Adham sat in the estate office receiving new tenants one after the other. They stood in line, the first before him and the last at the rear of the large reception hall. When the last tenant’s turn came, Adham asked him rather brusquely, without raising his head from his ledger, “What’s your name?”
He was taken aback by the voice that said, “Idris Gabalawi.”
Adham looked up in fright and saw his brother standing before him, then bounded to his feet to defend himself, watching Idris warily. But Idris seemed different, even unrecognizable: shabby, quiet and humble, dejected and pliant, like a starched shirt soaked in water. Although this appearance disarmed Adham of all his old resentment, he was still not completely reassured.
“Idris!” he said in a tone of mingled caution and hope.
Idris hung his head and said, with unfamiliar gentleness, “Don’t worry. I’m only your guest in this house, if you can find it in your heart to let me.”
Were these sweet words really coming from Idris? Had his suffering refined him? Truly, this humility was just as uncanny as his depravity had been. And wasn’t receiving him as a guest an insult to Gabalawi? Still, he had not invited Idris, though he now found himself motioning him to sit by him. They sat together and exchanged curious gazes until Idris spoke.
“I hid in the crowd of tenants so that I could get to you alone.”
“Did anyone see you?” asked Adham uneasily.
“No one from the house, don’t worry about that. I haven’t come to cause you any trouble, but I need your sweet nature!”
Adham lowered his eyes from shame as blood rushed to his face.
“Maybe you’re shocked by the change in me. Maybe you’re wondering what’s happened to my arrogance and boasting. You must know that I have endured suffering few people could survive, but in spite of all that I’m not telling anyone but you. People like me can only forget their pride with kind people.”
“God bless you, and us—how your fate has ruined my life!”
“I should have known that all along, but anger had blinded me, and alcohol took away my dignity. Then the life of a vagrant and a thug finished off everything that was human in me—would you ever have thought this of your older brother?”
“Never—you were always a good brother and the best of men!”
“Those days are gone,” lamented Idris. “Now I’m worthless. I hang around the desert hauling this pregnant woman around with me, wrecking every place I go, making a living doing terrible things and being hateful.”
“You are tearing at my heart, Idris.”
“Forgive me, Adham. I’ve always known you to be like this. Didn’t I carry you around in my arms? Didn’t I watch you grow up from boyhood, and wasn’t I always aware of your nobility and wonderful qualities? What a terrible thing anger is!”
“Nothing is more terrible, Idris.”
Idris sighed and spoke as if to himself “With all I have done to you, there is no punishment too harsh for me.”
“God give you rest, Idris. Do you know, I always knew you’d come home? Even when our father was angriest at you, I spoke up for you.”
Idris smiled, showing rotten yellow teeth. “That’s what I always knew in my heart. I knew that if there was any hope of my father changing his mind, it would be on your account.”
“I can see God at work guiding your good soul—don’t you think the time has come for us to talk to Father?”
Idris shook his disheveled head in despair. “ ‘Older by a day, wiser by a year’—and I’m ten years older than you are, not just one. I know that our father can forgive anything except an insult from anyone. Father will never forgive me after what’s happened. I have no hope of ever going home to the mansion.”
This was perfectly true; this is what bothered Adham and depressed him. He murmured gloomily, “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Idris smiled again. “Don’t even think of giving me money, because I know how honestly you must run the estate—if you gave me a helping hand it would be your own money, and that I cannot accept. Today you’re a husband and tomorrow you’ll be a father. I haven’t come to you here driven by my poverty—I’ve come to tell you I’m sorry for the things I’ve done to hurt you, and to return your friendship. And I have something to ask.”
Adham looked at him attentively. “Tell me what you want, Idris.”
Idris moved his head closer to his brother as if he were afraid the walls would hear him. “I want to feel secure about my future—I’ve lost the present. I’m going to be a father, like you—what kind of a life will my children have?”
“I am at your command for anything I can do.”
Idris clapped Adham gratefully on the shoulder and said, “I want to know if our father is going to deprive me of my share of the inheritance.”
“How would I know that? But if you want to know what I think—”
“I’m not asking what you think.” Idris interrupted him restlessly. “I want to know what your father thinks.”
“You know that he never tells anyone what he’s thinking.”
“But he must have a record of his will with the estate deed.”
Adham shook his head but said nothing.
“Everything is in those documents,” urged Idris.
“I don’t know anything about them, and you know no one in our house knows anything about them. The work I do is completely under our father’s supervision.”
Idris transfixed him with a sad stare. “The estate documents are in a big book. I saw it once when I was small and asked what was in it. That was when he loved me the best. He said it was all about us, and wouldn’t talk about it or answer my questions about it. Now there is no question but my fate is decided in it.”
Adham felt cornered. “God knows,” he said.
“It’s in a secret room off of our father’s bedroom. You must have seen the little door at the end of the wall, on the left. It’s always locked, but the key is kept in a little silver box in the drawer of his bedside table. The big book is on the table in that narrow room.”
Adham raised his thin eyebrows in alarm. “What do you want?”
“Any peace of mind left for me in this world,” sighted Idris, “depends on finding out what is written about me in that book.”
Adham seemed alarmed. “It would be easier for me just to ask him what’s in the Ten Conditions!”
“He wouldn’t say—he’d get angry, and might think badly of you for asking, or get thinking about why you were asking in the first place, and he’ll get angry. I would hate for you to lose your father’s trust as punishment for acting charitably toward me. He certainly doesn’t want to broadcast his Ten Conditions—if he wanted us to know that, we would all know. The only sure way to the book is the one I’ve described to you. It will be very easy to do at dawn, when he goes out for his walk in the garden.”
Adham paled. “What a horrible thing to ask of me, Idris.”
Idris hid his frustration with a weak smile. “It’s not a crime for a son to read what concerns him in his father’s papers.”
“But you’re asking me to steal a secret that our father guards with his honor.”
Idris sighed audibly and said, “I said to myself when I decided to come to you, ‘There’s nothing harder than convincing Adham of something he considers contrary to his father’s will,’ but I was deluded by hope and thought, ‘Maybe he’ll do it if he sees how badly I need his help,’ and after all it’s no crime. It will go smoothly, and you’ll see that you can lift a soul from Hell at no cost to yourself.”
“May God keep us from evil!”
“Amen—but I’m begging you to save me from torment!”
Adham rose anxiously and was followed by Idris, who showed him a smile signaling his hopeless surrender.
“I have really troubled you, Adham; one of the things about my wretchedness is that I bring trouble to everyone I meet, one way or another. Idris is still a cruel curse.”
“How much it pains me, not being able to help you—it is the worst pain I know.”
Idris came near him and placed his hand tenderly on Adham’s shoulder, then kissed him affectionately on the forehead. “I’m the only one responsible for my hard life—why should I ask more of you than you’re capable of? Let me leave you in peace—what will be, will be.”
And with that, Idris left.