Naguib Mahfouz - Cairo Modern

Ahmad Badir — he felt rattled by the mention of that significant name. He wondered what this journalist, who knew all of society’s scandals, might have learned. What had he told Ma’mun Radwan? He looked carefully at his friend but found his expression as calm and pure as ever. His appearance suggested a clear conscience untroubled by bad news. Pretending to smile, Mahgub asked, “How is he? I haven’t seen him for quite some time. He hasn’t come to congratulate me.”

Ma’mun smiled and replied, “Some things have escaped your notice. News of your appointment was published in his newspaper. As he explains, he thinks you ought to thank him.”

They discussed Ma’mun’s overseas study, administrative and technical positions in the government, and the career of teaching at the university and in the secondary schools. Ma’mun criticized the prevailing system that did not allow specialists to hold posts in their field, and Mahgub was uncomfortable about a lack of respect for administrative positions. He told his friend that these had a special glory that teaching positions could never claim. Ma’mun understood glory in quite a different way. All the same, they presented their views in a comfortable, tolerant fashion. Their conversation raised some personal concerns, and Ma’mun confessed he had come to Cairo for reasons related to his marriage. Then Mahgub informed him that he had married. The young man congratulated him once more and prayed for his success. Then he said, “I met our friend Ali Taha yesterday and spent a long time with him.”

Mahgub’s heart pounded at this sudden change of topic and he felt anxious. Had Ali Taha’s name come up by chance or did Ali know about his marriage and tell Ma’mun? It was not possible for his marriage to remain secret, and Ali Taha would definitely learn about it some day. But how had the news gotten to him? How did he understand it? He looked at Ma’mun, and their eyes met. He detected discomfort and suspicion in those pure black eyes. So he felt no more doubt. Ma’mun’s eyes were a clear mirror, innocent of any cunning or deceit. They were obviously asking him, “Is it really true what he said? Have you really betrayed your friend?”

Finding it pointless to force his friend to ask first, he said, “How is he?”

Ma’mun replied gravely, “Fine.”

They were silent for a moment. Mahgub bowed his head. His conjecture had definitely been confirmed, but how much of the truth was known? Those who knew the whole truth — Ihasan’s family, the bey, and al-Ikhshidi — would not be able to disclose it to anyone, because that disclosure would harm them. If Ma’mun knew the truth he would never have visited him. It was not like him to pretend to show respect for someone he thought deserved his contempt. He had merely come to hear Mahgub’s defense against their friend’s accusation, which was quite simply a charge of betrayal, not an accusation of marrying a certain kind of girl because he wanted a job. This was plainly the truth of the matter. Feeling satisfied with his reasoning, since he wasn’t concerned about Ali’s grief or about what Ma’mun thought of him, he looked at his visitor with his customary audacity and asked, “What’s troubling him?”

Ma’mun did not know what to say. Feeling uneasy, he bit his lip and remained silent. Mahgub laughed listlessly, and then said as if answering himself, “My marriage.”

Ma’mun asked eagerly, “Really?”

Mahgub responded tersely, “Actually, I married our former neighbor Ihsan Shihata Turki.”

The other man’s face revealed his astonishment and discomfort. Smiling, Mahgub said, “But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

He explained how the relationship between Ali and Ihsan had faltered and finally been terminated. He confirmed that he had not stepped forward to request her hand until afterward.

With the candor for which he was known, Ma’mun asked, “Aren’t you responsible for the relationship’s problems and termination?”

Mahgub said with great certainty, “Absolutely not.”

The visit concluded after that. As he shook hands with Ma’mun, Mahgub felt that the young man was saying a last farewell to him. When he heard the door slam shut, he spat contemptuously and angrily and muttered with intense resentment, “Tuzz!”

After lunch he stretched out in bed, but his eyes were still open. She was sleeping beside him as usual, and he began to listen to her now familiar, regular breathing. Then he yielded to the turbulent current of his thoughts, which had denied him the pleasure of sleep. Today Ma’mun had parted company with him. Not that long before he had parted company with Ali Taha. Thus his ties to the people closest to him had been severed.

Friendship had never been anything he craved, but he felt alienated and solitary, as if he were in one valley and the rest of the world in another. Yes, he had never taken any pains to befriend anyone, but more than one person had befriended him, leaving him the feeling of being on amiable terms with people. Now that the slender threads tying him to other people had snapped, one after the other, he was falling into a deep isolation. Before, the oddity of his ideas had occasionally afflicted him with a sense of desolation. As he put some of his ideas into practice, this feeling of desolation increased, and he felt that he was alone in a valley while the rest of the world was in another. He asked himself apprehensively how he could expel these clouds from his breast. There was not a single individual he liked in his world. With the other government employees he knew there was merely an obligatory form of camaraderie. Salim al-Ikhshidi’s only concern was his personal self-interest. Where would he find the antidote? He glanced at the face of the person sleeping beside him, and heard her regular breathing. Yes, she was his consolation, his solace, the essence of what remained to him of his life. If he could win her, he would complain of nothing. His anxiety today was not really inspired by his rupture with Ma’mun so much as by remembering Ali Taha and his passion. His heart fell prey to jealousy, and he no longer believed that marriage was merely the safety release valve on the boiler, as he had liked to say when asked about love or women. His perceived need for a wife was violent and powerful. Perhaps this was a consequence of his feeling of desolation or perhaps he was responsible for it. Even in his current condition he didn’t believe in love the way Ali Taha understood it. He didn’t force his eyes to look to the heavens; there was no dream of ideals and fantasies, even though he experienced his need for the girl as a tyrannical, brute force that wasn’t merely a result of his sexual maturation. It was a reciprocal desire and a reciprocated longing, without which he would not feel he had shaken off his desolation and achieved any solace. This tyrannical, brute force mocked domineering intellects, presumptuous souls, and sarcastic philosophies. He smiled ironically and started to say, “To hell with all this despicable jealousy.” What point was there to the vanities of this life if the world lost its savor in response to nothing more than a dismissive gesture from this gracious animal? The reality of his new feelings wasn’t lost on him. Initially he had agreed to the marriage as part of a self-interested bargain and had hoped to overcome his irregular status by embracing absolute freedom and limitless ambition. Now, however, he craved more than his wife’s body. He craved her love. If his fortune had united him with a different woman — not Ihsan, the girl he had adored in the old days — perhaps the situation would have been different. With Ihsan, however, he had no choice but to love her when his mind was tormented by such thoughts, which he considered a warning that threatened his existence and life. He told himself sadly: Perhaps they’re symptoms of a passing malady caused by my frightful desolation.