Naguib Mahfouz - Karnak Café

There now followed a prolonged silence, like a prolonged, mute sob.

“What kind of man can he be?” I eventually managed to mutter, referring to Khalid Safwan.

“There’s nothing odd about the way he looks,” Zaynab said. “For that matter he could just as well be a professor or a man of religion.”

“The entire matter needs further study,” I said, feeling utterly nonplussed.

“Study?” she yelled. “Did you say ‘study’? Do you seriously propose to initiate a research program involving my personal honor?”

I felt so ashamed, I didn’t say another word.

“A few weeks later I was summoned to Khalid Safwan’s office again. He looked as calm as usual, even more so perhaps. It was just as though nothing had ever happened.

“ ‘You’ve been proved innocent,’ he said tersely.

“For a long time I simply looked straight at him. For his part, he gave me a fixed, lackadaisical stare.

“ ‘Were you watching?’ I screamed at him.

“ ‘I simply see what there is to be seen,’ he replied quietly.

“ ‘But now I’ve lost everything,’ I shouted angrily.

“ ‘Oh no! Everything can be put right. We can see to that.’

“ ‘I don’t believe,’ I yelled madly, ‘that the revolution would be happy to hear what went on in this room!’

“ ‘We’re here to protect the revolution, and that’s much more important that the few isolated mistakes we may happen to make. We always make sure to put right whatever needs to be put right. You’ll be leaving here now with a brand new boon — our friendship.’

“With that I burst into tears, a prolonged fit of nervous weeping that I was totally unable to stop. He waited silently until I’d finished.

“ ‘You’re going to see one of my assistants now,’ he said. ‘He’s going to make you an offer beyond price.’ For a few moments, he said nothing, then he went on, ‘I would strongly advise you not to turn it down. It’s the chance of a lifetime.’ ”

So Zaynab had become an informer as well. She was offered special privileges, and it was decided that Isma‘il was to be the pawn in the whole thing. It was made very clear to her that she had to maintain total silence; she was told that the people she was working for had absolute control of everything.

“When I went home,” Zaynab told me, “and had some time to myself, I was utterly horrified by what I’d lost, something for which there could be no compensation. For the first time in my entire life I really despised myself.”

“But …,” I began trying to console her.

“No, don’t try to defend me,” she interrupted. “Defending something that is despicable places you in the same category.” She continued angrily, “I kept telling myself that I’d become a spy and a prostitute. That was the state I was in when I met Isma‘il again.”

“I assume you kept your secret to yourself.”

“Yes.”

“You were wrong to do that, my dear!”

“My secret job was far too dangerous to reveal to anyone else.”

“I’m talking about the other matter.”

“I was too afraid and ashamed to tell him about it. I was keeping my hopes up as well. I told myself that, if I had things put right by surgery, then I might be able to think about a happy life in the future.”

“But that hasn’t happened so far, has it?”

“Small chance!”

“Maybe I can do something for you,” I offered hopefully.

“Forget it,” she replied sarcastically. “Just wait till I’ve finished my story. I may have made a mistake, but in any case I proceeded to take the only course open to me, torturing my own self and submitting to the very worst punishments I could possibly imagine. By taking such action I was relying on an unusual kind of logic. I’m a daughter of the revolution, I convinced myself. In spite of everything that’s happened, I refuse to disavow everything it stands for. Therefore I am still responsible for its welfare and must fulfill that obligation. As such, I am implicitly to blame for the things that have happened to me. On that basis I decided to stop pretending to live an honorable life and instead to behave like a dishonorable woman.”

“You did yourself a grievous wrong.”

“I could tolerate everything about it except the idea that Isma‘il might come to despise me. At the same time I didn’t want to betray him. While I was going through all this, I couldn’t even think straight and went completely astray.” She shook her head sadly. “A number of things happened which made it impossible for me to put things right again or to return to the straight and narrow. It was at precisely that point that old Hasaballah, the chicken seller, saw me again.”

I stared at her in alarm.

“This time he found the path wide open.”

“No!”

“Why not? I told myself that this was the way to lead a debauched life. You couldn’t do that without there being a price to pay.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“I took the money.”

With that I felt a sense of revulsion toward the entire world.

“And Zayn al-‘Abidin ‘Abdallah as well!” she continued, giving me a sarcastic and defiant stare.

I didn’t say a word.

“He used Imam al-Fawwal and Gum‘a, the bootblack, as go-betweens,” she added.

“But I always thought they were both decent, loyal people,” I blurted out in amazement.

“So they were,” she replied sadly. “But just like me, they were both devastated. What’s happened to everyone? We seem to have turned into a nation of deviants. All the costs in terms of life — the defeat and anxiety — they have managed to demolish our sense of values. The two of them kept hearing about corruption all over the place, so what was to stop them having a turn too? I can tell you that both of them are acting as pimps as we speak and without the slightest sense of shame.”

“But Zaynab,” I asked, “should we despair about everything?” After a moment’s pause I proceeded to answer my own question, “No! This particular phase we’re going through is just like the plague, but afterwards life will be renewed once again.”

Zaynab paid no attention to what I was saying. “I decided to tell Isma‘il everything,” she said.

“But you said you wouldn’t,” I said in amazement.

“I decided to do it in a very original way, so I just gave myself to him.”

“I must confess that at this point I can’t work out what kind of relationship there is between you and Isma‘il.”

“After the storm that we’ve been through, there’s no point in trying to find some fixed logical process to apply.”

“But do you still love Isma‘il?”

“I’ve never been in love with anyone else.”

“What about now?”

“All I can feel now is death, not love.”

“But Zaynab, you’re a young girl right at the beginning of her life. Everything will change.”

“Will it be for better or worse, do you think?”

“It can’t possibly get any worse than it is now. So change must be for the better.”

“Let’s go back to my story. The only consolation I was getting out of what I was doing was that I could feel the pain involved in the self-punishment. But then I did something that can never be expiated, no matter what the price.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Are you starting to feel disgusted with me?”

“No, Zaynab,” I replied. “I’m actually feeling very sorry for you.”

“One evening Isma‘il and I went to Hilmi Hamada’s home. We found he was planning revolution. He confided in us that he was distributing secret pamphlets.…”

The sheer force of the memory was so great that she had to stop talking for a while. For my part, I welcomed this break that had arrived like some kind of truce period in the midst of a prolonged saga of torture.