The lights turned to red and the insane uninterrupted deluge of traffic came to a halt, allowing a surge of people to rush forward and hurriedly cross the street. This caused Husniya to stand up straighter and raise her voice in a shout, “Have a go and see your luck for a shilling.”
Over and over she repeated the call. When no one stopped by her, she threw a piece of dry bread into the cage of the mouse, who was looking on expectantly, then began once again to gaze at the traffic lights in anticipation of probable customers. Meanwhile her attention was taken up with the very same thoughts that had begun several days ago to harass her, and which up until this very moment still spoilt her life for her: “Just suppose, my girl. Uncle Hasan recovered and was up and about, hale and hearty, it would be as if all your efforts had been for nothing. And what if Uncle Hasan agreed to bring you a work kit, when he’s convinced you’re intending to make your living in some place away off the map, the problem’s still there, the same knot in the wood the saw can’t deal with. Because the work kit costs money, it can be very expensive, and he’d take it out on you because you know he’d give his life for a piaster and can’t easily part with money.”
She sighed with annoyance and extreme anger at her husband, feelings so intense that she imagined that, were he to appear before her at that instant, she would pick up the largest stone and hurl it at him to smash his head in and would also give him a good beating, because all the hardship she was living through was caused by him, he having left her in the position of some charitable endowment that can never be changed, neither divorcing her nor returning to her to take up her worries and make her feel she was someone living in the world like everyone else.
She felt that the world in her sight was narrower than the eye of a needle. She left the mouse in its cage on the cardboard box she used as a table and walked a few steps until she reached the boy sitting in front of a mat on which were scattered shoelaces, boxes of matches, and plastic combs. Suppressing her feelings of exasperation, she said to him, Abdul Rahim, “Let’s have a couple of puffs, by the Prophet.” With a flamboyant gesture, which made him look like a miniature man, the boy took a long pull at the cigarette between his lips that bore as yet no trace of a mustache, then he raised his head and handed her the cigarette, while his eyes roamed over the details of her body under the gallabiya, which appeared somewhat transparent due to the morning sunlight. Busying himself with arranging some small mirrors on the mat, he said to her, “It’s all yours.”
She thanked him, after having filled her chest with a long draught of smoke, and went back to the mouse. When she felt she had calmed down a little, she began calling out again, “Have a go and see your luck for a shilling.”
Within a matter of seconds—she didn’t know what happened exactly—all hell broke loose. A huge gray van came to an abrupt stop by the pavement and with lightning speed policemen and officers descended from it, after which boxes of matches and tins of shoe polish, metal keys and plastic shoes, nails and shoelaces, all went flying about, and blows were mingled with shouts and with people rushing about and screaming. The policemen were scooping up the wares of the vendors with dazzling speed and hurling them into the back of the huge gray van. When Husniya saw the white mouse making a complete somersault in the air, complete with cage, then disappearing into the van, she was quite sure they must be the authorities police. She slapped her breast and screamed at the top of her voice. “What a calamity!”
Madly she rushed off in the direction of the van in an attempt to rescue the mouse, but all she got was a slap on the face from a well-practiced hand, which set her head spinning. She began swearing and cursing, the tears streaming from her eyes. Once again she tried to retrieve the mouse, dashing forward and covering the hand of the sergeant with both of hers, trying to stop him so she could tell him that the mouse had been left in her safekeeping and that she was working with it for an old man. like himself, who was ill. “Ό God, may He keep you safe for your children, sergeant, and protect you from the evils of the highways. Give me back the mouse because it cost a lot and it will be difficult to find another one like it.” She told him she’d be forced to pay its price to its owner because it was his only capital.
But the sergeant turned a deaf ear and violently withdrew his hand from between hers. “Get away or I’ll throw you into the van to join your mouse,” he told her. He busied himself collecting up the rest of the things left by the vendors who had fled.
She stood watching and hitting herself on the head in desperation but before long, when she saw him lighting a cigarette and putting his hand in his pocket, an idea occurred to her. She went up to him and pushed ten piasters furtively into his hand, at the same time adjusting her headscarf and whispering, “May God keep you safe in every step you take. ... By the Prophet, let me have back the cardboard box.”
She stood waiting when he told her that he would do so when the officer had moved away a little so that he wouldn’t be noticed. She tried to look unconcerned whenever an officer or a policeman passed in front of her, thinking about the people’s things that the government had taken, things that were all they possessed and that they worked with in order to keep body and soul together. She was extremely surprised at how the government never stopped lying in wait for poor miserable folk, always picking on them over every blessed thing, and having no mercy on them and not even letting God’s mercy descend on them, making problems because people may be standing around looking for charity, despite the fact that the road’s plenty wide enough and people are going about as they wish, and the vendors haven’t trodden on the government’s toes in any way—not like shopkeepers who fill up the streets and the pavement with their goods and their ears. She smacked her lips in disgust and brought to mind the proverb that says that he who doesn’t have someone to back him will be beaten about the ears. Suddenly it was as though an electric current had passed through her face: she had seen the sergeant returning from the van quite empty-handed. She hurried toward him inquiringly. “The cage broke and the mouse escaped,” he told her. All the joints of her body went slack and the blood in her veins ran cold. Again she began striking her chest. “Woe is me, mother!” she shrieked.
Then she sat down on the ground, crying and wailing, at which the sergeant advised her to leave the place quickly and make herself scarce because if the officer were to see her making such a fuss he’d get annoyed and would perhaps collect her up in the van with those who were being detained for not having identity cards, and perhaps he’d think up some charge to make against her and she’d be in a real mess. She leapt up in fright, looking like someone who’s just had somebody die, and she went off dragging her feet, thinking about the disaster that had come to her from God knows where and which she’d never dreamt would happen, and wondering what she’d say to Uncle Hasan, her neighbor and owner of the mouse. She was the only one, from among all the neighbors who lived in the rooms of the house, whom he had trusted with the mouse, and with his money. When he had got ill and become bedridden, it was she he had asked to go out and seek her livelihood in the street with the mouse, as he had done, by telling people’s fortunes through it. Things would be even more difficult for her when he learnt that she had gone against his instructions and hadn’t stood with the mouse somewhere along the outer wall of the university, but had got greedy and taken her stand on the pavement of the big street with the rest of the vendors. It was the boy Abdul Rahim who had recommended this to her and had given her the impression she’d do better business in the new location because it was near the main road. Also, Uncle Hasan wouldn’t believe the truth because only three days ago he had asked her about the month that was coming and, when she had told him that it was February, he had urged her to take courage and get a move on in the work because that meant the season had begun and the students’ exams were approaching, which would result in their asking more and more to have their fortunes told.
She wept bitterly. She felt that the Lord had taken vengeance on her for having deducted for herself a little of the takings—during the days that had just passed she had hidden a quarter of a pound each time for herself and hadn’t told Uncle Hasan about it. But this thought quickly flew from her head when she remembered how stingy and tight he was with her, and that, despite the fact that she had to stand the whole day, in the end all he would stretch out in his hand to her was fifty piasters—though he knew perfectly well that she wouldn’t stint him in his demands. On returning late at night she would do his washing and would cook for him and feed him with her own hand, because his own had begun to shake and he had grown very weak, and, over and above that, she would put up with the things the women in the rest of the house said about her, because of her going in and out of his room. She kept silent because the position with Uncle Hasan was a thousand times better than previously when she used to go around on the buses peddling chewing gum and combs. At least she was now standing in one and the same place with the mouse and no longer heard dirty talk directed against her by the driver or ticket collector, poisoning her body every other minute, and was no longer exposed all day long to curses and harsh treatment.
A furnace was raging in her head as she made her way toward the house. Her sorrows seemed to be endless, and if she had happened to meet her wretch of a husband at that moment she would have cut him into bits, would have made mincemeat of him. for it was he who had caused her all this torment she had lived through since he left her and disappeared. He had separated her from her family when he married her in the village years ago and brought her to this city in which one didn’t know whether one was coming or going and where there wasn’t a soul prepared to raise his eyes and look into the face of the person in front of him in the street. Her mother had died ages ago and it hadn’t occurred to her husband even to ask about her because he hated her in the same way as she had hated him. As for Uncle Hasan, who was so kind to her and was the only person she had in this world, she would lose him forever from the moment she reached the house and told him she had lost his means of earning his daily bread and had allowed the government to make off with the mouse. Perhaps he would believe her when she swore to him by her mother’s grave and told him that the mouse had escaped from the government but that the policeman hadn’t found it. The trouble was that she had invested high hopes in Uncle Hasan and so put up with his bossing her about and endured patiently his many demands although they made her absolutely furious sometimes. She was dreaming one day of his conscience pricking him and his saying, “If I die, Husniya my girl, take everything I have because I’ve got no family and everything’s in your hands, and you’ve got a better right to it than any other creature in the world—to the mattress and the blanket, and the chair and the rest of the things—because you’re a good girl and you’ve been at my disposal and service just as though you were my own daughter, my own flesh and blood. As for the few piasters in the pocket of the gallabiya, you can have them to buy yourself a nice gallabiya and a new nylon nightgown.”
The tears streamed down even more as she remembered all that and she chewed at her lips in bitterness as she approached the door of the house. She thought about how she would open the conversation with Uncle Hasan, and she pictured to herself how he would look when he got to know and flew into a rage and would say to her, “Get out of my sight, you accursed girl, you who spoil everything, you thief, you bringer of disasters. Your man left you because your face brings bad luck.”
She had reached the courtyard of the house and was crying more and more. She found a throng of people in front of Uncle Hasan’s room, with the owner of the house standing and barring the door with her vast body. “No one’s to go near him,” she was saying, “till the health inspector comes and writes the paper for him.”
When she saw Husniya approach, the tears filling her eyes, she said to her in astonishment, “Did you hear the news, Husniya? You’re a good sort, by the Prophet, coming so quickly. Give me the money you got so we can prepare what’s required for the burial and take part in the funeral procession early tomorrow morning, God willing.” Then she returned to the rest of the neighbors and said, “Not a soul is to touch anything belonging to Uncle Hasan, for we intend to sell his belongings, God willing, to pay off the months of rent he’s owing me.”