The Yacoubian Building: A Novel

  This was one of a number of fall-back positions, tantamount to defensive tactics, that Taha used under difficult circumstances in order to express what he felt while at the same time avoiding problems, positions that had initially been a matter of acting for him but which he soon performed sincerely and as though they were the truth. For example, he did not like to sit on the doorkeeper’s bench so that he had to get up respectfully for every resident, and if he was sitting on the bench and he saw a resident coming, he would busy himself with something that would obviate his duty to stand up. Similarly, he was accustomed to addressing the residents with a carefully calculated modicum of respect and to treating them as an employee would his superior and not as a servant his master. As for the children of the residents who were close to him in age, he treated them as complete equals. He would call them by their first names and converse and play around with them like close friends, borrowing from them schoolbooks that he might not actually need in order to remind them that despite his position as a doorkeeper he was their colleague when it came to study.

  These were the commonplaces of his day-to-day life—poverty, back-breaking hard work, the arrogance of the residents, and the five-pound note, always folded, that his father bestowed on him every Saturday and on which he practiced every stratagem to make last the whole week; the smooth, warm hand of a resident extended lazily and graciously from a car window to give him a tip (at the sight of which he had to raise his hand in a military-style salute and thank his benefactor enthusiastically and audibly); that look, impertinent and full of smugness or covertly sympathetic and tolerant, inspired by embarrassment at the “issue,” which he noted in the eyes of his school friends when they visited him and discovered that he lived in the doorkeeper’s quarters “up on the roof”; that hateful, embarrassing question “Are you the doorkeeper?” that strangers to the building addressed to him; and the deliberate slowing down of the residents as they entered the building so that he would hurry to relieve them of whatever they were carrying no matter how light or unimportant.

  It is with annoyances such as these that the day passes, but when Taha gets into bed at the end of the evening, it is always in a state of purity and with his ablutions made, after he has first performed the evening prayer, plus superrogatory odd and even series of prostrations. Then he stares long into the darkness of the room, gradually soaring until he beholds himself in his mind’s eye as a police officer strutting proudly in his beautiful uniform with the brass stars gleaming on his shoulder and the impressive government-issue pistol dangling from his belt. He imagines that he has married his sweetheart Busayna el Sayed and that they have moved to a suitable apartment in an up-market district far from the noise and dirt of the roof.

  He firmly believed that God would make all his dreams come true—first of all because he made the utmost effort to honor God’s commandments, observing the obligatory prayers and avoiding major sins (and God had given to the observant in a noble verse of the Qur’an the good news that Had the people of the cities believed and been God-fearing, We would have opened upon them blessings from heaven and earth) and second because he had the highest expectations of God’s good intentions (given that the Almighty and Glorious had said, in words revealed to the Prophet, “I am according to my slaves’ expectations of me: if good, then good, and if bad, then bad”). And see—God had fulfilled his promise and granted him success in the general secondary exams, and he had passed, praise God, all the tests for the Police Academy. All that remained for him to do was the character interview, which he would pass that same day, God willing.

  Taha rose and prayed the two morning prostrations, plus two more in supplication for the achievement of his wish, then washed, shaved, and began to get dressed. He had bought a new gray suit, a shining white shirt, and a beautiful blue tie for the character interview, and when he glanced at himself for the last time in the mirror, he looked very smart. As he kissed his mother goodbye, she put her hand on his head muttering an incantation, then started praying for him with an ardor that made his heart pound. In the lobby of the building, he found his father sitting with his legs tucked up under him on the bench as was his habit. The old man rose slowly and looked at Taha for a moment. Then he put his hand on his shoulder and smiled, his white mustache quivering and revealing his toothless mouth, and he said proudly, “Congratulations in advance, Mr. Officer!”

  It was past ten o’clock and Suleiman Basha was crowded with cars and pedestrians, and most of the stores had opened their doors. It occurred to Taha that he had a whole hour ahead of him before the exam and he decided that he would take a cab for fear of spoiling his suit on the crowded buses. He wished he could spend the remaining time with Busayna. Their agreed method was that he should pass in front of the Shanan clothing store where she worked; when she saw him she would ask permission from Mr. Talal, the owner, to leave, using the excuse that she had to fetch something or other from the storeroom, and then catch up with him at their favorite place in the new garden in Tawfikiya Square.

  Taha did the usual routine and sat there for about a quarter of an hour before Busayna appeared. At the sight of her, he felt his heart beating hard. He loved the way she walked, moving with small, slow steps, looking at the ground, and giving the impression that she was embarrassed or for some reason regretful, or was walking over a fragile surface with extreme care, so as not to break it with her footsteps. Noticing that she was wearing the tight-fitting red dress that revealed the details of her body and whose wide and low-cut front showed her full breasts, he experienced a surge of anger and remembered that he had quarreled with her before in an attempt to make her stop wearing it. However, he suppressed his annoyance, not wishing to spoil the occasion, and she smiled, showing her small, white, regular teeth and the two wonderful dimples on either side of her mouth and lips, which she had painted dark red. She sat down next to him on the low marble garden wall, turned toward him and looked at him, with her wide seemingly astonished honey-colored eyes and said, “What a dandy!”

  He answered in an urgent whisper, “I’m going for the character interview now and I wanted to see you.”

  “The Lord be with you!” said Busayna with true tenderness. His heart beat hard and at that moment he wished he could clasp her to his chest.

  “Are you scared?” she asked.

  “I have placed myself in the hands of God, Almighty and Glorious, and whatever Our Lord may do I shall gladly accept, God willing.”

  He spoke fast, as though he had prepared the answer ahead of time or as though he were trying to convince himself with his own words. He was silent for a moment, then went on gently, looking into her eyes, “Pray for me.”

  “The Lord grant you success, Taha,” she exclaimed warmly.

  Then she went on, as though she thought she had gone too far in showing her feelings, “I have to go now because Mr. Talal is waiting for me.”

  As she withdrew, he tried to make her stay, but she put out her hand and shook his, her eyes avoiding him, and said in an ordinary, formal way, “Best of luck.” Later, when he was sitting in the taxi, Taha reflected that Busayna’s attitude toward him had changed and there was no point in ignoring it; that he knew her well and that one look was enough for him to penetrate her innermost thoughts. He had memorized everything about her—her face, whether radiant with happiness or sad, her uncertain smile and the way she blushed when she was embarrassed, her wildcat glances and glowering (but still beautiful) features when she was angry; he even loved to look at her when she had just woken up and the traces of sleep were still on her face, making her look like a compliant, gentle-hearted child.

  He loved her and he preserved in his memory the image of her as a little girl when she would play with him on the roof and he would run after her and deliberately hang on to her so that the smell of soap from her hair would tickle his nose; of her as a student at the commercial secondary school wearing the white shirt, blue skirt, and short white school socks above black shoes as she walked hug
ging her bag as though to hide her ripening bosom; and the beautiful images of them wandering together at the Barrages and the Zoo, and of the day when they revealed their love to each other and agreed to marry and how after that she had clung to him and asked him questions about the details of his life, as though she were his young wife looking after him. They had agreed on everything for the future, even the number of children they would have and their names and what their first apartment would look like.

  Then suddenly she had changed. She had become less interested in him and took to talking about “their project” listlessly and sarcastically. She would often quarrel with him and avoid meeting him, using a variety of excuses. This had happened right after her father died. Why had she changed? Was their love just an adolescent thing to be grown out of as they got older? Or had she fallen in love with someone else? This last thought pricked him like a thorn till he bled. He started to picture Mr. Talal the Syrian (owner of the store where she worked) taking her arm in his and wearing a wedding suit.

  Taha became aware of a heavy worry weighing on his heart, then awoke from his thoughts as the taxi came to a halt in front of the Police Academy building, which at that moment appeared impressive and historic, as though it were the fortress of fate in which his destiny would be decided. His exam nerves came back to him and he started reciting the Throne Verse in a whisper as he approached the gate.

  The information available about Abaskharon in his youth is extremely sparse.

  We don’t know what he did before the age of forty or the circumstances in which his right leg was amputated. Everything we know starts with that rainy winter’s day twenty years ago when Abaskharon arrived at the Yacoubian Building in the black Chevrolet of Madame Sanaa Fanous, a widowed Copt of Upper Egyptian origin, rich, and with two children to whose upbringing she had devoted her life following the death of her husband. Despite her devotion to her children, however, she responded from time to time to the whimsical demands of her body and Zaki el Dessouki had got to know her at the Automobile Club and had been her companion for a while. Much as she enjoyed the relationship, her religious conscience gave her no rest and would often make her break into painful tears as she lay in Zaki’s arms after the accomplishment of their pleasure and go and appease her guilt by taking on an abundance of good works through the church. Thus it was that no sooner did Borei, Zaki’s former office servant, die than she insisted on his appointing Abaskharon (whose name was on the assistance list at the church), and suddenly there he was, standing hunched up like a mouse and staring at the ground, at his first meeting with Zaki Bey, who was so disappointed at his shabby appearance, his amputated leg, and his crutches, which marked him with the stamp of a beggar, that he said sarcastically to his friend Sanaa in French, “But, my dear, I’m running an office, not a charity!”

  She continued trying to win him over with blandishments until in the end he grudgingly agreed to employ Abaskharon, with the idea that he would do what she wanted for a few days then throw him out…but here they were! Abaskharon had demonstrated from the first day an unusual competence: he had an uncommon capacity for uninterrupted, exhausting work and even asked the Bey daily to give him new things to add to his list of duties. He also possessed a sharp intelligence, adroitness, and shrewdness, which made him do the right thing in any given situation and with a capacity for absolute discretion, for he would see and hear nothing of what took place in front of him, be it even murder.

  By dint of these great virtues, before a few months had passed Zaki Bey couldn’t do without Abaskharon for so much as an hour. He even had a new bell put in the kitchen of the apartment so that he could summon him whenever he needed him, and he gave him a generous salary and allowed him to stay overnight in the office (which was something he hadn’t done with anyone before). Abaskharon for his part had fathomed the Bey’s nature from the first day and realized that his master was self-indulgent, a pleasure-seeker, and given to sudden whims and caprices and that his head was rarely free of the effect of narcotics. This sort of man (as per Abaskharon’s wide experience of life) was quick to get angry and had a sharp temper but rarely did any harm, and the worst that one was likely to suffer from him was verbal abuse or a dressing down. Abaskharon promised himself that he would never argue with or question his master about what he asked for and that he would always take the initiative in apologizing and ingratiating himself, in order to gain his affection. Likewise he never addressed him by any term other than “Excellency,” which he would insert into any sentence he uttered. Thus, if the Bey asked him, for example, “What time is it now?” Abaskharon would reply, “Five o’clock, Excellency.”

  To tell the truth, Abaskharon’s adaptation to his work is somewhat reminiscent of a biological phenomenon. Thus, in the midst of the quiet darkness that reigns over the apartment during the daylight hours and of the ancient musty smell that emanates from the mixing of the scent of old furniture with that of the damp and of the double-strength carbolic acid that the Bey insists be used to clean the bathroom—in this “medium,” when Abaskharon emerges from one of the corners of the apartment with his crutches, his ever-dirty gallabiya, his aged hang-dog face, and his ingratiating smile, he seems like a creature functioning effectively in its natural surroundings, like a fish in water, or a cockroach in the drain. Indeed whenever for some reason he leaves the Yacoubian Building and walks down the sunny street through the passersby and the noise of the cars, he looks odd and out of place, like a bat in daylight, and his integrity is restored only when he returns to the office where he has spent two decades concealed in darkness and damp.

  We must not, however, be fooled into thinking of Abaskharon as no more than an obedient servant, for the truth is that there is much more to him than that, and behind his servile, weak exterior lies concealed a strong will and precise goals that he will fight courageously and obstinately to achieve. In addition to the raising and educating of his three daughters, he has taken on his shoulders the care of his younger brother Malak and his children too. This gives us the clue to understanding what he does every evening when, alone in his small room, he extracts from the pocket of his gallabiya every coin and small, sweat-soaked, folded banknote, whether obtained directly as tips or that he has succeeded in filching from the purchases for the office. (Abaskharon’s brokering methods may be taken as a model of precise, skillful fraud, for he does not, like an amateur, inflate the prices of what he buys, since the prices are known, or may be known, at any moment. Instead he will, for example, filch each day from the coffee, tea, and sugar an amount too small to be noticed, then repackage the stolen provisions in new bags and resell them to Zaki Bey, presenting genuine invoices that he has obtained through a private agreement with the pious, bearded Muslim grocer on Marouf Street.)

  In the evening, before retiring to his bed, Abaskharon counts his money twice with care, then pulls out the little blue indelible pencil that he always keeps behind his ear and writes down the balance of his earnings, subtracting from them the amount he is going to save (which he will place in his savings account on Sunday and never thereafter touch), then pay off mentally out of the remainder of what he has received the needs of his large family. And whether he has anything left over after that or not, Abaskharon, the believing Christian, cannot sleep until he has chanted the prayer of thanks to the Lord, his voice reverberating in the silence of the night as he whispers with genuine piety before the figure of the crucified Christ that hangs on the kitchen wall, “because, O Lord, Thou hast fed me and fed my children; thus, I praise You as Your name is glorified in Heaven. Amen.”

  A word, unavoidably, about Malak.

  The fingers of the hand differ from one another in appearance, but all move together in coordination to carry out a given task. Similarly, on the soccer pitch, the mid-field player shoots the ball with the utmost precision to land at the feet of the striker so that he can score a goal. Abaskharon’s relationship with his brother Malak was conducted with the same extraordinary harmony.
r />   Malak learned tailoring in shirt-making workshops when he was young; thus domestic service has not left its stamp of abjection upon him, and the fact is his short stature, his cheap, dark-colored “people’s suit,” his huge belly, and his plump face devoid of any good looks leave a disturbing first impression. However, he hastens to take the initiative with anyone he meets by smiling his broad smile and shaking his hand warmly, talking to him like an old friend and concurring with all his opinions (so long as they do not touch his vital interests), then insistently offering him a Cleopatra cigarette from the wrinkled pack that he carefully extracts from his pocket, checking each time that it is okay, as though it were a jewel. This excessive pleasantness has another side to it, however. If necessary, Malak will switch, in an instant and with the greatest of ease, to the utterly foul language that is to be expected of someone who has received most of his upbringing on the street. Since he combines two opposites—viciousness and cowardice, the violent desire to hurt his opponents and excessive fear of the consequences—he has become accustomed in his battles to attacking with everything he has. If he finds no resistance, he will go to any lengths in his aggression, without the slightest mercy, as though he doesn’t know the meaning of fear. And if he meets with serious resistance from his foe, he will back off immediately without thinking twice. To all these high-level skills of Malak’s are added the sagacity and cunning of Abaskharon, so that the two of them work together in perfect coordination and are able, truth to tell, to pull off the most amazing feats.

  The two brothers wanted to get a room on the roof, so they had planned and schemed for many months till, on this very day, the hour for action had arrived and no sooner had Rabab entered to see Zaki Bey than Abaskharon, standing in the doorway, bowed and said with a slight, crafty smile, “Excellency. Your permission to run a quick errand?” Before he had finished the sentence, the Bey (who was preoccupied with his girlfriend) had gestured to him to go. Abaskharon closed the door quietly, and his face, as his wooden crutches struck the tiles of the hallway, seemed to change. The servile, ingratiating smile disappeared and a serious, anxious expression appeared in its place. Abaskharon made for the small kitchen that was next to the entrance to the apartment and looked around cautiously. Then he stretched up, leaning on a crutch, until he was able carefully to remove the picture of the Virgin that hung on the wall and behind which was a niche. Sticking his hand into this, he pulled out several large bundles of banknotes, which he set about concealing carefully in his vest and pockets. Then he left the apartment, closing the door gently and firmly behind him. Reaching the entrance of the building, he turned, using his crutch, to the right and approached the doorkeeper’s room, from which his brother Malak, who had been waiting for him, quickly emerged. The brothers exchanged a single look of understanding and a few minutes later were making their way down Suleiman Basha on their way to the Automobile Club to meet Fikri Abd el Shaheed, the lawyer who was the agent for the Yacoubian Building.