Naguib Mahfouz: Morning and Evening Talk

Badriya Hussein Qabil

SHE WAS BORN IN AN APARTMENT in a modern block on Ibn Khaldun Street, the first child of Hussein Qabil, the antique dealer in Khan al-Khalili, and Samira, the fourth child of Amr Effendi. The quarter was fragrant with the perfume of westernized Jews and the apartment radiated elegance, good taste, and affluence. As Badriya grew, sweetness infused her features and gracefulness her manner. When she visited the old house in Bayt al-Qadi with her parents, her early maturity would attract attention. Amr Effendi, her grandfather, chuckled and said, “She’ll be wearing the higab and veil before long.”

“But she is going to continue until she finishes her education, Uncle,” said Hussein Qabil.

“What a weird, wonderful world,” Radia laughed.

“We won’t treat our sons and daughters any different,” said Samira.

“Even if a bridegroom comes round the corner?” asked Radia.

“He can wait or go in peace,” Samira said without hesitating.

“Samira, you’re quite the odd one out in this family!” said her father, disguising his objection with a smile.

When she reached adolescence a merchant on a visit to her father’s shop saw her and wanted to marry her, but he turned away when he discovered he would have to wait until she finished her education. Another visitor came forward whom they could not satisfy. Then, in her fifteenth year, sitting on the balcony with her mother and brothers and sisters, she suddenly collapsed, her body rigid, her limbs shuddering, her mouth foaming. Alas, it was epilepsy. Qasim’s tragedy was etched in people’s hearts but this was epilepsy of the most violent kind. The doctor was summoned and advised rest, a change of air, and extremely gentle treatment. She stopped going to school. The glow in her wide eyes was replaced by a vacant, dazed look, and her ability to converse vanished, replaced by senseless jabber. Samira appealed to her mother for help.

“If she could do anything she would have done it for her son,” said Hussein Qabil.

But Samira did not accept this argument so Radia came with her incense, spells, and incantations. She took the girl around the tombs of the saints and the Prophet’s family but the situation went from bad to worse until only a ghost remained.

One morning, Badriya said to her mother, “I dreamed a prince was summoning me to go for a walk in al-Qanatir.” Samira’s heart was gripped with foreboding. Death came for the girl at noon and she passed away. Thus, Samira lost a daughter just as Matariya had lost a son; but Samira’s had been in the prime of youth. She was surrounded on all sides by condolers from the families of Amr, Surur, Mahmud Bey Ata, Ahmad Bey Ata, and Abd al-Azim Pasha Dawud. How Radia grieved. Whenever she thought about her daughter’s situation she would whisper to her lord, “Have pity, O Merciful and Compassionate.”

Surur Effendi secretly resented Radia. He suspected she was the reason neither of his two daughters were chosen by any of her sons and reviled her in his usual manner. He said to his wife, Zaynab, “It all derives from Radia’s family; all the men and women in it are touched with madness, her first and foremost.”

Baligh Mu‘awiya al-Qalyubi

He was the last of Shaykh Mu‘awiya al-Qalyubi’s children and the brother of Amr Effendi’s wife, Radia. He was born in the shaykh’s house in Suq al-Zalat in Bab al-Sha‘riya, the only infant born to the shaykh after his release from prison. He had a religious upbringing from the outset and his father enrolled him at al-Azhar when he was still young. When he visited his sister Radia in Bayt al-Qadi, his youthfulness, jubbah, caftan, and turban turned heads. He occasioned a mixture of reverence and merriment in her family for by nature he sated both sides, reciting the Qur’an in a fine voice at his sister’s request and joking with her sons and daughters. He had an attractive, round, wheat-colored face and his love of fine cuisine was evident; he knew as much about different kinds of food as he did about the religion he studied.

“You’d be better as a cook than a theologian like your father,” Radia remarked with her biting tongue.

He chuckled, “I’m wavering between a scholastic father and a sister who fraternizes with ifrit.”

Around this time, Shaykh Mu‘awiya departed for the land of his Lord. He arranged Radia’s marriage but did not live to see the wedding. After his death there was no one to curb Baligh’s impulses. One day, Radia and her old mother, Galila, were sitting on the sofa in the hallway, presided over by the stove with the well to its left. Radia could tell from her mother’s somber manner that she was immersed in a sea of worry that was unusual for her. When she asked what was wrong, her mother replied, “Would you believe it, Radia? Your brother has begun coming home each night in a drunken stupor!”

“God forbid!” cried Radia, alarmed.

“I’m powerless.”

Radia found herself even more powerless than her mother. She turned to Amr Effendi for help, but Baligh only feigned remorse and continued his wayward behavior. He provoked general disapproval and increasing indignation all round. Reports eventually reached the Azhar administration and the affair ended with him dismissed and disbarred before obtaining his religious diploma. He found himself lost, without a source of income. His mother owned some vacant land and ceded it to him. He sold it and decided to invest the proceeds in a wholesale grocery business. He traveled to his father’s relatives in Qalyub and began purchasing cheese and butter and transporting it back to Cairo to distribute to grocers. With the outbreak of the First World War he made notable profits and his finances improved. From then on his star rose brightly. Around this time he married Amina al-Fangari, who came from a wealthy and respected family. With the Second World War his fortune reached its zenith. He erected apartment blocks and built a mansion for himself in al-Qabisi, which became known in the quarter as “The Abdin of al-Qabisi” on account of its majesty and splendor. He only produced one son, whom he envisaged as a senior judge. He proved to be a skilled merchant, yet all his life he never recovered from the malady for which he had been expelled from al-Azhar. He would visit Bayt al-Qadi from time to time in a carriage, and later a car, laden with gifts, secretly watching the impression he made with boundless pleasure. He continued to pray and fast and give alms as much as he drank and was as persistent in seeking forgiveness as he was conceited and proud. He lived to the beginning of the 1950s, after Ahmad Ata, Amr, Surur, Mahmud Ata, his mother, Galila, and sisters, Shahira and Sadiqa, had passed away, and when only his older sister Radia, the one who fraternized with ifrit, remained. He developed cirrhosis of the liver, spent half a year in his comfortable bed, and then died in his sleep — or so it appeared to his wife, Amina al-Fangari.

Bahiga Surur Aziz

The square of Bayt al-Qadi witnessed her childhood games with her brother Labib and sister Gamila. While growing up she mixed with her uncle Amr’s sons and daughters. She shared the calm temperament of her older brother, Labib, and cousin Samira, and was the same age as her cousin Qasim. Her face was white and radiant like her mother Sitt Zaynab’s, glowing and rosy. Her eyes were a clear green and there was in her voice a richness that recalled her father, Surur Effendi. Her natural composure meant that some mistook her as dull, whereas her respect for tradition and piety prevented her from misbehaving like other children. Like her uncle’s daughters and her sister, Gamila, her education ended with Qur’an school, and, like them too, she applied herself to cooking, sewing, and other household chores and assumed her place in the customary queue for a suitable man when still very young. Her cousin Hamid was probably the most suitable one in the family, but Ata al-Murakibi’s family seized him for themselves, sounding alarm bells for Surur Effendi and his wife, Zaynab Hanem. They had been through a similar experience once before when hoping to marry Gamila to Amer.