When he came to himself again, Shaikh As-Salhubi was carrying on with what he had been saying earlier. “That’s why we’re in the age of fundamental principles,” he was saying, “just like the days when the great religions were in conflict with each other!”
“What hope have the small nations got in life,” asked Samir Abd al-Baqi, “if the great nations don’t disagree with each other?”
“The atom is the flood,” Shaikh As-Salhubi said with conviction. “Either we turn in truth to Almighty God, or else there will be ‘clear destruction’!”8
Isa tried hard to remember where he had come across that idea before, the idea of the flood. He forgot this philosophizing when he found four tens in his hand. He sprang into action so as to make up for his losses during the long night. He opened with twenty-five piasters to draw them into the round, but they all passed because they had such poor hands. His head was spinning. Then he showed his winning hand.
“Your luck’s worse when you’re winning than when you’re losing!” shouted Ibrahim Khairat.
“You’re undoubtedly lucky in love,” Shaikh As-Salhubi remarked.
Isa was about to boil over. Gambling can eventually become a deadly disease, he told himself. He started to reckon up what kind of crisis was waiting for him at home. Everyone stopped playing just as dawn was about to appear.
Abbas Sadiq stood up. “What fun would there be at Ra’s al-Barr,” he said, “if it weren’t for gambling?”
Isa went out into the street feeling like a candle with only the vestige of the wick left. Abbas Sadiq and Samir Abd al-Baqi walked one way, and he walked another with Shaikh As-Salhubi. A dewy breeze blew quietly, and the sounds of people sleeping happily resounded in a darkness broken only by the light of the stars and by the moon rising at the end of the month. From afar, the horizon echoed the roaring of the sea. Shaikh As-Salhubi yawned as he intoned the word “Allah.” “How beautiful it is at this time of night,” he murmured.
“Especially when you’ve won!” Isa replied with a laugh.
“I’ve left this evening session of ours with no wins or losses,” the Shaikh said with a laugh. “Abbas Sadiq is God’s own lighted fire.” Then, after a pause: “Isa, you’re a risky gambler, you know!”
“I lost,” Isa replied with a tone full of meaning, “even though I had a pair of aces in my right hand.”
The Shaikh realized what he meant. “That’s the way the world is,” he replied. “Do we deserve the things that happen to us? Let’s admit that we do make mistakes, but then, who doesn’t? How can this renegade nation have forgotten us? How can it forget the people who used to treat it as a sympathetic mother treats her only child?”
A feeling of sadness overwhelmed Isa and his willful pride softened. “We were a party with the very loftiest ideals,” he said, responding to a sudden desire to make a confession, “a party of self-sacrifice and absolute integrity. In the face of all kinds of temptations and threats, we were the party which said, ‘No, and no again.’ We were like that before 1936. So how did our pure spirit get so senile? How did we sink little by little till we had lost all the good qualities we had? Now here we are turning up our hands in despair in the darkness, feeling sad and guilt-stricken. It’s too bad.”
“We were the best of them all,” the Shaikh said insistently, “right up till the very last moment.”
“That’s a relative judgment,” Isa replied in a bitter tone which was really aimed at himself. “It doesn’t fit in with the nature of things, nor does it satisfy the people who are tackling life so enthusiastically. Too bad, then…”
Isa said good night to him at the end of the street. He watched him as he walked slowly away with the wind blowing in his loose-fitting gallabiyya. The Shaikh had started his life, Isa thought sadly, by being imprisoned in Tanta when the Australian soldiers had arrested him as he was shouting. “Long live the homeland…long live Saad.” He had ended up in 1942 trading in vacant jobs, just as I finished up with bank account number 33123 at the Bank of Egypt.
He looked up at the universe. The rising moon was shining brightly, and the stars were gleaming, infinity overwhelming everything else. “What does it all mean?” he asked himself in an audible voice. “Tell me; my guide’s all confused.”
The doorbell rang loudly in the nocturnal silence when he pressed it. He waited for a while, then rang it again. He waited, and then rang again. He kept on pressing the bell, but there was no answer. She must have decided not to open the door! he thought. He stamped on the ground, then turned around and walked away.
TWENTY-SEVEN
He spent the night at Ibrahim Khairat’s house. The next day he took a room in the Grand Hotel on the Nile. After a week he had to draw another hundred pounds to cover his never-ending losses and his daily expenses. Ibrahim’s wife went to see Qadriyya at her husband’s suggestion to apologize for the unintentional role which Ibrahim had played in her quarrel with her husband. Then she tried to bring about a reconciliation, but got no response. Isa kept on gambling without the slightest consideration of the consequences. Samir stopped coming to their evening sessions because he was so disgusted by the dissipation he could see in his friend. “You should really take a look at your entire situation,” he told Isa one day.
They were sitting in the Soprano Casino overlooking the sea. It was noon, the time of day when he usually woke up. With his round eyes, Isa was following a group of swimming girls. He did not comment on his friend’s remark, but continued enjoying the view. Samir repeated what he had said.
“I’d really like to try an experiment,” Isa said, “one that has never been possible at the right time. I’d like to flirt with a pretty girl and get to know her, then propose to her. Meanwhile, we’d be exchanging presents, talking to each other, and making promises to each other over the telephone.”
“Do you really want to get married again?” Samir asked him.
He looked up at a slow-moving cloud which had a shape like a camel. “Just look at that cloud,” he said. “Tell me, is it possible that our life was created like that shape up there?”
“Even that fleeting shape is inevitable,” Samir replied with a smile. “It’s the result of hundreds of different factors of air and nature. But tell me, do you want to get married?”
Isa laughed and finished his Spatis.38 Just a dream,” he said. “Why do Sufis always believe everything?”
“Well, then,” Samir said angrily, “let’s discuss your situation.”
“Just imagine,” Isa replied in a similar tone, “as I was coming from the hotel, I met Sami Pasha Abd ar-Rahman, the old Free Constitutionalist. I felt rather attached to him personally because we both belonged to the past generation. We shook hands with each other and stood there talking. Strangely enough, if it hadn’t been for Saad Zaghlul, we wouldn’t have got into this situation!”
Samir laughed so loudly that lots of people sitting around stared at them.
“The biggest trick I let them pull on me was the dowry balance,” Isa said in a different tone of voice. “The old woman’s a farsighted old devil!”
“Qadriyya Hanem is a very reasonable woman, Isa,” Samir said sorrowfully. “You’re mad to be doing all this gambling.”
Isa breathed in angrily. “It’s boredom,” he muttered.
“Work and work again,” said Samir, patting his hand. “That’s my first and last piece of advice to you.”
Samir came in at the very beginning of the evening session, when Isa was concentrating on the game, and invited him to accompany him on some urgent and important business. Isa tried to ignore the invitation and continue playing, but Samir dragged him from the table in spite of his cries of protest and the silent protests of the people around him as well.
He found himself in Samir’s chalet confronted by Ihsan, Samir’s wife, and Qadriyya, his own wife, who was sitting on a large chair with her head lowered. Ihsan welcomed him and sat him down next to her on a long, ornate semicircular sofa. “Thank you so much for coming,??
? she said. She gestured at Qadriyya Hanem. “May I present to you a dear friend of mine. She’s married to a fine man who’s been lost in action.”
Isa frowned and Qadriyya blushed. Her eyes moistened and Samir noticed it. “That’s a good sign,” he said. “What do you say?”
They did not stop speaking for a single moment. “Every problem can be solved without an argument,” Ihsan said.
“Things can be put right again with a little kindness,” Samir told Qadriyya with a smile. “Your husband is a stubborn man. In the past, he was subjected to all kinds of terror and torture without changing his mind.”
“Are you happy with this situation?” Qadriyya asked. “Tell me.”
A silver tray with cassata cakes and pastries from the local market was passed around. There was a pause while they ate.
“Humanity as a whole needs some doses of Sufism,” Samir said. “Without it, life would lose it pleasure.”
“We need to come back to life several times,” said Isa, “till we perfect it.”
Qadriyya now spoke to him for the first time. “I hope you’re not holding back your kindness toward me till some other life, then,” she said.
Samir had moistened the edge of his handkerchief with water and was using it to rub his trouser leg at the knee where a drop of strawberry juice had spilled. “Let’s talk about the future,” he suggested. “Please…”
“I’m quite sure,” Qadriyya said, “that the only thing that could get him out of his difficulties is a job. I’ll accept any sacrifice to achieve that much!”
“I completely agree with you,” Samir said. “But he must move away from Ra’s al-Barr so that that excellent idea can sink in. You’ve spent the month of August here; that’s enough. Go to Alexandria and spend the rest of the summer there. That seems both essential and urgent.”
“We’ll leave tomorrow,” Qadriyya said, “provided he agrees.”
“You’ll find ample time to think in Alexandria,” Samir said as he led them to the outside door of the chalet. “When you get back to Cairo in October, you’ll start work immediately.”
They walked side by side in the street, which was almost empty. The half-moon was fixed above the horizon like a cosmic smile in a clear sky. He had a thought; all that beauty scattered around in such remarkable order was just some unknown, mocking force, compelling mankind to realize the intensity and chaos of its own misery.
“I’ve found out that I’ve got high blood pressure,” Qadriyya muttered, “and you’re the cause of it all!”
“Really?”
“Yes. The doctor examined me and gave me some medicine and put me on a diet.”
“I hope you’ll soon get better,” he told her, stroking her back very gently. He felt he was not getting any further in his quest for happiness. A marriage with no love, a life without hope. Even if he did have some success with a job, he would still be out of work.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The two of them traveled to Alexandria alone, and her mother stayed on in Ra’s al-Barr. They lived in the Louvre Hotel for a few days till Isa found a flat in Sidi Gaber on the seventh floor of a building overlooking the sea. The summer season was almost over; there was less noise to be heard from young people now, and the skies were welcoming masses of white clouds. The weather was conducive to peace and contemplation. Qadriyya seemed to be really happy even though she felt unwell. She stuck to her diet in spite of her fondness for food. If it took off some of her weight, she said, then so much the better. Isa grew fond of walking and avoided eating fatty foods as much as possible so that he could regain his slim appearance. They both agreed that he would start work as soon as he returned to Cairo. He had decided to open an office, although the idea did not seem to fill him with a great deal of pleasure. “I’d really like some other kind of life,” he said.
She stared inquiringly into his face with her huge, cowlike eyes.
“Don’t get worried,” he resumed hurriedly. “That’s just a dream. I’d like to live in the country, far away from Cairo; I’d only like to see it on special occasions. I’d like to spend the day working in the fields and the night on a balcony looking out on space and silence.”
“But we’ve no connections with the countryside,” she said in alarm.
“It’s just a dream.”
Days went by, and he felt exasperated. All he got from the almost deserted beaches was a lonely feeling, especially since Qadriyya preferred to stay in the house most of the time because of her health. He used to walk till his feet felt tired; when he sat down, it would be in the Gleem Paradise, where he could hang on to his memories. His own era was over, he told himself, and he wouldn’t be able to merge into the same kind of life as he had had before. Here he was, tied to a woman in order to steal from her, not love her. He wondered when the world was going to be wiped out, and whether there wasn’t some other kind of ideas which might give his heart some life again.
He found a palm reader in Indian dress standing in front of him, looking at him with gleaming eyes. He was sitting in his usual place in the Paradise. He stretched out his hand, and the man brought over a seat and sat down in front of him. He started concentrating immediately on the lines of his palm, while Isa waited patiently for the voice of the occult with a smile of resignation.
“You’ll have a long life,” the man said, “and you’ll recover from a serious illness.” He looked at his hand again. “You’ll marry twice,” he continued, “and have children.”
Isa listened with interest. The man continued. “There are many upsets in your life,” he said, “but you’ve nothing to fear because you have a will of iron. But you, you’ll risk being drowned at sea!”
“At sea?”
“That’s what your palm says. You’re an ambitious man without any consideration for others. You’ll always find an abundant means of support, but your nervousness often spoils your peace of mind.”
The man stood up, bending his head in farewell as he did.
“What’s the way out?” Isa asked him without thinking as he was about to leave.
The man looked at him inquisitively. Isa scoffed at himself and gave him a thankful gesture.
In the evening, he started walking along the Corniche till he reached Camp Cesare.6 There was a row of cafés and shops which were bunched together on the pavement in a riot of lights, and it was there that his eyes fell on Riri! He stopped dead in his tracks on the Corniche. Fear gripped him as he looked again more carefully. Yes, it was definitely Riri, no one else. She was in a small place which sold ice cream and ful15 and taamiyya40 sandwiches, and was sitting behind the till on the chair belonging to either the manager or the owner. He rested his back on the seawall at a spot out of the light and scrutinized her face in amazement. When he recalled the way he had behaved, he felt very uncomfortable—he was shocked by how cruel and unpleasant he had been to her. Riri! It was Riri, no one else; but she was no longer a girl. Certainly not! She was a woman now in every sense of the word, and had a personality of her own—which the waiter who kept moving to and fro with orders between her and the customers obeyed to the full. A serious woman and a real manager. The incredible thing was that he had walked this way for twenty days in succession without looking at this small place. Now he read the name clearly: Take It and Thanks. On the few occasions when he had spent the summer in Alexandria, he had thought of her and been worried about the idea of meeting her either by himself or with his wife and friends. But he had found no sign of her. Eventually he had come to the conclusion that she had left town or maybe the world altogether. How had it come about that she was sitting in that seat? Were five years enough—without a world war—for her to reach this level? Her teacher in Al-Ibrahimiyya would undoubtedly be jealous of the rapid way she had advanced. Her colleagues would never have dreamed of it!
He stood there in the semi-darkness, not taking his eyes off her, and recalled their old relationship which was now forever lost in the recesses of oblivion. The superficiality of human relati
onships amazed him. Without realizing it, he thought, we’re trying out death; we experiment with it time after time during our lives before death finally catches up with us. The whole scene with Riri sitting there in her place looked just like the Saadi Club when he used to walk in front of it, or like the House of Parliament. They were all lives destined to an early death, and the only things to benefit from them would be insects.
A woman in servant’s clothes came into the place leading a little girl by the right hand. She went and spoke seriously to Riri. Meanwhile the little girl jumped onto Riri’s lap and started playing lovingly and trustingly with the necklace she was wearing. At that moment, Isa had a thought that made his heart pound so much that it even covered the noise of the sea behind him. His whole body went rigid, and he looked closely at the little girl. He lost all consciousness of what was around him. But no…no! Why was his head spinning like this? What a stupid thought, and terrifying too! The little girl’s face was turned toward her mother, so he could not see it. Things would pass quietly, he told himself, and then he would laugh at himself after it was all over. But the earth had already slipped and everything standing had been destroyed. Well, then, he should run, and never come back to Camp Cesare again, never return to Alexandria. He did not budge a single inch from the spot where he was standing. How had these idiotic ideas managed to take him by surprise?
Riri released herself from the little girl, kissed her, and then put her on the ground. The servant took hold of her hand and led her out of the café. She made for a side street that went inland from the shore. Instead of running away, he dashed across the road toward the side street and kept quickening his pace till he almost caught up with the two of them. He could hear the little girl piping up with some unintelligible words, almost all of them unintelligible except for “chocolate”; she sounded just like a chirping sparrow. They stopped in front of a shop on the corner of a cross street which sold sweets and games. He took up a position next to her in the gleaming light, and asked for a box of cigarettes. He began to scrutinize the girl’s face with an avid curiosity. Did not her face have a triangular shape to it? And those circular eyes! The features of his mother and three sisters were all mingled in hers; they seemed to come and go. Was it just his imagination? Was it fear? Or was it the truth? He almost collapsed from sheer exhaustion. His heart was pounding fast, sending out continuous waves of amazement, disgust, panic, grief, longing, and desire for death.