Naguib Mahfouz: Karnak Café

With that my own thoughts went off on an entirely new tack, the primary impulse being a feeling of profound sadness. Yes indeed, I told myself, this life we’re living does have its painful and negative aspects, and yet they are simply necessary garbage to be thrown away in contempt by the entire gigantic social structure. However, they should not blind us to the majesty of the basic concept and its scope. During the period when Saladin was winning his glorious victory over the Crusaders, how do we know what the average street-dweller in Cairo was living through? While Muhammad ‘Ali was busy creating an Egyptian empire in the nineteenth century, how much did the Egyptian peasants have to suffer? Have we ever tried to imagine what it must have been like during the time of the Prophet himself, when the new faith caused deep rifts between father and son, brother and brother, and husband and wife? Friendships were torn apart, and long-standing traditions were replaced by new hardships. And if we keep all these precedents in mind, should we not be willing to endure a bit of pain and inconvenience in the process of turning our state, the most powerful in the Middle East, into a model of a scientific, socialist, and industrial nation? While all these notions were buzzing inside my head, I had the sense that, by applying such logic, I could even manage to convince myself that death itself had its own particular requirements and benefits.

And then, all of a sudden one afternoon, the familiar, long-lost faces reappeared in the doorway: Zaynab Diyab, Isma‘il al-Shaykh, Hilmi Hamada, and some others as well. We never saw the rest of them again. Their arrival prompted an instantaneous outburst of pure joy, and we all welcomed them back with open arms. Even Zayn al-‘Abidin joined in the festivities. Qurunfula sank back into her chair, as though she were taking a nap or had just fainted. She neither spoke nor moved. Hilmi Hamada went over to her.

“I’ll get my revenge on you!” she sobbed and then burst into tears.

“Where on earth have you all been?” someone asked.

“On a trip,” more than one voice answered.

They all roared with laughter, and everyone seemed happy again. And yet their faces had altered. The shaved heads made them look peculiar, and the old youthful sparkle in their eyes had gone, replaced by listless expressions.

“But how did it all happen?” someone (maybe Zayn al-‘Abidin) asked.

“No, no!” yelled Isma‘il al-Shaykh, “please spare us that.…”

“Oh, come on,” yelled Zaynab Diyab gleefully. “Forget about all that. We’ve come through it, and we’re all safe and sound.”

There was one name that I kept hearing, although I have no idea how it came up or who was the first person to mention it: Khalid Safwan, Khalid Safwan. So who was this Khalid Safwan? A detective? Prison warden? Several of them kept mentioning his name. I caught brief glimpses of the expressions on their faces; under the exterior veil the suffering and sense of disillusionment were almost palpable.

True enough, life at Karnak Café resumed its daily routine, and yet a good deal of the basic spirit of the place had been lost. A thick partition had now been lowered, one that turned the time they had been away into an ongoing mystery, an engrossing secret that left questions of all kinds unanswered. Beyond that, and in spite of all the lively chatter and jollity, a new atmosphere of caution pervaded the place, rather like a peculiar smell whose source you cannot trace. Every joke told had more than one meaning to it; every gesture implied more than one thing; in every innocent glance there was also a feeling of apprehension.

One day Qurunfula opened up to me. “Those young folk have been through a great deal,” she said.

“Has he told you anything about it?” I asked eagerly.

“No,” she replied, “he doesn’t say a single word. But that in itself is enough.”

Yes indeed, that in itself was enough. After all, we were all living in an era of unseen powers — spies hovering in the very air we breathed, shadows in broad daylight. I started using my imagination to reflect upon the past. Roman gladiators, courts of inquiry, reckless reprobates, criminal behavior, epics of suffering, ferocious outbursts of violence, forest clashes. I had to rescue myself from these reflections on human history, so I reminded myself that for millions of years dinosaurs had roamed the earth, but it had only taken a single hour to eradicate them all in a life-and-death struggle. All that remained now were just one or two huge skeletons. It seems that, whenever darkness envelops us, we are intoxicated by power and tempted to emulate the gods; with that, a savage and barbaric heritage is aroused deep within us and revives the spirit of ages long since past.

At this particular moment all the information I had was filtered through the imagination. It was only years later and in very different circumstances that people finally began to open their hearts, hearts that had previously been locked tight shut. They provided me with gruesome details, all of which helped explain certain events that at the time had seemed completely inexplicable.

Zayn al-‘Abidin never for a moment gave up hope, making a virtue out of patience. He kept on watching and waiting for just the right moment. Needless to say, Hilmi Hamada’s return had completely ruined his plans. It may have been his fear of seeing his quest for Qurunfula end in failure that stirred an emotion buried deep inside him. In any case, it led him to cross a line and abandon his normally cautious demeanor. One day he put his suppressed feelings into words right in front of Qurunfula.

“It seems to me,” he stated recklessly, “that the presence of these young people in the café may be having a very negative effect on the place’s reputation.”

Qurunfula shot right back at him. “So when are you planning to leave?” she asked.

He chose to ignore her remark and instead continued in a suitably homiletic tone, “I do have a worthwhile project in mind, one with a number of benefits to it.” He now turned toward me, looking for support. “What do you think of the project?” he asked.

For my part I addressed a question to Qurunfula. “Wouldn’t you like to have a larger share in the national capital?”

“But it’s not just the capital he’s after,” she replied sarcastically. “He wants the woman who owns it as well!”

“Not so,” insisted Zayn al-‘Abidin. “My proposal only involves the business itself. Matters of the heart rest in the hands of God Almighty.”

She stopped arguing with him. It seemed as though she was totally consumed by her infatuation. Every time I watched her playing the role of the blind lover, I felt a tender sympathy for her plight. I had no doubt in my mind that that boy loved her in an adolescent kind of way; for her part she certainly knew how to attract him and keep him happy, while he was able to enjoy her affection to the full. But how long would it last? On that particular score she used to share some of her misgivings with me, but at the same time she felt able to tell me with complete confidence that he certainly wasn’t a gigolo.

“He’s as decent as he is intelligent. He’s not the sort to sell himself.”

I had no reason to doubt her word. The boy’s appearance and the way he talked both tended to confirm her opinion, although once in a while his expression would turn cryptic and even violent. But speculation of this kind was essentially pointless when one was faced with the incontrovertible fact that Qurunfula was well into the autumn of her years; at this stage in her life, money and fidelity were the only things she could now offer from among the many forms of enticement she had previously had at her disposal.