The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street

  Kamal smiled. He was listening with increasing anxiety, for he expected, from one moment to the next, to hear the anti-aircraft guns fire with a deafening sound. He answered, “Of course not”. Then he continued in a questioning tone: “Perhaps from fear of pain?”

  “Is there still some obscure hope for life stirring within you?”

  Why did he not kill himself? Why did his life wear a fasade of enthusiasm and faith? For a long time his soul had been torn between the two extremes of hedonism and asceticism. He would not have been able to bear a life devoted entirely to the tranquil satisfaction of his desires. Inside him there was also something that made him shy away from the notion of a passive escape from life. Whatever that thing was, perhaps it was what kept him from killing himself. At the same time, the fact that he clung to the agitated rope of life with both hands contravened his lethal skepticism. The resulting condition was a tormented anxiety.

  Suddenly the anti-aircraft guns burst forth with a continuous volley that scarcely left the chest time to breathe. People did not know what they were seeing or saying. Yet, by the clock, the shooting lasted only two minutes. Afterward everyone awaited the odious return of the frightful noise.

  Terror gripped their souls, and there was a heavy silence. Isma'il Latif asked, “When do you suppose the raid will be over? I can imagine all too well the state my wife is in now.”

  Riyad Qaldas asked, “When will the war end?”

  Shortly thereafter the all-clear siren sounded, and the shelter's denizens voiced a profound sigh of relief Kamal said, “The Italians were just teasing us.”

  They left the shelter in the dark, like bats, as doors emitted one ghostly figure after another. Then a faint glimmer of light could be seen co tiling from windows, and the world resumed its normal commotion.

  In this brief moment of darkness, life had reminded careless people of its incomparable value.

  146

  OVER THE course of time, the old house assumed a new look of decay and decline. Its routine disintegrated, and most of the coffee-hour crowd was dispersed. These two features had been the household's soul and lifeblood. During the first half of the day, when Kamal was away at his school, Amina was off on her spiritual tour of the mosques of the Prophet's grandchildren al-Husayn and al-Sayyida Zaynab, and Umm Hanafi was down in the oven room, al-Sayyid Ahmad would stretch out on the sofa in his room or sit in a chair on the balcony while Aisha wandered aimlessly between the roof terrace and her bedroom. The radio's voice was the only one heard in the sitting room until late in the afternoon, when Amina and Umm Hanafi met there. Aisha would either stay in her room or spend part of the coffee hour with them. Al-Sayyid Ahmad did not leave his room, and even if Kamal returned home early, he retreated to his study on the top floor. At first, the confinement of al-Sayyid Ahmad had been a source ofunhap-piness, but then he and the others had become accustomed to it. Aisha's grief had been most distressing, but eventually she and the others had grown used to it too.

  Amina was still the first to wake. After rousing Umm Hanafi, she performed her ablutions and her prayers. The maid, who was by and large the healthiest of them all, headed on rising for the oven room.

  Opening heavy eyes, Aisha would get up to drink successive glasses of coffee and to light one cigarette after another. When summoned to breakfast, she would take only a few morsels. She had allowed her body to waste away to a skeleton covered with a faded skin. Her hair had started to fall out, and she had been forced to consult a doctor to avoid going bald. She had fallen victim to so many ills that the physician had advised having her teeth removed. All that remained of the old Aisha was her name and the habit of looking at her reflection in the mirror, although not to adorn herself. It was simply a custom allowing her to scrutinize her sorrows. Occasionally she seemed to have resigned herself gracefully to her losses, as she sat for longer periods with her mother, took part in the conversation, allowed her withered lips to part in a smile, visited her father to ask after hishealth, or strolled around the roof garden, tossing grain to the chickens.

  On one such occasion her mother said hopefully, “It does my heart good, Aisha, to see you like this. I wish you were always so cheerful.”

  Drying her eyes, Umm Hanafi said, “Let's go to the oven room and make something special.”

  But at midnight the mother awoke to the sound of weeping from Aisha's room. She rushed to her daughter, taking care not to wake al-Sayyid Ahmad, and found Aisha sitting up and sobbing in the darkness. Sensing her mother's presence, Aisha grabbed hold of Amina and cried out, “If only I had the baby from her belly as a reminder of her… a bit of her! My hands have nothing to hold. The world is empty.”

  Embracing Aisha, the mother said, “I know more about your sorrows than anyone else. They are so great that any attempt at consolalion is meaningless. I would gladly have given my life for theirs. But God's wisdom is lofty and exalted. What point is there to this sorrow, my poor dear?”

  “Whenever I fall asleep, I dream of them or of my life in the old days.”

  “Proclaim that God is one. I've had my own taste of suffering like yours. Have you forgotten Fahmy? Even so, an afflicted Believei' asks God for strength. What has happened to your faith?”

  Aisha exclaimed resentfully, “My faith!”

  “Yes, remember your religion and entreat God for merciful relief, which may come from some totally unexpected source.”

  “Merciful relief! Where is it? Where?”

  “His mercy is so vast it encompasses everything. For my sake, visit al-Husayn with me. Put your hand on the tomb and recite the opening prayer of the Qur'an. Then your fiery suffering will be changed into a refreshing peace just as Abraham's fire was” (Qur'an, 21:69).

  Aisha's attitude toward her health was equally mercurial. She would visit doctors diligently and regularly for a time, leading people to think that she had regained her interest in life. Then she would neglect herself and scornfully disregard everyone's advice in a virtually suicidal fashion. Visiting the cemetery was the only custom from which she never once deviated. With happy abandon she spent the income from her husband's and her daughter's bequests on the grave site, transforming it into a lush garden of flowers and fragrant herbs. The day Ibrahim Shawkat came to complete the formalities of the bequest, she had laughed hysterically, telling her mother, “Congratulate me on my inheritance from Na'ima.”

  Whenever he sensed that she was calm, Kamal would visit her and stay for lengthy periods, humoring her affectionately. He would gaze at her silently for a long time, sadly remembering the exquisite form God had bestowed upon her and examining what had become of it. She was emaciated and sickly, to be sure, but also heartbroken in every sense of the word. The striking similarity between their misfortunes did not escape him. She had lost her offspring, and he had lost his hopes. If she had ended up with nothing, so had he. All the same, her children had been flesh and blood, and his hopes had been deceptive fictions of the imagination.

  One day he suggested to them, “Wouldn't it be better if you all went to the air-raid shelter when the siren goes off?”

  Aisha replied, “I won't leave my room.”

  His mother said, “These raids don't harm anyone, and the guns sound like fireworks.”

  His father called out from the bedroom, “If I were able to go to the shelter, I would go to the mosque or to Muhammad IfFat's house instead.”

  On another occasion, Aisha rushed down from the roof, all out of breath, to tell her mother, “Something amazing has happened!”

  Amina looked at her with hopeful curiosity, and Aisha, who was still panting, explained, “I was on the roof, watching the sun go down. I felt more wretched than ever before. All of a sudden a window of glorious light opened up in the sky. At the top of my lungs I shouted, Lord!'”

  The mother's eyes grew wide in amazement. Was this the desired merciful relief or a new abyss of sorrows? She murmured, “Perhaps it's our Lord's mercy, daughter.”

  Her face radiant with joy
, Aisha said, “Yes. I shouted, Lord!' and light filled the whole world.”

  They all brooded about this event and, with obvious anxiety, kept careful track of developments. Aisha stood for hours at her post on the roof, waiting for the light to break through again. Kamal finally asked himself, “I wonder if this is a finale compared to which death would seem trivial”. But fortunately for all of them, she appeared to forget the matter in time and stopped mentioning it. Then she became ever more deeply involved with a private universe of her own creation. She lived there by herself, a solitary figure, whether in her room or sitting beside them, although at infrequent intervals she would come back to their world, as if returning from a voyage. Shortly thereafter she would resume her imaginary travels. She developed a new habit of speaking to herself, especially when no one else was present. This made her family quite nervous, but when she spoke to the dead she recognized that her loved ones had passed away. She did not think that they were present as specters or ghosts. This compromise with reality was a source of some comfort to those around her.

  147

  “HOW COLD it is this winter! It reminds me of the one people used as a point of reference for years after. I wonder which it was? My Lord, where is the memory for it, where? My old heart yearns for that winter even though I can't remember the date - since it's part of the past and such memories coax my tears from their hiding places.”

  In those dayshe had awakened early, taken a cold shower even in winter, filled his belly, and then burst forth into the world of people, activity, and freedom. He knew nothing of that world today, except for the reports people gave him, and even these seemed to refer to life on the far side of the planet.

  More recently, when he had been able to sit on the sofa in his room or in a chair on the balcony, confinement to the house had seemed irksome. Although he had been free to go to the bathroom when it was necessary and to change his clothes by himself he had cursed staying home. One day a week he had been permitted to leave the house supported by his stick or riding in a carriage on a visit to al-Husayn or to the home of a friend. Still, he had often prayed for God to deliver him from this house arrest.

  Now he could not get out of bed. The boundaries of his world extended no further than the edges of his mattress. The bathroom came to him, instead of the other way around. He had never imagined such a squalid eventuality, and having to cope with this left a resentful pout on his lips and a bitter taste in his mouth. On the same mattresshe stretched out during the day and slept at night. He took his meals on it and answered the calls of nature there, he who had once been proverbial for his neatness and fragrant cologne. This household, which had always yielded to his absolute authority, now looked askance at him, granting him pitying looks when he asked for something or scolding remarks fit for a child. His beloved friends had departed from life in rapid succession, as if by prior arrangement. They had gone, leaving him alone.

  “God's compassion on you, Muhammad Iffat!”

  Al-Sciyyid Ahmad had seen him for the last time one night during Ramadan at a party held in the men's parlor overlooking the garden. After bidding Muhammad Iffat farewell, he had started off, accompanied to the door by his friend's noisy laughter. He had scarcely made it back to his room when someone had knocked on the door. Ridwan had rushed in, saying, “Grandfather has died, Grandfather.”

  “Glory to God… When? … And how? … Wasn't he laughing with us just a few minutes ago? … But he fell flat on his face as he headed for bed. That was how a lifelong friend disappeared. It took Ali Abd al-Rahim three whole days to die. His repeated bouts of coughing were so severe that we had no choice but to pray that God would grant him a peaceful end and relieve our friend of his pain, and thus my soul mate Ali Abd al-Rahim vanished from my world.”

  He had been able to say farewell to these beloved friends but uot to Ibrahim al-Far. The severity of his own ailments had kept him in bed, preventing him from paying a sick call on al-Far, whose servant had eventually come to announce his master's death. Al-Sayyid Ahmad had not even been able to attend the funeral. Yasin and Kamal had paid last respects to the man for him.

  “To the compassion of God, you most charming man!”

  Even before them, Hamidu, al-Hamzawi, and tens of other friends and acquaintances had died, leaving him alone, as though he had never known anyone. No one visited him. No one paid him a sick call. There would not be a single friend to see him off at his funeral. He was prevented even from praying, for he could maintain the necessary state of ritual purity for only a few hours after a bath, and his guardians granted him one very infrequently. He was denied access to prayer when, plunged into oppressive solitude, he was in the greatest need of communion with God the Compassionate.

  His days passed in this manner. The radio played, and he listened. Amina came and went. She was very feeble but had never developed the habit of complaining. She acted as his nurse, and what he feared most was that she would soon need someone to care for her. She was all he had left. Yasin and Kamal would sit with him for an hour and then depart. He wished they would stay with him all the time, but this was a wish he could never express and they could never grant. Only Arnina never tired of him. If she went to al-Husayn, it was solely to pray for him. In every other respect, his was an empty world.

  For him, the day of Khadija's visit was definitely worth the wait. She would bring Ibrahim Shawkat, Abd al-Muni'm, and Ahmad. They would fill the room with life and dispel its desolation. He would not have much to say, but they would.

  Once Ibrahim had requested, “Give the master a rest from your chatter.”

  But al-Sayyid Ahmad had scolded him: “Let them talk…. I want to hear them!”

  He prayed that his daughter would have good health and a long life and made similar invocations to God on behalf of her husband and sons. He knew that she would have liked to supervise his care herself. The affection he could see in her eyes defied description.

  One day, with jovial curiosity and avid interest, he asked Yasin, “Where do you spend your evenings?”

  Yasin answered bashfully, “Today the English are everywhere. It's like the old days.”

  “The old days!” he mused. “The days of power and strength, of laughter that shook the walls, of convivial evenings spent in al-Ghuriya and al-Gamaliya, and of people of whom nothing is left but their names. Zubayda, Jalila, and Haniya___I wonder if you remember your mother, Yasin…. Here's Zanuba and her daughter, Karima, sitting beside Karima's father…. You'll never be able to ask for God's mercy and forgiveness often enough.”

  “Of the people we used to know, who is still at the ministry, Yasin?”

  “They've all retired. I no longer have any news of them.”

  “Nor do they have any of us,” he thought. “All our close friends are dead. Why should we ask about acquaintances? But how lovely Karima is! She's more beautiful than her mother in her day. And she's only fourteen. Na'ima was outstandingly beautiful too.”

  “Yasin, if you're able to persuade Aisha to visit you, do. Rescue her from her solitude. I'm afraid of its effect on her.”

  Zanuba responded, “I've asked her time and again to visit Palace of Desire Alley, but she … May God come to her aid.”

  There was a gloomy look in the man's eyes when he asked Yasin, “Don't you ever run into Shaykh Mutawalli Abd al-Samad when you're on the street?”

  Smiling, Yasin replied, “Occasionally. He hardly recognizes anyone. But he's still walking around on two sturdy feet.”

  “What a man! Doesn't he ever feel the urge to visit? Or hashe forgotten me, just as he forgot my children's names?”

  Deserted by his friends, he had befriended Kamal. This late-blooming friendship probably surprised the son, but al-Sayyid Ahmad was no longer the father he had once known. The man became a friend who shared confidences with him and who looked forward to their chats. Al-Sayyid Ahmad said of him regretfully, “A bachelor at thirty-four, he spends most of his life in his study. May God come to his aid”. He no lon
ger felt responsible for what became of his son, for from the beginning Kamal had refused to accept anyone's advice. As a result, he had ended up an unmarried teacher and an emotionally crippled recluse. Al-Sayyid Ahmad avoided annoying references to marriage or to the money that could be made from private lessons. He asked God to make his own savings last until his final breath, so that he would never be a burden on his son.

  He asked Kamal once, “Do you like this age?”

  Kamal smiled nervously and was slow to reply. So the father continued: “Our times were the real ones! Life was easy and pleasant. We had our health and strength. We saw Sa'd Zaghlul and heard the supreme vocalist, Abduh al-Hamuli. What do your days have to offer?”

  Fascinated by the implications of the words themselves, Kamal answered, “Every age has its good and bad points.”

  Shaking hishead, which rested against the folded pillow, the father said, “Pretty words, nothing more___”

  Then after a period of silence he announced without any preamble, “My inability to perform the prayers hurts me badly, for worship is one of the consolations of solitude. All the same I experience strange moments when I forget all deprivations of food, dr:nk, freedom, and health. I feel such an amazing peace of mind I imagine that I'm in contact with heaven and that there is an unknown happiness compared to which our life and everything about it will seem insignificant.”

  Kamal murmured, “May our Lord prolong your life and restore your health.”

  Nodding hishead meekly, al-Sayyid Ahmad said, “This has been a good hour. No pain in my chest, no difficulty with breathing … the swelling in my leg has started to disappear, and it's time for the listeners' request show on the radio.”

  Then Amina's voice asked, “Is my master well?”