end tonight. He would satisfy Hatim’s body one last time, get the position, and stop sinning.
They entered the apartment without speaking and Hatim turned on the lights, saying cheerfully, “The house is horrible without you.”
Abduh suddenly drew close to him, embraced him, and tried to take off his clothes so that he could make love to him. He was in a hurry to get the job done but Hatim understood his haste as a sign of his longing for him and laughing a happy coquettish laugh whispered, “Be patient, Abduh!”
He hurried into the inner rooms while Abduh opened the bar, took out a bottle of whisky, and poured himself a large glass, which he polished off at one gulp without water or ice. He felt an urgent need to get drunk and, in the short time that it took Hatim to pretty himself up, had emptied a number of glasses into his belly. The alcohol took immediate effect. He could sense the blood surging passionate and hot through his veins, and the feeling took possession of him that he was strong and capable and that nothing could stop him from doing what he wanted. Hatim came out of the bathroom wearing rose silk pajamas over his naked body and walked slinkily to the kitchen, returning with hot food, which he placed on the table, and poured himself a glass of whisky, which he slowly sipped, provocatively licking the edge of the glass with his tongue. Then he put his hand on Abduh’s strong arm, and sighed, “I’ve missed you so much.”
Abduh removed his hand and said in a drunken voice, “Hatim Bey, we made a deal. Tonight’s our last night. Tomorrow morn, each goes his own way, roight.”
Hatim smiled and, passing his fingers over Abduh’s thick lips, said, in playful imitation of his accent, “Roight, you Sa’idi you.”
This time Abduh could not contain himself, pounced on Hatim, and picking him up like a child despite his laughing protests and provocative cries, threw him down on the bed, pulled off his pants, and threw himself on top of him. He made love to him violently, ravishing him in a way he had never done before and causing Hatim to scream out loud more than once from the pleasure and the pain. Abduh slaked his lust in Hatim’s body three times in less than an hour without uttering a single word, as though he were enthusiastically performing an unwelcome task in order to be quit of it. When they were done, Hatim lay stretched out naked on his stomach and closed his eyes in an ecstatic swoon, like one who was drugged or asleep and wanting never to awake from his delicious dream. Abduh meanwhile remained stretched out staring at the ceiling and smoked two cigarettes without saying a word. Then he jumped up and started putting on his clothes. Hatim, becoming aware of what he was doing, pulled himself up into a sitting position on the bed and asked him anxiously, “Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
Abduh said this with indifference, as though the matter was closed. Hatim got up, stood in front of him, and said, “Stay here tonight and go tomorrow.”
“I’m not staying one minute.”
Hatim hugged his naked body to him and whispered, “Stay the night, for me.”
All of a sudden, Abduh pushed him so hard that Hatim fell into the chair next to the bed. His face turned red and he shouted furiously, “Have you gone crazy? What do you think you’re doing, pushing me?”
Abduh replied defiantly, “Each goes his own way now.”
Abduh’s clear statement, which proved that his plan had failed, angered Hatim. He said, “We agreed you’d spend the night.”
“What we agreed to I’ve done and I owe you nothing.”
“Who exactly do you think you are?”
Abduh didn’t answer and finished dressing in silence so Hatim went on with even greater rancor, “Answer me! Who do you think you are?”
“A human being, just like you.”
“You’re just a barefoot, ignorant Sa’idi. I picked you up from the street, I cleaned you up, and I made you a human being.”
Abduh took a slow step toward him, looked at him for a while with his drink-reddened eyes, and then said threateningly, “Look. Watch out you don’t get rude with me. Got it?”
But Hatim had lost control of himself and as though touched by some satanic urge that was pushing him to the limit, he looked Abduh up and down contemptuously and said, “Have you taken leave of your senses, Abduh? With one telephone call I can send you to hell.”
“You can’t.”
“I’ll show you whether I can or not. If you go now, I’ll call the police and tell them you robbed me.”
Abduh almost answered him but instead shook his head and moved toward the door to leave. He felt he was the stronger and that Hatim could do nothing to implement his threat. He stretched out his hand to open the door of the apartment, but Hatim grabbed onto his gallabiya and shouted, “You’re not going!”
“Let go of me, I’m warning you!”
“When I tell you to stay, it means stay!”
As Hatim cried out these words, he clung tenaciously to the neck of the gallabiya from behind. Abduh turned around, easily pulling away his hands, and slapped him hard on the face. Hatim stared at him for a moment, eyes bulging madly. Then he shouted, “You’d strike your master, you dog of a servant? I swear by your mother’s life, no job and no money! First thing, I’ll call the bank and stop the check. You can boil it and drink the water.”
Abduh stood for a moment in the middle of the room while things sorted themselves out in his mind. Then he let out a hideous noise, something like the roar of an angry wild animal, and fell on Hatim, kicking him and punching him. He grabbed hold of him by the neck and started beating his head with all his might against the wall till he felt the blood spurting hot and sticky over his hands.
Later, in the police report, the neighbors mentioned that around four o’clock in the morning they had heard shouts and screams issuing from Hatim’s apartment but had not interfered because they were aware of the nature of his private life.
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
So let them fight in the way of God
who sell the present life for the world to come;
and whosoever fights in the way of God and is slain, or conquers,
We shall bring him a mighty wage.
How is it with you,
that you do not fight in the way of God,
and for the men, women, and children, who, being abased,
say, “Our Lord, bring us forth from this city whose people are evildoers,
and appoint us a protector from Thee,
and appoint us from Thee a helper?”
Sheikh Bilal recited from the chapter called “Women” in a sweet, mellifluous voice that affected those who were praying behind him. Holy awe took possession of them and they repeated after him the Prayer of Obedience in humble submission. The dawn prayer came to an end and Sheikh Bilal sat telling his prayer beads as the brothers came to him one by one to shake his hand with love and respect. When Taha el Shazli bent down over him, he pulled him gently toward him and whispered, “Wait for me in the office. I’ll catch up with you there right away, God willing.”
Taha set off straight for the office, asking himself why the sheikh wanted to see him. Radwa was always saying that she loved Sheikh Bilal like her father, but did she love him so much that she’d report to him what her husband had said about him? If she had done so she would have a painful reckoning with him. He would never forgive her; a wife had to be the faithful guardian of her husband’s secrets. If the sheikh asked him about what he’d said to Radwa, he wouldn’t lie. He would repeat it in front of him and take the consequences. What could the sheikh do to him? The most he could do was to throw him out of the camp. So be it. What was the point of his staying in the camp to eat, drink, sleep, and do nothing? If the sheikh was not going to let him join the gihad, it would be better to throw him out of the camp to return to where he’d come from.
Taha went on thinking along these lines until he pushed open the door of the office and warily entered. Inside he found two brothers waiting — Brother Dr. Mahgoub, who was a veterinarian of over forty, one of the pioneering generation that had founded the Gamaa Islamiya in the 1970s, and Brother Abd el Shafi, from the Fayoum, who had been a law student at Cairo University, then was repeatedly detained and hunted by Security till he abandoned his studies and came to live in the camp. Taha shook their hands affectionately and the three of them sat talking of general matters, though inwardly all of them felt anxiety and foreboding. Sheikh Bilal arrived, shook hands with them, embraced them warmly, and said as he looked at them with a smile on his face, “Youth of Islam, this is your day. The Gamaa’s Consultative Council has chosen you to go out on an important operation.”
A moment of silence passed. Then the brothers shouted “There is no god but God!” and embraced one another in happiness, the most joyful of all being Taha, who shouted out “Praise be to God! God is great!” The sheikh’s smile widened and he said, “Bravo! God bless you and increase you in faith! This is why the enemies of Islam tremble in fear of you — because you love death as they love life!”
His face resumed its serious expression and he sat at the desk, spread a large sheet of paper out in front of him, and said, searching in the pocket of his gallabiya for a pen, “We don’t have much time. The operation has to be carried out at 1 P.M. today or we’ll have to wait a whole month at least. Sit down, boys, and give me all your attention.”
Two hours later a small truck loaded to the brim with cylinders of cooking gas was making its way toward the Feisal area in the Pyramids district. In the driver’s seat was Dr. Mahgoub and next to him Taha el Shazli. Brother Abd el Shafi had taken up position among the cylinders piled in the back of the truck. They had shaved off their beards and dressed themselves as workers distributing gas, the plan being for them to carry out a visual inspection of the site at least one hour before the operation, then stay in the street in a perfectly normal way until the National Security officer left his house. In the time between his exiting the door of the apartment block and his getting into his car, they were supposed to delay him by any means available to them, then open fire with the three automatic rifles hidden under the driver’s seat. They were also provided with stern additional instructions. If the officer was able to get into his car before the plan had been implemented, they were to cut him off with their truck, then throw their whole supply of hand grenades at him at once, abandon the truck, and each run in a different direction firing into the air so that no one would pursue them. If they suspected that they were being observed, Dr. Mahgoub (as the emir of the group) had the right to call off the operation immediately, in which case they were to leave the truck in any side street and return to the camp separately using public transport.
As soon as the truck entered the Feisal area, it reduced speed and Brother Abd el Shafi started banging with his wrench on the gas cylinders to announce their arrival to the residents. A few women came to their balconies and windows and called out to the truck, which stopped more than once, Abd el Shafi carrying the cylinders to the residents, taking the money, and returning to the truck with the empties; these were the instructions of Sheikh Bilal, who was concerned that they have good cover. The truck arrived at Akif Street where the officer lived and a woman asked for a cylinder from her balcony, so Abd el Shafi took it to her. This provided an opportunity for Mahgoub and Taha to inspect the place at their leisure. The officer’s car — a blue, late-seventies Mercedes — was waiting in front of the entrance to the building. Mahgoub carefully studied the distances, the neighboring shops, and the exits and entrances. When Abd el Shafi returned, the truck sped off to a point away from the site, where Dr. Mahgoub looked at his watch and said, “We have a whole hour. What do you say to a glass of tea?”
He spoke in a cheerful voice as though to instill confidence into them. The truck stopped in front of a small cafe in a neighboring street, where the three sat and drank mint tea. Their appearance was completely ordinary and incapable of provoking any suspicion. Mahgoub noisily sucked tea from his glass and said, “Praise God, everything’s okay.”
Taha and Abd el Shafi responded in a low voice, “Praise God.”
“Did you know that the brothers in the Gamaa Council have been watching the target for a whole year?” he whispered.
“A whole year?” asked Taha.
“I swear, an entire year. Investigations are difficult because the high-ranking officers in National Security go to enormous lengths to conceal themselves. They use more than one name, have more than one residence, and sometimes they move with their families from one furnished apartment to another, all of which makes it almost impossible to get to them.”
“What’s the officer’s name, Brother Mahgoub?”
“You’re not supposed to know.”
“I understand that it’s forbidden, but I’d like to know.”
“What difference would his name make to you?”
Taha fell silent, then looked at Mahgoub for a moment and said irritably, “Brother Mahgoub, we’ve started the gihad for real and maybe God will honor us with martyrdom and our souls will rise together to their maker. So can’t you trust me a little, as we stand at death’s door?”
Taha’s words had an impact on Mahgoub, who was very fond of him, so he said in a low voice, “Salih Rashwan.”
“Colonel Salih Rashwan?”
“A criminal, an unbeliever, and a butcher. He used to take pleasure in supervising the torture of Islamists and he’s the one directly responsible for the killing of many brothers in detention. In fact, he killed with his own revolver two of the best of the youth of Islam, Brother Hassan el Shubrasi, the emir of Fayoum, and Dr. Muhammad Rafi’, the Gamaa’s spokesman. He boasted of killing them in front of the brothers in detention at the El ‘Aqrab prison — may God have mercy on our innocent martyrs, bring them to dwell in the mansions of His paradise, and unite us with them without mishap, if God wills!”
At five minutes to one the gas truck pulled up on the other side of the street from the entrance to the apartment building. Abd el Shafi got down, went up to the driver’s cabin, took a small notebook out of his pocket, and pretended to go over the accounts with Mahgoub, the driver. The two of them busied themselves with an audible discussion of the number of cylinders sold, appearing entirely natural, while Taha grasped the door handle in readiness. The entrance to the building was in clear view in front of him and he felt as though his heart was almost bursting it was beating so hard. He tried hard to focus his mind on a single point, but a roaring cataract of images swept through his mind’s eye and a minute passed in which he saw his whole life scene by scene — his room on the roof of the Yacoubian Building, his memories of his childhood and his good-hearted mother and father, his old sweetheart Busayna el Sayed, his wife Radwa, the general in charge of the Police Academy condemning him for his father’s profession, and the soldiers in the detention center beating him and violating his body. He burned with longing to know whether this was the officer who had supervised his torture in detention, but he had not been frank with Mahgoub about this desire in case the latter should feel uneasy about him and exclude him from the operation. Taha kept staring at the building entrance, the memories rushing past in front of him, and then the officer appeared. He looked the way they had described him — portly, with a pale complexion, the traces of sleep and his hot bath still on his face, walking calmly and confidently, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
Taha quickly opened the door, got out onto the street, and headed toward him. It was his job to detain him however he could till the others could fire at him. Then Taha would run and jump into the truck and throw a hand grenade to cover their flight. Taha approached the officer and asked him in a voice that he strove to make seem ordinary, “Please, sir, which way is No. Ten, Akif Street?”
The officer didn’t stop but pointed haughtily and muttered, “Over there,” as he continued toward his car.
It was he. He was the one who had supervised his torture, who had so often ordered the soldiers to beat him and shred his skin with their whips and force the stick into his body. It was he without the slightest doubt — the same husky voice, the same dispassionate intonation, and the familiar slight rasp due to his smoking. Taha lost all awareness of what he was doing and leaped toward him, letting out an inarticulate, high-pitched cry like an angry roar. The officer turned toward him with frightened eyes, his face pinched in terror as though he realized what was happening, and he opened his mouth to say something but couldn’t because successive bursts of fire suddenly erupted from the automatic rifles, all of them striking the officer’s body, and causing him to fall to the ground, the blood gushing out of him. Taha disobeyed the plan and remained where he was so that he could watch the officer as he died; then he shouted, “God is great! God is great!” and leaped to return to the truck. Something unexpected occurred, however. Sounds of glass being violently broken were heard on the first floor and two men appeared who started shooting in the direction of the truck.
Taha realized what was happening and tried to get his head down and run in a zigzag course as they had taught him during training so as to get out of the line of fire. He was getting close to the truck, the bullets flying around him like rain, but when he got to within two meters he felt a coldness in his shoulder and chest, a coldness that burned like ice and took him by surprise. He looked at his body and saw the blood spurting from his wounds and the coldness was transformed into a sharp pain that seized him in its teeth. He fell to the ground next to the rear wheel of the truck and screamed. Then it seemed to him as though the agony was diminishing little by little and he felt a strange restfulness engulfing him and taking him up into itself. A babble of distant sounds came to his ears — bells and sounds of recitation and melodious murmurs — repeating themselves and drawing close to him, as though welcoming him into a new world.
Starting in the late afternoon, Maxim’s had been turned upside down.
In addition to the restaurant’s own employees, ten other workers had been called in to help, and everyone was busy cleaning the floor, the walls, and the bathroom with soap and water and disinfectants. Then they moved the tables and chairs to the sides of the room so as to leave a broad corridor from the entrance to the bar and a wide space in the middle that could serve as a dance floor. They continued working tirelessly under the supervision of Christine, who had put on a baggy training suit and was helping them to move things herself (which was her way of encouraging them to work with a will), her voice ringing out from time to time in its broken Arabic that used feminine forms of Arabic words even when she was speaking to a man, saying, “You, move all that here! Clean it well! What’s the matter? Are you tired or what?”
At seven o’clock the place was sparkling, with new gleaming white cloths, brought out especially for the occasion, spread on the tables. Then the flower baskets arrived and Christine oversaw their correct placement, the small bouquets untied and the flowers distributed among the vases, while she ordered the workers to place the large baskets at the entrance to the place outside, the length of the passageway. Next she took out from the drawer of her desk an elegant old sign on which was written in French and Arabic “The restaurant is reserved tonight for a private party” and hung it on the outer door. She poked her head inside for a last look and, satisfied with the restaurant’s appearance, hurried to her house nearby to change her clothes.
By the time she returned an hour later in her smart blue gown, wearing restrained and expertly applied makeup and with her hair put up in a chignon after the fashion of the fifties, the band had arrived and its members were bent over tuning their instruments — mizmar, saxophone, violin, and rhythm section — the confused snatches of melody rising like the murmuring of some giant musical being.
The guests had started to arrive. A few old people who were Zaki el Dessouki’s friends came, some of whom were known to Christine and with all of whom she shook hands, inviting them to visit the bar, where beer and whisky were offered free. The numbers of the guests continued to swell. Friends of Busayna’s from Commercial College came, bringing their families. Ali the Driver came (and forced his way straight through to the bar) and Sabir the laundryman with his wife and children and many others from the roof. The women were wearing shiny gowns embroidered with gold thread and sequins, and the girls of marriageable age came in their best and smartest clothes, conscious of the opportunity for marriage that was implicit in the wedding. The roof people were awestruck at the poshness of the restaurant and its old European style, but little by little the women started to break through this by means of mirthful conversations on the side and loud bursts of laughter that were closer to bawdiness than the spirit of the occasion demanded.
At around nine the door opened and some people entered quickly, followed unhurriedly by Zaki el Dessouki in his smart black suit and a white shirt, a large red bowtie at his neck and his dyed hair swept back in a new cut that the hairdresser had suggested and which had secured its object, in that he appeared ten years younger than his real age. His steps were a little halting and his eyes bloodshot as a result of the two double whiskies that he had decided to start the evening with, and no sooner did he appear at the party than shouts, whistles, and applause — “Congratulations! A thousand congratulations!” — rang out on every side, with a few shy ululations. While everyone was shaking his hand and wishing him the best, Christine darted up to him, embraced him, and kissed him in her warmly affectionate way.
“You look like a movie star!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. Then she sighed, looked at him for a moment, and said, “How happy I am for you, Zaki! You’ve done what you should have done long ago.”
This was the wedding party of Zaki Bey el Dessouki to Busayna el Sayed — who was a little late in coming from the coiffeur, as brides usually are, but who soon arrived in a white wedding dress the ends of whose long train were borne by her sisters and her little brother Mustafa. The moment the bride appeared, the sight of her touched all present and a clear and uninhibited storm of melodious, repeated ululations burst forth. Everyone was happy and as soon as the band had finished with the wedding march and the buffet had opened, Christine made a bid to preserve the European style of the occasion by playing Edith Piaf ’s song “La Vie en Rose” on the piano, singing in her mellifluous voice,
The bride and groom danced on their own, Busayna a bit nervous and almost stumbling but guided to the right steps by the groom, who took advantage of the opportunity to pull her close to him in a move that did not escape the notice, or the laughing comments, of the guests. Zaki thought that Busayna in her wedding dress looked like some wondrous, pure, newborn creature and that she had rid herself forever of the blemishes of the past that through no fault of her own had tarnished her. When the song was over, Christine suavely tried to propose other French songs but in vain. Public opinion was so pressing that in the end it had to be accommodated and the band started playing oriental dance numbers. This was the magical moment, for the women and girls jumped up as though they had finally found themselves, clapping, singing, and swaying to the rhythm, more than one of them tying a sash around her hips and dancing. They kept insisting that the bride do the same until she gave in and allowed them to tie a sash on her and joined the dancers, while Zaki Bey el Dessouki watched her with love and admiration, clapping enthusiastically to the rhythm. Then little by little, raising his arms aloft amid the joyful laughter and cries of the others, he joined her in the dance.