What are you going to do? For how long will you think and wait? What are you waiting for? Your relatives didn’t believe you, so who will believe you? What good is sorrow? What good is sitting alone by Hind’s Rock? The stars don’t answer, neither do the darkness and the moon. Do you hope to meet the servant again? What new thing do you expect from him? You stare into the darkness, around the site where, it is said, your ancestor met Gabal. You stood for such a long time by the huge wall, at the place where, it is said, he spoke to Rifaa. But you did not see him or hear his voice, and his servant has not returned. What are you going to do? This question will stalk you the way the desert sun stalks shepherds. It will constantly tear away your peace of mind and the pleasures of happiness. Gabal was like you, but he triumphed. Rifaa knew his own way, and kept to it until he was murdered, then he triumphed. What are you going to do?
“How you neglect your beautiful little girl,” Qamar chided him. “She cries, and you ignore her. She plays, but you don’t play with her.”
He smiled at the little face, scenting her sweet breath, which soothed the inferno of his thoughts. “She’s so dear!” he said.
“Even the hour we do spend together, you’re not really there—like we’re no longer part of your world.”
He moved closer to her on the couch, where they all sat, and kissed her cheek, then kissed the baby’s face all over. “Don’t you see how much I need you?” he said.
“You have my whole heart and all the love, affection and friendship in it, but you have to be easier on yourself.”
She lifted the child into his arms, and he cuddled and rocked her tenderly, listening to her otherworldly chants. Suddenly he said, “If God gives me victory, I will not exclude women from getting income from the estate.”
“But the estate is only for males, not females,” said Qamar in surprise.
He gazed into the dark eyes in the little face. “My ancestor said, through his servant, that the estate belongs to everyone, and women are half our alley. It’s amazing our alley doesn’t respect women, but it will respect them when it respects justice and mercy.”
Love and solicitude were clear in Qamar’s eyes. She said to herself: He talks about victory, but where is this victory? How she longed to advise him to take a safe, peaceful course, but her courage let her down. She wondered what the future held for them. Would she have the luck of Shafiqa, Gabal’s wife, or be afflicted with Abda’s fate—or Rifaa’s! Gooseflesh covered her body, and she looked away lest he see anything questionable in her eyes.
When Sadeq and Hassan came to go to the coffeehouse with Qassem, he suggested that they visit Yahya so that he might introduce them. When they reached his hut they found him smoking the pipe, and the air redolent of the rich savor of hashish. Qassem introduced his friends, and they all sat down in the entryway of the hut, where the full moon beamed like happiness through a small window.
Yahya looked at the three faces in mild astonishment, as if asking: Are these really the ones who are going to turn the alley upside down? He repeated to Qassem what he had already told him. “Be careful that no one should know your secret until you’re ready.”
They had a pleasant round at the pipe. The bright moonlight from the window illuminated Qassem’s head and fell on Sadeq’s shoulder, and the coals blazed in the brazier in the dim hall of the hut.
“How should I get ready?”
The old man laughed. “Anyone chosen by Gabalawi has no need to ask the opinion of an old man like me!” he joked.
There was silence broken only by the gurgle of the pipe, until the old man spoke up again. “You have your uncle, and your wife’s uncle. There’s no good or harm in your uncle, but you can bring the other one over to your side if you promise him something.”
“What should I promise him?”
“Promise to make him overseer of the Desert Rats.”
“No one is to be above anyone else when it comes to the estate revenue,” said Sadeq loyally. “It is everyone’s legacy on the basis of equality. That’s what Gabalawi said.”
“What a strange old man!” chuckled Yahya. “It was power with Gabal, and mercy with Rifaa, and now he has something else!”
“He owns the estate,” said Qassem. “He has the right to substitute or change the Ten Conditions!”
“But you have a terrible task, my boy. It concerns the whole alley, not just any neighborhood.”
“That’s what Gabalawi wanted.”
Yahya had a long fit of coughing that left him weak, and Hassan volunteered to take over handling the pipe. The man stretched his legs out and sighed deeply. “So will you use force, like Gabal, or love, like Rifaa?”
Qassem’s hand explored his turban. “Force when necessary, and love at all times.”
Yahya nodded and smiled. “The only problem you have is your concern with the estate. That will cause you endless trouble.”
“How can people live without the estate?”
“The same way Rifaa did,” said the old man grandly.
“He lived with the help of his father and his friends,” said Qassem seriously, but politely. “He left behind him friends not one of whom could imitate him. The fact is that our miserable alley needs cleanness and dignity.”
“Do those come only with the estate?”
“Yes, sir, with the estate and with an end to gang rule. That is how to win the respect that Gabal won for his neighborhood, and the love that Rifaa called for—and the happiness that Adham dreamed of.”
“What have you left for the one coming after you?” laughed Yahya.
Qassem thought this over for a while. “If God gives me victory, the alley will not need anyone else after me.”
The pipe made the rounds like an angel in a dream, the water singing in its glass filter. Yahya yawned and asked, “What will be left for any one of you if the estate is divided out equally?”
“But we want the estate in order to capitalize on it, and that way the alley will be like an extension of the mansion!” said Sadeq.
“What kind of preparations have you made?”
The radiant moon disappeared behind a passing cloud, and they sat in darkness, but within a minute the radiant light reappeared.
Yahya looked at Hassan’s burly body. “Can your cousin defeat the gangsters?”
“I’m seriously thinking of consulting an attorney,” Qassem suddenly said.
“What attorney will agree to threaten Rifaat the overseer and his protectors?” yelled Yahya.
Despondent thoughts invaded their drugged stupor. The three friends went home, discouraged. Qassem suffered terribly in his solitude; he was so driven by worry and care that one day Qamar told him, “We shouldn’t be so worried about people’s happiness that we make ourselves miserable!”
“I have to be worthy of the good opinion in which I’m held,” he said sharply.
What are you going to do? Why don’t you step back from the edge of the abyss? The abyss of despair, filled with silence and stagnation, a graveyard of dreams covered with ashes. His loveliest memories and favorite melodies had turned against him. Tomorrow was already wrapped in yesterday’s shroud.
But one day he summoned Sadeq and Hassan. “It’s time to begin,” he told them.
Their faces were jubilant.
“Tell us,” Hassan said.
“I’ve done my thinking, and come to a decision. We are going to set up an exercise club!” Surprise tied their tongues, but he smiled. “We’ll have it in the courtyard of my house. Exercising is a big pastime in most of the neighborhoods.”
“What does that have to do with our mission?”
“Like a weight-lifting club? What does that have to do with our mission?” asked Sadeq in his turn.
Qassem’s eyes were brilliant. “The young will come to us, in love with strength and games, and we will choose the most trustworthy and mature of them.”
Their eyes widened.
“We’ll be a team—and what a team we’ll be!”
“Yes. And we’ll get young men from Gabal, and from Rifaa!”
They were happy enough to sing, and as he walked, Qassem almost seemed to dance.