Autumn, “harbinger of winter cold.” How will we be able to stand it? A lifetime peddling peanuts, melon seeds, and popcorn. And of this woman I’ve been sentenced to, like another imprisonment. In this country nearly everyone deserves to be locked up. Why single us out for jail? A law not founded on respect for its own workings is insane.
What are all these young boys going to do? What will happen to them? Wait till you see these old houses blown sky-high! A history reduced to rubble is pretty sad.
The woman never stops dreaming.
But what’s this? Who is this? Some ghost from the past? “Bring me a poisoned dagger.” What is it you want, you plague, you swamp of insects?
I turn to Halima and bark at her, “Look!” She jumps and we both speculate as to whether he’s coming to congratulate us or to gloat, while he stands there grinning, with his little eyes, thick nose, and heavy jaws, like a pig. Be tough with him, the way you were the other times.
“Tariq Ramadan! What brings you here?”
“Our first visit from a loyal friend,” Halima sneers, “since we returned to the face of the earth!” She’s agitated, unnerved.
“I couldn’t help it. I’ve been in a whirl, too.”
“You’re like a nightmare,” I say, turning my back on him to busy myself with a customer.
“I have bad news,” he says.
“Bad news doesn’t mean a thing to us,” says Halima.
“Even if it’s about Mr. Abbas Younis?”
“He’s a devoted son,” I snap back. “When I refused to return to my old job at the theater, he set us up in this little shop.”
“And his play’s been accepted,” the woman adds.
But it’s precisely about Abbas’s play that Tariq’s come here. Has jealousy driven him crazy? He’d rather die than see Abbas succeed. So let his jealousy kill him. He’s the source of all our trouble. No one can understand you better than I, Tariq: we both crawled out of the same dung heap.
“The setting is this house,” Tariq persists. “It’s about you, and it reveals other crimes no one ever imagined.”
Is that possible? Abbas never said a word about the subject to anyone. But then he’s such a perfect little moralist. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“Everything. Everything! Don’t you want to know about it?”
What’s he getting at? Why should Abbas compromise himself? “Even prison?” I ask.
“And that he’s the one who denounced you to the police and that he killed Tahiya.”
“That’s nonsense!”
“What do you mean?” the woman shouts. “You hate Abbas!”
But he’s said enough already to disturb me deeply. “Isn’t it just a play?” I say feebly.
“Abbas can explain everything,” Halima says.
“Go see the play for yourselves!”
“You’ve been blinded by hate!”
“Not by hate. By the crime!”
“You’re the only criminal! You’re crazy with spite!”
“My son may be stupid, but he is neither an informer nor a murderer,” I retort, hiding my anxiety.
“Tahiya’s murderer must be brought to justice!” he yells.
He and the woman begin a terrific row, but my own thoughts wander, until I finally get rid of him with a curse.
It is then that I find myself drowning in a sea of suspicion. Would Tariq have taken the trouble to come out this way to tell tales about Abbas that were groundless? The man is vicious, but he’s not stupid. When my doubts finally get the better of me, I glance at the woman, only to find her staring back at me.
We live together in this old house like two strangers. If it weren’t that Abbas would suffer, I’d divorce her. Abbas. The only thing that gives savor to this bitter life. He’s the only hope I have left.
“He’s lying,” the woman mutters.
I feel much more concern than she does, almost to the point of being sympathetic with Tariq. “Why should he lie?”
“He still hates Abbas.”
“But there’s the play, too,” I venture.
“We don’t know anything about it. Go and see Abbas.”
“Yes, I’ll certainly go and have a talk with him.”
“But you aren’t making any move!” Stupidity and stubbornness can make Halima quite intimidating.
“There’s no great rush.”
“He has to know what’s going on behind his back.”
“And if he confesses?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if he admits that his play really does say what that swindler claims it does?”
“You’ll get an explanation for everything.”
“I wonder!”
“A real murderer doesn’t expose himself.”
“I don’t know.”
“Go see him, that’s the main thing!”
“Of course I’ll go.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“You haven’t got anything fit to wear,” I point out, reminding her how they’d seized all our money and how that son of a bitch of a detective beat me. “But that’s all in the past. It’s finished. We’ve got to concentrate on what happens to us now.”
“That cheap swindler. He’s lying.”
“Abbas just couldn’t accept our way of life, could he? So virtuous! You’d think he was a bastard, not my son! But he’s always been loyal to us. And why would he kill Tahiya?”
“You’re asking me?”
“I’m thinking aloud.”
“You believe what the wretch said!”
“And you believe him, too.”
“We’ve got to hear what Abbas has to say.”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t believe him.”
“You’re raving.”
“Damn you!”
“I was damned the day I got tied to you.”
“The same applies to me.”
“I used to be pretty.”
“Did anyone else want you but me?”
“Everyone always wanted me! Just my bad luck, that’s all.”
“Your father was a postman, but mine was employed on the Shamashirgi family estate.”
“Which means that he was a servant.”
“I come from a family.”
“What about your mother?”
“Just like you.”
“You’re a windbag. You don’t want to go, do you?”
“I’ll go when it suits me.”
Collecting my wits, I decide that, come what may, nothing worse can happen to us. To think that when this woman and I came together for the first time it was with feverish passion, beautiful dreams! What’s happened to us? I’ll have to make this trip. Some afternoon. That’ll be the best time.
I don’t know anything about the place where my son is supposed to be living. After his marriage we lost contact and we’ve had nothing to do with each other since. He despised us and rejected our way of life, and I despised and disowned him. When he moved to Tahiya’s apartment I was glad not to see his scornful looks anymore. But now I’m running to him. It’s the only hope left. When we came out of prison he treated us with understanding, as a dutiful son should. How can he be the one who threw us into it?
—
I go up to the porter at Tahiya’s address a few days later to inquire about Abbas, only to be told that he left a couple of hours earlier, carrying a suitcase.
“Is he traveling somewhere?”
“He told me he’d be away for some time.”
“Didn’t he leave an address?”
“No.”
This unexpected obstacle upsets me. Why didn’t he tell us? Have Tariq’s accusations reached him? I decide to look up Sirhan al-Hilaly at the theater in Sharia Imad al-Din. I ask to see him and he lets me in immediately, standing up to welcome me, full of sympathy over my safe homecoming: “If it weren’t for my circumstances, I’d have come to see you and offer congratulations.”
“Sirhan Bey,” I say coolly, “that excuse is unacceptable.”
He laughs. Nothing fazes him. “You’re right.”
“Our association has been a long one. A lifetime. My lifetime as prompter of your company. And you had the use of my house. Until I was arrested.”
“I haven’t treated you right,” he mumbles. “How about a cup of coffee?”
“No coffee, no tea. I’ve come to see you about Abbas, my son.”
“You mean the controversial playwright? His work is going to be an unprecedented success. And you, Karam, above all people, should understand how I feel.”
“Good. But I didn’t find him at home. The doorman told me he’d left carrying a suitcase.”
“And why are you so upset about that? He’s started on a new play. Who knows? Perhaps he’s found a quiet place…”
“I’ve heard things about the plot of the play and I’m afraid it’s got something to do with his leaving.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Karam.”
“Tariq is malicious, and he…”
“Don’t talk to me about Tariq,” he interrupts. “I know him better than you. There’s no need whatever to worry about your son.”
“I’m afraid he may have…” I leave the sentence unfinished.
“The play is a fantasy. And even if it were true…”
“Tell me what you really think.”
“I don’t bother my head, not for one minute, about anything but the play itself. Any crime the hero commits onstage is good for the play. That’s all that concerns me.”
“But doesn’t he betray his parents and kill his wife?”
“And a very good thing, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“The elements of tragedy!”
“Don’t you believe that’s what actually happened?”
“It’s got nothing to do with me.” He shrugs.
“I want to know the truth.”
“The truth is, we have a great play. And I am, as you know, the owner of a theater, not a public prosecutor.”
“And I am in agony.”
Al-Hilaly laughs. “What are you talking about? You never loved him!”
“The present isn’t the past. You should understand that better than anyone else.”
“A play is just a play. Nothing more. Otherwise the law would have the right to put ninety percent of our authors in the prisoner’s dock.”
“You don’t want to offer me any comfort.”
“I wish I could. Karam, don’t get worked up over absurd conjectures. No one could share them with you anyway except your most intimate friends. As for the public, they won’t look beyond the play itself. By the way, why did you turn down your old job as prompter?”
“Thanks for asking. Abbas suggested that, and he told me you’d agreed. But I have no wish to go back to the past.”
Al-Hilaly laughs again. “I can see that. You’re your own boss now. And perhaps you make more money from the shop. That’s all right, my friend. But don’t get upset over Abbas. He’s trying to establish himself. He’ll surface at the proper time.”
Our meeting is over and I take my leave, weighed down by contempt for all mankind and thinking: No one cares about me, and I care for no one. I don’t even love Abbas, though my hopes are pinned on him. A treacherous murderer. Why should I blame him, though? I’m just like him. His outer paint has been peeled off, and he’s shown the true colors he’s inherited from his father—the naked self everyone pretends to honor these days, revealed without hypocrisy. What is goodness but mumbo jumbo, empty words said over and over in the theater and the mosque? There are pickup joints and rooms by the hour all along the Pyramids Road. How could he get me thrown into prison?
Who’s this? At the door of the cafeteria I run into Tariq Ramadan, who holds out a slimy hand. I refuse it and tell him to get out of my sight.
I didn’t do anything wrong. Drugs were chic, weren’t they? And I was a man with no inhibitions. I followed my instincts, that’s all. Other men were no different from me. What happened later was bad luck. Halima would say to me, “Do you expect my salary by itself to be enough to support your family?”
“You want a quarrel? I’m ready.”
“Opium ruins everything.”
“So what?”
“What about your son? Such a wonderful boy deserves to be looked after.”
It wasn’t my fault. My mother taught me what’s right, instilled the fundamental principles. Halima wanted to play at being respectable, to forget the way she used to live. But I won’t tolerate hypocrisy in my household.
“If you have trouble finding a suitable place sometimes,” I said to al-Hilaly, “you can use my house.” He gave me a searching look. “In the heart of Bab al-Shariya,” I assured him, “even the jinn wouldn’t suspect it!”
I was right. The old house took on new life: it was cleaned up from top to bottom and the largest room was transformed into a salon for the hell-raisers. Those aristocrats. Those playboys—al-Agrudy, Shalaby, Ismail, Tariq—and Tahiya the playgirl. I respected them. They did as they liked without hypocrisy. There was a storeroom for snacks, drinks, and drugs, and Halima really took to the trade. A total hypocrite. I despise hypocrisy. Her true nature came right to the fore: the expert mistress of a new establishment, pretty, sharp-witted, as open-minded as I was and even more so, quite adept at running a brothel. The sky rained down gold.
What made the boy look at us in disgust? Whose son are you anyway? Who’s your father? Who’s your mother? Who’s your grandmother? You’re a bastard, you are—offspring of a theatrical marriage! An idiot, taken in by hypocrisy.
“The boy’s sorrow is killing him,” Halima sighed.
“Let him die of grief, the way every idiot should.”
“He refuses to accept the situation.”
“I don’t like that word accept.”
“He deserves some sympathy.”
“He deserves to be throttled.”
As he grew to hate me, my love for him was likewise uprooted. “Understand your life! Live in the real world! It’s only the chosen few who have as good a life. Look at the neighbors! Don’t you hear about what’s going on around you? Don’t you understand? Who are you anyway?” His eyes gave off a queer look, as if he lived outside the walls of time. What did he want?
Listen, I’ll give you some advice: Your grandfather built this house. I don’t know anything about him. Your grandmother—a young widow no different from your mother—made it a lovers’ nest. Your father grew up in the bosom of reality. I’d really like to tell you everything. Should I be scared of you? If your grandmother hadn’t died suddenly she would have married the master sergeant and lost the house. After she died he wanted to lord it over me. I beat him up and he tried to get me drafted into the old regular army, but the house stayed mine. It was Umm Hany—my mother’s cousin and al-Hilaly’s pimp—who got me the job as prompter. I’d like to lay these facts before you someday so you’ll know what you came from, so you can trace your origins back to their roots without any sham reluctance. Be like your father, and love will unite us the way it used to when you were small. Don’t be misled by your mother’s hypocrisy. Someday you’ll find out everything. Should I be afraid of you, son?
—
Back at the shop I have to face Halima’s dreary questioning. What had Abbas told me? she wants to know.
“I didn’t see him. He left the flat with a suitcase, and no one knows where he went.”
She beats her thighs with her fists. “No one knows! Why didn’t he let us know?”
“He doesn’t think about us.”
“He’s the one who helped us start this shop.”
“He wants to forget us now. As far as he’s concerned, we belong to a past that’s best forgotten.”
“You don’t understand my son. You should’ve gone to see al-Hilaly!” Exasperation makes me speechless, and she goes on: “You’re not careful!”
“I’d like to bash your head in.”
“Have you gone back on opium?”
“Only government ministers can afford it these days!” I retort. “Al-Hilaly doesn’t know where he is either.”
“You visited him?”
“He has no idea where he is,” I repeat.
“My God! Did he move out of his flat?”
“No.”
“He’ll come back. Maybe there’s a woman involved.”
“That’s what a woman like you would think.”
“You don’t care about him at all!” she screams. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself!”
“I have been condemned to leave one prison for another.”
“I’m the one who’s living in a prison cell!”
The woman begins to sob, and that makes me even more exasperated. How could I ever have loved her? I wonder.
—
The red cafeteria. Walls and ceiling painted deep red, tablecloths and a thick carpet of the same color. I sat down at the barman’s counter on a high leather stool, next to a young woman I hadn’t noticed at first. Amm Ahmad Burgal, the barman, brought me the usual fava beans and a sandwich with a cup of tea and inevitably I glanced sideways, to be instantly dazzled by a young creature of extraordinary beauty. It struck me that she must be an employee of the theater, like myself, since the public wouldn’t show up at the theater until well after eight o’clock. I heard Amm Ahmad ask her, “Any news about a flat, Miss Halima?”
“Searching for gold is easier,” she replied, in a voice that oozed honey.
“Are you looking for a flat?” I butted in, bewitched.
She nodded, took a sip of tea, and Amm Ahmad introduced us. “Mr. Karam Younis, the company’s prompter. Miss Halima al-Kabsh, the new cashier.”
“Getting married?” I said with my usual brashness.
Amm Ahmad answered for her. “She’s living with an aunt in a cramped little apartment and dreams of having a small place of her own. But there are the problems of rent and key money.”
“I have a house,” I piped up at once.
She turned to me, interested for the first time. “Really?”
“A large house. It’s old, but it has two floors.”
“Is each floor an apartment?”
“No. It isn’t divided into flats.”
Amm Ahmad asked me if she could have a floor to herself.
“Of course she could.” She asked if that wouldn’t inconvenience the family. “I live there alone,” I replied, at which she raised her eyebrows and turned away, prompting me to explain, in defense of my good intentions: “You and your family would find yourselves quite safe there.”
She made no comment, but Amm Ahmad asked me, “What’s the rent?”
“No one’s ever taken it before. I’m not at all greedy.”
“Shall I bring you a tenant?” he inquired solicitously.
“Oh no, I don’t want that. It’s the family house and it has its memories. I just wanted to help out the young lady, since we both work here in the theater.”
Amm Ahmad laughed. “Give us a chance to think about it.”
The young woman went out, leaving me charged with pangs of desire.
There she is now, sitting bent over in her chair with her arm folded, disgust and anger in her eyes, her forehead knitted in a scowl like a curse. Wouldn’t it be better to live alone than share a life of wrangling? Where is the old enchantment—the sparkle, the foaming intoxication? Where in this world has its mummified corpse been interred?
Whenever I saw her in the red cafeteria I’d say to myself, “This girl grabs me like hunger.” I’d imagine her and her high spirits in the old house, the way it would be rejuvenated, warmed. I fantasized about her curing me of deep-seated ills.
Amm Ahmad Burgal kept encouraging me in private. “Halima is a relative of mine,” he said one day, “on my mother’s side. She’s educated and she’s clever. I’m the one who got her her job here with al-Hilaly Bey.”
“She’s a wonderful girl,” I responded, encouraging him to go on.
“Her aunt’s a good woman. She herself is a very virtuous girl.”
“There’s no question about that.”
His smile was so promising that it ignited my feelings, which were already pretty volatile; and I let myself surrender to the enticements of my own imagination, allowed myself to be lulled into daydreams, overpowering visions of sweet sensation, unbearably sustained. One day I finally said to him, “Amm Ahmad, I sincerely want…”
The rest of my unfinished sentence he understood. “Good for you!” he mumbled, full of glee.
“I have no income except my salary, but I own the house, and that’s not something to be sneered at these days.”
“Having a roof over your head is more important than keeping up appearances.” And a little later that same week he was able to meet me with the words “Congratulations, Karam!”
During the days that followed, I floated on the tenderness of a tranquil engagement, wrapped in a veil whose silk translucence was woven from gossamer dreams and only the most dulcet of realities. The leather shaving kit she gave me made me so pleased that I felt like a child. Sirhan al-Hilaly raised my salary by two pounds and congratulated me on entering a new life. The theater people gave a party for us in the cafeteria and saw us off with flowers and sweets.
What’s on the woman’s mind? Her veined hand toys absentmindedly with a heap of popcorn. She hasn’t a cheerful thought in her head. We’re condemned to venting our mutual irritation on each other alone. We live in a prison cell. Only the light streaming down on the rubbish strewn along this ancient street makes it look a little different, as gusts of wind pick up the lighter bits, blowing them here and there to be kicked about by the feet of countless boys. What’s on the woman’s mind?
On our wedding night, with a cock crowing on a neighboring rooftop, she made the revelation that dragged us both to the edge of a bottomless pit, down which everything seemed to plunge but history itself. My first bewilderment turned to a numbness so deep that except for hearing the sound of her choking sobs, I almost thought I’d died. The sobs said everything. “I’ll never forgive myself,” she whimpered. Really? “I should have…” What for? There’s no need to say any more. “But I loved you,” she murmured a second time.
I’d found out her secret. But she hadn’t yet found out mine. How could she know that her man had likewise come to her with something of a past? Or even understand how wild I’d been? I’d had a nasty surprise, but her deception didn’t bother me, and even my surprise, once the numbness wore off, seemed silly. “The past doesn’t matter to me,” I declared heroically.
She bent her head, in what looked like grateful humility.
“I hate the past,” she said. “I’m becoming a new person.”
“That’s good,” I said magisterially. Any desire to learn more I put aside. I was neither angry nor glad. I loved her. I entered into my new life with all my heart.
Hours go by, and we don’t exchange a word. We’re like two peanuts in a shell. Every customer complains about the rise in prices, the overflowing sewers, the exhausting queues at the government food stores, and we exchange condolences. Sometimes they look at the woman and ask, “What makes you so silent, Umm Abbas?”
What have I got left to look forward to? She, at least, expects Abbas to return.
I began my married life with genuine ardor. Halima announced the news of her approaching motherhood, and I was annoyed at first, but it was only a passing feeling. When Abbas was a child I loved him passionately.
Then things began to change. It was Tariq Ramadan who came up to me one day and said, “Hamlet’s a tough role. Why don’t you dissolve this in a cup of tea?” That was the beginning of a mad course. The man who cared about nothing was taken in. As time passed, the springs of life dried up and finally all joy was throttled in the grip of a crisis.
“Is this what you want? To blow you earnings on poison and leave me to face life on my own?” Halima’s voice was now as disgusting to me as the stench of backed-up sewers. We’d become like two bare trees. Hunger was knocking at the old house’s door.
I was relieved to be able to say to her one day, “The end is in sight.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’ll fix up the east room upstairs as a place for entertainment.”
“What?”
“They’ll come every night. We won’t have to worry about being poor anymore.”
She gave me a look that boded ill, so I said, “Al-Hilaly, al-Agrudy, Shalaby, Ismail. You know. But we have to organize something that will keep them coming.”
“That’s a dangerous game.”
“But it’s a very shrewd one. The profits will be incredible.”
“Isn’t it enough for us that Tariq and Tahiya are staying here? We’re sinking to the lowest depths.”
“We are rising to new heights. You and your son can both shut up.”
“My son’s an angel. He’s the one I’m worried about.”
“Just let him try defying his father, damn him. You’re ruining him with your silly ideas.”
She gave in, but with resentment. She’d forgotten her wedding night. It’s strange: people always yearn to be free of government regulations, but they’re delighted to load shackles on themselves.
Here she is returning from her mission. Except for her services in the house, I’d have wished she’d never come back. There’s disappointment in her face and I don’t ask her any questions, ignoring her until finally she sighs, “His apartment is still locked up.” I’m glad to have a customer. It’s an excuse to avoid her. When he’s gone, she hisses at me, “Do something.”
My mind isn’t with her: it’s busy pondering how the government could throw us into prison for doing what it practices itself quite openly. Don’t they operate gambling houses? Don’t they promote brothels for their guests? I’m full of admiration for them. It isn’t operations like that that drive me to rebel. It’s the hypocritical injustice.
“Go and see al-Hilaly again,” the woman says in a louder voice.
“Go yourself!” I say sarcastically. “You know him better than I do.”
“God have mercy on your mother!” she says, stung to fury.
“At least she wasn’t a hypocrite like you.”
Then she sighs, “You don’t love your son. You never loved him.”
“I don’t like hypocrites. But then, again, I don’t deny he helped us.”
She turns her back on me, muttering, “Where are you, Abbas?”
Where’s Sirhan al-Hilaly? He’d gone out and hadn’t come back. He was hardly likely to have gone to sleep in the bathroom. Meanwhile the gambling was still going on, and I was raking my percentage of the winnings after every round. Wasn’t it time for Halima to serve drinks? Where was she? “Where’s our producer?” I asked.
Everyone was busy with his cards and no one answered me. Was Tariq giving me a funny look? Halima should bring the drinks. “Halima!”
No answer. I couldn’t leave my place or I’d be robbed. “Halima!” I shouted at the top of my voice. A little while later she appeared.
“Where were you?”
“I fell asleep.”
“Make some drinks. And take my place until I come back.”
I left the card room. Downstairs I found Abbas. “What woke you up at this hour?” I asked him.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Have you seen Sirhan al-Hilaly?”
“He left the house.”
“When?”
“A while ago. I don’t know exactly when.”
“Did your mother see him?”
“I don’t know.”
Why had he left? Why was the boy looking at me so quietly, with such despair in his eyes? I smelled something fishy. I may be many things, but I’m not a sucker. When there was nothing left in the house but cigarette butts and empty glasses, I gave the woman a long accusing look and then confronted her: “What went on behind my back?” Staring back disdainfully, she ignored my question altogether. “Did Abbas see?” She still didn’t answer, and her silence irritated me all the more. “He’s the one,” I said, “who gave you the job. Everything has its price, that’s what concerns me.” She stamped her feet with fury. “As for you, though,” I went on, “you aren’t worth being jealous over.”
“You’re the lowest kind of vermin,” she snarled, marching off to her room.
I guffawed. “Except for one little worm!”
She’s returned from another outing. I hope you suffer more and go even crazier. Standing facing me in the shop, she says, “Fuad Shalaby is quite sure.”
“Did you see him?”
“In the actors’ coffeehouse.”
“How does he know?”
“He said it’s just an author’s whim and that he’ll show up at the right time with a new play in hand.”
“A few words of comfort to a poor, infantile madwoman.”
She dragged her chair into the farthest corner of the shop and sat there talking to herself. “If God had only willed it! He could have given me better luck. But He threw me into the arms of a junkie.”
“That’s what happens to a man when he marries a whore.”
“God have mercy on your mother! When Abbas comes back I’m going to live with him.”
“I hope he returns, then, for my sake.”
“Who’d ever imagine you’re his father?”
“Any boy who’s killed his wife and thrown his own parents in jail is my son and I’m proud of him!”
“He’s an angel. And he’s the product of my upbringing.”
I wish she’d talk herself into a straitjacket.
The karate chop that detective gave me on the neck. The punch that made my nose bleed. The raid was like an earthquake. It flattened everything, even Sirhan al-Hilaly: he was so frightened he just stood there blinking. And the savings we’d sold our souls for—confiscated. My God, it was awful!
What the devil was going on out in the hall?
I left my room to find Tariq and Abbas fighting, and Halima screaming.
“What’s this nonsense?” I roared.
“It’s ludicrous!” Tariq shouted. “Mama’s boy is going to marry Tahiya!”
Everything seemed ludicrous, alien, incompatible with the euphoria beginning to rise from the drug I’d just taken.
“What kind of lunacy is this?” Halima shouted. “She’s ten years older than you!”
Tariq spat out threats so vehemently that saliva was sprayed in every direction.
“Don’t make matters worse,” Halima pleaded.
“I’ll bring destruction on this house,” Tariq shouted, “and everyone in it!” Whatever excitement I could have felt had receded. All I could muster was scorn and indifference, but before I could express anything, Halima told Tariq to take his clothes and get out.
“Behind my back!” he yelled. “In this filthy house!”
“It’s your presence that makes it filthy,” came my rejoinder, in so calm a tone that it sounded very strange in this stormy atmosphere. He didn’t bother to look at me.
Then Halima asked Abbas, “Is it true, what he says?”
“We’ve reached an understanding,” said Mama’s boy.
“Why weren’t you considerate enough to consult us?” I said with lofty indifference and, getting no response, went on: “Will her salary be sufficient for running a home?”
“I’m going to take your place as the company’s prompter.”
“From author to prompter?”
“There’s no inconsistency between the two.”
“My son’s gone mad!” cried Halima convulsively. Then she told Tariq, “Don’t you act like a crazy fool, too.”
He began making threats again, whereupon she yelled, “Get out of our house!”
“I’ll stay here until Doomsday!” came his parting shot. Exit Tariq, leaving the scene to the Noble Family. I looked maliciously from one to the other, enjoying myself.
“I don’t even know her except as this or that person’s mistress,” Halima said to Abbas, imploring him to reconsider.
I roared with laughter. “Your mother’s an expert. Listen and take note!”
She went on pleading with him. “Your father, as you well recognize, has become a good-for-nothing. You’re our only hope.”
“We’ll begin a new life,” said Abbas.
I laughed. “Why have you deceived us all this time with your high-flown morality?”
Abbas strode out, and she broke into sobs. In the depths of my heart I would welcome his final departure, exulting over the collapse of the alliance between him and his mother against me. His had always been a dissenting voice, and I was fed up with him. Let him leave, and the house would become calm and harmonious. I’d even been afraid of him at times. He personified the meaning of words I hold in contempt, the nature of acts I abhor.
Halima was bewailing her fate. “Alone! Alone!”
“Alone! Don’t pretend to be what you are not. In what way are we different? The same source, the same life, the same final goal!”
She stared at me with eyes that spoke loathing and contempt, then went to her room, with my loud, disdainful laugh following her all the way.
I look at her back over the mounds of peanuts, melon seeds, popcorn, and dried chickpeas heaped up in their bins along the counter. What kind of existence is this, so totally joyless, in this atmosphere laden with smoke and aversion? The boy’s return and his success should have been enough to give her new life.
For once, I was really feeling quite cheerful, while Halima was hiding her gloom.
Sirhan al-Hilaly had been asking, “Where are Tariq and Tahiya?”
“A severe shortage of players,” said Salim al-Agrudy.
I laughed. “Exciting news, Sirhan Bey: my crackpot son has married Tahiya.”
The whole table burst out laughing. “It appears,” said Ismail, “that your son is a real artist.”
“The kid,” exclaimed al-Hilaly.
“The marriage of the season!” added Shalaby.
“You’ll now find Tariq,” said Ismail, “wandering in the desert, like Magnun Layla.”*
The table burst out laughing again.
“But Halima isn’t joining in our happiness,” observed Sirhan.
“Halima is at a funeral,” she said, and went on mixing drinks.
“Who knows? Perhaps he’s found the happiness that evades the rest of us.”
“In spite of everything!” I laughed out loud.
“These days only mules are lucky enough to be happy,” Halima said bitterly.
“Will he go on trying to write plays?” said Sirhan.
“Of course,” Halima replied.
“Great. Tahiya will be able to supply him with lots of useful experience.”
After that I became absorbed in collecting the money. It was the first night I’d done business with no one to spy on me and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
—
The woman is out searching for her son. Alone in the shop, I wonder what kind of end he’s assigned her in the play. I forgot to ask about that. Has he lowered the curtain over the time we spent in prison? Over this shop? Customers come one after another. These people don’t realize how much I despise and detest them. Hypocrites! They carry on exactly the same way we did, then offer up prayers at the proper times. I’m better than they are. I’m liberated. I belong to the good old days, before religion and moral behavior became all the rage. I’m besieged in this shop, though, by an army of hypocrites, every man and woman. The state, too. That’s why it neglects the sewers, leaves us to line up in queues, and deluges us with bombast. And my son gives me a splitting headache with his silent reprimands, then commits betrayal and murder. If only I could get hold of a little opium. It would make everything bearable. Why were we so beguiled at the time of our engagement? Why did it whisper to us so insinuatingly of a sweetness that didn’t exist?
“I am indebted to Amm Ahmad Burgal for a joy that is almost more than a man can bear.”
“Don’t exaggerate.”
“Halima, who can be happier than a man whose heart has not beaten in vain?” Her radiant smile was like a flower in full bloom.
Where does she hide this sweetness now?
Ah, if only it were possible to go back in time as it is to go back in space. Somewhere in my primeval being is a soft spot that makes me want to cry over these ruins. Somewhere a Karam who no longer exists is weeping over the Halima of the past.
The woman has returned. She comes in and sits down without even a nod at me. I ignore her completely, and she doesn’t speak, but her eyes look serene. What has she found out? She’s no doubt withholding good news from me, the sow: if it were bad news she’d have poured it over my head the minute she came in. Has Abbas returned? I refuse to ask. Several minutes pass before she says, “We’re invited to see the play!” She hands me a printed notice.
My eyes come to rest on the name of the author: Abbas Younis. I’m carried away with pride. “Shall we go?”
“What a question!”
“We may get a shock when we see ourselves.”
“What matters is that we see Abbas’s play,” she says. “My heart tells me that the playwright is bound to appear.”
“Who knows?”
“My heart knows.”
We do our best to look presentable: I wear a suit that isn’t too bad, and Halima has rented a tailleur from Umm Hany. At the theater they receive us graciously.
“But I don’t see the playwright,” Halima says.
“He didn’t come,” says Sirhan al-Hilaly, “but I’ve told you enough.” So she’s met him and managed to get considerable news from him.
Since we’re early, we go to see Amm Ahmad Burgal, who gives us each—on the house—a sandwich and a cup of tea. “It’s like old times,” he remarks, but we neither smile nor comment. At curtain time we take our seats in the front row. The theater is packed.
“It’s a success,” observes Halima.
“You can’t judge until a week’s gone by.” Despite the ironic detachment I feel—how can I take a play seriously when life itself does not mean anything to me?—my nerves are on edge.
Ah, the curtain is rising—to reveal our house. Our house, no other. Was it al-Agrudy or Abbas who wanted it this way? The father, the mother, and the son. A brothel and a gambling den, that’s what it is. There’s more than crime and betrayal there. The stage mother is an uncontrollable whore, her relations with the director, the producer, the critic, and Tariq Ramadan follow one after another: and I look swiftly at Halima, whose breath is coming in rough gasps. It’s sheer hell. Now you can wallow in your son’s opinion of you. What he thinks of his father and mother is painfully clear. Who would have imagined that his serene head could hold all this devastation? I’m glad he sees his mother this way, glad he’s come out with what he really thinks of her. This piece of drama is his way of wreaking vengeance on me, punishing me for what I am.
But in this moment of scandal I experience a sense of triumph over both the mother and the son, over my two mortal enemies. He doesn’t understand me. He presents me as someone fallen, a man who has resorted to corruption in reaction to the challenge of reality. I’m not like that, you fool. I never had any stature to lose. I grew up untamed and free, watching the hypocrites, learning from them. That’s what you cannot understand. What’s the secret of your success? You flatter them, you pander to their sense of superiority. I spit on you and your evasions!
Thunder of wild applause.
We’re invited—as is customary—to the party in the cafeteria, in celebration of a successful play. “Shall we join them or leave?” I whisper.
“Why shouldn’t we join the party?” It’s no use pretending to be above it all, Halima. You don’t have the same wings I have. “He didn’t need to commit suicide,” she murmurs.
“What kind of an end did you expect for a murderer?” I ask, hoping to nettle her.
“He got a lot of sympathy.”
Sirhan al-Hilaly declares loudly, “My intuition says that it won’t be a flop,” and they begin drinking toasts.
“It’s brutal, of course,” says Salim al-Agrudy, “but it’s impressive.”
“It reminds the audience of their everyday hardships,” says Fuad Shalaby. “But it’s terribly pessimistic.”
“Pessimistic?” scoffs al-Hilaly.
“He needn’t have committed suicide. The audience’s hopes and aspirations were all pinned on him.”
“Don’t look at it as a suicide,” answers al-Hilaly.
“It’s just a way out for the new generation.”
“God protect all bastards!” roars al-Hilaly. And turning to Tariq Ramadan, he raises his glass and says, “To the revelation of a great actor, discovered in his fifties!”
“A discovery more significant,” Fuad Shalaby exclaims, “than finding an oil well!”
Al-Hilaly turns to us for a response, but I anticipate him and raise my glass. “A toast to the absent playwright.”
A surge of acclaim turns into a riot of drinking at the theater’s expense. I revel in scandals recalled about every man and woman present. Why were we the only ones imprisoned? Friends, libertines—drink a toast to me! I am your true symbol!
When we return to the old house, it is dawn and we have no wish to sleep. I light the charcoal in the heater in the hall, where the tiles are covered by an old Assiut rug, and Halima and I sit down, as if, in spite of our mutual aversion, we want to be together for a while. Which of us will start the conversation? How very difficult it is for us to talk to each other. We are always on guard.
“Did you like the play?” I ask.
“Very much. Very much.”
“And the subject?”
“What a silly question from someone who’s spent a lifetime in the theater!”
“Why do we always deceive ourselves? There’s no doubt about what he intended.”
“I won’t accept this silly way of thinking!”
“It was even more true than the real facts.”
“There’s no connection between the way I appear in that play and the real facts.” I can’t help chuckling at that, which annoys her. “It’s just a fantasy.”
“All of them just as we know them in real life?”
“An author is free to do as he likes, to keep some characters as they are in real life and change others, as he wishes. There were completely new elements in the plot.”
“Why did he portray you as he did?”
“That’s his business.”
“I thought he loved and respected you!”
“There’s no doubt about that.”
“You give yourself away with that bitchy look of yours!”
“I know I’m right.”
“Even Tariq!” I say with contempt. “I never imagined you’d sink to such depths.”
“Spare me your filthy thoughts.”
“If it hadn’t been for your fun and games on the side we’d have made a lot more money.”
“What about you? The fact is that he shows you much better than you really are, which proves that he really was using his imagination.” I laugh so loudly that she says, “Quiet! People returning from dawn prayer will hear you.”
“So what? That strange boy of yours. He threw us into prison.”
“How can you expect anyone to lead a decent life? You don’t follow any rules but your own.”
“But he claimed to be so perfect. That’s what gave me a pain in the neck!”
“He’s a wonderful boy. A well-known playwright. My son.” Outwardly, at least, she’s pleased with things.
“What I admire is his brutality!”
“When he comes back I’m going to leave this damn house and live with him.”
“This house? Where every room bears witness to our past glory?”
She leaves me, and I sit there alone holding my hands over the heater. I’d like to know more about my father. Was he one of these hypocrites? He died young, my mother sank very low, and I grew up her way, under the devil’s horns. But you, Abbas, are a dark horse.
How bored I am! I’m like a jinni shut up in a long-necked bottle. No room to maneuver.
I follow the play’s success with fascination, expecting the playwright to surface, even to come up with a new play, hoping that his success will change the course of my tedious life.
I make frequent visits to the theater to nose around for news; and one morning as I enter Amm Ahmad Burgal rushes up to me and takes me into the empty cafeteria. His downcast face alarms me. I sense that behind it lies bad news.
“Karam! I was just about to come see you.”
“Why! What’s wrong?”
“Abbas.”
“What about him? Say it, Amm Ahmad.”
“He disappeared from the pension in Helwan, the place where he was staying, and he’s left a strange message behind.”
“What message? Don’t you want to tell me?”
“A note, saying he was going to commit suicide.”
My heart sinks, pounding, like anyone else’s. We look at each other silently. “Have they found…?”
“No,” he says. “A search is being made, though.”
“Ah. Probably…who knows? But he wouldn’t have written the note, would he, if he hadn’t…?” My mouth says the words, my thoughts are astray.
“May the Lord help you.” He sounds like someone who believes the matter is ended.
“I must go to Helwan!”
“Sirhan Bey al-Hilaly has already gone.”
A futile, painful trip. There is nothing but the suicide note. Abbas has vanished, disappeared once and disappeared again. Finding his body will be the only proof of his suicide. Would he have written the note if he hadn’t really made up his mind to commit suicide?
“If he really wanted to commit suicide,” al-Hilaly muses, “why didn’t he do it in his room?”
“So you doubt the seriousness of his intentions?”
“Yes, I do.”
I do not return to the old house until evening. Halima isn’t there and I realize that she’s gone to the theater to find out why I’m so late. I close up the empty shop and sit in the hall waiting for her. An oppressive hour goes by before she comes in, her eyes ablaze with madness. We gaze at each other for a second, then she cries, “No! Even if he wanted to kill himself he wouldn’t do it! He couldn’t! He couldn’t kill himself! It’s not possible!”
Sinking into a sofa, she bursts into wild tears, slapping her cheeks with both hands.
*Refers to the theme of a love lyric by Gameel (d. 701), a poet from Medina. Magnun was the self-immolating lover and Layla his ever-inaccessible inamorata.