Naguib Mahfouz: Karnak Café

“So now we’re back to our original point,” I said with some emphasis.

“You realize that I’m in love, don’t you?” she asked me forthrightly.

True enough, I had noticed certain things, but now she had caught me red-handed.

“You’re no fool,” she said, “so don’t even ask me who it is.”

“Hilmi Hamada?” I inquired with a smile.

Without even excusing herself she made her way back to her chair; once there she threw me the sweetest of smiles. At one time I had thought it was Isma‘il al-Shaykh, but then I discovered that he and Zaynab Diyab were very close. After that things had become clearer. Hilmi Hamada was a very trim and handsome young man, always very excitable when there was an argument. Qurunfula was quite frank with me. She had been the one to make the amorous overtures, in fact right in front of his young friends. On one occasion she was sitting next to him and listening to him speak his mind about some political controversy: “Long live everything you want to live,” she yelled, “and death to anyone you want to see dead!”

She invited him up to her apartment on the fourth floor of the building (the café was on the first floor). Once there she gave him a sumptuous welcome. The sitting room was decked with flowers, there was a huge spread on the table, and dance music was playing on the tape recorder.

“He loves me too,” she told me confidently, “you can be quite sure of that.” She paused for a short while, then continued in a more serious tone, “But actually he has no idea how much I love him.” Then there was a flash of anger. “One of these days I expect he’ll just get up and leave for good … but then, what else is new?” That last phrase came out with a shrug of the shoulders.

“You’re aware of everything, and yet you still insist on going your own way.”

“That’s a pretty fatuous remark, but it might just as well serve as a motto for life itself.”

“On behalf of the living,” I commented with a smile, “allow me to thank you.”

“But Hilmi’s serious and generous too. He was the first person to get enthusiastic about my project.”

“And which project might that be, if you please?”

“Writing my memoirs. I’m absolutely crazy about the idea. The only thing holding me back is that I’m no good at writing.”

“Is he helping you write them down on a regular basis?”

“Yes, he is. And he’s very keen about it too.”

“So he’s interested in art and history?”

“That’s one side of it. Other parts deal with the secret lives of Egypt’s men and women.”

“People from the previous generation?”

“The present one as well.”

“You mean, scandals and things like that?”

“Once in a while there’s a reference to some scandals, but I have more worthwhile goals than just that.”

“It sounds risky,” I said, introducing a note of caution.

“There’ll be an uproar when it’s published,” she went on with a mixture of pride and concern.

“You mean, if it is ever published,” I commented with a laugh.

She gave me a frown. “The first part can be published with no problems.”

“Fine. Then I’d leave the second part to be published in the fullness of time.”

“My mother lived till she was ninety,” she responded hopefully.

“And may God grant you a long life too, Qurunfula,” I said, in the same hopeful tone.

There came a day when I arrived at the café only to find all the chairs normally occupied by the young people empty. The entire place looked very odd, and a heavy silence hung over everything. The old men were busy playing backgammon and chatting, but Qurunfula kept casting anxious glances toward the door. She came over and sat down beside me.

“None of them have come,” she said. “What can have happened?”

“Maybe they had an appointment somewhere else.”

“All of them? He might have let me know, even if it was just a phone call.”

“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

“Perhaps not,” she said sharply, “but there’s plenty to be angry about.”

Evening turned into night, but none of them showed up. The following evening it was the same story. Qurunfula’s mood changed, and she became a bundle of nerves, going in and out of the café.

“How do you explain it all?” she asked.

I shook my head in despair.

“Oh, they’re just youngsters,” was Zayn al-‘Abidin’s contribution to the conversation. “They never stay anywhere for too long. They’ve gone somewhere else that suits them better.”

Qurunfula lost her temper and rounded on him. “What a stupid idiot you are!” she said. “Why don’t you go somewhere that suits you better as well?”

“Oh no,” he replied with an imbecilic laugh, “I’m already in the most suitable place.”

At this point I did my best to smooth things over. “I’m sure we’ll see them again at any moment.”

“The worry of it all is killing me,” she whispered in my ear.

“Don’t you know where he lives?” I asked delicately.

“No, I don’t,” she replied. “It’s somewhere in the Husayniya Quarter. He’s a medical student, but the college is closed for summer vacation. As you can tell, I’ve no idea where he lives.”

Days and weeks passed, and Qurunfula almost went out of her mind. I joined her in her sorrow.

“You’re destroying yourself,” I told her. “Have a little pity, at least on yourself.”

“It’s not pity I need,” she replied. “It’s him.”

Zayn al-‘Abidin avoided any further tirades by saying nothing and keeping his thoughts to himself. Actually, he was feeling profoundly happy about the new situation, but he managed to keep his true feelings hidden by looking glum and puffing away on his shisha.

One day Taha al-Gharib spoke up. “I hear there have been widespread arrests.”

No one said a word. After this moment of loaded silence I thought I would try to be as helpful as possible. “But these young folk all support the revolution,” I said.

That led Rashad Magdi to insert his opinion. “And there’s a not inconsiderable minority of them who oppose it.”

“It’s quite clear what’s happened,” Muhammad Bahgat suggested. “They decided to put the guilty ones in prison, so they’ve dragged all the friends in too. That way the investigation will be complete.”

Qurunfula kept following this conversation. The expression on her face was one of utter confusion, and it made her look almost stupid. She adamantly refused either to understand or be convinced by anything she was hearing. Meanwhile the conversation continued with everyone contributing their own ideas about what was happening.

“Imprisonment is really scary.”

“The things you hear about what’s being done to prisoners are even more scary.”

“Rumors like those are enough to make your stomach churn.”

“There’s no judicial hearing and no defense.”

“There’s no legal code in the first place!”

“But people keep saying that we’re living through a revolutionary process that requires the use of extraordinary measures like these.”

“Yes, and they go on to say that we all have to sacrifice freedom and the rule of law, but only for a short while.”

“But this revolution is thirteen years old and more. Surely it’s about time things settled down and became more stable.”

Qurunfula started neglecting her job. She would spend all or part of the day somewhere else; sometimes she didn’t appear for twenty-four hours at a stretch. It would be left to ‘Arif Sulayman and Imam al-Fawwal to run the café.

When she reappeared, she used to tell us that she had been to see all the influential people she knew from both past and present. She had asked them all for information, but nobody knew anything. “What you keep getting,” she told us, “are totally unexpected remarks, like ‘How are we supposed to know,’ or ‘I’d be careful about asking too many questions,’ or even worse, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t offer any young folk hospitality in your café!’ What on earth has happened to the world?”