by Waguih Ghali
‘It’s not true,’ I said.
‘I know. Mais les gens patient, tu sais.’
‘Would you like me to marry her?’
She put the socks down and said she didn’t care whom I married as long as she knew I was happy. She knew, she said, that Edna had been my girl friend. But, she said, marrying a Jewess ‘ce n’est pas très pratique en ce moment’, but if I loved her and if that was the reason why I was behaving the way I did, I might as well marry her. If she would accept me, that is; because they were multi-millionaires. She was also older than me, my mother said. Suddenly she told me to marry for love and started weeping.
The telephone rang. My mother took her glasses off and her usual look returned.
‘C’est Dr Hamza,’ she whispered. ‘Be very polite.’ She brought me the telephone and stood expectantly by.
‘Ram,’ he shouted.
‘Yes?’
‘What have you done with the last set of pictures?’
‘I have,’ I said, ‘made copies and sent them to all the newspaper editors.’
‘Who gave you permission to do such a thing?’
‘Nobody,’ I said.
‘You are an irresponsible child,’ he shouted. ‘You are not only endangering yourself, but everyone else connected with this business. Burn everything you have. Don’t come to my office any more.’ He hung up.
‘What does he want?’ my mother asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘I heard what he said, Ram. You are connected with politics. I knew it,’ she screamed. ‘C’est le fin. You will kill us all. Mon dieu. Mon dieu …’
I calmed her down, then went into the bathroom. I lay on the floor and reached with my hand under the bath-tub. I reached for a loose tile and pulled from underneath it a large brown envelope. I placed it in the sink and set light to it. I replaced the tile, cleaned everything, then started dressing.
PART V
I knocked at Edna’s door. Once, in London, when we had been particularly close, she had said that if we were to part for ever, she would cut her hair because she could not bear to know that I would not comb it for her any more. I too, I had said, could not bear to think that anyone else would comb her hair.
‘Come in, Ram.’ She recognized my knock. She was sitting at her desk writing a letter, a cigarette in her hand and a cup of Turkish coffee beside her paper. She was going to get up but I told her to go on writing. I pulled a chair and sat behind her.
‘Writing a letter?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have a large family, Edna?’
‘I am my parents’ only child, you know that. But the family is very large.’
‘Where are they all living?’
‘All over the world, Ram. All the Salvas of Germany and the Baltic countries are now mostly in South Africa, Rhodesia … around there. Then I have cousins and aunts in England, France, North America. All over the world, Ram.’
‘And in Israel too?’
She shook her head. ‘Some young ones from France and England are there. But more as tourists than anything else.’
‘Are they all so very rich?’
‘There are Salva shops all over the world. You know how we Jews are. We like to employ Jews, and better still, those belonging to the family. We also help each other a tremendous amount.’
‘Edna, why are you living in this quarter?’
‘Our house is sequestré, Ram, as well as our shops here. I like the district and I haven’t made plans for the future yet.’
‘What are your plans, Edna?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Edna, don’t you want to get married and have children of your own and have them jump up on your knees and look at you with large eyes and ask you if they may have another ice?’
She smiled.
‘And to have a husband who will place the children in convenient places on the floor; fix the automatic camera and rush back to put his hand on your shoulder for the family portrait?’
‘You’re sweet, Ram.’
‘And then,’ I said, ‘when the camera has clicked, it is one of those new things which develop and print the film all at once, you will see that I have made a grimace and we shall both …’
‘You, Ram?’
‘Yes, me.’ I looked at the nape of her neck. Her two plaits had been rolled up and stuck on either side of her head, covering her ears. Her neck is slender and pale, with a concave line running down the middle of her nape, like a girl of twelve.
‘It will never be, Ram.’
‘If you only gave me a reason,’ I said. ‘There are hundreds. One would do. Or just say you don’t love me.’
‘I do love you,’ she whispered.
I put my hands on the back of the chair and stared at her in silence. ‘When you went away from London that first time and didn’t write for a year, I used to walk the streets at night, wondering what happiness and the fulfilment of life really is. Perhaps it is only my personal opinion, perhaps it is because you have engendered that feeling in me; but happiness, to me, is the freedom of two people who love each other to share their lives in circumstances permitting this love to live. When I hear of downtrodden people, of concentration camps, of wars, of hunger, of imprisonment, I always think of two people separated in these circumstances. I know that people can’t continue to love if they have to share a room with their children, or are diseased or are dirty or are hungry. In spite of your idealism, generosity, kindness, I consider you cruel. You are cruel when you say you love me, and yet insist on living separated from me. If you didn’t love me, it would be another …’
‘Please, Ram. Stop it.’
‘Is there nothing, nothing at all I can do?’
She shook her head.
A man can sometimes run a marathon race over a fantastic distance, and when the race is ended, he collapses, exhausted, just as though he had measured his capacity to that very last inch.
I stretched my hand and touched her rolled plait. Suddenly I jumped up and stood with my hand outstretched, as though terribly stung. The plait fell from my hand to the floor, unrolling itself and looking at me desperately. She had cut her hair.
I had reached that last inch.
I was sitting on her bed, and she was by my side, holding my hand. The reason why she would never discuss marriage, was because she was already married. It was like asking the marathon racer, the collapsing marathon racer, to race again.
‘I am already married, Ram,’ she had said.
‘To whom?’ I asked, half an hour later.
‘I married just before I met you. He was a Jew, a member of the Communist Party here. A very good man, Ram. Very honest, very kind. Utterly unselfish. We knew he was going to be arrested, and as I had a British passport, we hoped that if he married me, they would not imprison him. The British refused to give him asylum or nationality. He refused to go to the Soviets because they were supporting Nasser. He was suddenly completely alone. Two weeks after we were married, he was taken away and given ten years. A group of them tried to escape, and some of them died, shot with Russian weapons given to Nasser. He was hit by three bullets and is completely disfigured. He is not even a man any more. He is in Israel because he is a Jew.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.
‘I wanted so many times to tell you.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I repeated.
‘But I didn’t. When I left you and went to Israel, I did not mean to come back … but I wanted so much to see you again. I am also a woman, Ram. Also weak like other women. I love too, like other women. Forgive me, Ram.’
‘I forgive you a thousand times over,’ I said.
I walked about the room, opening her cupboard and closing it; pulling her drawers out and pushing them in again.
‘Are you becoming an alcoholic, Ram?’
I shook my head. She opened her desk and gave me an unopened bottle of whisky.
‘Will you have a glass too?’
; ‘Yes.’
I opened the bottle and poured two glasses.
‘So you are an Israeli,’ I said.
‘No, Ram, I am Egyptian.’
I stood up. ‘You know, Edna, you are not Egyptian. Not because you are married to an Israeli or because you are Jewish; you are just not Egyptian. I’ll tell you why. Do you remember you told me once that I am not Egyptian because I belong to the élite, etc? But I am Egyptian. Like Jameel and Yehia, I am real Egyptian. I have our humour. Even though my “Egyptian” has been enfeebled by my stay in England and by the books I have read, I have the Egyptian character. You haven’t,’ I told her. ‘You have no humour, Edna. We would all have died a long time ago if we didn’t have our humour.’
‘I haven’t got much to laugh about,’ she said.
‘God,’ I said, going to her. ‘I loved you and love you more than anything in the world, and these last six years would have been the happiest ever lived, if you had had some humour and not frowned upon mine; if you could have been light-hearted at times. It wouldn’t have made any difference if you were married or not. It still doesn’t make any difference. Do I care? We can live together until we die and that’s all I care about. You know I can get a job any time I want. My aunt would see to that. Or we could go and live in Upper Egypt with my uncle. Even open a school there, if you wanted.’
I drank another glass of whisky.
‘If it’s politics,’ I said bitterly, ‘that I lack, I’ll find something to do.’ I told her about Dr Hamza.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about that before?’
‘Did you ever give me a chance? You always refused to see me since my return. There are many things you don’t know.’
‘What, Ram?’
‘I joined the Communist Party when I was in England.’
‘You! Why?’
‘Why? Oh, it would be easy to say I joined for the same reason anybody else joins – a belief in its principles.’
‘Is that why you joined?’
I started walking round the room again. I finished my whisky and poured another glass. I don’t like whisky very much without soda and ice, but I drank it all the same.
‘I joined,’ I said, ‘because I didn’t know what to do with the knowledge I possess.’
‘What do you mean, Ram?’
‘I mean,’ I said, ‘this knowledge of history and politics and literature had to be channelled towards something or other if I weren’t to go mad. At first all I did-my politics, my behaviour, my infidelities – were nothing but bravado, showing off, enjoyment. I would go with you and listen to speeches about South Africa, go to rallies in Trafalgar Square, listen to Bevan and Russell and Soper and Collins and Paul Robeson singing; and then walk back home holding your hand, telling myself: what an interesting and enjoyable life this is. I would feel passionately angry about the cruelty and injustices I heard about, but this passionate anger was itself enjoyable. It was the participation with you in something good which I enjoyed. I loved you and that was the main thing in my life. It was when you would suddenly leave and I imagined I had lost you for good, that my anger at things political became personal. My bitterness at losing you became mingled with the atrocities I heard and read about. It was as though I had lost you because of people like Vervoerd. And even when I was honest enough to admit that your leaving me had nothing to do with the injustices of the world, I would nevertheless believe that if the world had been just, we would have loved and lived normally, you and I.
‘Edna,’ I went on, ‘when you used to leave, I used to be left with a colossal amount of knowledge and awareness of the world which I didn’t know what to do with. As long as you were with me, it had, however vaguely, something to do with my love for you. My knowledge made me a little worthy of you.’
I filled our glasses once more.
‘I left you that first time without writing,’ Edna said, ‘because I was afraid. You changed so quickly during that brief spell in England, I thought perhaps it was because of my influence on you. To prove to me, perhaps, that you were a man. I didn’t want that. There was another reason why I left. But I could have written.’ She finished her glass in one gulp and re-filled it herself.
She looked at me.
‘Ram, I fell in love with you twice. The first time was because I was lonely and because you had a beautiful character. You were fresh and sincere. I am older than you, Ram. I thought your love for me would die naturally after a while. When I returned to England a year later, you had changed completely. You had become a difficult and complicated person. I fell in love with you again. But it was another love. I loved you because I found you attractive … you are attractive to women. Give me a light, Ram.’
I lit her cigarette.
‘Why,’ I asked softly, ‘do you say you loved me, when you always acted as though you didn’t?’
She made a dismissing gesture with her hand. ‘Because we can’t get married. And even if we could, you would never be happy with me.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I knew it for certain when Didi came to England.’
‘It is one of those circles you find no beginning to,’ I said. ‘I can say that what happened between Didi and myself was because I felt you didn’t love me, and you can say you felt we couldn’t be happy because of this business with Didi.’
‘Ram, darling …’ I suddenly smiled.
‘I wonder why,’ I said, ‘we never used terms of endearments between us. Things like “darling” and “beloved”. This is the first time you call me “darling”.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s true, we never did. I don’t know why.’ She shrugged her shoulders in a light, pleasant way and also smiled.
‘I was going to tell you, Ram, that when Didi was in England, your old natural character returned for a while.’
I also shrugged my shoulders.
‘When did you join the Communist Party?’ she asked.
‘I joined the last time you left, you and Font; just before the Suez war.’
‘What really made you join?’
I filled my glass with whisky once more and stood looking out of the window. Heat has always had the strange effect of making a din in my ears; a perpetual low buzz I become aware of now and then, like suddenly hearing a clock’s tick. I shook my head involuntarily.
‘If,’ I told Edna, ‘someone has read an enormous amount of literature, and has a thorough knowledge of contemporary history, from the beginning of this century to the present day, and he has an imagination, and he is intelligent, and he is just, and he is kind, and he cares about other people of all races, and he has enough time to think, and he is honest and sincere, there are two things can happen to him; he can join the Communist Party and then leave it, wallowing in its short-comings, or he can become mad. Or,’ I said, ‘if he is unconsciously insincere, he may join one of the many left-wing societies in Europe, and enjoy himself.’
I put my glass down on her desk and started walking about the room.
‘And what are you, Ram?’
‘I am insincere,’ I said, ‘but honest.’
‘Are you still a communist?’
‘A communist,’ I said. ‘A communist. You should ask me whether I belong to the Communist Party. The answer to which is no.’
‘Why didn’t you return with us during the Suez war? Why did you become so sarcastic? Why didn’t you tell us you had joined the Communist Party?’
‘Because,’ I said, ‘Font would have joined it too if he had known. But Font is sincere. He’d have gone on being an active communist here and he would have been imprisoned and tortured. And anyway I joined after you had left.’
‘And now?’
‘Now what?’
‘What are you going to do?’
I walked about once more, drinking more whisky and beginning to feel its effect.
‘You asked me,’ I said, ‘why I was so sarcastic and all that. You were the one always to remind me I’m Egyptian, and yet you never
wanted me to behave the way Egyptians do. As long as …’
‘Why did you return, Ram?’
I lit another cigarette and stood by the window once more.
‘You told me so many times you love Egyptians. I, too, Edna, but unconsciously, not like you. Egypt to me is so many different things. Playing snooker with Doromian and Varenian the Armenians, is Egypt to me. Sarcastic remarks are Egypt to me – not only the fellah and his plight. Riding the tram is Egypt. Do you know my friend Fawzi? He can never give an answer that isn’t witty … and yet he isn’t renowned for it. He’s an ordinary Egyptian. Last week I was riding the tram with him when a man stepped on his foot. “Excuse me,’ said the man, “for stepping on your foot.” – “Not at all,” said Fawzi, “I’ve been stepping on it myself for the last twenty-seven years” … How can I explain to you that Egypt to me is something unconscious, is nothing particularly political, or … or … oh, never mind,’ I said.
‘But why then aren’t you living an ordinary life? Why aren’t you working, why are you annoying your family, why did you help Dr Hamza?’
And once again this terrible feeling of oppression and this longing to explode everything and expire with the explosion came over me.
I put my face in my hands.
‘This terrible knowledge I possess,’ I said. ‘All the literature I have read. You. This awareness of myself,’ I told her, ‘which started to inflict me as soon as I set foot in Europe. I see myself not only through Egyptian eyes, but through eyes which embrace the whole world in their gaze.’
‘I can’t understand all you say, Ram.’ She came towards me and did something she had never done before. She knelt and looked up to me with tears in her eyes.
‘My God,’ she said, ‘I never realized I had made you so lonely.’
We have no twilight in Egypt; but we have a large sun setting on the horizon, and a mauve light, more substance than colour, regretfully reaching out from all objects. This only lasts a few minutes, but it is the sign of a fresh breeze on the way, and suddenly the streets become animated, and lethargy, you feel, has just been vanquished.
I stood in the street not knowing what to do with myself. Unless you are an alcoholic or something like that, it is horrible to start drinking in the early afternoon. You experience moments of exhilaration and others of depression and you keep on drinking until it is time to go to bed. I wanted to return to Edna but knew I should not. I’d have liked to take her dancing at the Semiramis roof and have supper overlooking the Nile. I counted my money slowly. I had over a hundred pounds. A street boy came and cleaned my shoes while I was standing. I gave him a pound and told him to keep it. I walked across the street to the Mirandi bar and ordered a whisky. Then I went in the telephone booth and dialled Mounir’s number.