Khan Al-Khalili

  As the three days of the Eid came to an end, he was thinking about all the things he needed to do immediately before acting. The first Friday after the Eid arrived, he had yet to put any of his plans into effect. However, that morning he saw her again for the first time since the first day of the Eid, and his lovelorn heart was thrilled. It was early November, and from time to time the fresh air wafted a cool breeze in his direction. The sky was covered by a thin veil of white clouds that shielded the bright light of the sun. He opened the window—“Nawal’s window”—and looked up. There was his beloved girl looking down at him like a radiant hope, a wonderful dream. He smiled at her and gave her a wave, and she smiled back. How he adored that smile of hers! He stayed there for a while, taking in the pure loveliness of her complexion. Just then it occurred to him that he should try to signal to her, to the extent possible, that he was about to talk to her father about marrying her. But she beat him to it, resting her head on her arm as a way of indicating that she wanted to take a nap. She pointed to her head, frowned, then twisted her lips to imply that she had a headache. With that she turned away and went inside. He was sorry to have lost the opportunity, but his determination now became even stronger. He needed to have a cigarette, so he went over to Rushdi’s room to get one from him. The door was ajar, so he pushed it and went inside. He noticed that his brother was standing by the window looking upward. Rushdi was so involved in whatever he was doing that Ahmad was halfway across the room before his brother even realized he had come in. From where he was standing he could clearly see the other window that his brother was looking at. From the middle of the room he managed to spot Nawal’s head—no one else’s—which proceeded to withdraw at lightning speed! The way in which she disappeared—or, more appropriately, ran away—made Rushdi aware that his brother had arrived. He turned round and gave his brother a smile. For his part, Ahmad was totally shocked by what he had seen, a shock far worse than the one he had experienced on the night of the bombing raid. This hit him like a bolt out of the blue, stripping away his initial equanimity and pulling him apart like clouds during a sudden lightning strike.

  He was well aware of the way his younger brother had turned to look at him, so, in an instinctual gesture, he closed his eyes and called up all his hidden reserves so as to seem calm. He even managed to fake a smile, then looked at his brother who was coming toward him with a sweet, innocent smile of his own.

  “I’d like a cigarette, please,” he said calmly.

  Rushdi took the cigarette pack out of his pajama pocket, opened it, and offered it to his brother. Ahmad took one and thanked his brother by raising his hand to his forehead. With that he went back to his room.

  24

  Once back in his room, he was so distraught that he could barely see straight. He threw the cigarette on his bed, then went over to the window and looked up. He could see the balcony just as she had left it, open and empty. He lowered his gaze with a frown and closed the window so loudly that it made the glass rattle. Going back to his bed, he sat down on the edge.

  “I didn’t realize,” he muttered to himself, “that there was another window in her apartment that looked out directly onto his just like this balcony. I honestly didn’t realize.”

  By now his blood had turned into oil, sending tongues of flame to his heart. Hadn’t he seen her moving backward in shock when he had appeared in his brother’s room? Was it a feeling that she was doing something wrong that shocked her? If not, then what had made her go to the window when she had convinced him that she was going to take a nap? It could only mean one thing, and it was not pleasant: the girl had been deliberately deceitful, and that meant an end to all his futile hopes. The amazing thing was this younger brother had only come home ten days ago, and in that short time everything had changed—the very idea hit him like a slap on the face. From now on his heart would declare all his passions to be invalid; any smiles of welcome were simply examples of hypocrisy and outright deceit. How could these changes happen so fast, he wondered. Could it be this easy and noncommittal, almost a victimless process? Or was there bound to be an appropriate level of reluctance and pain? Was the girl toying with both of them? Behind that sweet smile could there really be a thoroughly nasty and cunning little vixen? Why had she exchanged greetings with him just a few minutes ago? Did she feel awkward and shy, or was it more a matter of sheer cunning?

  His younger brother was blameless; he was totally unaware of the circumstances involved. Rushdi had set eyes on her and found her attractive, so he had started flirting with her (as he usually did with girls). He had managed to attract her attention, and she had fallen for him. With a single glance and gesture she had forgotten all about the elder brother. That was all there was to it! She had forgotten the older man, with his balding pate. He had only himself to blame. Did he not know enough by now about his own hard luck and his negative view of the world in general and women in particular to steer well clear of false hopes and glimpses of happiness?

  As he stood up, his expression was one of profound sadness and utter despair. He started pacing back and forth in his room between bed and desk until he began to feel dizzy. He went back to sit down on the bed. Was there any point, he asked himself, in engaging in a contest with his own brother? The very thought aroused his innate arrogance. No, it was out of the question for him to lower himself so far as to engage in any rivalry with another human being; genuine rivalry could only take place between equals. It was also out of the question to let his younger brother know about his secret love. Ahmad’s sense of his own self-importance made it absolutely impossible for him to even contemplate begging for happiness or love. No, someone like him should rather stand aloof from such trivialities—love, the girl, and whoever wins her. He was far above all that. But what about the agony he was feeling? Why did this dreadful pain not appreciate his genuine worth and simply disappear? Jealousy kept stinging his heart like a scorpion bite. And what was the point of all this pain and grief? Truth to tell, he had stretched out his hand to unveil his bride, but, when the embroidered veil had been taken off, what was beneath it turned out to be a skull. In his imagination he could see a picture of the two of them together: Rushdi in the prime of his youth, and she with her lovely, honey-colored eyes. The very idea was painful and only managed to make him feel even more disdainful and supercilious.

  How was it that Rushdi always managed to interfere with his happiness, he wondered; especially since Ahmad loved no one else to the same extent as he did his brother? It was his younger brother who had forced him—twenty years ago now—to sacrifice his own future in order to devote himself to his brother’s education. Now here was Rushdi plucking the fruits of the happiness that should have been his and trampling all over his hopes with hobnail boots.

  At this point raw anger got the better of him, and he surrendered totally to an erupting volcano of hatred. Even so, he could not find it within himself, even for a single instant, to hate his own brother, even though he was the focus of his towering rage. The love he felt for his brother certainly suffered a kind of spasm during which it was unconscious; but while it may have fainted for a short while, it didn’t actually die. Not only that, but he did not feel any hatred toward Nawal either, even though she was guilty enough. It seemed as though his anger could go on forever, but, as it turned out, his temper calmed down remarkably quickly; indeed, it was a total surprise to see how soon it disappeared. The anger, malice, and superciliousness all disappeared, to be replaced by a profound sadness, despair, and sense of failure, all of which lingered and refused to go away. He recalled the happiness he had felt just the day before, but, instead of feeling any sense of regret or sorrow, he was contemptuous and not a little embarrassed.

  “The time for deceit is long past,” he told himself in a muted, sad voice, as though addressing someone else. “There’s no escaping the bitter truth. You’re an unlucky man. In fact, that’s by no means all that’s involved. You’re actually someone set up by fate to be the target for arr
ows of frustration and failure. You’ve been assigned to a foul and devilish power, one that makes sure that every good opportunity or happy chance that comes your way is removed. You imagine that the only thing separating you from hope is a single word that needs to be said or a hand to be extended. But no sooner do you extend your apron to catch the fruit off the tree than some bird of ill omen comes down, grabs it in its claws, and flies away with it. No sooner do you reach the top of a pyramid in your endeavors than the entire thing collapses and you find yourself in a deep pit. Your horizons glow with the flares of false hopes; your position on the earth is dark and gloomy. Does there exist in this world any other man who is beset by such stubborn ill fortune?

  “As people go about their daily lives with smiling faces, they all have the benefits of good health, a nice family life, a satisfactory station in life, and enough money. But what about you? You don’t have a single one of them! Early on it was your father’s fall from grace that first broke your back, then your genuine affection for your younger brother shattered all your aspirations, and finally the entire boorish environment in which you were living crippled your undoubted intellectual gifts. What dreams remain in this rotten world of yours? By now youth is long gone. All it managed to produce was a beautiful memory seeking shade from the midday heat of time’s inexorable march. And now here comes middle age, poking you in the ribs as you relentlessly broach the ranks of the elderly. How on earth can you stand this foul existence? Any man can divorce his loyal wife if he finds out that she’s barren. So how can you stand a world that is not merely barren but that only brings you pain and grief? Why do you exist at all? Is there no end to this ongoing torture and stultifying boredom? Beyond all that, what use has your mind ever been to you? All that knowledge you have?

  “In the name of all these pains put together,” he told himself, “I hereby swear that I intend to close books forever and burn this pesky library. It’s a much better idea to become addicted to some drug that will dull the brain enough for an even more powerful stupor to take over. Life is one extended tragedy, and this world is merely a tedious drama. The amazing part of it all is that the actual plot is really disturbing and yet the actors are all clowns. The entire purpose is to make people feel sad—not because it is intrinsically distressing—but because it is supposed to be very serious. What it produces is the ultimate in farce. Since we find ourselves unable most of the time to laugh at our own failures, we end up in tears, and our tears only succeed in deceiving us about the truth. We imagine that the plot involves tragedy, whereas in fact it’s one gigantic farce.”

  He paused for a moment, frowning and disconsolate, then stood up abruptly. “Very well then,” he muttered angrily, “to the dark cave it is, the cave of loneliness and desolation; the cold grave, the grave of despair and disillusion. The world, the low world that is, has kicked me enough, so now I in turn will kick it back from a loftier position. Eunuchs have no need of women. If I choose to deprive myself of all false hopes in that direction, then I can use despair to block out the world entirely. So then, to the cave of lonely desolation. From its darkness we can supply a curtain to shield our eyes against life’s never-ending perfidy!”

  With that he turned toward the window—Nawal’s window—that was now firmly locked. “Closed forever,” he said angrily, “closed forever!”

  25

  He decided to make his way to the Zahra Café. While he usually went there on Friday mornings, he realized that the distress he was feeling provided him with an extra-powerful incentive to go; he really needed to find a way to console himself. He started putting on his new suit, remembering all the while how he had had it tailored and how much it had cost. With a sigh of exasperation he left the apartment.

  As he descended the staircase, he recalled the first morning he had spent in the apartment building; how he had looked behind him and spotted Nawal’s eyes for the first time. How can anyone guard against predestined misery when it reveals itself in such bright hopes and vibrant colors? Even so, he was also aware that his current feelings of agony, persecution, and injustice were perversely pleasurable, albeit a somewhat obscure kind of pleasure whose features had not as yet made themselves clear.

  As he plodded his way slowly toward the café, he could not help thinking about the way an underage girl had managed to bring down so much sorrow and despair on an intelligent elder man like him. He found the entire thing too much to bear.

  “Good grief!” he scoffed at himself, “how can it have happened? A little girl just out of nappies doing this to me? How could she possibly pull me up to the very heights of delight, only to dump me into the depths of hell? Why behave sensibly if infectious desires could toy with us in this despicable fashion? Shouldn’t we expect—I ask Your forgiveness, O God!—to be created better than that? If the entire world has turned itself into a gloomy wasteland simply because some insanitary microbe or other has gone berserk or run out of hope, wouldn’t it be better simply to piss on the world and everything in it?”

  At this point he reached the café, which ended this conversation with himself. He found that his friends had already arrived, except, that is, for Sulayman Bey Ata who was still in his village. Boss Nunu was with them; on Fridays he always closed his store from ten in the morning until after prayer time. As usual, Abbas Shifa sat beside Boss Zifta, not far removed from the circle of friends. The men started chattering, while the radio broadcasted some recorded music. Kamal Khalil decided to include the new arrival in their conversation.

  “So what’s Professor Ahmad’s opinion of singing?” he asked. “Which style does he prefer, the old or the new?”

  Damn it! As the age-old proverb puts it: “Woe to the person with troubles from the one who is without!” But after all, hadn’t he come to the café specifically to take his mind off things by listening to their normal drivel? Yes indeed, he had. Okay then, he should dive in and be grateful. In fact, he adored singing (would his mother have given birth to anyone who didn’t love singing?), but he preferred the old style; he had never developed a liking for the more modern stuff, not only out of habit but because of his early upbringing. He had listened to the songs of female vocalists and records made by singers like Munira, Abd al-Hayy, and al-Manyalawi.

  Just then he stole a glance at his old foe, Ahmad Rashid, who seemed to be concealing his thoughts on the matter behind his dark glasses.

  “The old style of singing,” Ahmad told them all, “is the only one that can arouse the emotion and effortlessly ensnare our hearts.”

  Boss Zifta shouted “God is most great!” enthusiastically while Boss Nunu clapped his hands three times.

  “But what about Umm Kulthum and Abd al-Wahhab?” asked Sayyid Arif.

  Ahmad Akif sneaked another quick glance at his foe. “To the extent that they repeat aspects of the old style, they’re both terrific, but beyond that they’re nothing.”

  “Umm Kulthum’s wonderful,” said Sayyid Arif, “even when she’s singing ‘The Tender Radish!’ ”

  “There’s no arguing about her beautiful voice,” replied Ahmad Akif, “but we’re talking about the artistic aspect of singing.”

  Kamal Khalil chimed in at this point. “Professor Ahmad Rashid loves the new style of singing. Not only that, but he likes Western music too!”

  It was obvious that the young lawyer was not in the mood to argue. “My views on singing are not those of an expert,” he responded lackadaisically. “I don’t really bother with it that much.”

  Boss Nunu was determined to have his point of view heard. “Listen, folks,” he said in his usual gruff tone, “the Prophet Muhammad’s people are still in good shape. The English have been with us now for over half a century, but tell me, for heaven’s sake, have you ever heard anyone English who could sing ‘O Night, O Eyes’? The truth of the matter is that anyone who prefers Western music is just the same as someone who likes eating pork!”

  As a rule Boss Zifta was preoccupied with his work and had little to say, but this t
ime the subject interested him. “Okay,” he chimed in, with a lisp that suggested that he had lost at least a couple of his teeth, “here’s the scoop. The very best singing you’ll ever hear is Si Abduh with ‘O Night,’ Ali Mahmud doing the dawn call-to-prayer, and Umm Kulthum with ‘When Love.’ Everything else is just a pile of straw mixed with dust!”

  Ahmad Akif was anxious not to leave the subject of modern music without injecting a bit of philosophizing. “People who admire modern singing and European music,” he said, “fall into the category of the ruled being influenced by their rulers, as Ibn Khaldun pointed out.”

  Ahmad Rashid still remained silent in spite of the way Ahmad Akif had attacked his position. That brought an end to the conversation about singing. Without any particular connection, talk now shifted to the topic of Sulayman Ata Bey. Kamal Khalil observed that he had stayed in his village longer than usual.

  “So God has given us two merciful weeks of respite from his shameless behavior!” commented Sayyid Arif.

  “It won’t be long,” said Abbas Shifa disapprovingly, “before he gets married again.”

  “But what a bride!” Sayyid Arif continued regretfully. “I tell you, by God, I’ve never seen a woman more beautiful than Yusuf Bahla’s daughter!”

  “Isn’t your friend aware,” Ahmad Akif asked, “that no one would want him for a husband if it weren’t for his money?”