The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail (23 page)

           

“T
here's a secret in our life,” Isa told Salwa, “which you ought to know.” They were sitting together on the veranda, the scent of roses and carnations all around them. It was almost sunset; daylight had half-closed its eyelids and the sun was withdrawing its lashes from the mansion rooftops. Spring seemed to be breathing with the pure energy of youth. Susan Hanem had disappeared for a while and left them alone. They were drinking lemonade. A crystal decanter stood on a table of painted rattan.

“A secret?” Salwa whispered inquisitively.

He lifted himself, beginning with his eyebrows, something he always did when he was on the point of speaking. “Yes,” he said. “You may think that I hadn't seen you before when I asked for your hand. But in fact I loved you tremendously ten years ago; you were ten and I was twenty. We were living in my mother's house in Al-Wayiliyya
⁴⁸
and your family lived out by the Pyramids. Your father was a lawyer in those days and a close friend of my father and they used to visit each other a lot. You
were very beautiful then, as you are now, and I fell in love with you. Don't you remember those days?”

She stifled a laugh by biting the inside of her lip. “Only a little,” she replied. “I remember seeing rockets on the Prophet's birthday at your house once, but I don't remember anything about your loving me…”

He laughed, tossing his head back in a particular way, quite unwittingly copying one of the pashas in the party.

“No one remembers such things,” he said. “But my late father had to restrain me once when I was looking at you in utter infatuation and on another occasion when I kissed you!”

“No!”

“Yes! A pure kiss to match your tender age.”

“But you weren't a child.”

“No, but you were! It doesn't matter anyway. Work hard and you'll marry her, my father told me at the time; make sure you turn out to be a young man who is worthy of her and I'll see you're married! I asked what degree of worthiness was required, and my father replied that Ali Bey Sulaiman was his relative and close friend but we needed Susan Hanem's approval. She was rich and not concerned with wealth; what she wanted for her daughter was a successful young man—a judge, for example. The fact of the matter is that my own rapid promotion has impressed a number of people. I've become an important civil servant—no, politician even—at a very early age. But no one knew what the real reasons were for this unusual energy on my part!”

With a graceful gesture, she opened an ivory fan. On its outer edge was a picture of a swimming duck. “All this, and yet you hadn't been to see me for ten years!” she said with mild irony.

“Don't forget,” he said earnestly, “that your father was appointed a justice after that, that he worked for years plying between Asyut and Alexandria, and that I myself got heavily involved in politics.”

“How were you to know that ten years hadn't turned me into something awful?” she asked with a coquettish smile.

“My heart! I trust its feelings. And when I saw you again my confidence in it was doubled. So our betrothal may seem traditional on the surface, but there's a real love story behind it even though it was all one-sided.”

“Well, at any rate,” she murmured, gazing into the distance, “it's not that way any longer.”

He took her chin between his fingers, turned her head gently, leaned forward until his hungry mouth met her soft lips in a throbbing kiss, then drew his head back again, smiling with a sense of happiness so deep that as his eyes wandered over the collection of flowerpots on the veranda, they were misted with emotion like a fog-covered windowpane. The tale he'd told her was not a complete fabrication. Not all along the line, in any case. He had often admired her beauty in the past and he really loved her now, even if he'd forgotten her for ten years. So what harm was there in a little white lie, which was a shining example of good sense and which would give their relationship a magical beauty of its own?

His beloved was not ready, however, to be parted from her mother; it was almost as though the midwife had forgotten to sever the umbilical cord. This attachment worried him sometimes. He looked forward eagerly to the day when he would really have her completely as his own and was somewhat disturbed by the way she looked at her mother during breaks in conversation. But his happiness
swept all misgivings away, just as a big wave will sweep away the flotsam from a beach and leave it smooth and clean, and he found delight in the fact that she had so appallingly little experience of life's normal happenings. Her innocence may in fact have flattered his own feelings by simply giving him a sense of superiority. He was also pleased at her love of music and her wide reading of travel literature.

“For me your love is a treasure without price,” he said. “When I came to meet you for the first time, I asked God that I might make a good impression on you.”

“I'd seen you before in the newspapers.”

“If I'd known that at the time, I'd have taken more care getting ready for the photograph!” he replied delightedly.

“That doesn't matter. But I also heard about your misfortunes in politics.”

As he laughed, he threw his head back once again like the pasha. “I wonder what you make of that?” he asked. “I'm an old friend of police truncheons and prison cells. I'm quite used to being dismissed and expelled. What do you think of that?”

She bit the inside of her lip once more. “Papa says…”

“There's no need to quote Papa on the subject,” he interrupted quickly. “I know what he thinks already; he belongs to the other side. But don't you think about anything but music and travel books? From now on, you're going to have to prepare yourself for the role of a politician's wife—a politician in every sense of the word.”

Susan Hanem came back into the room. “Everything is as you wish,” she said, sounding like someone announcing that a project had been successfully concluded.

“Thank you, madame,” Isa replied, standing there in his sharkskin suit. They both sat down. “The marriage will be
in August, then,” he continued, smoothing his trousers over his knees, “and afterwards we'll travel directly to Europe.”

Their eyes met in delight. The last ray of the sun had disappeared. “I was telling Salwa that I've loved her for ten years!” he told Susan Hanem.

The lady raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Don't believe everything he tells you,” she warned her daughter. “Your fiancé is a politician and I know all about these politicians!”

All three of them dissolved in laughter.

           

I
sa was at breakfast on the morning of the twenty-third of July
⁴²
when the radio interrupted its normal broadcast to announce the Army declaration. At first he did not fully comprehend what he was hearing. Then he leapt up and stared at the radio, listening dry-mouthed to these strange words which kept following each other, forming startling sentences. When he realized what he was hearing, his immediate reaction was dismay. He reeled, like someone suddenly coming out of darkness into brilliant light. What could it all mean?

He went into the sitting room and sat down next to his mother. “Very grave news,” he said.

She raised her dim eyes in his direction.

“The Army's defying the King!” he said.

She found the news hard to digest. “Is it like the days of Urabi Pasha?”
⁴⁵
she asked.

Ah! Why had that thought not occurred to him? He was really in a very agitated state. “Yes,” he muttered, “like the days of Urabi.”

“Will there be war?” she asked anxiously.

What would really happen? He couldn't get any more news now since there was no one left in Cairo to consult. The only reason why he himself was not on vacation was that he'd postponed it until the time for his trip abroad.

“No, no,” he told his mother, “the Army's making some demands and they'll be met. That's all there is to it.”

He traveled to Alexandria, mulling over what had happened en route. Here was the tyrant himself being dealt a blow of steel: it should match the brutality of his own tyranny and should be final—let him burn, in the contemplation of his own crimes. Just look at the consequences of your errors and stupidity! But where would this movement stop? What would be the party's role in it? At one moment, Isa would feel intoxicated by a sense of hope; at others, he would be overcome by a feeling much like the whimpering uneasiness dogs show immediately before an earthquake.

He found Abd al-Halim Pasha in Athenios
²
wearing a white suit of natural silk with a deep red rose in the buttonhole of the jacket. In the glass on the table in front of him, all that was left was the froth of a bottle of stout, looking as though it was stained with iodine. The Pasha narrowed his eyes languorously. “Forget about the Army's demands,” he said. “The movement's bigger than that. The demands can be met today and the people who are putting them forward will hang tomorrow. No, no, my dear sir! But it's very difficult to judge what's behind it all.”

“Haven't you any news, sir?”

“Things are moving too fast for news. Goodwin, the English journalist, was sitting where you are just an hour ago, and he assured me that the King's finished.”

The shock was tremendous. It overwhelmed him for a
moment. “Don't we have any connection with what's going on?” he asked.

“One can't be sure about anything. Who are these officers? And don't forget that our leaders are abroad.”

“Maybe their journey abroad has got something to do with the movement?” Isa suggested.

The Pasha's expression showed no signs of optimism. His only comment was a barely audible “Maybe.”

They continued their conversation without saying anything new; this became an end in itself, providing a release for their anxieties.

He found Ali Bey Sulaiman in his villa at Sidi Bishr,
³⁶
sitting in a bamboo rocking chair, his forehead contracted into a frown and looking haggard and sickly, all healthy good looks and innate haughtiness gone. When he looked up and saw Isa approaching, he gave him an anxious stare. “What news have you got?” he asked impatiently.

Isa sat down. He could feel the burden as the Bey, his wife, and his daughter looked at him. As he spoke, there was a superficial calm to his voice, concealing a certain pride at the new factor he was about to introduce to the situation. “The King's finished,” he said.

The last gleam went out of the Bey's eyes. He threw a sickly glance through the balcony toward the pounding sea. “What about you? I mean you people. Do you approve?”

For a moment Isa enjoyed a sense of exultation, a moment that seemed itself to swing to and fro above a painful wound. “The King's our traditional enemy,” he mumbled.

The Bey sat up straight in his chair. “Has the party got anything to do with what's happening?” he asked.

Isa would have loved to be able to give an affirmative
answer to these people who were looking at him. “I don't have any information about that,” he replied, concealing his own chagrin.

“But you can find out, no doubt.”

“No one whom I've met knows anything. Our leaders are abroad, as you know, sir.”

The Bey snorted angrily. “We've forgotten the lesson of the Urabi revolt pretty quickly,” he said. “The British will be marching in soon.”

“Is there any news about that?” Isa asked anxiously.

The Bey gave an angry gesture with his hand.

“Wouldn't it be better for us to go to the estate?” Susan Hanem asked.

“No one knows what's best,” he answered languidly.

Events moved on until the King left the country. Isa saw it in Alexandria. He also saw for himself the Army movements and the clamorous demonstrations. Conflicting emotions kept preying on his mind, sweeping him around in a never-ending whirlpool. The exhilaration he frequently felt was difficult to confirm, to define, or even to contemplate: though it cured the pains of his own resentment, it did not last, always collapsing against some dark cloud of other emotions. His pleasure was spoiled to a certain degree. Was this the natural reaction to the release of bitter feelings? Or was it the sort of pity that anyone might feel, standing secure over the corpse of a tyrannical rival? Perhaps when we achieve a major goal in our lives, we also lose a reason for our enthusiasm for living. Or could it be that he found it hard to acknowledge a great victory without his party taking the main credit for it?

This was the state of mind Isa was in when Abd al-Halim Pasha's visitors arrived at the latter's mansion in Zizinia.
⁵⁰
Their feelings seemed very mixed; some of them
were delighted, while others looked apprehensive and even worried.

“Glory to Him who never ceases,” the Pasha said.

“Faruq's finished,” Shaikh Abd as-Sattar as-Salhubi said in his oratorical manner, “but we need to reassure ourselves.”

The ensuing wave of nervous chuckles was devoid of joy. Isa was sitting beside his friends, Samir Abd al-Baqi, Abbas Sadiq, and Ibrahim Khairat. “What about the future?” he asked.

“It will undoubtedly be better than the past!” Abd al-Halim Pasha replied, ignoring the point of the question.

“Maybe he's asking about our own future,” Shaikh Abd as-Sattar as-Salhubi said to the Pasha.

“We'll have a role to play,” the Pasha replied with an expressionless face, which suited an old politician. “There's no question of that.”

Shaikh Abd as-Sattar trembled like a Qur'an reader steeling himself during interludes in recitation. “This movement isn't in our interests,” he commented angrily. “I can smell danger thousands of miles away. On the day the treaty was annulled, we lost the King and the British, and now today we're going to lose everything.”

“We're the last people who should have to worry about any danger. Or at least that's how it should be.”

“We would have done exactly the same as what has happened today,” Ibrahim Khairat said, “if only we'd had the strength.”

“Yes, but we didn't, Sidi Umar!”
³⁷
Shaikh as-Sattar retorted sarcastically.

With sudden, hammering violence, the past surged up in Isa's mind, crammed full now of glory and grief, a past, his heart told him, that was taking shape as a bubble about to
burst, as a new kind of life from within revealed its outer surface bit by bit, a life charged with new and very strange notions. He could know this new way of life—he had already seen hints of it here and there—but how could it get to know him when he was still inside the bubble and it was about to burst?

His eyes rested on a picture hanging on the wall over the cold heater. It showed a black woman—thick lips and big eyes, not bad-looking. She was leering down at him with a saucy sensuality that spelled out enticement and seduction.