Naguib Mahfouz - Morning and Evening Talk

“A land of infidels!” cried Yazid.

“To study medicine.”

“If God hadn’t been looking out for me I’d be going too!” exclaimed Aziz.

Dawud left to begin an experience he would never have dreamed of. During his absence, Yazid al-Misri and Farga al-Sayyad died, Aziz fathered Rashwana, Amr, and Surur, and Ata al-Murakibi leaped from the depths of poverty to the summits of wealth and moved from al-Ghuriya to the mansion on Khayrat Square. Dawud returned a doctor and headed to his old house in al-Ghuriya, where Aziz and his family lived alone. Affection united the two brothers once more. Aziz began observing his brother with interest and apprehension. He was happy to find him observing his prayers and still as fond as before of visiting al-Hussein, though his clothes had changed and, to a degree, so had the way he spoke. He seemed to be hiding another side of himself that he had obtained in the infidel land. “Didn’t they try to turn you away from your religion?” Aziz asked him.

“Not at all,” he answered laughing.

Aziz would have liked to talk to him more about “them” but didn’t want to upset the peace. He also asked, “Is it true you cut bodies open?”

“When necessary. For the good of the patient,” Dawud replied.

Aziz praised God in secret for conferring flight on him that day long ago.

“If things had been different you could be a father by now,” he said to his brother.

“That’s uppermost in my mind,” Dawud said.

There was a Turkish family in Darb Qirmiz, the Rafat family. He pointed them out and said, “Maybe they’d approve a doctor returned from France for their daughter.”

They decided that Ata al-Murakibi, in his new circumstances, was the right person to raise the matter. But Dawud was refused as a vulgar peasant. Neither his knowledge nor his suit or job could intercede on his behalf. The young man was hurt and looked to his brother, Aziz, for guidance. “There’s the Warraq family that owns the paper supplier where our father works,” said Aziz. They were a family with Syrio-Egyptian roots. The brothers found what they were looking for in the great al-Warraq’s granddaughter, Saniya. The family welcomed the groom. The wedding was held and Dawud took his bride to a new house in al-Sayyida. She gave him a son, Abd al-Azim, and three daughters whom death snatched away as infants. Dawud advanced in his profession until he earned the rank of pasha and his official and intellectual standing was firmly established. It was destined that he should successfully reconcile his two incongruous identities. In his medical profession he was a fine emissary for the new civilization, with a vision of the nation’s future driven by a painful awareness of what the country lacked in his field and with close friends among both his Egyptian and foreign colleagues. Yet he was also in tune with his wife who, despite her beauty, social rank, and basic education, was not really any different from his mother, Farga al-Sayyad, and older brother’s wife, Ni‘ma al-Murakibi. He never renounced the customs of his family and environment, and visited the house in al-Ghuriya out of love and duty. There he would completely forget his assumed identity, sit at the low round table, tuck into the fish, bean cakes, lentil broth, salted fish, and green onions, and observe the love and affection developing between Abd al-Azim and Rashwana, Amr, and Surur. He visited al-Hussein and wandered around Bab al-Akhdar and got to know his brother’s brother-in-law, Ata al-Murakibi, and two sons, Mahmud and Ahmad, and friend Shaykh al-Qalyubi, the father-in-law of Dawud’s nephew Amr. During these times, he would revert to being the old Dawud, son of Yazid al-Misri and Farga al-Sayyad, son of al-Ghuriya and its fragrant, penetrating smells, towering minarets, and mashrabiyas clothed in the past.

Dawud wanted to make a doctor of his son, Abd al-Azim, to follow in his footsteps. However, the youth headed for law school, a school of ministers and the elite, and pursued an eminent and successful career as a lawyer. When the doctor pasha was fifty, he fell in love with a Sudanese maid and married her, prompting astonishment in the family and sparking gossip. He selected a separate house for her in al-Sayyida and set aside a grave in the family enclosure that Yazid al-Misri had erected near the tomb of Sidi Nagm al-Din, having seen it in a dream. His life extended until the Occupation. He and his brother were alive for the Urabi Revolution and supported it with their hearts, then swallowed its bitter failure. The brothers died in consecutive years early in the Occupation and were buried side by side in the grave inaugurated by Yazid al-Misri. It was not long before its female wing was occupied by Farga al-Sayyad, Ni‘ma Ata al-Murakibi, Saniya al-Warraq, and the poor maid in her special grave.

Dalal Hamada al-Qinawi

She was born and grew up in her parents’ house in Khan Ga‘far, the youngest child of Sadriya and Hamada al-Qinawi. Her house was a short distance from her grandfather Amr’s, and she was as close to Amr and Radia as she was to her own parents. Like all the grandchildren, she adored Radia and was enchanted by her eccentricities, especially because her grandmother continued to pass on her innate heritage, clothed in supernatural phenomena, to each generation. “Dalal is beautiful but how did this Upper Egyptian accent infiltrate your Cairene children?” Radia would ask her daughter.

“From a mule!” Sadriya would respond scornfully, gesturing to her husband, whom she spent her life domesticating.

Radia would laugh, “He’s as brainless as a stone, but he’s respectable.”

As was the custom, Dalal, like Nihad and Warda, was only permitted two years of Qur’an school before Sadriya assumed control of her education and instruction. Sadriya began to review the young men in the family — the sons of her sisters, brothers, and uncle, and descendants of al-Murakibi and Dawud. However, prospective grooms would also come to al-Qinawi’s daughters from Qina and its environs in the name of the Qinawi family. A young village mayor called Zahran al-Murasini, who owned land adjacent to that of Dalal’s father and uncles, requested to marry her. “It’s destined that a train journey will come between me and my daughters,” said Sadriya.

Dalal’s sister Warda’s tragedy delayed the marriage for a year. Then she was wedded to the village mayor in Cairo and, a week later, taken to his hometown. She settled in Karnak for good, gave birth to four daughters and three sons, and only visited Cairo on special occasions.

Dananir Sadiq Barakat

She was the only child of Rashwana, Amr and Surur’s older sister, and Sadiq Barakat, the flour merchant in al-Khurnfush. She was born in Bayn al-Qasrayn in the house her father owned and grew up in considerable comfort, which looked set just to get better. Rashwana did not have any more children because of a defect in her, but, luckily for the family, Sadiq Barakat had two childless marriages behind him so he thought they were equally responsible. Dananir grew up between a mother who was as pious as a shaykh and a father whose family was regarded as pioneering in terms of female education. She was quite pretty and tended to be on the large side, which was considered an advantage. She also displayed promising energy in school. She obtained the primary school certificate and enrolled in secondary school, raising the eyebrows of Rashwana’s uncle, Mahmud Bey Ata al-Murakibi.

“Do you approve of this?” he asked Amr.

“Her father does,” Amr answered.

The man went to Bayn al-Qasrayn and assembled the family.

“I didn’t let Shakira go beyond primary school,” he said.

“Times have moved on, Mahmud Bey. The baccalaureate is appropriate nowadays,” replied Sadiq Barakat.