The only place in the desert that offered shelter from the raging sun was Hind’s Rock. That is where Qassem sat on the ground with no companions but the sheep. He wore a clean blue galabiya—as clean as a shepherd’s galabiya can be—with a thick turban to shield his head from the sun, and old, frayed leather slippers on his feet. He was lost in his thoughts part of the time, and the rest of the time watched the ewes, rams, nanny goats and kids. His staff lay at his side. Muqattam loomed near, looking huge and gloomy from where he sat, as if he were the sole creature under the limpid dome, challenging the wrath of the sun, pained but unyielding. The desert rolled on to the horizon, burdened with heavy silence and burning air. When he had worn out his thoughts, dreams and youthful, evanescent suppositions, his gaze roamed to the flock, taking in their play and sport, their fights and their romances, their movement and their idleness, especially the kids and baby lambs, who excited his love and sentimentality. He marveled at their black eyes; their stares made his heart beat faster, as if they were speaking to him. He spoke to them in turn, and compared the affectionate care he gave them with the insults the people of the alley got from the arrogant gangsters. He paid no attention to the condescending view of shepherds in the alley, convinced from the very start that a shepherd was better than a bully, a phony or a beggar. Anyway, he loved the desert and the pure air, and enjoyed the companionship of the Muqattam, Hind’s Rock and the dome of the sky with its strange moods—and shepherding always brought him to Yahya. The first time Yahya saw him as a shepherd, he asked, “From a potato seller to a shepherd?”
“Why not, sir?” asked Qassem, not embarrassed. “It’s a job that hundreds of idle men in my neighborhood begrudge me!”
“Why did your uncle let you go?”
“My cousin Hassan got bigger, and he has more right to go with Uncle on his rounds than I do. And tending sheep is better than begging!”
Not a day passed without him visiting his teacher. He loved him, and was enthralled by his conversation; he had found in him a man immersed in the lore of his alley, its present and its past. He knew everything the poets sang of and more, and even knew what was often deliberately ignored. “I tend sheep from every neighborhood,” Qassem told Yahya. “I have sheep from Gabal, and some from Rifaa, and from the rich people in our own neighborhood. And the marvel is that they all graze together in brotherhood, something unknown among their bigoted owners in our alley!” He also told him that “Humam was a shepherd. And who are the people that despise shepherds? Beggars and slobs, and the unemployed. At the same time, they respect the gangsters, and what are the gangsters but shameless, bloodthirsty thieves. God forgive the children of the alley!”
Once, he told him jokingly, “I’m poor and happy. I don’t lift my hand to hurt anyone, and even my sheep get only affection from me. So, am I not like Rifaa?”
“Rifaa! You, like Rifaa!” The man stared at him in horror. “Rifaa spent his life saving his brothers from demons, so that they could be good!” Then the old man laughed. “You are a boy crazy about women, you lurk in the dark for the desert women!”
“Is there something wrong with that, sir?”
“It’s your own business, but don’t say you’re like Rifaa!”
Qassem considered this a moment, then said, “Wasn’t Gabal like Rifaa, one of the good children of Gabalawi? He was, sir, and he fell in love and married, and he gained his people’s rights in the estate, and distributed them justly.”
“But his only goal was the estate!” said Yahya sharply.
The boy thought this over and then said plainly, “But civility, justice and the law were other goals of his.”
“So you think Gabal is better than Rifaa?” asked Yahya indignantly.
His dark eyes filled with confusion, and Qassem hesitated for a long time before saying, “They were both good men, and how rare good people are in our alley. Adham, Humam, Gabal and Rifaa—that’s it. But gangsters—we have so many!”
“And Adham died heartsick, Humam was murdered and Rifaa was murdered!” said Yahya sadly.
Those were indeed the good men the alley had produced. Brilliant lives and bad ends, Qassem whispered to himself as he sat in the shadow of the great rock. A burning desire to be like them rose in his heart. The gangsters—how degraded their deeds were. A mysterious sadness entered him, and unease gripped him. He said to himself, to allay his fear: How many people, how many deeds, this rock has witnessed—the passion of Qadri and Hind, the murder of Humam, the meeting of Gabal and Gabalawi, Rifaa’s talk with his ancestor. But where were the deeds and where were the people? Only fond memories, but they were more precious than a flock of goats and sheep! And this rock witnesses our great ancestor when he roams these horizons all alone, doing his own will, as wrongdoers are terrified. So how is he, in his isolation?
At the end of the day he got up, stretched and yawned. He whistled melodiously and waved his staff. The sheep bleated and began to gather and troop off in a mass toward town. He felt hungry; he had eaten nothing all day long but a small fish and a small loaf of bread, but a good dinner awaited him at his uncle’s house. He quickened his pace until he caught the first glimpse from afar of the mansion and its high walls, its shuttered windows and the tops of the trees. What was the garden like, the garden that the poets sang of, for which Adham had died pining? As he drew closer to the alley, its chaotic noise reached his ears. He passed opposite the great wall into the alley as the air filled with darkness. He made his way between mobs of frolicking boys flinging mud at one another, his ears assaulted by peddlers’ cries, women’s gossip, the sarcasm and obscenities of the idle, the shrieks of lunatics, and the bells on the overseer’s vehicle, while his nose was filled with the strong smell of tobacco laced with honey, rancid garbage and the lovely aroma of garlic and coriander sauce. He ascended to the buildings of Gabal to bring its sheep home and did the same in Rifaa, and then had only one ewe left, belonging to Lady Qamar, the only lady who owned property in the Desert Rats’ neighborhood. She lived in a two-story house with a medium-size courtyard; a palm tree grew in the center, and a guava tree in the corner. He walked into the courtyard driving Naama in front of him, meeting the slave woman, Sakina, with her frizzy, graying hair on his way. He greeted her, and she greeted him back with a smile. “How is Naama?” she asked in her coppery voice.
He told her how much he liked the ewe, and left it with her, turning back, when the lady of the house appeared, entering the courtyard from the alley. She stood before him, her cloak wrapped around her full body, her dark eyes looking at him tenderly over the black veil that covered her lower face. He stood aside and averted his gaze, and she spoke to him with refined amiability.
“Good evening.”
“Good evening, ma’am.”
The woman now walked more slowly, looking carefully at Naama, and then at him. “Naama is getting fatter every day, thanks to you!”
“Thanks to God, and your good care,” he said, touched by her affectionate looks even more than by her kind words.
“Give him some dinner,” said Lady Qamar, turning to Sakina.
He lifted his hands to his head in thanks. “You’re very kind, ma’am.”
He was rewarded with another look from her as he said goodbye and left. He went away deeply moved by her warmth and sympathy, as he was whenever good luck permitted him to meet her. It was the kind of sympathy he had never experienced, except in what he had sometimes heard of the mother’s love he had never known. If his mother had lived, today she would be about the same age as this woman in her forties. How strange this affection seemed in his alley, so proud of its power and violence. Even more wonderful was her reticent beauty and the copious delight it imparted to his soul. It was nothing like his passionate adventures in the desert, with their blind, raging hunger and brief melancholy satisfaction. He hurried to his uncle’s house, his staff over his shoulder, hardly able to see what was in front of him, so great was his excitement. He found his uncle’s family assembled on the balcony overlooking the courtyard, waiting for him. He sat with the three of them around the low table which held a meal of falafel, leeks and watermelon. Hassan, now sixteen, was so tall and strong that Zachary dreamed of seeing him someday become protector of the Desert Rats. When dinner was ended, the woman cleared the table, Zachary went out and the two friends stayed on the balcony until a voice called to them from the courtyard: “Qassem!”
They both got up, and Qassem answered, “We’re coming, Sadeq.”
Sadeq met them, radiant with joy. He was about the same age and height as Qassem, but slenderer. He worked as an assistant to a coppersmith in the first shop in the Desert Rats’ neighborhood, close to Gamaliya. The friends headed for the Dingil Coffeehouse, and as they entered they were spotted by Taza the poet, who sat cross-legged on his bench toward the front. Sawaris sat near Dingil at the entrance, and the young men went over to the gangster and greeted him humbly despite the pride Qassem and Hassan felt at being related to him. They took their seats on one bench, and a boy speedily came to take their usual order; Qassem loved a pipe and mint tea. Sawaris surveyed Qassem disdainfully and asked bluntly, “What’s with you, boy, all neat like a girl?”
Qassem blushed. “There’s nothing wrong with being clean and neat, sir,” he said apologetically.
“At your age it’s stupid!” sneered Sawaris.
Silence fell in the coffeehouse, as if its customers, silverware and walls were all listening in on the gangster. Sadeq looked kindly at his friend, knowing how easily hurt his feelings were, and Hassan hid his face behind his glass of ginger drink, so that the gangster would not see his anger. Taza took up his rebec and began to pluck melodies from its strings; after saluting Rifaat the overseer, Lahita the gangster, and Sawaris, protector of this neighborhood, he began his chant.
“Adham imagined that he heard footfalls. Slow, heavy footfalls that stirred misty memories, as a strong, sweet smell may defy perception and definition. He turned his face to the entrance of the hut and saw the door open, then saw it blocked by a huge form. He started in surprise, and peered through the dark, his hopes enclosed by fears, then a deep moan escaped him. ‘Father?’ he murmured. He seemed to be hearing the old voice: ‘Good evening, Adham.’ His eyes swam with tears. He tried to get up but could not. He felt a delight, a bliss that he had not known in twenty years.”