Shafi’i went down to open up the shop but did not find Rifaa there as he had expected. He did not call out for him. It was, he reasoned, wiser to affect coolness over his absence. The day passed, crawling slowly by, the light of the sun left the land of the alley and the sawdust mounted around Shafi’i’s feet with no sign of Rifaa. Evening came and he closed the shop, deeply troubled and angry. As usual, he headed for Shaldum’s coffeehouse and took his seat, and when he saw Gawad the poet coming in alone he was surprised and said, “So where is Rifaa?”
“I haven’t heard from him since yesterday,” the man replied, feeling his way to his bench.
“I haven’t seen him since he left us after lunch,” said Shafi’i uneasily.
Gawad raised his gray eyebrows and sat cross-legged on the bench, tucking the rebec by his side, wondering, “Did anything happen between you?”
Shafi’i did not answer him, but quickly got up and left the coffeehouse. Shaldum was taken aback by Shafi’i’s agitation and spoke up with amusement.
“Such a drama our alley hasn’t seen since Idris built his hut in the desert! When I was young, I used to run away from the alley for days and no one would ask about me. When I’d come back, my father, God rest his soul, would shout, ‘What brings you back here, you little bastard?”
“The point is, he wasn’t positive you were his son,” was Khunfis’ comment from where he was listening in the heart of the coffeehouse.
The place erupted in laughter, and most of them congratulated Khunfis on his elegant witticism. Shafi’i headed home, and when he asked Abda, “Has Rifaa come back?” she was seized with anxiety. She said that she had thought he was in the shop as usual. She grew even more concerned when he told her that Rifaa had not gone to the poet Gawad’s house.
“So where did he go?”
They heard Yasmina’s voice split the air as she called a fig seller. Abda gave Shafi’i a suspicious look, but the man shook his head tiredly and gave a brief bark of dry, ironic laughter. “A girl like that can figure men out!”
Shafi’i went to Yasmina’s house driven only by despair. He knocked at the door and Yasmina opened it herself. When she recognized him, she tossed her head in surprise and triumph. “You!” she said. “Well, well, how surprised should I be?”
The man lowered his eyes at her diaphanous blouse. “Is Rifaa here?” he asked dejectedly.
“Rifaa!” she said, even more surprised. “Why?” Shafi’i’s embarrassment mounted, and she indicated the inside of her house. “Look for him yourself.”
But the man turned to go.
“What, has he come of age today?” she asked sarcastically.
He heard her addressing someone within: “These days people are more worried about their boys than their girls.”
Shafi’i found Abda waiting for him in the passage.
“We’ll go to Muqattam Marketplace together,” she told him.
“That boy!” he shouted angrily. “This is what I get after a day of hard work?”
They took a mule-drawn cart to Muqattam Marketplace and asked about him at their old neighbors’, and they asked old friends, but discovered no trace of him. While he used to disappear for hours in the afternoon or early evening in seclusion or on the mountain, no one imagined that he would stay out in the desert until this hour of the night. They returned to the alley as they had left it, but in an even more anguished state. People gossiped about Rifaa’s disappearance, especially when it went on for days. He became a joke in the coffeehouse, at Yasmina’s house and throughout the Al Gabal neighborhood. Everyone ridiculed his parents’ anguish. Perhaps Umm Bekhatirha and old Gawad were the only ones who shared the parents’ grief. “Where has the boy gone?” asked Gawad. “He isn’t this kind of boy; if he were, we wouldn’t grieve.” Once when Batikha was drunk he yelled, “Little boy lost, good people!” as if he were calling a lost toddler; the whole alley laughed and the small boys repeated it. Abda was sick with grief. Shafi’i worked distractedly in his shop, his eyes red from lack of sleep. Khunfis’ wife, Zakia, stopped visiting Abda and ignored her in the street.
One day Shafi’i was absorbed in sawing a board when Yasmina shouted at him as she came in from an errand. “Shafi’i! Look.”
He saw her pointing to the end of the alley, into the desert. He left the shop, still holding the saw, to see what she was pointing to, and saw his son Rifaa walking shyly toward the building. He dropped the saw in front of the shop and hurried to his son, examining him with surprise. Then he snatched him by the upper arms.
“Rifaa!” he shouted. “Where have you been? Don’t you know what your absence meant for us? For your poor mother, who nearly died from worry?”
The boy said nothing, and his father perceived how emaciated he was.
“Were you ill?”
“No. Let me see my mother,” said Rifaa a little confusedly.
Yasmina came up to them and asked doubtfully, “But where were you?”
He did not look at her. Boys gathered around him, and his father led him home. They were quickly followed by Gawad and Umm Bekhatirha.
When his mother caught sight of him she jumped from the bed and clutched him to her. “God forgive you,” she said weakly. “How could you do this to your mother?”
He took her hand between his and sat her down on the bed, then sat beside her. “I’m sorry.”
His father lifted his glowering face, which hid the exulting relief within him as a black cloud conceals the moon, and scolded him. “All we were trying to do was make you happy!”
“Did you think we would force you to get married?” asked Abda, her eyes filled with tears.
“I am tired,” he said sadly.
“Where were you?” everyone asked at once.
“I was depressed with life, so I went to the desert. I had to be alone and to go to the desert. I never left the desert except to buy food.”
His father slapped his forehead and shouted, “Is that what normal people do?”
“Let him alone,” said Umm Bekhatirha kindly. “I know about these conditions. You shouldn’t force someone like him to do anything he doesn’t want to.”
“His happiness was our only hope, but fate took its course. How thin you are, my boy!”
“Tell me one thing,” said Shafi’i in exasperation. “Has anything like this ever happened in our alley before?”
“To me, there is nothing strange about him, Shafi’i, believe me,” said Umm Bekhatirha reprovingly. “He’s a wonderful boy.”
“We’re the talk of the whole alley,” Shafi’i muttered dejectedly.
“There’s no other boy in the whole alley like him!” said Umm Bekhatirha angrily.
“That’s the whole problem,” said Shafi’i.
“By the unity of God,” exclaimed Umm Bekhatirha, “you don’t know what you’re saying, or understand what others say!”