Chapter Ten

July 23, 1952. Morning. The army had shaken Egypt to the core. Awe, disbelief, a belligerent joy and pride; as news of the revolution spread, new sentiments trembled on millions of lips and shone through the tears in people’s eyes. New words sobbed from throats choked with emotion. Egyptians poured from their homes to fervently clasp the hands of the soldiers, hearts sheltered in their cupped and shaking palms.

Muhammad Effendi Sulayman sat at home, riveted to the radio, listening again and again to the declaration of the Revolutionary Leadership. He was petrified by the conviction that something would intervene to thwart the revolution and postpone Mahmud’s release. At first he had not believed his ears. He simply could not accept that men like him—Egyptians just like him—had successfully challenged the authorities—all of them!—and had overturned the government. When it finally dawned on him that the thing had really happened, a wave of pride in himself, in having been born an Egyptian, engulfed him.

But a different reaction followed all too soon. An agonizing fear throbbed through his body as he heard that the revolution had moved into a new stage, and it mounted as he heard that they were talking about dethroning the king. Wasn’t the earth still turning? he asked himself. Well, then, mustn’t the king still be on his throne, the Egyptian people bowing as always to his sovereignty? How could those revolutionaries change the course of destiny? Glued to the radio, Muhammad Effendi Sulayman listened to the news of the king’s expulsion from Egypt. Tears collected in his eyes, reflecting the blend of alarm and pride he felt as the paramount icon of the old Egypt was demolished before his eyes.

As Muhammad Effendi Sulayman heard the momentous news, Layla was walking along Qasr al-Aini Street. She noticed a blue-overalled worker on a bicycle coming in her direction; still at a distance, he was waving his hands wildly, turning first to one side and then the other, flinging out words that Layla could not make out. She could see, though, that people were coming together, forming little groups and chattering. A few meters from Layla the bicycle rider stopped, his swarthy face wreathed in smiles as he looked at her. Gesturing wildly, he yelled, “The king has left the country!” and then turned away immediately to offer the same news to a barefoot boy who was dashing toward him. Layla felt a quaking in her body and took off at a run after the worker. People darted from their shops to crowd around him, asking for more details. “The king has left the country!” The worker’s ecstasy encompassed his whole face. Layla’s hand shot out and he shook it vigorously with a simple “Congratulations!”

“Congratulations!” The word resounded as if people were incapable of finding any other. Spaces between bodies vanished as one person clapped the next on the shoulder, as people chuckled and whooped and told jokes. Layla could not move; she stood among them, enjoying her sense of oneness with the crowd, the companionable sensation that they had all contributed in one way or another to expelling the king. A mood of sympathy, of ease and belonging, swept over her, a sense of confidence in herself and others; how she wished she could stay among them, stay on and on! But the moment passed; the bicyclist straightened on his seat, warning people that he was about to move on; folks tried to detain him but he would not stay. He moved forward, waving his hands, laughing, to go on to others, to tell more and more people that the king had been thrown out. Forward he went, from one group to another, as if propelled by a crying need inside of him to connect with the greatest number of people possible at this precise moment in time.

It was a pounding forceful enough to shake even the massive doors to the Aganib Prison, where many of the guerillas were imprisoned. It was like the blow of a single man, in unison like the shouts with which it mingled: “Long live Egypt! Long live the Revolution! Down with Imperialism!” It was a moment when those young people surely could have broken down those doors, but there was no reason to do so. They understood that the prison doors were as good as open; they knew they were all but free. It was just a matter of days. Yet those young souls could not bear it! At such a moment, were those doors to keep them apart? At this moment, for which they had waited all their lives, indeed for which they had lived? They were determined to be together, united, and the prison shook with their blows and cries. It was not the usual time to organize themselves into rows for the officers; but the prison superintendent issued his order to open the huge doors. Prisoners and jailers—they hugged each other, laughter and tears mingling. A prisoner twisted a jailer’s belt around his middle and began to dance. A crowd gathered round him, clapping in time, while other prisoners split into groups, talking and laughing. A voice rose in song.

 

My country, my country

My blood I’ve offered you

I’ll sacrifice my life

For the peace that is your due.

 

Silence—and then other voices rose, and still others joined those, as their youthful owners stood tall and the circle widened to embrace them all. The voices combined to become one voice—a single, strong voice of celebration that arched across the land of Egypt to embrace every one of its folk.

*

Mahmud and Husayn strolled through the yard that lay behind the Aganib Prison. “Didn’t I tell you?” exclaimed Husayn. “Now maybe you’ll start believing what I say!”

Mahmud smiled, shaking his head in wonder. “But who could have imagined it? Who could have foreseen that things would develop like this? And so fast?” As the friends approached a wooden bench, Mahmud dropped onto it and stretched. He felt deeply refreshed, as if an enormous responsibility had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders; as if he had delivered that burden to another and dusted his hands of it; and now it was his turn to rest.

“What’s on your mind right now, Mahmud?”

Mahmud’s hand, no longer tense, stroked his growing beard. “A good shave, a warm bath, and a clean mattress.”

Husayn snorted. “What a lucky guy you are! You’re going back to an orderly household, all waiting for you—to your mother and sister. Speaking of your sister—she’s awfully nice.”

Mahmud looked at him. “Why don’t you get married, Husayn? Instead of living by yourself like this.”

Husayn started laughing. Then he raised his head. “I’m broke, ustaz.”

“Two years an engineer in a good, solid company, and you’re broke! You’ve got to be kidding me. How much were you getting?”

“Thirty-five pounds.”

“You didn’t save any of it?”

“I saved.”

“So?—”

Husayn smiled and shrugged. “I married off my sister—got her off my back.”

Mahmud leaned over and clapped a hand on Husayn’s thigh. “But you’re no ordinary guy. And can’t you take up the scholarship your sister did the paperwork for?”

“I don’t want to leave the country right now.”

Mahmud pulled himself upright. “Oh come on, Husayn, what’s the matter with you? Sure, the first time around you pulled out of the scholarship, and your excuse was perfectly reasonable and acceptable, and they knew that. There were circumstances, and a guy couldn’t leave the country at such a time. But now—it couldn’t be a better time. So—?”

“A month or two, that’s all, until things settle down. Mightn’t they need us?”

“They? Whom do you mean?”

“The revolution.”

“Why?” Mahmud’s voice was sarcastic. “Are they going to appoint you as a Minister of Public Works, or what?”

Husayn began to laugh but stopped short as he leaned toward Mahmud. His voice was serious. “Mahmud, we’ve got to be alert. The English aren’t going to take this lying down. They aren’t going to watch the country slip from between their fingers like this without putting up a very big fuss.”

Mahmud did not seem bothered. “In any case, our responsibility stops here. Now it’s up to the army.”

Husayn was silent for a moment, gazing toward the horizon. He spoke quietly, as if thinking out loud. “We’re all responsible. As long as one’s alive, his responsibility toward his country never comes to an end.”

Mahmud got to his feet. “Fine, then, just stay here and languish, lazybones,” he said, irritated. “Anyone with your attitude doesn’t deserve to travel, anyway.”

Husayn’s face reddened at the sudden, unexpected insult. He bit back the sharp words on his tongue. He truly loved Mahmud, and he knew how intense had been Mahmud’s transformation while in detention. His friend had sketched such a rosy picture of life in his head that confronting its rawness shocked him. Death he could face with courage, but he had not been able to face treachery so peaceably. He had witnessed betrayal at the Canal, and in the burning of Cairo, and in the wave of arrests and detentions. The world had frightened him and he would never quite recover. Now, he turned to his friend.

“I’m sorry, Husayn.”

Husayn gazed into his companion’s gaunt face, aged by deprivation, the eyes permanently bewildered, the look of a child unthinkably deceived. He smiled, stood up, and put his arm around Mahmud as they headed toward the prison’s reception area, trying all the while to think of something to say that would dispel Mahmud’s worries. Husayn knew he had clubbed his friend in a sensitive spot at the worst possible moment. He had reminded Mahmud of responsibility at a time when his friend believed he had finally rid himself once and for all of that burden. The revolution had come as a salvation from on high for Mahmud, a rescue that lifted from his weary back the necessity of facing life in its merciless realities; a salvation that gave him to believe that he could finally stand on shore, a mere observer, without the slightest feeling of guilt. Husayn smiled and leaned toward Mahmud.

“I’m bad news, aren’t I?”

Mahmud broke out laughing and disentangled himself from Husayn’s grip. But Husayn grabbed his arm again and quickly went on. “Mahmud, there’s something I want to talk to you about, something personal.”

Mahmud stopped laughing and looked straight at Husayn, his eyes showing interest. “What’s going on, Husayn?”

Husayn hesitated a moment. The smile disappeared from his face, his hand dropped from Mahmud’s arm, and he took a rapid step forward.

“Husayn, what is it? Come on, say something, brother.”

Husayn would not meet his eyes. “Later, Mahmud. Later on.” His voice dwindled. “It’s my problem, and I’m the one who has to solve it.”

Husayn tossed and turned on his straw pallet, settled on his back and lay still, thinking. Why had he used the word “problem”? Why not, for example, “subject,” or “issue,” rather than “problem”? But wasn’t one-sided love a problem indeed? Especially when you didn’t even know if the girl you loved was attached to someone else or not. No—she isn’t attached; she was, she really was, but everything ended. That was clear, very clear from the way she had pushed Isam’s hands away from her body, as if they held some filth that she absolutely could not bear to have within reach. No—this was no ordinary quarrel! It could not have been. It was the end of their relationship, an end that bastard deserved.

Husayn smiled lightly in the darkness. What right did he have to cast names at a person he knew only by sight? Someone of whom he knew so little? Wasn’t this madness? But wasn’t the whole story madness and more madness? What did he know of the girl who had occupied every moment of his life in this prison? A girl to whose image he fell asleep and wakened? Who filled his heart with her radiance and an enthusiasm for life? Nothing—he knew nothing at all. Yet the sensation persisted that he had known her all his life—and would never know her any better than he already did today, because it would be impossible to know her any better. He was sure that he could finish whatever sentence she started, could turn automatically in the direction she wanted to go even before she could do so. And he had known this after spending no more than half an hour with her! Well, perhaps it was the prison. It was this solitude, this loneliness, that had constructed from one fleeting meeting a whole legend to consume him, a fairy tale that started to fade whenever the light of day brushed over it. If he were to leave prison, perhaps his feelings would change? No, never—that would never happen. He had sensed the extent of his attachment to her even before prison; in fact, he had known it the moment he saw her. What had happened was beyond anyone’s understanding. You couldn’t explain it to anyone; it could not be subjected to any logic or rational explanation. But it had happened, and it had happened to him—to someone who was never convinced by anything that wasn’t completely logical or rational or scientific. When she had rushed toward him in the elevator he had barely been able to keep back a shout. She had stopped and apologized, and into his mind had sprung a wholly-formed question: “Where have you been all this time? I’ve been waiting for you all my life!” Meanwhile, his tongue had formed meaningless utterances that had absolutely nothing to do with the thoughts coursing through him. And then he had left her, he had come out of the elevator. But when she had shut the iron grille between them he realized that he could not just leave her and go away. She was his fate and he could not let go of that. Then, when he discovered that she was Mahmud’s sister, he realized that he would see more of her. Still, as the elevator ascended he had felt that a part of him was going with it. When his eyes had met hers and they had laughed together he imagined that perhaps she, too, had understood that he was her fate, but he’d been wrong. The two of them were worlds apart.

With the back of his hand Husayn wiped away the drops of sweat that had collected on his brow. What had happened to her in the meantime, as brief as that interim had been? What had made her despise life so, to lead her to think about suicide? And then cause her to submit so passively, so that she faced people with a stiff body and even more severe face from which all life seemed gone? Yet during that short time, when she was not with Isam, hardly would he sit down with Mahmud before the guy would appear—ten minutes later, maybe a quarter of an hour at most—to sit composedly with them. No—it didn’t appear after all that anything had happened between them. True, Isam was one of those emotionally detached people whose actions and reactions, comments and feelings, were always so calculated. You encountered people like that every day—there were thousands of them just like Isam. Husayn had recognized the signs the first time he’d seen Isam. But after all, the fellow was a human being. It did not seem possible that something could have come between him and Layla that would shatter her so and yet leave him so completely unruffled. It must be as he had first thought. Layla must have heard something about Isam, perhaps from Gamila. Whatever it was, she had seen her world devastated before her eyes.

So Husayn tossed and turned. He doubled over his pillow to cover his face. How had he come to be so certain of this? How could he have grasped the situation so precisely, and so rapidly—indeed, the moment he had seen her bewildered face as she entered the room? Even before he had seen her on the roof pushing Isam’s hands away from her body in disgust, he had understood. He had seized the situation fully, immediately, as if she had spilled out every detail, telling him, for instance, that she loved Isam, but that Isam had committed an act so horrible that it had eliminated all possibility of her loving or respecting him. He understood it all, swiftly and exactly, even though she had not so much as glanced his way. She had not even sensed his presence, leaving his hand—reaching toward hers—suspended in the air.

Lord, how had he been able to size the situation up so readily, in that room, before Layla had made any sort of telling gesture? A simple guess? There’d been no preliminaries that would have made it a reasonable deduction, he puzzled. Yet he had understood perfectly, as if whatever barrier kept him from knowing what was in her mind had vanished. And she had not even turned his way, had not even sensed that he was there! No, no it was impossible. She had to have been aware of him. How could he possibly feel so strongly about her—how could he have these feelings that destroyed all logic, all limits, and penetrated him from body to soul—if she did not have something of the like, even just a bit, even one part in a thousand?

Husayn flattened his pillow and rested his palms on it. When she had waved at him from the elevator and smiled, he had sensed a current run between them. On the roof, when he had whispered into her ear, “Believe me,” and she had turned to face him, and their eyes had met, he had said all he wanted to say in a single gaze—and she had understood everything. Hadn’t she? Then the current had been cut: Layla had heard Isam’s voice and her face had regained its hard lifelessness.

Husayn closed his eyes, trying to banish Layla’s image as she stood there on the roof. He did not want that picture to form his memory of her. He wanted to see her as she had been the first time, when they stood at the stairs, the joy of life dancing in her eyes and face. Six months had passed. Surely she had gotten over the shock of that incident by now. And when I see her, he thought . . . . He shot upright in bed. Yes! He would see her, a few days from now at most. She would enter the room where he was, happiness dancing in her eyes and face, through her body. That wondrous, lovely buoyancy that had almost made him shout in the elevator would envelop him again.