Bayoumi, protector of the alley, stood behind the gate of his back garden that opened onto the desert. The night was young, and the man watched and listened. When a hand knocked softly at the gate, he opened it and a woman slipped into the garden; in her black cloak and veil, she was like a part of the night itself. He took her hand and led her through the garden paths, avoiding the house, until they came to the reception hall, where he pushed open the door and entered; she followed. He lit a candle and put it on a windowsill, and the hall seemed not to be there. The sofas stood along the sides, and in the center, inside a circle of cushions, lay a wide tray holding a water pipe and its accessories. The woman threw off her cloak and veil, and Bayoumi drew her to him with a warmth that penetrated to her bones until she gave him a pleading look. She broke nimbly away from him and he sat down on a cushion and laughed softly. He began to probe the coal ashes with his fingers until he found a live coal. She sat beside him and kissed his ear, pointing to the pipe. “I’d nearly forgotten that smell.”
He started to kiss her cheek and neck profusely, then tossed a lump of hashish in her lap.
“No one smokes this in our alley but the overseer and little old me!”
Sounds of a furious battle, of cursing, the blows of sticks crashing together and breaking glass sounded from the alley; then running footsteps, a woman’s shrieks and the barking of a dog. Worried curiosity lit up the woman’s eyes, but the man, oblivious, began to cut up the lump of hashish.
“It wasn’t easy, my coming here,” she said. “I go from the alley to Gamaliya, so no one will see me, and from Gamaliya to al-Darasa, and from al-Darasa to the desert, until I get to your back door.”
He bent over her, not interrupting the work of his hands, and smelled her armpit delightedly. “I have no problem visiting you in your house.”
“If you do, none of the cowards will give you any trouble.” She smiled. “Even Batikha will pat down the sand for you to walk on. Then they’ll work off their anger on me.” She toyed with his thick mustache and said playfully, “But you sneak out to this place for fear of your wife.”
He dropped the lump and encircled her with his arm, pulling her close so tightly that she moaned.
“God help us from the love of gangsters!” she whispered.
He released her as he lifted his head and threw out his chest like a rooster. “There is only one gangster. The rest are his children.”
She played with the chest hair that curled out of his shirt collar, and said, “Gangster over others but not over me.”
He tweaked her breasts lightly. “You are the crown on my head.” He reached behind the tray and grasped a jug. “Great stuff!”
“It has a strong odor my dear husband might smell,” she said regretfully.
He drank deeply from the jug until he had enough, and lined up the hashish, frowning. “Some kind of a husband he is! I’ve seen him so many times, wandering around like a lunatic—the first-ever male exorcist in this bizarre alley!”
“I owe him my life,” she said, watching him smoke. “That’s why I’m patient with him. There’s no harm in him, and it’s so easy to fool him.”
He offered her the pipe and she took the stem in her mouth eagerly and sucked at it avidly, exhaling the smoke with her eyes closed, her senses already stuporous. Then he took his turn smoking, drawing intermittent puffs and murmuring between each puff.
“Leave him…he’s wasting…your time…stupid…boy.”
She shrugged disparagingly. “My husband has nothing to do in this world but rid poor people of demons.”
“And you don’t rid him of anything?”
“Never, I swear! One look at his face and there’s nothing to be said.”
“Not even once a month?”
“Not even once a year—he’s distracted from his wife by other people’s demons!”
“So let the demons keep him! What good does it do him?”
She shook her head in confusion. “None. If it weren’t for his father we would have died of starvation by now. He thinks he’s obliged to please the poor people and save them.”
“And who obligated him?”
“He says this is what Gabalawi wants his children to do.”
Interest shone in the slits of Bayoumi’s eyes, and he set the pipe down on the tray. “He said that’s what Gabalawi wants?”
“Yes.”
“Who told him what Gabalawi wants?”
The woman felt anxious and annoyed—she was afraid of spoiling the mood or discussing something dangerous. “That’s how he interprets his sayings as the poets sing them.”
He began to finger a new lump of hashish. “What a bitch of an alley, and the Al Gabal are the worst part of it—they produce most of these quacks, and spread strange news about the estate and the Ten Conditions, as if Gabalawi were their ancestor alone. Yesterday their quack Gabal came with a lie and used it to steal the estate, and today this simpleton is interpreting things that cannot be interpreted. He’ll say that he heard them from Gabalawi himself.”
“All he claims to do is expel demons from poor people,” she said uneasily.
The gangster snorted contemptuously. “For all we know, the estate could have a demon!” He raised his voice to a pitch that did not suit the secrecy of their meeting. “Gabalawi is dead or as good as dead, you bastards!”
Yasmina was afraid of ruining the mood and missing this opportunity. She moved her hand to her dress and then slowly took it off. The man’s features softened after their sullenness, and he gazed at her with gleaming eyes.