“Nothing happened.”
“I beg you, please. Forget this obsession of yours, this prying and spying, and concentrate on learning your part. It’s the chance of a lifetime.” As I leave the room he adds, “And you’d do well to treat Umm Hany better. If she leaves you, you’ll really be in a bad way.”
She’s the same age as I am, damnit, and doesn’t have the sense to feel grateful. She watched Tahiya die, and couldn’t see that she’d been murdered, leaving me to play the role of the forsaken lover night after night, to cry again and again—in front of her coffin, because she died without remorse, without even thinking about me, without knowing herself that she’d been murdered, killed by that idealist who commits suicide in the play, and should be hanged in real life.
This crime is creating an author and an actor in one stroke.
“Isn’t Tahiya coming?”
“No.”
“I didn’t see her at the theater.”
“She’s not going to the theater.”
“What do you mean, Abbas?”
“Mr. Tariq—excuse me—Tahiya isn’t coming here and she’s not going to the theater.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Pardon me, but we’re going to be married.”
“What?!”
“We’ve decided to get married.”
“You son of a bitch. Are you crazy? What are you saying?”
“Be reasonable. We wanted to be nice to you, to treat you with respect. Allow me…”
I slapped his face and all of a sudden he became a tiger, snarling with hatred. He punched me—a powerful young man despite his clouded left eye—and my head swam.
Karam Younis and Halima came up yelling, “What happened?”
“It’s ludicrous!” I shouted. “A joke! Mama’s boy is going to marry Tahiya!”
“Is that so?” said Karam in the dim voice of an addict still on a high, remote and uninvolved.
“Tahiya!” Halima exploded at her son. “What kind of lunacy is this? She’s ten years older than you?”
Abbas said nothing.
“Kids’ games!” I shouted. “I’ll find a way to stop this!”
“Don’t make matters worse!” Halima screamed.
“I’ll bring destruction on this house and everyone in it!” I shouted.
“Take your clothes,” she told me coolly, “and get out.”
“You can stay here and rot!” I shouted, storming out of the house.
—
I was shattered, though. My self-esteem went down like a stallion biting the dust. And it was just at this point, when my spirits were at rock bottom, that my heart leapt aflame with love. I’d thought my feelings were smothered in routine. I’d taken it for granted that Tahiya belonged to me, like a comfortable old shoe. I’d harangued her, demeaned her, and beaten her, but she couldn’t live without me, I thought, and she’d sacrifice her life rather than leave me. Now I knew that if she walked out on me—so cunningly and so cruelly—she was taking my trust in life, my confidence, and my sense of mastery with her. What replaced them was madness—in the shape of love, which broke out of the dark corner of its lair, shook off the lethargy of long hibernation, and went to seek the food it had been missing.
When she appeared at the judas, summoned by my ringing, Tahiya’s eyes showed confusion, as if she might be faltering. But they didn’t flinch, there was no sign of cringing from challenge at this crisis in her life. And in what seemed a new personality, courageous, freed from continual submission, looking forward to a new life, I sensed that she was slipping across some kind of border into a region of potential violence.
“Open the door, Tahiya,” I pleaded.
“You know everything now.”
“Are you going to leave me outside, like a stranger?”
“Tariq, what can I say? Perhaps it’s for the good of both of us. It’s our fate.”
“This is some crazy joke.”
“I should have told you myself.”
“But I don’t believe it. Open up!”
“No. I’m treating you honorably.”
“You’re nothing but a whore!”
“Fine, then. Leave me in peace.”
“I’ll never do that.”
“We’re getting married right away.”
“A student. Mad. Half blind.”
“I’ll try my luck.”
“Open the door, you fool.”
“No. It’s all over between us.”
“It can’t be.”
“That’s life.”
“You’ll never know love except with me.”
“We couldn’t go on living like that.”
“You’re not old enough to have given up hope. Why are you acting in this stupid fashion?”
“Please, let’s be friends, I beg you.”
“You acted in a fit of despair. It was a mistake.”
“No.”
“People like you—I know what odd phases they go through.”
“May God forgive you.”
“You lunatic! When did you change?”
“I haven’t committed any sin against you.”
“You’ve lived a lie for quite some time.”
“Don’t keep on insisting. It’s no use.”
“You’re the biggest whore around.”
She clicked the judas shut.
—
For a while I actually stayed on at Karam Younis’s house—Abbas Younis had left, taking over his father’s job as prompter, which the old man no longer needed, being content with the earnings the house made for him—and the atmosphere to begin with was somewhat strained. Sirhan al-Hilaly took me aside. “Don’t spoil our soirees,” he whispered. “Be sensible. You can get Umm Hany back with a wink, you know. She earns twice as much as Tahiya.” Al-Hilaly is crazy about women and he’d had Tahiya once or twice, but he knows nothing about love and can’t see any connection between suffering and sex, which he ordains or disdains as if it were a matter of administrative routine. When he wants it, it’s simply served up immediately. I had no doubt about his good intentions toward me: he’d given me many chances, all of which came to nothing only because of my own limitations—and now in Abbas’s play he believes I’ll finally be a success—so that when he told me he’d already given hints to Umm Hany about my returning to her, I went back to the company’s seamstress. I did it more for the sake of escaping loneliness and shoring up the sad state of my finances than to get over any bitter emotional experience. The fact was that I expected Tahiya’s marriage to fail: she’d always had attachments—she needed the money—but I was sure she’d never love anyone except me, in spite of my poverty. On the face of it she belied my expectations, keeping up her marriage until her death. The play, however, unveils her secret: she is shown confessing on her sickbed that she’s sold herself to a foreigner, whereupon her husband decides to kill her by replacing her medicine with plain aspirin. So my doubts were justified without my knowing it. This man, whose idealism had been a thorn in our flesh, killed her—this man who, if it is left to me, will never escape punishment.
—
What have I hoped to gain? I’m face-to-face with Abbas in the flat that was once Tahiya’s, having gone there the day after the reading, after seeing his parents in their shop. So he’s now a playwright—a playwright at last, after dozens of rejections—this scribbling phony who plunders reality without shame. He’s astonished to see me.
Don’t be surprised, I want to tell him. What’s past is past, but its aftermath, thanks to you, is going to be felt far and wide, all over again.
Al-Hilaly made peace between us one day and we’ve shaken hands, but we haven’t buried our feelings. Here in his study—the flat consists of two rooms with a little foyer—we look at each other sullenly until I say, “No doubt you’re wondering why I came.”
“I trust it’s good news.”
“I came to congratulate you on the play.”
“Thanks,” he replies lukewarmly.
“Rehea
rsals begin tomorrow.”
“Your producer is full of enthusiasm.”
“Not like our director.”
“What’s he say?”
“The hero is a disgusting creature and the public won’t like him.”
He shrugs, frowning.
“Why weren’t you at the reading?” I ask him.
“That’s my business.”
“Didn’t you stop to think? What takes place in the play could create suspicion about you.”
“I don’t care if it does.”
“They will think, quite understandably, that you’re a murderer, and a traitor to your parents.”
“That’s ridiculous. And anyway, why should I care!”
Losing control, I blurt out, “You’re a self-confessed murderer!”
“And you’re nothing but a shit,” he mutters, looking at me with scorn.
“Will you be able to defend yourself?”
“I haven’t been accused. I don’t need to defend myself.”
“You’ll be accused—sooner than you think.”
“You’re an idiot.”
I get up. “She may well have deserved to be killed,” I say. “But you deserve to hang.”
—
The next day, at the first rehearsal, I’m welcomed by one of al-Hilaly’s tantrums. When our producer gets angry he’s a hurricane! “You! You! You’re behaving like a ten-year-old!” he shouts. “An imbecile! If you weren’t so stupid you could have developed into a fine actor. But you insist on turning yourself into a public prosecutor. Why did you go see Abbas Younis?” Has that bastard been complaining about me? I choose to say nothing until this storm blows over a little. “You’ll never get a grip on your role,” he yells, “until you concentrate on it, instead of on him.”
“Today’s the first day,” I mumble. “It’s just as important that the criminal gets what he deserves.”
“There’s not one of us,” he bellows sarcastically, “who hasn’t got some misdeed hanging around his neck for which he deserves to go to jail.”
“But we haven’t gone so far as to commit murder!”
“Who knows? Tahiya—if it’s true that she was killed—had more than one man possibly involved in her murder. And you are chief among them.”
“He doesn’t deserve your defense.”
“I don’t consider him accused. Have you got one bit of evidence against him?”
“The play.”
“No play is devoid of some charge or other. The office of the public prosecutor demands quite a different kind of evidence.”
“In the play he commits suicide.”
“Which means that in real life he does not commit suicide. And it’s our good fortune that he’ll be around to write some more.”
“He never created one line, and he’ll never write one. You know perfectly well what kind of plays he offered you before.”
“Tariq Ramadan, don’t be so tiresome! Pay attention to your work and take advantage of this opportunity, because it isn’t going to come your way again.”
I become absorbed in my role. Rehearsing that murderer’s play, I relive my life with Tahiya, from its beginning backstage and the old house in the gravel market where we made love in my room, to the denunciation of Karam and Halima, and finally to my crying at her funeral.
“You’re acting like you never acted before,” Salim al-Agrudy remarks, “but you must stick to the text.”
“I’m repeating what was actually said.”
He laughs. “Forget about real life and live in the play!”
“You’re lucky to have the right to change it.”
“Just the necessary cuts. I dropped the scene about the baby.”
“I have an idea!” Al-Agrudy looks annoyed, but I go on anyway: “As the heroine is dying, she asks to see her former lover.”
“What lover? Every actor in this theater was her lover at one time or another.”
“I mean the lover whose part I’m playing. He goes to see her, and she apologizes to him for her infidelity and dies in his arms.”
“That would mean introducing major changes in their personalities and in the relationship—the bond of affection—between the husband and the wife.”
“But…”
“You’re inventing a new play. The heroine here forgets her former lover altogether.”
“Impossible. And unnatural, too.”
“I told you to live in the play and forget about life. Or go ahead and write a new play. There’s quite a lot of sloppy, offbeat writing on the market these days.”
“But you cut out the baby!”
“That’s different. It has no connection with the basic plot, and the killing of an innocent baby is enough to deprive the hero of any sympathy.”
“But he kills his wretched wife.”
“Listen, hundreds of men in the audience wish, in their hearts, that they could kill their wives, too!”
—
Isn’t that Karam Younis? That’s him, for sure, leaving al-Hilaly’s office. Only two weeks to go before the play opens. At the doorway of the cafeteria I stand chatting with Doria, the star of our company, the two of us with coffee cups in hand. As Karam approaches, dressed in his old suit, the neck of his black sweater pulled right up to his jawline, I call out, “Glad to see you here.”
Casting a look at me, he growls, “Get out of my sight,” nods at Doria, and goes on his way.
Doria breaks off what she was saying about the high cost of living to remark, “He must have come to ask about Abbas’s mysterious disappearance.”
“Abbas is hiding because he’s a criminal.”
“He didn’t kill anyone,” she assures me with a smile, “and he hasn’t committed suicide.”
“He may not have committed suicide. But he’s certainly going to hang.”
“Victory*3 should have led us to a more prosperous life,” Doria goes on, returning to the subject at hand.
“Only the corrupt have it easy. The whole country’s become one huge brothel. Why did the police bother to choose Karam Younis’s house for a raid? He was only doing what everyone else does.”
“We’re living in times when sex has become a national pursuit,” Doria says, laughing.
—
“I’m a man so sunk in corruption that I’ve been disowned by an old respectable family. So why am I still bogged down in failure?”
“The eternal failure! Poor man. No field of operation left to exploit but Umm Hany!”
—
On opening night, the tenth of October, the air outside is mild, but inside it feels as though it’s going to be steamy. Karam and Halima, al-Hilaly, and Fuad Shalaby are among the audience. Though I’m the only one acting out on the stage what he experienced in reality—Ismail has the part of Abbas—the life of the old house is lived again in all its shamelessness with new and more brutal crimes added. Scandals follow one after another—the producer takes the risk of actually sneaking into Halima’s bedroom—and are crowned with betrayal and murder. And during all this, for the first time in my career, my acting is greeted with applause. Is Tahiya watching us from her grave?
Pouring us out success like wine, the crowd either listens in deathly silence or bursts into wild applause. The author, of course, criminal and cowardly, is absent. But how are Karam and Halima taking it? Before the final curtain they’re going to have a few more wrinkles in their faces.
—
After the show, when we have our usual celebration in the cafeteria, people, for once, seem aware of my presence. I am altogether a different person. From a nobody, Tahiya has made me more than a man. The broad grin on Umm Hany’s face spreads until her mouth is as wide as a bulldog’s. Behind every great man there’s a woman.
“Didn’t I tell you?” says Sirhan al-Hilaly.
“A great actor has been born,” adds Fuad Shalaby.
Ismail’s simper shows his jealousy: it’s I who’ve played the complex role of a lover, a madman, and a heel. I fill my stomach
with shawerma and cognac; and the cognac reacts with the wine of success to the point where, seeing Halima in a suit she’s rented from Umm Hany, I even drink a toast to the absent author.
Around three o’clock in the morning I leave the theater, arm in arm with Umm Hany and Fuad Shalaby. “Come on,” says Fuad. “Let’s take a stroll around Cairo at the only time it has a chance to be respectable.”
“But we’re a long way from home,” protests Umm Hany.
“I have my car. I need to get some information.”
“You’re going to write about me?”
“Of course.”
I crow with laughter.
Answering his questions as we walk, I tell him about my past: “I was born in Manshiyyat al-Bakri. There were two villas side by side—the Ramadan family and the al-Hilaly family. My father, Ramadan, was a major general in the cavalry, one of the pashas of the old order; al-Hilaly’s was a landowner. I was the eldest in our family, and Sirhan was an only child. One of my brothers is a consul, another is a judge of the High Court, and the third is an engineer. My story in a nutshell is that we were expelled—Sirhan and I—from school. Not that we’d learned much, except about whorehouses, taverns, and drugs. My father left me nothing. Sirhan inherited seventy feddans,*4 though, and to satisfy his craze for bossing and for girls, he founded a theatrical troupe. I was one of his actors. My brothers cut off relations with me completely. A low salary. Debts all over the place. If it hadn’t been for women…”
Umm Hany sighs, “Ah.”
Fuad asks, “You were active politically, of course?”
I laugh again. “I have no affiliation with any entity but life. You know what Karam Younis is like. He and I are twins in spirit. People say in his case that being brought up by a mother who was a prostitute has made him what he is. Well, I grew up in a respectable family. So how do you explain our similarity? Environment can’t change natural gifts. We despise respectability, both of us. The difference between us and other people, in fact, is that we’re honest and they’re hypocritical.”
“Are you going to write this drivel?” asks Umm Hany, turning to Fuad.
“Fuad belongs to the same breed himself!”
“You’re a real bastard,” she bubbles gleefully. “Don’t you believe there are any decent people at all?”
“Sure. Mr. Abbas Younis, for example, the author of Afrah al-Qubbah. He’s such an idealist, you know. That’s why he throws his parents into jail and kills his wife and baby son!”