The Harafish

by Naguib Mahfouz

  Nur and Samaha were in a state of panic.

  “I might as well say goodbye to my inheritance,” said Samaha.

  “But your rights won’t be affected,” said his mother, as if she didn’t have much faith in what she was saying.

  “Do you imagine Kalabshi will bother with the law?”

  “Life’s more precious than money,” Nur admonished.

  “The man has me watched day and night,” exploded Samaha. “I’m the successor to the terrible Nagis. And this new alliance will make him more wary than ever.”

  Nur sighed. “Watch out for yourself, son. To hell with your father! And God preserve you.”

  49.

  Samaha was convinced his life was still in danger, because his death would make Sanbala sole inheritor after Shams al-Din and enable the chief to consolidate his position once and for all.

  It was strange, but Shams al-Din himself did not enjoy the lethargy of his newfound security for long. What was there to stop Samaha taking revenge on him? He knew his son’s wild, rash nature better than anyone. And Suma al-Kalabshi had all the cards in his hand now. His fear of dying had thrust him right into the lion’s jaws. The chief would not rest until he had taken his last penny off him. He felt no real affection for Sanbala, and his yearning for Nur returned with a vengeance. But he had to endure this union along with the other irritations in his life. A simple truth was embedding its claws in his flesh: the past would never return.

  50.

  Suma al-Kalabshi visited him one night. He signaled to his daughter to leave the room and Shams al-Din feared the worst. What did it mean, this nighttime visit? Suma’s face, round as a ball, covered in scars, repelled him. He hated his easy manner, as if he was in his own home. The chief began to talk about amazing coincidences, odd twists of fate, the obscure forces controlling men’s destinies. Shams al-Din was at a loss, until finally the chief said, “For example, look how a particular person’s existence is equally inconvenient for both of us!”

  Instantly Shams al-Din realized where the man’s speculations had been heading. An image of his son rose up before his eyes. He was more alarmed by this complicity with his secret desires than he was afraid for Samaha. He decided to act the innocent. “Who do you mean?”

  “Come on!” said Kalabshi scathingly. “What kind of fool do you take me for?”

  “Do you mean Samaha?”

  “So do you!”

  “He’s my son.”

  “You were your father’s son!”

  He winced. “You’re powerful enough. You shouldn’t be afraid of anyone.”

  “Cut it out. Are you really that stupid?”

  “Perhaps you should make yourself clearer.”

  “Put everything in your wife’s name, then Samaha will give up and go away.”

  His heart sank. “Or finally decide to have his revenge on me,” he said desperately.

  “As long as I’m alive, no harm will come to you.”

  He saw the trap open wide, the hunter baring his teeth. Poverty or death or both at the same time. Impossible to accept, impossible to refuse.

  “Give me time to think,” he implored.

  The chief glowered. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

  “A little time,” he begged.

  “Tomorrow morning. That gives you all night,” said the man, getting to his feet.

  51.

  Shams al-Din couldn’t sleep. Sanbala, all beautifully dressed and made up, tired of waiting for him and fell asleep. He put out the light and sat huddled in his cloak against the cold. He saw the specters in the dark. All the specters from the past. Why this sudden disintegration after he had persevered so long? Hadn’t he borne his burdens serenely? Paid for his sins without complaining? Always been serious, reliable, patient? So why this to take away all he’d struggled for? It was because he had plunged into an abyss of fear. Fear was at the root of the misfortune. He had been frightened of his son and driven him out, then divorced his wife, then gone running into the devil’s lair. Without stopping to think rationally. Because he had panicked. When he had fought fear and beaten it, he had faced life with his head held high. His family’s bad reputation, his own foul crime, the alley’s scorn, had not defeated him. He had faced life boldly, put despair to work for him. On immoral foundations he had built a respectable home. He had prospered in his business, gained power and wealth. Now he was being asked to give up his riches. Next Samaha would kill him and be arrested for his crime, then Kalabshi would have wealth and security. A specter in the darkness said, “Don’t kill your son. Don’t make your son kill you. Don’t submit to a tyrant. Don’t let fear get the better of you. Put despair to work for you. If life becomes impossible, seek consolation honorably in death.”

  The winter wind wailed mournfully. Intoxicated by his reveries, he pictured Ashur listening to the same wind one night long ago in his immortal basement room.

  52.

  In the morning a light rain had begun to fall, breathing the pure, capricious, rebellious spirit of the late winter season, and the cold chilled people to the marrow of their bones. Shams al-Din made his way over the slippery ground with the aid of his stout stick. Suma welcomed him, sitting cross-legged on his sofa in the café. “Good to see you, Shams al-Din!” He motioned him to sit beside him, and murmured, “Shall we start proceedings for the sale?”

  “No,” replied Shams al-Din with frightening calm.

  “No?!”

  “There’s no deal.”

  The chief’s face grew livid with anger. “This is an insane decision.”

  “It’s the voice of reason.”

  A grim mask of evil etched itself on Suma’s features. “Don’t you depend on your alliance with me?”

  “Apart from God, I depend only on myself,” said Shams al-Din with the same resolute calm.

  “Are you challenging me?”

  “I’m explaining my position, that’s all.”

  Anger seized Suma and he slapped him hard. Enraged, Shams al-Din returned the blow with even greater ferocity. The two men jumped to their feet in a single moment, brandishing their clubs, and began to fight savagely. Shams al-Din was strong and ten years younger than Suma, but he didn’t have the habit of fighting. Suma’s men appeared on all sides with amazing promptness. Samaha was among them. In deference to the traditions, they surrounded the combatants but did not intervene. Suma al-Kalabshi had the upper hand and summoned his strength to deliver the decisive blow. At that moment Samaha suddenly leapt forward and brought his club down on the chief’s head. Suma’s legs gave way beneath him and he crashed over on his back. This all happened at lightning speed. The men shouted and fell on Shams al-Din and Samaha. But there was another surprise in store. A group of Suma’s men crossed over to join forces with Shams al-Din and Samaha.

  “It’s a mutiny!” cried several voices.

  The two groups fought one another with savage enthusiasm. Clubs clashed, bodies made violent contact, loud cracks exploded in the air, curses flew about under the damp rain, blood flowed, hatreds were unleashed. Shutters were closed on shopfronts, carts hurtled along, people gathered at either end of the alley, windows and wooden lattices were crowded with faces. Shouting and wailing rose to the sky.

  53.

  Shams al-Din’s broken body was carried to his house. Samaha managed to drag himself home to bed, where he lay more dead than alive. Suma was finished, his legend destroyed, his men routed.

  54.

  The same day, the truth was uncovered. Samaha wanted to be chief and had secretly won a group of Suma’s men over to his side. He planned to eliminate the chief and gain control over his father. The surprise battle between the two men had given him the opportunity he needed. When he attacked to protect his father he signaled the start of his insurrection. His plan had succeeded, but for the moment he hovered between life and death.

  55.

  The rain continued to fall throughout the day. The air was dark reddish-brown, steeped in drowsiness.
The sticky ground was patterned with animals’ hooves. Shams al-Din lay dying, cared for by a neighbor, since Sanbala had fled. He didn’t open his eyes or speak a word, only stirred vaguely every now and then. He appeared detached from everything around him, and in the middle of the night he died.

  The ninth tale in the epic of the harafish

  1.

  Fate decreed that Samaha should live. Gradually he recovered his health and strength. The last battle had scarred and disfigured him, and he looked ugly and intimidating. He took over as chief of the clan without a struggle and enjoyed unlimited power. Nur rejoiced at her good fortune and her decisive victory over Sanbala, who was obliged to return to her aged father’s house to give birth to a son. She named him Fath al-Bab, after her maternal grandfather. Shams al-Din’s legacy was divided between his two sons, Samaha and Fath al-Bab, and his widow Sanbala. Samaha appointed himself his stepbrother’s guardian. Since no one dared oppose him, most of his father’s wealth fell into his steely grasp.

  “You abandoned my father,” he said to Sanbala, “you left him alone when he was dying. It would be unfair for you to inherit any of his money. Don’t expect a penny of Fath al-Bab’s share to come your way either. Think of some of it as protection money and the rest as punishment for your sins!”

  2.

  Samaha created a legend around himself. He declared that he had only entered the battle against al-Kalabshi to defend his father, in spite of the animosity between them, and that the men who had gone over to his side had done so spontaneously, driven by a noble impulse. Nobody believed a word of this. It was widely known that he had been plotting against the chief, had incited some of his men to rebel, and had merely profited from the occasion to seize power. His detractors accused him of not defending his father as he ought to have done, and of being glad when he died. But he knew nothing of this and continued to bathe in his manufactured glory.

  His reign hung over the alley like the shadow of a huge mountain, but to his credit he brought the neighboring chiefs to heel, and restored the alley to its former position of power. He built a sumptuous house where he installed his mother, and divided his own time between the bar, the smoking den, and the neighborhood brothels.

  3.

  Suma al-Kalabshi died and his daughter Sanbala inherited a small fortune which she shared with her ten sisters. Soon afterward she married a moneylender’s clerk, who was reluctant to welcome his wife’s son by her first marriage. Things grew worse when he and Sanbala had children of their own, and Fath al-Bab grew up in a miserable atmosphere, clinging to his mother and avoiding the master of the house. He felt a growing sense of pain and isolation which was not eased by his excellent performance at Quran school or his gentle nature and good behavior. When he was nine years old his mother took him to the chief.

  “Here’s your brother,” she said. “It’s time you took him under your wing.”

  Samaha examined him. He looked handsome, frail, sad, but his heart didn’t warm to him. “What’s wrong with him? He looks half-starved!”

  “He’s not. But he’s a delicate boy.”

  “To see him, you wouldn’t think he was descended from clan chiefs on both sides! It’s more appropriate for you to take care of him,” he said, trying to shrug off the unwanted burden.

  Her eyes filled with tears. “He’s not happy with me, there’s nothing more I can do.”

  Samaha, feeling obliged to take him, presented the child to his mother. She protested vigorously. “I don’t have the energy to look after children anymore.”

  The truth was that she was horrified at the idea of raising her co-wife’s son. Samaha was at a loss, and the boy had to bear his humiliation and distress without a murmur. Seeing his plight, an old woman, a friend of Nur’s, volunteered to look after him. Sahar the midwife was a widow without children of her own, and a descendant of the Nagis. She lived in a two-room basement in a building which had belonged to Galal, the minaret man. She was good-hearted, proud of her lineage, and with her for the first time Fath al-Bab had a cozy, untroubled life, which helped him bear the separation from his mother.

  4.

  One day a pretty young girl caught Samaha’s eye. She wasn’t his for the taking like his other women. He saw her passing in a carriage and found out where she lived. In her beautiful face he detected a familiarity which made him think some hidden affinity existed between them. He soon discovered why. It turned out that she was Firdus, Radi’s granddaughter. His attraction was based on lust for her and a desire to possess her, but it was so powerful that it made him think seriously about marriage for the first time in his dissolute life. Added to that, he was tempted by the fact that she owned the cereal business and was a Nagi like him. His mother was amazed when he asked her to arrange the engagement, but overjoyed at the same time.

  “What makes us a good match,” chuckled Samaha, “is that we’re both descended from beautiful, crazy Zahira, the mankiller!”

  He was so ugly, so bad that he deserved to be turned down, but who would refuse the clan chief?

  5.

  Firdus married Samaha. Beauty united with the Beast. He had been beautiful once until the clubs rearranged his face. But he was endlessly proud of his origins and his unrivaled strength. Contrary to expectations, the marriage succeeded and they were happy. Samaha became manager of the cereal business and its virtual owner. From his office he unleashed his iron will, and ran the business and directed the gang’s military operations with equal zeal. Marriage brought pleasant days and youth and beauty into his life, palatial ease, the habits of refined living against a background of fine artifacts and furnishings, and all the splendors and diversions of wealth and luxury. He did not give up his riotous excesses, but confined them to his marriage nest, installing gilded water pipes and calabashes to enhance his pleasure. Managing the cereal business taught him a love of money, and as he began to amass a fortune he decided to follow in the footsteps of the eccentric Galal and impose his authority not only on people but on objects of value.

  6.

  Firdus demonstrated that she was intelligent as well as lucky. She loved her husband, gave him children with warmth and tenderness, was tireless in her efforts to make him more cultured and genteel and to possess him completely, but she did this gently, stealthily, without a hint of aggression or arrogance. She did not set great store by the office of clan chief, but was happy to enjoy all its privileges. As a Nagi herself, she extolled the virtues of the legendary chiefs of old with their justice and integrity; at the same time, as a member of the bourgeoisie, she had an aversion to such purity which favored heroic poverty and muzzled the powerful and rich. She was happy for the memory to be a blessing and a source of pride, as long as the clan system of the present was there to achieve power and wealth. There was no harm in Samaha doing what he wanted provided that it was in her house, protected by a gilded veil of wealth and respectability.

  The days passed; she was happy. The rich grew richer and the poor grew poorer.

  7.

  Fath al-Bab continued his education in the Quran school, and learned the Holy Book by heart. He was happy in the affectionate atmosphere of his new home. The shadow of fear had lifted from his soul, revealing a wealth of feelings and a prodigious imagination. He was a boy with a clear, light brown skin, jet-black eyes, a dimple in his chin, a graceful physique, and a pleasant, intelligent air. He forgot his mother, just as she forgot him, and centered all his affection on the midwife Sahar. He loved and revered her, and she explained things to him that he’d never thought about before.

  As they sat together in the evenings she would say to him, “We’re both descended from the blessed Ashur al-Nagi.”

  Then she would go on to talk with conviction of the distant past as if to her it was a living, breathing reality. “He came from very noble origins, but his father wanted to protect him from the wrath of a tyrannical clan chief. In a dream he was ordered to leave the boy on the path in the sacred shadow of the monastery.”

&nb
sp; Fath al-Bab cursed those who called his ancestor a foundling.

  Sahar recited, “He came from very noble origins. He was raised by a good man and grew up to be a strong and powerful youth. One night an angel came to him and told him to leave the alley to escape from the plague. He called on the people in the alley to flee with him but they laughed at him, and he departed sadly with his wife and child. When he returned, he saved the alley from suffering and shame, just as God had saved him from death.”

  She would go on to tell the tale of Ashur’s life—his return, his sojourn in the Bannan house, his reign as chief, his covenant—until the boy’s eyes were filled with tears.

  “Then one day he disappeared. He never came back, so people thought he was dead, but the truth is that he never died.”

  “Is he still alive today?” asked Fath al-Bab expectantly.

  “He’ll be alive forever!”

  “Why doesn’t he come back here?”

  “Only God knows the answer to that.”

  “Might he turn up unexpectedly?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  “Does he know what my brother did?”

  “Of course, son.”

  “Why did he keep quiet about it?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Doesn’t he care about injustice?”

  “Of course he does.”

  “So why doesn’t he do anything about it?”

  “Who knows? Perhaps because he’s angry that people seem indifferent to the tyrant that rules them.”

  Fath al-Bab was silent. “Is all that really true?” he demanded finally.

  “Have I ever lied to you?”

  8.

  As Fath al-Bab went back and forth to school, he saw Ashur everywhere. He made his heart pound, quickened his imagination, set his hopes and passions alight. He saw him in the mosque, the fountain, the animals’ trough. He saw him on the path by the old wall that enclosed the monastery garden and in the little square in front of the monastery. Hour after hour Ashur had contemplated those walls, that closed door, the tall mulberry trees, just as he was doing now. The air was still moist with his breath, with the murmurings of his voice. With his desires and dreams. The secret of his whereabouts was hidden in the folds of the unknown, out of reach of the sun’s streaming rays. One day he would definitely return. That’s what Sahar had said, and she always told the truth. He would wave his rough stick and Samaha with his ugly face would vanish. That would be the end of his black reign of tyranny, his bloody avarice, his hoarded wealth. The harafish would rejoice at the day of salvation and swim in a sea of light. The madman’s minaret would come tumbling down and treachery and foolishness would be buried under its rubble for all time.