“They may. But what does it matter?”
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“She’s not a child, you know. What have I done? Taken her in and given her some honest work.” She said finally, with a note of determination, “Monsieur Amer, I shall stick to that girl.”
“I shall cling to duty as long as I live. Might is not right. Let them do their utmost.”
—
She showed her what to do and Zohra seemed to learn very quickly. Mariana was delighted.
“She’s wonderful,” she confided in me happily. “She’s strong and intelligent, understands everything once I tell her. I’m in luck, really.”
A little later, she consulted me. “What do you think? Five pounds a month above her board and clothes?”
I said it was fair, but begged Madame not to dress Zohra in modern city clothes.
“Why? You don’t want her to go around in those peasant rags?”
“My dear, she’s very good-looking. Think…”
“I’ll keep my eyes open. And she’s a good girl.”
And so after years of concealment under an ankle-length gallabiya, Zohra appeared in a cotton frock cut to a size that did justice to her charming figure. Her hair was washed with kerosene, parted in the middle, and hung down her back in two thick plaits. Tolba gave her a lengthy stare, then whispered, “Next summer we’ll probably find her in the Genevoise or the Monte Carlo.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said.
As he passed her on his way to the door, he asked her jokingly, “Do you have any French ancestors, Zohra?”
She looked after him doubtfully. It was clear she didn’t like him.
“He’s only joking,” I said when she turned to me. “Take it as a compliment.” I added with a smile, “I too am one of your admirers.”
She smiled gently back. I was pleased to see that she liked and trusted me. I had been kind to her and we had become friends.
When Madame invited her, after she’d finished her work, to sit with us as we gathered around the radio, she would choose a seat near the screen, a little apart, and follow our conversation with grave attention. One evening, supposing that we had not heard it from Mariana, she told us her story.
“My brother-in-law wanted to take advantage of my situation, so I farmed my piece of land on my own.”
“Wasn’t it difficult for you, Zohra?”
“No. I’m strong, thank God. No one ever got the better of me in business. In the field or at the market.”
Tolba laughed. “But men are interested in other things too.”
“I can stand up to them like a man, if it’s called for.”
I heartily approved of this attitude.
“She’s not an innocent,” added Mariana. “She used to go everywhere with her father. He was very fond of her.”
“And I loved him more than anything,” Zohra said wistfully. “All my grandfather wants is to exploit me.”
Tolba would not let it pass. “If you could stand up to them like a man,” he teased, “then why did you run away?”
Mariana broke in. “I have come to her assistance!”
“Come now, you know what villages are like, Tolba Bey,” I said. “How they worship the grandfathers and their terrible conservatism. She either had to run away or stay and be two-faced.”
She looked at me gratefully. She said, “I left my land behind.”
Then Tolba remarked, “They’ll say you ran away because you had a lover, or something of the sort.”
She gave him an angry look and her face darkened like a Nile flood. She pointed her forefinger and middle finger at him. “I’d stick these into the eyes of anyone who dared to say a thing like that.”
“Zohra, can’t you take a joke?” cried Mariana.
“He’s only teasing you.” I tried to soothe her, surprised at the force of her anger. “Where’s your tact, my dear sir?” I asked Tolba.
“It’s been sequestrated!”
—
Her eyes are as brown as honey, her cheeks are rosy and rounded, and her little chin is dimpled. A child. Barely as old as my granddaughter. And her grandmother? Lost in the blink of an eye. Without even knowing love or marriage. Who was she? Impossible. Impossible even to remember what she looked like. In my memory now are only the names of places: Bargawan, Darb al-Ahmar, and the saintly shrine of Sidi Abu al-Su’ud, the healer of broken hearts.
—
“How long will you be staying here, sir?”
She used to bring coffee to my room every afternoon and I would make her stay until my desire to converse with her was satisfied.
“For good, Zohra.”
“And your family?”
“I have no one but you, my dear.” That made her laugh.
Her little hands were hard, her fingertips callused, her feet large and flat. But her figure and face were lovely.
“I don’t like him,” she once whispered to me about the other lodger.
“He’s an old, unfortunate man. Besides,” I said charitably, “he’s sick.”
“He thinks he’s still living in the days of the pashas. And he acts like one.”
At her words my mind went spinning back around the whole circumference of the last hundred years.
“They refuse to visit the Minister of Justice because he’s an effendi and not a pasha or a bey?”
“My dear sir, members of the bench have their self-esteem.”
“It is because I am above all a fellah, and they are Circassians. Listen. They have always jeered at me because I am a leader of the people. And my answer has always been that I am proud to lead the rabble in their blue gallabiyas. Mark this. They shall come, and with all due respect.”
She even learned the foreign names of all the brands of whiskey she bought us at the High-Life Grocery. “People stare and laugh when I ask for these.” In the silence of my heart I blessed…her simplicity.
—
What a noise! The voices were familiar, but loud and sharp. I wondered what was happening outside.
As I got out of bed and put on my dressing gown, the clock was striking five in the afternoon. Out in the hall I saw Tolba disappearing into his room, wringing his hands. Zohra was hunched in a chair, her face puckered, on the verge of tears. In front of her stood Mariana, obviously distressed.
“What’s happening?”
“Zohra is so suspicious, Amer Bey.”
“He asked me to massage him,” the girl shot back roughly, reassured by my presence.
“You don’t understand,” Mariana put in. “You know he’s an invalid. He needs massage for treatment. He used to go to Europe every year for the cure. You don’t have to do anything you don’t like.”
“I never heard of such things,” the girl said angrily. “I went into his room in good faith and there he was lying on his face almost naked.”
“Calm down, Zohra. He’s an old man, older than your father. You just don’t understand. Go and wash your face and forget it.”
Left to ourselves in the hall, we sat on the ebony settee. Madame broke the heavy silence.
“It was his request and I don’t believe he meant any harm.”
“Mariana,” I said significantly, “there’s never an end to folly.”
“Don’t you trust him? You know he’s an old man.”
“They have their own kind of folly.”
“I thought she could earn some good money, instead of his going off to pay a professional.”
“You know she’s a fellaha. And after all, you’ve taken responsibility for her.”
Tolba joined us, putting on an innocent air and remarking scornfully, “Once a peasant, always a peasant.”
“Leave her alone,” I said. “Let her die as God made her.”
He was clearly offended. “She’s a wildcat. Don’t let that dress and Mariana’s gray cardigan fool you. She’s a savage.”
Poor Zohra, how sorry I am for you. Now I know how lonely you must be. This pension is no place
for you, and Mariana, your protectress, would have no qualms at eating you up on the first available occasion.
“God’s wisdom!” said Tolba after his first drink.
“Watch out, Tolba Bey,” said Mariana, glad to change the subject. “Don’t blaspheme.”
“Tell me, my dear,” he said, pointing to the little statue of the Madonna, “why did God allow His son to die on the cross?”
“To redeem us,” she said gravely, “or we would have been damned.”
“You mean we aren’t damned anyway?” He threw back his head and laughed, looking in my direction for encouragement, but I ignored him. Then he nudged me with his elbow. “You must help me make up with Zohra, you old fox!”
—
A new guest?
Something about the well-formed dark features gives away his peasant origin. He is solidly built, rather dark, with a strong, piercing look; about thirty years old, I would guess. Mariana motions him to take a seat at the breakfast table.
“Monsieur Sarhan al-Beheiry,” she says, inroducing us, and asking him, if he doesn’t mind, to tell us more about himself.
“Deputy head accountant at the Alexandria Textile Mills,” he says with a strong country accent.
When he leaves, Mariana confides happily, “Another lodger, on the same terms.”
Not more than a week later came Hosny Allam, a little younger than Sarhan, also as a permanent resident. Big and husky, he carried himself like a wrestler. Mariana said he belonged to one of the old country families of Tanta.
Then came Mansour Bahy, an announcer with the Alexandria Broadcasting Service, twenty-five years old. I was charmed by his delicate, fine features. There was something childish, perhaps even feminine, about his face. One could see at once that he was rather withdrawn, an introvert.
All the rooms were now occupied and Mariana was very happy. My heart, hungry for contact, warmed to the new arrivals. “It’s good to have young people around. I hope they won’t be bored with our decrepit company.”
“Well, at least they’re not students,” said Mariana.
We did not get acquainted any further until the first Thursday of the Umm Kulthum season, when I learned from Mariana that they would join us in the evening to listen to the concert on the radio. How pleasant. An evening of youth and music.
—
They had ordered a kebab supper and a bottle of whiskey. We gathered around the radio, and Zohra waited on us, moving lightly. It was a cold night, but the wind was hushed. Zohra said the sky outside was so clear you could count the stars. The drinks went around and she sat apart, next to the screen, her eyes smiling. Only Tolba Marzuq was unable to put away all anxiety: a few days before, he had confided to me, “This place is becoming a hell!” He was suspicious of strangers, certain that they knew his history and the circumstances of his ordeal, either from the papers or through Mansour Bahy.
Mariana had of course got all the information she could about the young men. “Monsieur Sarhan al-Beheiry is one of the Beheiry family.” I had never heard the name before, nor, obviously, had Tolba Marzuq. “A friend of his recommended the pension when he learned that Monsieur Sarhan wanted to give up his flat.”
“And Hosny Allam?”
“He’s one oft he Allams of Tanta.” It seemed to me that Tolba knew the family, but he made no comment. “He has a hundred feddans,” she added, as proudly as if she herself were the owner. “The Revolution hasn’t touched him,” she went on, as joyous as someone about to be rescued at sea. “He’s come to Alexandria to start a business.”
“Why don’t you cultivate your land?” Sarhan asked him when he heard that piece of information.
“It’s been let.”
“You should say instead that you’ve never laid a hand on a hoe or a spade in your life!” mocked Sarhan. The three of them roared, but Hosny’s own laugh was loudest.
“As for this young man,” said Mariana, indicating Mansour Bahy, “he’s the brother of an old friend, one of the best police chiefs I’ve ever known in this city.”
Tolba’s cheeks turned pale.
“And before he left,” Mariana went on, “he advised this young man to come and stay with me.”
When the others were busy drinking, Tolba leaned over and whispered, “We’ve landed in a nest of spies.”
“Antisocial behavior is out of date,” I said. “Don’t be silly.”
Whereupon politics erupted into the gathering.
“But the country has changed beyond recognition,” Sarhan was saying passionately, as he argued on behalf of the government’s land reforms, his voice rising and falling in proportion to the amount of food he had in his mouth. “And the working class! I spend my life among them. You should come to the mill and see for yourselves.”
Mansour Bahy (the quietest of the young men, though even so he would sometimes burst out laughing, just like the others) asked him, “Are you really in politics, then?”
“Of course. I was a member of the Liberation Organization and then the National Union. Now I’m on the Committee of Twenty and I’m also an elected member of the company board, representing the staff.”
“Were you in politics before the Revolution?”
“No.”
“I support the Revolution wholeheartedly,” said Hosny Allam. “My people consider me a rebel.”
“Why not?” replied Mansour. “The Revolution hasn’t touched you.”
“That’s not the reason. Even the poorer members of our class may not support it.”
“My own conviction,” Mansour remarked, “is that the Revolution has been more lenient with its enemies than it ought to have been.”
Apparently Tolba thought that in the circumstances his silence might be held against him. “I’ve been badly hit,” he started. “It would be sheer hypocrisy to deny that I’ve been hurt. But it would also be selfish to deny that what they have done was necessary!”
Mariana did not drink. She took some of the kebab and a glass of warm milk. “It’s a pity Umm Kulthum starts so late,” she complained, even though the young men were helping us pass the time in a very agreeable fashion while we waited.
Mansour Bahy turned and spoke suddenly to me. “I know a great deal of your brilliant past.” I was overcome with a childish pleasure: to be able to recall my youth! “I often look through the back numbers of old newspapers for a program I write.” Delighted, I encouraged him to say more. “You go back a long way. You made a major contribution to the political currents of the past—the People’s Party, the National Party. The Wafd, the Revolution.”
I seized this opportunity and took him with me at once on a voyage back into history, leading him to events that should never have been forgotten. We reviewed the parties one by one, the pros and cons of the People’s Party and the National Party; the Wafd and how it resolved long-standing contradictions—and why, after all that, I had shifted away into independence, why I supported the Revolution.
“But you weren’t interested in the basic social problem.”
“I grew up in al-Azhar. Naturally I sought a compromise, a marriage of East and West.”
“But isn’t it strange that you should have attacked both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Communists?”
“No. It was a puzzling period of conflicting opposites. Then came the Revolution, to absorb what was best in each.”
“So your dilemma is solved now?”
I said yes, but in fact what was in my mind was only my private dilemma, which no party or revolution could solve, and I sent up a lonely prayer. Then the hour struck. And with it I gave up my distress to a sea of song, hoping it would help resolve the conflicts in my soul, entreating that it would instill peace and love and purge my anguish in melody, bringing the supreme pleasure of insight to my heart and mind, which would both soften and sweeten the bitter obduracy of life.
“Haven’t you heard? The Cabinet met on the houseboat that belongs to Munira al-Mahdia, the prima donna.”
It was almost dawn
when I retired to my room. Tolba joined me there, to ask what I’d thought of his little speech.
“Wonderful.” My voice sounded strange, for I had removed my false teeth.
“Do you think anyone believed me?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’d better look for other accommodation.”
“Nonsense.”
“For me to hear people praise these murderous regulations is enough to bring on another stroke.”
“You’d better get used to it.”
“As you have?”
I smiled. “We’ve always been different, you know.”
“I wish you terrible dreams,” he remarked as he left.
—
“These young men are so attractive and well-to-do.”
Mariana often expressed her satisfaction with her young lodgers. Zohra’s chores multiplied, but she rose to it all with redoubled energy.
“I can’t trust any of them,” Tolba complained.
“Not even Hosny Allam?” Mariana inquired.
But he did not seem to listen. “Sarhan al-Beheiry is the most dangerous. He’s made good under the Revolution. Let alone the Beheiry family, of which no one has ever heard. Everyone in the province of Beheira is a Beheiry, anyway. Even Zohra is Zohra al-Beheiry.”
I laughed and so did Mariana. Zohra passed us on her way out, wearing Madame’s gray cardigan and a blue scarf she had recently bought with her own money. She was as graceful as a wildflower.
“Mansour Bahy is very intelligent, don’t you think?” I asked. “He doesn’t talk much, but just goes quietly to work. A true child of the Revolution.”
“Why should he or anyone else go along with the Revolution?”
“You speak as if there were no peasants, no workers, no youth in the land.”
“The Revolution has stolen the property of a few and the liberty of all.”
“You speak of liberty in the old sense,” I said. “And when you were top dog you didn’t even show respect for that!”
—
Leaving the bathroom, I caught sight of two figures in the dim passage, Zohra and Sarhan whispering to each other. At that moment he raised his voice to give her instructions about his laundry. I went to my room as if I hadn’t noticed anything, but I was filled with anxiety. How could Zohra live in peace in a place full of young men? When she brought my afternoon coffee, I asked her where she spent her free afternoon on Sundays.