Naguib Mahfouz - The Time and the Place - And Other Stories

“May your heart be right, Abu Mahmoud.”*

“I wish I could rely on you.”

“I’m your friend and indebted to you for your generous kindness, but I can’t leave the ruins.”

Dahroug thought for a while, then asked, “Does anyone in the big city know you behind that beard?”

“They know the very djinn themselves.”

“And will you spend your life in the ruins?”

“Better than the hangman’s noose, Abu Mahmoud.”

Dahroug laughed loud and said, “I have to laugh whenever I remember the story of your escape from between two guards.”

“The best way of escaping is when it’s not expected.”

Amna was standing facing the wasteland, her shawl drawn back over half of her jet black hair. “And the man got bumped off without any blood money.”

“He was a murderer, the son of a murderer,” said Salama angrily. “He was so old I was afraid death would get to him before I did. My family went on demanding I that take revenge.”

Dahroug guffawed loudly. “And you made your escape when the papers were on their way to the Mufti to endorse the death sentence.”

Salama tugged at his arm in gratitude. “And I found myself desperate and said, ‘I’ve got no one but Dahroug, my childhood friend,’ and you gave me shelter, you noblest of men.”

“We’re men of honor, Salama.”

“In any case the storehouse here is in need of a man — and I’m that man.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the appearance of a funeral procession on the horizon. It was coming from where the buildings stood and it continued toward the road opposite the western fence of the ruins that led to the Khafeer cemetery. The coffin, shrouded with a white silk covering, came into view. “A young girl,” muttered Amna. “How sad!”

“This place is beautiful and safe,” said Salama. “The only thing wrong with it is it’s on the road to the cemetery.”

“Isn’t it the road we all take?” said Dahroug, laughing.

—

The wasteland had remained substantially unchanged since war was declared. It was a playground for the sun from its rising to its setting, a place of passage for coffins, and an encampment for silence. The sirens were sounded in exercise for imaginary air raids. The old battered radio achieved the height of importance when it allowed Dahroug to calculate the shells exchanged between the Siegfried and Maginot Lines.

Whenever Salama’s senses registered the tones of Amna’s melodious voice, or a playful movement or glance, even if not intentional, he became aflame with a voracious fire and at the same time with a merciless anger against himself.

“Things haven’t changed,” said Dahroug morosely. “Where’s all we heard about the war?”

“Be patient. Don’t you remember what your Jewish commission agent said?”

Dahroug looked toward the piles of iron with which, acting on the advice of his agent, he had filled up the place. “Let the days pass quickly.”

“Let them pass quickly — and let them swallow up fifteen years.”

“Fifteen years?”

“Then my sentence becomes null and void.”

“What a lifetime! By then we’ll be on the brink of a third war.”

Salama began singing in a strange, hoarse voice, “Come tell me, Bahiyya.” Then he called out, “Master Dahroug, none of my family will be left but the women.”

He told himself that Amna, without knowing it — or perhaps knowing it — was turning his head and that he would be going through hell before death took him. The war did not concern him in the least, but in between musical intervals on the radio he heard the news of Holland and of Belgium being overrun, and of the fall of Paris. In front of his eyes there passed the successive columns of refugees, and the void was filled with sighs and tears. Then Italy declared war. “It’s knocking at the gates,” said Dahroug uneasily.

But Salama was indifferent. “For us it’s neither here nor there.”

“The good Lord will look after us,” muttered Amna as her gaze followed the naked children playing around a barrel filled with water.

—

For the first time the siren sounded for a real air raid. Dahroug and his family awoke, as did Salama, bedded down in the truck. Amna was frightened for the children and said that the shelter was too far away.

“Stay in the room,” said Dahroug. “They won’t bomb the wasteland or the cemetery.”

Salama raised his head toward the full moon which stared down at them, eternally calm. “I see nothing but crazy lights,” he said.

From the truck window he directed his gaze at the closed room. It stood against the fence to the left of the entrance, with a roof that sloped toward the door, and a colorless wall. The wall was daubed with moonlight; the room enclosed within itself hearts filled with apprehension. It was like some abandoned hut, and he imagined it veiled the night and the ruins.

The raid plunges down at the city and destroys all that exists in it: it topples the law, the Mufti, the judge, the warder, and the hangman’s noose. The innermost parts of the earth hurst open, and it sweeps everything aside. Even noble-mindedness has its breathing choked. From out of the debris there rises a naked man and a woman with clothes tipped apart; the wardens have been killed .

Night after night the raids followed in close succession, raids that were either as silent as the wasteland or interspersed with antiaircraft fire. Dahrough would go to Salama in the truck to look up at the sky and talk.

“The raids aren’t as we heard.”

“The Italians aren’t like the Germans.”

Dahroug laughed and clamped his hand on Salama’s beard. “You’re cheating the angel of death by going on living.”

“Yes, I should have been in the grave at least a year and a half ago.”

“Is that why you don’t fear death?”

“No, I’ve feared it ever since I sniffed the smell of it as they carried me off to the Mufti.”

“Just imagine what you’d look like now!”

“I give thanks to God who has spared me that I might see the searchlights and the antiaircraft guns.”

A new energy pervaded the ruins, then things advanced apace in a manner undreamt of by Dahroug. Every day he would spend several hours away from the place. Later his business outside took up the whole of his day. Salama meanwhile worked diligently in the ruins as watchman and warehouseman. In his leisure time he would sit on a rubber tire with his back resting against the bumper of a truck, smoking a cigarette or combing through his beard, his sharp eyes yielding to an increasing compliance with his unruly desires. He told himself that she was ignoring his stares but that she was acutely conscious of them all the time and that his piercing gaze dominated her every movement as though manipulating some unseen thread. He looked at the sky and followed a kite as it made its farewell patrol at early evening, then looked down and saw her standing a few meters away in the direction of the tap from which water was flowing into a jerry can. “It’s been a very hot day,” he said.

She nodded her head in agreement and looked into his staring eyes, then lowered her head and hid a smile. The smile swept away the impediment of generosity of spirit in his breast, and he was carried off by a tornado of emotions. He gave an audible sigh, and the woman scolded Mahmoud, who, at the door, had pulled his sister by her pigtail. “Shall I make you tea?” she asked Salama.

“It’s likely that he’ll travel shortly to Sharqiyya province,” he said in a tone rebelling against his control.

With evening Dahroug returned. He appeared tired and begrimed, but the gleam of success shone in his eyes. He laughed loudly as he said to Salama, “Man, war’s not as they say. War’s a real blessing.” And he gave Amna a large parcel of meat, saying, “Hurry up — I haven’t had a bite all day.”