Qassem went back to his house at midnight, but he found Qamar awake and waiting for him. She was even more than usually affectionate and attentive, and it hurt him to think of her waiting up for him until that hour. Then he saw that her eyes were tired and red after crying, much as the sun leaves an aurora.
“Have you been crying?” he asked dispiritedly.
She did not answer, as if absorbed in the cup of warm milk she was preparing for him, so he spoke again. “Shaaban’s death has upset all of us. God rest his soul.”
She answered him suddenly. “I already did my crying for Shaaban, but now I was crying when I thought of that man attacking you. You’re the last person who deserves to have dirt thrown on his head and face.”
“It’s not very much compared to what happened to our poor friend.”
She sat beside him and offered him the cup. “It really hurt me,” she stammered, “what was said about you:”
He smiled, pretending that was unimportant, and lifted the cup to his lips, but she went on resentfully. “Galta is assuring the people of Gabal that you have designs on the estate, to claim it all for yourself. Hagag is telling all the people of Rifaa the same thing. They’re both spreading rumors that you say degrading things about Gabal and Rifaa.”
He did not hide his concern. “I know that. I also know that if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t even be alive today.”
She rubbed his shoulder affectionately, recalling for no reason their past days, when their conversations had no end and their happiness knew no limit; the delights of the radiant nights after Ihsan was born. Today she possessed nothing of him, and he possessed nothing of himself. She even hid the occasional pains of her illness from him; he scarcely gave a thought to himself, so how could she worry him about her? She was too ashamed to overburden him, to help his enemies without meaning to. Who could possibly reassure her about him, when the days of their lives were passing by as quickly as their days of peace? God help you, alley of ours.
“I never lose hope, even in dark times,” Qassem continued. “I have so many good friends, even if I seem alone. One of them challenged Sawaris—who would ever have dared do that before? And the rest are like him. Courage is the most important thing for the people of this alley, if they aren’t going to be trampled down for the rest of their lives. Don’t tell me to take the safe path; the man who was killed was killed on his way to my house. You wouldn’t be happy for your husband to live with the humiliation of cowardice.”
Qamar smiled, and replaced the empty cup. “The gangsters’ wives trill with joy when there are fights, which are evil; how can I be less happy than they are when what I have is good?”
He saw that her sadness was more profound than it had first seemed to him. He stroked her cheek lovingly and said comfortingly, “You are everything to me in this world. You are my best friend in life.”
She smiled, summoning the serenity that she needed before she could sleep.
Sadeq’s disappearance took Shantah the coppersmith by surprise. He looked for him at his house, but found no trace of him or any of his family. Nor could Abdelfatah, the salt-cured-fish seller, find any trace of his employee, Agrama, anywhere in the alley. Abu Fisada did not show up at Hamdoun’s snack shop, though he had not notified him of any absence. And where was Hamroush? Hassuna the baker said that he had vanished, as if the very flames of the oven had consumed him. Others, too, had gone and not come back. The news spread through the Desert Rats’ neighborhood, and its echoes reached the rest of the alley, until people in Gabal and Rifaa sneered that the Desert Rats were deserting, and soon Sawaris would have no one to collect protection money from. Sawaris summoned Zachary to the Dingil Coffeehouse.
“Your nephew is the best person to help us find out where these people have gone,” he warned him.
“Please, Sawaris, don’t blame him,” said Zachary. “Days, weeks and months have gone by, and he has not left his house.”
“Children’s games!” raged the gangster. “I have only brought you here to warn you what might happen to your nephew.”
“Qassem is one of your own family. Please don’t give his enemies anything to gloat over.”
“He is his own enemy, and he is my enemy. He thinks he’s a modern-day Gabal, and that curse is the fastest way to Bab al-Nasr.”
The cemetery was at Bab al-Nasr.
“Patience, Sawaris, we are all under your protection.”
On his way home, Zachary met Hassan coming back from Qassem’s house, and he began to unload on him all of the anger Sawaris had left him with, but Hassan interrupted him. “Please be patient, Father. Qamar is ill—very ill, Father.”
The whole alley learned of Qamar’s illness, even the overseer’s house. Qassem stayed with her, at the extreme limit of sorrow and depression, shaking his head bewilderedly and saying, “With no warning, you lie down, helpless!”
She spoke to him weakly. “I was hiding my condition from you, to spare your heart, which has been so burdened with troubles.”
“I should have shared your pain with you from the beginning,” he said in utter despair.
Her pale lips parted in a smile, like a wilted flower on a dry stalk. “I’ll be healthy again, like before,” she said.
That was his prayer, but what was this cloudiness in her eyes, the dryness over her skin and this ability to hide pain? All this for you. O God, keep her in Your mercy, and spare her for me, and have compassion on the child’s crying, which will never cease.
“Your tolerance toward me has made me unable to tolerate myself.”
She smiled again, in seeming rebuke. Umm Salem was brought in to burn incense for her, Umm Atiya to prepare her some dressings and Ibrahim the barber to bleed her, but Umm Ihsan seemed to resist recovery.
“I would do anything to ransom you from your pain.”
“May no harm come to you,” she answered in a voice as weak as silence. Then she went on: “I love you so much.”
The way she looks makes the whole world black in my eyes, he said to himself.
“A sensible man like you is the last person to need consoling,” she said.
Male and female visitors came, but the place got too confining for him and he went up to the roof. Women’s voices floated out of the windows of the buildings, curses mingled with peddlers’ cries from the street, and a child’s crying, which at first he took to be Ihsan’s, until he saw the child wriggling in the dust on a neighboring roof. Darkness was falling slowly. A flock of pigeons flew back to their dovecote, and a solitary star winked on the horizon. He pondered the meaning of the strange look in Qamar’s eye—it was as if she could not see—the twitching of one side of her mouth, the blue tint that had come over her lips, and his overwhelming feeling of anguish. He stayed there for a few hours and then went down, meeting Sakina in the hall, holding Ihsan in her arms.
“Go in softly so she doesn’t wake up,” she whispered.
He lay down on the sofa facing the bed, in the dim light shed by a lamp on the windowsill. There was no sound outdoors but the lament of the rebec, followed by the voice of Taza the poet.
“The grandfather said calmly, ‘I have decided to give you a chance no one from outside here has ever had: to live in this house, to marry into it and to begin a new life in it.’ Humam’s heart beat in a rapture of joy, and he said, ‘Thank you for your kindness.’ ‘You deserve it.’ The boy’s gaze alternated between his grandfather and the carpet before he asked anxiously, ‘My family?’ ‘I have clearly told you what I want,’ Gabalawi reproached him. ‘They deserve your forgiveness and your affection,’ Humam pleaded.”
Qamar, asleep, made a sudden movement, and he jumped off the sofa to her. He saw a new luster in her eyes instead of the cloudy look, and asked her what was wrong.
“Ihsan!” she cried in a strong voice. “Where is Ihsan?”
He sped out of the room, and returned with Sakina, who was carrying the sleeping baby in her arms. Qamar pointed to Ihsan, and Sakina brought her near so that she could kiss her cheek. Qassem sat at the foot of the bed, and she looked down at him.
“Mine’s greater,” she whispered.
He leaned over her. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve given you great pain but mine’s greater.”
He bit his lip. “Qamar, I’m so sad, because I can’t do anything to lighten your pain.”
“I’m afraid for you, after.”
“Don’t talk about me,” he said, intensely sad.
“Qassem, go. Be with your friends. You’ll be killed if you stay behind.”
“We’ll go together.”
“Not the same way,” she said with some difficulty.
“You don’t want to give in to me the way I’m used to.”
“Oh, that was in the past.”
It seemed as if she were resisting some great pressure, and she beckoned with her hand. He leaned more closely over her, until he felt her breath; she squirmed and strained forward as if appealing for help. Her chest fell in, and exhaled a harsh, rattling sigh.
“Sit her up, she wants to sit up!” shouted Sakina.
He took her in his arms to sit her up, but she emitted a moan, like a mute farewell, and her head dropped against his chest. Sakina rushed the child out of the door, and then the silence was shattered by her screams.