In any case he was delighted to know that she lived in this house and that she opened the balcony windows most of the time. She would open them again as usual. She naturally would not deprive herself of light and air just because some fool smiled at her from Hajj Shahhata’s miserable coffeehouse. Was it miserable? For the first time Mustafa thought of that coffeehouse with disdain. He opened his eyes to his surroundings. He took a critical, disapproving look at its old tables and chairs, and the large vapor lamp that hung over the sign that dirt and time had erased. All that was left of GREAT COFFEEHOUSE OF SUCCESS, SHAHHATA MUHAMMAD, PROPRIETOR were the words SHAHHATA and COFFEEHOUSE.
He threw a sweeping glance inside, past the glass door panels, most of which were broken. He looked at the seated patrons. They were noisy and so was the sound of the backgammon and domino pieces. Astonishing! How had he been able all that time to sit near this hodgepodge of effendis, turban wearers, and rustic felt-cap guys? They were all lower-class types. The voice of Master Shahhata could be heard crying out from within, “A light for the pipe, mate.”
One of the waiters passed him then, wearing a traditional vest with sleeves and a scarf around his skullcap. In order to prove how up-to-date the coffeehouse was, he had added to this attire an apron. He had placed a rose behind his left ear with a sprig of fresh marjoram. Mustafa chanced to look at what was on the table in front of him. The design of colored flowers on the water glass set on the tin tray had been eroded by age and repeated washings. Then there was the alleged Spathis bottle. He perceived that this really was a sleazy coffeehouse.
Remembering how close it was to his residence, he realized why he had frequented it. At that second he remembered something he had seen. It was the image of that tall, broad-shouldered man with the black upturned mustache who had visited this same coffeehouse regularly, sitting in front of him. Puffed up like a cock, he had filled the world with a phony racket of commands and countermands all the time he was there. His gestures were arrogant and haughty in a ridiculous, affected way. He had kept lifting his eyes to the empty balcony until he despaired and left.
Mustafa laughed to himself at the memory of those scenes that had so frequently amused and entertained him. But it wasn’t long before his face clouded over a little. Fear afflicted him now that he understood which girl had attracted this man. He had seen her once the way Mustafa saw her yesterday. This man lived in the same house he did. He had met him one day coming down the stairs from the upper floor. His own position was exactly comparable to this man’s in every respect. The only difference was that the other man had gotten the jump on him in watching the balcony. Now this man had disappeared. It had been some time since he had been at the coffeehouse. Perhaps all he had achieved with her was disappointment and despair. If this predecessor had failed, why shouldn’t he, the subsequent suitor, fail as well? This was clear! The harbingers of defeat had appeared less than forty-eight hours after his happiness. Hadn’t the window been closed in his face today?
Despondency crept into Mustafa’s heart. Mustafa, like any young man ignorant of women, wasn’t able to see in what had happened anything but aversion and rebuke leading to dejection. He bowed his head a moment in distress as he wondered what to do. Should he give up all hope? What would become of him if he determined that he had no choice but to return to the empty life he had been living? Merely thinking of his past life terrified him. There seemed to be an abyss between him and it, even though he was separated from it now by only a day.
Was he to return to living as he had before, a dead man, not waiting for anything, not hoping for anything, without his heart pounding for anything? Could this be called life? Would he be able to return to it after he had learned that his excuse for putting up with it in the past was ignorance? Not when he had seen the light with his own eyes. . . . He raised his hand in a gesture of annoyance. He called the waiter and handed him the money for what he had drunk. Then he rose without a final glance at the balcony. He must have used all his willpower to prevent himself from looking. He went off in no particular direction, his head bowed and his hands in his pockets. Going through his mind repeatedly was: My fate will be identical to that man’s. One day I must disappear too and flee the coffeehouse.
But hope budded again as his flattering soul began to create excuses to cheer and comfort him. He began reviewing in his imagination the ridiculous images of Salim. He enlarged and exaggerated all their silly and comic aspects, till it was clear to him that Salim wasn’t a person suitable for the affections of a beautiful and delicate young woman. He began to compare himself with him, gauging what they had in common and how they differed. He concluded with a verdict in his own favor. This man did not resemble him in any way. Their fates would in no way be similar. They were neither alike nor comparable. If he actually were like that, he would have thrown himself in the river a long time ago. Yes, he would definitely have thrown himself in the river ages ago.
This phrase seemed to please and comfort him. He began repeating it to himself with conviction and clear articulation: Right! I would have tossed myself in the Nile ages ago.
So this anxious man was able to restore some composure and peace of mind to himself. He imagined the light had dawned before his eyes again.
CHAPTER 17
If Mustafa, at the moment he smiled at Saniya, had raised his eyes to the window of the neighbors who lived above him, he would have felt fiery rays piercing him from eyes behind the wooden shutters. Zanuba’s eyes had never faltered in her surveillance of him and Saniya since the day of the quarrel. She may have been the first person to see and recognize the improvement in Mustafa’s attire as well as the reason for it. She was likewise possibly the only person who caught that smile on Mustafa’s lips directed toward Saniya.
This was enough for her: that Mustafa would smile at Saniya and she at him. “God! God!”
She waited till the folks—except for Muhsin, who was in Damanhur—gathered and then told them what she had seen, exaggerating the facts and adding everything she imagined would take place. After a smile, what was next if not a rendezvous and letters? Afterward she had seen Mustafa rise. Where would he be going if not to meet the one he had just been smiling at? It so happened that a little after Mustafa rose, Zanuba saw Saniya’s maid go out in her wrap on some errand. Zanuba imagined that Saniya had sent her maid after Mustafa. She added that to her account of what she had seen. Then she asked the grim-faced Abduh and Salim, “Are you asleep? Fine, these are letters going back and forth, twenty-four-carat certain, openly in broad daylight.”
It was in this way that the disaster fell on the two men. Hanafi and Mabruk were equally astonished. They were skeptical that all of this could happen with such speed, especially since Mustafa was a quiet young man and no one had been aware of his existence all the time he was there.
After Zanuba was sure her words had sunk in, she asked them to draft a letter to Saniya’s father, who was legally responsible for her conduct, so he would pull her up short. This was the only correct course. This was their duty as sincere, responsible neighbors. The Prophet urged people to care for even the seventh neighbor. Salim agreed at first, moved by the anger that suddenly swept over him, to write the letter.
But Abduh was furious. He suppressed his nervous anger and burst out shouting, as though this was his relief valve, “No letter will be written! No letters will be sent! If you’re really a man and a captain, go downstairs to the fellow. I swear by God Almighty no letter will be written. That’s cowardly. I will never permit such cowardice. No letter . . . I know my job!”
Salim asked him, “What do you mean you know your job? What are you going to do? Beat him up?”
Zanuba’s eyes were gleaming with vengeance as she said, “Do what you see fit, but there’s got to be a letter too.”
Abduh screamed at her, “Shut up!” Then he turned on Salim and said, “I tell you it’s cowardice. It’s base. It’s what a woman would do.”
/>
At last Salim was convinced by Abduh’s words. Zanuba’s attempt to get them to write what she wanted failed. Then she thought of having the letter written secretly by a public scribe of the kind who are always on call, who set up their tents or offices outside the courthouse for Al-Sayyida. She would not be deterred. She put on her black wrap that afternoon and went secretly to a scribe. In order to conceal from him her actual goal, she began as if the reason for her coming was to ask him to write a normal letter to Muhsin. When Muhsin’s letter was finished she pretended the idea had just occurred to her to ask him to write the anonymous letter.
* * *
• • •
Saniya opened her eyes the next morning with a smile for the day. She stayed in bed thinking about what she had done yesterday and about the happiness she was anticipating today. What else but happiness did she have to look forward to from now on? She had never known life could be this sweet. She had lived through seventeen springs, but the beauty of the world had never been disclosed to her the way it was today. Everything was beautiful this morning. Everything was smiling.
All this because Mustafa had smiled? She had seen many people smile at her in the street or on the tram when she was accompanying her maid, Bakhita, going back and forth to the clinic of a dentist who was putting fillings in her molars, which had been damaged by bonbons and sweets. Indeed, she had at the very least seen the smiles of Salim and Muhsin. But she hadn’t felt what she did on seeing Mustafa’s smile. It seemed this smile had turned her life upside down and changed the world in her sight. Everything before her and around her began to smile.
All the same, she had greeted it by shutting the window in his face. Saniya laughed, revealing her pearly teeth, when she thought of that scene.
She was chock-full of contentment, pleasure, and inner delight at treating him so roughly. She asked herself happily what he could possibly be saying about her now. Then she stopped laughing and said in a voice trembling with delight, “The poor dear.”
All the same, another conflicting emotion had a share in her heart. It was a feeling of regret, compassion, and anxiety. She feared she might have hurt him more than she should have—that she might have severely wounded his feelings.
This emotion persisted, and she scolded herself, or pretended to scold herself. For in reality the feeling of pleasure at her rudeness and of delight in her roughness still fluttered around the edges of her heart. She found the solution at last, however. She was able to reconcile these two apparently conflicting emotions. She would compensate him for the mistreatment. Yes, she would show him some good treatment or at least not hurt his feelings after today . . . this poor, charming, young man.
She smiled.
The sun’s rays reached her pillow, and her ebony hair gleamed in the light. She felt its warmth and put her pure white hand to her head to shield it from the sun’s heat. But she remembered the time and realized she was later than usual getting up today. She rose at once and walked across the carpet with her bare white feet. She stood in front of the mirror in her silk nightgown. Her hair, which had not yet submitted to the morning comb, hung down, beautiful and black, covering her eyes. She shook her head to put it in place and to remove this thick veil from her eyes. She saw in the mirror an image she contemplated for a long time with admiration, as she turned slowly in every direction. How could it be? Was this marble neck hers? And these upraised breasts whose shadow showed clearly through her silk chemise! This waist that she encircled with her two hands to confirm how slender it was in the mirror? How amazing! She hadn’t known she was this beautiful.
She smiled at her reflection too.
Then she took the comb. She drew it through her hair while gazing with satisfaction at her face and lips. She began to sing a short, cheerful song, a ditty, while changing from her nightgown to her housecoat.
When Saniya finished dressing and primping, today taking more time than usual, she gave a final look at her reflection in the mirror. Then she walked to the door of her room with the dainty steps of a beautiful bird. It seemed that everything about her today had become several times more charming and delicate than before. She was now in both her body and soul like an exquisite butterfly too fragile to be touched. Perhaps it was the radiant joy and luminous happiness that made her feel so light that she was today more a bird in flight than a solid body.
But as soon as she opened the door of her room and went out into the hall she stopped, dumbfounded. Fear gripped her without her knowing why. She heard a row between her father and her mother, revealing a high level of anger.
The sound came from the closed door of her father’s room. She couldn’t make out the words, although she clearly heard her name being repeated from time to time. Then her father used the expression “your daughter” in addressing her mother violently. Saniya froze where she was, aghast. It was clear that evil was ready to ambush her.
She had no time to reflect or gain control of herself. Her father’s voice continued its frightening and thunderous explosions. Then the door was opened with such force that it almost came off its hinges. Her father appeared with a letter in his hand. When he saw her in front of him in the hall he shouted, “You’re here?”
He paid no heed to his daughter’s pale face, nor did he give her time to reply. Instead he pushed his hand toward her with the letter at once, screaming, “Take it! Take it and read! Read and tell me the meaning of the words written there.”
Saniya did not move, nor did she take the letter. She wasn’t strong enough to do anything. But her angry, raging father advanced on her as his fury increased. At that moment her mother appeared and shouted at him. She tried to pull him back without success. She wanted to get between him and his daughter to protect her. He pushed her away violently and approached Saniya. He yanked her arm, grabbing her hand roughly. He pressed her fingers around the letter, screaming, “I told you, read what’s written here! Read these words! I’m a man who has always lived honorably. I’ve served in the Sudan and seen combat.”
Saniya could not bear any more. She was at the breaking point and would have fallen to the floor had her mother not rushed to take her in her arms. She looked askance at her husband and said, “Won’t you shut up, man! Can she stand talk like that, poor thing?”
But the father did not keep quiet. Instead, his rage increased. He took his daughter’s limp arm and shook it violently while he demanded that she read the letter. The mother shoved his hand off her daughter and then took her to the nearest chair, holding her in her arms.
At that the father advanced and raised the letter to his eyes. He shouted, “You’re not willing to read it? Then I’ll read it. Listen.”
The Eminent and Respected Dr. Hilmi,
To begin:
After greeting you, we inform you that there is a passionate love affair being freely conducted between Saniya Hanim, your daughter, and a man who is one of the customers of the coffeehouse facing your illustrious abode. Letters and signals pass nonstop between the balcony and the coffeehouse. We have brought this to your attention because of our respect for you and because of our concern for your good reputation and our desire for the honor of your name.
Yours sincerely,
Signed:
A Sincere Friend
As soon as the father got to the end of the letter he shrieked at his daughter, “You have ruined my reputation. You have soiled my honor. My military honor! You ruin my name after I participated in the Battle of Omdurman!”
He did not finish, because Saniya, weak as she was, her eyes closed and her head on her mother’s breast, began to shed tears that flowed silently in streaks over her face. When her mother suddenly noticed these silent tears, her compassion was moved to the bursting point within her.
She flared up in her husband’s face, shouting, “Be quiet! Be quiet then, without any Omdurman or Om‘umran. Man, you are going to kill my daughter, who i
s my life. Should I be happy with you then? God’s name, this girl can’t take this! Shame on you!”
She raised her eyes heavenward before turning them on her husband.
“By the Prophet, she’s been falsely accused,” she said. “May the one who slandered her be struck down along with his children! You who wrote this letter, may you be struck down, along with your children, your sight, and your health on account of this morning.”
The father said sharply, “You mean your daughter has never stood on the balcony?”
The mother answered immediately, “Never . . . never! O deliverer! O omniscient God! On the balcony? May the tongue be cut out of anyone who says that.”
She apparently had a flash of inspiration, for it occurred to her just then that this anonymous letter must have come from Zanuba. Yes . . . since the reason for the quarrel between her and Saniya was precisely that. It hadn’t been long enough for that to have been erased from the heart. So it was Zanuba who had done that, motivated by her anger at Saniya. The mother seemed to have found an approach to defend her daughter and a decisive argument of her innocence. Her face brightened, and she sat up to deliver some telling words. But her husband remembered at the same time the other letter that had fallen into his grasp, the letter signed by Captain Salim, the letter that his daughter hadn’t known about and that he had subsequently returned to the sender. He no longer had any doubt then as to the accuracy of this second letter, for the two confirmed each other.
Return of the Spirit Page 31
