Omm Husni stopped him as he was going downstairs. She would not do that without a good reason. He looked at her face furrowed with wrinkles, her hair dyed with henna, and her body still strong in spite of her old age. It made him think of his mother, and he shook her hand smiling.
“I’ve got news,” she said.
“I hope it’s good news.”
Narrowing her single eye (the other one she had lost in a fight in the alley), she said, “There’s nothing good in it.”
He looked at her intently.
“A suitor. There’s now a suitor standing in your way.”
“Eh?”
“Somebody has proposed to Sayyida.”
A sense of grief and bafflement overwhelmed him as if the news was something he could not have expected. He was lost for words.
“A tailor.”
He knew this was something inevitable. He would not try to prevent it nor could he hope to. It was like death. He did not utter a word. She dragged him by the hand to her room and seated him on the settee next to herself.
“Don’t you care?”
He felt a sharp pain in the depth of his soul. It was as if the world was fading away. He said angrily, “Don’t ask meaningless questions!”
“Calm down!”
“I’d better go.”
“But you won’t be able to meet her.”
The world faded more and more.
She went on: “You should have realized that by yourself.”
“How do you mean?”
“Her mother is keeping a strict eye on her movements. A real man is better than an illusion…”
“A real man is better than an illusion,” he mumbled in a stupor.
“You love her, don’t you?”
“I love her,” he said disconsolately.
“A well-worn story in our alley.”
“Yet it is true.”
“Great! And why haven’t you popped the question?”
“I can’t,” he said poignantly.
“Listen, the girl has begged me to tell you!”
He sighed in total despair.
“Go at once and propose to her or let me do it for you,” the woman said.
He murmured something incomprehensible as if he were speaking an unknown language. The woman was baffled. He continued his soliloquy: “And God will not forgive me.”
“God forbid! Do you think her unworthy of a civil servant like yourself?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Omm Husni!”
“Speak your mind to me! I’m like a mother to you…”
“I can’t get married…”
“Let her wait for you as long as you wish.”
“It would be a long wait…”
“Give her your word. That would be enough.”
“No. I’m not selfish. For the sake of her happiness I must say no.”
Before she had time to reply he had left the room. He walked slowly through the narrow lanes. His tribulation was profound and he bitterly accepted that he would not see her again. Yet, despite his anguish, he experienced a kind of relief, desolate and mysterious. If he was relieved, he felt equally certain that he was damned. He loved her, and no one else would fill the void she would leave in his heart. The love he had known would not be easily erased. It would teach him to hate himself and his ambition, but he was determined to cling to it with all the power of loathing and despair. Mad he was, but his was a hallowed madness that slammed the door on happiness with disdain and pride and drove him irresistibly along the path of glory, rough and strewn with thorns. Happiness might lure him into thoughts of suicide, but misery would spur him to pursue life and worship it. But oh, Sayyida, what a loss she was!