She looked at him askance without ceasing her work. She said, “By the Prophet, find something to do.”
But Abduh, who thought Mabruk was right, suggested that the loaves be counted and then divided equally between them, so that none of the folks would take a single one more than his companions. Each of them would be allowed to go off with his share to do whatever he wished. He would be free to eat his entire portion in one day or spread it over several. The idea pleased everyone, and President Hanafi shouted enthusiastically, “That’s fair!”
So Zanuba gave in and began to count the battaw and minin to divide them equally. Muhsin, however, remembered Saniya and her share of the present and became rattled and anxious. Finally he found the courage to say with some agitation, “I think, aunt, you ought to send a little to the neighbors’ house. They must know of course that I’ve come from the country bringing—”
He choked on the rest of the sentence when he noticed a strange, sudden change of expression on the faces of his comrades and especially on his aunt’s face. Zanuba stammered in disapproval, “The neighbors?”
Muhsin felt his heart sink. He turned to his comrades to clear up the matter with them. He found they looked annoyed and apprehensive. They seemed to wish to postpone something that would spoil their enjoyment of a moment like this. He noticed that Salim was twisting his familiar mustache for the first time since he had come. But this time he was twisting it gravely, compulsively, not with satisfaction and pride the way he once had. He noticed as well for the first time that Salim’s mustache had changed. It was no longer glisteningly erect. Instead it had become droopy, with the ends hanging down. He seemed to have given up using wax on it for a long time. He turned to his aunt Zanuba and noticed that her lips were trembling and quivering as though she was about to burst into speech. Her hands had stopped work. When she observed the silence, she got her nerve up and repeated in a fiery tone, “Neighbors! What neighbors?”
Muhsin felt a calamity brewing. It was taking shape, about to collapse on his head. His eyes wandered over his companions. At that point, Abduh raised his head and gestured nervously with his hands to Zanuba. In a dry, angry voice he said, “Be quiet now. There’s no need!”
But it was enough for Zanuba to broach this subject for her mouth to open wide. She had not stopped talking about it for a week. Whenever she spoke about it, she felt she was quenching a thirst. For that reason, whenever she had met one of her acquaintances, whether close or distant, she had said the words she shouted now: “What neighbors, fellow? The house of Dr. Hilmi with the two horns! The house of Saniya, the whore!”
Abduh trembled with rage and shouted at her, “I told you, shut up. That’s enough name-calling.”
With affected disinterest Salim said, while twisting his mustache as vainly as a vanquished person, “There’s no need for us to take an interest in a matter like this. Is your Saniya that important? I, by God, never cared for her.”
Despite his nervous agitation, Abduh stared at him mockingly, as though to say: The fox, unable to get them, pronounces the grapes sour.
Zanuba gestured to Abduh and Salim to tell them to leave her and her concerns alone. She was screaming, “Right. Can’t I tell Muhsin what happened?”
Yes, she would have told Muhsin what had happened while he was away, if Muhsin at that time had been among the living or in a condition permitting him to hear. Muhsin, as soon as her expression “Saniya, the whore” had lodged in the pit of his heart, had blanched, and his body had grown cold. He was oblivious to everything around him. He grasped the edge of the table to try to steady himself as he rose. He stared at the old, faded oilcloth spread over it, and his gaze froze. He no longer heard anything of that clamor, chatter, shouting, or fuss that Zanuba stirred up with her long, detailed story of what had happened that ill-fated week.
CHAPTER 10
The only sleep that Muhsin got that night came in spurts that did nothing for him. He dozed off occasionally from the fatigue of this day filled with travel and sorrow. Sleep would flow through his joints and quell the strife within him. But that lulling sleep lasted only a few minutes. Then a sound like a prolonged whistle or sharp scream would pierce his eardrums. When he made it out, it was a voice saying, “Saniya, the whore! Saniya, the whore!”
Sleep would fly away. He felt that his heart had been snatched or had fallen at his feet and sunk into the earth, opening two enormous red eyes in it. Then he would conjure up everything that had happened that day, remembering Zanuba and the features of her face contracted in rage. She had fumed and frothed as she narrated what had happened. Among other things, she told him, while he was only half-conscious, “From the day you left, Muhsin, she was flirting with him from the balcony.”
Then, after that, she had said, “If only the matter had been limited to flirting from the balconies—but their relationship has now reached the point of exchanging letters and messengers. Not a day goes by without Saniya’s maid, wrapped in her cloak, being seen heading in secret toward Mustafa Bey’s. She stays in his residence in the downstairs apartment long enough to deliver the letter to him and for him to furnish her the answer.”
She writes him . . . writes him messages and letters every day. Muhsin had been waiting for just one letter in Damanhur.
He remembered the truth that had spoiled everything for him. He remembered the letter that he had received at the farm and memorized. He remembered what Zanuba had said when he roused and braced himself enough to ask, “So, aunt, the letter I received from you—who wrote it for you? Not Saniya?”
Zanuba’s reply had been, “Saniya? Does she have time for us or is her time devoted to the man, the giddy libertine, who lives downstairs?”
The youth mustered all his waning power to ask her despairingly, “So who wrote it?”
She replied, “The scribe opposite Al-Sayyida courthouse.”
“A scribe?”
Yes, Zanuba’s fury and anger had not been satisfied by exposing Saniya and making her faults known to people, with or without cause. Fury and anger had driven her to go to a petition writer for the court at Al-Sayyida Zaynab to get him to write an anonymous letter for her to send to Saniya’s dignified father in order to expose the girl to him and stir up a storm in her house. She had done all that because Mustafa Bey had grown fond of Saniya and slighted Zanuba, although she had been the first to court him. For that reason Saniya was deemed a whore by her, and Mustafa Bey had become a giddy libertine.
That was her real reason for going to the public scribe of Al-Sayyida courthouse. She had merely seized this opportunity to ask him to write, as a little extra, a short letter for her to send to Muhsin.
Muhsin saw clearly now this was the truth about the cherished letter that he knew by heart. Saniya hadn’t written him a single word. She knew nothing about him. It was of no interest to her whether he was in Cairo or away.
Muhsin couldn’t bear the thought. He sat up in bed as though he had received a sudden blow and started hitting his head with his hands, wishing to end his life. What point was there to his life now? What was he to do with it when it was empty of . . . ?
He did not dare to mention her name. In fact, he almost moaned out loud but stopped his mouth with the covers. Then he looked around him anxiously and found they were all asleep. His neighbor Hanafi was snoring in his bed, his mind at rest. The rest of the folks were sleeping tranquilly. It was, however, the tranquility of people who have yielded and given in. Was it possible for him to yield too when he had lost everything in life? Why should he sleep? Why should he wake up tomorrow?
He pulled the covers over his face and body. His forehead was dripping with sweat. He began to pray to God fervently that he would fall asleep and never wake up. He closed his eyes with wild, nervous determination as though wishing to convince God of the force of his will. He remained for a while waiting for death and soliciting it, till sleep came to him. Then he slept deeply and
experienced the most beautiful dream of his life. He saw first that everything he had heard about Saniya was a lie and an invention. Mustafa Bey had left the building and the area, even all of Cairo, to return to his farms in the provinces, where he had married the daughter of one of the local notables, a cousin of his. Muhsin, wearing his new suit, had gone to Saniya with the present he had brought her. She had greeted him at the top of the stairs clad in green silk garments that fluttered as though an unseen breeze was moving them. She put her arm out to him and kissed him on his right cheek. It was a fragrant kiss that filled his nostrils. He didn’t know whether the fragrance was from her clothing or whether the whole room exuded a beautiful perfume. She gazed at him through her long black lashes until those lashes drooped like a tiny silk fan descending on her cheek. She began to fiddle with the buttons on her jacket without looking at him—as though chiding him. Finally he heard her whisper to him, “Didn’t I tell you, if you love me, you won’t stay away from Cairo any longer?”
Muhsin roused himself a little from the intoxication of the kiss. He told her he hadn’t been slow to return. Just as soon as he had received that dear letter, which he always kept with him at his breast wherever he went—as soon as he had read and reread it—he had decided to depart. He had packed up his belongings and come to Cairo. She seemed to be half-convinced. At last she led him to the piano room and played the keys with her svelte fingers. The maid entered carrying glasses of red fruit punch. Muhsin trembled a little when he saw the maid. He didn’t know why. He drank with pleasure. The maid exited. He watched her leave with a frightened look. Then he suddenly turned toward Saniya and caught her gazing at him stealthily in that languid way. When she saw him catch her by surprise, she lowered her eyes with their long black lashes and fell silent. Muhsin’s heart pounded, and he felt tipsy.
Saniya rose suddenly and leapt back to the piano, wanting to play something else for him. After a delicate sigh, she smiled enchantingly at him. She said in a whisper as she gazed at him again, “Oh, Muhsin, if only you truly loved me as much as I love you!”
The youth did not know what to reply. Perhaps he was incapable of answering, for he was oblivious to everything, even to himself and to her. He perceived only one thing: that all the treasures of the earth and other worlds would not equal what he had won with this little sentence and that he was grasping his happiness—a happiness people describe without experiencing it—with his hand. Indeed here it was filling his palm. Here he was putting it in his pocket. No, in his heart. It was filling his heart to capacity, even weighing it down, as though this happiness were pure gold. Yes, it weighed his body down now too. It was currently pulsing through his entire body in spurts. He felt his body being stuffed with it, like a sack being filled with gold. He could scarcely breathe from joy. Happiness was strangling him. It had reached his throat. The joy would choke him if it didn’t spill out. The happiness was about to pop out of his mouth. It was puffing up his chest and belly, searching for an exit. Yes, he needed to release some of it. He was in distress. How heavily this gold weighed on his chest!
Muhsin rolled over in bed with a smile on his lips, his mouth open, breathless from carrying the weight of his happiness. He wanted to do something. To run. To rise and tell . . . to tell people, to speak, to jabber, to leap, to wallow in the dirt, to roll about on the ground. The last Muhsin actually did. He rolled about on his bed till his head ended up at the edge. He opened his eyes and discovered that his head was hanging off the mattress, looking at the floor. His mouth was open as though he had been vomiting.
The harbingers of day showed at the window. The sun’s rays took command of the large, communal wardrobe.
Suddenly poor Muhsin remembered everything. The grim truth in its entirety came back to him. He knew his happiness was a dream that had expired. He had vomited it and emptied his heart of it now at daybreak. Not a drop of it remained to nourish him or resuscitate him. The room went black to his eyes again as he looked at the sun’s disk, which had risen fully. It seemed to him to be a black sphere . . . black ebony . . . black hair. It did not beam light and whiteness to the world. No, black . . . blackness.
He remembered that for fear of this day he had wanted to die during the night. In place of death, God had granted him a delightful dream in order to increase his torment when he woke and the truth became apparent to him. The image of Saniya in that beautiful dream—the kiss, the gaze, and her lashes—passed through his imagination. Saniya now would not know him, busy as she was with her love for Mustafa. She did not know or want to know whether he had returned. This terrifying split between dream and consciousness loomed before him, and he moaned to himself like an animal being slaughtered. He shoved his head under the pillow and panted out a plea to his Lord, mixing it with pain and censure: “Never! Shame! No way!”
CHAPTER 11
It passed through Muhsin’s mind that the folks would wake shortly and see him in this state. So he rose quickly and slipped his clothes on in a few minutes. Then he left the house and headed for school without eating any breakfast. On his way he passed the doorway of Dr. Hilmi. He bowed his head in pain and didn’t look at it. He walked beneath the infamous balcony without raising his head. It seemed he no longer had the right to look, not even at her wooden balcony, where he had frequently stood beside her and gazed out with her at the street and the small coffeehouse opposite. Then he suddenly remembered the last time he saw it—when he had gone to say good-bye to her shortly before his trip to Damanhur. She actually had been looking at the coffeehouse with such interest that he had felt apprehensive and doubtful. Mustafa Bey had been sitting on the street that day, looking furtively at her balcony too.
His heart had warned him then that all was not well, but she had known how to dispel his suspicions. She had acted toward him in a way that made him the happiest man. Yes, he could still feel her kiss on his face—had she been slyly seeking to deceive him? The tear she had shed for him, hadn’t it been pure and genuine? Impossible! He could not conceive of her trying to deceive him. No matter how she was acting now, he couldn’t doubt for a moment the nobility of her character. Then, what had happened? What had made her change so quickly toward him?
At that, an idea came to Muhsin and penetrated his heart with a flash of hope. Why should he judge her before seeing her? Why not go to her and ask for an explanation? Perhaps she would deny all or some of what he had heard. Or perhaps if she saw him, she would remember or repent or be moved to pity or . . .
Yes, he should go. He enjoyed some peace for the first time since learning of the disaster. This flash, however, was shortly blotted out by a black cloud that formed in no time. What a simple boy he was! Did he suppose that Saniya today was the same as yesterday? How could he—after this bond had developed between her and Mustafa, after the love letters—aspire to anything or imagine that he had any rights with her, starting with the right to visit her?
Then there was something else: How would he go? What pretext could he use when relations between the two households were now severed? His aunt Zanuba had cut them with her jealousy, and Saniya had moved farther away than the stars in the sky.
Thus he made his way through the streets, buffeted by these opposing ideas, moving from hope to despair, without fate leaving him the comfort of either. At last he reached the school and entered the courtyard with his head down. He kept his distance from the other pupils in order to be alone until the bell rang to go into class.
From time to time he raised his head and cast a glance at those droves of students gathered in numerous circles, each circle uniting a group of brethren who were laughing and joking together, relating what they had seen that was strange and unusual during the vacation or narrating what they had done during it and how they had spent it.
Most of the time, at the center of a circle was a pupil who was older, brighter, wittier, or funnier than the others. He was the one steering the conversation. He would narrate and relate stuff whi
le everyone listened to him, laughing happily in enjoyment at every word he said.
Muhsin remembered that he had always been that beloved pivot for the listening pupils of his class to gather around. To his right had been his trusted friend Abbas, who buoyed him with his confidence and trust, his blind faith and total enthusiasm for everything Muhsin said.
Muhsin remembered the noon break, when he and Abbas, with the others crowded around them, had passed the time trading poems beside the school wall beneath the main stairway. When their quiver was emptied of poems, Muhsin would become a persuasive preacher, debating with eloquence, imagery, and allusions before this small crowd of admirers. When he happened to turn toward the place by the wall under the stairs, he was astonished to find a group of the students from his class there—Abbas among them—who kept looking at the gate of the school, as though waiting for someone to arrive. Who could they be waiting for now except Muhsin? But what could Muhsin say to them today? He who had left them just before the holiday the happiest of men returned to them as another person. He was afraid they would finally notice him, so he moved farther away and hid until the bell rang and the pupils lined up in the schoolyard. The queue began to move forward to the classes. At that moment Muhsin ran quickly and tagged along at the tail of his row without anyone noticing him till he entered the classroom last. They turned and recognized him, shouting at him. Abbas trotted toward him, and Muhsin pretended to be happy, affecting a smile. He tried to joke with them. To himself he was praying that God would speed the teacher’s arrival so he could be spared having to pretend and the class would leave him alone.
Return of the Spirit Page 27
