He was extra careful nowadays when he visited Qadriyya in the prostitutes’ quarter, and he decided to disguise himself as a member of the lower classes so that nobody would recognize him. So one night he went to her wearing a loose galabiya, a cloak, and a scarf. She did not recognize him until she heard his voice.
“Been sacked from the government?” she asked, almost beside herself with laughter.
She had been slowly going downhill, growing all the time more fleshy and more debauched. Yet the relationship between them had grown stronger and developed into real human intimacy. It had passed through all the natural phases of desire, boredom, and then indispensable habit. Thus she and the bare room and the horrible wine had together become something integral and familiar, which simultaneously gave him comfort and sorrow as well as something to think about. It also impelled him to face up to life, harsh and primitive as it was. He took no notice of the woman’s indifference or of her despicable behavior. In fact, these very elements made it possible for him to enjoy, even while he was with her, his sacred solitude.
“Strange,” he would say to himself, “that in all my years I haven’t made love to an ordinary woman except once!” He remembered Asila, but he also remembered that what he had done with her was a criminal act and not an act of love.
And he would also say to himself, “There is a humane and wholesome way of making love.”
Then he would sigh and say, “But there is glory, too.”
Then he would sigh more deeply and say, “There is God as well and He is the origin of everything.”
Then he would sigh more deeply still and add, “And we remember Him when times are good and also when they are bad!”
Thirty
Despite her resistance to the passage of time, age had left its imprint on Omm Husni. Her eyesight was almost gone and she limped so badly that she could only walk by supporting herself with an old broom handle. Meanwhile Othman had so completely despaired of Omm Zaynab, the marriage broker, that he told himself indignantly that those who chattered about class conflict had good reason to!
Omm Husni was no longer fit for her noble profession. Her senility was such that once she suggested a woman for him forgetting that she had died years before.
One afternoon, after Friday prayers at the mosque, he was sitting in the Egyptian Club coffeehouse when he saw Asila passing, accompanied by another woman. He recognized her at once, though the extent to which she had changed was dreadful. She was as flaccid as a punctured ball, and in her face the springs of femininity had dried up, leaving behind an ambiguous shadow that was neither feminine nor masculine. She walked clumsily, a model of misery and degeneration. Something told him that death was hunting her down and that it also was drawing closer to his own time and place; that his time which had once seemed hallowed in eternity was no longer secure behind the screen of sweet illusions and that the proud and everlasting truth was now revealing itself to him in all its awesome cruelty. Did Asila still remember him? She could not have forgotten him. He had penetrated into her very depths with the full weight of his deceit and egoism, leaving her thereafter to hate him and curse him.
As for the companions of his boyhood, they were petty by profession and all they did was father children and fill the air with meaningless laughter. And gone were the innocent passions and the unruly imagination of childhood, buried under thick layers of dust like al-Husayni Alley, which had changed its skin. Many old houses had been demolished and small blocks had taken their place. A small mosque now occupied what used to be the donkey park and a lot of people had left the quarter and gone to al-Madhbah. Everything was changing: electricity and water had been introduced into houses, radios blared night and day, and women were abandoning their traditional wrap. Even good and evil had changed and new values arisen.
All this took place while he was still in grade three and growing old. Was this the reward for his extraordinary effort and dedication? Did they not recognize him as the epitome of expertise based on both theory and practice? That if his official memoranda, his budget analyses, and his original pronouncements on matters of administration and on the purchase and storage of goods were collected in book form, they would constitute an encyclopedia of government affairs? For such a shining light to be hidden away in the position of a Second Deputy Director of Administration was like hanging a 500-watt electric bulb on the wall of a toilet in a tiny village mosque.
He also told himself that “government official” was still a vague concept inadequately understood. In the history of Egypt, an official occupation was a sacred occupation like religion, and the Egyptian official was the oldest in the history of civilization. The ideal citizen of other nations might be a warrior, a politician, a merchant, a craftsman, or a sailor, but in Egypt it was a government official. And the earliest moral instructions recorded in history were the exhortations of a retiring official to his son, a rising one. Even the Pharaohs themselves, he thought, were but officials appointed by the gods of heaven to rule the Nile Valley by means of religious rituals and administrative, economic, and organizational regulations. Ours was a valley of good-natured peasants who bowed their heads in humility to the good earth but whose heads were raised with pride if they joined the government apparatus. Then would they look upward to the ascending ladder of grades which reached right to the doorstep of the gods in heaven. To be an official was to serve the people: the competent man’s right, the conscientious man’s duty, the pride of the human soul—and the prayer of God, the creator of competence, conscience, and pride.
One day he went for an inspection tour of the Archives Section. There he saw Onsiyya, whose womanhood had now reached the stage of maturity. She had also moved up the official scale to become a supervisor, occupying the post which was made empty by her husband’s transfer to the Ministry of Education.
“A long time!” he could not prevent himself from saying as he shook her hand.
She smiled in unaffected shyness.
“Are you happy?” he asked.
“I’m all right.”
“The ability to forget is one of fortune’s blessings,” he said, yielding to an irresistible impulse.
“Nothing is forgotten and nothing remains,” she said with friendly simplicity.
He thought about her words for a long time, and as he left Archives, he repeated to himself, “I loved you so much, Onsiyya, in the old days.”
He returned to his office to find on his desk a circular from the Public Relations Section. He could tell from its appearance that it was the kind which announced the death of an employee or the relative of one. The circular read: “Mr. Isma‘il Fayiq, the Head of Administration, died this morning. The funeral will take place…”
He read it a second time. He read the name over and over again. Impossible. Only yesterday he had been working in full health. Othman had had his morning coffee with him in his office. Indeed the man had said, giving voice to his familiar worries, “The country is awash with contradictory opinions,” at which Othman had smiled without comment.
“Everyone,” Isma‘il had gone on, “believes he’s been sent by Providence.” Then he had shaken his head and said, “In what frame of mind can one begin to prepare the final accounts?”
“In one like mine,” replied Othman in an undertone of sarcasm.
The man had given a loud laugh. He had never questioned the efficiency of his deputy or the fact that he was the backbone of the administration. How could the man have died, in heaven’s name?
Othman went to the First Deputy, who had been an intimate friend of the Director.
“Do you know anything about this tragedy?”
“He had just started on his breakfast,” the First Deputy replied in a stunned voice, “when he suddenly felt tired. He got up and went to lie on the couch. When his wife came up to him to see what was wrong, she found him already dead!”
One felt relatively secure, thought Othman, because one believed that death was logical, that it operated on the basis of premise and
conclusion. But death often came upon us without warning, like an earthquake. Isma‘il Fayiq had enjoyed perfect health until the last moment, and what happened to him could happen to anyone. Wasn’t that so? Health then was no guarantee, nor was experience, nor knowledge. Fear shook him to the depths. “The best definition of life is that it’s nothing…” Othman said to himself.
But was death something so unfamiliar? Certainly not, but seeing was not like hearing, and his fright would surely persist for a day or two. For in moments like this, profit and loss and joy and sorrow canceled each other out, and things lost their meaning.
“What’s the value of a lifetime of dedicated work?” he would ask himself.
His misgivings stayed with him during the funeral. Even the chitchat of the employees did not deflect his thoughts from their wistful course. But he felt grateful to be alive. “What is true heroism? It is to go on working with undiminished zeal in spite of all that.”
His preoccupation with the post of Director of Administration soon drove all other thoughts from his head. The First Deputy had been nominated for a job in the judiciary system. This left the way clear for himself. He would be promoted to grade two and appointed Head of Administration. After a year’s work in the post he would be eligible for substantive appointment in the post. Hope was now something he could really and truly grasp.
But he was totally dismayed by the decision to appoint someone from the Ministry of Transport as the new Director of Administration.
Thirty-one
No…No…No…
This possibility had never crossed his mind. He hated His Excellency Bahjat Noor and cursed him a thousand times. Bahjat Noor should have stood up for him. Damn them all! Did they think he could work for the benefit of others all his life? And who was this new Director? Who was this Abdullah Wajdi? How could he introduce himself to him as one of his staff? The shame of it! Shame would pursue him down the corridors of the ministry, and many were they who would gloat over his plight!
Bahjat Noor called him to his office.
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Bayyumi.”
“I’ve come to despair of doing my best in life,” he answered, not seeking to conceal his indignation.
“No, no. He is a relative of the Minister.”
“I have learned to envy lazy officials.”
“I repeat, I’m sorry, and I can tell you His Excellency the Under Secretary is sorry too.” The Director General was silent for a moment and then went on: “Don’t despair! It’s been agreed to promote you to First Deputy this month as soon as the present one has left.”
No use. Promotions did not matter except as a means to his most cherished hope, the hope to which he had dedicated his life. The new Director was a young man of only forty, which meant that, if things went their natural course, he would be pensioned off as a Deputy Director or at best, and then only by a miracle, as Director of Administration. The dream of his life was shattered and the past was dead and buried, leaving behind it only the blackness of illusion. Perhaps he would have been better off driving a cart like his father. For the first time in his life despair overcame him and he felt the end of his life much closer than the achievement of his precious hope.
A new idea possessed him with a force he had not experienced before: marriage. He should not procrastinate any longer; procrastination would serve no purpose. It was enough that the best time of life for love and marriage was gone. How he yearned for a wife, for genuine affection, for an honest partnership, a warm house, children, a human relationship, a loving heart, a kind touch, conversation, a refuge from torment, a shield against death, a savior from loss, a prayer niche worthy of true faith, a resting place secure from foolish dreams, a truce with frugality and deprivation and loneliness.
“Woman is life, and in her presence Truth is crowned by Death itself with all Death’s solemnity.”
He would not resort to Omm Zaynab, nor was there now anything to be gained from Omm Husni, crippled as she was. But there was a new girl in the administration called Ihsan Ibrahim to whom he had unhesitatingly expressed his affection. For now he did not want to delay his marriage for a single day if he could help it, and each extra night he slept alone made him all the more frightened. It was as though the desire for marriage had constantly smoldered inside him until it finally erupted like a volcano.
But Ihsan did not take his affectionate hints in the right way. She probably thought it inappropriate for a man of his age to court her. But what could he do, since he was no longer capable of the kind of love he had experienced in the days of Sayyida and Onsiyya, or the wild passion he knew in the days of Saniyya and Asila.
One day Ihsan happened to be in his office on some business or other. He seized the chance and said to her, “Do you mind, Miss Ibrahim, if I ask you a question which may sound a bit curious?”
“Of course not, sir.”
“Are you engaged?” he inquired after some hesitation. She blushed and for the first time glanced at him with the eye of a female rather than an employee working under him.
“Yes, sir.”
He was disappointed.
“Forgive me, but I hadn’t noticed a ring on your finger.”
“I mean, I’m almost engaged.”
After a moment’s reflection he said, “May I ask you something…something that must remain a secret between us?”
“Sir?”
“Could you help me find a wife?”
She was confused for a while and then said, choosing her words, “All my friends and relatives are about my age. They wouldn’t suit you, I’m afraid.”
A polite way of saying, “You wouldn’t suit them,” he thought.
“Is it impossible for a man of my age to get married?” he asked, his desperation nearly driving him beyond the limits of propriety.
“Why not? There’s a suitable wife for every sort of age.”
“Thank you, and please forgive me for bothering you!”
“I hope I may be of some service to you.”
When she left, he was burning with anger. She should have accepted him for herself, he thought, or for one of her friends or relatives. He had become unwanted scrap then, like the rubbishy surplus from the ministry’s Supply Section, which he put up for sale every year after the annual stocktaking. Evidently his lot in the marriage stakes was to be no better than that. Not even if he achieved his most cherished hope and the dream of his life, by occupying the office of His Excellency the Director General. The whip of time continued to lash his back, and he could run no longer. And with each day that passed he became more and more obsessed with the idea of marriage till it bulked as large as his obsession with promotion. Ihsan brought him back no answer. Madly he began to make advances to women in the streets and on buses but he had no experience in that sort of thing and had to give it up. “What a waste my life has been,” he would often sigh to himself.
Indignantly he asked himself what it was which so stood in the way of his getting married even after he had relinquished his early cumbersome conditions. Age was no doubt a negative factor, but it was not everything. People probably inquired about him and knew all there was to know about his origins. That was the other shameful fact. The truth was, he was a man past his prime and also of lowly background. God knew what else they said about him; for an outstanding personality like himself would naturally arouse envy in the hearts of others. He had long felt that he was without a true friend in this world; that he stood aloof, high above human frailty.
Night took him as usual to Qadriyya and the bare room.
“How nice,” he would say to himself with bitterness, “to have a Deputy Director’s job and a whore who is half Negress as my lot in life!”
“This is the first time you have drunk a second glass of wine!” she said laughingly. “It must be the end of the world!”
The end of the world it was, for he felt a strange giddiness in the head.
“Qadriyya, you must know I’m a man of faith,” he said apropos of nothi
ng in particular.
“Thank goodness!” she said as she tied a red kerchief around her coarse hair.
“And if I didn’t believe that the world is sanctified by being the creation of God,” he went on, “I would be content to live like an animal.”
She gazed at him stupidly and said, “They’ve decided to abolish us, damn them!”
“And God in His greatness…” he continued, disregarding what she said.
“They’ve decided to abolish us,” she interrupted.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Haven’t you heard the news about the abolition of prostitution?”
No, he hadn’t. All he read in the papers were obituaries and affairs of state.
“Really?” he asked with alarm.
“They’ve actually told us so.”
“Unbelievable!”
“They’ve promised to help us find work. Work indeed! God damn them in this world and the next! Have they reformed everything till they’ve only got us left to worry about?”
“Maybe it’s only a rumor. This country is full of rumors, you know.”
“I’m telling you, we’ve been officially informed.”
“And when is this going to take effect?” he asked in real consternation.
“Before the end of the year.”
They were quiet, and for some time the noise of revelers in the lane could be heard in the room. He had imagined many disasters but this one never crossed his mind.
“There’ll be brothels everywhere,” he observed wistfully.
“And VD will spread.”
“Thousands of innocent girls will be corrupted.”
“Those wretched idiots! Just for the want of something to do!”
“What are you going to do?” he asked her with a sigh.
“Whatever happens, I am not going to work as a washerwoman in a hospital.”
“Could I have your home address?”
“We’ll be watched.”
“Haven’t you thought about the future?” he asked, his despair becoming unbearable.