Naguib Mahfouz - Morning and Evening Talk

Yet her natural impulses revolted against all this, for from childhood her heart inclined to Amer, a relative on her father’s side. In those days family ties meant more than class, status, rank, and fortune. Visits to Bayt al-Qadi, with their unusual scenes, peasant food, and Radia’s mysteries, were enjoyable excursions for the Dawud family, though their sense of superiority never left them. Amer and Iffat’s mutual affection thus met no opposition, indeed was welcomed, in Abd al-Azim’s house. Expectations for daughters were, in any case, different to expectations for sons: the Dawud family could give a daughter to an acceptable son from Amr’s family, but if a son coveted one of Amr or Surur’s daughters, it constituted a serious aberration and had to be firmly suppressed. Amr’s gentle manners allowed him to tolerate such a position and he looked for reasons to excuse it. It did not, however, escape the vicious tongue of Surur, who was consequently not as close to hearts in al-Murakibi or Dawud’s families. When the need arose he would comment ironically, “How come the great family of Ata has forgotten the pantofles and the shop in al-Salihiya? How come Dawud’s family has forgotten Uncle Yazid and Farga al-Sayyad?”

When the time came for Iffat to marry, the pasha had a beautiful house in Bayn al-Ganayin built, where she turned to meet the happy married life that would shatter the theories of its opponents. True, from the beginning she behaved like a princess whom circumstances had placed amid the herd, and the new setup created certain tensions between her and Amer’s sisters, Surur’s daughters, Shakira when she became her sister-in-law, and even Radia herself despite her friendship with Farida Husam. But the quarrels never reached the point of rupture or enmity; traditional bonds of friendship always triumphed. As for the married couple, they lived in sweetness and peace. Amer submitted fully to his beloved’s strong will; he seldom raised an angry voice and they never argued. Iffat gave birth to Shakir, Qadri, and Fayyid but she was not able to extend the umbrella of her authority over them. Shakir hurt her pride and Qadri aroused her fear and anxiety. Yet the three were good examples of nobility and success. The July Revolution came, then successive defeats, then victory and peace, then clouds of strife and crime gathered once more. Meanwhile, Iffat sought refuge in the fort of the observer and let none of this worry her except insofar as her family and children were directly affected. She grew old and her arrogant tendencies calmed. Despite the stream of events, she lived happily with the love of her life, children, and grandchildren until Amer disappeared from her world in a blink of an eye, in the middle of a conversation. Thereafter, her life was silent and overshadowed with constant gloom.

Ata al-Murakibi

He started out as a boy in the shop of the Moroccan Gal‘ad al-Mughawiri in al-Salihiya. The man scooped him up as an orphan, raised him, and gave him lodgings in the shop. The boy proved himself capable and trustworthy and stayed with his master until he was an able-bodied adolescent of medium height with burly features and a large head. Gal‘ad married him to his only daughter, Sakina, and made him his deputy in the shop. He moved in with him at the house in al-Ghuriya, as neighbors of Yazid and his son, Aziz. When Gal‘ad and his wife died, Sakina became the legal owner of the shop but in effect it passed to Ata. He wore the gentle manners of a merchant over his coarse features so was able to make friends with Yazid and Shaykh al-Qalyubi. Sakina was moderately pretty but her body was worn down with frailty and she did not conceive for some time. Then, after a difficult delivery that nearly cost her life, she gave birth to Ni‘ma. Ni‘ma inherited her mother’s wide black eyes, soft brown skin, and abundant chestnut hair, and she was healthy too. Sakina was a good neighbor and won Farga al-Sayyad’s affection, paving the way for Ni‘ma’s marriage to Aziz at the appropriate time.

Each night, Shaykh al-Qalyubi, Yazid, and Ata would meet at the Shurbini Coffee Shop in Darb al-Ahmar. The men watched Napoleon Bonaparte lead his troops past the shrine of al-Hussein on his horse and lived through his campaign’s vicissitudes, including the two Cairo uprisings. Yazid was nearly killed in the second. They witnessed Muhammad Ali’s rule, the Mamluk massacre, and the upheaval the leader brought the country and its people. Though Shaykh al-Qalyubi was distinguished by his religious education, his tight bond to his people and heritage meant he was close to his two companions sentimentally. He was conscious of their greed and ignorance but ignored people’s deficiencies and satisfied himself with their amicable side and friendship. He invited them to his house in Suq al-Zalat on several occasions, though only once was he invited back to the house in al-Ghuriya. He preferred Yazid to Ata, for he saw in the former the fundamentals of chivalry, integrity, and piety, which the other lacked. Nevertheless, he never tired of Ata or considered spurning him. Ata carried on content and amiable until his wife, Sakina, died, a year after their daughter Ni‘ma married Yazid’s son Aziz. He then surprised the whole quarter by marrying the rich widow, Huda al-Alawzi. She lived in the old house opposite the pantofle shop; did this tale then have the usual preface with no one noticing?

“Things will change,” al-Qalyubi said to Yazid. “Huda Hanem will not be happy for her husband to remain in the shop.”

Ata began to think with the head of a manager who had not yet had the opportunity to use his talents. He consulted rich influential neighbors and skilled Jews about his affairs and promptly purchased land and began building the great mansion on Khayrat Square. As time passed, he bought a farm in Beni Suef too and had a country mansion built there. Huda Hanem al-Alawzi gave birth to Mahmud and Ahmad. Ata started studying farming and cementing relations with his new neighbors. Wealth unveiled his hidden talents and strength of character, as it did his greed, miserliness, and endless hunger for money. Contrary to expectations, he imposed total authority on his wife and those he dealt with, until Shaykh al-Qalyubi compared him to the leader who came to Egypt as a simple soldier and turned into a giant at the vortex of a vast empire, though the emperor of Beni Suef was not half as bad as Napoleon.

His relations with his old friends weakened but he never stopped visiting Ni‘ma and Aziz in al-Ghuriya. He would descend on the quarter in his carriage, ignoring looks of envy and proffering occasional gifts on festival days. He would invite the family to the mansion on Khayrat Square, so Rashwana, Amr, and Surur became good friends with Mahmud and Ahmad. However, there were always limits to his expressions of generosity and his two sons were probably more sympathetic to their poor sister, Ni‘ma, than Ata was himself. He naturally sent his sons to school but, like their cousins Amr and Surur, they ran out of breath with the primary school certificate. This did not especially bother Ata and he began preparing them to farm beside him. He was delighted by Mahmud’s keen response and steel character, but Ahmad dashed his hopes and in the end he left him in despair at his docile ways. Bakri al-Arshi, the head of the Mamluk family on the next-door farm, had two daughters, Nazli and Fawziya, equal in beauty and sophistication. Ata requested they marry his sons, Mahmud and Ahmad, and the marriages were celebrated in a joint wedding feast brought to life by Abduh al-Hamuli and Almuz.

Ata lived through the Urabi Revolution. His emotions were not conquered via nationalism but by way of land and money. So when the waves of the revolution rose high and he was sure of its victory, he announced support and donated money, hiding the pain this caused him, and when hostile forces assailed it and its failure glimmered on the horizon he declared allegiance to the khedive. When the British Occupation began he was gripped once more by anxiety over events whose effect on his land he did not know, but his father-in-law, Bakri al-Arshi, assured him, “The English won’t leave the country and we won’t leave the British Empire in our lifetime.”