The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail (26 page)

           

F
or months he dithered.

“I'm thinking of going to Alexandria,” he told his mother one day.

More accustomed to his strange way of speaking by now, she looked much thinner and had lost her color. “But the summer's over,” she replied calmly.

“I intend to stay there, not just for the summer.”

Her eyelids quivered anxiously.

“I mean for a period of time,” he continued.

“But why?”

“I want to live somewhere no one knows me and I know no one.”

“I'm not at all happy about your attitude,” she said irritably. “A man should face up to difficulties in some other way. There's still an opening waiting for you with your cousin.”

When she saw that he was determined to go, she called on his three sisters to help, and they came hurrying over to Dokki. They were all married and carried the family stamp
on their faces, the triangular-shaped features and circular eyes. They all felt a real love for Isa, not just because he was a brilliant person of whom they could feel proud, but also because he was kind enough to arrange for promotions and raises for their husbands during his period of influence. They all agree that he should not go to Alexandria and that he should accept his cousin's proposition. “What's the point of staying in a town like a stranger?”

“Isn't it enough that I'll be able to get some rest?”

“What about your future?”

“My future's a thing of the past,” he retorted.

“No, it isn't. Now you have an opportunity to recover everything you've lost!”

He raised his hand in a decisive gesture that told them to stop. “There's no point in going on like this,” he said calmly. “What's new and important is the fact that I've decided to move out of this house!”

His mother's face turned pale.

“There's no sense in carrying its enormous costs any longer,” he said apologetically.

“Is there any connection between that and your decision to leave?”

“No,” he replied with a frown. “I regard the journey to Alexandria as a necessary cure.”

“Don't let your enemies gloat over your situation,” his mother pleaded. “You could certainly keep your beautiful house and your way of life if you accepted the job Hasan offered you.”

He closed his eyes and said nothing; he refused to carry on a futile argument.

“You're my son,” his mother continued bitterly, “and I know you. You're obstinate; you always were. You've chosen pride, however much it costs you. Well, your stubbornness
has only encountered love and understanding from us here. But not everyone's like your mother and your sisters!”

He shrugged. “I'll pretend I didn't hear anything,” he replied scornfully.

“You should follow God's command,” she said even more pleadingly. “The power is His and He can do what He wishes; the future is in His hands. You can be happy without being an under secretary or a minister.”

“Where would it be best for Mother to stay till I get back?” he said, looking at his sisters.

They kept out of the discussion. Each of them suggested that their mother should stay with her.

“I shall go back to the old house in Al-Wayiliyya,” the old lady said.

“You'll never live by yourself,” shouted Wahiba, the daughter most devoted to her mother.

“Umm Shalabi will never leave me,” her mother replied. “I hope you'll come and visit me.”

Isa remembered the old house, where they all had been born, and especially the wide courtyard with its dry, sandy floor. He did not know how to express his displeasure at his mother's idea. “Wouldn't it be best for you to stay with one of my sisters?” he asked.

“No,” she replied nervously. “I'm stubborn too; it'll be better for everyone if I live in the old house.”

All her daughters made it clear that they would be delighted if she would stay with them, but she paid no attention. Isa's thoughts were filled with his beautiful house. He looked at the trees outside the balcony, rustling gently against a white autumn sky that seemed to inspire a sense of melancholy. “Isn't God's curse on history?” he said to himself.

“The old house isn't suitable for someone who has been used to living here,” Wahiba commented.

When Isa saw his mother's eyelids quivering, he thought she was on the point of crying. “It's perfectly suitable,” she replied in a wavering voice. “We were all born there.”

           

E
verything seemed to promise a deathlike repose. Grief-stricken people are apt to welcome any kind of sedative, even if it is poison. This small, furnished flat showed that civilization was not entirely devoid of a little mercy at times. There was the sea stretching away into the distance till it sank over the horizon; from the mildness of October it derived a certain wisdom and tenderness. The walls of the flat were hung with pictures of the family of the Greek woman who owned it and every time you looked outside, you could see Greek faces on the balconies, at the windows, and in the street. He was a stranger in a district filled with strangers; that was the great merit of Al-Ibrahimiyya.
²²
If you went out, the café with its tree-lined pavement, the vegetable market with its fresh colors, and the neat shops were also full of Greek faces and now at the end of the season you could hear the language being spoken everywhere. You could really imagine that you had gone abroad; the strangeness and unfamiliarity were
intoxicating. These foreigners, of whom you had often thought badly, you had now learned to love even more than your fellow countrymen. You looked for consolation in their midst since you were all strangers in a strange country.

The choice of a flat on the eighth floor was another sign of your desire to treat the idea of traveling seriously: sections of neighboring buildings stretched as far as the Corniche,
¹²
and were low enough so that over them you could see the sea in the distance, where October had bewitched it, enchanting it into daydream. You could see the bevies of quail as well, swooping in to land exhausted at the end of their long, predestined, illusorily heroic flight. Cairo was now no more than a memory clouded by sadness, loneliness, the bitter experience you needed to keep from seeing the faces of people who would make you distressed and sleepless, or the signs of triumph that would arouse your sense of loss.

He experimented with solitude and its companions—a radio, books, and dreams. Is it possible, he wondered, to forget how to speak? Moments follow each other without any regulation, he thought; you don't know the time and hardly even remember what day it is. And so you look up bewildered at the sun's tranquil diamond disk appearing behind the light clouds of autumn, life flirting with you even though you are too morose to respond. It's as though you were seeing the world—and the people in it—for the first time after waking up from a fever, an illness by struggle and ambition, its essential values uncovered, revealing the brilliance of creation. Up till now, the sun's course has been merely a messenger, bearing news of the submission of a memorandum, the warning of a diplomatic reception.
Now that events have buried you alive, these troubles are no more than muddled dreams burning away inside your own decomposing head.

There was real loneliness in this Greek flat, and yearning in his heart. He missed the comfort of the corner in El Bodega, but his conflicting emotions connected with it seemed mean. I love Abbas Sadiq and Ibrahim Khairat, he thought, and yet at the same time I hate them! I love the part of them that was alive before the revolution, but I hate the way they've been able to live after it has taken place. Now I have an opportunity to clarify these vexing problems. Anxieties like mountains, the mind overwhelmed by rust, and the road to consolation, which is beset with folly, is paved and ready in the face of your ill-gotten gains and daydreams in which torture leads eventually to victory. A look from above at this boundless wilderness gives the soul a feeling of repose and an ability to rise above it all. O Lord, why don't You give us a gleam of inspiration about the meaning of this grueling journey stained with blood? Why doesn't the sea say something when it has seen the struggle going on since time immemorial? Why does this mother earth eat up its sons when evening comes? How is it that rocks, insects, and the condemned man in the mountain
¹⁰
have a role in the drama while I have none?

One morning he went to the Paradise Casino
⁷
in Gleem
¹⁷
in response to a letter from Samir Abd al-Baqi. He hadn't seen Samir since coming to Alexandria in the middle of September and hadn't visited the Paradise Casino since the summer of 1951. There was no one on the beach and the casino itself was almost empty, as was usual during the final days of October. In the period of influence, Isa had gone to the Paradise with an arrogant air, and people would look at him with interest as he made his way
between pashas—friends and enemies—to the table reserved for him in that ephemeral world. How could people forget the reception at the Paradise two years ago? The fabulous sound, the all-embracing magnificence of it all and the ringing shouts, and then his own arrival with an entourage to drink, have fun, and while away the evening. All he had seen on the horizon then were hopes that had held the promise of sure success.

He sat in his old place to the right of the inside entrance, among the empty seats. Some old pashas, who were hanging on till the last moment of the summer season, were sitting at scattered tables; two women sat by themselves, one old, the other middle-aged. A dreadful silence hung over the whole place. Isa stole a look at the old woman and told himself that Salwa would meet the same fate one day, going the way of all prestige and power, of all expectation. He took pleasure in looking at the expanse of sea, calm and pure blue, and at clouds, which looked as though they might be swollen with white rose water.

Samir Abd al-Baqi arrived on time and they embraced warmly. Samir looked even thinner than when he'd seen him last, but he was in better health and his eyes looked clearer. “My wife and I are here visiting her mother,” he said. “We're going back tomorrow.”

Isa asked about the corner in El Bodega and Samir replied that there was nothing new. “I've sold my share in an old house,” he said, “and gone into partnership with an uncle who sells furniture. In fact, I'm his accounts manager and a junior partner.”

Isa congratulated him and told him that he himself had no desire to work at the moment.

“Just look how empty Alexandria is!” Samir said, gazing around.

“The whole world's empty,” Isa replied. “What's that you're holding?”

Samir handed him a book and he read the title
Ar-Risalat al-Qushairiyya
³¹
on the cover. Isa looked inquiringly at him.

“Haven't you heard of mysticism?” Samir asked.

Isa laughed abruptly. “I never knew you were interested in it,” he said.

“I wasn't, but then I heard Ahmad Pasha Zahran discussing it. He's given me some books on the subject at various times and recently I've found myself looking into them.”

“Are you serious about it,” Isa asked with some vestiges of laughter still visible on his face, “or is it just a question of amusement?”

Samir emptied a bottle of Coca-Cola into his glass. “It's more than just amusement,” he replied. “It's a real source of relaxation.” He drank half the glass and then continued. “The fact that you only look to it under the constraint of specific circumstances doesn't negate its qualities. We may only go to Aswan in winter to cure an illness, but that in itself doesn't discredit the benefits which Aswan can offer a whether we're sick or healthy.”

“But there's obviously a difference,” Isa said mockingly, “between turning to mysticism during a political crisis and doing so quite spontaneously when things are going well.”

Samir smiled patiently, his green eyes glinting even more brightly than the candescent clouds. “Yes, there's a difference,” he said, “but the lesson's in the consequences. Sometimes a disaster will hit us in such a way as to lead us unawares along the right path!”

“Suppose, for example, that the world…” Isa stopped speaking suddenly, as though he'd stumbled on silence,
caught up in an exchange of glances with the middle-aged woman who was sitting next to the old one. Then he turned back to his friend, thinking that if things had gone as he'd wanted, Salwa would have been his wife now for at least a year. If only…! “What is the mystical view of the particle ‘if only'?” he asked.

Samir did not understand his point, so Isa gave the answer himself. “ ‘If only' is the particle of anguish which has stupidly hankered after some illusory ability to change history.”

“From the mystical point of view,” Samir replied simply, “it represents a denial of God's manifest will in history. What it does is to imbue things with futility and irrationality.”

Salwa has not budged from your heart, Isa thought to himself, even though you despise her character. The mind may formulate specifications for the ideal woman however it likes, but love is an essentially irrational proceeding—like death, fate, and chance. Salwa's behavior was typical of this world. You'll still need girls, though; they're wonderful tranquilizers for anxieties. Probably better than mysticism, he thought, remembering the question he'd broken off. “Suppose,” he said, “the world promised us we'd be appointed to the ministry again! What would you do with mysticism?”

Samir laughed so hard that his teeth flashed. “It isn't difficult to do both at once,” he replied. “That's what Almad Pasha Zahran used to do. Now you see me combining mysticism with commerce. It doesn't stifle your energies, but gets rid of flaws.”

“It's better than suicide, at any rate,” said Isa sadly.

The sun shone for a few seconds, then disappeared again. Samir asked him what he intended to do.

“Are we really finished?” Isa asked him in turn.

“Most probably,” Samir replied, shaking his head in despair. “Things aren't as they were in previous revolutions.”

Isa said nothing for a while, as though he were listening to the all-pervading silence. “We're just like the Alexandria beach in autumn,” he said.

“That's why I'm saying you should get a job.”

“We won't be working, whatever job we take,” Isa replied, “because we've no role to play. That's why we feel excised and rejected like a removed appendix.” He gave a smile, then continued. “I must confess that I have my own mystical beliefs. They keep me busy when I'm alone.”

Samir looked concerned.

“I'm thinking of taking up crime,” Isa said blandly.

Samir let out a long laugh. “That's a novel form of mysticism!” he said, still chuckling.

“But you don't kill your own body with it. Just other people's.”

“I suppose you'll choose some kind of sex crime.”

They both laughed.

“Thank God, there's still a world that can laugh,” Samir said.

“We'll laugh a lot more every time we take a look at what's going on. It'll all be worked out for us. But we won't be participating in it. We'll be like eunuchs.”

A gentle breeze blew. The pashas looked as though they were asleep. For no particular reason, Isa remembered the first speech he'd made in Parliament, when he was still a student at the university. “Our very history is threatened with extinction,” he said sadly.

“History is very long-suffering. It'll defend itself when all the other combatants have disappeared.”

The Greek proprietor walked over to them, smiled at Isa, and asked him how he was and how things were going. Isa recognized the political import of his question immediately. “Just as you see,” he replied with a smile.

When he returned to his tall building near the tram stop, he was feeling depressed at saying farewell to Samir. As he walked through the high, dark entrance, he cursed Salwa, and as he entered the elevator, he told himself how much he needed a “tranquilizer.”