The old man is in the corner of the room. His period of service in the government has come to an end and the procedures and papers for retirement are being completed. While in the service and at an age of over fifty he had graduated in law, but in regard to promotion he had not benefitted greatly from the qualification. Without uttering a word, the man runs his eyes over the men and women working there.
When he had entered the faculty of law he had been preoccupied by the question of justice. Why should his wife have died when she was still young? Why had she not given him any children? Would he have been entitled to divorce her? Why did she die during the air raids of Cairo in 1956?
The doctor had told him that the war had frightened her and had affected her weak heart. He was, however, not entirely sure about that because in the last two weeks her state of health had been extremely bad.
The burial grounds of Imam Shafi‘i in Cairo are full of the living, who have taken up residence in the rooms specially built for those visiting the dead. At the time he told himself that directly the war ended he would move her body to the burial grounds of Port Said, but till now he had not carried out his promise.
He had learnt during his long life in government service that nothing was so harmful to an employee as becoming attached to a young girl at work.
He speaks to himself, addressing the depths of his soul, and sees himself standing on a high rock in a wasteland and talking to a group of people, declaiming them and shouting for justice. He would have liked to have donned a judge’s robes and have dispensed justice among people. He keeps control of himself, paying particular attention to his hands lest he wave them about in the air as he shouts silently and draw to himself the gaze of those sitting in the room. One hand he puts in a pocket and the other under his chin as he sits relaxed, gazing ahead of him and leaning back against the chair.
He too had been a young man. His wife had been in her prime when he-had married her. Later on everyone would say: An old man whose wife had died and who remained a widower the rest of his life, then he went mad during the few hours before he was to go on pension. Let him go off to the lavatory and talk to himself there to his heart’s content.
The woman who was deputy head of the department suddenly said to him in a voice that betrayed a dislike of him, “Mr. Abdel Azeem, you can leave. You are now on pension.”
The man realized what was going on in her mind. He decided to ignore her invitation to go, to be driven away from the office. He took refuge in silence and, as usual, did not turn his face to her. Everyone was sitting and looking at him. They all knew that today he would be going back home and would not again put in an appearance. He had retired on pension—and Leila too knew that.
The man began asking himself why he hadn’t yet moved his wife’s body to the burial grounds in Port Said. Leila wished him good health and a long and happy life, and he said to her, “That’s life.” I le wasn’t, though, altogether sure that he had said anything to her or whether he had contented himself with looking at her, with staring into her ever-radiant face.
Before leaving the room and saying goodbye to the others he told himself that he hadn’t failed his wife, for after the 1956 war there’d been the 1967 war in which both the dwellings of Port Said and its burial grounds had been laid waste, then had come the war of 1973 which had ended with the liberation of part of Sinai, and it hadn’t been possible for him throughout these wars to move the body. He also told himself that it was just as well, for there were still many wars to come.