At that moment Abduh appeared, coming in from outside as well. Mabruk greeted him with the same gesture and smile. It was enough for Abduh to see Salim bent over at the door to have his heart affected in the same way as or even more intensely than Salim’s. He instantly made for the door and jostled the captain with his shoulders. His heart was pounding. But Salim straightened up right away, leaving Abduh the hole with a bitter smile. He turned to Mabruk and asked in a whisper, “Who’s the woman in there?”
Abduh straightened up too after that, his hope disappointed. He stood beside Salim as though adding his voice to the question while they waited for Mabruk’s reply. Mabruk looked at them. He understood what they had hoped when they looked through the hole. He emitted a groan of confirmation, as though he too sincerely knew and felt what they did. He began to speak. “Those days will not return. The past will not return. Finished!”
But they pressed him to answer. With failing patience Abduh asked him again, “Who is that woman?”
Mabruk cleared his throat, approached them, and whispered quickly, “The undertaker’s wife!”
The two of them repeated in astonishment, “Undertaker!”
Their lack of understanding was apparent. Mabruk pulled them away to the communal bedroom and explained in a tone of enjoyable revenge that this woman was the wife of the undertaker of Al-Sayyida Zaynab district. She was the one who was going to bring them a handful of dirt from the grave of a dead man who had not been buried three days.
Abduh asked forcefully, “Why? For what reason?”
Mabruk replied in the same vengeful tone, “For the ‘job’ we’re going to sprinkle on the doorstep of that man Mustafa.”
Abduh shook his head. He had grasped everything. He resumed his interrogation of Mabruk: “Of course this was Zanuba’s idea?”
Mabruk confirmed this proudly and added, “Zanuba consulted the most famous expert for this prescription. It’s tested. There’s no fear it will fail. If Mustafa doesn’t die within three days, the expert who provided it won’t need to be paid. He’s the one who laid that condition on himself, after he took only the amount for the consultation.”
He, Mabruk, had spent several days searching for the undertaker’s wife to invite her to come to Zanuba to reach an agreement with her. He had succeeded only today. Mabruk was silent for a moment. He looked at them as though expecting a word of agreement or encouragement. But they remained silent. Abduh was plunged into deep ruminations. It occurred to him that while they had yielded the matter to God and been impotent to do anything, Zanuba had not stopped her efforts. Neither religion nor conscience had prevented her from proceeding toward her goal. She wanted Mustafa to die in three days, and she was working to have him die . . . to have a man die whose only fault was not loving her. How monstrous! Is this a woman? If she loves and is disappointed, does she become a predatory animal?
Abduh’s next intuition made the world look gloomy. By a strange coincidence, Salim thought of the same thing. Salim turned anxiously and suspiciously to ask Mabruk, “Are you sure it’s only for Mustafa?”
Abduh added in a nervous tone verging on a scream, “It doesn’t make sense that Zanuba would kill Mustafa and spare Saniya.”
Mabruk grasped this suddenly, and his heart started pounding too. In a hoarse, anxious voice he said, as though to himself, “She only said against Mustafa. . . . I don’t know. . . . Perhaps, additionally . . .”
Salim then began to outline for them what he suspected was Zanuba’s intention. “She would not harm Mustafa. All the evil is directed against Saniya and no one else. This is only reasonable. This is what is in Zanuba’s own interest. She wishes Saniya dead, because she’s Zanuba’s rival and foe. But in order to enlist naive Mabruk for the job she hid the true aim from him and led him to understand that the intended victim is Mustafa.”
When Salim reached this point they heard the apartment door open and close. Thus they knew the visitor had left. They rushed to Zanuba. Abduh shouted at her, “Who was that woman?”
Zanuba was flustered to be accosted so fiercely but gained control of herself. She smiled and went toward him, relating what Mabruk had said shortly before. Abduh shouted at her with ferocious anger, “You’re not, then, willing to give up this magic of yours?”
Salim added, “Fine, let’s suppose you do a job on Mustafa. You’ll be killing a man! You’ll murder a human being? You have a clear conscience about that?”
She bowed her head for a moment, boiling with rage. Then she raised her head violently and shouted at them, “I’m not going to sit like a ninny in this house watching the messengers!” She turned on Abduh and demanded, “What should I do? I’ve worn myself out trying to get you to go to the landlord to tell him and explain it to him—to get him to evict this bachelor tenant, who has turned the house into a brothel.”
The blood rose to Abduh’s head. These foul words had stung him.
Whatever Saniya’s tie was to Mustafa, she was still an honorable woman who should not be slurred in this way. Abduh didn’t know why these filthy suggestions upset him when they were aimed at Saniya. Did he still admire her and consider her his ideal so that he wouldn’t let anyone defile this magnificent marble statue, even if it did not belong to him?
Even stranger was the fact that Salim too turned his back on Zanuba in disgust.
They heard the door open and close. Muhsin appeared. They all looked at him. They were appalled by what they saw: a pale face and red eyelids, and legs that could barely support him. Zanuba couldn’t keep from asking immediately, “Muhsin! What’s wrong?”
He raised his head. He wanted to tell them it was nothing. Before he could get the words out, however, they were asking him, “Are you sick?”
He decided to tell them, “Yes!” Then he went to his bed, took off his clothes, and got under the covers. Meanwhile Abduh and Salim were watching him as though they grasped what was troubling him. Their hearts were smitten with pity for him. They approached quietly and sat on the edge of his bed. They would have liked to comfort him or bring him some relief but feared he would take their words of consolation the wrong way . . . that these might hurt his feelings. So they chose to remain silent, despite the affection and love they felt for him, and never so much as on that day. They lowered their heads when they saw he had closed his eyes from fatigue. They seemed to have gauged the extent of his pain and to have compared it to their own, finding his greater. They felt for the first time that they didn’t measure up to him. He was set apart from them by the rare quality of his heart.
CHAPTER 14
None of Mustafa’s neighbors in the vicinity knew anything about him except that he was a wealthy young man. Perhaps the first person to make inquiries about him was Zanuba. Since he had started living there at the beginning of the year she had been working up to asking his servant who he was and what he did. She had not yet been motivated by anything except curiosity about a new neighbor. The servant was busy carrying up a few household items delivered by a mule-drawn cart and answered her quickly, “His profession? He’s one of the gentry.”
The servant went on up, engrossed in his work, paying no attention to her. So she wasn’t able to ask him what gentry he came from. Was he from Cairo, the countryside, or one of the provincial capitals? Zanuba caught sight of him after that from the window when he was at the coffeehouse opposite the house. She liked his looks but wasn’t able to learn anything more about him. Perhaps modesty prevented her or fear of betraying her agitation, now that this person had begun to interest her. Or perhaps it was chance that kept her from that servant, who was seldom seen. The fact was that Mustafa Bey himself, when he first moved in, was often absent. If he appeared in al-Hajj Shahhata’s coffeehouse one day, he would disappear from the district for days as though he had traveled. The same was true of his servant.
Yet there was nothing about the conduct of this young man to attract the attention of any of th
e neighbors. Calm prevailed at his residence. Tranquility slumbered at his doorstep. He entered and exited without anyone being aware of him. He seemed to strive for a good reputation among the neighbors or at least to avoid the suspicion attached to a bachelor living alone. Perhaps his personal acquaintance with the landlord and the confidence the latter showed in him by agreeing to rent to him without condition or stipulation made Mustafa extra careful to protect his reputation and to prefer solitude and quiet.
But something else prompted this wealthy young man to withdraw from the commotion and nightlife of Cairo and retreat to al-Hajj Shahhata’s coffeehouse, where he spent long hours. Watching Salim Effendi try to flirt via the balcony was not his reason for spending long hours sitting there, because Salim was for Mustafa nothing but a diverting episode that came to him gratuitously to cheer him up. Mustafa at the time was peevish and out of sorts about something. He had returned to Cairo expecting it to be as he had left it five years before. He had been a pupil at the Muhammad Ali School, the large wooden door of which he could see when he sat at his place in the coffeehouse. Then he had been a student at the Nile Valley Secondary School, which he still passed whenever he went down al-Dawawin Street. At that time he had been dwelling in this very district, the air of which he was breathing now. Nothing was different, although the house he had lived in at that time was in Al-Baghala. Unfortunately, he had not been able to rent the apartment he had inhabited with his brother and sister as well as his sister’s husband, who was an employee in the Ministry of Finance. He found that it had been occupied for a long time. But the landlord had purchased another house in the same area, on Salama Street. It was this one, number 35. He felt he had to live there. In any case, he would have the same landlord. In spite of that, Mustafa was cross and dejected. He felt disappointed with Cairo. So what had changed then, according to him?
Mustafa was sitting at al-Hajj Shahhata’s coffeehouse thinking about his past in this district, his school days and friends, about playing ball with them near the Nilometer and their summer excursions in boats on the Nile as the moon rose. They brought along food and fruit such as watermelon and cantaloupe. They would eat, drink, and sing until the boat brought them close to the Abbas Bridge beyond Al-Qasr al-Ayni. They would put the oars up and let the boat float freely in those calm, tranquil waters under the bridge. The moon created beautiful patterns on the water with light and darkness. The Nile about them was silent except for the cry of a night bird or the sound of a fish leaping suddenly in the water beside them as it played among the stalks of grass and reeds springing up near the shore. They would sound off and make a racket, laughing together. At times they would be silent, as though the poetic sights around them stirred in them better feelings latent in them or some deep sense of sublime beauty. Young people have a special right to the heart. At that golden age, a person’s first and last rebellion must take place so that he can discover by the flame’s light the powers and treasures buried in his soul. But, unfortunately, this young man’s time came to have his heart illumined before he had met a woman. None of the band of young men in the boat had been granted the opportunity to know a woman with a heart and soul who could inspire great deeds . . . unlike the prostitute they visited every Friday eve in exchange for twenty piastres.
For that reason, these moments of silence that this magnificent scene with its poetry elicited from them did not last. These could only exert a limited influence on the souls of boys who entrusted their reputations to prostitutes rife with base materialism.
The moon, water, and breeze moved the most poetic of them, and he started reciting verses from the poetry assigned them for the baccalaureate examination that year. His companions greeted this with coarse mirth and obscene jokes. So he fell silent in embarrassment.
Then he changed over shortly to join in their stupid banter and bestial clamor. He forgot that flash of exalted imagination and emotion that had shone in his heart a moment before. Thus those tiny sparks of greatness were extinguished in the souls of these young men filled with life.
They resumed their excursion amid vulgar songs and rowdy guffaws. At midnight they returned to their homes, stumbling through the neighborhood of Al-Baghala, which lacked lamps. They shouted a lot as though drunk.
But Mustafa did not recall the past in this fashion. He saw it instead as the first happy period of childhood, with its merriment and games and the total solidarity of his brethren. Where were these brothers now? Who could say . . . perhaps a doctor at a rural center, a superintendent in a district capital, a bureaucrat in a provincial capital, or an unemployed wanderer? Even his own brother, who had been a member of the group, had traveled years ago to complete his education in France. He had not returned yet and did not want to return, not even when they asked him to come for a pressing reason. Nevertheless Mustafa had been looking for his brethren from the past ever since he arrived in Cairo. He found some of them. At their first meeting they had been overjoyed. He had inquired what had become of them. They were employees in government agencies. They asked what he had been doing and why they had been separated all this time. He told them that after he received his baccalaureate, his father had wanted him to work for him in their famous textile firm in Al-Mahalla al-Kubra. He had remained in Al-Mahalla al-Kubra against his will all this time, until his father died at the first of the year. Then he wasted no time. He stayed only long enough to do his duty to the departed. After that he prepared himself quickly to travel. He brought along a servant and a few belongings. He left the large textile firm in the care of employees. He was determined to leave commerce to attempt to find employment in a government ministry so he could settle permanently in Cairo. But unfortunately he hadn’t found the Cairo he had been longing for. To his regret he could scarcely recognize in it the town of his past. Everything seemed to have changed, even though nothing had.
Yes . . . those of the brethren he found had been able to dissipate that depression at first. They had led him through the city, exploring the new centers of amusement and entertainment. They took him by night to the drinking spots and then to the houses of prostitution. The glitter of the capital, which he was seeing again after his absence, captured Mustafa’s fancy that day. It distracted him to some extent from hidden feelings of depression. His friends, however, repeated that excursion with him, and Mustafa noticed in them a frightening change of character. He saw first of all that they were not seeking to revive an old friendship. They did not enjoy his company, nor were they befriending him for himself the way they had before. They wished, rather, to exploit him, to curry favor with him, so he would lavish his inherited wealth on them. This was what he understood from them and their conduct. He split at once from these companions, rejecting that side of their character. He was amazed that childhood friends would change that way.
For this reason he preferred the solitude he found at al-Hajj Shahhata’s coffeehouse and concluded provisionally that it was impossible to revive the past. He got over his depression bit by bit and began to think about what he should do. Should he return to Al-Mahalla al-Kubra and take over management of the firm as the successor of his industrious and diligent father . . . or should he stick with his original idea of seeking employment in Cairo after selling off the firm and dividing the proceeds among the heirs: himself, his brother, and his sister?
His sister left the decision up to him. He received a letter from Fayoum, where she resided with her spouse, who was now employed in the provincial administration. His brother likewise wrote him from France saying, “Do whatever you want on condition you don’t ask me to come back to Egypt and don’t decrease my monthly allowance in any way.”
He himself did not wish to settle in Al-Mahalla al-Kubra or to be tied to the firm. It would be very easy for him to liquidate it and sell it to a branch of a firm owned by a foreigner, C. S. Cassoli, who had made an offer to buy the firm as soon as he caught scent of a desire to liquidate it when he learned that Mustafa, following the death of
his father, would be traveling to Cairo.
Yes . . . Mustafa was just a young man who had lost his ambition. He wasn’t corrupt or dissolute. There was a lot of good and virtue in his soul, but this goodness was buried under a heavy layer of indolence and indecision.
He had had a long debate with himself over the question of the textile firm, traveling repeatedly to Al-Mahalla. He and his servant would go off . . . and then return. He would send his servant there to provide him with news of the firm. He decided that was the easiest and best way to manage the business. But all of this only made him more certain that he wasn’t strong enough for the burdens of commerce and the responsibilities of free enterprise. The firm had been in constant decline since he left. Its profits kept decreasing. He did not know whether that was because of his lax supervision of the employees since he had left them to sit in al-Hajj Shahhata’s coffeehouse or because of a lack of direction, drive, and exertion. In any case, what was all this to him? Why not free himself from this entanglement? He should sell the firm to the foreigner Cassoli. Wasn’t that best?
No one opposed him in this matter. His mother was dead. Her brother, who was an important cotton merchant, did go to him, incredulous and dismayed, on hearing rumors about the liquidation of the firm and its sale to Cassoli. He advised his nephew against selling. He pleaded with him out of concern for him, because it would be a big loss.
Mustafa Bey laughed sarcastically and nonchalantly said, “Loss! Are we dependent on this firm?”
His uncle answered, “My son, every blessing comes from this firm. It’s this firm that has brought all the farms and properties.” In fact, the inheritance of Mustafa and his siblings was not limited to the firm. Their deceased father had left them other properties and lands as well. For that reason, Mustafa was not too concerned about the firm. Yet his uncle said to him regretfully, “This isn’t right for a merchant’s son. Woe to businessmen if their heirs leave the profession to become low-ranking bureaucrats. Indeed, what a disgrace for an Egyptian to give up his commercial establishment and let a foreigner take charge! The famous textile firm of Raji will become a subsidiary of Mr. Cassoli the Greek.”
Return of the Spirit Page 29
