The darkness drew back to reveal the ugly apparitions that frequently grasped at him like emblems of torment and loathing. Among them he could make out the fruit store at the head of the cul-de-sac called the Palace of Desire, or Qasr al-Shawq. An image with blurred features came to him. It was himself as a boy. He saw the boy hurrying to the shop where that same man greeted him and brought him a bag filled with oranges and apples. Joyfully he took it back to the woman who had sent him and was waiting for him… to his mother, not someone else, alas. The memory made him frown with rage and anguish. Then he recalled the image of the man. He asked himself apprehensively whether that man could possibly recognize him if he saw him. Would he recognize in him the smaL boy he had once known as that woman's son? A tremor of alarm passed through him. His towering, bulky body seemed to fade and dwindle until he sensed it had become nothing at all.
At that point the carafe and glass were brought. He poured out some cognac and drank greedily and nervously. He was in a hurry to reap the drinker's share of refreshment and forgetfulness, but suddenly his mother's face appeared to him from the depths of the past. He could not keep himself from spitting. Which should he curse: fate, which made her his mother, or her beauty, which caused so many men to fall in love with her and enveloped him in disasters? It was beyond his power to change anything destined to befall him. All he could do was submit to the divine decree that mauled his self-esteem. After everything he had endured, it was surely unjust to expect him to make amends for what fate had decreed, as though he were the sinful offender. He did not know why he deserved that curse.
There were many children like him raised by divorced mothers. Unlike many of them, he had found with his mother pure affection, boundless love, and abundant fondling unrestrained by a father's control. He had enjoyed a happy childhood based on love, tenderness, and gentleness. He could still remember many thi ngs about the old house in Qasr al-Shawq, like its roof, which overlooked countless other ones. Minarets and domes were visible from it in all directions. Its enclosed balcony looked down on al-Gamaliya Street, where night after night wedding processions passed, lit by candles and flanked by toughs. Most would lead to brawls in which cudgels were wielded and blood flowed.
In that house he had loved his mother in a way that could not be surpassed. In it an obscure doubt had crept into hisheart. There the first seeds of a strange aversion had been cast into his breast, the aversion of a son for his mother. These seeds were destined to grow and mature until they changed in time into a hatred like a chronic disease. He had often told himself that if a person had a strong enough will he might be able to carve out more than one future, but no matter how strong his will he could never have more than one inescapable and unavoidable past.
Now he asked himself, as he had frequently before, when he had realized that he and his mother were not alone. It was unlikely that he had known with any certainty. All he could remember was that at one point in his childhood his senses had noted with disdain a new person who intruded on the household from time to time. Perhapshe, Yasin, had looked at him skeptically and somewhat fearfully. The man had probably done everything in his power to amuse and please him.
He gazed back into the past with intense hatred and revulsion but found he could not fight it off. His past was like a boil he wished he could ignore, while his hand could not keep from touching it every now and then. Moreover, there were mattershe could not possibly forget. In a certain place, at a time between daylight and darkness, from beneath the upper window or through a dining-room door with red and blue triangles of glass - in that place he remembered he had suddenly beheld, in circumstances corroded by forgetfulness, the intruder assaulting his mother. He had not been able to keep himself from screaming from the depths of hisheart. He had howled and wept until the woman came to him, clearly disturbed. She had attempted to put his mind at rest and calm him down.
At that point the train of his thoughts was cut short by his intense resentment. He looked around him despondently. Then he filled his glass from the carafe and drank. When he set the glass back down he noticed a drop of liquid on the edge of his jacket. He thought it was wine and took out his handkerchief. He started patting the spot. Checking on a hunch, he examined the outside of the glass and saw drops of water clinging to it near the bottom. He surmised it was water and not v/ine that had fallen on his coat and thus regained his composure. But what a deceptive composure it was! His mind's eye had returned to the odious past.
He did not remember when the incident in question had taken place or how old he had been at the time. He did remember quite certainly that the seducer kept on coming to the old house and had frequently tried to ingratiate himself with Yasin by giving him sweet and tasty fruit. After that, he had seen the man in his fruit store at the head of the alley when his mother brought him along with her to run an errand. With childish innocence he had pointed the man out to her. She had dragged him forcefully away and forbidden him to point at the man. Thus Yasin learned to pretend not to know him when his mother was with him on the street. This incident had made the man seem even more mysterious and incomprehensible to him. She had also cautioned him against mentioning the man in the presence of an elderly uncle who was still alive at that time and who visited them occasionally. He had heeded her warning and become even more apprehensive.
Fate had not been satisfied with that. If the man had not visited the house for several days, his mother would send the boy to invite him to come “tonight”. The man would receive him graciously and fill a bag with apples and bananas. He would give the boy his acceptance or apologies, as the case might be. It got to the point that when Yasin wanted some tasty fruit he would ask his mother's permission to go to the man to invite him for “tonight”. When he remembered this, his forehead broke out in a sweat from shame, and he exhaled in annoyance. Then he poured some cognac and swallowed it.
Slowly the fiery intoxication spread through his system and began to play its magical role in helping him bear his troubles. 'I've said a thousand times I've got to leave the past buried in its grave. It's no use. I don't have a mother. My stepmother, who is tender and good, is all the mother I need. Everything's fine except for an old memory I can get rid of. I wonder why I allow it to persist with me and exhume it time after time. Why? It was just bad luck which plunked that man in front of me today. He's destinec to die one day. I wish a lot of men would die. He's not the onl} one.”
Although his intellect forbade it, his rebellious imagination continued the journey through his gloomy past. Now he felt more relaxed about it. Indeed, there was not much more to the story itself. The rest of it differed from the beginning, perhaps, and seemed relatively bright after the dark period he had endured as a young child. This improvement came in the few years preceding his transfer to his father's custody. Then his mother had sum-mo tied up the courage to tell him openly that the fruit merchant had been, visiting her in hopes of marrying her. She had hesitated to accept him and probably would refuse him for Yasin's sake. How much truth was there to what he had been told? It would be absurd to put too much faith in the details of his memories, but he had certainly attempted to understand and comprehend. He had been afQicted with an obscure doubt, revealing itself to the heart rather than the intellect. He had suffered enough distress to scare away the dove of peace and prepare the earth of his soul to receive the seed of the revulsion, which in time had grown to maturity.
When he was nine, he had been transferred to his father's custody. Before that, his father had only seen him a limited number of times, to avoid friction with Yasin's mother. When he came to his father's house as a boy he was ignorant even of the most elementary forms of knowledge and had to make up for the ill effects of his mother's excessive pampering. He hated learning and had little willpower to help him. Had it not been for the ferocity of his father and the pleasant atmosphere of his new home he would not have succeeded in obtaining the primary certificate even when he was over nineteen.
Ashe grew older an
d grasped the facts of life, he paraded in review his life in his mother's house and examined it from different perspectives, using his new expertise to cast a glaring light on it. Then the bitter and repugnant realities were revealed to him. Whenever he took a step forward in life, he found the past was like a poisoned weapon attacking him and his dignity from within.
At first his father had tried to ask him about life in his mother's home. Even though he was young, he had abstained from digging up the sad memories. His wounded pride defeated both a desire to arouse his father's interest and the love of chattering characteristic of small boys. He kept silent until he received strange news about his mother's marriage to a coal merchant in the Mubayyada region of al-Gamaliya. Then the boy wept for a long time. His anger was more than he could bear, and he burst out and told his father about the fruit merchant whose offer of marriage his mother had claimed, one day, she had refused for Yasin's sake.
His link to her had been severed at that time, eleven years ago. He knew nothing about her except what his father related from time to time, like her divorce from the coal merchant after two years of marriage to him. Then she had married a master sergeant the year later. After about two years she was divorced again, and so forth and so on.
During the lengthy separation, the woman had frequently endeavored to see him. She would send someone to his father to ask his permission for their son to visit her, but Yasin rejected her invitations with intense distaste and revulsion, even though his father advised him to be conciliatory and forgiving. The truth was that he h eld a fierce grudge against her that rose from the very core of his wounded heart. He closed the door of forgiveness and pardon on her and barricaded it with anger and hatred. He believed he was not being unjust to her. He had simply set her down at the level to which her activity had lowered her.
“A woman. Yes, she's nothing but a woman. Every woman is a filthy curse. A woman doesn't know what virtue is, unless she's denied all opportunities for adultery. Even my stepmother, who's a fine vv oman God only knows what she would be like if it weren't for my father.”
His thoughts were interrupted by a man's voice which rang out: “Wine has nothing but benefits. I'll cut off the head of anyone who disagrees. Hashish, dope, and opium are very harmful, but wine is full of benefits.”
“What are its benefits?” his companion asked.
“Its benefits! What a strange question!” the man replied incredulously. “Everything about it is beneficial, as I told you. You know this. You believe it….”
The companion said, “But hashish, opium, and other narcotics are also beneficial. You ought to know this and believe it. Everyone says so. Are you going to oppose this popular consensus?”
The first man hesitated a little. Then he observed, “Everything's beneficial, then. Everything. Wine, hashish, opium, narcotics, and whatever comes along.”
His companion retorted in a victorious tone, “But wine is forbidden by Islam.”
The man said angrily, “Is that all you can come up with? You should give alms righteously, go on pilgrimage, feed the poor. The opportunities for atonement are plentiful, and a good deed is worth ten others.”
Yasin smiled with relief. Yes, at last he was able to smile. “Let her go to hell and take the past with her. I'm not responsible for any of it. Every man gets some dirt on him in this life. Anyone who could pull back the curtain would get an eyeful. The only thing that interests me is her real estate: the store on al-Hamzawi, the residence in al-Ghuriya, and the old house in the Palace of Desire. I swear to God that if I inherit all of it one day, I'll have no qualms about praying God to be compassionate to her…. Oh … Zanuba, I almost forgot about you, and only the devil could make me forget you. It was a woman who tormented me, and it's with a woman that I seek consolation. Oh, Zanuba, I didn't know until today that under your clothes you have such a fair complexion…. Ugh, I need to erase this thought from my head. The truth is that my mother's an aching molar that won't stop hurting till it's pulled.”
14
AL-SAYYID AHMAD Abd al-Jawad sat behind the desk in his store. The fingers of his left hand were playing with his elegant mustache as they commonly did when he was carried off by the flow of Hs thoughts. He was staring into space, and the expression on his face suggested that he felt relaxed and contented. He was obviously pleased to feel the love and affection people harbored for him. If he could have discerned some sign of their love every day, that would have made each day happy and splendid in a way no amount of repetition could blunt. Today he had received yet another proof of their love.
The night before, he had been unable to attend a party to which one of h is friends had invited him. Immediately after he had taken his seat in the store this morning, the man who had invited him and some comrades who were guests at the party had come to see him. They had reprimanded him for missing it and held him responsible for diminishing their delight and enjoyment. They had said, among other things, that they had not really laughed from the bottom of their hearts the way they did when he was present. They had not found the same pleasure in drinking that they did with him. Their party, as they put it, had lacked its soul.
Now he was joyfully and proudly reviewing their remarks. He was deeply touched by the intensity of their reproaches and the warmth of his own apologies. All the same, he did not escape the reprimands of his conscience, which by its very nature was bent on pleasing his dear friends and thirsty for a fond and sincere drink from the' springs of friendship and affection. It might almost have spoiled his good humor, except for the contentment and pride he felt because of the love his friends' revolt against him revealed. Yes, how often the love that attracted him to others and them to him had cheered hisheart with unlimited delight and satisfaction. He seemed to have been created for friendship more than for anything else.
He had encountered another manifestation of this love, or of a different type of love, later that morning. Umm Ali the matchmaker had called on him. She had told him, after beating around the bush for some time, “You surely know that Madam Nafusa, the widow of al-Hajj Ali al-Dasuqi, owns seven stores in al Mugharbilin?”
Al-Sayyid Ahmad had smiled. He had grasped intuitively what the woman was hinting at, and hisheart had told him she was not simply playing the matchmaker this time but was a messenger sworn to secrecy. He had imagined on more than one occasion that Madam Nafusa had come close to announcing her affection for him during her frequent trips to his store to buy groceries. All the same, he had wanted to sound her out, if only to amuse himself. He had replied with apparent interest, “It's your job to find a suitable husband for her. And they're hard to come by!”
Umm Ali had thought she had achieved her objective. She had said, “I've chosen you out of all men. What do you say?”
The proprietor had laughed loudly and merrily, revealing his good humor and self-satisfaction, but had replied decisively, “I've been married twice. I failed the first time. God made me successful with the second. I will not be reckless with the blessing God has granted me.”
The truth was that he had often overcome, by the force of his inalterable will, the temptations of another marriage, in spite of the suitable opportunities that came his way. It seemed he had not forgotten the example of his father, who had slipped inadvertently into a succession of marriages that squandered his fortune and caused him many problems. He, his father's only child, had been left with only a negligible amount of money. Now, through his own profits and income, he enjoyed an ample living that furnished his family happiness and comfort and provided him with as much as he wished to spend on his amusements and entertainments. How could he do something that would spoil this excellent and convenient situation that secured for him both honor and freedom? Indeed, he had not amassed a fortune, not from a lack of means of accumulating one, but because of the generosity that was part of his nature. Spending his wealth and enjoying what it brought him were the only reasonshe could see for having it. Moreover, a deep faith in God and His benefactions fille
d his soul with a sense of trust and confidence that protected him from the fear afflicting many people with regard to their possessions and their future.
His rejection of the lures of further matrimony did not prevent him from being pleased and proud whenever a good opportunity came his way. Consequently, he could not overlook the fact that a beautiful woman like Madam Nafusa wanted him to be her husband. This thought dominated his mind now. He began to look at his assistant and the customers with vacant eyes and a dreamy, smiling f ice. He remembered, again with a smile, how one of his friends had teased him that morning about his elegance and his use of perfume: “Enough ofthat. Enough for you, old man.”
Old man? He actually was forty-five, but what could this critic say about his enormous vitality, robust health, and stream of gleaming black hair? His feeling of youthfulness had not weakened or dimini shed. His boyish vigor seemed to increase with time, and he had lost none of his charms. Indeed, despite his modesty and complaisance, he was intensely conscious of his looks and secretly both proud and vain. He was enormously fond of praise. His humility and graciousness seemed designed to increase praise and to spur his companions gently on to say more nice things about him. He was so self-confident that he believed himself superior to other men in looks, grace, and elegance, but he was not a bore about it. His modesty also came to him naturally. It was an innate characteristic that arose from a disposition overflowing with good humor, sincerity, and love.
In fact, he made use of this native disposition, without any reservations, to scout for more love. Inspired by this thirst for love, his nature was inclined toward sincerity, faithfulness, serenity, humility: the attributes that attract love and approval the way flowers attract butterflies. Although his modesty seemed to be a skill, it was a natural characteristic. His skill came instinctively and not from any act of will, revealing itself naturally and simply, without any affectation or effort. He preferred to be silent about his good qualities and conceal his pleasing qualities, while joking about his faults and defects, in order to seek love and affection. To make his virtues known and brag about them could easily have incited an envious reaction. His effective and skillful use of modesty drove his admirers to praise what his wisdom and reserve passed over. Without his resorting to any unseemly boasting, his merits were made public in a way he could never have achieved by himself, thus increasing his charm and the affection lavished on him.
The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street Page 12