The days following the marriage saw tireless activity in Rifaa’s life. He hardly ever went near the shop, and had it not been for the love and pity of his father he would have had nothing to live on. He invited every one of the Al Gabal he met to rely on him to cleanse them of their demons and secure for them a pure happiness they had never dreamed of before. The Al Gabal whispered that Rifaa bin Shafi’i was not right in the head and had to be considered hopelessly insane. Some pointed to his peculiar behavior. Others said it was because of his marriage to a woman like Yasmina, and people talked of nothing else in the coffeehouse, in homes, among the handcarts and in the drug dens. And how shocked Umm Bekhatirha was when Rifaa bowed down to whisper in her ear, with his characteristic sweetness, “Won’t you allow me to save you?”
“Who told you I have an impure demon?” she asked, smiting her chest. “Is that what you think of the woman who loved you as a son?”
“I offer my services only to people I love and respect,” he said earnestly. “You are a source of goodness and holiness, but you are not free of a covetousness that drives you to traffic in sick people. If you were saved from this master of yours, you would do good free of charge!”
The woman could not refrain from laughing.
“Do you want to ruin me completely? God forgive you, Rifaa.”
People retold Umm Bekhatirha’s story with shouts of laughter; even Shafi’i laughed mirthlessly at it, though Rifaa had an answer for him.
“Even you yourself need me, Father, and it is only right that I should start with you.”
The man shook his head sadly and pounded the nails with a force that betrayed his irritation. “God give me patience,” he said.
The youth tried to sway him, but the man asked in a tormented tone, “Isn’t it bad enough that you’ve made us the talk of the alley?”
Rifaa retreated dispiritedly to a corner of the shop under his father’s skeptical gaze.
“Seriously,” Shafi’i asked, “did you make the same appeal to your wife that you made to us?”
“She was like you two,” said Rifaa regretfully. “She did not want happiness.”
Rifaa went out to Shaldum’s den in the dilapidated ruin behind the coffeehouse, and found Shaldum, Higazi, Burhoum, Farhat, Hanura and Zaituna around the hearth. They looked up at him curiously.
“Welcome to Shafi’i’s boy,” said Shaldum. “So marriage has taught you the value of a drug den?”
Rifaa laid a little package of kunafa pastry on the table and took a seat. “I brought you this as a gift.”
“Welcome—thank you,” said Shaldum, passing the pipe.
But Burhoum laughed and spoke up boorishly. “And then he’s going to throw us an exorcism party to cleanse us of our demons!”
“Your wife has a demon called Bayoumi,” called Zaituna with an angry nasal twang, drilling Rifaa with a hateful stare. “Cleanse her if you can!”
The men gasped, and all their faces plainly showed embarrassment. Zaituna pointed to his smashed nose. “Thanks to him I lost my nose.”
Rifaa did not seem angered. Farhat looked at him sadly. “Your father is a good man and a fine carpenter, but when you act this way you hurt him and humiliate him. The man had scarcely got over your marriage when you abandoned the shop to go and save people from demons! May God heal you, my boy.”
“I am not sick. I want you all to be happy.”
Ziatuna held a draw from the pipe for a long moment, staring harshly at Rifaa, then spat out the smoke and asked, “Who told you we were unhappy?”
“We are not as our ancestor wanted us to be.”
Farhat laughed. “Leave our ancestor alone. How do you know he hasn’t forgotten us?”
Zaituna fixed him with a look of contemptuous rage, but Higazi kicked him and warned, “Respect this group—don’t even think of starting trouble!” He wanted to improve the general mood, so he nodded and gave his friends a special cue, and they began to sing.
My sweetheart’s ship is coming across the water.
How sadly the sails hang over the water.
Rifaa left, and some of them looked sorrowfully after him. He went back to his house, his heart broken. Yasmina met him with a serene smile. She used to scold him for the way he acted, which made him—and, by extension, her—something of a joke; but she had given up scolding him as futile. She endured her life, though she did not know how it would come out, and even handled it with grace. Someone came up to the door and knocked; it was Khunfis, protector of the Al Gabal, and he came in without being asked. Rifaa welcomed him, and Khunfis clapped him on the shoulder with a hand as powerful as a mad dog’s jaws. Without preliminaries, Khunfis asked, “What did you say about the estate at Shaldum’s?”
Yasmina was frightened and the blood drained from her face, but Rifaa, though he was like a bird in an eagle’s talons, spoke calmly. “I said our ancestor wants us to be happy.”
Khunfis gave him a violent shake. “Who told you that?”
“It’s one of the things he told Gabal.”
“He talked to Gabal about the estate,” said Khunfis, gripping his shoulder even more tightly.
“The estate means nothing to me,” Rifaa replied. Bearing the pain exhausted him. “The happiness I have been unable to give anyone yet has nothing to do with the estate, or with liquor or hashish. I have said that everywhere in the Al Gabal neighborhood and everyone heard me say it.”
He shook him again. “Your father used to be rebellious, but then he was sorry. Don’t be like him or I’ll crush you like a bedbug.” He gave Rifaa a shove that landed him on his back on the sofa, then left.
Yasmina ran to help Rifaa up and massage the shoulder he had turned his head to in pain. He seemed half conscious, and murmured as if to himself. “It was my grandfather’s voice I heard.”
She watched his face with pity and terror, wondering if he had truly lost his mind. She did not repeat what he had said; she was assailed by an anxiety she had never felt before.
One day when he left the house his path was blocked by a woman not of the Al Gabal. “Good morning, Rifaa, sir,” she said hopefully.
The note of respect in her voice took him by surprise, as did the “sir.” “What do you want?” he asked.
“I have a son who is disturbed,” she said submissively. “Please cure him!”
Every one of the Al Gabal despised the people of the alley, and he hated the idea of putting himself in the service of this woman; it would double his own people’s contempt for him. “Couldn’t you find an exorcist in the alley?”
“Of course,” she said, choking up, “but I’m a poor woman.”
His heart was touched, and he was fascinated that she had turned to him, he who had met with only derision and contempt from his own people. He looked at her resolutely. “I am yours to command,” he said.