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

  “He'll learn tomorrow or the next day. Do you think he'll mind? He's the last person to be concerned about honor in marriage.”

  Arnim shook her head sadly and asked, “What about Ridwan?”

  Al-Sayyid Ahmad replied with a frown, “He'll stay with his grandfather or go with his mother, if he can't bear to be separated from hei. May God embarrass those who have caused the boy this embarrassment.”

  “My Lord, the poor child - his mother one place and his father another…. Can Zaynab really bear to be parted from him?”

  Her busband replied with apparent disdain, “Necessity has its own laws”. Then he asked, “When will he be old enough to come to his father? Do you remember?”

  Arnim thought for a bit and said, “He's a little younger than Na'irna, Aisha's daughter, and a little older than Khadija's son Abd al-Mun'im. So he must be five, and his father can claim custody in two years. Isn't that right, sir?”

  Yawning, al-Sayyid Ahmad replied, “We'll see when the time comes”. Then he went on: “He's been married before. I mean her new husband.”

  “Doeshe have children?”

  “No. His first wife didn't bear any.”

  “Perhaps that helped endear him to Mr. Muhammad Iffat.”

  The man retorted angrily, “Don't forget his rank!”

  Amina protested, “If it was merely a question of social status no one could match your son, if only for your sake.”

  He felt indignant and secretly cursed Muhammad Iffat, despite his love i or the man. But then he reiterated the point that consoled him: “Don't forget that had it not been for his desire to safeguard our friendship, he would not have hesitated to honor my request.”

  Amina echoed this sentiment: “Of course, naturally, sir. It's a lifelong friendship and not something to be trifled with or taken lightly.”

  He began yawning once more and muttered, “Take the lamp.”

  She rose to carry out his order. He closed his eyes for a moment before rising in a single bound, as though to overcome his inertia. He headed for his bed to stretch out. Now he felt fine. How good it was to lie down when exhausted. Yes, hishead pulsed and throbbed, but he almost always had some kind of headache. Let him praise God in any case. Being totally at ease was a thing of the past.

  “When we are by ourselves,” he reflected, “we become conscious of something missing that will never return. It looms up out of the past in a pale memory, like the faint light from the little window in the door.”

  In any case he should praise God. He would enjoy his life, which others envied. The best thing was to reach a decision about whether to accept his friends' invitation or not. Or should he leave tomorrow's problem till the morrow?

  Yasin was a problem not only for tomorrow but for yesterday and today…. He was no longer a child, since he was twenty-eight. It would not be difficult to find him another wife, but “God does not change people until they change themselves” (Qur'an, 13:11). When would God's guidance shine forth and encompass the earth so that its light dazzled the eye? Then he would cry out from the depths of his soul: “Praise the Lord”. But what had Muhammad Iffat said? That Yasin prowled and patrolled the Ezbekiya entertainment district from top to bottom…. Ezbekiya had been another kind of place when he had prowled and patrolled it himself. He was shaken by longing at times to return to its watering holes and revive some memories. Praise God that he had learned Yasin's secret before setting out. Otherwise Satan would have laughed at his embarrassment from the bottom of his mocking heart.

  “Clear the way for the next generation,” he told himself. “They've grown up. The Australians kept you away from there once. Now it's this Australian mule of a son who does.”

  73

  THE EARLY-MORNING silence was broken by the repeated thumps of dough being kneaded in the oven room and by the crowing of a rooster. Umm Hanafi's corpulent body was bent over the bread bowl. Her face looked full by the light of a lamp atop the oven. Age had not affected her hair or her plumpness, but her appearance had take a on an air of gloom and her features seemed coarser. On a kitchen chair to her right sat Amina, who was spreading bran on the breadboards. They continued the work in silence until Umm Hanafi finished kneading the dough, took her hand from the bowl, and wiped her sweaty brow with her forearm. Then the servant waved her fist, which was covered with dough and looked like a white boxing glove, as she observed, “It'll be a hard day for you, ma'am, but a delightful one. May God grant us many happy days.”

  Without raising her head from her work, Amina murmured, “We've got to make sure the food's delicious.”

  Umm Hanafi smiled, gestured toward her mistress with her chin, and said, “Your skill will take care ofthat”. She planted her hands in the bowl once more to resume punching the dough.

  “I wish we had contented ourselves with distributing stew to the needy around al-Husayn Mosque.”

  Umm Hanafi gently scolded her mistress: “No one present will be an outsider.”

  Amina muttered somewhat nervously, “But there'll be a banquet and a lot of commotion. Fuad, Jamil al-Hamzawi's son, has also earn ed the baccalaureate - without anyone seeing or hearing anything about it.”

  But Umm Hanafi kept up her scolding: “It's just an opportunity for us to get together with our loved ones.”

  How could joy be free from reproach or forebodings? In former times she had reckoned up the years, discovering that Kamal would receive his school certificate at the same time Fahmy received his law degree. That celebration would never take place, and her pious vow could never be honored. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four… the prime of his young life, which she had been prevented from witnessing. Instead, it had been earth's lot to embrace him. How heartbreaking what they termed sorrow was!

  “Mrs. Aisha will be delighted by the baklava. It will remind her of the old days, my lady.”

  Aisha would be delighted. So would Amina, her mother, who experienced the succession of night and day, satiation and hunger, wakefulness and sleep, as though nothing had changed.

  “Forget your claim to be unable to live on a single day after he died,” she thought. “You have lived on to swear by his grave. When a heart is turned upside down, that does not mean the world is too. He seems totally forgotten, until it's time to visit the cemetery. You filled my eye and soul, son. Now they only think of you during the holidays. What has come over them? Everyone's busy with his own affairs, except for you, Khadija. You have your mother'sheart and spirit. I even have had to admonish you to be strong. Aisha's not like that. But not so fast! It's not right for me to find fault with her. She's mourned quite enough. And Kamal can't be blamed either. Have pity on their young hearts. Fahmy was everything to me. Your hair has turned gray, Amina, and you look like a ghost. That's what Umm Hanafi says. You'll never be young and healthy again. You're going on fifty and he wasn't twenty yet. Pregnancy with all its cravings, childbirth, breast-feeding, love, hopes… and then nothing. I wonder if my husband'shead is free of such thoughts. Leave him out of it! ‘The grief of men is not like that of women.’ That was what you said, Mother, may God make paradise your abode. It tears me apart, Mother, that he's gone back to his old habits, as though Fahmy had never died or all memories of him had evaporated. He's even critical when grief overwhelms me. Isn't he the father as much as I'm the mother? My mother said, 'Poor dear Amina, don't allow such thoughts into your heart. If we could judge people'shearts by comparison with a mother's, all others would seem to be stones. He's a man, and the grief of men is not like that of women. If men gave way to sorrow, they would collapse from the weight of their burdens. It's your duty to cheer him up if you notice he's sad. My poor daughter, he's your bulwark.'”

  That affectionate voice had vanished. Its loss had come when their hearts were already filled with grief, so that hardly anyone had mourned for the old lady. Her mother's wisdom had been demonstrated late one night when he had come home drunk and had thrown himself sobbing on the sofa.

  “Then yo
u wanted him to recover, even if he forgot his dead son forever. You yourself, don't you forget sometimes? And there's something even more atrocious. It's your enjoyment of life and desire for it. That's what the world is like, so they say. You repeat what they say and believe it. Then how could you have allowed yourself once to resent Yasin's recovery and continuation of his former way of life? Not so fast… rely on your faith and forbearance. Submit to God's will and to whatever He sends you. You'll always be Fahmy's mother and be called Umm Fahmy. So long as I live I'll continue to be your mother, son, and you'll be my child.”

  The beats of the dough being kneaded continued as al-Sayyid Ahmad opened his eyes to the early-morning light. He stretched and yawned in a loud, prolonged way - the sound rising like a complaint or a protest. Then he sat up in bed, leaning on hands that rested on outstretched legs. His back seemed curved, and the upper part of his white house shirt was damp with sweat. He began to shake hishead right and left, as though to clear the weight of drowsiness from hishead. He slipped his feet to the floor and made his way to the bath for a cold shower, which was the only remedy he used to restore balance to his mind and poise to his body. He took off his clothes. As the spray of water hit him, he remembered the invitation he had received the day before. Hisheart pounded from the combined impact of the memory and the invigorating sensation of the cold water.

  Ali Abd al-Rahim had said, “Look again at your former sweethearts. Life can't go on like this forever. I know you better than anyone else.”

  Should he take this final step? For five yearshe had resisted it. Had his repentance been merely that of an afflicted Believer? Had it been kept hidden because he feared making it public? Had it been in good faith, even though he had not committed himself fully to it? He did not remember. He did not want to remember. A man going on fifty-five was no youngster. What was there to disturb and upset his thoughts so? He had felt the same way when he had been invited to return to their drinking parties and had agreed, as well as the time he had been asked to rejoin their musical evenings and had accepted. Would he answer this plea on behalf of his former sweethearts in the same way? When had grief ever brought a dead man back to life?

  “Did God order us to slay ourselves when those we love depart?”

  Grief had almost killed him during the long year of mourning and self-denial. He had drunk no alcohol and listened to no music. Not a single witty remark had escaped from his mouth, and his hair had turned gray. Yes … that year had been the first time that gray had appeared in his hair. Then he had reverted to drinking and music, out of consideration for his close friends who had renounced their entertainments to honor his grief, or at least that had been how he rationalized it. He had started drinking again both because he could not do without it any longer and because he felt sorry for his three friends. They had not been like the others.

  “The others are not to be blamed. They shared in your grief, but then they began to divide their evenings between your sober soirees and their drinking sessions. What was wrong with that? But your three best friends refused to allow themselves more of life than you did. Slowly you returned to everything except the women, since you thought adultery a major sin. At first they did not press you. How you resisted and how you grieved! Zubayda's emissary made no impression on you. You rejected Maryam's mother with sad and resolute dignity. You endured unprecedented pains. You were certain you would never go back. Time after time you asked yourself, ‘How can I return to the arms of women entertainers when Fahmy's embraced by the earth?’ Oh… we are so weak and wretched that we desperately need God's compassion.

  “ ‘Let him continue to grieve who can be sure he will not die tomorrow.’ Who came up with this pithy saying? It was either Ali Abd al-Rahim or Ibrahim al-Far. Muhammad Iffat Bey's not good at wise sayings. He rejected my request and married his daughter to a stranger. Then he tried to take me in with his display of affection. He did not renounce his anger but took care not to let me observe it again. But what a man he is! What loyalty and affection! Do you remember how his tears mixed with yours at the cemetery? Yet he's the one who later said, ‘I'm afraid you'll become senile if you don't do anything…. Come to the houseboat.’ When he sensed my hesitation, he said, 'Let it be an innocent visit…. No one's going to rip your clothes off and toss you on a woman.' God knows my grief has lasted a long time. When Fahmy passed away, a great part of me died. My best hope in this world vanished. Who can blame me if I'm able to achieve some peace of mind and consolation? Even if it laughs, my heart's still wounded. I wonder what the women are like now? How have five years, five long years, changed them?”

  Yasin's snoring was the first thing Kamal noticed when he woke up. He could not keep himself from calling to his older brother, more from a desire to pester him than to awaken him on time. He kept after him persistently until Yasin responded in a complaining and scolding voice like a death cry and turned his huge body over, making the bed creak as though it was groaning with pain. He sighed and opened his red eyes.

  In his opinion there was no need for this haste, since neither of them could venture to the bathroom until their father had left it. It was no longer an easy matter to get the first turn in the bathroom. A new regime had been established in the house five years before, when - except for the reception room and the adjacent sitting room furnished with simple furniture as a vestibule everything from the lower floor had been moved upstairs. Although Yasin and Kamal had hardly welcomed the notion of sharing a floor with their father, they had been forced to comply with his wish to vacate the lower level, where no one set foot, except to entertain a visitor.

  Yasin closed his eyes but did not go back to sleep, not merely because it would have been futile but also because an image had flashed through his mind, setting his emotions on fire … a round face with black eyes at the center of its ivory surface. Maryam! He answered the call of his daydreams and abandoned himself to a spell even stronger than that of sleep.

  A few months back she had meant nothing to him and might just as well have never existed. Then he had heard Umm Hanafi tell his stepmother one evening, “Have you heard the news, my lady? Mrs. Maryam's gotten divorced and returned to her mother”. At that time he had remembered Maryam, Fahmy, and the English soldier who had been Kamal's friend, although the soldier's name had escaped him. Then he had remembered in turn how lively his own interest in her had been after the scandal. Before he had realized what was happening, a signboard had suddenly lit up inside him. It was like a billboard illuminated at night with the message: “Maryam… your neighbor… separated from you by only a wall… divorced… and with quite a history behind her… Rejoice!” He had tried at once to discourage himself. Her link to Fahmy had deterred and troubled him, prompting him to close the door firmly and repent, if possible, for this passing thought he kept secret.

  Later he had run into her and her mother in the Muski. Their eyes had accidentally met, but she had immediately granted him a smiling look of recognition, which could scarcely have been accidental. Hisheart had been stirred initially by nothing more than the look but subsequently by the pleasant impression made on him by her ivory complexion, kohl-enhanced eyes, and body pulsing with youth and vitality. She made him think of Zaynab at her prime. He had proceeded on his way with pensive excitement, although after a few steps, as he descended to Ahmad Abduh's subterranean coffeehouse, a sad memory had come to mind and distressed hisheart. He recalled Fahmy what he had looked like and his characteristic ways of speaking and moving. Yasin's passion had subsided and abated, and he had been overcome by a heavy sorrow. He would need to bring everything to a halt… but why?

  An hour later, after several days, or whenever he asked himself this question, the answer was: Fahmy. But what relation was there between the two of them? He had wanted to get engaged to her once. Why had he not done so? “Your father would not agree. Was that all? It was the initial reason. Then what? Next came the scandal with the Englishman when the faint trace of affection remaining in Fahmy 's sou
l had been erased. Faint trace? Yes, because most probably he had forgotten her. So he forgot her first and spurned her afterwards…. Yes, so what relationship was there then between them? None. But!… But what? I mean, what about my feelings as his brother? Is there any doubt concerning the sincerity of your feelings for him? Of course not! A thousand times no! Is the girl worth it? Yes! Both her face and her body? Yes! So what are you waiting for?”

  From time to time he would catch a glimpse of her at the window and then on the roof… repeatedly on the roof.

  “Why had she gotten divorced?” Yasin asked himself. “If it was because of some defect in her husband's character, then she was lucky to be divorced. If it was occasioned by some fault of hers, then you're the lucky one.”

  “Get up, or you'll fall asleep again.”

  Yasin yawned as he combed his untidy hair with his thick fingers. Then he remarked: “You're fortunate to have that long school vacation.”

  “Didn't I wake up before you?”

  “But you could have kept on sleeping if you'd wanted to.”

  “As you can see, I didn't want to.”

  Yasin Laughed for no particular reason. Then he asked, “What was the name of the English soldier who was your friend long ago?”

  “Oh…Julian.”

  “Yes, Julian.”

  “What made you ask about him?”

  “Nothing!”

  Nothing? What ridiculous things we say! Washe not superior to Julian? At any rate Julian had been a transient, and Yasin was a permanent resident. “There's always a hint of a smile in her face for you. Hasn't she noticed how frequently you appear on the roof? Certainly! Remember Julian. She's not a woman who would miss the significance of such a gesture. She responded to your greeting…. The first time she turned her smiling face. The second time she laughed. What a beautiful laugh she has! The third time she gestured to the roofs of the other houses to caution you. ‘['11 come back once the sun has set,’ that's what I daringly said. Didn't Julian accost her from the street?”