Despite her resistance to the passage of time, age had left its imprint on Omm Husni. Her eyesight was almost gone and she limped so badly that she could only walk by supporting herself with an old broom handle. Meanwhile Othman had so completely despaired of Omm Zaynab, the marriage broker, that he told himself indignantly that those who chattered about class conflict had good reason to!
Omm Husni was no longer fit for her noble profession. Her senility was such that once she suggested a woman for him forgetting that she had died years before.
One afternoon, after Friday prayers at the mosque, he was sitting in the Egyptian Club coffeehouse when he saw Asila passing, accompanied by another woman. He recognized her at once, though the extent to which she had changed was dreadful. She was as flaccid as a punctured ball, and in her face the springs of femininity had dried up, leaving behind an ambiguous shadow that was neither feminine nor masculine. She walked clumsily, a model of misery and degeneration. Something told him that death was hunting her down and that it also was drawing closer to his own time and place; that his time which had once seemed hallowed in eternity was no longer secure behind the screen of sweet illusions and that the proud and everlasting truth was now revealing itself to him in all its awesome cruelty. Did Asila still remember him? She could not have forgotten him. He had penetrated into her very depths with the full weight of his deceit and egoism, leaving her thereafter to hate him and curse him.
As for the companions of his boyhood, they were petty by profession and all they did was father children and fill the air with meaningless laughter. And gone were the innocent passions and the unruly imagination of childhood, buried under thick layers of dust like al-Husayni Alley, which had changed its skin. Many old houses had been demolished and small blocks had taken their place. A small mosque now occupied what used to be the donkey park and a lot of people had left the quarter and gone to al-Madhbah. Everything was changing: electricity and water had been introduced into houses, radios blared night and day, and women were abandoning their traditional wrap. Even good and evil had changed and new values arisen.
All this took place while he was still in grade three and growing old. Was this the reward for his extraordinary effort and dedication? Did they not recognize him as the epitome of expertise based on both theory and practice? That if his official memoranda, his budget analyses, and his original pronouncements on matters of administration and on the purchase and storage of goods were collected in book form, they would constitute an encyclopedia of government affairs? For such a shining light to be hidden away in the position of a Second Deputy Director of Administration was like hanging a 500-watt electric bulb on the wall of a toilet in a tiny village mosque.
He also told himself that “government official” was still a vague concept inadequately understood. In the history of Egypt, an official occupation was a sacred occupation like religion, and the Egyptian official was the oldest in the history of civilization. The ideal citizen of other nations might be a warrior, a politician, a merchant, a craftsman, or a sailor, but in Egypt it was a government official. And the earliest moral instructions recorded in history were the exhortations of a retiring official to his son, a rising one. Even the Pharaohs themselves, he thought, were but officials appointed by the gods of heaven to rule the Nile Valley by means of religious rituals and administrative, economic, and organizational regulations. Ours was a valley of good-natured peasants who bowed their heads in humility to the good earth but whose heads were raised with pride if they joined the government apparatus. Then would they look upward to the ascending ladder of grades which reached right to the doorstep of the gods in heaven. To be an official was to serve the people: the competent man’s right, the conscientious man’s duty, the pride of the human soul—and the prayer of God, the creator of competence, conscience, and pride.
One day he went for an inspection tour of the Archives Section. There he saw Onsiyya, whose womanhood had now reached the stage of maturity. She had also moved up the official scale to become a supervisor, occupying the post which was made empty by her husband’s transfer to the Ministry of Education.
“A long time!” he could not prevent himself from saying as he shook her hand.
She smiled in unaffected shyness.
“Are you happy?” he asked.
“I’m all right.”
“The ability to forget is one of fortune’s blessings,” he said, yielding to an irresistible impulse.
“Nothing is forgotten and nothing remains,” she said with friendly simplicity.
He thought about her words for a long time, and as he left Archives, he repeated to himself, “I loved you so much, Onsiyya, in the old days.”
He returned to his office to find on his desk a circular from the Public Relations Section. He could tell from its appearance that it was the kind which announced the death of an employee or the relative of one. The circular read: “Mr. Isma‘il Fayiq, the Head of Administration, died this morning. The funeral will take place…”
He read it a second time. He read the name over and over again. Impossible. Only yesterday he had been working in full health. Othman had had his morning coffee with him in his office. Indeed the man had said, giving voice to his familiar worries, “The country is awash with contradictory opinions,” at which Othman had smiled without comment.
“Everyone,” Isma‘il had gone on, “believes he’s been sent by Providence.” Then he had shaken his head and said, “In what frame of mind can one begin to prepare the final accounts?”
“In one like mine,” replied Othman in an undertone of sarcasm.
The man had given a loud laugh. He had never questioned the efficiency of his deputy or the fact that he was the backbone of the administration. How could the man have died, in heaven’s name?
Othman went to the First Deputy, who had been an intimate friend of the Director.
“Do you know anything about this tragedy?”
“He had just started on his breakfast,” the First Deputy replied in a stunned voice, “when he suddenly felt tired. He got up and went to lie on the couch. When his wife came up to him to see what was wrong, she found him already dead!”
One felt relatively secure, thought Othman, because one believed that death was logical, that it operated on the basis of premise and conclusion. But death often came upon us without warning, like an earthquake. Isma‘il Fayiq had enjoyed perfect health until the last moment, and what happened to him could happen to anyone. Wasn’t that so? Health then was no guarantee, nor was experience, nor knowledge. Fear shook him to the depths. “The best definition of life is that it’s nothing…” Othman said to himself.
But was death something so unfamiliar? Certainly not, but seeing was not like hearing, and his fright would surely persist for a day or two. For in moments like this, profit and loss and joy and sorrow canceled each other out, and things lost their meaning.
“What’s the value of a lifetime of dedicated work?” he would ask himself.
His misgivings stayed with him during the funeral. Even the chitchat of the employees did not deflect his thoughts from their wistful course. But he felt grateful to be alive. “What is true heroism? It is to go on working with undiminished zeal in spite of all that.”
His preoccupation with the post of Director of Administration soon drove all other thoughts from his head. The First Deputy had been nominated for a job in the judiciary system. This left the way clear for himself. He would be promoted to grade two and appointed Head of Administration. After a year’s work in the post he would be eligible for substantive appointment in the post. Hope was now something he could really and truly grasp.
But he was totally dismayed by the decision to appoint someone from the Ministry of Transport as the new Director of Administration.