“Perhaps you need some fun. That’s what I keep telling myself…” So spoke Sa‘fan, looking in his direction, his face partly lit by the wedding lights, partly hidden in shadow. “Your days are slipping by in work and study, but life demands much more of us than that,” he added.
He pretended to listen attentively but inside he felt contempt. He despised homilies which encouraged indolence and considered them a blasphemy against God. At the same time his thoughts returned to Sayyida in her long agony, to the duties he must fulfill and the facts he must bear in mind and reconsider. He felt a meaningless smile on his face. Sa‘fan started talking again. “You are a man of high ambition, but peace of mind is a precious possession too…”
“You are very wise, Mr. Basyuni…” he said, his contempt rising.
At the doorway of the balcony a shadow appeared. It was a girl carrying a tray from which rose the aroma of mint tea. Lights from the wedding below were reflected on her face, revealing some of her features in spite of the darkness of the room behind her. She had a pale round face, evidently attractive but its charms were veiled in mystery. He felt apprehensive. As he bent slightly forward to pick up his cup, he saw from close up the smooth tender skin of her arm and felt as if the scent of mint emanated from it. She was hardly there for a minute before disappearing into the darkness, the smile that had nearly escaped her timorously concealed. Silence reigned like a feeling of guilt, the atmosphere charged with a sense of conspiracy. His apprehension heightened.
“My daughter…” said Sa‘fan. Othman nodded respectfully.
“She’d completed her primary education before she stopped going to school.” He nodded again, this time in admiration. The voices of the group accompanying the singer were wafted up to them. Sa‘fan went on: “Home is the real school for a girl.” He did not comment. He did not know what to say. At the same time he was annoyed at his own silence.
“What’s your view on the subject?”
“I agree with you completely.”
Yet he recollected his mother’s life of bitter struggle. He felt he was being pushed into a trap. The soloist began to sing in a soft, gentle voice. Sa‘fan murmured, “How beautiful!”
“Indeed.”
“Life is beautiful too.”
“Absolutely.”
“But it demands wisdom from us if we’re to enjoy its sweetness.”
“Isn’t wisdom difficult to attain?”
“No. It’s a gift from God.”
God did not create us for a life of ease or the taking of shortcuts. The man was laying siege to him, but he was not going to give in. Yet how could he keep his freedom and gain his chief’s favor at the same time? He no longer listened to the music. But Sa‘fan went on listening, keeping time with his hands and feet and occasionally casting an inquiring look at him. He concluded that, by way of self-defense, he had better repay his invitation with one even more generous—a conclusion that caused him no slight pain. For he would never spend a single piastre except to meet a pressing need, and on the very day he received his first salary he opened a deposit account with the post office. It never occurred to him to change the place where he lived or the food he ate. He believed that thrift was an important element in his long struggle as well as a religious duty. It was also a safeguard against fear in a fearful world. Yet what must be must be. He would repay the treat with a more generous one. Moreover, it would be in a restaurant, not in his room, jam-packed with books as it was and poor in everything else. As a result, he would be spending a positively enormous amount of money. A curse on all stupid people! The sounds of music turned into a meaningless din and the gates of hell flew open. Yet the old man swayed his head to the tunes, oblivious of the offense he was committing. The world was inflicting on Othman another of its mockeries.
Eight
Before the end of the month, he had treated the man to dinner at al-Kashif restaurant. They had delectable fish and dessert. The old man was so happy he looked as if he expected an angel of mercy and joy to descend from heaven.
“What about spending the rest of the evening at al-Fishawi’s café?” he suggested, apparently not satisfied with the dinner alone.
Othman’s heart throbbed painfully, but he took his arm and said, “What a wonderful idea!”
As they sat in the café he remembered a Bairam festival in the past when his new galabiya was torn in a brawl in al-Husayni Alley. His father later gave him a beating and he had to wear the galabiya for a whole year, patched up by his mother. The old man’s joviality irritated him. It was obvious he expected to hear good news. He sat there with a glow of expectation in his drab eyes and an air of general satisfaction.
“Are you happy with your colleagues in the Archives?” he said.
“Yes. I believe I am.”
“They are a poor lot, but good-natured enough.”
“Yes. Yes, indeed.”
“As for you, you are an excellent young man. Will you become a barrister when you’ve got your degree?”
“No. But I hope to better my position.”
“A good idea. I admire your high ambition.”
Othman abandoned his hesitancy, determined to escape even if it meant stifling the man’s hopes.
“My cares are greater than you imagine,” he said.
The man looked at him apprehensively and said, “Heaven protect us! What’s the matter?”
“It’s not ambition I care about as you think. My concerns are of a humbler kind.”
“Really?”
“If circumstances weren’t so difficult, I would desire nothing more simple or natural than marriage.”
The old man failed to disguise the disappointment which choked him. “What sort of circumstances, if I may ask?” he said.
“Huge responsibilities.” Othman sighed wistfully. “People like me, brought up in poverty, cannot escape its grip…” With bowed head he added in a voice of melancholy, “How I wish…”
He fell silent as if overcome by emotion. The old man leaned back out of the lamplight till he was in shadow. Othman could not retract what he had said but he must preserve the man’s friendship as best he could. Out of the shadow the man’s voice came to him: “And when will you be able to stand on your own feet?”
“I have small children and widows to look after,” he said in a tone of despair. “I’m just an ox tied blindfold to a waterwheel.”
Everything went dead. Even the banging of backgammon pieces was no longer audible. He murmured again, “How I wish…”
The old man did not utter a word. He wanted to pay the bill but Othman would not let him. He paid out of his own pocket, feeling utterly miserable. All enjoyment had gone from the party and no pretense could revive it. They left the café and walked up to Bab al-Shariya Square, where the man took his leave and went off toward his home.
Othman was left in a wretched state of nervous tension. A surge of lunatic rashness swept over him, driving him to desperate extravagance of a suicidal nature.
Without wavering he made his way to the prostitutes’ quarter, where he could bury his tensions and sorrows and his pangs of conscience.
“Even the sins of man must be hallowed,” he said to himself in his misery.
Nine
Omm Husni stopped him as he was going downstairs. She would not do that without a good reason. He looked at her face furrowed with wrinkles, her hair dyed with henna, and her body still strong in spite of her old age. It made him think of his mother, and he shook her hand smiling.
“I’ve got news,” she said.
“I hope it’s good news.”
Narrowing her single eye (the other one she had lost in a fight in the alley), she said, “There’s nothing good in it.”
He looked at her intently.
“A suitor. There’s now a suitor standing in your way.”
“Eh?”
“Somebody has proposed to Sayyida.”
A sense of grief and bafflement overwhelmed him as if the news was something he
could not have expected. He was lost for words.
“A tailor.”
He knew this was something inevitable. He would not try to prevent it nor could he hope to. It was like death. He did not utter a word. She dragged him by the hand to her room and seated him on the settee next to herself.
“Don’t you care?”
He felt a sharp pain in the depth of his soul. It was as if the world was fading away. He said angrily, “Don’t ask meaningless questions!”
“Calm down!”
“I’d better go.”
“But you won’t be able to meet her.”
The world faded more and more.
She went on: “You should have realized that by yourself.”
“How do you mean?”
“Her mother is keeping a strict eye on her movements. A real man is better than an illusion…”
“A real man is better than an illusion,” he mumbled in a stupor.
“You love her, don’t you?”
“I love her,” he said disconsolately.
“A well-worn story in our alley.”
“Yet it is true.”
“Great! And why haven’t you popped the question?”
“I can’t,” he said poignantly.
“Listen, the girl has begged me to tell you!”
He sighed in total despair.
“Go at once and propose to her or let me do it for you,” the woman said.
He murmured something incomprehensible as if he were speaking an unknown language. The woman was baffled. He continued his soliloquy: “And God will not forgive me.”
“God forbid! Do you think her unworthy of a civil servant like yourself?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Omm Husni!”
“Speak your mind to me! I’m like a mother to you…”
“I can’t get married…”
“Let her wait for you as long as you wish.”
“It would be a long wait…”
“Give her your word. That would be enough.”
“No. I’m not selfish. For the sake of her happiness I must say no.”
Before she had time to reply he had left the room. He walked slowly through the narrow lanes. His tribulation was profound and he bitterly accepted that he would not see her again. Yet, despite his anguish, he experienced a kind of relief, desolate and mysterious. If he was relieved, he felt equally certain that he was damned. He loved her, and no one else would fill the void she would leave in his heart. The love he had known would not be easily erased. It would teach him to hate himself and his ambition, but he was determined to cling to it with all the power of loathing and despair. Mad he was, but his was a hallowed madness that slammed the door on happiness with disdain and pride and drove him irresistibly along the path of glory, rough and strewn with thorns. Happiness might lure him into thoughts of suicide, but misery would spur him to pursue life and worship it. But oh, Sayyida, what a loss she was!
Ten
He made progress in every direction, but his torment hardly abated. He was now firmly established at work, and Sa‘fan Basyuni, in spite of the failure of his own plans for him, testified to his assiduity, proficiency, and good behavior. He would say of him, “He is the first to arrive and the last to leave, and at prayer time he leads the worshippers in the ministry’s prayer hall.”
He would often do his own work as well as that of those who fell behind with theirs, and people spoke of his helpfulness no less than of his ability. The tremendous determination with which he advanced in his study promised brilliant success. Obsessively he frequented the National Library, where he read avidly in various fields of knowledge in addition to his difficult study of law. He also became a familiar figure at the Friday prayers at al-Husayn Mosque. He thus became known in the area for his piety and rectitude. Nevertheless his torment was unabated. Sayyida continued to dominate his thoughts.
“She is the one precious thing in my life,” he would tell himself.
On the days when they had once had their assignations he would go and sit on the steps of the ancient drinking fountain and suffer the pangs of memory. He would indulge in them until they took form and substance in his mind. In moments of extreme passion he expected to hear her light footsteps and see her approaching, her face aglow with longing and timidity. He yearned for their long talks, their passionate embraces, and each precious spot he had washed with his kisses. But she did not come, nor would she. She had cut him off. Perhaps she had forgotten him, and if his image crossed her mind, would curse him as he well deserved. One afternoon as he was passing under her window, he thought for a moment that he glimpsed her head behind a pitcher placed on the sill to be cooled by the air. But she was not there. Or perhaps she had hurriedly drawn back in disgust. Man was sanctified by suffering, he told himself. Work and worship were inseparable, he told himself again.
One Friday morning he bumped into her in al-Khiyamiyya, in her mother’s company. Their eyes met for an instant before she turned them away indifferently. She did not look behind her. He had a revelation of one meaning of death. Like the voluntary exodus of his ancestor from Eden. Like his own lofty struggle with agony.
In his emotional wretchedness he continued to pay cautious visits to the prostitutes’ quarter. Time strengthened his relationship with a girl of the same age as he who called herself Qadriyya. Her dark brown complexion, like Sayyida’s though darker, attracted him. She was plump but not excessively so. Once their paths had met, quite a long time since, he had never looked elsewhere. Her room reminded him of his. Nevertheless, it was more primitive with its bare floor, its raised bed, its mirror, its solitary chair used both for sitting and for hanging clothes, its washbowl and jug. Because of this he was not able to take off his suit on wintry nights. Years had passed without a word exchanged between them except for greetings on arrival and departure. Deeply devout though he was, she taught him to drink the necessary little amount. A glass of the hellish Salsala wine at half a piastre was sufficient to blot out his mind and infuse madness into his blood. So much so that one time he said to her in a moment of ridiculous ecstasy, “You are the mistress of the universe.”
He would contemplate the bare room, smell the incense, notice the insects, imagine the hidden germs, and ask himself: was this accursed corner burning with the flames of hell not part of the kingdom of God? On one occasion there was a thunderstorm and he was incarcerated in the naked room; the lane was deserted, there was no sound and darkness reigned. Qadriyya squatted on the bed while he sat on the bamboo chair. The room was lit by a solitary candle. As time seemed endless, he took a notebook from his pocket in which he had written down some notes from his lectures. He started to read out loud, as was his habit.
“Qur’an?” Qadriyya asked.
He shook his head, smiling.
“Dates with girlfriends?”
“Lectures.”
“So you’re a student? Then why do you wear a mustache?”
“I’m a government employee. I go to evening classes.”
He craved for Sayyida with an aching heart. But an idea occurred to him which brought him comfort: that the pouring rain was washing the lane and wiping its face clean.
One day he went back to the alley to find the ground in front of Sayyida’s house strewn with sand, while flags fluttered on either side. His heart gave a final beat. On the stairs to his flat he came upon Omm Husni—perhaps she had meant to wait for him? He greeted her as he passed and went on. Her voice called after him, “May God give you what you want and make you happy!”
He could not concentrate on his lecture notes. His small room was invaded by voices, women’s cries of joy, children’s cheers, and the wedding music. Yes. There was Sayyida entering the kingdom of another man. A period of his youth was over and buried.
He went out with a new determination. He told himself that life was something greater than all its aspirations, that the wisdom of Omar al-Khayyam was more beautiful than al-Ma‘arri’s* and that a man’s heart was his onl
y guide. He stormed into the wedding and the people said he was crazy. He pointed at Sayyida and said to her, “The decision lies with you.” She responded to his appeal in spite of the crying and the wailing, because in the critical moments which precede execution the truth is laid bare and death is vanquished. Away they went, running together up three back streets through Bab al-Nasr to the City of the Dead, both staggering with happiness.
The noise, the cries of joy, and the singing continued till dawn broke. He kept looking at his notes without comprehending a thing. He was overcome by loneliness, slumped in an empty world without sound or hope. His anguish bore down upon him on the wearisome path. He reminded himself of the battling of nations and the battling of germs and the battling of health and strength, and he shouted, “Glory be to God on high!”
* * *
*Omar al-Khayyam was a twelfth-century Persian poet whose famous Ruba-‘iyyat or quatrains were translated in 1859 by Edward FitzGerald. His verse mocks the transience of human grandeur and calls for the enjoyment of the pleasures of the fleeting moment. Al-Ma‘arri was a renowned eleventh-century Arab poet who led a life of celibate solitude and renunciation and whose austerity was reflected in his poetry. Translator’s note