I really admired Amer Wagdi, sitting up so late, and thoroughly enjoying the singing and the music. It was almost dawn when we got up to go to bed.
“Was there ever in your day a voice like Umm Kulthum’s?”
“No.” He smiled. “It’s the only thing today for which the past can provide no equal.”
—
I asked her to sit down, but she just stood there leaning against the wardrobe and gazing with me out through the window at a cloud-laden horizon. She was waiting for me to finish my cup of tea. I usually gave her a biscuit or a piece of cake from a small store I kept in my room, which she accepted in token of a growing friendship. I was pleased that her innocence made her sensitive to the admiration and respect I felt for her.
It began to rain. The small drops streamed down the windowpanes, transforming the world outside. I asked her about her village and she chatted with me. I guessed why she was driven from home, but said lightly, “If you’d stayed at home, you’d have been married by now.”
Then she told me a terrible story about her grandfather and the old man they would have forced her to marry. She concluded, “And so I ran away.”
I was disturbed. “But what will people say?”
“I don’t care anyway. It’s better than what I escaped from.”
My admiration for her grew. But I pitied her for her loneliness, even though she stood there full of self-confidence. Rain stippled the windowpanes with water and mist, making the world almost disappear.
—
What was it? A bomb? A rocket? A flash of insanity? No, just a car, with that idiot Hosny Allam at the wheel. What made him drive so insanely? Only he knew. But there was a girl with him. (Looks like Sonya. Is it Sonya?) Oh well, Sonya or not, the hell with him.
A little later I sat at my desk. Then one of my office colleagues came up to me. “Your friends were arrested yesterday,” he whispered. I was stunned for a minute and couldn’t say anything in reply. “They say it’s because…”
I cut him short. “That’s not important.”
“There are rumors…”
“I said it’s not important.”
He leaned on my desk. “Your brother was wise.”
“Yes, very wise.” I sighed with exasperation. Hosny Allam must be at the end of the world by now, I thought, and Sonya must be trembling with fear and desire.
—
“Not another word from you! I’m getting you out of this hole.”
“I’m not a child anymore.”
“You sent your mother to her grave.”
“I thought we’d agreed not to rake up the past.”
“But I see it in the present. You’ll come with me to Alexandria even if I have to carry you there by force.”
“I beg your pardon! You forget I’m a grown man.”
“You’re a fool. Did you think we didn’t know? We know everything.” He looked hard at me. “You conceited idiot! What do you take them for? Heroes?” He grunted. “I know them better than you do. You’re coming with me, whether you like it or not.”
—
She opened the door herself. My heart was hammering; my mouth had gone dry and my head was in a daze. In the dark corridor her face shone white and pale. She stared at me stonily, without recognition. Then her eyes widened in surprise.
She whispered, “Mr. Mansour.”
She stood aside and I went in.
“How are you, Doreya?”
She led the way to the sitting room, where everything around her seemed to reflect her own profound unhappiness. We both sat down. His portrait faced us from the opposite wall, looking out at us from a black frame. He was holding a camera, which he seemed to aim at the two of us together. We looked at each other.
“When did you come back?”
“I came straight from the station.”
“You heard…?”
“Yes, at the office. I took the two o’clock train.” I looked at his photograph. The smell of his tobacco still hung about the room. “Did they get them all?”
“I think so.”
“Where did they take them?”
“I’ve no idea.” Her hair was untidy and her face was pale. She looked wilted, heavy-eyed from anxiety.
“And you?”
“As you see.”
The fact that she was on her own, with no money or resources—he’d been an associate professor of economics, but had no savings—was all too clear.
“Doreya, you’re an old friend, and so is he. My best friend…in spite of everything.” I gathered my courage and went on. “I have a good job and income. And I have no one to support, you know.”
She shook her head. “But you know I can’t…”
I wouldn’t let her go on. “I didn’t think you’d refuse a little help from an old friend.”
“I’ll find a job.”
“Yes, all right, but that will take time.”
Nothing had changed in the room. His room, as I’d always known it in the past: the big studio sofa and the bookshelves laden with books, the tape recorder, the record player, the television set and the radio, the camera and the film equipment, the albums. (Where’s the photograph we had taken at the Auberge in Fayoum? He must have smashed it in a moment of anger.) My eyes met hers, then we both looked away, thinking the same thoughts, touched by the same memories. Past, present, and future seemed to meet on a dark road, fearful and unknown.
“Have you any plans?”
“I haven’t had time to think.”
“You didn’t think of writing to me.”
“No.”
“But it must have occurred to you I might turn up.”
No reply. She left the room and came back with the tea tray. I lighted her cigarette and we sat smoking in silence, while an old unrecollected aroma came stealing back to me. And at last what had to be said was said.
“I suppose you know that I tried to come back and couldn’t?” She made no comment. “I didn’t get much encouragement, to put it mildly.”
She murmured, “Let’s forget it. Please.”
“Even Fawzi would have nothing to do with me.”
“I said forget it.”
“Doreya, I know what they said. That I wanted to come back to spy for my brother.”
She pleaded. “Can’t you leave it alone? Can’t you see I’m unhappy enough as I am?”
I looked down. “You know exactly how I feel.”
“I’m very grateful.”
I felt stung. “I mean the feeling I have that I should have been with them!”
She said sadly, “It’s no good your torturing yourself.”
“I wish—I wish you’d tell me frankly what you think of me.”
“I’ve received you here in my house—his house, if you like.” She spoke in a low voice, after a tense silence. “That’s enough, I should think.”
I sighed with relief, though I wasn’t fully reassured: I knew I’d be right back in the old hell. But it was no time for explanations.
“I’ll come to see you occasionally. And please write to me if ever you need help.”
—
I was very fatigued from traveling, so I stayed in the pension and joined the group around the radio. Luckily they were my favorites, Amer Wagdi, Madame, and Zohra. I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, not listening to their conversation, until I heard Madame addressing me.
“You always seem so far away from us all.”
“The intelligent ones are always like that,” said Amer Wagdi, looking at me gently. “Have you ever thought of bringing out some of the material of your programs in book form?”
“I’m thinking of writing a program,” I threw out carelessly, “about the history of betrayal in Egypt.”
“Betrayal!” The old man laughed. “What an enormous subject. You must come to me. I’ll help you. I’ll give you all the necessary references and recollections.”
“I love you. You love me. Why don’t you let me talk to him?”
“Y
ou’re out of your mind.”
“He’s a rational man. He’ll understand and he’ll forgive.”
“Can’t you see? He loves me and he considers you his best fiend.”
“But he hates falsehood. I understand him perfectly.”
“A program on betrayal—what a program that would be! But mind you, write a book in the end or you’ll soon be forgotten, as I’ve been. The only man who survived without writing down his thoughts was Socrates.”
Madame was listening to a Greek song that she herself had requested on the radio. About a virgin listing the qualities of the man of her dreams, or so she says. The sight of her as she listened silently, with her eyes closed, was touching, a tragicomic image of the irrepressible desire to live.
“It was Plato, a disciple, who gave him immortality,” Amer Wagdi went on. “But isn’t it strange that he should have chosen the poisoned cup when he had the chance to escape?”
“Yes.” I added bitterly, “And to do so even though he had no sense of guilt.”
“And yet how numerous are the people now who in comparison with Socrates don’t even seem to belong to the same species!”
My bitterness bordered on insanity. “They’re betrayers. All of them.”
“There are facts and there are legends. Life is an enigma, my boy.”
“But your generation believed. You had faith.”
“Faith. Doubt.” He chuckled. “They are like day and night.”
“May I ask what you mean?”
“I mean that they are inseparable.” After a moment of silence, he said, “And what is your generation like, my boy?”
“What counts is what you do, not what you think,” I answered impatiently. “And therefore I’m really no more than an idea.”
“Do? Think? What’s all this about?” Madame smiled in bemusement.
The old man smiled too. “Sometimes a tired thinker may come to the conclusion that the best things in the world are a good meal and a pretty woman.”
Madame crowed, “Bravo! Bravo!”
Zohra laughed. It did me good to hear her laugh for the first time. Then there was a moment of silence, during which we listened to the wind howling outside, driving at the walls and the closed windows.
I felt myself lapsing into anxious depression. “I’m sure the ideal is to believe and put your beliefs in action. To have nothing to believe in is to be lost forever. But to believe in something and nonetheless sit there paralyzed is sheer hell.”
“I agree. You should have seen Saad Zaghloul in his old age, defying banishment and death.”
I looked at Zohra, the lonely exile. She sat there full of hope and self-confidence. I envied her.
—
The following week I paid Doreya another visit. The place looked as neat and well kept as in the old days and she seemed to be taking care of herself, but of course she was still alone—without hope and without an occupation to fill her time.
“I hope my visits don’t disturb you.”
“At least they make me feel that I’m still alive.”
Her voice was lifeless. It almost broke my heart, for it made me imagine the barrenness and poverty of her existence. I longed to be able to tell her something of what I felt, but memories silenced me. We agreed that she should get a job. But how? Her having only a BA in classics didn’t make it easy.
“Don’t shut yourself up in this house.”
“I have thought of that, but I’ve made no move yet.”
“If I could only see you every day.”
She smiled. “It would be better,” she said, after thinking a moment, “if we could meet away from here.”
I was not very happy at the idea, but I could see that she was right. So I agreed.
—
Our third meeting in Cairo was at the Zoo. Except for a changed expression in her eyes, from which all the joyfulness had gone, the beautiful radiant face that day looked the same as ever. We walked for a while along the fence that shut off the grounds from the road leading up to the gates of the University—that highway of memories, unforgettable, shared.
“You know you’re inflicting too much on yourself?”
“But you can’t imagine how happy this makes me!” Should I have said that? “Loneliness is terrible, Doreya. It’s the worst evil anyone can suffer.” The world-weary tone I used was probably calculated.
“I haven’t been to the Zoo since our student days.”
“I’m lonely as well,” I said, persisting. “I know what it’s like.”
She now had the look of a cornered animal. I was upset. My feelings were growing more twisted, more tangled, but I couldn’t control myself any longer. When our eyes met it seemed to me that she flinched.
“It’s wretched that I should be walking here in the fresh air, while he’s…in there.” Then she noticed that I was very quiet. “What’s the matter?”
“I can’t get over this sense of guilt.”
“I’m afraid my company will only add to your pain.”
“No. It’s just that this accursed feeling feeds and thrives on despair.”
“We can try to find some comfort in seeing each other.”
“And despair ends in recklessness. Which can only add to the trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…I mean…Would you forgive me if I couldn’t help myself…and told you…that I love you now as I loved you in the past?”
I’d done it. Madness. What could I gain by it? Like someone who in order to put out the fire that’s burning his clothes dives headlong into a watery abyss.
“Mansour!” The note of reproach in her voice was like a slap across the face.
“Forgive me.” My voice sounded weak. “I can’t imagine how I spoke out. But believe me, I can never find happiness, or even try to.”
As I took the train back to Alexandria I reminded myself that a man could show more courage in letters.
—
I woke up to a terrible noise, which for all I knew might have been a projection of my own troubles. But the noise outside was of a quite different kind. I left my room in time to catch the last scene of a battle and I could see from their faces that Sarhan, Zohra, and another woman had been either its heroes or its victims. But who was the woman? And what did Zohra have to do with it all?
When Zohra brought my afternoon cup of tea she told me all about what had happened; how the woman had rushed in after Sarhan on his return to the pension, how they’d fought, and how she’d become involved as she tried to separate them.
“But who’s the woman, Zohra?”
“I don’t know.”
“I heard Madame say she’d been Sarhan’s fiancée.”
She considered the idea for some time. “Maybe.”
“But why should she hit you?”
“I said I was trying to separate them.”
“That’s no reason why she should turn on you.”
“Well, it just happened.”
I looked at her kindly. “Is there anything between you and…?” She wouldn’t answer. “There’s nothing wrong in that. I’m asking you as a friend.” She nodded in reply. “So you’re engaged and keep it a secret from me?”
“No!” she said emphatically, shaking her head.
“Ah! You haven’t announced your engagement yet?” Her silence worried me. “Then when will it be announced?”
“All in good time.” She seemed confident.
I was still worried. “But he deserted this other woman.”
She said naively, “Because he doesn’t love her.”
“Then why did they get engaged?”
She looked at me for a moment, then took courage. “She wasn’t really his fiancée. She’s a fallen woman.”
“That doesn’t alter his fickleness.” My own words sounded pathetic and odd in my ears; and immediately my thoughts were shot with poison. I cursed Sarhan, whom I hated as I hated myself.
A few days later she came in at the same time in t
he afternoon and cried out gaily, “Mr. Mansour, shall I tell you something?”
I looked up expecting to hear something of her relationship with Sarhan.
“I’m going to learn to read and write.” I did not understand. “I’ve made arrangements with one of the neighbors—Miss Aleya Muhammad, the teacher. She’s going to give me lessons.”
“Really?”
“Yes, we’ve arranged it all.”
“That’s wonderful, Zohra. How did you think of that?”
“I won’t stay ignorant forever. And then I have something else in mind.”
“What?”
“That I’ll learn some craft or trade, of course.”
“Good, Zohra. Excellent.” I admired her very much. I was happy for her, and pondered these feelings in my room after she’d gone.
It was raining heavily outside and the sea seemed to rage in a strange broken language. It didn’t take long for the elation I’d felt a few minutes earlier to cool, condensing back into the stagnant shape of my habitual moodiness. Thus rising at once recalls falling, strength recalls weakness, innocence recalls depravity, hope recalls despair. For the second time, I had found in Sarhan the perfect object on which to project my anger. I cursed him.
—
We chose a table under a eucalyptus tree in the little café on the Nile bank, where the afternoon sun was feebly pursuing the biting cold of a Cairo winter. Avoiding my eyes all the time, she said, “I shouldn’t have come.”
“But you have,” I answered reassuringly. “So that’s decided.”
“Nothing is decided, believe me.”
I looked at her. I had to take the plunge. “I’m sure your coming…”
“No. It’s just that I wouldn’t stay alone with your letters.”
“There’s nothing new in my letters.”
“But you’ve written them to someone who just doesn’t exist.” I touched her hand lying on the table in proof, as it were, that she did exist. She took her hand away. “They’re four years late.”
“But they tell you things that have nothing to do with time or place.”
“Can’t you see that I’m weak and miserable!”
“Well, so am I. Our friends see me as a spy. I see myself as a renegade, a traitor. I have no one but you.”