Laziness in the Fertile Valley

by Albert Cossery

  That evening, during dinner, he could scarcely control his impatience. The meal dragged along with disheartening slowness. It seemed as though Hoda deliberately tried to postpone the moment of departure. She ate slowly, taking an infinite amount of time to gather the plates and remove the cloth. She moved about like an automaton, with an absent air, a frozen smile on her lips. However, she must leave with him. Serag had finally allowed himself to be convinced; Hoda was going to accompany him on his marvelous adventure. But she didn’t seem at all excited by the approach of the departure, which meant to Serag the beginning of a new life, full of unpredictable dangers. Her stupid indifference aggravated the young man’s nervousness; from time to time he gave her a furtive look, charged with pleas, to beg her to hurry. But Hoda did not appear to understand.

  Only Rafik had noticed the anxiety of his young brother.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing,” Serag said.

  “I hope that from now on you’re going to calm down and not upset yourself with these wretched scenes about escape and work. We can live happily now and sleep to the end of our days. At last we’re rid of that accursed marriage! And you owe it all to me.”

  “To hell with the marriage,” said Serag.

  “You thankless child! Look at him, Galal my brother! The ingratitude of this child wounds my heart. We ought to kill him! With such a spirit in the house we can never find tranquility.”

  But Galal seemed too cast down to answer. His head between his hands, he leaned on the table, staring at the plate of food before him with eyes scarcely opened. He didn’t even have enough energy to eat. Rafik was used to his eldest brother’s characteristic air of heavy discouragement, but his present attitude was somewhat alarming; it seemed to prophesy evil times.

  “What’s the matter? Why don’t you eat? You seem more depressed than usual. Is that mouse keeping you awake again?”

  “It isn’t the mouse,” said Galal, “It’s Father. My dear Rafik, I’ve just had a veritable catastrophe.”

  “What did Father do to you?” Rafik asked.

  “He kept me awake all day!” replied Galal. “My word, he’s a criminal!”

  “When was this? Today?”

  “I don’t know,” Galal said. “Maybe it was today; perhaps it was a few days ago. It doesn’t matter, I’m completely exhausted.”

  “What did he want?” said Rafik. “He came down to your room to see you? I can hardly believe it.”

  “No,” said Galal. “He didn’t come down to my room to see me. That would have been less terrible. But he sent me this man without a heart” — he nodded his head toward Uncle Mustapha — “who harassed me until I finally had to go upstairs with him. He had promised to carry me on his shoulders, but he scarcely helped me. It was a long torture.”

  “What a story! But you haven’t told me yet what Father wanted.”

  “I think it had something to do with a murder. He asked me to lecture you about it, and to tell you not to forget he is the master. It seems that you wanted to kill Haga Zohra?”

  “Oh! Was that all!”

  “I forgot to congratulate you,” said Galal.

  “It isn’t worth the trouble,” said Rafik. “From now on that fat businesswoman won’t dare come up here. Let her arrange her marriages in hell!”

  “We owe you eternal gratitude,” said Galal. “My dear Rafik, you’re a hero!”

  “You’re nothing but an ill-mannered boy,” interrupted Uncle Mustapha, who, during this time, had been eating quietly, his face set and dignified. “You have done an enormous injustice to our reputation. Haga Zohra will go everywhere peddling what you’ve done. What will people say?”

  “I piss on all the people,” said Rafik.

  “What a scandal for our family!” said Uncle Mustapha.

  Serag feared a long dispute, but Rafik let his uncle’s exclamation go unanswered; he only gave a mocking smile. No doubt his success in ridding them of the menace of old Hafez’s marriage had made him more indulgent. He seemed to have recovered his calm and was eating heartily. But after a moment he looked at his uncle, and couldn’t resist the desire to unleash one last pleasantry.

  “Uncle Mustapha,” he said, “I allow you to give my father, the title of Bey. He deserves it. With a hernia like his, he could easily be a minister of state.”

  “How dare you talk like that about your father!” said Uncle Mustapha. “What are you saying about a hernia. You have no shame!”

  “Uncle Mustapha,” said Rafik, “you aren’t going to tell me that you pretend my father hasn’t a hernia?”

  “On my honor, I didn’t know. Now you’ve begun making up ugly stories about your father!”

  “But it was he who told me,” said Galal.

  “I didn’t say anything to you,” said Uncle Mustapha indignantly. “You’re all spoiled. Your father is tired of your disobedience. He has informed me he plans to leave you alone here and retire to his estate.”

  “Heaven he praised!” said Rafik. “Is he really going to do it?”

  “At last we can sleep.” said Galal.

  Uncle Mustapha had purposely lied in order to give an impression of intimacy with old Hafez. He hadn’t realized that such news would please his nephews, and that it would even arouse their enthusiasm. But it was too late to retract. He tried to save the situation by taking refuge in an enigmatic silence.

  “Come,” said Rafik. “Tell us the truth, Uncle Mustapha.”

  “There’s nothing else to say,” said Uncle Mustapha. “I’ve told you all I know. You can believe me if you want to.”

  “How can we not believe you?’ said Rafik. “Uncle Mustapha, you’re the genius of this house.”

  “I forgive you for what you did to me the other day,” said

  Galal. “Only, don’t begin again.”

  Now Hoda was clearing the table; they were all getting up to go back to their respective beds. Serag waited and watched them leave, then he also got up and shut himself in his room.

  An hour later, he slipped furtively out of the house and hurried down the side of the road. Hoda was waiting for him in a shadowy corner, dressed up as if for a promenade. In the dimness

  that enveloped her, she seemed shrunken; her face, unskillfully painted, looked like the image of a candy doll. She had been waiting, peaceful and resigned, but when she saw Serag she ran to meet him.

  “What made you drag like that?” said Serag. “By Allah! I thought we’d never finish dinner.”

  “I did my best,” said Hoda.

  “Well, let’s go,” said Serag.

  “Kiss me first,” said Hoda.

  Serag kissed her, then took her hand and they started down the road. First they walked rapidly, then, little by little they slackened their pace, stopped for a moment, looked at each other and smiled. The night was clear, and the sky resplendent, spilling over with stars so real and so close that it seemed one could pluck them like ripe fruit. A fresh wind swept the countryside, bringing the odor of herbs and, from the distance, the acrid and violent odor of the great city. Serag breathed this wind of conquering liberty with delight. He felt it on his face; he felt it on his hands, and it seemed to revive him as though he had just come out of a grave. An immense joy floated through him; he turned to the young girl.

  “Are you happy?” he asked.

  ‘Yes,” Hoda said. “I’m happy to be with you.”

  “At last, I’ll be able to work,” Serag said.

  He was exulting in the thought of the effort he was about to undertake. He was going to share the destiny of humanity and participate in the boiling energies that governed the world. His life would be sterile no longer. A daring existence, full of the unpredictable, awaited him. He was impatient to get to the city.

  “Try to find a job that isn’t too tiring,” said Hoda.

  “Why, girl? On the contrary, I’ll look for the most difficult work.”

  “You’ll get sick.”

  “I won’t get
sick. What do you take me for, girl? I can do any kind of work.”

  Hoda reflected.

  “You could be a cab driver,” she said.

  “No,” said Serag. “That isn’t a serious job.”

  “It’s very serious and, at the same time, very amusing,” said Hoda. “All day long you only have to run around in a car. You could take me along with you.”

  “Be quiet,” said Serag. “I don’t want to. It’s not serious at all. You call that a job; to sit down all day driving a cab. I want real work, do you understand?”

  “It’s too bad,” said Hoda. “You could have taken me with you. I’m so fond of driving in a car.”

  “What are you thinking about, girl? Let’s be serious. We aren’t here to amuse ourselves.”

  “So much the worse,” said Hoda. “Do what you like.”

  They had just passed the last houses and now found themselves alone on the road, surrounded by the vast countryside and the threatening sounds of distant perils. Serag looked at the road in front of him; it lost itself in infinity, a long line of flickering street lamps. He slackened his pace and seemed to hesitate before the enormous effort of accomplishment. His exaltation had suddenly disappeared and he began to feel a treacherous regret in the depths of his heart. The warm peacefulness of his father’s house, from which he had just fled to run after tempting adventures was still too attached to his whole being for him to forget it easily. The subtle threads, made of torpor and the inexpressible joys of sleep, held him to the destiny he wished to betray. He had been insane to think he was different from them, and pledged to the grotesque and boring efforts of men. All that was nothing but puerile vanity. He began to think with terror of the evil pitfalls of the great city.

  First there were the factories where one must go to work at four in the morning; Serag shivered at the thought. There were the streetcars, those sinister streetcars that ran at breakneck speed, heedless of the people they crushed. And then, there was the government. What if the government arrested him and threw him in prison? This upset him most of all. The government, his father had told him, arrested rebels. But was he a rebel? Was his desire to look for work and to mingle with working men a revolutionary act? Serag didn’t understand why his love of an active life should be considered by the government as an attempt at revolt against the established laws. It seemed very strange to him.

  The thought of the policemen made him sick. Suddenly he felt weak; his head was spinning. He stopped and looked at the young girl for a moment.

  “It’s still far,” he said. “Should we stop a moment?”

  “All right,” Hoda said. “Are you tired already?”

  “A little,” Serag admitted. “Let’s sit down here for a minute. Only for a minute.”

  They sat down on the side of the road, and Serag closed his eyes. No car passed on the highway; the silence was almost total. There was nothing but the almost imperceptible sound of the ditches, carrying their dirty waters across the fields swallowed up by the night.

  “Do you think we’re very far from the house?” Serag asked.

  “No,” said Hoda. “Do you want to go back?”

  “I don’t know,” said Serag. “First I want to sleep for a minute.”

  “As you wish,” Hoda said.

  Serag gave a long yawn; Hoda looked at him and began to yawn also. Then they leaned against each other and fell asleep, indifferent to the furious labour of men, under the peaceful gaze of the idle stars.

  AFTERWORD: GOD IS WITH THE LAZY

  The lazybones attracts all the waves of the sea. “Let me sleep,” he begs, “so nice and warm under my white sheets and blue blankets.” And would you believe it? The sun’s on his side.

  — Edmond Jabès, 1945

  Fasten a mast to the bed, let the sheets catch the wind. It is possible that, if you drift long enough on the waves of sleep, you will awaken into a world that has changed — though who can say for the better? The Greeks told of the boy Epimenides, who was searching for his father’s stray sheep when he stopped for a noonday nap in a cave. When he awoke, fifty-seven years later, everything that he once knew had vanished. Across Crete, news spread that Epimenides must be particularly loved by the gods to have slept so long. For Aristotle, he was proof of the impossibility of the passage of time without the occurrence of change.

  Christian martyrs have dozed longer still. The eighteenth chapter of the Quran — and an earlier Syriac legend — tells of a group of young Christian men who, fleeing the persecution of a Roman Emperor, escaped into a cave, where they slumbered for three hundred and nine years. Rising from their long sleep, they found their beards had grown long, Christ’s name was openly spoken, and all of their loved ones were dead. In 1933, the Egyptian playwright Tawfiq al-Hakim dramatized their swim through the oceanic night in The People of the Cave. Awakening into a world where they are hailed as saints, the stiff-limbed sleepers find they cannot live in this strange, undreamt future. “We are like fish, whose water has changed from sweet to salty,” the saints protest, as they retreat into their cave.

  Languishing in a French prison in 1883, Paul Lafargue observed that a strange mania had lately gripped mankind. It seemed everyone had begun to worship what their God had damned. In their canonization of work — that vampire sucking the blood of modern society — they had forgotten His sublime example. Did He not toil for six days, then rest forever after? In his treatise The Right to Be Lazy, Lafargue intoned a prayer: “O, Laziness, have thou mercy upon this eternal misery! O, Laziness, mother of the arts and the noble virtues, be thou balsam for the pains of mankind!”

  Enter the catatonic heroes of Albert Cossery’s Laziness in the Fertile Valley, exercising their right to do nothing. In a dilapidated villa in the Nile Delta, a family sleeps all day, rising only for meals. The cadaverous Galal, oldest of three brothers and friar of somnolence, staggers into the dining room in a dirty nightgown. Some say he is an artist. “Why are you awake?” he cries in abject horror. His uncle and brothers are gathered around a pot of lentils at the table. The youngest, Serag, secretly dreams with eyes half-closed of freeing himself from the familial inertia and doing the unthinkable — finding a job — perhaps in the factory being constructed nearby. But on his exploratory walks (he cannot help but fall asleep on the way), he finds the rusted heap forever unfinished. Their father, Old Hafez, never descends from his bedroom, yet hatches a controversial scheme to take a wife in his old age. Rafik, the middle son, must keep vigil during the siesta to kill the matchmaker conspiring to bring such an enemy of sleep into their den. Forced to stay awake, Rafik is fighting against the current in a dangerous river. “From time to time, in a supreme effort, he managed to free himself, he raised his head and breathed deeply,” Cossery writes. “Then, again, he found himself plunged into the depths of an annihilating sweetness. The waves of an immense, seductive sleep covered him.”

  “I should tell you that this setting, this household, they were my family.” On November 3, 1913, Albert Cossery was born in the Fagalla neighborhood of Cairo to a moderately wealthy Greek Orthodox family of Syro-Lebanese descent. “Certainly it’s romanticized,” Cossery said in an interview, “but my father didn’t work, and so he slept until noon. My brothers didn’t work either, nobody worked. . . . In truth, we were all sleeping. If someone heard a noise in the house, no one would move to go see what it was, even if there had been a thief.” Laziness, Cossery claimed, was the only thing his father Salim had taught him. Born at the end of the nineteenth century in a village near Homs in Syria, Salim immigrated to Egypt, where he acquired farmland and properties in the fertile lands of the Delta. While the fields grew cotton, dates, and watermelons, Salim read the newspaper and took naps. Albert sprouted under the wing of his grandfather, who lived with them in Fagalla. One day the grandfather decreed he would no longer leave his bedroom — not because he wasn’t able, but because he no longer felt like it. When Albert brought meals up to him, he would find him with a black cloth tied across his eyes,
in order to obtain the perfect darkness. Sometimes, his grandfather forgot the blindfold was on his face.

  Albert, the youngest, would awake alone at seven in the morning for school, first at the Jesuit Collège des Frères de la Salle, and later at the French Lycée. He began writing his first novel in French at age ten. At seventeen, he published a book of poems titled Les Morsures (“Bites”), which lifted heavily from his god, Baudelaire. “I am alone like a beautiful corpse,” he wrote, in an ode to Nuit. “The first night of the tomb.”

  Cossery was sent to university in Paris in the 1930s, but claimed he studied nothing at all. Yet he had discovered that being a writer gave a respectable alibi to his inherited laziness. On his return to Cairo in 1938, he fell in with the Egyptian Surrealists — George Henein, Edmond Jabès, Anwar Kamil, and the painter Ramsès Younane, among others. Cossery joined their group Art et Liberté, and contributed short stories to their journal al-Tatawwur (“Evolution”). In 1938, observing the growing hostility of Europe’s totalitarian regimes to the artistic spirit, the Egyptian Surrealists penned a manifesto: “Long Live Degenerate Art!” André Breton in a letter to Henein from Paris wrote, “The imp of the perverse, as he deigns to appear to me, seems to have one wing here, the other in Egypt.”

  At twenty-seven, Cossery published a collection of short stories, Les hommes oubliés de Dieu (“Men God Forgot”), which sketched the themes to which he would continuously return over the next sixty years: the misery of the poor, the absurdity of the all-powerful, the will to laugh — and to sleep through it all. In “The Postman Gets His Own Back,” a neighborhood wages war against those who would disturb its slumber. To safeguard his countrymen’s morning sleep, Radwan Aly, the poorest man in the world, fatally hurls his one and only piece of furniture, an earthenware chamber pot, out the window of his hovel at the noisy greengrocer hawking his wares. Even the police are dumbfounded at his sacrifice. Down the street, a washerman sleeps in his rusted laundromat, nary a soap bubble in sight. His head sinks into a basin of slumber, heavy as a stone slipping to the bottom of a pool. Then, “like a diver leaving a wave, the laundryman reappeared once more on the surface of life.” He brings dreams up to the surface, like sea creatures.