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 wou
ld 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:
Non, rien de rien. Non, je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu’on m’a fait, ni le mal
Tout ça m’est bien égal…
Avec mes souvenirs j’ai allumé le feu
Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs,
Je n’ai plus besoin d’eux…
Je répars à zéro…
Car ma vie, car mes joies
Aujourd’hui ça commence avec toi.
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 love
ly 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?”