Children of the Alley

by Naguib Mahfouz

  Arafa joined her in holding him up, but the old man tried weakly to push them away from him. He was breathing heavily, and everyone became very somber.

  “It’s your fault, Awatif,” said a woman from a window. “He should have been home.”

  “What could I do?” asked Awatif, still crying.

  “Gabalawi!” gasped Shakrun weakly. “Gabalawi!”

  98

  It was not yet dawn when a long wail broke the silence, and then the people knew Shakrun had died. It was not an unusual occurrence in the alley. “God send him to Hell,” Santuri’s followers said. “He was always disrespectful, and his own disrespect killed him.”

  “Shakrun was murdered,” Arafa told Hanash. “The same way a lot of people in this alley are murdered. The murderers don’t take the trouble to hide their crimes, and no one dares complain. There are no witnesses.”

  “It’s horrible!” said Hanash in loathing. “Why did we ever come here?”

  “It is our alley.”

  “Our mother left it. It ruined her. It’s an accursed alley, it and everybody in it.”

  “But it is our alley,” Arafa insisted.

  “As if we’re doing penance for sins we never committed.”

  “Giving up would be the worst sin of all.”

  “The test with the bottle failed on the mountain,” said Hanash despairingly.

  “But it will succeed the next time.”

  Only Awatif and Arafa walked behind Shakrun’s bier. Only they had shown up in front of the building. Everyone was surprised to see Arafa the magician taking part in the funeral, and they whispered about the strange audacity of that insane magician.

  Even stranger, Santuri joined the funeral procession when it passed through the neighborhood of the Al Qassem. And he did it with such insolent boldness! But it was without a trace of shame. He even spoke to Awatif. “May you live out his years, Awatif.”

  Arafa realized that this was the man’s preface to a further demand. By now the funeral procession had changed in the blink of an eye, as it was hurriedly crowded with every neighbor and acquaintance whom fear had prevented from taking part. Now it filled the whole street.

  “May you live out his years, Awatif,” Santuri repeated.

  She looked at him menacingly. “You kill a man and walk in his funeral.”

  “Something like that was once said to Qassem,” Santuri said loudly enough for everyone to hear.

  “Say, ‘God is One!’ ” a babble of scolding voice urged Awatif “Death is in God’s hands alone!”

  “My father was murdered by a blow of your hand!” Awatif shouted.

  “God forgive you, Awatif,” said Santuri. “If I had really hit him, he would have died then and there. The truth is that I did not hit him, but I upset him, and everybody will swear to that.”

  The people vied with one another to corroborate this.

  “He just got him excited! He never touched him—may worms eat our eyes if we’re lying!”

  “God will avenge me!” cried Awatif.

  “God forgive you, Awatif,” said Santuri with an indulgence that became the stuff of a long-enduring proverb.

  Arafa inclined himself to Awatif’s ear and said in a near-whisper, “Let the funeral go peacefully.” The next thing he knew, one of Santuri’s followers, a man named Adad, slapped him across the face and shouted at him.

  “You son of a toilet! Who told you to get involved between them?”

  Arafa turned to him, dazed, and received a blow even harder than the first. Another man slapped him, a third spat in his face, a fourth grabbed him by the collar and a fifth pushed him so hard that he fell on his back. A sixth man kicked him and said, “You’ll be buried in a grave if you go to her.”

  He lay sprawled on the ground, stunned, then collected himself and got up with great pain. He brushed the dirt from his galabiya and his face. A crowd of children had gathered around him and were chanting, “The calf has stumbled, get a knife!” He went back to his basement, hobbling and half crazed with anger.

  “I told you not to go!” groaned Hanash when he saw him.

  “Shut up! They’ll be sorry!” he shouted in impatient rage.

  “Please forget that girl,” said Hanash with combined gentleness and determination. “If you don’t, we’re dead.”

  Arafa was silent for several moments, looking at the floor and thinking. When he lifted his face, it was sullen with dreadful certainty. “You’ll see me married to her, sooner than you think.”

  “This is insanity itself.”

  “And Agag will lead the wedding procession.”

  “You’re dousing yourself with alcohol and throwing yourself in the fire.”

  “I will retest the bottle in the desert tonight.”

  He stayed at home, not going out for days, but kept up his relationship with Awatif by way of the barred window. When the period of mourning had ended, he met her secretly in the hall of her building.

  “We should get married immediately,” he told her frankly.

  The girl was not surprised at his request, but answered sadly, “If I accept, I’ll be causing you unbearable troubles.”

  “Agag has agreed to give us a party. You know what that means,” he said confidently.

  Steps were taken in total secrecy until everything was ready. The alley learned, without prior notice, that Awatif, daughter of Shakrun, had married Arafa the magician and moved into his house; that Agag, the protector of the Al Rifaa, had witnessed the wedding. Many of the people were stunned, and others asked how that could have happened—how Arafa had dared do it—how Agag had been persuaded to give his blessing. But the people who knew said, “We’re in for it now.”

  99

  Santuri met his followers in the Al Qassem coffeehouse. Agag learned of this, and met with his followers in the Al Rifaa coffeehouse. The alley was aware of these meetings, and grew very tense. The peddlers, beggars and children lost no time in evacuating the area between the Al Qassem and Al Rifaa neighborhoods, and the shops and windows were locked up. Santuri and his men came out into the alley, and Agag and his men came out too. Evil emblazoned the air, and its sickening odor spread; only a nudge was needed for a flaming inferno to explode.

  “What has made our men so angry?” a good man called out from his roof. “Think, before the blood flows!”

  Agag stared at Santuri and broke the terrified silence. “We are not angry. We have no cause for anger.”

  “You went too far,” said Santuri bluntly. “No gangster can approve what you did.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You protected a man who was challenging me,” raged Santuri, the words coming from his mouth and his eyes alike.

  “All the man did was marry a solitary girl after her father died. I witness the marriage of every Rifaa person.”

  “He has nothing to do with Rifaa,” said Santuri contemptuously. “No one knows who his father is, not even himself. You could be his father, or I could be, or any beggar in the alley.”

  “But today he lives in my territory.”

  “All he did was rent a vacant basement!”

  “So what!”

  “Do you know that you went too far?” shouted Santuri.

  “Don’t shout,” said Agag. “There is no need for us to fight like roosters.”

  “Maybe there is a need.”

  “Don’t get me started!”

  “You watch it, Agag!”

  “Damn you, oaf!”

  “Damn your father!”

  Their clubs were raised, but were frozen by a bellowed command: “For shame!”

  Their heads turned toward the source. There was Saadallah, protector of the alley, moving through the crowd of Rifaa until he stood in the area between the two neighborhoods.

  “Put down your clubs,” he said.

  All the clubs were lowered, like the heads of men at prayer. Saadallah looked at Santuri and then at Agag.

  “I don’t want to hear what any of you have t
o say. Go home quietly. A massacre over a woman? What kind of men are you?”

  The men broke up in silence, and Saadallah went back to his house.

  Arafa and Awatif were in their basement, unbelieving that the night would pass in peace. They were listening to what was happening outside with pounding hearts, pale faces and dry mouths. They heard Saadallah’s commanding, unanswerable voice, and Awatif sighed deeply. “What a life,” she said.

  He wanted to breathe some comfort into her heart. He pointed at his temple and said, “I work with this, just like Gabal, and the sly devil Qassem.”

  She swallowed with a little difficulty. “Will our safety last?”

  He drew her to his chest, outwardly amused. “I wish every couple were as happy as we are.”

  She laid her head on his shoulder, catching her breath, and whispered, “Do you think that’s the end of that?”

  “No gangster is ever sure of his flank.”

  She raised her head. “I know that, but I have a wound in me that will never heal until I see him dead.”

  He knew whom she meant, and looked thoughtfully into her eyes. “For you, revenge is a duty, but it won’t lead to anything decisive. Our safety is threatened, not because Santuri wants to attack us, but because the safety of our whole alley is threatened by the attacks of all the gangsters. Even if we beat Santuri, who can guarantee us that Agag won’t turn on us tomorrow—or Yusuf the day after tomorrow? It’s either safety for everyone, or safety for no one.”

  She smiled weakly. “Do you want to be like Gabal or Rifaa or Qassem?”

  He kissed her hair and breathed in its clove-scented smell, but did not answer.

  “They were put to work by our ancestor, Gabalawi.”

  “Our ancestor, Gabalawi!” he said irritably. “Everybody, when he’s down, cries out, ‘Gabalawi!’—like your late father. But haven’t you heard of grandchildren like us who have never seen their ancestor, and they live all around his locked mansion? Have you heard of any estate owner who lets criminals manipulate his estate this way, and he does nothing about it, and says nothing?”

  “It’s old age!” she said simply.

  “I have never heard of any old man who lived this long,” he said distrustfully.

  “They say there’s a man in Muqattam Marketplace who’s more than a hundred and fifty years old. With God, anything is possible.”

  He was silent, then murmured, “With magic, anything is possible too!”

  She laughed at his vanity, and traced her fingers on his chest. “Your magic can heal eyes.”

  “And do lots of other things.”

  “What fools we are!” she sighed. “We have such fun talking, as if nothing were threatening us.”

  He ignored her interruption. “Maybe someday it will be able to get rid of the gangsters themselves, and build buildings, and provide livings to all the people of this alley.”

  “Do you think that might happen before Judgment Day?” She laughed.

  His sharp eyes took on a dreamy look. “If only we were all magicians!”

  “If!” She continued: “It didn’t take long for Qassem to establish justice, without your magic.”

  “And it didn’t stay established long. But magic never wears off. Don’t underrate magic, my honey-eyed dear, it’s just as powerful as our love. It creates new life in the same way. But it can’t do its work unless most of us are magicians.”

  “And how will that happen?” she joked.

  He thought a long while before answering. “If justice is achieved, if Gabalawi’s conditions are implemented. If most of us could dispense with hard labor and devote ourselves to magic.”

  “Do you want an alley of magicians?” She laughed lightly. “How can the Ten Conditions be implemented when our ancestor is bedridden, and it looks like he is no longer able to get any of his family to do it for him?”

  He gave her a curious look. “Why don’t we go to him ourselves?”

  “Can you get into the overseer’s house?” she asked, laughing again.

  “No, but maybe I can get into the mansion.”

  “That’s enough joking,” she said, slapping his hand. “Let’s concentrate on staying alive for now.”

  “If I liked jokes,” he said with a mysterious smile, “I wouldn’t have come back to this alley.”

  Something in his tone of voice frightened her, and she stared at him in alarm. “You mean what you said!” she cried.

  He looked at her in silence.

  “Imagine if they caught you in the mansion!”

  “What’s so unusual about a grandson in his grandfather’s house?” he asked serenely.

  “Tell me that you’re joking. Lord! How can you look so serious? Strange. Why do you want to go to him?”

  “Isn’t meeting him worth the risk?”

  “This is just your talk—how has it become an awful fact?”

  He rubbed the palm of her hand to calm her thoughts. “Ever since coming back to our alley, only I have thought of unthinkable things.”

  “Why can’t we live the way we are now?”

  “I wish! They won’t let us live the way we are now. And a man has to take care of his own life.”

  “So we’ll escape from the alley.”

  “I won’t escape, when I have magic!”

  Tenderly he pulled her close until she was pressed against him, and he stroked her shoulder. “We’ll have lots of opportunities for talk,” he said. “For now, just rest.”

  100

  Has the man gone crazy, or is he blinded by vanity? Awatif wondered as she watched Arafa work and think. For her part, the only thing that spoiled the serenity of her happy days was her desire for revenge against Santuri, her father’s murderer. Revenge had been a sacred tradition in the alley since ancient times, but she might have been made to forget even this sacred tradition, however grudgingly, for the sake of the happy life marriage had given her. But Arafa was certain that revenge against Santuri was only a part of a grand project he had promised himself to carry out—as it appeared to her. She did not understand him. Did he think he was one of those men of whom the poets sang? Gabalawi had not asked anything of him, though he did not seem to put much stock in Gabalawi or what the poets said. What was absolutely sure was that he gave magic much, much more of his time and effort than his livelihood required. When he thought, his thoughts far transcended himself and his family, extending to general issues no one else cared about—the alley, gang rule, the overseer, the estate, its revenues, and magic. He dreamed vast dreams of magic and the future, though he was the only man in the alley who rejected smoking hashish, as his work in the back room required alertness and attention. But all this was nothing next to his insane wish to infiltrate the mansion. Why, husband? To ask him how things should be in the alley. You know how things should be in the alley; we all know; why is it necessary to risk death? I want to know the Ten Conditions of the estate. The important thing is not to know but to act, and what will you be able to do? The truth is that I want to see the book that got Adham kicked out, if the stories are true. What do you want with that book? Something makes me positive that it’s a book of magic. Only magic can explain Gabalawi’s deeds in the desert—not muscles or a club, as people think. What do you need with all these risks, when you’re happy, and you make a fine living without them? Don’t think that Santuri has forgotten us. Whenever I go out, I almost stumble over his men’s hateful looks. Magic is enough for you—just forget the mansion. The book is there: the first book of magic, with the secret of Gabalawi’s power, which he begrudged even his son. It might be nothing like what you imagine. Or it might be—it’s worth the risk.

  Then he took the decisive step unambiguously.

  “That’s how I am, Awatif. What can I do? I’m just the despised son of a wretched woman and an unknown father. Everyone knows that, and makes jokes about it, but I have nothing to worry me in this world but the mansion. It’s not so strange for someone who never knew his father to strive with all
his might to know his grandfather. My back room has taught me to have no faith in anything I haven’t seen with my own eyes and touched with my own hands. I must get inside the mansion. I might find the power I’m searching for, or I might find nothing at all, but whatever I find will be better than the confusion I’m enduring now. I’m not the first person to choose the hard way in our alley. Gabal could have kept his job with the overseer, and Rifaa could have been the best carpenter in the alley, and Qassem could have enjoyed Qamar and her fortune, and lived the life of a distinguished man. But they chose the other way.”

  “How many people in our alley go racing, on their own legs, to their ruin!” sighed Hanash.

  “How few of them had sound reasons,” said Arafa sharply.

  But Hanash was quick to help his brother. He followed him like his shadow out to the desert in the dead of night. When Awatif despaired of changing his mind, she raised her hands in prayer for him. It was a black night; the crescent moon appeared early, and then disappeared. The brothers walked close to the walls until they reached the back wall of the mansion that overlooked the desert.

  “Rifaa was standing right here when he heard Gabalawi’s voice,” Hanash whispered.

  Arafa cast a critical look around him. “That’s what the poets say. I’ll know the truth of everything.”

  Hanash pointed to the desert. “And in that desert he spoke to Gabal himself, and sent his servant to Qassem,” he said solemnly.

  “And in that desert Rifaa was killed, and our mother was raped and beaten, and Gabalawi did nothing!” said Arafa irritably.

  Hanash frowned and put his digging tools on the ground. They both began digging under the wall, taking out dirt in a basket. They worked seriously and doggedly, until their chests were filled with the reek of earth. Hanash had been no less industrious than Arafa, and clearly he was driven by the same desire, though he was terribly afraid. Arafa’s head cleared the level of the ground by just one inch when he spoke from within the pit. “That’s enough for tonight.” He vaulted out of the ground on his palms, and said, “We have to cover the top of the hole with wooden planks, then cover that with dirt so that no one will know about it.”