Naguib Mahfouz - Palace Walk

Had it not been for the military blockade, he would have been in his beloved seat at the coffeehouse of Ahmad Abduh, sipping green tea and chatting with his acquaintances among its patrons. He would have been enjoying himself in its historic atmosphere. He was captivated by its antiquity, and his imagination was stirred by its subterranean chambers buried in the debris of history. Ahmad Abduh’s coffeehouse was the one he loved best. He would not forsake it, unless scorched by some desire, for as they say: "Desire’s a fire". It was desire that had attracted him in the past to the Egyptian Club, which was close to the woman who sold doum palm fruit. Desire had also been responsible for tempting him to move to al-Sayyid Ali’s coffeehouse in al-Ghuriya, situated across the street from the home of the lute player Zanuba. He would exchange coffeehouses according to the object of his desire. He would even exchange the patrons who had offered him their friendship. Beyond satisfying the desire itself, the coffeehouse and his friends there were meaningless. Where were the Egyptian Club and those friends? They had gone out of his life. If he ran into one of them, Yasin might pretend not to know him and avoid him. It was now the turn of Ahmad Abduh’s coffeehouse and its regulars. God only knew what coffeehouses and friends the future had in store for him.

In any case, he did not spend too much of his evening at Ahmad Abduh's. He would soon slip over to Costaki’s grocery store, or, more exactly, to his secret bar to get a bottle of red wine, or "the usual," as he liked to call it. Where was "the usual" on this gloomy night? At the memory of Costaki’s bar, a shudder of desire passed through his body. Then a look of great weariness showed in his eyes. He seemed as fidgety as a prisoner. Staying home appeared to him to be prolonged suffering. The sharpness of the pain intensified when he entertained the images of bliss and memories of intoxication associated with the bar and the bottle. These dreams tormented him and doubled his anguish. They encouraged his ardent longing for wine’s music of the mind and the games it played with his head. Those made him warm and happy, overflowing with delight and joy. Before that evening he had never realized how incapable he was of patiently abstaining from alcohol for even a single day. He was not sad to discover how weak he was and how addicted. He did not blame himself for the overindulgence that had ended up making him miserable for such a trivial reason. He was as far as one could be from blaming himself or being annoyed. The only cause for his pain that he could remember was the blockade the English had set up around his house. He was consumed by thirst when the intoxicating watering hole was near at hand.

He glanced at Zaynab. He found her examining his face with a look that seemed to say resentfully, "Why are you so inattentive? Why are you so glum? Doesn't my presence cheer you up at all?" Yasin felt her resentment in the fleeting moment their eyes met, but he did not respond to her sorrowful criticism. To the contrary, it annoyed and riled him. Yes, he disliked nothing so much as being forced to spend a whole evening with her, deprived of desire, pleasure, and the intoxication on which he relied to endure married life.

He began to look at her stealthily and wonder in amazement, "Isn't she the same woman?… Isn't she the one who captured my heart on our wedding night?… Isn't she the one who drove me wild with passion for nights and weeks on end?… Why doesn't she stir me at all? What’s come over her? Why am I so restless, disgruntled, and bored, finding nothing in her beauty or culture to tempt me to postpone getting drunk?"

As usual, he was inclined to find her deficient in areas where women like Zanuba excelled. They were clever at providing him special services, but Zaynab was the first woman who had attempted to live with him in a permanent relationship. He had not spent much time with the lute player or the doum fruit vendor. His attachment to them had not been great enough to prevent him from moving on when he felt like it. Many years later he would recall these anxious moments and his reflections on them. Then he would realize things from his own experience and from life in general that had not occurred to him at the time.

He was awakened from his thoughts by her question: "I guess you're not happy about staying home?"

He was not in a condition to deal with criticism. Her sarcastic question affected him like a careless blow to a sore. He shot back with painful candor: "Of course not".

Although she had tried to avoid quarreling with him from the beginning, his tone hurt her badly. She replied sharply, "There’s no harm in that. Isn't it amazing how you can't bear to miss your carousing for even one night?"

He said angrily, "Mention one thing that would make staying home bearable".

She became enraged and said in a voice that showed she was on the verge of tears, "I'll leave. Perhaps then you'll like it better".

She turned her back on him to flee. He followed her with a stony glare. "How stupid she is! She doesn't know that only divine decree keeps her in my house".

Although the quarrel had relieved a little of his anger, he would have preferred for it not to have happened, if only because it served to increase his depressing boredom. If he had wanted to, he could have appeased her, but the listlessness of his mind had overwhelmed all his feelings.

In a few minutes, a relative calm took possession of him. The cruel words he had thrown at her echoed in his ears. He acknowledged that they were harsh and uncalled for. He felt almost regretful, not because he had suddenly discovered some dregs of affection for her in the corners of his heart, but because of his desire to treat her politely, perhaps out of respect for her father or fear of his. He had not exceeded these bounds, even during the nerve-racking period of adjustment when with decisive firmness he had undertaken to make her accept his policies. He had apologized when he got too angry.

Anger was nothing out of the ordinary for this family. The only time they attempted to control their tempers was when the father was present, monopolizing for himself all rights to anger. Their anger was like a bolt of lightning, quick to flare up and quick to die down. They would be left with various forms of regret and sorrow. Yasin was like this, but he was also obstinate. His regret did not motivate him to seek a reconciliation with his wife. He told himself, "She’s the one who made me angry… Couldn't she have spoken to me in a gentler tone?" He wanted her to be consistently patient, forbearing, and forgiving, so that he could shoot off in pursuit of his passions, confident about the home front.

After she got angry and withdrew, he felt even more uncomfortable with his imprisonment. He left the room to go to the roof. He found the air pleasant there. The night was tranquil. It was dark everywhere but more profoundly so under the arbor of hyacinth beans and jasmine. On the other side of the roof, the dome of the sky was visible, studded with stars like pearls. He began to pace back and forth on the roof between the wall adjoining Maryam’s house and the end of the hyacinth bean garden with its view of the Qala'un mosque. He gave himself over to contemplation of various mental images.

As he was walking slowly by the entrance to the arbor a rustling sound or perhaps a whisper caught his ear. He could hear someone breathing. Surprised, he stared into the darkness and called out, "Who’s there?"

A voice he easily recognized replied in ringing tones, "Nur, master".

He remembered immediately that Nur, his wife’s maid, retired at night to a wooden hut containing a few sticks of furniture, next to the chicken coop. He looked across the roof until he made out her figure standing a few feet away, like a condensed and solidified piece of night. He saw the whites of her eyes, as pure white as circles drawn in chalk on a jet-black form. He kept on pacing and said nothing more, but her features were automatically traced on his imagination. She was black, in her forties, and solidly built. She had thick limbs and a full chest. Her rear was plump. She had a gleaming face, sparkling eyes, and full lips. There was something powerful, coarse, and unusual about her, or he had thought of her that way since she had appeared in his house.