Naguib Mahfouz - Khan Al-Khalili

Shimbaki went on in an angry, yet regretful tone. “Here’s what she said to me as she left, clutching her bag of clothes: ‘I’m going to remember you as a man who’s never given me a single day’s happiness!’ Listen, for heaven’s sake. Is that anything for a companion of thirty years to utter?”

“Curse her!” said Aliyat in a bitter, censorious tone. “Too bad you wasted the best days of your life on her. Listen to me, Boss. Show her the way things really are by marrying someone else!”

The man gave a nod, as something resembling a smile crossed his lips. “Is there enough of life left?” he muttered.

“Heaven forbid, Boss,” she replied immediately. “You’re still in the prime of life!”

Now Boss Nunu was warming to the idea. “People who claim that nothing trains a woman better than having her husband marry another wife have it right! Our Lord instructed us to marry four of them.”

“God forbid! God never ordained any such thing. What He did do was to make it legal as long as all four are treated equally.”

“Any other constraints to share with us?”

“Bless the Prophet! I’m an old man. Nothing’s to be gained from this kind of talk.”

“You should get married, using those new pills Sayyid Arif is taking as a blessing!”

At this point Boss Zifta resumed the conversation he had been having before Boss Shimbaki interrupted with his family problems.

“You should try buying Persian rugs in particular. Gold can go down in price, and so can copper. But the value of Persian rugs always increases over time. An old woman isn’t worth a solitary penny, but a rug.…”

Aliyat slapped him on the chest.

“Oh God,” he yelled, “the only molar I have left just fell out.…”

“Listen, you crazy pot-head,” she told him, “we’re talking about marriage. What are you going on about rugs for?”

“Don’t get mad. Patience is the gateway to solutions. As long as you’re determined to get Boss Shimbaki married off again, I’m going to tell him a joke that’ll make him want to do it.”

With that he turned toward Shimbaki.

“A shaykh came home after a long evening out,” he went on, “and saw his wife asleep on the bed. She’d been bragging to him about how beautiful she still was, to such an extent that he felt harassed. Passing by her on his way to bed, he muttered, ‘The siren’s asleep!’ when suddenly, she grabbed the edge of her nightgown, saying. ‘And God curse whoever woke her up!’ ”

Ahmad felt as though he were suffocating. He could not stand the atmosphere in the room any longer. His patience had worn thin, so he staggered to his feet. Everyone stared at him.

“Where are you going?” Boss Nunu asked.

“I’ve had enough,” he replied almost inaudibly.

“This is just the end of the beginning! We still have time ahead of us for punning, singing, and real intoxication.”

But Ahmad insisted on taking his leave, and he did so with slow and heavy steps.

“Have the pills worked for you as well?” Boss Zifta joked as he left.

He left the apartment, clasped the banister, and went slowly, very slowly, down the stairs until he saw the steps leading to the street. Once on the street, he staggered his way home to his room. It was the riskiest journey he had ever taken in his entire life, the time being almost two o’clock in the morning. He undressed wearily, turned out the light, and fell onto his bed. He did not fall asleep as quickly as he expected. He realized that, while his eyes might be closed, he was still wide awake in a peculiar and alarming way and his heart was thumping fast, almost as though to lift the covers off the bed and throw them down. Images kept crowding his imagination, then dissolving and vanishing. Only one image lingered, that incredible woman. Did he want to have sex with her just as much as did all the others? But slowly now … what would he do with her? If she embraced him, he would feel small and puny, like a flea in an elephant’s armpit. No, she was no real woman, but rather a symbol of the world of steaming passions, on which shore his feet had sunk and on whose horizon his eyes had gazed. His heartbeat doubled and his throat felt dry, and he imagined himself falling from a great height into a bottomless abyss. Terrified, he sat up in bed. Fear and despair gripped him and for what remained of the night until daybreak he endured incredible pain, both physical and psychological.

Ahmad made up his mind not to repeat this adventure. Boss Nunu did his best to reassure him and convince him his reactions that night were due to the fact that he hadn’t eaten something sweet directly after smoking hashish. Ahmad refused to accept these explanations, tempting though they were.

“It’s very clear,” he told himself in his normal tone of self-pity, “that the intellectual mind is simply not equipped to enjoy these types of pleasure.”

Even so, he told himself that he would not need these drugs in order to forget his miseries. If his younger brother married to the girl fairly soon, he would be free to forget. However, the problem was that Rushdi continued his reckless ways and refused to put an end to his irresponsible behavior. He had not even fully recovered his health; in fact, it had deteriorated. No one could ignore any more how thin he looked, added to which was the fact that his paleness had now turned a sickly yellow color. He began to cough violently and lost his appetite. Ahmad was horrified by his condition.

“It sounds to me,” he told his brother in a tone that brooked no argument, “as though the way you’re neglecting your health has put a monkey wrench into your hopes and plans. Why don’t you straighten out so you can get your health back? That’s why you haven’t recovered from your first illness, and now you’ve got this violent cough. From now on, you should give up going out regularly at night and drinking. What on earth are you doing to yourself?”

For a change Rushdi did not object since the coughing fits were already weighing him down. “Okay,” he said, “I agree.”

“You’ll need to get well, Rushdi,” said his brother who was used to self-torture, “before you can fulfill your promise to Nawal’s family.”

The sick young man now started to display some genuine resolve. He stopped going to the Ghamra Casino and only left the house in the afternoon in order to give his private lessons to his two pupils, that being an obligation that was dear to his heart and a source of much pleasure. For the first time since he had left his childhood behind, he made a point of going to bed at ten o’clock, something that aroused in Ahmad a sense of total amazement at the magical workings of love. However, Rushdi refused to give up his morning walk out to the hills even though it exposed him to bone-chilling cold; after all, it, too, was something dear to his heart and nourishment for his fondest dreams. For several days he endured this utterly respectable way of life, but there were no signs of any improvement in his state of health; in fact, the cough went down into his larynx, and his voice turned hoarse. As a result he could no longer sing his favorite songs.

The celebration of the Eid al-Adha was about to happen, and, as usual, the family was busy making preparations. The sacrificial sheep was brought in, and, since there was nowhere else to put it, they tied it to the kitchen window by the neck. Sitt Dawlat, the mother of the family, busied herself making the bread loaves. As usual Ahmad had complained about the rise in the cost of a sheep and suggested that they might well not be able to afford one next year, a thought that appalled his mother.

“I spit on the very notion!” she laughed. “Don’t even mention such dire thoughts.”