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

Apart from that dismal experience, he would become boggle-eyed as he gawked at the women walking in the street, his heart suffering emotional pain as his stomach suffered hunger. He found no one but his mother on whom to vent his fury and frustration, despite her great love for him, the love of an old woman for an only son. Whenever she urged him to take a job or pull himself together, he would challenge her, “And when are you going to depart this world?”

“May God forgive you,” she would say with a smile. “And what would you do if my pension was no longer available to you?”

“I’d sell the house.”

“You wouldn’t find anyone to buy it for more than five hundred pounds, which you’d fritter away in a couple of months, and you’d then take up begging.”

He never said a kind word to her. His friends advised him to change his manner so he would not kill her off with worry and grief and actually expose himself to beggary. They reminded him of God’s words and of what the Prophet had said about respect for one’s parents, but his feeling of utter hopelessness had plucked out the roots of faith from a heart brimful with hunger and afflictions. He stuck to his scoffing, embittered attitude toward the events that passed by him, such as the battles between the political parties and the World War, calling down upon the world, with exaggerated mockery and scorn, yet more ruin and destruction. His mother completely despaired of him and resigned herself to the will of God. Sometimes, overwhelmed by distress, she would say, “Why do you repay my love with disrespect?”

And he would say derisively, “One of the causes of ill-fortune in this world is that some people live longer than necessary.”

—

The cost of living continued to rise. Was there to be further deprivation? And so he suggested to his mother that he should take in a person, or a family, as lodgers in his bedroom and that he should sleep on the couch in her room. “And open our house to strangers!” cried his mother in disbelief.

“Better than dying of hunger,” he shouted at her. He cast a glance at the courtyard of the house and muttered, “It’s like a football ground and it’s good for nothing.”

An agent brought along a student from the country, who took the room for a pound. Friends made a joke of the incident and said that the Qushtumur house had become a boardinghouse, and they gave his mother the name “Madame al-Baqli.” But he did not try to evade their ridicule and would sing “Days arrive when a man of breeding is humiliated.”

Unlike many he made light of the air raids. He never responded to the siren — he would not leave his seat at the café and did not know the way to the shelter. He did not mind this. What he did mind was that life was rushing past him and he was approaching his forties without having enjoyed a decent meal or a beautiful woman. He had not even been affected by the Revolution. “It seems,” he had remarked ironically, “that this Revolution is directed against us landlords!”

He never in his life read a newspaper, and got his information haphazardly at the gatherings of his friends. He became older, passed fifty. His mother became advanced in years; she grew frail and began to lose interest in things. She became critically ill. A doctor friend of his examined her and diagnosed a heart condition and prescribed medicines and rest. Rest, however, was out of the question, and medicines not feasible. In the meantime he continued to wonder how he would make out if he were to be deprived of her pension. Hour by hour she drew nearer to death, until one morning he woke up to find her dead. He looked at her for a long time before covering her face. He felt that he was recollecting dimmed memories from a distant past and that he was compelled to desist from his sarcasm and to recognize that that particular moment of the morning was a sad and melancholy one.

Right away he sought out the richest of his friends, Mr. Nuh, a dealer in property, who undertook to make the necessary arrangements for the burial of the deceased, and who also warned him against selling the house if he should find himself after a while down and out in the street. Isam al-Baqli wondered, though, how long cheating at backgammon and the letting out of the room would support him. Might there not be too a limit to one’s friends’ generosity? He made a venture into begging in the outskirts of the city, and it was not a barren exercise.

Days followed one upon the other, one leader died and another took his place, and then the “open-door” policy came in when he was knocking on seventy, his seventieth year of desperation and the squandering of life. The cost of living continued to rise in real earnest, and the scales wavered perilously. Begging was no longer of any avail, the generosity of friends was suddenly cut off (some of his friends had, for his bad luck, departed this world, while the remainder had betaken themselves to a quiet old age in which they were happy to sit around and chat), and he plunged headlong into the abyss of ruin. What a wretched, desperate old man he was!

Then one day the darkness of his existence dissolved to reveal the face of the broker making his descent on angelic wings straight down from the heavens. In the presence of his two friends, the lawyer and the property dealer, the transaction was concluded and the fabulous sum deposited in the bank. The three of them then sat in a low-class café on al-Azhar Street, a café whose unpretentiousness was in keeping with the wretched appearance of the millionaire. Isam al-Baqli gave a deep sigh of satisfaction that dispensed with any words. For the first time in his life he was totally happy. Yet, feeling at a loss, he said, “But don’t you two leave me on my own.”

“From today on you’re not in need of anyone,” said Othman al-Qulla, the lawyer, laughing.

But Mr. Nuh said, “He’s mad and needs someone to guide him at every step.”

“You two,” said al-Baqli gratefully, “are the best persons I’ve known in my life.”

“There are certain priorities,” said Mr. Nuh, “before we get down to any work — things that can’t be put off. First and foremost, you must go to the Turkish baths and get rid of all that accumulated dirt so that you can show your true self.”

“I’m afraid they won’t know me at the bank….”

“And have a haircut and a shave, and today we’ll buy you a ready-made suit and other clothes so that you can put up at a decent hotel without arousing suspicion.”

“Shall I stay at a hotel permanently?”

“If you want to,” said the lawyer. “You’ll find full service and everything….”

“A flat also has its merits,” said Mr. Nuh.

“But a flat’s not complete without a bride!” exclaimed al-Baqli.

“A bride?”

“Why not? I’ll not be the first or last bridegroom at seventy!”

“It’s a problem.”

“Don’t forget the bridegroom’s a millionaire.”

“That’s a strong incentive, but only to the unscrupulous….” said the lawyer, laughing.

“Scrupulous or not — it’s all one in the end!” said al-Baqli scornfully.

“No, you might find yourself back at begging quicker than you imagined,” said Nuh.

“Let’s put that off for the time being,” said the lawyer.

“The question of a woman cannot be put off,” said Isam al-Baqli. “It’s more important than the ready-made suit.”

“There are plenty of opportunities, and nightclubs galore.”

“My need of the two of you in this respect is particularly urgent.”

“But we said goodbye to riotous living ages ago.”

“How can I get along on my own?”

“Someone accompanied by money is never alone.”

“We’ll have another session,” said Mr. Nuh, “after giving thought to the investing of the fortune. It would be wise to spend from the income and not from the capital.”