Khan Al-Khalili (14 page)

By now he was growing accustomed to seeing her lovely person, and perhaps she too was getting used to seeing him. Even so, he still felt flustered and shy. Every time the wonderful moment arrived, he looked at her with the staid, serious, and timid expression of someone who was on the point of running away. In his imagination he could now see her clearly. Her honey-colored eyes exuded a blend of purity, simplicity, and loveliness, eyes whose expressions suggested both inquisitiveness and acceptance, while their sprightly quality lent them a veil of wisdom and warmth.

Then came the evening when he was on the point of leaving his room to go to the café. The doorbell rang just as he was getting to the door. When he opened it, he found himself facing Sitt Tawhida and her daughter Nawal! For a moment, he simply stared at them both, taken aback by the joy that had hit him so suddenly. But then he recovered his senses and stood aside. “Please come in,” he stammered.

He called out to his mother to come and greet the two guests, then went on his own way. Nawal’s mother noticed how flustered he seemed and could not understand why a man of his age could be so awkward and act so bashfully simply because he had met two women. As Ahmad went down the staircase, he was ecstatic. He could recall very well—something he kept reminding himself to allay his doubts—that the young girl had given him a dazzling smile when he had greeted them at the door. It could have been the kind of smile a guest gives to her host at the door or even a shy, hesitant smile. On the other hand, it could also have been the kind of smile a woman bestows on a man as a way of rewarding him for his eagerness and persistence in looking at her every single day at sunset for a week or more. Whatever the case might have been, it was certainly a very sweet smile, the kind his heart had craved for twenty long years. He was loath to go to the café immediately; he wanted to give himself time to think.

He was one of those people who like to take a walk if they have something to ponder. With that in mind he headed for the New Road and walked along it for a while, feeling exultantly happy and relishing the joy of it for as long as he could. Needless to say, he was not as young as he once had been and life had not brought him much good luck—how could it be otherwise, bearing in mind the misfortunes and missteps in his earlier life? All he wanted at this point was to enjoy the happy feeling for an hour, even if it meant fooling himself and getting the entirely wrong idea. He had also decided to use this opportunity to reexamine his fortunes: where was he precisely with regards to his long suppressed hopes for the future; was it
even possible for him to try all over again? For his part, he considered himself to be free, having now fulfilled all his obligations to the letter. Hadn’t he taken on all of his father’s burdens once his life had collapsed? Wasn’t he the one who had given his family support when at one point it had seemed threatened with imminent disaster? Hadn’t he looked after his brother until he had grown into a man? With all that in mind, he felt perfectly entitled to consider his own happiness and leave the family burdens to his younger brother. None of them could begrudge him that. But was there still enough time?

The rush of joy and triumph he was currently feeling forced him to think hard and use his imagination. His postal savings account had a fair amount of money in it, although it was paltry compared with the amount of time he had been working. As for the way he looked, there was no shame in being unattractive; and, in any case, he could really try, as he had done today, to make himself presentable, in spite of his gaunt appearance and baldness. He could even have a new suit made and buy a fez that was not as faded and crumpled as the one he now had. Now there was an idea! But he was middle-aged. He was over forty, and the girl was still in her teens. Only some kind of miracle could overcome such an age gap, but where would he ever find such a miracle? For the first time since he had opened the door to the two visitors, his heart sank. His doubts about his sexual attractiveness now came back to haunt him.

With a frown he finally woke up from his joyous dream. Walking along the street in the dark, he could picture the girl smiling at him. “She’s just a silly, inexperienced girl!”
he muttered to himself. Even so, there was one thing that had not occurred to him: he could volunteer to proffer his hand to the life that was pulsing inside his own heart, albeit to throttle it in the serenity of death. Let it pulse and bloom then, and he would wait for that shelter that lies beyond the veil of the unknown. One thing was certain, he would never find himself in a situation any worse than the ones that fate had already thrown at him.

On his way back it occurred to him to ask himself whether this painful sensation he was feeling was actually love, the hidden passion that grows within the folds of the heart, the longing that coats one’s very breath with the soul’s essence, that heavenly ecstasy that brings delight to soul and world alike, the agony that fears any failure or return to loneliness and desolation. Wasn’t it love when that lovely, simple vision settled inside his heart and became the stuff of his dreams and the source of all his hopes and agonies? Yes indeed, this was love, and he knew it perfectly well.

He went back to the Zahra Café where he found his companions chatting and sipping tea. He noticed the young boy, Muhammad, sitting beside his father and looking around the assembled company with those same honey-colored eyes. Ahmad was delighted to see him again—the boy being the envoy of his hopes—and his heart went out to him. He took his usual spot alongside Ahmad Rashid and started listening to what Sayyid Arif was saying.

“The Germans will take advantage of the thick spring fog,” he said enthusiastically, “and attack the shores of England. Then the war will be over!”

“You mean, the same way Hesse fell?” Kamal Khalil asked jokingly, so as not to be too provocative.

Sayyid Arif chose to ignore his colleague’s sarcasm. “England with all its arrogance will be flattened before it even has a chance to recover from the attack.”

“But how can Germany invade England,” Ahmad Rashid asked, “when its troops are bogged down in the terrible fighting in Russia?”

“The Fuhrer has special forces ready for the invasion of England. It’s likely England will fall even before Russia, or at least they’ll both collapse at the same time.”

“It’s obvious you know nothing about Russia,” Ahmad Rashid replied. “Socialist Russia is not the same as Czarist Russia. People in the Soviet Union are now a solid front, united by common conviction and determination. They may have retreated a bit to recover their breath, but they’ll never lay down their arms or even contemplate surrender.”

“And what about Bunker 13?” asked Sayyid Arif.

Rubbing his hands together Boss Nunu chimed in, “That must be the place to get the pills you need.…”

“If what people say about Hitler is true,” Ahmad Akif asked, “then why wouldn’t he use the contents of Bunker 13?”

“As an act of mercy on humanity in general. The Fuhrer will never resort to using that dreadful warehouse unless he finally gives up all hope of winning by normal strategic methods—God forbid!”

At this point Boss Nunu clapped his hands, called the waiter over, and asked him to bring the domino board. “Curse the whole lot of them!” he yelled in exasperation. “The Germans aren’t our mother, and the English aren’t our father either. The devil take them all to hell!”

Boss Nunu’s intervention divided them into two groups—one to play games, the other to talk. Once again Ahmad Akif found himself sitting alone with the young lawyer. He did not feel like talking and told himself he should go home again, especially since Nawal and her mother were there. But what could he do once he arrived? He would have to stay in his room. He was still pondering these ideas when he heard the lawyer talking to the young boy, Muhammad.

“It’s time you went home, Muhammad, and did your homework.”

The boy stood up with a smile that suggested he was a bit embarrassed and immediately left. Ahmad Akif was surprised at the imperious way the lawyer had spoken to the boy and equally that the boy had responded. The tone he had used was neither one of gentle counseling nor of affection for the boy’s father.

The lawyer sensed Ahmad’s surprise. “It’s amazing how much better girls are than boys.” he said. “The boy’s sister is hardworking and obedient, but Muhammad treats his lessons like nasty medicine and finds every conceivable excuse for not studying.”

How could this creep be talking about the daughter so freely? Just then an idea occurred to him, one that made his heart leap.

“Do you tutor them privately?” he asked.

Ahmad Rashid responded that indeed he did. That aroused so much resentment in Ahmad Akif that he was forced to fabricate a smile so as not to reveal what he was really feeling. Did this creep really sit down next to his girl as a tutor? Did he teach her things, tell her to learn them,
and then perhaps pretend to be serious and scold her? Didn’t he have to be alone with her sometimes? Did he ever look at her with something other than a teacher’s eyes? What did she think of him? An educated young man with a bright future. His serious mien and glass eye would not stand in the way. In fact, truth to tell, he—meaning Ahmad Akif—was no better than Ahmad Rashid, although at the same time he wasn’t any lower in status either—at least as far as the plebeians and illiterates were concerned. So should he simply give up before the battle had even started?

In situations like this he wasn’t the kind of person who could muster a great deal of fighting spirit and courage; quite the contrary in fact, he would usually shrivel up and take to his heels out of a combination of embarrassment, cowardice, and arrogance. Whenever the going was tough, he would still crave the coddling atmosphere in which he had grown up. Whenever it let him down—as it inevitably did on occasion—he would withdraw into himself with a wounded heart, licking his wounds and laying all the blame on the bad luck that dogged him. If only it were men’s role to be chased after and not to do the chasing, to be the object of desire and not the initiator of it, then things would have been that much easier and the matter of love would have worked itself out. But things were not that way, indeed they were the exact opposite. What was needed was a certain manliness, suavity, and élan. How on earth did he ever expect to be successful in love? If innate traits of character could be made subject to the will of mankind, then he would have been willing to abandon his culture and his intellectual talents—his purported talents, that is—if in return he could become a skillful lover and attractive
man. But there was little chance of that, so all that remained was for him to despise love, loathe women, and learn to enjoy the pleasures of lonely seclusion.

He now avoided any further conversation with the young lawyer and pretended instead to be paying attention to the radio. Time passed, and neither of them said a word. The prevailing silence was only broken when Sulayman Bey Ata was provoked by Sayyid Arif and let out an angry yell. The frenzied thoughts preoccupying Ahmad’s silence drove him to some poisonous wells from which his traumatized imagination drank deep. He surrendered to some truly demonic and terrible desires: that some insane air raid on Cairo would drop lava that would level all its buildings and pummel its inhabitants until nothing was left standing and the entire area was reduced to rubble. Only two people would be left alive, him and the girl. She would be completely his and his alone, without fear, despair, jealousy, or effort! Before his darkened eyes he could picture the city of Cairo smashed and destroyed, with two lonely people, one of them running to the other to seek shelter and protection in his arms. The other would be content to have his companion seeking shelter with him alone, forgetting all about the dust and rubble that covered him. This strange longing on his part was provoked by an overwhelming sense of oppression and suffering.

I
t was after midnight when he returned home. He shut himself in his room, feeling annoyed. Would it not be better, he wondered, to stop opening the window and instead to lock his own heart in the face of this new emotion that was rapidly turning into agony? Surely dying in peace was better than living a life of agony and torture? But in spite of everything, by the following morning he had forgotten all about his concerns. From then on he kept his daily appointment by the windowsill every afternoon. He no longer doubted for a single moment that the girl was well aware that her new neighbor was deliberately appearing at the window every afternoon and directing that bashful, timid glance at her. What, one wonders, was her heart telling her? Was she laughing at his appearance, scoffing at his middle age? Or did his shyness and apathy merely aggravate her? The amazing thing was that, as days passed, he still kept the same appointment, adhering rigidly to the time, and feeling incapable of doing anything else until he
had taken a timid glance upward to the balcony. But no sooner did their eyes meet than he would immediately look away, eyelids twitching.

He was beset too by the image of Ahmad Rashid. His jealous heart wondered whether he too was the recipient of such lovely looks from the girl, or was he, Ahmad Rashid, the beneficiary of something even lovelier and more charming? Even so, those happy afternoon moments managed to take his mind off such lingering doubts. He now started to calm his own fears. He convinced himself that if she were in love with the young lawyer she would hardly be bestowing such charming glances on him one afternoon after another; and that gave him back his hope. He realized, however, that it was not normal to settle for such exchanged glances and that he had to adopt a new approach. But could he do it? Was he actually capable of launching himself into life again just as he had managed to run away from it for all of twenty years? Why didn’t he stare at her until she was the one to look bashfully away, if only just once? Why didn’t he greet her with a smile? The very idea of staring at her and then smiling made him blush and sent him into such a dither that he was utterly incapable of doing anything. Good grief, could a middle-aged man really be that fearful of a youngster? Does a forty-year-old run away from some girl aged sixteen? How often had he told himself in the past that shyness was a disease that would disappear as one got older? But in his case it had lingered and turned into a brand new middle-aged disease.