He was not quite sure what to do. He took her hand in his, but she grabbed his and raised it to her neck. Their lips came together in a long kiss, and then she gave herself to him.
“The whole thing was a complete surprise,” he confided to me. “I was thrilled, of course, but at the same time I couldn’t help worrying. A number of unfocused questions formed a cluster inside my head. I almost asked her why she had decided to do it now, but didn’t.”
For a moment we just looked at each other.
“Maybe things had stirred her up?”
“Could be.”
“Afterwards I regretted what I’d done. I blamed myself for taking advantage of a moment of weakness when she herself was obviously in a state of collapse as well.”
“Did it happen again?”
“No.”
“Neither of you thought of trying?”
“No. On the surface our ties remained strong, but something inside, in the very depths of our souls, had started to come apart.”
“What a peculiar situation!”
“It felt like a lingering death. From my side, there are things that can explain it. But where she’s concerned, it’s a total mystery to me.”
“I noticed a change in your relationship while we were at the Karnak Café, but I thought it was just something temporary that would blow over.”
“I asked her what she had had to go through during her short time in prison, but she assured me it had all been short and trivial. From this point on, our beliefs in the revolution were contaminated by a deep-seated anger. We were much more willing to listen to criticism. The enthusiasm was gone; the spark was no longer there. Sure enough, the basic framework was still in place, but what we kept saying was that the style had to be changed; corruption had to be eradicated, and all those sadistic bodyguards had to go. Our glorious revolution had turned into a siege.”
One evening they had discussed the subject again with Hilmi Hamada.
“I’m surprised you can still believe in the revolution!” Hilmi had said.
“Just because the body has bowels,” Isma‘il had replied, “doesn’t diminish the nobility of the human mind.”
“Aha,” commented Hilmi sarcastically, “now I can see that, like everyone else, you resort to similes and metaphors whenever your arguments are weak!”
He had looked at them both. “It’s time for us to do something,” he went on.
He showed them a secret pamphlet that he and some of his colleagues were circulating.
“I was absolutely astonished at his frankness,” Isma‘il told me. “Or, more accurately, I was stunned. I dearly wished I had never heard him say it. I remembered my secret assignment that required me to report him immediately. The very thought of it made my entire universe start to shake. The reality of the deep abyss into which I was falling now became all too apparent to me.
“By now the two of us had been talking for well over an hour; Hilmi was doing the talking while I sat there or made a few terse comments. I was completely at a loss and at the same time felt utterly disconsolate.
“ ‘Stop those activities of yours,’ I told him, ‘and tear up that pamphlet!’
“ ‘What a joker you are!’ he scoffed. ‘This one isn’t the first, and it certainly won’t be the last.’
“We left his house at about ten and walked in silence. By now the time we were spending alone together was agonizing and difficult for both of us. We parted company. She needed to go back to the tenement building, while I felt like going to the Karnak Café. I wandered around the streets, unable to make the fateful decision. All the time I was feeling scared, scared for me and for Zaynab as well. In the end I made no decision, but returned to the tenement building at about midnight. I threw myself down on the bench in the courtyard without even taking my clothes off. I told myself that I faced a choice: either make the decision or go out of my mind. Even then I couldn’t make up my mind. I postponed things till the morning, but I didn’t get any sleep at all. I’d hardly fallen asleep when they came for me.”
“The security police, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“That very same night?”
“Yes, the same night.”
“But that’s staggering, unbelievable!”
“It’s magic. The only explanation I have is that they must have been watching us both and listening in from a distance.”
“But, in any case, you had decided not to report your friend,” I said, trying as best I could to give him a bit of consolation.
“I can’t even claim that much,” he replied. “After all, I had decided not to decide.”
And that is how his third prison term came about. Before dawn had even broken he found himself facing Khalid Safwan again.
“You’ve betrayed our trust in you,” said Khalid Safwan. “You failed the very first test.”
Isma‘il said nothing.
“Very well,” he went on. “We never force anyone to be friends with us.”
He was given a hundred lashes and then thrown into the cell again, that eternal darkness.
Isma‘il then proceeded to tell me about Hilmi Hamada’s final battle. They said he died in the interrogation room. He had both commitment and guts. The answers he gave them stunned them. They started hitting him and in a rage he tried to retaliate. A guard pummeled him with blows until he fainted. It then emerged that he was already dead.
“I languished in that awful dark cell,” he said. “I’ve no idea how long it went on, but I just seemed to fade into the darkness.”
One day he was summoned again. He assumed that he would be seeing Khalid Safwan, but this time there was a new face. He was informed that he would be released.
“I’d found out everything that had happened even before I left the building.” He paused for a moment. “From beginning to end,” he went on, “I heard every single detail about the flood.”
“The June War, you mean?”
“That’s right. May, June, even the fact that Khalid Safwan had been arrested.”
“What a time that must have been.”
“Just imagine, if you can, how it felt to me.”
“I think I can.”
“Our entire world had gone through the trauma of the June War; now it was emerging from the initial daze of defeat. I found the entire social arena abuzz with phantoms, tales, stories, rumors, and jokes. The general consensus was that we had been living through the biggest lie in our entire lives.”
“Do you agree with that?”
“Yes, I do, and with all the vigor used in the torture that had tried to tear me limb from limb. My beliefs in everything were completely shattered. I had the feeling that I’d lost everything.”
“Fair enough. By now though you’ve gone beyond that phase, haven’t you?”
“To a certain extent, yes. At least I can now raise some enthusiasm for the revolution’s heritage.”
“And how were things for Zaynab?”
“The same as for me. At first she had very little to say, then she clammed up for good. I can still vividly recall our first meeting after I was released. We embraced each other mechanically, and I told her bitterly that we would have to get to know each other all over again. We were both faced with an entirely new world and had to deal with it. She told me that, in such a scenario, she would be presenting herself to me as someone with no name or identity. I told her that I could now understand the full meaning of the phrase ‘in the eye of the storm,’ to which she replied that it would be much better for us if we acknowledged our own stupidity and learned how to deal with it, since it was the only thing we had left. When I told her that Hilmi Hamada had died in prison, she went very pale and spent a long time buried in her own thoughts. She told me that we were the ones who had killed him; not only him, but thousands like him. Although I didn’t really believe what I was saying, I replied that we were really the victims. After all, stupid people could be considered victims too, couldn’t they? Her reply came in an angrily sarca
stic tone, to the effect that it all depended on quite how stupid people had actually been.
“And then, as you well know, everyone fell into the vortex. We were all assailed by various plans: plans for war, plans for peace. In such a stormy sea all solutions seemed like a far-off shore. But then there came that single ray of hope in the emergence of the fedayeen.”
“So you believe in them do you?”
“I’m in touch with them, yes. Actually I’m seriously thinking of joining them. Their importance doesn’t lie simply in the extraordinary things they’re doing; equally significant are the unique qualities they possess, as clearly shown by these events. They’re telling us that the Arabs are not the kind of people others think they are, nor indeed the kind of people they themselves think they are. If the Arabs really wanted it, they could perform wonders of courage. That’s what the fedayeen believe.”
“But does Zaynab agree with you?”
For a long time he said nothing. “Don’t you realize,” he eventually went on, “that there’s nothing between us any more? All we have left are memories of an old friendship.”
Needless to say, I was anticipating such a response, or something like it, since it corroborated all my own observations and deductions. Even so, I was astonished to hear him describe it that way. “Did it happen suddenly?” I asked.
“No, it didn’t,” he replied. “But it’s difficult to hide a corpse’s stench, even when you’ve buried it. There came the point, especially after we’d both graduated, when we had to think about getting married. I discussed it with her, keeping all my suppressed and bitter feelings to myself. For her part, she neither refused nor consented; better put, she wasn’t enthusiastic. I couldn’t fathom the reason why, but I had to accept the situation the way it was. After that, we only broached the topic on rare occasions and no longer felt the need to spend all our time together as we’d done in the past. We used to sit in Karnak Café acting like colleagues, not lovers. I can clearly remember that signs of this situation began to show themselves after our second term in prison, but they began to assume major proportions after the third. It was then that our personal relationship started to flag. It kept gradually falling apart until it died completely.”
“So it’s over then?”
“I don’t think so.…”
“Really?”
“We’re both sick. At least I am, and I know the reason why. She’s sick too. One day our love may be revived; otherwise it’ll die for good. At any rate, we’re still waiting, and that doesn’t bother either of us.”
So they’re both waiting. But then, who isn’t?
Zaynab Diyab
Zaynab was both vivacious and pleasant, a combination that drew me to her from the first. She had a wonderful wine-dark complexion, and her figure had bloomed sweetly and with a certain abandon; she looked both svelte and trim. She seemed well aware that I admired her fascinating personality; in fact that was what allowed us to get to know each other well and eventually to develop a really strong sense of friendship.
She had grown up in the same surroundings as Isma‘il; in the very same building, in fact.
Her father was a butcher, and her mother started out as a washerwoman before becoming a broker after a good deal of effort. She had a brother, who worked as a plumber, and two married sisters. As a result of her mother’s second job the family could afford some of life’s necessities; for Zaynab she was able to provide the bare minimum of clothing she needed. They were not prepared for the way Zaynab excelled in her school work, and it caused both surprise and problems. They could see no harm in allowing her to continue playing this game with education until some nice young man came along. That was why her mother did not welcome Isma‘il al-Shaykh at first. She thought he was a layabout and a distinct roadblock to the future progress of any pretty young girl. Truth to tell, Zaynab’s mother was the real power in the household. Her father worked hard all day for a few piasters and then proceeded to squander it all at the beer parlor. The standard result was a fierce family quarrel. The amazing thing was that her dissolute father was actually very good-looking; his austere face may have had hair sprouting from it and a mass of wrinkles to go with it, but his features were very handsome. It was from him that Zaynab had inherited her looks. Meanwhile, her virago of a mother was just as tough as any man.
The long-anticipated crisis had finally arrived when Zaynab was in secondary school. A chicken seller who was considered to be wealthy in the terms of this poor quarter came to ask for her hand. He was forty years old and a widower with three daughters. Zaynab’s mother welcomed the idea of him taking her away from the tenement courtyard and giving her a happy life of her own. However, Zaynab turned him down, and that made her mother very angry. It was Isma‘il and his family who had borne the brunt of that anger.
“You’ll be sorry!” she yelled at her daughter. “It’ll be too late, and then you’ll regret it.”
Even then the matter did not blow over quietly. The merchant spread a rumor that there was something going on between Zaynab and Isma‘il. This also raised a storm inside the courtyard, but Zaynab’s will was still strong enough to triumph. It also affected the way she behaved. In order to confront these unjust accusations head on, she decided to act in a very conservative fashion. If certain people decided to accuse her of being reactionary, then so be it; she did not care. Nor did her increasingly broad education change her demeanor in any way.
“We represent a conservatism that is deliberately dressed in the guise of progressivism,” she said. “That’s why, within the framework of the revolution, I’ve found things that to me seem both comforting and reassuring.”
She loved Isma‘il very much and fully understood the way he thought as well. She believed that they shared the same set of attitudes. Even though he might pretend to say things that he didn’t really believe in his heart of hearts, she realized that he would never forgive her if she were to look down on him in any way.
“At the time,” she told me, “old Hasaballah, the chicken seller, was eager to get me at any price. When I turned him down, he wasn’t put off. He used an old woman who worked with him to get to me again. But I certainly taught her a lesson.”
“You mean, he wanted to have you out of wedlock?”
“That’s right. And he was prepared to pay a high price for it too!”
She was saying all this in a listless tone that seemed strangely inappropriate to the situation. At the time I had no idea what lay behind it.
“Zayn al-‘Abidin ‘Abdallah tried the same game later on,” she said.
“Never!” I exclaimed in surprise.
“Oh yes, he did,” she replied emphatically.
“But he was crazy about Qurunfula!”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Maybe he was just pretending to be in love with her,” I suggested. “He wanted to hide the fact that he was really after her money.”
“No,” she replied. “He was genuinely in love with her; he still is. He just needed a bit of diversion for consolation’s sake. Maybe the old rogue thought I was one of those girls who fools around.”
“When did he let you know what he was after?”
“Many times, but I’m referring to the first time, immediately after our first spell in prison.”
“In spite of his stubbornness I believe that he’s given up hope about Qurunfula.”
“Why should he give up hope? He’s simply sitting around waiting for the time when he’ll get his dues.”
She decided to put an end to this chatter about affairs of the heart. “There were many others as well,” she said.
“Was Hilmi Hamada—God rest his soul—one of them?” I asked with a great deal of hidden concern.
“Certainly not!” she replied in amazement.
“I must tell you in all candor that I’d thought there was something between the two of you.”
“We were close friends,” she replied sadly. “But Isma‘il’s the only man I’ve ever lov
ed.”
“Are you still in love?” I asked.
She ignored my question.
The story of her attitude toward the revolution was exactly the same as Isma‘il’s. “They arrested me because of my connection with Isma‘il,” she said, talking about her first arrest. “There was not even the slightest suspicion of a case against me, and I told them I’d never been a member of the Brotherhood. I was only held for a couple of days, then released unharmed.” She gave me a sad smile. “The real trouble was at home. My mother told me that those were precisely the kind of difficulties I should have expected to find myself in because of my being with Isma‘il. It so happened that my own arrest came one week after my father had been taken in; he’d been accused of rowdiness and assaulting a police officer.”
“In such circumstances,” I commented admiringly, “the way you have managed to move ahead is remarkable.”
“I asked Khalid Safwan why they were badgering us like this. We were all children of the revolution, I told him; we owed it everything. How could they accuse us of being opposed to it? His sarcastic response was to the effect that the very same excuse was being used by ninety-nine percent of the people who were genuinely opposed to the revolution.”
She talked to me about her former belief in the revolution and about the fact that their imprisonment had done nothing to alter or take away their core belief in its values. “However, whereas we had previously thought that we had all the power in the world, that feeling had been severely jolted by the time we’d emerged from prison. We’d lost much of our courage and along with it our self-confidence and belief in the workings of time. We had now discovered the existence of a terrifying force operating completely outside the dictates of law and human values.”
Zaynab told me that she had discussed with Isma‘il the agonies she had gone through when he had suddenly disappeared. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea,” she had suggested, “for us to keep to ourselves for a while and avoid meeting friends and other groups?”
“It was my fault that they were all arrested,” he had replied sarcastically, “not vice versa!”