Naguib Mahfouz - Khan Al-Khalili

“Good evening!” Rushdi greeted his brother. “You’re back!”

“Yes,” Ahmad replied looking at his brother carefully. “How are you feeling?”

“Praise be to God. How was the tea at the Zahra Café?”

“As usual.”

“Drink it in good health then,” Rushdi said in a barely audible voice.

Ahmad left him to get some sleep, went to his own room, and got undressed. He was feeling tense, and his nerves were on edge. He could smell something foul, and that made him even more tense and nervous. Could the anxieties that populate the deepest recesses of the human soul actually smell bad? For an hour he tried to take his mind off things by reading, then he got up to go to bed. He spent a long hour, lying there prey to dreadful thoughts and misgivings.

Next morning he woke up early to the sound of movement inside the house. His senses were immediately on the alert. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was five o’clock. He wondered what could have woken anyone up at such an early hour. He got out of bed and rushed out of his room in a panic. Before he had gone even a couple of steps toward Rushdi’s room, the door was opened suddenly. Their mother emerged, holding her hands above her head as though begging for help. Then she lowered them and started slapping her cheeks violently, crazily.…

It was a truly awful day, one long procession of pain, grief, and agony. The very memory of it grieved Ahmad, digging a pit inside his heart as deep for him as it was for his poor parents.

It began with him going into Rushdi’s room, quaking in fear at the very idea of what was awaiting him there. Looking toward the bed, he saw Rushdi lying there. His mother had covered his body with a blanket, and his father was standing close by, weeping, his head downcast. Ahmad went over to the bed and pulled back the blanket. There was Rushdi, lying there as though he were sleeping, his appearance and pallor unchanged. Had the disease left anything for death to change? Leaning over, Ahmad kissed his cold forehead, then pulled the blanket back over him. Now he surrendered to the flood of tears that, fueled by so much grief, had been gathering inside him day after day until they clustered together in the chill of death and flowed in profusion.

Then his stop at the store in al-Ghuriya. As Ahmad purchased a shroud, he remembered that only yesterday he had bought his brother some clothes for this world. He had chosen the brightest colors because he knew how much Rushdi liked to look well-dressed. In a complete daze he watched the salesman’s hands as he measured out the cloth and then folded it up.

Next he had to go to get a burial certificate.

“Name of the deceased?” asked the official casually.

Ahmad dearly wished that he could not hear his own voice. “Rushdi Akif,” he replied.

“Rushdi Akif has died,” he told himself. “How horrible can this reality be?”

“How old?” asked the official in the same cold tone.

“Twenty-six,” he replied.

“What illness?”

As he told the official, he felt increasingly angry. How could he ever forget what it had done to his ill-starred brother? The way his legs and neck had looked, the color of his skin, the hacking cough? He now received a copy of the document that was required before Rushdi could disappear into the bowels of the earth forever. He expressed his thanks to the official and left. The way this official and the bank’s doctor had acted in such an unfeeling fashion had aroused his anger against all human relationships in general. How could anyone be so casual about death when it was the direst thing that ever happened in life? Did a day ever go by without the sight of a coffin being carried on people’s shoulders? How could they be so casual about the whole thing, as though it didn’t bother them at all? Shouldn’t everyone envision themselves being carried in such a coffin?

Then the profiteers of death. They came in succession, carrying washing equipment and the coffin itself. Eyes glinting, arms flexing, they all invoked false expressions of sympathy in order to hide the glee they felt as merchants about to make a good profit. For them Rushdi’s beloved body was merely a commodity.

Then the casket proceeded on its way, carried on the shoulders of men decked in the white garb of youth. Ahmad let his gaze follow it as it went on its usual downward path, passed from hand to hand and shoulder to shoulder. A fez was placed on top, reminding everyone that its owner had always tilted it to the right until it almost touched his eyebrow, a sign of someone with a rakish streak who was well aware of how attractive he was. My God, all his friends were there in force, crying their eyes out. Kamal Khalil was crying too, while Ahmad Rashid looked stone-faced. Ahmad was far from delighted to see the latter among the mourners. He also avoided looking at Boss Nunu, who was flippant by nature; unlike Ahmad, he would always make light of misery and smiled his way through misfortunes.

Rushdi’s father walked directly behind the coffin, his intense sorrow seeking solace in faith and piety. When the funereal procession reached the mountain road, Ahmad’s emotions got the better of him — this very road had been a witness as morning after morning Rushdi had played the role of the young lover in pursuit of his love, heedless of his deadly illness. The love in his heart had been bought at the expense of his health, but then he had lost both of them. Dear God, could this road really bear witness, as the saying goes, to a friend’s deceit? Could it lead him to conclude that the girl who had watched as Rushdi committed suicide for love of her had started to worry about catching the illness herself and cast him off into the wilderness?

The family tomb loomed ahead of them newly cleaned. The ground was covered with sand, and chairs had been set up in rows in front of the entrance. Water carriers moved among them. The tomb’s entrance looked like a mouth yawning in irritation as it watched life’s tragedy being repeated. The coffin was placed on the ground, and the covering was removed. Rushdi, wrapped in the shroud that Ahmad himself had chosen, was lifted up and clasped by hands, which then placed him into the ground. A moment later they re-emerged and started relentlessly piling earth on top of him. In just a few minutes he had completely disappeared, and the ground was level again. They then poured some water over the grave, as though somehow the crops had not been sufficiently watered yet.

Thus did a beloved person vanish forever and a life come to an end. In the blink of an eye a much-loved person simply disappears, and neither tears nor sorrows are of the slightest use. Now everyone went back, their emotions shattered. The wisdom that only yesterday had decreed that Rushdi should be a much-loved person now willed that he be forgotten. The apartment was gloomy, and the two parents were beside themselves. Rushdi’s room was cleaned, then the door was locked.

Around midnight, Ahmad went to his room, his mind full of reflections. Just then he smelled something in the air. Good heavens, that foul smell was still there, the terrifying stench of death! Next morning it was still hovering in the atmosphere. He worked out that it was coming from the street leading into the old part of Khan al-Khalili. He opened the window and looked down. On the sidewalk he could see a dead dog, its stomach bloated and its flesh all puckered; it looked just like a waterskin and was covered in flies. For a while he stared at it, then looked away, his eyes welling with tears.

The days that followed were truly grim. Their father began to salve his bleeding wound with faith, but not even belief could find a way to assuage their mother’s abject grief. In fact, such was her agony that she actually started blaming God, “What harm would it have done to Your world if You had left me my son?”