Fahima Abd al-Azim Pasha
She was known as The Flowers’ Friend because of the long hours she spent in the garden of the villa on Sarayat Road. She was the most beautiful of Abd al-Azim’s children and prettier than Farida Hanem Husam. She may not have been as clever as Iffat, but her heart was kinder and her soul purer. She was educated with her sister at La Mère de Dieu with the same end in mind, namely to prepare her to marry into high rank. Yet her marriage nonetheless came about in the traditional way, as she was engaged—by way of a neighbor—to a public prosecutor called Ali Tal’at. Abd al-Azim Pasha Dawud had a house built for her in Bayn al-Ganayin, as he had done for Iffat, and she was wedded to her groom there. The marriage was very successful and she gave birth to Dawud, Abd al-Azim, and Farida. However, the bad luck waiting round the corner for the family became proverbial. Fahima lost her children once they had made it through youth and raised hope: Dawud died of typhoid in his third year of law school, Abd al-Azim died of cholera a month after graduating from the faculty of science, and Farida died of rheumatism of the heart in secondary school. Profound grief distracted the parents to the point of renouncing the world. Ali Tal’at, then a councilor at the court of appeals in Cairo, requested his pension and devoted himself to worship and religious readings in constant seclusion at home or in the cemetery. Fahima, in contrast, who came from a family where religion crouched on the margins, began asking questions about fate and the day she would be united with her dead children once more. She started buying all the books she could find at the market about spirits, how to summon them, and secret powers, and finally put faith in Radia and the heritage she had previously looked on with a mocking smile.
“Have patience, dear daughter,” her father, Abd al-Azim Pasha, said. “If only I could ransom myself for your children.”
“You’re goodness and blessings, Papa. May God prolong your life,” she replied.
Each time he led the funeral procession of one of her young children, heading the cortege due to his advanced years, he felt anguished and somehow culpable. He found the eyes gazing at him in reverent silence oppressive. Ali Tal’at soon entered God’s mercy, struck down by a severe flu, and Fahima found herself on her own in her kingdom of spirits. She lived long after the death of her parents and relatives from the respectable generation, which hallowed tradition and family ties, and became oblivious to everything except the telephone conversations she had with her sister, Iffat.
Qasim Amr Aziz
THE LAST CHILD OF AMR AND RADIA, he was born and grew up in the house on Bayt al-Qadi Square and was the only one of the children who never left home. From the beginning, he was thin and lively and bore no obvious resemblance to either parent. However, when he laughed he called to mind his father, and anyone who saw him when he was agitated was reminded of Radia. The roof and the square with its tall trees were his playground and he lived life to the full in the winter rain and Khamsin wind. He was not given the opportunity to get close to any of his brothers or sisters, as the moment he reached adolescence they departed for their marital homes. Instead, he made friends with his uncle Surur’s and the neighbors’ children and found recreation at the homes of his married brothers and sisters and the families of Ata and Dawud. He was his mother’s most devoted listener and the most believing follower of her dreams and spiritual tours about the mosques and shrines. Whenever his imagination played up he found in her a receptive ear and believing heart. One night in Ramadan he told her that he had seen a window of radiant light open in the sky for a few moments on the “Night of Power” and that another night he beheld a procession of demons through the gap in the mashrabiya. When still a boy, he gazed with interest at the girls in the family, alert and hungry before his time, and would hover in particular around Dananir, Gamila, and Bahiga, as well as the neighbors’ girls and young women; even their wives did not escape his wicked desires. Yet he was pious, prayed, and fasted from an early age.
He entered Qur’an school reluctantly and learned the basic principles with a reticent heart and rebellious mind. He could never distinguish between school and the district prison in Gamaliya where wretched faces loomed behind the window bars. At an after-dinner gathering, Amr questioned him, “Don’t you want to be like your brothers?”
“No way!” he shouted back.
His father frowned and warned him, “Don’t force me to become strict with you.”
Qasim’s image of his father was shaken by the man’s failure to prevent his cousin Ahmad’s death and he, Qasim, was left to cry in vain. He liked the pleasure afforded by Gamila’s embrace, although his heart would be seized by pain when he came to pray. He was constantly torn between love and prayer and Bahiga and his mother’s vigilant eyes. One day, Radia caught him and Gamila on the roof among the chickens, rabbits, and cats. The moment she appeared they broke free from their embrace. Gamila flew off like a dove, blood rushing to her cheeks in shame. Radia glowered and, pointing her emaciated hand up to the sky over the roof, said, “God sees everything from up there.”
Gamila vanished from sight when a suitable man came forward and Qasim added a broken heart to the anguish of death. He began to see rabbits’ heads peeking out from under overturned earthenware jars and it was not long before he found himself confronting illusions alongside irksome school lessons and a mysterious smile in Bahiga’s beautiful eyes. He expected her to be like her sister, Gamila, but found a sweet heart combined with a strong will. What good could come from their wordless exchange? “You two are the same age. He isn’t suitable,” Bahiga’s mother, Sitt Zaynab, said to her.
And Radia told him, “It’s important you focus your energy on school.”
Amr spread his palms and pleaded, “Lord, be kind to me with this boy.”
Qasim wept over the harsh ban. Sitting with his parents one evening, his father asked him why he was crying. “I’m thinking about Ahmad!”
Amr frowned. “That’s ancient history. Even his own mother has forgotten him!” he exclaimed.
He began to gaze at things sadly and weep. When they were alone, Radia said to her husband, “The evil eye has taken our son.”
“People envy his misfortune!” Amr replied angrily.
She perfumed him with incense, but when he inhaled its mysterious aroma he fell unconscious. His father took him to the doctor, who concluded it was a mild bout of epilepsy and there was nothing to fear; he needed rest and a change of atmosphere. They recalled the tragedy of Samira’s daughter, Badriya. Once when his parents were present he gazed into space and said, “I will do anything you wish.…”
“Is this the illness rambling?” Amr asked.
“No. He is communicating with people in the Unknown,” Radia replied confidently.
People learned of his condition and flocked to Bayt al-Qadi to try and revive him. They stared at him full of curiosity and apprehension. At Ata’s mansion there was whispering.
“It’s the root of madness that has long run through Radia’s family,” Shakira said to her mother.
At her house Sitt Zaynab said the same to Surur, while Radia asserted her knowledge of such things to Amr and told him with faith and conviction, “Don’t be afraid or sad. Trust in God.”
She took her son around the shrines and burned incense in every corner of the house. Qasim renounced school in contempt and began roaming the alleys and wandering about the houses of his brothers and sisters and relatives on Khayrat Square, Sarayat Road, and Bayn al-Ganayin. Everywhere he went he would be given something to drink and would make some enigmatic remarks about the future as he saw it. Events fulfilled his prophecies and he became known as “The Shaykh.” People no longer dared to make fun of him.
“It’s God’s will,” Mahmud Bey said to a dejected Amr. “You’re a believer. The boy has a secret that no one but God knows. He reads my thoughts. I have to think carefully before I do anything.”
“But what about the future? How will he make a living?” Amr asked.
His aunt Shahira was present a
nd said, “God does not forget any of his creation so why should He forget one of his saints?”
Qasim’s reputation was spread as a legend. Troubled rich men began arriving with gifts, then money, and the family was forced to set aside a room on the first floor to receive his visitors. Amr was amazed as his son’s fortune grew and overtook that of all his brothers together. His worries faded with time until it seemed Qasim was made for this role. Qasim exchanged his European clothes for a gallabiya, cloak, and turban, let his beard grow, and divided his time between receiving visitors and praying on the roof. Even his mother—the mistress of ancient knowledge—became one of his students and disciples. He opened his heart to the sorrows of his family and plunged into their dramas. He paid the last honors for their dead and blessed them in the cavity of their tombs. One day, when he was in his thirties, his heart began to beat in a way that brought rose-scented memories of the past flooding back. A tender voice called him to leave the house. He wrapped his cloak around him, went out, and headed straight to his uncle’s house next door. Bahiga met him with amazement, asking herself what had prompted him to burst into her desperate solitude now. They gazed at one another as they had in the carefree old days.
“I dreamed you were beckoning me,” he said.
She smiled weakly.
“A voice from the Unknown told me the time has come for us to marry,” he continued. He promptly stood up and left. He returned home and told his mother, “I want to marry. Propose to Bahiga on my behalf.”
Radia told herself that the saints had all married and produced children. When Labib came to visit she told him the news. Labib consulted his cousins Amer and Hamid, and they all agreed Qasim was capable of bearing the burden of a family; the matter rested with Bahiga. Amazingly, Bahiga consented. Some said it was desperation, others said it was the old love. Either way, she was married to him as soon as the old house had been rejuvenated with new furniture. The wedding took place in near silence because of the gloom that reigned during the war; it was celebrated with antiaircraft fire. Years went by without children. Then, one day, Bahiga gave birth to her only son, al-Naqshabandi. He was handsome, like his uncle Labib, and extremely healthy and intelligent. He graduated as an engineer the year of the Setback and, shortly before the 1970s, was sent on a delegation to West Germany. The situation in his country was a burden on his personal well-being so he decided to emigrate. He took an important post at a steel manufacturer after obtaining his doctorate, married a German girl, and settled in Germany for good. Bahiga was deeply saddened while Qasim, who was never sad, bade him farewell with his heart but did not shed a tear.
Qadri Amer Amr
He was born and grew up in the house in Bayn al-Ganayin, the middle son of Amer and Iffat. From childhood he shone in play, industry, and imagination. From childhood too, he was kindled by reading and interested in public life and, unlike his two brothers, was to find he sided with the Marxists. He was passionate about art and literature, despite a gift for science, and laid the foundations for his private library when still in the first year of secondary school. He was a near image of his father, though taller and more robust, and naturally rash, which got him into difficulty. How great was Amer’s surprise when his son was arrested amid a group of Marxists. The man rushed to his father-in-law, Abd al-Azim Pasha, who took steps to have Qadri released on the pretext of youth. The pasha was nevertheless alarmed. “How did such a boy emerge from your house?” he asked Amer and Iffat.
“We haven’t been lax in raising them, but others have sneaked into their lives and corrupted them,” Amer replied timidly.
Qadri entered the faculty of engineering with his name on the security forces’ blacklist. Halim warned his sister the situation could jeopardize his future, and Hamid did the same with his brother Amer. Qadri was repeatedly arrested and released while an engineering student. He was at one time drawn to Shazli, his aunt Matariya’s son, because of their shared culture. But he found Shazli agnostic, the antithesis of his own rational Sufism, so he lost patience and moved on. When he graduated as an engineer he shunned the civil service and worked in the engineering office of a retired teacher of his. He was a competent engineer but his reputation was marred by his politics. His mother was keen that he marry—to sort him out, on the one hand, and to compensate her loss in the case of Shakir, on the other. For his part, he welcomed the idea. She wanted one of his uncle Lutfi Pasha’s daughters for him but did not find the enthusiasm she had hoped for and guessed it was because of his bad reputation. Her anxiety was compounded when neighbors rejected him because they doubted his piety and, consequently, the validity of the marriage. Qadri grew angry with the idea of marriage, just as he was with the bourgeoisie in general. He began to believe his uncles Ghassan and Halim were wise to forsake it.
By the July Revolution his political activism had ceased, but his ideology and friends were the same and the cloud shrouding his reputation had not dissipated. He made palpable progress in his career and it looked set to continue, but then he was sent to prison for the third time. His father appealed to some important officers who had been former students of his. They indulged him and Qadri was released. When the revolution became linked with the Eastern Bloc he inclined toward it and began to see dimensions he had not seen before. Perhaps it was this that made the national catastrophe of June 5 easier for him to bear; he saw it as a clear beginning to securing Soviet influence in Egypt and a step closer to total revolution when the time was ripe. Perhaps this was what made him greet the victory of October 6 with an exasperation he could not conceal. He expended all his logic and learning in negating its meaning and portraying it as a charade. He said to himself: Victory for the bourgeoisie equals victory for reactionism! It was for this reason he opposed Sadat the moment his political strategy became clear and why he detested him both in life and in death, despite the wealth that unexpectedly came his way in the days of the infitah policy. He was one of the flood of men sentenced in September 1981. He was freed with the rest a few days before his father died to resume his successful job and frustrated hopes.
Labib Surur Aziz
HE WAS SURUR AND ZAYNAB’S FIRST CHILD. He had a radiant, handsome face, which resembled his mother’s, and a slender body, below average in height, which seemed designed for a girl. Amazingly, he was calm and composed from childhood, as though he had been born fully mature. Playing for him consisted in standing outside the front door watching the world go by; or following the movements of his cousin Qasim, who was a few years older than him, as he got up to mischief like others his age; or walking around the square cracking almonds. Radia would call him over and say affectionately, “Sensible boy!”
She would also say of him, “The father is an idiot and the mother is a fool, so where did the brains come from?”
When he was just four years old, encouraged by his composure and avoidance of childish mischief, Surur Effendi sent him to Qur’an school. He thought it would not be a waste of time if he spent a year or two there without understanding or grasping anything. But in those two years he acquired enough knowledge to satisfy the shaykh. “Your nephew, Labib, is an amazing boy. You must start him at primary school,” the shaykh said to Labib‘s uncle, Amr Effendi. In those days no one advanced to primary school below the age of eight or nine, so Labib‘s father presented him for the entrance exam without taking it seriously and his success came as a surprise. His studies began when he was only six and he progressed with success year after year, causing astonishment around the family. Even more astonishing was the way he applied himself to his homework without encouragement or incentives, or anyone’s help, until he obtained the primary school certificate aged only ten. His age and talent enabled him to enter one of the king’s special schools free of charge, and he progressed through secondary school with similar success. As a teenager, he resisted the temptations he encountered around family or in the street, obeying his mother’s warnings and deliberately spurning whatever might impede his industry and uprightness.
Thus, he obtained the baccalaureate at the age of sixteen. The teachers college was the preferred and appropriate option in the family’s circumstances, but the ambitious young man announced he wanted to go to law school.
“It’s the school for leaders!” muttered Surur, worried but hopeful.
“Let’s get Abd al-Azim’s advice,” said Amr.
The pasha was impressed with the young man’s history so took steps for him to enter law school, again with the fees waived. Labib‘s father had his first tong-trouser suit made for him. He went off to law school to be gazed at with amazement; sarcastic comments about the “Elementary Law School” and “The King’s Kindergarten” buzzed around him and attitudes did not change until he proved his ability and potential. He did not hesitate to join in the demonstrations and distribute pamphlets when the 1919 Revolution broke out, though his activities mostly took place in shelter and safety. He was conscious of the class differences between him and his colleagues and it left a residue in his soul. Yet he overcame it with his natural calm and inherent wisdom. It never worried him that he only had one suit, was not part of a social scene or life of luxury, and traveled in second class on the tram. He avoided troubling his father with requests that might challenge his resources; he was always, as Radia said, very sensible.
His patience and industry bore fruit. He obtained his law degree at the age of eighteen, placed in the top ten. He was obstructed from working for the public prosecutor’s office not because of his roots—in deference to Abd al-Azim Dawud—but because it refused to appoint a minor as an assistant prosecutor! Thus, it was agreed he should take a clerical post until he reached majority, at which point he joined the public prosecutor’s office. This enabled Aziz’s family to hold its head high, gaining for them a foothold in the upper ranks of the bureaucracy next to Dawud and Ata’s families, and prompting jealousy, resentment, and astonishment in every branch of the family, including those closest to him—namely his cousins. Surur Effendi walked tall as though he was the public prosecutor. His tongue grew more vicious and left a nasty mark in people’s hearts and he became insufferable.