The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail (9 page)

           

T
he dinner party was as rich in memories as it was in food and drink. Zeinab pressed his hand in welcome, her eyes brimming with tears, and Mustapha gave him a warm hug. It was the first time he'd seen Aliyyat. As he sat next to Buthayna at the table, he remarked with surprise that she was the picture of her mother as a girl.

“I can't possibly taste all of them!” he said as the appetizers were offered. Then he turned to Buthayna. “They told you I was an old friend, but that is only a partial truth. Actually, I'm an old friend who's just gotten out of prison.”

She smiled, taking it as a joke.

“It's true. I'm an old friend and a veteran prisoner.”

At this point, Zeinab intervened. “Then she should know that you're a political hero, not merely a prisoner.”

Buthayna looked at him with astonishment.

“Hero. Criminal. The words are interchangeable.”

Omar said to her, “Othman is an old friend, and now a colleague in the firm. I'll tell you his story another time.
But you already know something about the political prisoners…”

“Did the King imprison you?” Buthayna asked.

As the houseboy was placing a slice of turkey and some peas on his plate, he said, “No, the whole society did.”

“What had you done?”

When he didn't answer, Mustapha laughed. “He was a socialist prematurely.” Then he added with a wink, “And he was fond of playing with bombs.”

The green eyes widened, and Zeinab stepped in again, trying tactfully to change the subject. “Buthayna is a poet.”

Othman looked at Omar and smiled. “Poetry is hereditary in this family.”

Mustapha warned him, “Her poems are paeans of praise to the Divine Spirit!”

Restraining the urge to say something sarcastic, he commented politely, “I hope to have the good fortune to hear some of your poems.”

Omar managed to hide his restlessness and maintain the appearance of calm. He took a stuffed pigeon, reflecting that if it had flown better, it wouldn't have been eaten, and followed with pleasure the conversation between Buthayna and Othman. Suddenly the girl asked, “How could you endure prison life?”

“I endured it because I had no choice, and I came to be known for my good conduct. It seems that we only misbehave in society.” He laughed. “Actually, prisons are not without their advantages. Life among prisoners is classless, something we'd like to achieve in the world outside.”

“I don't understand a thing!”

“You'll understand my words if I'm able to understand your poetry.”

“Have you read Papa's poems?”

“Of course.”

“Did you like them?”

Omar protested. “For God's sake, you'll never finish dinner if you don't stop talking.”

But Othman continued, obviously enjoying her conversation. “Will you study literature in the university?”

“Science.”

“Bravo, but why science when writing poetry is your main interest?”

Zeinab said proudly. “She excels in science.”

Buthayna explained, “Papa's enthusiastic about studying science.”

Othman looked at Omar quizzically, then said to Buthayna, “One day you'll realize science is the great hope.”

“But I won't give up poetry.”

“And why should you?”

“How many years did you spend in prison?”

“About twenty.”

He laughed at her astonished expression. “And yet I knew a man who did not want to leave jail. Every time the date of release drew near, he'd commit another small crime, just to prolong his imprisonment.”

“What a crazy way to behave.”

“How often people behave in crazy ways.”

“Don't you want him to eat?” Omar reproached her.

Othman and Buthayna continued their conversation after they'd all adjourned to the parlor for coffee. But around ten o'clock, at Mustapha's suggestion, the three men went out to the balcony, and the women moved to the living room.

Othman wanted to know what Mustapha had done
with his life, so he gave him a frank, rather jaded account and concluded by asking, “What are your thoughts, now that you've heard what our situation is?”

Othman replied, a bit apathetic and sullen after Buthayna's disappearance, “I'll have to get started as a lawyer, first of all.”

“Yes, but I'm asking what's going on in your head.”

“I'll have to study the conditions…”

“As you should, but our old position is no longer really valid.”

“It is valid,” he said defiantly.

“I mean that the state is now socialist. Isn't that enough?”

Omar looked in silence at the flowing river and at the reflections of lamplight on the surface. A crescent moon was visible on the horizon.

Othman said bitterly, “Just because you have changed doesn't mean truth has changed.”

“We haven't changed so much as developed.”

“Backward.”

“The country has certainly gone forward.”

“Maybe, but you've gone backward.”

Omar was still looking at the moon as Mustapha said jokingly, “Aren't you satisfied with what you've already sacrificed of your life?”

“Truth is never satisfied.”

“My dear friend, it's not your responsibility alone.”

“Man shoulders the burden of humanity as a whole, or else he's nothing.”

Mustapha laughed. “If I can't shoulder the burden of Mustapha, how could I take on humanity as a whole?”

“How pathetic…I can't believe how degenerate you've both become.”

Mustapha couldn't take the conversation seriously, but, pointing to Omar, he said, “Let Omar be, for he's going through a bad time. A revulsion from work, success, and the family.”

Othman looked inquiringly at Omar, but his head was still turned toward the Nile.

“As if he's searching for his soul,” Mustapha observed.

Othman frowned. “Wasn't it he who lost it?” Then he sighed. “So it's all ended in philosophical meditations.”

Mustapha went on, trying to restrain his mirth. “I've often felt that he wanted to revive his dormant impulse to write, and he continues to try. But he dreams sometimes of a strange ecstasy.”

“Can you be more explicit?”

Omar turned toward them. “Drop the subject and just consider it an illness.”

Othman looked at him sharply and murmured, “Perhaps it really is a disease, for you've lost your old vigor.”

Mustapha said, “Or he's searching for the meaning of his existence.”

“When we're aware of our responsibility toward the masses, the search for a personal meaning becomes quite insignificant.”

Omar asked with irritation, “Do you think the question will die when the dictatorship of the proletariat is established?”

“But it hasn't been established yet.” He looked from one of them to the other. “Scientists search for the secret of life and death through knowledge, not through illness.”

“And if I'm not a scientist?”

“At least you shouldn't throw the dust of wailing and lamentation in the faces of the workers.”

Mustapha said, “You're hurling some strong language at our friend at a time when he really is in pain.”

“I'm sorry, and I'm afraid I'll have to remain sorry indefinitely.”

Omar asked, “Won't the heart come to our rescue if we're not scientists?”

“The heart is a pump operating through the arteries and veins. To see it as a means of apprehending the truth is sheer fantasy. Honestly, I'm beginning to understand you. You're looking for ecstasy, or perhaps for something called absolute truth, but because you lack any effective method, you turn to the heart as the rock of salvation. But it is only a rock, and with it you'll recede to the depths of prehistory. Your life will have been wasted. Even my life, spent behind prison bars, has not been sacrificed for nothing. But your life will be. You'll never attain any truth worth speaking of except through reason, science, and work.”

He hadn't witnessed the desert sunrise, or felt the ecstasy which gives assurance without proof. The world had not been cast, like a handful of dust, beneath his feet.

Mustapha said, “I believe in science and reason, but I have in my hands a
kasida
^*
which Omar wrote just before renouncing poetry for good. In it, he declares his revolt against reason.”

Controlling himself, Othman said, “I'd like to hear it.”

Omar was about to protest, but Mustapha had already unfolded the paper, and begun to read:

A heavy silence reigned until Othman spoke. “I didn't understand any of it.”

Omar said, “And I didn't say it was poetry, just hallucinations while I was in a morbid frame of mind.”

Mustapha observed, “But modern art in general breathes this spirit of rebellion.”

Othman said disdainfully, “It's the whimper of a dying order.”

“Perhaps that's true,” Mustapha said, “but speaking as a veteran artist, I see an artistic crisis as well, the crisis of an artist who is fed up with his subject matter and searching for a new form.”

“Why should he be fed up with the subject matter?”

“Because whatever subject he hits upon is hackneyed.”

“But the artist confers his own spirit on the subject which makes it new to a certain extent.”

“This no longer suffices in our era of radical revolutions. Science has ascended the throne and the artist finds himself among the banished entourage. However much he wanted to penetrate the lofty realm, his ignorance and inability prevented him, and so he joined the Angry Young Men, turned to the anti-novel and to the theater of the absurd. While scientists were compelling admiration through their incomprehensible equations, the silly artists strove to impress by producing obscure, strange, and
abnormal effects. If you can't attract the public's attention with your profound thoughts, try running naked through Opera Square.”

Othman laughed loudly for the first time.

“Therefore I've chosen the simplest and most honest route, and become a clown.”

Why get involved, Omar concluded, in discussing matters of no concern to him?

           

T
he dawn was speechless. On the banks of the Nile, on the balcony, even in the desert, the dawn was speechless. And nothing but a broken memory bore witness to its ever having spoken. There's no point in continuing to look upward, burning the heart out, listening to its cries of yearning reverberate hopelessly in the heavens. The nagging rhymes, Margaret's golden hair, Warda's gray eyes, and the image of Zeinab leaving church. What are they but pale ghosts wandering in a hollow head? Mustapha laughs, tolling the death of hope, while Othman rages like a prophet of nihilism. I've spoken to the chairs, the walls, the stars, and the darkness; I've argued with the void, I've flirted with something which doesn't yet exist, until I finally found comfort in the prospect of my complete annihilation. Everything has been demeaned, the very laws that rule the universe have been discredited, predicting even the sunrise is impossible. After this how can I peruse the case files or discuss the household budget?

I said to the four walls of my room, “What a mistake it was to accept this truce and return home.”

And I told the cat who was rubbing against my leg, “Your word is my command. I'll leave this refuge, so full of emotions which disturb and inhibit.”

No diversions were left, other than dancing on the peak of the pyramid, plunging from a bridge into the depths of the Nile, or breakfasting nude at the Hilton. Rome was set aflame by desperate passions, not by Nero. They cause the earth to quake, the volcanoes to erupt.

Warda spoke on the telephone. “I wonder whether you've forgotten my voice.”

He answered listlessly, “Hello, Warda.”

“Won't you visit us even once a year?”

“No, but I'm at your service if you need anything.”

“I'm speaking to you from the heart.”

“The heart,” he scoffed, “is a pump.”

He sought relief from distress by speeding like a madman to the outskirts of Cairo, and further on to Fayum, Tanta, and Alexandria. Often he would leave Cairo in the morning and return the next day, having roamed around all night. He might go into a grocer's for a drink or doze off briefly at a café, or he might join a funeral procession, honoring some unknown deceased, and when he returned at dawn, overcome by fatigue, he would sleep right in the car or on the banks of the Nile.

He went back to the office one day and found Othman zealously working away.

“Where have you been these past days?” the man asked.

He looked at him disparagingly. “Innumerable places.”

“You must be tired. I wonder what's going on in your head.”

His distress had freed him of self-consciousness and fear, even in confronting Othman. “I'm thinking of exploding the atom, or murdering if that fails, or committing suicide at the very least.”

Othman laughed. “But your office.”

“You've been with me long enough to understand me.”

“Tell me what you plan to do.”

He said decisively, “It's time to do something I've never done before—that is, to do nothing.”

“You must be joking.”

“I've never been more serious.”

Omar's stern expression caused Othman to change his tone. “Have you consulted your doctor?”

“I won't consult anyone on something of which he's ignorant.”

An oppressive silence fell. “And you, are you confining your energies to the practice of law?” Omar finally asked.

“Yes, but I haven't stopped thinking.”

“So, you'll become once more a menace to the country's security.”

Othman smiled. “I can't claim that honor yet.”

Really, this buzzing going on around him made it impossible to listen to the silence. He would have to leave, and his nerves were so on edge, he could no longer trust himself to keep silent about confidential matters. So he told Zeinab that he would give her power of attorney over his property, and leave his associates in charge of the office. He was determined, he said, to rid himself of distractions, to remove the burden of the world from his shoulders. She should consider it a disease, whether she understood it or not. In any case, he wanted to withdraw into himself. There was no woman involved, she must
believe him. And it was not a mere whim; rather his illness had reached crisis proportions. If any cure existed, it lay in the path he'd chosen.

She implored him, her eyes reflecting the pain of the successive blows she'd received. “We've let you alone. If you can't stand your work, then leave it. If your artistic urges are so strong, then follow them. But don't desert us, for the sake of your children.”

Her words affected him, but he said there was no use in trying to put off a decision as unavoidable as fate. “I've had long talks with Mustapha. It hurt me that you've confided in him what you've hidden from us, but I suppose in your present condition, you're not to be blamed. Forgive me for not understanding this search for the meaning of your existence. I don't see why it involves leaving your work and your family, disregarding your future. Why don't you consult your doctor again?”

“That's why I haven't been open with you.”

“But illness isn't shameful.”

“You think I'm insane.”

She sobbed convulsively, but he remained resolute, “The solution I've chosen is best for us all.”

“All right, then, leave until you've regained your health, but then return.”

“It's best to reconcile ourselves to a permanent absence.” He continued as she wept. “If I don't do that, I'll go mad or commit suicide.”

She stood up, saying, “Buthayna's not a child. You must listen to her.”

“Don't make the torment any worse,” he shouted.

He could imagine what was being said about his “illness,” but what difference did it make? Perhaps the diagnosis was even true. He talked to the animals and objects
around him, and held discussions with extinct creatures. Sometimes when he was racing along in the car, the solid earth would explode into fragments, then disintegrate into a vast network of atoms, and, trembling uncontrollably, he'd have to stop. Sometimes as he was gazing at the Nile or at a tree it would come alive, the image would assume features which indicated feelings and awareness, and he'd imagine that it peered at him warily, that it questioned his existence in comparison with its own, so much more ancient and immutable. What did it all indicate? What did his desertion of work, family, and friends signify? Ah, he'd have to be on guard or else he'd find himself driven to the insane asylum.

Mustapha and Othman came to see him, at the urging of Zeinab, he realized. Mustapha's laughter failed to ease the tension. Omar himself barely murmured a greeting, but when the whiskey was brought out, he took a drink in their honor. They looked at him awkwardly, revealing the concern they'd striven to conceal. Zeinab then came out to greet the men, and commented as she was leaving, “We were such a happy family, he was the best of men, then suddenly everything fell apart.”

Her words made it impossible to avoid the subject any longer. “Is what we've heard true?” Mustapha asked.

He didn't answer, but his determined expression was sufficient confirmation.

“So, you're leaving.”

“Yes,” he said sharply.

“Where?”

“Somewhere.”

“But where?”

He remained silent. The place, stretching on to infinity, was still a prison. Mustapha was stupid to use words without meaning.

“So now it's our turn to be thrown on the garbage heap.”

“Yesterday Buthayna cried, but that was the only answer she got.”

“Is it the end of our relationship with you?” Mustapha asked fearfully.

“It's the end of my relationship with everything.”

“I'll mourn with all my heart and soul.”

“What I've suffered is worse.”

“And to what end?” Mustapha asked.

“To ram my head against the rock,” he answered bitterly.

“I don't understand,” said Othman.

Mustapha continued, “Whatever it is, stay among us.”

“I must go.”

Othman said, his eyes fixed on Omar, “Shouldn't you consult the doctor?”

“I'm not in need of anyone,” he replied sharply.

“You're an intact organism which shouldn't be destroyed to no purpose.”

“In reality, I'm nothing.”

“Can't a man think while he's among other people?”

“I don't care about thinking.”

“What will you do, then?”

He said with annoyance, “We don't understand each other at all.”

“But I'm sure that you're driving yourself to ruin.”

“Rather, it's you who are on the way to ruin.”

“Well, if ruin is unavoidable, isn't it better to go down together?”

He brushed the remark aside. “I won't look back.”

“In fact, you're running after nothing.”

Is the ecstasy of the dawn nothing? Does truth then lie in nothingness? When will the torture end?

“Imagine if all the intelligent men in this world followed your example,” Othman said.

“Let the intelligent men concern themselves with the world.”

“But you're one of them.”

He wiped his forehead, then thrust his fist toward the ground. “Trample my mind under your feet,” he said disdainfully.

Othman asked sadly, “What's the use in arguing?”

“It's futile, for tomorrow you won't see me.”

Mustapha sighed. “I don't believe a word of what's been said.”

He answered, his eyes on the ground, “It's best for you to forget that I ever existed.”

“It's too hard to bear,” Mustapha said.

Othman's face hardened with suppressed grief, while Omar assumed a mask of indifference. As he gazed at them, their figures disintegrated into two groups of atoms, effacing their individuality, but the conflict he felt showed that his love for them, as for his family, was still rooted in his heart, causing him more anguish than he could bear. How his soul longed for the moment of victory, the moment of complete liberation!