Naguib Mahfouz - Khan Al-Khalili

How could this creep be talking about the daughter so freely? Just then an idea occurred to him, one that made his heart leap.

“Do you tutor them privately?” he asked.

Ahmad Rashid responded that indeed he did. That aroused so much resentment in Ahmad Akif that he was forced to fabricate a smile so as not to reveal what he was really feeling. Did this creep really sit down next to his girl as a tutor? Did he teach her things, tell her to learn them, and then perhaps pretend to be serious and scold her? Didn’t he have to be alone with her sometimes? Did he ever look at her with something other than a teacher’s eyes? What did she think of him? An educated young man with a bright future. His serious mien and glass eye would not stand in the way. In fact, truth to tell, he — meaning Ahmad Akif — was no better than Ahmad Rashid, although at the same time he wasn’t any lower in status either — at least as far as the plebeians and illiterates were concerned. So should he simply give up before the battle had even started?

In situations like this he wasn’t the kind of person who could muster a great deal of fighting spirit and courage; quite the contrary in fact, he would usually shrivel up and take to his heels out of a combination of embarrassment, cowardice, and arrogance. Whenever the going was tough, he would still crave the coddling atmosphere in which he had grown up. Whenever it let him down — as it inevitably did on occasion — he would withdraw into himself with a wounded heart, licking his wounds and laying all the blame on the bad luck that dogged him. If only it were men’s role to be chased after and not to do the chasing, to be the object of desire and not the initiator of it, then things would have been that much easier and the matter of love would have worked itself out. But things were not that way, indeed they were the exact opposite. What was needed was a certain manliness, suavity, and élan. How on earth did he ever expect to be successful in love? If innate traits of character could be made subject to the will of mankind, then he would have been willing to abandon his culture and his intellectual talents — his purported talents, that is — if in return he could become a skillful lover and attractive man. But there was little chance of that, so all that remained was for him to despise love, loathe women, and learn to enjoy the pleasures of lonely seclusion.

He now avoided any further conversation with the young lawyer and pretended instead to be paying attention to the radio. Time passed, and neither of them said a word. The prevailing silence was only broken when Sulayman Bey Ata was provoked by Sayyid Arif and let out an angry yell. The frenzied thoughts preoccupying Ahmad’s silence drove him to some poisonous wells from which his traumatized imagination drank deep. He surrendered to some truly demonic and terrible desires: that some insane air raid on Cairo would drop lava that would level all its buildings and pummel its inhabitants until nothing was left standing and the entire area was reduced to rubble. Only two people would be left alive, him and the girl. She would be completely his and his alone, without fear, despair, jealousy, or effort! Before his darkened eyes he could picture the city of Cairo smashed and destroyed, with two lonely people, one of them running to the other to seek shelter and protection in his arms. The other would be content to have his companion seeking shelter with him alone, forgetting all about the dust and rubble that covered him. This strange longing on his part was provoked by an overwhelming sense of oppression and suffering.

It was after midnight when he returned home. He shut himself in his room, feeling annoyed. Would it not be better, he wondered, to stop opening the window and instead to lock his own heart in the face of this new emotion that was rapidly turning into agony? Surely dying in peace was better than living a life of agony and torture? But in spite of everything, by the following morning he had forgotten all about his concerns. From then on he kept his daily appointment by the windowsill every afternoon. He no longer doubted for a single moment that the girl was well aware that her new neighbor was deliberately appearing at the window every afternoon and directing that bashful, timid glance at her. What, one wonders, was her heart telling her? Was she laughing at his appearance, scoffing at his middle age? Or did his shyness and apathy merely aggravate her? The amazing thing was that, as days passed, he still kept the same appointment, adhering rigidly to the time, and feeling incapable of doing anything else until he had taken a timid glance upward to the balcony. But no sooner did their eyes meet than he would immediately look away, eyelids twitching.

He was beset too by the image of Ahmad Rashid. His jealous heart wondered whether he too was the recipient of such lovely looks from the girl, or was he, Ahmad Rashid, the beneficiary of something even lovelier and more charming? Even so, those happy afternoon moments managed to take his mind off such lingering doubts. He now started to calm his own fears. He convinced himself that if she were in love with the young lawyer she would hardly be bestowing such charming glances on him one afternoon after another; and that gave him back his hope. He realized, however, that it was not normal to settle for such exchanged glances and that he had to adopt a new approach. But could he do it? Was he actually capable of launching himself into life again just as he had managed to run away from it for all of twenty years? Why didn’t he stare at her until she was the one to look bashfully away, if only just once? Why didn’t he greet her with a smile? The very idea of staring at her and then smiling made him blush and sent him into such a dither that he was utterly incapable of doing anything. Good grief, could a middle-aged man really be that fearful of a youngster? Does a forty-year-old run away from some girl aged sixteen? How often had he told himself in the past that shyness was a disease that would disappear as one got older? But in his case it had lingered and turned into a brand new middle-aged disease.

Why did God create people like him who could not handle life? In this moment of despair he came up with a new tactic: people who were scared of staring and smiling, he told himself, could always write. Why didn’t he try writing to her? The idea appealed to him, and he gave the matter serious thought. All he would have to do was to write a few words on a piece of paper, fold it up carefully, and toss it up to the balcony. That was fine. But how was he to begin? Should he say, “My beloved Nawal”? No, that would be too familiar. How about “Dear Nawal”? No, mentioning the name was still forward of him. So just “My dear”? That was more in line with his sense of decorum. But then what? Letters usually began with greetings, so he could do that, but then what? Should he declare his love to her? No, that was something to keep under wraps for the time being. He should begin by expressions of admiration, but how was he supposed to compose the right expressions, the apposite phrases? What kind of style would impress her? What choice of words would have the right impact on her? And, even supposing he managed to solve all those issues, what was he going to ask her? To send him a reply? To meet him? In fact, there was something else that was far more important than any of these questions. What led him to believe that she would welcome the receipt of such a letter? How was he to know that she would not tear it up and throw it right in his face? Either that, or she might even get angry, in which case she would reveal his secret and expose his behavior. His ever-diffident mind had been on the point of grabbing a pen, but now it retreated to seek a safer solution.