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

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Naguib Mahfouz The Time and the Place: And Other Stories

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Selected and translated by the distinguished scholar Denys Johnson-Daivies, these stories have all the celebrated and distinctive characters and qualities found in Mahfouz's novels: The denizens of the dark, narrow alleyways of Cairo, who struggle to survive the poverty; melancholy ruminations on death; experiments with the supernatural; and witty excursions into Cairene middle-class life.

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And he had kept his promise and had come to ask for her hand. By then she had attained a degree of maturity that gave her an understanding of the dimensions of her tragic position. She had found that she had no love or respect for him and that he was as far as he could be from her dreams and from the ideas she had formed of what constituted an ideal and moral person. But what was to be done? Her father had passed away two years ago, and her mother had been taken aback by the forwardness of the man. However, she had said to her, “I know your attachment to your personal independence, so I leave the decision to you.”

She had been conscious of the critical position she was in. She had either to accept or to close the door forever. It was the sort of situation that could force her into something she detested. She was the rich, beautiful girl, a byword in Abbasiyya for her nobility of character, and now here she was struggling helplessly in a well-sprung trap, while he looked down at her with rapacious eyes. Just as she had hated his strength, so too did she hate her own weakness. To have abused her innocence was one thing, but for him to have the upper hand now that she was fully in possession of her faculties was something else. He had said, “So here I am, making good my promise because I love you.” He had also said, “I know of your love of teaching, and you will complete your studies at the College of Science.”

She had felt such anger as she had never felt before. She had rejected coercion in the same way as she rejected ugliness. It had meant little to her to sacrifice marriage. She had welcomed being on her own, for solitude accompanied by self-respect was not loneliness. She had also guessed he was after her money. She had told her mother quite straightforwardly, “No,” to which her mother had replied, “I am astonished you did not make this decision from the first moment.”

The man had blocked her way outside and said, “How can you refuse? Don’t you realize the outcome?” And she had replied with an asperity he had not expected, “For me any outcome is preferable to being married to you.”

After finishing her studies, she had wanted something to do to fill her spare time, so she had worked as a teacher. Chances to marry had come time after time, but she had turned her back on them all.

“Does no one please you?” her mother asked her.

“I know what I’m doing,” she had said gently.

“But time is going by.”

“Let it go as it pleases, I am content.”

Day by day she becomes older. She avoids love, fears it. With all her strength she hopes that life will pass calmly, peacefully, rather than happily. She goes on persuading herself that happiness is not confined to love and motherhood. Never has she regretted her firm decision. Who knows what the morrow holds? But she was certainly unhappy that he should again make his appearance in her life, that she would be dealing with him day after day, and that he would be making of the past a living and painful present.

Then, the first time he was alone with her in his room, he asked her, “How are you?”

She answered coldly, “I’m fine.”

He hesitated slightly before inquiring, “Have you not…I mean, did you get married?”

In the tone of someone intent on cutting short a conversation, she said, “I told you, I’m fine.”

The Time and the Place

It happened on my last night in the old house, or rather on the night that it had been agreed was to be the last. Despite being old and clearly out of place in a contemporary setting, the house possessed a character of its own. It had become, as it were, an ancient monument, and this was further accentuated by a location that gave one a view of a square born the same year as the city of Cairo itself. By virtue of having inherited the house, we had been brought up there. Then, by reason of the discord of different generations, a feeling of antipathy had grown up between us and the house, and we found ourselves aspiring to the bright new milieux, far distant from the stone walls that lay embedded in narrow alleyways.

I was sitting in the spacious living room, on a dilapidated couch, which it had been decided to dispose of, under a skylight firmly closed against the caprices of the autumn weather. I was sipping at a glass of cinnamon tea and gazing at a small brass ewer standing on a table in front of me; out of it protruded a stick of Javanese incense, slowly giving out a thread of fragrant smoke that coiled and curled under the lamplight in the silence of leave-taking. For no reason a listlessness gripped at my feeling of well-being, after which I was overcome by a mysterious sense of unease. I steeled myself to fight against it, but the whole of life piled up before my eyes in a fleeting flash, like a ball of light flung forward with cosmic speed; in no time it was extinguished, giving itself up to the unknown, submerged in its endless depths.

I told myself that I was acquainted with such tricks and that the departure tomorrow, so arbitrarily fixed, was reminding me of one’s final departure, when the cameleer raises his voice to intone the very last song. I began to seek distraction from the sorrows of leave-taking by imagining the new abode in the wide street under the densely growing branches of mimosa lebbek trees, and the new life that gave promise of immeasurable sophisticated delights. No sooner had the cinnamon tea come to rest inside me than I made a sudden and gigantic leap that transferred me from one actuality into another. From deep within me rose a call that with boundless confidence invited me to open doors, to pull aside the screen, to invade space, and grab hold of approval and forgiveness from the atmosphere so fragrant with incense. Cares, anxieties, and thoughts of annihilation all faded away, drowned in a flood of energy and a sense of enchantment and ecstasy, and my heart quivered in a wonderful dance brought into being by passionate exuberance.

Within me flashed a light, which assumed the form of a person. Presenting me with a glass of wine filled to overflowing, he said to me amiably, “Accept the gift of a miracle.” I expected something to happen and it did: dissolving into nothingness, the living room was replaced by a vast courtyard that extended far into the distance until it met its boundary with the square in a thick white wall. The courtyard was covered with grassy rounds and crescents, with a well in the middle. At a short distance from the well was a lofty palm tree. I found myself wavering between two sensations: a feeling that told me I was witnessing a scene I had never viewed before, and another that told me that there was nothing strange about it, that I had both seen it and was remembering it. I made a violent movement with my head so as to bring myself back to the present, if in fact my mind had been wandering. The scene merely became clearer, more dominating, while between the palm tree and the well a human being took shape. This person, though concealed within a black gibba and a tall green turban, was none other than myself; despite the flowing beard, the face was mine. Once again, I moved my head, but the scene merely became even clearer and sharper; the tawny light indicated that the sun was setting. There also took shape, between the well and the date palm, a middle-aged man who was dressed similarly to myself. I saw him handing me a small box and saying, “These are days of insecurity. You must hide it under the ground until you return to it in due time.”

“Wouldn’t it be best,” I asked him, “for me to have a look at it before hiding it?”

“No, no,” he said firmly, “that would cause you to be hasty in taking action before a year is up, and you would perish.”

“Have I to wait a year?”

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