Naguib Mahfouz: Morning and Evening Talk

Morning and Evening Talk is made up of a series of character sketches in Arabic alphabetical order according to the first name of the title character. The complete alphabet is as below, with the name of each letter transliterated in English.

Ahmad Muhammad Ibrahim

THE SKY WAS A CLEAR BLUE, the shadows of walnut trees slumbered on the ground, and the surface of the old square shone in the sunlight and clamored with endless noise from the surrounding alleys. Bare feet, ornamental slippers, pantofles, and the hooves of horses, donkeys, and mules trampled over Bayt al-Qadi Square, where the new police station met the old courthouse. Ahmad emerged into this vast playground and quickly forgot the house he came from, his parents’ house in Watawit. He was four years old when he was brought to his maternal grandfather’s house on Bayt al-Qadi Square to relieve the loneliness of his uncle Qasim, who was a year and a half older than him. With the other sons and daughters married, the house was empty; no one was left except the father, Amr Effendi, the mother, Radia, and their youngest child, Qasim. Qasim only knew his sisters, Sadriya, Matariya, Samira, and Habiba, and brothers, Amer and Hamid, as fleeting guests of his parents and would visit them in the same manner he would visit the branches of the family living on Khayrat Square and in Suq al-Zalat and East Abbasiya. At his sister Matariya’s house in Watawit he liked her son Ahmad best. Ahmad had an older brother called Shazli and a baby sister, Amana, but Ahmad was by far his favorite. Matariya loved Qasim like a son so let Ahmad go and live with his grandparents and relieve Qasim’s loneliness in the big empty house. Muhammad Effendi Ibrahim, Ahmad’s father, did not like the idea and nor did his mother, Aunt Matariya, but they let him go, determined to reclaim him the moment he was old enough to attend Qur’an school. Qasim knew nothing of their hidden plan and delighted in the company with unadulterated happiness.

Ahmad was a paragon of beauty. He had a rosy complexion, blue eyes, soft hair, and a winning personality. He would follow his uncle about the square like a shadow. The two of them watched the snake charmers, watering carts, and policemen filing by. They met Amm Karim the ice-cream seller together and observed funeral processions with a sense of dread. Women from the neighborhood would gaze at Ahmad as they passed.

“Who’s this handsome lad?” one would ask.

“Ahmad, Aunt Matariya’s son,” Qasim would reply proudly.

“The handsome son of a beautiful lady,” she would say and go on her way.

“Don’t fill Ahmad’s head with tales of ifrit,” Muhammad Effendi Ibrahim used to chide Qasim’s mother, Radia. She regarded him with contempt and replied, “What an ignorant teacher you are!” The man laughed, revealing his overlapping front teeth, and continued smoking his pipe. This was because it was usually Radia who put the two boys to bed. Elation would fill their hearts as they listened to her fairy tales before going to sleep, as the miracles of saints and the mischief of ifrit flooded their imaginations and reality submerged in a world of dreams, marvels, and divine signs. In their spare time she took them around different houses and the tombs of the saints and the Prophet’s family. The fun and entertainment continued until one day Qasim was taken off to begin a new life at Qur’an school and Ahmad was denied his friendship for two-thirds of the day. The Qur’an school was situated a few steps from the house in a recess in the Kababgi Building, but it was surrounded by a fence of strict tradition that turned it into a prison where divine principles were learned under threat of the cane. It was no place for entreaties and tears. Qasim would leave in the afternoon and find Ahmad and Umm Kamil waiting for him at the gate. The world was not the same anymore; inescapable worries had crept in. His instincts told him Muhammad Ibrahim, Ahmad’s father, posed a further danger for he did not like living apart from his son. His bulging eyes began to regard him coldly.

“I don’t like that man,” he said to his mother.

Her long brown face darkened. “How ungrateful you are! Didn’t he send you his son?” she said.

“But he wants him back.”

She laughed. “Do you want him to give up what is his for your sake?”

One day Ahmad was not waiting for him when he left the Qur’an school. Instead, he found his mother looking more grave than usual.

“Your friend is sick,” she said.

He found Ahmad in a deep sleep in his bed. His mother prepared vinegar compresses, muttering, “Dear boy, you’re scorching like a fire.”

She recited verses from the Qur’an nonstop. When Amr Effendi came home in the evening he decided to send Umm Kamil to notify Matariya and her husband. When the incense and incantations did not succeed in bringing the fever down, Amr Effendi fetched the neighborhood doctor, but he said he was only an eye doctor and recommended they send for Doctor Abd al-Latif who lived in Bab al-Sha‘riya.

“But he is married to the belly dancer Bamba Kashar!” Amr protested.

The doctor laughed. “Bamba Kashar doesn’t mean he can’t be a good doctor, Amr Effendi.”

The doctor married to the famous belly dancer arrived. Qasim could feel the tension in the air. He heard his mother say, “I don’t trust doctors. I recognize only one doctor — the Creator of heaven and earth.”

Days went by. Where was Ahmad? Qasim wondered. Where had his freshness and beauty gone?

One afternoon he returned from Qur’an school and met a new scene at home. His family sat in a strange silence. His mother and Ahmad’s grandmother were in Ahmad’s room and his brothers and sisters — Amer, Hamid, Sadriya, Samira, and Habiba — were in the living room. Matariya was sobbing and Muhammad Ibrahim was next to her, smoking his pipe despondently. His heart was infused with fear at the somber atmosphere. He realized that the enemy he had heard about on formal occasions in the past, that he had seen reigning over funeral processions heading toward al-Hussein, had somehow invaded his house and snatched away the person he loved most in the world. He screamed and cried until Umm Kamil carried him up to the top of the house. Through the summer room jalousie he saw Ahmad’s grandmother, with an embroidered bundle in her arms, board a carriage with her daughter and Amr Effendi. The carriage moved off, followed by a second carrying Amer, Hamid, and Qasim’s uncle, Surur Effendi — a funeral procession of a new kind. Was this the end of Ahmad? He refused to believe or accept it. He was convinced they would bring him back that day, sweet and rosy once more. But he still could not stop crying. In the evening everyone dispersed.

“That’s enough!” his father chastised.

“Where did you take him?” he asked expectantly.

“You’re not a child anymore,” said Amr. “You attend the Qur’an school and learn suras from the Qur’an by heart. Ahmad has died. Everyone dies according to God’s decree. It’s the will of God.”

“But why?” he protested.

“The will of God. Don’t you understand?”

“No, Papa.”

“Stop.… This is no way to behave before God. Ahmad will go straight to paradise, which is a wonderful destiny. Be careful not to misbehave.”