That afternoon, he sat with his mother in the lounge drinking coffee.
“Today I had a visit from the neighborhood women,” she told him, obviously very happy. “They came over to welcome me and make my acquaintance as is the custom.”
Ahmad was well aware of his mother’s ability to get to know people and her fondness for visiting other families. “That’s very nice for you,” he replied with a smile.
With a laugh she took a cigarette from him and lit it. “There were some really nice women,” she went on. “They’ll be able to fill the void in our strange new surroundings with their warmth and contentment.”
“It could be,” said Ahmad, “that you’ll soon be forgetting your old friends in al-Sakakini, al-Zahir, and Abbasiya.”
That was too much for her.
“How can a decent person ever forget her true friends?” she exclaimed. “They’re my heart and soul. However far apart we may be, distance will never be able to separate us.”
“What are the women in this quarter like?”
“They’re not lower-class folk,” she replied carefully, fully prepared to leap to their defense if needed, “nor are they uncivilized as you may have imagined. Remember that it’s not fair to judge people without really getting to know them. One of them is married to an official in the Survey Department named Kamal Khalil, and another one is the wife of yet another official from the same department named Sayyid Arif. I also had visits from the wife of the owner of the Zahra Café and his sister. The wife’s a nice lady, but the owner’s sister needs to be watched; the mean streak in her was obvious enough from her expression, even though she made a big effort to keep it hidden.”
“Flatter her and people like her. She’ll only show her true colors when she can dig up some dirt about you.”
“Heaven forbid, son! Something even more odd happened today. I met Sitt Tawhida, the wife of Kamal Khalil Effendi—who is as broad as your own mother when she was younger—she’s an old friend of mine! I used to know her well from Bahla the perfumer’s shop in al-Tarbi’a.”
“You’d both try to outdo each other with diet pills!”
“That’s right. We said hello many times, but never really got to know each other.”
“So now’s the opportunity.”
It was then that he remembered that the lady in question was the mother of the young boy Muhammad whom he’d seen at the café. It was only the mention of his mother’s name that had brought him to mind. He wondered to himself in amazement how he could have managed to forget all about him, whereas a mere twenty hours ago that had been all he could think about. However, his mother gave him no time to reflect.
“We had a long chat about women’s deceitful ways,” she said with a loud laugh. “One of the women has a father who’s a major expert on law; people feel blessed if they can kiss his hand. Another is the daughter of a very wealthy merchant. Still another is related to the director of accounting in the Ministry of the Interior. And a fourth has been ill and has spent dozens of pounds on a cure.”
They both laughed.
“And what lies did you have to tell?” he asked her with a laugh.
“Oh, nothing to cause me grief on Judgment Day. I told them that your father had only recently been pensioned off; he’d been an inspector in the Ministry of Religious Endowments. Your grandfather was a merchant, I told them. As for you, my dear sweet son, you’re a department head in the Ministry of Works. You’re thirty-two years old, and no more. Don’t forget!”
“What on earth?”
“There’s no point in complaining about it! Make sure you don’t say anything to call these little white lies into question. I’m thirteen years older than you. I’m forty-five.”
“You mean, you had me while you were still a child?”
“Girls can give birth at twelve!”
“That makes you more of a sister than a mother.”
“You’re right. The eldest child is always a brother to his own parents. Your brother’s a bank manager in Asyut.”
He shook his head in amazement. “How can you possibly make up such stories when they can’t possibly stay a secret for very long?” he asked. “One day, people are bound to find out.”
“Starting tomorrow, we’ll all get to know each other much better, and then we can all find out the truth bit by bit. Don’t worry, it won’t involve any blame-giving or mockery. If I hadn’t embellished the truth somewhat, they wouldn’t have believed me; in fact, they don’t believe me even now. But we’d have lost the principal as well as the interest.”
“What a load of unmitigated liars you all are!”
“What’s your problem? No one can object to a few white lies when a bit of social one-upmanship is involved. Women’s lies are a soothing balm for bloody wounds. May God grant you a wife who’ll treat you to the very best lies there are!”
Even though her mention of the word “wife” made him angry, he still managed to laugh. “What a load of unmitigated liars you are!” he repeated.
“And you men,” she said, giving him a wink, “you never lie, of course!”
For a moment he said nothing, not because he did not have a response ready, but rather because he was thinking about the various kinds of lies in his own life. “Oh yes,” he replied, “we lie as well, but about more significant things.”
“Maybe the things we find trivial are important to you men. But do you really regard life, prestige, and respect as trivialities?”
“Men’s lies are as noble as manhood itself. Where do all you women fit in the context of lies told by merchants, politicians, and men of religion? Men’s lies are the very pivot of the noble life whose effects you can all see on the battlefields of government, parliament, factories, and academic institutes. Indeed, they are the pivot for this dreadful war that has brought us to this strange quarter!”
He realized that she only understood part of what he was saying, and that made him even happier. Just then he remembered something.
“Did you have a visit from the wife of Boss Nunu?” he asked.
“ ‘God damn this world’ you mean? They all told me a lot about him, but he won’t allow his wives to go outside the house or look out of the windows. They may well have to spend year after year cooped up inside the house, happy and content!”
“It’s fair enough for someone who curses the world not to trust it.”
“By God, my son, women are just as wronged as the world is. But never mind. Have you heard of someone called Sulayman Ata?”
“The inspector?”
“Tawhida Hanem calls him ‘the monkey.’ ”
“That may well be the first true statement you’ve heard!”
“She told us with a great chuckle that he’s thinking of getting married.”
“Which girl would ever consider taking that monkey as a husband?”
“Untold numbers of women. Money makes up at least half the value of beauty. The girl in question will be the one who manages to track him down and go after him in earnest so she can marry him before he’s fifty-five.”
“So is it true,” he asked her with a laugh, “that men are finished at that age?”
“Good heavens, no! But she has no rights to his pension if she marries him after that.”
“So when she marries him, she’s gambling on the fact that he’s going to die! And who pray is this judicious woman?”
“Tawhida Hanem told me that it’s the daughter of Yusuf Bahla, the perfumer. Apparently, she’s a genuine beauty, and in two specific ways, natural and artificial!”
As Ahmad pictured the aged monkey he felt sick. He was shocked that such a man could manage to attract beautiful women whereas he was a total failure at it. After all, hadn’t a woman—who wasn’t even beautiful—rejected his hand with the words, “He’s too old!”? He wanted to picture the beautiful daughter of the perfumer, but instead what came to his mind right out of the blue was that beautiful brunette girl with the honey-colored eyes whom he’d met in the hall
way.
“Does the perfumer live in our building?” he asked, his heart in his throat.
“No,” she replied. “He lives in Bayt al-Qadi.”
He gave an inner sigh of relief, then wondered to himself which family the lovely girl belonged to. He only just managed to stifle a groan. At that very moment he remembered the eyes of the young boy, Muhammad, and realized that the place where he had seen them before was in those honey-colored eyes in the hallway! That’s what he had been trying so hard to remember. So, the young boy was the girl’s little brother; there could be no doubt about it! His heart gave a flutter, but, now that he had found a release from all his doubt, confusion, and shyness, he also felt a profound sensation of pleasure and relief. So powerful was his joy at this discovery that he was no longer paying any attention to what his mother was saying. She kept on talking, but he was lost in his own dreams.
8
In the evening he made his way to the Zahra Café again. He did not do so without a certain hesitation; frequenting cafés was not something he was used to doing, it was entirely new. His long-standing desire for cultural seclusion now found itself matched by his favorable impression of the café and its denizens. But for his desire to joust with Ahmad Rashid and lord it over the others, he certainly would not have found it so easy to abandon his normal reclusive habits. When he reached the café, he did not find Ahmad Rashid; when he asked after him, he was told that the pressures of work often prevented him from coming. Even so, the assembled company was by no means dull; both Boss Nunu and Boss Zifta, the café owner, managed to enliven it in their own unique way.
Ahmad Akif talked a lot and laughed a lot. He started enjoying spending time with people, and especially the more refined types; for him at least, consorting with such folk was just like someone who is dead tired surrendering to sleep. He returned home at ten, and spent a couple of hours reading; all the while the images from his new life were dancing in front of his eyes as he perused every line on the page (something he had never done in any detail before). Then he went to bed and fell asleep. He had no idea how long he slept, but he woke up with a start to hear a hateful sound. At first he did not realize what it actually was, then he did, and his heart gave a terrified leap. He jumped out of bed like a madman, felt his way into his slippers, and rushed over to the door. There he bumped into his parents, with a young servant leading the way.
“How do we get to the shelter?” his father asked in a quavering voice.
“I know the way, sir,” the servant replied for him.
The family rushed to the front door in total darkness and went out into the hallway, feeling their way down the spiral staircase. By this time everyone was awake, and the silence was broken by the sound of doors slamming and footsteps rushing down the stairs. There were anxious voices and nervous laughter. The caravan clung to the banisters and stumbled its way downstairs through the darkness, gripped by fear and panic. Ahmad’s family did not need their servant to guide them; the shadowy figures and sound of voices showed people where to go. Outside, the covered streets were just as dark as inside the houses, but the dim starlight made the other streets slightly less gloomy. They all felt the same as they had on that other hellish night—scared out of their wits; they kept lifting their eyes to the heavens whenever they loomed into view. They reached the entrance to the shelter amid a flood of people and went downstairs into the bowels of the earth.
They found themselves in a wide space; the powerful electric light blinded eyes that by now had become accustomed to the pitch darkness. The firm and well grounded walls and ceiling were enough to give observers a profound sense of relief. Long wooden benches were attached to the side walls while in the middle were piles of sand. Ahmad’s family made for one of the corners and sat themselves down, while other people distributed themselves on benches and in corners. There were not enough seats for everyone, so many people had to stand in the middle. At first everyone was scared. Neither the fact that they were together, nor the light, nor the solid walls were of any help in easing their intense anxiety. There followed a tense period of waiting, during which the looks in people’s eyes gave eloquent expression to what they were feeling inside.
“It’s 2 a.m.,” muttered his father, looking at his watch. “Same time as on that dreadful night!”
Ahmad was as scared as his father, or even more so. But he made an effort to appear calm. “That raid was a mistake. God willing, it won’t be repeated!”
Minutes passed in total silence. As time went by, a sense of security began to insinuate its way into the assembly. People started whispering and talking to each other. There was a lot of laughter, and people kept trying to reassure each other. Ahmad looked at the faces of the people next to them, but they were all strangers. Now everyone rushed to say something.
“They’ll never harm the place where al-Husayn’s head is buried!” said one man.
“Say, ‘God willing,’ ” responded another.
“Everything’s according to God’s will,” said a third.
“Hitler claims to have a profound respect for the Islamic countries.”
“Not only that. People say he’s actually a closet Muslim!”
“That’s not so surprising. Didn’t Shaykh Labib al-Taqi say that he saw in a dream Ali ibn Abi Talib—may God bless him—giving Hitler the sword of Islam?”
“Then why was Cairo bombed in the middle of the month?”
“That was al-Sakakini, the quarter where the majority of the inhabitants are Jews.”
“What do you suppose the Muslim peoples can expect from him?”
“Once the war is over, he’s going to restore Islam to its former glory. He will unite the Muslim peoples, and then alliances and treaties of friendship will be signed with Germany.”
“For that reason we pray that God will support him in his war efforts.”
“And he would not be victorious if his motives were not pure—our reward is ultimately a measure of our intentions.”
Ahmad listened to this conversation with a mixture of pleasure and disapproval. True enough, most of them were local folk, but even so it had never occurred to him that their sheer naiveté could reach such a level of illusion or that propaganda—if there were such a thing—had managed to achieve such a comic effect. In spite of that he was unwilling to deny himself the pleasure of this unconscious humor and would not have done so had he not spotted at that very moment his great rival, Ahmad Rashid, walking slowly past him. He jumped up, and they shook hands.
“I didn’t see you today,” Ahmad Akif said.
“No,” replied Ahmad Rashid in his dark spectacles, “I was busy studying a legal case.”
The very mention of the subject aroused his jealousy, and he made no comment.
“I see all our colleagues are here,” the lawyer went on, casting an eye over the assembled company, “but of course I don’t see Boss Nunu.”
“I’m surprised by his strange behavior,” said Ahmad with a smile.
“All summarized in the single phrase ‘God damn the world!’ ”
“For him it’s a slogan; you could almost call it his theme song.”
“He would have paid more heed to death if he were younger.”
“For him it’s a matter of faith.”
“He has a profound sense of God’s presence. Wherever he is, he keeps Him in mind and puts his trust in Him with all his heart. He has not the slightest doubt in his mind that God will never abandon him. That’s why you can see him indulging in every conceivable kind of outrage, firm in the belief that he’s going to receive God’s forgiveness and mercy.”
“I suppose he’s a happy man,” commented Ahmad Akif with a sigh.
“Fool’s paradise is more like it,” the young man retorted with a scoff. “That’s the happiness of ignorant fools and blind faith, the kind of happiness that tyrants enjoy by virtue of controlling the lives of simpletons. It’s really funny that I’ve despaired of ever discovering happiness among people of wisdom, a
nd yet you seem to find it in such a stupid form. You need to search for genuine happiness within the framework of science and knowledge. If that makes you feel anxious, angry, or miserable, then look on that as a sign of a genuinely virtuous human existence, one that will rid society of its faults and the human soul of its illusions. When it comes to real happiness, Boss Nunu’s version of it only credits our suffering—those of us that support science and reform, that is—to the extent that he can privilege death with its would-be repose over the boons of life with all its struggles and tensions.”
The atmosphere in the bomb shelter had already made Ahmad Akif feel tense, so he did not feel up to arguing with him. “Don’t you think,” he responded with a smile, “that the very unthinking happiness that you’ve just talked about is letting him sleep soundly while we’re all down here sweating it out through the night?”
The young man had more self-control than Ahmad Akif and simply laughed. “He’s undoubtedly sleeping soundly at this very moment, undisturbed by anyone except for the quarter’s ‘husband lover.’ ”
The look on Ahmad Akif’s face made it obvious that he did not understand what his companion was talking about.
“Haven’t you heard about her?” the young lawyer asked with a smile. “She’s a terrific woman. Her official role is to be Abbas Shifa’s wife. Do you remember him? Every evening her house provides a warm welcome to a whole crowd of heads-of-household from this quarter. Boss Zifta, the café owner, calls her the quarter’s ‘husband lover.’ ”