The Beginning and the End

by Naguib Mahfouz

  “As a member of Ali Sabri’s band?”

  “No. I shall sing alone.”

  His mother looked at him with disapproval.

  “Have you really become a singer?” Nefisa asked him.

  “It happens sometimes that a distinguished member of a band is chosen to sing at a party, which is the first step he takes on the way to success.”

  “Who asked you to sing at his party?” his mother asked in a rather sarcastic tone.

  “Amm Gaber Soliman asked me to sing at the wedding party of his son, Soliman.”

  Nefisa lowered her eyes, her enthusiasm extinguished. She underwent a feeling of suffocating anguish.

  Samira was astonished. Nodding at Nefisa, she asked, “Did he ask you after what happened?”

  Hassan laughed. “We had agreed to it before Lady Nefisa’s fight at the bride’s house, and the man dared not break our agreement.”

  For a while silence prevailed. Everyone gazed at him incredulously. It was true that there was a touch of sweetness in his voice, but it was not enough to make him a singer.

  Perplexed, his mother at last asked him, “Do you really mean what you say?”

  “Yes. I swear by God’s mercy upon my dead father.”

  “How much would you charge?”

  “Five pounds. Of these five pounds I shall give you one whole pound.”

  He kept silent to allow the effect of his words to sink in.

  “What do you think of joining my band as Sannids, to sing choruses? Your voices are good enough,” he asked, looking at his brothers.

  The two burst into laughter.

  “You’re fools!” Hassan exclaimed. “This is a rare opportunity for you to feast on the sumptuous food and drink at the buffet.”

  The two brothers continued to laugh sarcastically; yet in their minds they saw the table loaded with appetizing food. Various delicious plates promptly and most temptingly presented themselves to their hungry imaginations. Sensing the strong temptation swaying their minds, Nefisa cried with indignation, “What shame! Do you want to reduce your brothers to beggars in the grocers’ houses?”

  Hassan laughed. “Lady Nefisa,” he said, “I understand the reason for your anger. Your attack on the bride made it impossible for you to be invited to the party. But what have these two poor chaps done to be deprived of it? This party will be a real event. There will be meat, pastries, fruits and vegetables, and desserts. You’d better think twice about it.”

  Finding that his words had no effect, Hassan shrugged his shoulders and dropped the matter. His offer was well-intentioned, in thoughtful consideration for his brothers. But because of their own folly, he thought with sorrow, they would lose the good he intended for them. Though his two brothers did not share his sorrow, their hearts fluttered at the mention of all the food—the meat, pastries, fruits and vegetables, and desserts. They were pained at the thought of missing such delicious things, and their regret increased as the time for supper approached. Since Samira considered this meal superfluous, the family usually went to bed without it. They concealed their hunger so as not to increase her misery and discontent. And so, without uttering a word, the two young men imagined the delicious meals. Meanwhile, Nefisa was engrossed in her own thoughts, which rambled away from the pleasures of life in general and food in particular. Hassan’s talk evoked her sorrows, despair, and fears. In surprise she wondered whether it was really true that her brother Hassan would sing at the wedding party.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  At about nine o’clock on the morning after the wedding, Hassan was crossing Al Khazindar Square on his way to Clot Bey Street, where Ali Sabri had asked to meet him. He was tired after the previous night’s party, the memories of which were still fresh in his mind. What a night it had been! He was peerless in his daring. With steady steps, he had cut his way through the crowd to the pavilion constructed on the roof of Amm Gaber Soliman’s house, until he reached the dais amidst applause and shouts of welcome for the new singer. Solemnly greeting his audience, he took a seat in the middle of his band, which consisted of a lute player, a kanum player, and a violinist, who also repeated the refrains. He sang a song entitled “I Am Angry with You as Much as I Love You.” After a while he observed that his audience had become indifferent. Nevertheless, without a care, he continued to sing. He drank a great deal of liquor. At the beginning of the second set many people clamored for a song entitled “In the Forlorn Night.” Since he did not know the song, he began instead to sing another, called “The Garden of Your Beauty.” Very soon, any relationship between the singer and his audience was severed, the singer straining his voice with useless vocalizing, his audience busy with drink and laughter. This embarrassing situation reached its climax when a drunken man stood and addressed the singer, his speech thick from the effects of alcohol.

  “I swear by God,” he said, “that if you weren’t a bully I’d ask you to shut up.”

  Hassan recognized the man. He was a blacksmith whose shop stood at the opening of Nasr Allah alley. Under his breath Hassan swore to punish him. However, he continued to sing “Gone are the days; the days are gone.”

  Quickening his pace, he remembered all that had happened and laughed. What is done cannot be undone, he thought. There’s no reason for me to regret it since I’ve managed to grab the five pounds.

  Besides, recollections of the buffet were still lingering in his mind. He proved invincible in the battle over the buffet. He was at his greatest when he swallowed an entire pigeon, bones and all. He was not eating, but devouring, snatching, looting, and quarreling. The battle reached its zenith when the plate of beef was emptied. Seizing the hand of the guest next to him, Hassan forced him to relinquish the meat he had in his hand. But his real feat came after the party was over. Surrounded by the members of his band, who were claiming their pay, he said to them simply, “The food you have eaten is enough.”

  When they asked him, “What about the money due to us?” he answered brutally, “Take it by force if you can.”

  They went away discontented, angry, and desperate. Only one thing made him very sorry—the fact that his family had not shared the delicious food with him. He wanted to help his mother more than he actually did. But his protracted vagabondage had taught him to be careful, at least as long as his circumstances were bad. He was going toward Clot Bey, the courtesans’ quarter, specifically toward a very narrow path called Darb Tiab, where Ali Sabri was waiting for him. Ali Sabri had opened before him prospects of a life that suited his taste and inflamed his imagination. They had agreed to meet in a coffeehouse in the middle of the darb, across from the house of a courtesan named Zeinab al-Khanfa, called the Twanger because she spoke with a nasal twang.

  He climbed the stairs leading to the darb. He quickened his pace between two rows of closed houses, their occupants still asleep. The darb looked deserted. In the small cafés the workers were cleaning up the litter left over from the previous night. Hassan reached the middle of the darb. He saw Ali Sabri sitting before the entrance of the café and walked up to him, greeted him, and sat in a chair by his side. It was no longer the same old café: it looked much newer to him. A few workers were whitewashing the walls, in an attempt to renovate it.

  “Here, in this café, where we are sitting, we shall inaugurate a new project, and start a new life,” Ali Sabri said proudly.

  Hassan was astonished, because, accustomed though he was to Ali Sabri’s many projects, it was the first time he had heard of this new undertaking, the management of a coffeehouse.

  “And what is to become of the band and wedding parties?” he inquired.

  Ali Sabri spat with so much force that his spittle reached the walls of Zeinab the Twanger’s house on the other side of the darb.

  “The band will be working in this coffeehouse,” he continued. “As for wedding parties, may God convert them into mourning assemblies. The days of true wedding parties are over. Instead of such parties, we now hear of small family gatherings to celebrate the occasi
on. And the wireless is monopolized by Umm Kalthum, Abdul Wahab, and a bunch of singers who specialize in producing discordant sounds. So it’s impossible for us to earn a decent living in this country.”

  Hassan pretended to be dissatisfied with this state of affairs and said, “You are right, Master.” He paused, then asked, “What will the band be doing here?”

  Ali Sabri stretched out his legs, which reached the middle of the darb. He pointed to the coffeehouse. “It will be a café during the day,” he said, “and a tavern by night, in which Madam Zeinab’s women will dance. By the way, she is my partner. I, too, shall sing from time to time, and as you see, this is an excellent opportunity to make a good living. If you are interested in working with us, you will have to study the songs of Abdul Wahab.”

  “I know almost nothing about them.”

  “You will have to learn them, and you will have to study the takatiqs of Umm Kalthum, too. That’s the way things are, and we have to make the best of it.”

  “May God be with us,” said Hassan, laughing.

  “I’m optimistic,” Ali Sabri added. “This place is blessed. It is to this place that Mohammed al-Arabi is indebted for his wealth,”

  Hassan wondered how Ali Sabri had obtained the money to start this new life. Had he gotten it from Zeinab the Twanger? At best, she was over forty. Except for her bovine body, her beauty was gone. But she was a godsend, and her arms were encircled with heavy gold. There was no need to envy Ali Sabri, since Hassan would have his share of the wealth. Now prospects were good, and perhaps the days of vagabondage and hunger would be gone forever.

  “But your work as a repeater of refrains is secondary to what you’re expected to do,” Hassan heard his companion say.

  “And what am I expected to do?”

  Hassan approached this matter with the confidence and pride of a man who really knows what is expected of him.

  “You’re thoroughly acquainted with this district. On every corner there is a thug, a man who is up to no good, or a debauched drunkard. And who is the right person to deal with them? You. There is also the important traffic in narcotics, which requires skill, strength, and daring. And who’s the right person to deal with it? You again,” Ali Sabri said.

  A broad smile appeared on Hassan’s face, and remained there for a long time. He felt proud, pleased, and enthusiastic. This was real life, pulsing under breathtaking perils in the obscure ghoraz, the hidden shelters of hashish addicts, where cudgels and overturned chairs fell on the heads of brawlers. Here gold dropped from the sky, and the way of a man was strewn with thorns, leading either to pleasure and glory or to danger and death. Here, in the twisting darb, where the balconies of neighboring houses were intimately close to each other, coquettish cries mixed with debauched screams, the smell of perfume with the odor of liquor, and the blows of combatants with the vomit of drunkards, here Hassan felt quite at home. Added to all this were singing, instrumental music, and just plain frolic. In such an atmosphere he could live indefinitely without growing bored, eating, drinking, earning money, taking hashish, singing. His face beamed with the light of hope. He cast a look around him. He heard the footsteps of newcomers dispelling the silence, and his ears were struck by the prolonged laughter characteristic of courtesans. He watched their swaying buttocks and the glaring, lascivious glances in their eyes. The doors of the houses opened, incense burned in the darb, chairs lined the coffeehouses, and lewd giggles and cackles were heard, marking the beginning of the morning’s activities.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Thank you, Summer,” Hassanein said with feeling.

  Not knowing what he meant, she asked shyly, “Why do you thank the summer?”

  “Because it has made you take off your thick overcoat, and put on a dress that reveals your charm and beauty.”

  Her face flushed. To hide the sparkling pleasure evoked by his compliments, she frowned. “Didn’t I ask you to stop it? You keep doing things that annoy me,” she said.

  With a perplexed smile on his face, he listened to her. His eyes were devouring her plump body with pleasure. She was wearing a decent, almost prudish dress which revealed her arms, the lower parts of her legs, her delicate white neck, and the outlines of her soft, plump body. His eyes remained fixed on the round, minutely latticed parts of her dress above the chest, designed by the dressmaker to fit her blossoming bosom that seemed almost on the point of bursting out. As he imagined that he was softly stroking her breasts with his fingers, his body shook with a quiver of desire. He imagined that he was squeezing them, but their stiffness resisted him. Thirsty with desire, he swallowed. But he knew she would neither respond to him nor allow him to come too close to her body, and that she would persist in her adamant attitude of refusal. He had hoped that with the passage of time he would reach her, but he finally realized the futility of his hope.

  “Bahia,” he said in dejection, “you speak with the cruelty of a person whose heart has never throbbed with love.”

  A contradictory look appeared in her eyes. “I do not approve of the kind of love you want; you deliberately misunderstand me,” she said.

  “But love is love, and you cannot possibly divide it up into different kinds.”

  “No, no, no. I don’t agree with that at all,” she replied.

  Defeated, he sighed, casting a look at the distant horizon. The sun had already disappeared, leaving behind it an expansive red halo, its remote purple fringes becoming lighter in the center, almost the color of rose juice, and gradually fading away at its edges until the red was finally superseded by a pure, deep blue interspersed with delicate clouds, as tender as soft sighs. His eyes returned to her face.

  “I love you and I am your fiancé,” he said hopefully, “and I only want us to enjoy our love in all its purity and innocence.”

  A confused look appeared in her eyes. For a while she seemed to be in pain. “I can’t,” she said. “And I don’t want that.”

  His smile was without meaning.

  “You thrust me into the lap of a strange loneliness,” he replied. “And I can’t bear it. I have a burning desire to press a kiss on your lips and embrace you to my heart. This is my right and the rightful privilege of our love.”

  “No, no. You scare me.”

  “Don’t you love me?”

  “Don’t ask me about what you already know.”

  “I wonder! Wouldn’t you really like me to put my lips on yours?”

  “Surely,” she said, snorting, “you must enjoy making me angry.”

  “And to have you lie on my breast, hear the pulses of my heart, while I tightly encircle your waist with my arms?”

  Angrily, she shrank from him.

  “If this is not love, then what is it?” he said with annoyance.

  “Let our relationship remain as it has been up to now,” she murmured entreatingly.

  “You mean we meet, talk, and burn with desire.”

  “No. I only mean meet and talk.”

  “You’re lying to yourself.”

  “God forgive you.”

  “Is your love so heartless?”

  “God forgive you.”

  He stamped the floor with indignation. Frowning and baffled, he walked back and forth in front of her. Signs of anxiety appeared on her face.

  “I thought you had forgotten your upsetting demands and were satisfied with our life, gentle and amiable as it is,” she said. “I wonder what now makes you return to the same old fearsome persistence. Be a decent boy and stop all this nonsense. Real love knows no such frivolity.”

  He shook his head, defeated, desperate and wondering. What did she know about real love?! What an enigma she was! Did she really love him? He could not doubt her love for him. But hers was a kind of love beyond his understanding. Rather, her character itself was beyond his understanding. What a calm, solemn girl she was, with her blue eyes, cold and serene, entirely devoid of mischief, frivolity, and warmth. How, he wondered, could anybody with such a fascinating body possess such cal
m and frigid eyes? The fire of love can be extinguished only by another fire similar to it, or even stronger. He felt he was wasting his days in hopeless monotony. It occurred to him frequently that it always perturbed her whenever he spoke to her about love, and that she recovered her self-assurance only when both of them were silent or when she spoke of her distant hopes, which she never tired of repeating. When she talked about these things, she forgot herself and transcended time and space; her eyes beamed delightfully and her limbs were animated with a fresh vivacity. At that moment he would love her with all his heart. But this was love tainted by anguish, sometimes even by anger and resentment. Then he would wonder why her heart failed to respond in the same way to the feeling of love itself. Why was she afraid of it? Why did she shrink from the mere mention or hint of this emotion? He wondered, too, how long this barrier would separate them! Rather angrily, he looked intently at her face for a long time.

  “Shall I suffer this deprivation forever?” he asked.

  In spite of herself, she smiled, and his anger increased in response.

  “Not forever,” she said.

  His heart quivered. He kept his eyes fixed on her.

  “Till we marry,” he answered curtly.

  She looked down. He could see only her closed eyelids and rosy cheeks. At that moment, he was overcome by a vindictive impulse, a desire to injure, if only by words.

  “After marriage, you will give me willingly whatever you deny me now,” he said. “You will give me your lips, your breast, and your body, and you will take off your clothes and appear in crystal-like nakedness before me.”

  She did not hear these last words, for she had left him, taking to her heels. She quickened her pace toward the door leading from the roof. Words erupted from his mouth, heated, angry, and vindictive.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Ali Sabri’s coffeehouse became a small nightclub, featuring songs, dances, and liquor. Above the entrance was a large sign bearing Ali Sabri’s name in big letters. There was a dais for the band at the farthest end of the interior, and tables and chairs were arranged at the entrance and along the two sides. Having finished his singing for the first performance, Ali Sabri sat down among his drinking customers to entertain them. Then a tall, glistening, muscular black man entered, his eyes portending evil. Standing on the threshold of the coffeehouse, the newcomer shouted in a loud, insolent voice, “Where’s the owner of this café?”