Karnak Café

by Naguib Mahfouz

  Qurunfula was standing behind the table. “Where’s Hilmi?” she asked.

  No one answered.

  “Where is he?” she asked again, angry and insistent. “Why hasn’t he come with you?”

  Still no one said a word. They all avoided looking at her.

  “What’s the matter?” she yelled. “Can’t you speak or something?”

  When no one said a word, she realized.

  “No, no!” she screamed. She looked at Isma‘il. “Isma‘il, say something, anything, please.…”

  She leaned over the table as though she had suffered a stomach rupture and stayed there for a while without saying anything. Then she raised her head. “Merciful God, have mercy … have mercy!”

  She would have collapsed completely if ‘Arif Sulayman had not caught her and taken her outside.

  “They say he died under interrogation,” said Isma‘il after she had left.

  “Meaning that he was murdered,” commented Zaynab.

  During those days that followed the June War, sorrow, just like joy, was soon forgotten. I offered my condolences to Qurunfula, but she did not seem to grasp the significance of what I was saying.

  So this totally unforeseen tidal wave spread further and further. We all started following the news again and chewing the fat. As we suffered our painful way through the ongoing sequences of days, we placed the entire burden on our shoulders and proceeded on our way with labored, faltering steps. It was by sticking together that we continued to seek refuge from the sense of isolation and loneliness. It felt as if we had made a whole series of decisions about how to protect ourselves: against the blows of the unseen we would cling to each other; in the face of potential terrors we would share our opinions; when confronting overwhelming despair we would tell grisly sarcastic jokes; in acknowledging major mistakes we would indulge in torrid bursts of confession; faced with the dreadful burdens of responsibility we would torture ourselves; and to avoid the generally oppressive social atmosphere we would indulge ourselves in phony dreams. As hour followed hour, we found ourselves wading through a never-ending realm of darkness and on the verge of collapse, but never for a single second did we veer from our chosen course.

  Among the café’s clientele, the ones who best managed to withstand this pestilential onslaught were Imam al-Fawwal, the waiter, and Gum‘a, the bootblack. Both of them adamantly refused to accept that the defeat was a reality; they kept on believing what the radio was telling them. They were still dreaming of Victory Day. But, as time went by, their sense of disaster began to dissipate, to be replaced by an increasing concern with matters of daily life. Gradually they came to adopt a more insouciant attitude, although deep down they both felt a lingering sorrow over what had happened.

  The group of old men decided to retreat into the past.

  “Never in all our long history have we been in such a sorry state.”

  “At least in the past, we used to have the law as a haven. That was all we needed.”

  “Even during the very worst periods of tyranny, there were always voices raised in opposition.”

  “Those glorious days in the past, days of struggle, defiance, and sacrifice! How can we ever forget them?”

  They kept going back further and further in time, until eventually they settled some time in the seventh century with the caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab and the Prophet himself. They competed with each other to drag up the past, trying very hard to use the glories of yesteryear as a means of forgetting the present.

  Zayn al-‘Abidin ‘Abdallah kept listening to their chatter with a mixture of interest and contempt. “There’s only one country with the solution,” he said, affording us the benefit of his opinion, “and that’s America.”

  That seemed to strike a chord with ‘Arif Sulayman, the wine-steward, who registered his agreement.

  “Everything will have to start again from scratch,” he declared with a sweeping gesture. “This period of recuperation we’re going through is simply the last twitches before death finally comes.”

  The young folk were the only ones who neither gave themselves over to the past nor hoped for some goodwill gesture from America. Once they had all recovered from the blow of the June 1967 defeat, they all started talking, bit by bit, about a new struggle on the broadest possible scale, a conflict on a world-wide level between progressivist forces and imperialism. They said that people needed to be ready for a risky future; they talked about radical transformations in the basic internal fabric of society, and so on and so on.

  Apart from large-scale issues, the one thing that drew my attention more than anything else was the obvious change in the relationship between Zaynab Diyab and Isma‘il al-Shaykh. It seemed as if some unknown disease had crept into their hearts, making them act almost like complete strangers. I came to the conclusion that they had both buried their former love for each other once and for all and had decided to go their separate ways, taking their lives and sorrows with them. All of which led me to return to my former opinion, namely that Zaynab was actually in love with Hilmi Hamada. As time went by, I started to believe that more and more.

  I was delighted to notice that Qurunfula seemed to be recovering her old energy. Most of the time she was quiet and kept to herself. She would listen to the things we were saying, but would stay out of the discussions. By this time she was starting to look more staid and older.

  So time went by, and some faces disappeared, while others alternated between presence and absence. Up till now things have for the most part continued without much change. Most recently, things have worked out in such a way that my own relationships with some of the regulars at Karnak Café have been strengthened. From them I’ve learned things that I did not know before. Inner secrets involving both events and the hearts of men have now become known to me, and I have drained the glass to the very dregs.

  Isma‘il al-Shaykh

  Yes indeed, I’ve learned things I did not know before. From the very first time we met I found Isma‘il al-Shaykh interesting. He had a strong build, and his features were large and pronounced. I only ever saw him wearing one suit, and he wore it winter and summer long. In summer he used to take the jacket off, but in winter it would be back on, along with a sweater. He was obviously poor, but even so he still managed to win your respect. In spite of intermittent terms spent in prison, he had just recently earned his law diploma.

  “I come from a very poor neighborhood,” he told me. “Have you ever heard of Da‘bas Alley in the Husayniya Quarter? My father works there in a liver restaurant, and my mother’s a peddler who also sells sweet basil and palm leaves whenever people go to visit their family gravesite during the Eid festival. My elder brothers are a butcher’s mate, a cart-driver, and a cobbler. Our home consists of a single room that looks out on a tenement courtyard. The whole building feels like one enormous family consisting of over fifty people. There’s no bathroom or running water. The only toilet is in the corner of the yard, and we have to carry the water to it in jerry cans. The women all gather in the yard; on occasion men and women will congregate together. It’s there that they exchange gossip and jokes, and occasionally insults and blows as well. They eat and pray.”

  He gave me a frown. “Basically nothing has changed in Da‘bas Alley right up till today,” he said, but then he corrected himself. “No, I’m wrong. Schools have started opening their doors to people like us. That’s an undeniable boon. I was one of the children who went to school, but my father really hoped I would fail; he was anxious to get rid of me like my brothers by apprenticing me off to some tradesman. I thwarted him by doing well in my studies and eventually getting the Certificate of Secondary Education. That made it possible for me to enroll in law school. Once that happened, my father changed his tune and started treating me with pride and admiration. Could his son really turn into a public prosecutor, he wondered? In our part of town, there are always two well-known posts: policeman and public prosecutor. As you know, people have to deal with both types. My
mother set her heart on my continuing my studies, ‘even,’ as she put it herself, ‘if it means having to sell my own eyes.’ God knows how much it must have cost her to buy me a suit that would look right for a university student. But for her it was a piece of real estate that needed to be properly looked after: repair it, refurbish, or even replace it, by all means, but never dispense with it.”

  He paused for a moment. “These days the place is crawling with boys and girls going to school,” he went on angrily, “but their future is an ongoing problem that nations keep batting back and forth among each other.”

  When the 1952 Revolution happened, he had been three years old. Thus he was in every sense of the word a ‘son of the revolution.’ With that in mind, I could see no reason to conceal my amazement at the appalling treatment he had received. “It’s been suggested,” I told him, “that you must be either a Communist or a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

  “Neither,” he replied. “My only allegiance is to the July 1952 Revolution. But when it comes to the situation today.…” He fell silent and started shaking his head, as though he did not know what to say next. “For a long time,” he went on, “I’ve considered Egyptian history as really beginning on July 23, 1952. It’s only since the June 1967 War that I’ve started looking back earlier than that.”

  He admitted to me that he believed in Egyptian socialism. For that reason his faith had remained unshaken.

  “But what about your belief in socialist ideas now?” I asked.

  “Many people have decided to vent their spleen against socialism as being one of the causes of our defeat. But what we need to realize is that there has never been any genuine socialism in our lives. That’s why I’ve still not abandoned my support for the concept, even though I would dearly like to get rid of the people who have been applying it up till now. Hilmi Hamada—may he rest in peace!—was well aware of that from the very beginning.”

  “How come?”

  “He was a Communist.”

  “So there were some strangers in your group then?”

  “Yes, but what did we do wrong?”

  He told me a great deal about Zaynab. “I have known her ever since we were both kids growing up in the alley. She lives in the same tenement building. We used to play games with each other and were beaten for doing so. Then she grew up and matured into a young woman. She developed physically; whenever she moved, she used to attract the attention of young men. Youthful passions were stirred, and I took it upon myself to defend her, drawing my courage from old stories about gangs in our quarter. When we were both in secondary school, spies and traditions kept interfering in our lives, but our love was very strong. Our true feelings for each other had flared into the open, and everyone was forced to acknowledge that we were in love. It was when we went to university that at last we found some freedom. We announced our engagement, but, since we both viewed marriage as the final sanctuary, decided to wait before getting married. And now, just look at the way such dreams all come to nothing, and everything dies.…”

  He went on to tell me how they had found undreamed-of freedom at university. Their student days could not be subjected to the kind of authoritarian prudery that governed their movements in Da‘bas Alley, where there had had to be a valid reason or excuse for every single absence or lateness. As a result of this new-found freedom, they had spent many long hours together and had got to know each other’s friends. She had joined him and become one of the regular customers at Karnak Café; she had been arrested when he was. Her personality had developed in a way that he had never imagined.

  “We found ourselves beset by the issue of sex,” he went on with a laugh. “For a long time we both fumbled around, not really knowing what to do about it. We were both fully aware, of course, that we were surrounded by a variety of temptations urging us to indulge in experiments in free love that were all the rage.

  “ ‘We’re in love,’ I told her one day as I gave her a warm hug, ‘there’s no doubt about that. We’re definitely going to get married. So what do you say?’

  “ ‘I promised my father I wouldn’t,’ she replied.

  “ ‘That’s stupid,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t you hear what people are saying?’

  “ ‘I’m not sure about it,’ she replied testily, ‘nor are you!’

  “The result was that we both suffered a good deal over the subject.”

  So how far is this Isma‘il a genuine revolutionary? I asked myself. He makes no attempt to hide his religious belief, so he’s obviously a particular type of revolutionary. I wanted to ask him about his personal views on sexual freedom, but I was afraid he might get the impression that I wanted to pry into Zaynab’s secrets. With that in mind, I decided not to take him down a path that might lead him to reveal things he preferred not to be public knowledge.

  “In spite of everything people believe,” he said, “true love can provide a bulwark against temptation.”

  There was something else he told me as well, and I can never forget it.

  “In prison we felt a terrible sense of loss, and it managed to shake the entire foundation of our love for each other.”

  That reminded me that violent convulsions in a man’s life are followed by cries for help in sexual guise that often verge on the insane. What did it all mean? I wondered. But he seemed reluctant to return to the subject, so I changed the subject.

  “What about Hilmi Hamada?” I asked.

  “He kept on breaking with tradition and always did it with enormous intensity.”

  “Was he from the same background as you?”

  “No, certainly not! His father was a teacher of English, and his grandfather worked on the railroad.”

  “Was he really in love with Qurunfula?”

  “Certainly,” he replied, “I have absolutely no doubt about that. It may have been purely by chance that we initially found the café, but he insisted on going back to it. I can remember him saying, ‘Let’s go back to that woman’s café. She’s very attractive. Didn’t you notice?’ To tell the truth, we wanted to go back too, since we had grown fond of her as friends.”

  I had no doubts about Qurunfula’s attractiveness either, since I had fallen under the same spell. But was all that enough to counteract the powerful impression I had that Hilmi Hamada had been in love with Zaynab? Wasn’t it possible, I asked myself, that he had publicized his love for Qurunfula as a way of hiding his true feelings?

  “Yes, he really loved Qurunfula. Mind you, his motives may not have been entirely flawless. What he was looking for may have been something similar to love without actually being true love itself. Even so, he was loyal to her and showed her genuine affection. He never gave in to the urge to exploit her feelings, however easy that might have been. There was an idealistic side to his behavior as well. Beyond that his financial situation was fine; on that score all we need tell you is that my general education, and Zaynab’s too, came about thanks to the books that we borrowed from his library.”

  “Perhaps he felt some pangs of sympathy for her glorious past?”

  “We all used to sit there listening to her talk and pretending to believe it all,” Isma‘il replied with a laugh. “In fact, he didn’t believe a word of it. We loved her for what she is now. Even so, he did poke fun at her claims to have modernized art and to have been the only one of her profession who behaved in a model fashion.”

  “With regard to both art and morals,” I commented as a neutral observer, “she was certainly a model for emulation.”

  “It’s too late to convince Hilmi of that now,” he replied.

  But why had Isma‘il al-Shaykh been put in prison? As before, I was afraid that he would not respond to that question, but the radical change in circumstances seemed to have led him to adopt a different attitude.

  “It was nighttime,” he said. “I was asleep on a bench in the yard. In spring and fall I always do that so as to leave the single room for my father. I was sound asleep. Gradually I became aw
are of daylight impinging on my sleep like a dream. Someone was shaking me roughly. I woke up, opened my eyes, but found myself blinded by a powerful light shining right into my eyes. I sat up with a start.

  “ ‘Where’s the al-Shaykh house?’ a voice asked.

  “ ‘This is it,’ I replied. ‘What do you want? I’m his son, Isma‘il.’

  “ ‘Fine,’ said the voice.

  “The flashlight went out, and everything went dark. After a while I could make out some figures.

  “ ‘Come with us.’

  “ ‘Who are you?’

  “ ‘Don’t worry, we’re police.’

  “ ‘What do you want?’

  “ ‘You just need to answer a few questions. You’ll be back home before daybreak.’

  “ ‘Let me tell my father and put my suit on.’

  “ ‘There’s no need for that.’

  “A hand grabbed me by the shoulder, and I submitted. Wearing only my nightshirt I was frog-marched barefoot outside and thrust into a car. One of them sat on either side of me. Even though it was still pitch-dark, they put a blindfold over my eyes and tied my hands. My knees were left untied.

  “ ‘Why are you treating me like this when I’ve done nothing wrong?’ I asked.

  “ ‘Shut up!’

  “ ‘Take me to someone in authority, and you’ll see.’

  “ ‘That’s exactly where you’re going now.’

  “With that I felt a deathly terror. I started wondering what the charge might be. I wasn’t a Communist, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, or a feudalist. I had never uttered a single word to undermine the honor of that historical period which I had come to consider my own ever since I had reached the age of awareness.

  “Somewhere or other, the car stopped, and I was taken out. With two men holding on to my arms, I was led blindfolded into some building. My arms were released, and I could hear the sound of footsteps retreating and the door creaking as it was shut and locked. My hands had been untied and the blindfold taken off, but I could not see a thing. I felt as though I had lost my sight. I cleared my throat, but there was no response. I expected the darkness to dissipate a little as soon as my eyes were used to it, but that did not happen. There was not a single sound. What kind of place could this be? I stretched out my arms and started feeling my way around, moving very cautiously. The floor felt cold to my bare feet. The only thing I came into contact with was the walls; there was absolutely nothing in the room, no chairs, no rug, nothing standing at all. Darkness, emptiness, despair, terror, that was it. In a dark and silent environment like that, time stops altogether; since I had no idea when they had picked me up, that was even more the case. I had no idea when the darkness was supposed to disappear or when some form of life would emerge from this all-embracing corpse of a place.