He was anxious for the album to preserve its secrets, so he did not look any further. He picked up the diary without feeling any need to pry into its secrets, but even so he could not resist the urge to thumb through the final pages. He skimmed some of the headings: “new love,” he read, “mountain road,” “talk of love,” “our hopes,” and then, “the kiss that kills.” That made his heart thump. What could that mean? Hadn’t Rushdi used the same expression sometimes when he was feeling particularly miserable? The heading was dated the 12th of January 1942, in other words when he had first found out that he had tuberculosis. Ahmad could not stop himself reading that section, his entire being throbbing with emotion:
Monday, January 12, 1942
O my God! From today and as long as God so wills, I’m a dangerous person. Inside me is something that is harmful to other people. I am someone whose very breaths threaten God’s servants; a tower about to be demolished by fatal microbes. I’ve played a dangerous game so as not to lose Nawal. It’s no problem for us to meet each other, but I must be careful: Nawal is denied you; you certainly can’t touch her. Kissing her, something that would cure the soul, is totally out of the question. She keeps on chiding me and wondering why I’m behaving this way. Maybe she’s asking herself why I don’t still make good use of the fact that we’re alone on the road and kiss her as I used to do. Does she think that I’ve had enough of her lips? Is my love fading away? No, no, my love, my heart has not tired of kissing your lips nor has my love faded away. But I’m scared for you; I have to protect your lovely mouth from certain destruction. It’s not my fault. My heart still feels the same way toward you, but inside my chest lurks an evil foe. I’m afraid for you and have to protect you from it.
Ahmad closed the diary and started pacing around the room, staggering as though he had just received a bang on the head. Throwing himself down on the bed, he started banging his forehead.
“O God,” he yelled, “how I wronged him! How often I accused him of being thoughtless!”
It felt like a saw cutting into his heart, and he let out a groan of pain.
50
The rest of June went by, ushering in the incredible heat of July. The family was still in mourning, and a general atmosphere of gloom pervaded the house. Out of pity for his parents Ahmad was still diligently searching for somewhere else to live; in fact, he was tired of Khan al-Khalili as well. The shock of Rushdi’s death had badly affected his sensitive nerves, and his old insomnia returned. This nervous sensitivity brought with it other symptoms: he could become emotional very quickly and often fell prey to worries that drove him into depression. Sorrows over both past and present clustered together inside his churning heart, and he was permanently fearful about what griefs, worries, and sorrows the future might be holding in store.
“Whatever happiness we may feel toward our loved ones today,” he told himself with his parents in mind, “is merely a pawn for the tears that we’ll be shedding when we say farewell to them on the morrow.”
He recited a line of poetry by Abu al-Ala’ al-Ma’arri: “If calamity does not strike at night, then fortune’s decision will find you on the morrow!”
His nerves were useless when it came to enduring fate’s vicissitudes or life’s troubles, and he was on the point of falling prey to his old illness. All of which helps explain why he was so keen to leave the quarter, added to which was the fact that sirens kept going off day and night (although the city was not actually bombed as had happened the previous September).
The general situation became much more tense when Axis forces kept on advancing, crossed the Egyptian border, and penetrated deep into the country. They moved on past Marsa Matruh which was generally reckoned to be the most significant defense point for Egypt, then overran Fuka and Dab’a. When the invasion got as far as al-Alamein, general panic reached its height. The city of Alexandria was now in the invaders’ sights, and people started saying that the necessities of war were such that they threatened to turn Egypt into a crumbling ruin watched over by hooting owls and a mosquito-breeding swamp.
On the day German forces reached al-Alamein, the friends gathered at the Zahra Café as usual. They were all delighted to see each other, and there was much laughter. None of them had thought about leaving the quarter or stocking up on food. Not a single one of them had bothered to assess the potential impact of an invasion on the city; or, if they had, they were treating the whole thing as something to joke about, as though it really did not concern them at all.
“The whole thing’s in God’s hands,” was the word of the hour, “so whatever happens to everyone else can happen to us as well!”
Ahmad Akif did not disagree with what they were saying. On that day in particular, he found being in their company especially enjoyable; it was as if their tiny gathering were serving as a kind of retreat whereby he could escape from the general alarm that everyone seemed to be feeling. He was afraid and happy at the same time. Thinking about what might happen, he started to worry. Before his eyes there loomed a situation in which everything would be turned upside down, all sense of responsibility would disappear, and values would collapse. Deep down he felt a nervous thrill. The anticipated invasion would do away with all his worries and sorrows. Along with everything else, all traces of the past, including his own, would be swept away.
“Just listen to the latest news,” said Sayyid Arif using the tone of someone in the know. “Rommel has divided his forces in two: one pointing toward Alexandria, the other toward the Fayyum oasis.”
“I’ve heard that Alexandria’s being bombarded by air and land,” said Ahmad Rashid. “People are leaving the city and going to Damanhur.”
“Are the English really done for?”
“They’re burning their papers and evacuating their women.”
“When will the Germans reach Cairo?”
“Tomorrow or the day after.…”
“Unless they move their victorious army toward Suez.…”
“I’ve heard for sure that parachute troops have been landing in the fields.”
“And what would any of you do,” asked Boss Nunu, “if one of those parachutists landed near you and asked you for directions to the war zone?”
“I’d take him straight to Sulayman Bey Ata’s house,” Sayyid Arif responded immediately, “and tell him ‘Look, here’s the British ambassador!’ ”
“You’d be much better off offering him some of those pills you take for your illness!” Sulayman Ata replied angrily.
“I’ll tell you what I’d do,” said Boss Zifta. “I’d take him to Abbas Shifa’s apartment and show him the biggest pair of you-know-whats in Egypt!”
“How long are we going to joke around like this?” asked Ahmad Akif in amazement. “Don’t you all realize that there’s a real threat of our having to leave our homes? We may well be sent out to some filthy villages.”
“Oh, for the wonderful life in the village!” yelled Boss Nunu in reply.
“Aren’t you afraid of death?” Ahmad Rashid asked.
“Let me live long enough,” said Boss Zifta, “and throw me at Rommel.”
“True enough,” said Boss Nunu, faking a serious tone, “the Germans are monsters. When they invade a country, they spread out all over the place and disguise themselves in a whole variety of ways. By tomorrow you may come across Germans wearing turbans or women’s clothes. By God, I’m worried in case I turn on the water faucet to perform my ablutions before I pray and a German diver comes out.…”
At that very moment, as if on cue, the air-raid sirens went off.
It was seven o’clock in the evening. They all leapt to their feet, and the smiles rapidly vanished from their faces. They all rushed for the bomb shelter, many of them afraid that this would be a really fierce and destructive raid, as usually happens before an invasion. They had only to remember Alexandria, Suez, and Port Said, not to mention Warsaw and Rotterdam. It took only a few minutes for the shelter to be bulging with people. Ahmad sat with his parents.
Everyone was very scared. It was all too much for his mother, and he could see tears in her eyes. Twenty minutes passed in an agony of waiting, then the all-clear siren sounded. Everyone was astonished and looked relieved and happy.
“It was just a reconnaissance mission!” someone yelled, while others suggested that the plane had come close to Cairo but then turned round and changed direction.
Everyone made their way toward the exit, and Ahmad joined the crowd. Close by the exit he spotted Nawal holding the arm of her little brother, Muhammad. The two of them were laughing as they hurried back to their apartment. His heart gave a thump, something that usually happened whenever he saw or remembered her. He watched as she moved toward the exit and then disappeared around the corner. Suddenly he felt angry and miserable. The way she had been laughing infuriated him, as though he had caught her committing some foul crime. He was so upset that he decided not to go back to the Zahra Café until he had taken a walk to calm himself down.
As he strolled down al-Azhar Street, he started to feel calmer. Actually, his mood returned to normal much more quickly than he had expected and he asked himself why he had been so angry. What had upset him? Was it her laugh? Did he really expect her to spend her entire life weeping? Didn’t he laugh sometimes at work or in the café? Didn’t even his mother smile once in a while? Why shouldn’t Nawal laugh, and why should it annoy him if she did? No, the process of forgetting was the real culprit—that bitter pill that comes when mourning is finished and sorrow takes over; mourning for our pain, sorrow for ourselves. We tell ourselves that, thank God, we have forgotten; that is one of life’s laws.
He gave a deep sigh, but then a thought occurred to him, one that was by no means new but at the same time one he had been avoiding. He was afraid to confront it, but this time he told himself that it was useless to run away and pretend it wasn’t there. He had to confront reality. Did he still love Nawal? Why was his heart still pounding every time he saw her or thought of her?
He pondered all this as he continued his stroll, his pale face flushing in embarrassment as though his secret were now known to everyone. “Love,” he told himself, “was something buried under layers of anger, sorrow, and terrible memories. To be loyal to such a love, I would now have to trample underfoot both my sense of honor and my brother’s memory. That, of course, is out of the question. So, my brother and my pride stand between me and my love, and it is not worth my life to show such contempt for two things that are so very dear to me!”
But it was all true: he was still in love with Nawal; in fact, he had never stopped loving her even though his various sufferings might have kept the fact hidden from him. Even so, what would be the point of acknowledging such a love, even if it was the strongest force of all? How long could he tolerate being so close to the flame that was burning him up?!
51
At the end of August Ahmad Akif found an empty apartment in the al-Zaytun neighborhood. It was in a place owned by a civil servant in the Accounting Department at the Ministry of Works. He had heard that Ahmad was looking for somewhere to move, and by chance the civil servant who had been living there had to break his lease because he was being transferred abroad. The owner invited Ahmad to visit him, discussed the possibility, and rapidly reached an agreement, namely that the family would move in at the beginning of September as soon as the other tenant moved out.
Everyone in the family was delighted that they would soon be leaving Khan al-Khalili with all its gruesome memories. Even now they were having to leave with a broken wing. The father was suffering from high blood pressure that interfered with his retirement, while the mother continued to grieve, which made her lose a lot of weight. Her innate jollity was quashed under the burden of it all, and she began to look very old. Ahmad was just as sad, and yet he could see stars twinkling on the horizon. People started talking about fair treatment for workers who had been overlooked for a long time, and it seemed as though a promotion to the seventh grade was within the realms of possibility. He had always despised ranks and civil servants who held them, but deep inside he was happy about the anticipated promotion. He would be in charge of four employees in addition to the incoming mail and genuinely aspired to turn the position into a new initiative in government administration, one that would serve as a model for his boss, “the all-knowing.” Who knows what the future might hold? He could still look forward to some twenty years in government service, so maybe he would be promoted even further. At long last, the government would be getting things right!
Nor was that all. He had taken his mother with him to look at the new apartment. The owner of the house had invited them both to his own apartment. While Ahmad had drunk coffee with him in the lounge, his mother had been invited into the women’s quarters. On their way back to Khan al-Khalili his mother had been full of praise for the owner’s wife and his sister as well. Concerning the latter, his mother had told him that she was a cultured and attractive widow of fifty-three. That set his imagination working: the sister a fifty-three-year-old widow, cultured and attractive, and himself a bachelor of forty and colleague of her brother, both of them living in the same house. As far as he was concerned, the age difference was not significant; she was not that old, nor was he any spring chicken either. So life was not without its hopeful prospects, and only God could know what lay in the future. Even so, such thoughts could not coincide with wearing a black tie. Good God, how could these dreams of his be floating around so openly? At that moment it occurred to him that from now on Nawal might well be casting her glance somewhere else, at Ahmad Rashid, for example. That’s the way life proceeded on its course, oblivious to everything; it was almost as if it had not been just the day before that it had bid farewell to someone who had played such a prominent role. Life was dumb and cruel, like the dirt of the earth, and yet it could nurture hope just as easily as the earth did fresh flowers. Ahmad was still sad, but hope was there as well.
Thus the family started preparing to move. Carpets were folded up, cupboards and beds were taken apart, and utensils, books, and pieces of furniture were put in boxes. The move was to be the next day.
That afternoon the women of the apartment building all arrived to say farewell to the family. Ahmad was still in his room. Sitt Tawhida and Nawal were among the women who came to visit for the last time. They all sat in the central lounge since that was the only place in the apartment where anyone could sit. After the other women had left, Sitt Tawhida and Nawal stayed behind. By that time Ahmad was due to go out to the Zahra Café to say farewell to his friends there. There was no way he could avoid walking past the two visitors. When he came out of his room, Sitt Tawhida stood up.
“How are you, Ahmad Effendi?” she asked, offering him her hand.
“I’m well, thank God,” Ahmad replied softly in his usual flustered manner. “Thank you.”
Nawal had stood up as well. He turned to her and offered his hand. Their hands touched for the first time ever, and his body shuddered. He did not say a word or even look up at her.
“I’m still apologizing to your mother for the way we behaved,” Sitt Tawhida said. “I hope you can find it in you to forgive us as well, Ahmad Effendi. As God knows full well, your late lamented brother was very dear to us.…”
Ahmad was not a little bewildered. “We can all forgive you,” he replied. “Necessity has its own imperatives, dear lady.”
Sitt Tawhida deftly steered her way around the subject. She thanked Ahmad for his politeness and understanding. He then excused himself, said farewell to Sitt Tawhida, and held out his hand to Nawal. This time, as their hands were touching, he snatched a quick look into her eyes, but then headed straight for the door. It was the first time their eyes had met up close; he had barely looked at her since those early days when, bolstered by his initial hopes, he had flirted with her between his window and the balcony. In her eyes he could still detect the same purity, kindness, and curiosity he had seen before. As he quickened his pace, his heart kept pounding and his eyes twit
ched nervously. Maybe the problem was that they were saying good-bye. Farewells tend to arouse feelings even in people who normally do not get emotionally involved, so it was this farewell psychology that he invoked as an excuse for the fact that he was now feeling so emotional and upset. It was all intensified by the memory of Rushdi; his beloved image appeared before Ahmad’s eyes with a chiding smile on his face. Ahmad found himself addressing his brother’s image: “I’m sorry, Rushdi,” he said, “I was just saying good-bye. You know about that better than anyone. It was painful too, and you know about that too. You won’t need to chide me any more, I promise.”
Ahmad reached the Zahra Café; God alone knew when he would have the chance to go out to a café again. His friends greeted him warmly, as was only appropriate for a farewell occasion. They all stopped talking in order to concentrate on saying good-bye to their dear neighbor.