Children of the Alley

by Naguib Mahfouz

  Hanash shrugged his narrow shoulders, as if to say, “It’s in God’s hands.”

  A drunk blocked their way. “What do we call you?”

  “Arafa.”

  “Arafa what?”

  “Arafa ibn Gahsha!”

  All the bystanders shook with laughter, delighted at his fatherless humiliation.

  “We always used to wonder, back then when your mother was pregnant, who the father could be. Did she ever tell you the truth?”

  Arafa masked his pain with even more laughter, and said, “She died before she ever found out herself!” He walked away, leaving them laughing, and news of his return spread through the alley. Before he had rented the basement, a boy from the Al Rifaa neighborhood coffeehouse came to him.

  “Agag, the protector of the alley, is asking for you.”

  He went to the coffeehouse, which was not far from his building. As soon as he came near, a picture painted on the rear wall, above the poet’s bench, caught his attention. It was a picture of Agag mounted on his horse, below a likeness of the overseer, Qadri, with his splendid mustache and elegant cloak. Above that was a scene with Rifaa’s body in Gabalawi’s arms, as the old man was lifting it from the grave to take to his mansion. He studied the picture eagerly but quickly, then entered the coffeehouse and saw Agag sitting on a bench in the middle of the right wall, surrounded by his followers and subordinates.

  Arafa walked over to him until he stood before the gangster, who offered him a long, disdainful stare, as if to put him in a trance before striking. Arafa raised both hands to his head. “Greetings, blessings on our protector! We seek refuge in you, and rejoice in your presence.”

  Mockery glinted in the man’s narrow eyes. “Pretty words, Gahsha’s boy, but pretty words aren’t the only coin we recognize here!”

  “I’ll have the other kind of coin very soon, God willing,” Arafa said, smiling.

  “We already have more beggars than we need!”

  “I am no beggar, sir.” Arafa laughed, but arrogantly. “I am a magician known to millions of people!”

  The seated men exchanged glances, and Agag scowled. “What do you mean? Are you crazy?”

  Arafa stuck his hand into his breast pocket and drew out a delicate little box the size of a lotus fruit. With his outstretched hand he offered it submissively to Qadri, who took it disinterestedly and opened it. He saw a black substance inside and took a close look at it.

  “A grain of that in a cup of tea two hours before, well, you know, no offense, and after that, either you will be happy with your servant Arafa or you can kick him out of the alley with every curse you know.”

  For the first time, everybody craned their necks eagerly, and even Agag could not hide his interest, though he spoke with sham disdain. “This is your magic?”

  “I also have rare incense, exotic herbs, treatments and cures and charms. My power is best known for sickness, barrenness and debilitation.”

  “Well, well!” said Agag in what sounded like a threat. “We will be waiting to see your protection money.”

  Arafa’s heart skipped a beat, but his face grew even more cheerful. “Everything I own is yours, sir.”

  Suddenly the gangster laughed. “But you haven’t told us who your father is!”

  “Maybe you already know!” said Arafa, still smiling.

  Everyone in the coffeehouse laughed, and jeering comments filled the smoke-clouded air. When Arafa had left the coffeehouse, he said to himself resentfully, “Who knows who his father really was? Not you, Agag. Bastards!”

  He and Hanash inspected the basement, satisfied. “It’s roomier than I’d expected,” he said. “It’s just right, Hanash. This room will be good for having company, and the one in the back for a bedroom, and the last one for work.”

  “I wonder which room that woman burned to death in,” said Hanash a little uneasily.

  Arafa’s loud laughter rang against the empty walls. “Are you afraid of demons, Hanash? We work with them the same way Gabal worked with snakes.” He looked contentedly around him. “We only have one window in the room on the street. We’ll see the street from below through the window with the iron bars. This tomb has one fabulous advantage—it can’t be robbed.”

  “It might be ransacked.”

  “Might!” Then he sighed. “All I do is help people, but all my life I’ve got nothing but insults.”

  “Success will make up for all the harm you’ve suffered,” said Hanash, “and the suffering of your late mother.”

  94

  When he had leisure time, he loved to sit on an old sofa and watch what was going on through the window that looked out on the alley. He sat with his forehead against the bars of the window, his eyes level with the surface of the alley, with its rush of feet, wheels, dogs, cats, insects and children. He never saw people’s torsos or faces unless he crouched and raised his head. A naked child stood in front of him, playing with a dead rat; an old blind man walked by, carrying in his left hand a wooden platter heaped with seeds, beans, sweets and drowsy flies, and a thick cane in his right; the sound of wailing came from another basement window; two men were fighting, and blood ran down their faces.

  He smiled at the naked boy. “What’s your name?” he asked gently.

  “Una.”

  “Hassuna, you mean. Do you like your dead rat, Hassuna?”

  He threw it at Arafa, and had it not been for the bars it would have hit him in the face. The boy ran away, and Arafa turned to Hanash, who was dozing at his feet.

  “You see signs of the gangsters in every inch of this alley, but you don’t see a single sign of people like Gabal or Rifaa or Qassem.”

  Hanash yawned. “We see people like Saadallah, Yusuf, Agag and Santuri, but all we hear about are Gabal and Rifaa and Qassem,” he said.

  “But they did exist, right?”

  Hanash pointed to the floor of the room. “This building is in Rifaa. Everyone who lives in it is of the Al Rifaa. They belong to Rifaa, and every night the poets remind us that he lived and died for love and happiness. And we have breakfast every morning listening to their screaming and fights. That’s how they are—men and women both.”

  Arafa curled his lip, annoyed. “But they did exist, right?”

  “And screaming is the least of what goes on in Rifaa. The battles—God help you from them. Only yesterday one of them lost an eye.”

  “Strange alley!” said Arafa sharply. “Rest in peace, Mother. Look at us, for example. Everybody uses us, and no one respects us! They don’t respect anybody.” He set his teeth. “Except the gangsters.”

  Hanash laughed. “It’s enough that you’re the only person in the alley that everyone does business with—from Gabal, Rifaa and Qassem.”

  “God damn them all.” He was silent a few moments, his eyes bright in the dim light of the basement, then said, “Each of them is so stupidly, so blindly proud of its man—all proud of men of whom nothing is left but their names. And they never make any attempt to go one step beyond that false pride! Bastards. Cowards.”

  His first customer was a woman of the Al Rifaa, who came in the first week after he had moved into his basement. “How can I get rid of a woman without anyone knowing?” she asked in a subdued voice.

  He was alarmed, and looked at her in surprise. “I don’t do that, ma’am. If you want medicine for the body or spirit, I am at your service.”

  “Aren’t you a magician?” she asked dubiously.

  “In everything that does good for people. For killing, there are other people who do that.”

  “Maybe you’re afraid. But we would be partners, with one secret.”

  “That wasn’t Rifaa’s way,” he said with gentleness that contained a hint of mockery.

  “Rifaa!” she exclaimed. “God have mercy on him. We live in an alley where mercy doesn’t do any good. If it was any good, Rifaa wouldn’t have been killed.”

  She left him, in despair, but he was not sorry. Rifaa himself—the best man that ever was—ha
d never found safety in this alley; how could he aspire to it if he began his work with a crime? And his mother! How she had suffered, she who had never harmed anyone. He had to have good relations with everyone, as befitted every decent businessman. He began to frequent all the coffeehouses, and in every one of them he found a customer he knew. He listened to the poets’ stories in every neighborhood until they all mingled in his head, and made it spin.

  His first customer from the Al Qassem neighborhood was an elderly man, who smiled and whispered to him. “We heard about the gift you gave Agag, the protector of Rifaa.”

  He smiled at the wrinkled face of the old man, who spoke again. “Give us what you have, and don’t be surprised. Believe me, I’m still alive!”

  They both smiled at the secret, and the old man was encouraged.

  “You’re one of the Al Qassem, aren’t you? That’s what the people in our neighborhood think.”

  “Do they know who my father is?”

  “The Al Qassem are known by their looks!” said the man earnestly. “You are one of us. We are the ones who raised this alley up to the peak of justice and happiness, but, what a pity, it’s an ill-omened alley.” Then he remembered why he had come. “The gift, please.” The old man departed, holding the box close to his weak eyes, with new hope, energy and spring in his feeble gait.

  Arafa’s most recent visitor was an unexpected one. He was sitting on a cushion in the reception room, behind an incense burner exhaling delicate, bewitching smoke, when Hanash came in with an old Nubian man. “Yunis is the gatekeeper for his excellency the overseer,” he said.

  Arafa immediately stood up and offered both his hands in welcome. “Welcome! Welcome! It’s like a visit from the Prophet! Have a seat, sir!”

  They all sat down together, and the gatekeeper spoke with typical Nubian frankness. “Lady Nazira, the overseer’s wife, cannot sleep because of bad dreams.”

  Arafa’s eyes showed clear interest, and hope and ambition made his heart beat faster, but he said simply, “That’s a temporary condition. It will go away.”

  “But the lady is very disturbed. She sent me to you to find something that would help.”

  Arafa felt a happiness and control he had never known in all the wandering life he had been used to with his late mother. “The best thing would be if I could talk to her myself.”

  “Impossible!” said the gatekeeper sharply. “She will not come to you, and you must not go to her.”

  Arafa repressed his despair in order to pursue this golden opportunity. “Then I need her handkerchief, or something else of hers.”

  The gatekeeper bowed his turbaned head and got up to go. When they reached the basement door, the gatekeeper paused, then moved close to Arafa’s ear and whispered, “We have heard about your gift to Agag, the protector of Rifaa.”

  When the gatekeeper had left with the gift, Arafa and Hanash laughed for a long time.

  “Whom do you think he took the gift for?” Hanash asked. “For himself, or the overseer, or maybe the overseer’s wife?”

  “An alley of gifts and clubs!” jeered Arafa. He moved to the window to look out on the alley at night. The opposite wall was silver in the moonlight, the crickets were chirping loudly and the voice of the local poet rose from the coffeehouse.

  “And Adham asked, ‘When are you going to realize that you and I have nothing to say to one another?’ And Idris said, ‘Heaven forgive us, aren’t you my brother? That’s a bond that can never be broken.’ ‘Idris! You’ve done enough to me.’ ‘Sorrow stinks, but we’re both bereaved. You lost Humam and Qadri, and I lost Hind—now the great Gabalawi has a whore for a granddaughter and a murderer grandson.’ And Adham’s voice rose in a roar. ‘If the punishment you get isn’t as horrible as the things you’ve done, I hope the world drops into Hell!’ ”

  Arafa turned wearily away from the window. When will our alley stop telling its tales? When will the world go to Hell? Once upon a time my mother used to say, “If the punishment does not fit the crime, let the world go to Hell!” My poor mother, who dwelled in the desert. But what good have the tales done you, poor alley?

  95

  Arafa and Hanash were hard at work in the rear basement room by the light of a gas lamp fixed in the wall. The room was too dark and damp to be habitable, and was all the way in the back of the basement, so Arafa had made it into his workroom. On the floor and in the corners of the room lay collections of paper amulets, dust and lime, plants and spices, dried animals and insects such as mice, frogs and scorpions. There were piles of glass pieces, long-necked bottles, tin cans of fluids and strange, strong-smelling liquids. There was charcoal and a stove, and the shelves that had been installed on the walls held all kinds of vessels, containers and bags. Arafa was absorbed in a mixture of certain substances which he was kneading in a large ceramic vessel. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and every so often he wiped it with the sleeve of his galabiya.

  Hanash was reclining nearby and watching closely, ready to obey any order he might be given. He spoke as if to console Arafa, or to curry his favor. “Not even the busiest person in this ill-omened alley works a fraction as hard as you do. Any what’s it for? A coin, or a piaster at the most.”

  “God rest Mother’s soul,” said Arafa contentedly. “I am the only one who appreciates her. The day she gave me to that strange magician—who could read you every thought you had in your head—my life changed completely. Without her, I would have been a pickpocket, at best, or a beggar.”

  “Coins,” said Hanash, insistent in his chagrin.

  “With patience, money comes in. Don’t worry about that. Protection rackets are not the only way to riches. And don’t forget my exalted position here. Everyone who comes to me depends on me completely, and their happiness is in my hands. That’s no small thing. And don’t forget, either, the fun of the magic itself, the joy of turning dirty ingredients into something useful, the joy of healing, when people follow your orders. And there are the unknown powers you long to contact, and possess, if you could.”

  Hanash looked at the stove and suddenly interrupted what his companion was saying. “I should light the stove under the skylight, or we’ll choke.”

  “Light it in Hell, but don’t interrupt my thoughts! No idiot in this alley that considers himself educated is able to realize the importance of what I’m doing in this dark, filthy room with its funny smells. They appreciate the use of the ‘gift,’ but the gift isn’t everything. This room can produce marvels that the imagination can scarcely comprehend. Crazy people have no idea of Arafa’s true worth. Maybe someday they’ll know. Then they’ll have to ask for God’s mercy on Mother, and not make insinuations against her the way they do now.”

  Hanash had half stood up, but squatted back down and said resentfully, “All this beauty could be destroyed by some stupid gangster’s stick.”

  “We harm no one,” said Arafa sharply. “We pay the protection money. So why would anyone want to hurt us?”

  “Why did they want to hurt Rifaa?” laughed Hanash.

  “Why are you trying to drive me crazy?”

  “You want to get rich, and here only gangsters get rich. You want to be powerful, but here only gangsters are allowed to be strong. You figure it out, brother!”

  Arafa was silent, checking to see that he had been right about the ingredients he was mixing, then looked at Hanash, who still looked worried. He laughed. “Mother warned me before you. Thank you, Hanash, but I have come back to the alley with a plan.”

  “It looks like all you care about anymore is magic.”

  “Magic is so wonderful,” said Arafa, immediately carried away by the happy thought. “There is no limit to its power. No one knows where it ends. Even clubs are like children’s toys to someone who possesses magic. You know it, Hanash. Don’t be a fool. Imagine if all the children of the alley were magicians!”

  “Well, if they were all magicians, they’d all have starved to death!”

  Arafa’s laughter showed his
sharp teeth. “Don’t be a fool, Hanash. Ask yourself what they might have done. By God, miracles would have come out of our alley the way curses and insults do now!”

  “Yes, if they didn’t die of starvation first.”

  “Yes, and they won’t die as long as they have—” He fell silent before he finished what he was saying, and kept thinking intently until his hands stopped working. Then he resumed: “The poet of the Al Qassem says that Qassem wanted to use the estate so that everyone’s needs would be met. So they wouldn’t have to work. They’d be free for the leisured happiness that Adham dreamed about.”

  “That’s what Qassem said!”

  Arafa’s eyes were bright and he spoke intensely. “But leisure isn’t the ultimate goal! Imagine spending your life free and at leisure. It’s a beautiful dream, but it’s so ludicrous, Hanash. It would be so much better to be freed from work so that we could work marvels.”

  Hanash shook his large head, which seemed planted on his body with no neck to speak of, to protest a statement that meant nothing to him. Then, in his serious workplace tone of voice, he said, “Let me light the stove under the skylight now.”

  “Do it, and put yourself over the flame, because all you deserve is burning.”

  Arafa left the workroom an hour later. He went to the sofa and sat down to look through the window. After the silence, his ears were assaulted by the clamor of life. He heard the cries of peddlers, women’s conversations, shouted jokes and whole anthologies of obscenity, accompanied by wafting smells and the unending stream of pedestrians. Then he noticed something new in front of the wall that faced his window: a portable coffee stand made of a kind of tall cage covered with an old cape. There were boxes of coffee, tea, cinnamon, games, cups, glasses and spoons. An old man sat on the ground fanning the fire to heat the water, while a young girl stood behind the cage, calling out in her warm voice, “Great coffee, men!” The coffee stand was parked at the spot where Qassem and Rifaa met, and it seemed that most of its customers were handcart owners and the poor. Arafa gazed at the girl through the bars. How pretty, that brown face with its black scarf. That dark brown caftan that covered her from her neck to her feet; the hem of it trailed on the ground when she walked to deliver an order or returned with an empty glass. It was modest and decent. How beautiful, her slenderness and honey-colored eyes, if only it were not for the redness of her left eyelid, either from inflammation or from uncleanliness. She was the old man’s daughter, that was clear from their faces; he had begotten her in his old age, which is a very common thing in our alley.