Naguib Mahfouz: Morning and Evening Talk

“God knows I’m with you in heart. It was Mahmud’s decision,” Ahmad said smiling.

“Every day the square below the house seethes with demonstrations. The shouting for the destruction of the traitors fills the air,” said Amr with regret.

“People with interests don’t like revolutions, cousin,” replied Ahmad.

It was Ahmad who bore the brunt of the criticism since he was with people day and night whereas Mahmud spent most of his time steeped in business on the farm. The announcement of allegiance during those difficult times earned the brothers the rank of pasha on the festival of the coronation, bringing both men immense pleasure. Ahmad gave a banquet and invited everyone — men and women alike — from Amr, Surur, and Dawud’s families. The mansion was decorated as if for a wedding. Ahmad immersed himself in his private life up to the top of his head and did not let the nation’s worries infiltrate his solitude and sully it. However, as time passed and his children grew up, he encountered trouble from unexpected quarters. His eldest son opposed his decision to place himself under the trusteeship of his brother and entered into a long and obstinate dispute with his mother to start with, then his father. He pestered his father until he promised to reclaim the property he had renounced entirely of his own accord. The spark ignited a fire, which blazed in every corner of the close-knit family. Ahmad seized the opportunity when Mahmud next visited Cairo on business. He raised the subject timidly and concluded the speech with an apology, “The children have grown up. They have their own ideas.” Mahmud mulled over what he had heard for a while, seething with anger. He was marked by unlimited power. At the mansion his family enjoyed more prestige than his kind, meek brother’s. Fawziya Hanem feared him and complied with his orders while she debated with her husband as an equal. Ahmad’s two sons were decorous and obedient in his presence but affectionate, exuberant, and casual in front of their father. The reins were slipping out of his hands.

“You’re weak! How can you allow your son to behave like this?” Mahmud demanded.

Ahmad was hurt but did not want to lose his children’s respect. “There’s no need to speak cruelly, brother,” he said.

“Do you doubt my good care?” Mahmud asked brutally.

“God forbid,” he said hurriedly. “But I’m entitled to take charge of my own affairs.”

“So you’re entitled to ruin yourself at your idiotic children’s instigation?”

Ahmad frowned. “I seek refuge in God.”

There followed a discussion with Ahmad’s eldest son, Adnan, which Mahmud Bey regarded as an unacceptable impertinence. The young man addressed his uncle with a bluntness the elder found offensive. The fire spread. The two brothers quarreled, each wife rallied to her husband’s side, ripping their sisterly loyalty apart, and the nieces and nephews traded the worst insults. The family bond was lacerated. Each branch withdrew to its own floor of the mansion, as though they did not know one another. The efforts Rashwana, Amr, and Surur expended to repair the rift failed and Amr’s son Hamid, who lived with his wife, Shakira, on Mahmud Bey’s floor, found himself torn and hard-pressed to maintain good relations with his great-uncle Ahmad’s family. Ahmad Bey moved to the farm in Beni Suef to assume management of his land in old age. He cultivated what was his to cultivate and leased what was his to lease. It brought him troubles he had not foreseen and losses he had not anticipated. Shortly before the Second World War, he developed hemiplegia and was taken to his bed in Cairo to wait for the end. He was the first of the second generation to fall; various illnesses would soon call the rest to join him in some way or other. Amr was still healthy and went to visit Mahmud Bey and said, “It’s time to forget the quarrel and its reasons and return to your brother.”

Mahmud was silent, pensive. “The matter will never be forgotten but I will do what is appropriate.…”

Ahmad’s family knew only that Mahmud Bey sought permission to enter the room. They gathered and stood for him courteously with tears in their eyes. His wife and children were with him. When the handshaking was over he announced, “The rift is over and forgotten. My heart beats as kin.”

He approached his brother, who was lying prostrate on his bed, silent and motionless. Fawziya leaned over his ear and whispered, “Your brother, Mahmud Bey, has come to reassure you.”

Mahmud leaned over him, kissed his cheek then stood up and said, “Forgiveness is God’s. Take heart.”

Ahmad lifted his heavy eyelids. It was clear he was trying to speak but could not get any words out, though no one doubted his flushed cheeks were quivering with goodwill. He passed away in the middle of that sad night.

Adham Hazim Surur

He graduated as an architect in 1978. He entered working life aged twenty-five in a Cairo awash with troubles, yet never encountered a single problem in his own life. Torrents of people and vehicles surged around him, the noise erupting like the rumble of a volcano, yet he lived happily at his parents’ villa in Dokki in peace and tranquillity amid the scent of roses and flowers. While his generation fumbled about, searching for identity, a home, marriage, and selfhood, he found an important position awaiting him at his father’s engineering office. He was good looking like his father and similarly shortsighted, almost blind, in his left eye. He cared for nothing in the world except his chosen field and knew only dreams of fortune and success. So mild was his faith he had almost none, without being an atheist.

“We lost his older brother. Let me arrange his marriage!” Samiha Hanem, his mother, said to his father, Hazim.

“This generation makes its own choices. Don’t provoke him,” the man replied gently, careful as always not to anger her. But she flared up as usual.

“There’s a rotten root in your family and I’m frightened it’ll lead him down the same path as his brother,” she shouted.

His father lit a cigarette. “Do what you think is right.”

But Adham was much quicker than she imagined and informed them one morning during the holidays, as they sat in Mena House Garden, that he had chosen his life partner. Samiha was alarmed. She stared into his face questioningly. The young man guessed her fears and smiled. “Karima. She is in her final year of law school. Her father is Muhammad Fawzi, a government legal advisor.”

His mother’s nerves appeared to relax. She put a spoon of ice cream between her wrinkled lips and began chewing.

“Inquiries will have to be made,” she mumbled.

Adham frowned.

“It’s just the formalities. I’m optimistic,” his father said obligingly.

Visits were exchanged and the choice met with approval, though some critical comments on Samiha’s part were inevitable.

“The mother is evidently not educated,” she said to her husband.

The man was amazed at her remark since she — Samiha — had not herself obtained the baccalaureate, but he said only, “It’s not important.”

Everything was agreed on. Hazim bought his son an apartment in al-Ma’adi for six thousand Egyptian pounds and Adham moved there with his bride at the end of the year.

Of his family tree Adham knew only his mother’s branch; his grandfather, Muhammad Salama, who set up the engineering office, and his maternal aunts and uncles. As for his father’s side, he knew vaguely that his grandfather, Surur Effendi Aziz, was employed in the railways, that his great uncle, Amr Effendi, worked at the ministry of education, and that he had paternal aunts with children, but he never saw any of them. He also knew his family came from al-Hussein, a quarter he associated with poverty and backwardness, but there was no reason to remember it and he only ever passed through in a car. He often encountered members of his family in squares and public places without him recognizing them or them recognizing him. His father followed his movements with pleasure, confident that when he retired one day in the not too distant future the office would be left in capable hands. He once said to him with respect to the corruption that was rife, “There is plenty of opportunity out there. You have knowledge, intelligence, and ambition. Don’t digress. Don’t scorn advice. If you mock values then at least strive for a good reputation and beware of jail.”