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

Taken by surprise, I said, “I didn’t come to meet anyone, but I’d be glad to know the name of the person living in the house.”

“Really! And why?”

Pushing aside a feeling of apprehension, I said, “I’d like to know if the person living here is from the al-Baqallani family.”

“Enough of al-Baqallani — just continue your journey to its end.”

It occurred to me that the two of them were security men, and I was seized with alarm and confusion. “There’s no journey, no meeting,” I said.

“You’ll change your mind.”

Each seized me by an arm, and despite my struggles, herded me inside. Torn from a dream, I was thrust into a nightmare. I was taken into a lighted reception room in the center of which stood a person in a white galabeya, handcuffed. Round about the room I saw several men of the same type as the two who had herded me inside. One of the two men said, “He was coming to meet his friend.”

A man — I guessed him to be the leader of the group — turned to the man under arrest. “One of your comrades?” he asked him.

“I’ve not seen him before,” answered the young man sullenly.

Looking toward me, the leader asked, “Are you going to repeat the same story, or will you save yourself and us the trouble and confess?”

“I swear by Almighty God,” I exclaimed vehemently, “that I have no connection with anything you may suspect.”

He stretched out his hand. “Your identity card.” I gave him the card. He read it, then asked me, “What brought you here?”

I pointed to the two men and said in an aggrieved tone, “They brought me here by force.”

“They hunted you out from off the streets?”

“I came to the alley to ask about the al-Baqallani family.”

“And what should cause you to ask about them?”

Utterly confused, I was conscious of the wariness inevitably felt by anyone under questioning. “I read about them in a history,” I said, “I read that they used to live in the third house to the right as you enter this alley.”

“Tell me of the work in which you read that.”

I became even more confused and made no answer.

“Lying won’t do any good, in fact it’ll do you more harm.”

“What do you want of me?” I asked in near despair.

“We’re taking you in for questioning,” he said quietly.

“You won’t believe me if I tell you the truth,” I shouted.

“What might this truth be?”

I gave a sigh; there was dust in my spittle. Then I started to talk. “I was sitting alone in the living room of my house…” And I divulged my secret under their stern and derisive gazes. When I had finished, the man said coldly, “Pretending to be mad also won’t do any good.”

Taking the letter from my pocket, I called out joyfully, “Here’s the proof for you.”

He scrutinized it, then muttered to himself, “A strange piece of paper whose secret we shall shortly discover.” He began carefully reading the lines of writing, and his lips parted in a scornful smile. “An obvious code,” he mumbled. Then he looked toward the owner of the house, who was under arrest, and asked him, “Would you be Arif al-Baqallani? Is that your code name?”

“I have no code name,” said the young man contemptuously, “and this stranger is nothing but one of your stooges you’ve brought along so as to trump up a charge against me, but I’m well aware of such tricks.”

“Wouldn’t it be best,” one of the assistants inquired of the leader, “to stay on in case some others turn up and fall into the trap?”

“We’ll wait until dawn,” said the leader, and he gestured to the two men holding me, at which, disregarding my protests, they began putting handcuffs on me. I could not believe how things had turned out. How could they begin with a wonderful miracle and end up with such a reversal of fortune? I neither believed it could be nor gave way to despair. I was for certain up to my ears in trouble, yet the vision had not been revealed to me for mere jest. I must admit my childish error, I must reconsider things, I must put trust in time.

A heavy silence enclosed us. I brought to mind my brother and sister in the new house, and the gaping hole in the old. The situation presented itself to me from the point of view of someone standing outside it and I could not help but give a laugh. But no one turned to me, no one broke the silence.

It was nothing but a single room in the unpretentious Nouri Alley, off Clot Bey Street. In the middle of the room was the bar and the shelf embellished with bottles. It was called The Flower and was passionately patronized by old men addicted to drink. Its barman was advanced in years, excessively quiet, a man who inspired silence and yet effused a cordial friendliness. Unlike other taverns, The Flower dozed in a delightful tranquility. The regulars would converse inwardly, with glances rather than words. On the night that was blessed, the barman departed from his traditional silence.

“Yesterday,” he said, “I dreamed that a gift would be presented to a man of good fortune….”

Safwan’s heart broke into a song with gentle lute accompaniment, while alcoholic waves flowed through him like electricity as he congratulated himself with the words “O blessed, blessed night!” He left the bar, reeling drunk, and plunged into the sublime night under an autumn sky that was not without a twinkling of stars. He made his way toward Nuzha Street, cutting across the square, glowing with an intoxication unadulterated by the least sensation of drowsiness. The street was humbled under the veil of darkness, except for the light from the regularly spaced streetlamps, the shops having closed their doors and given themselves up to sleep. He stood in front of his house: the fourth on the right, Number 42, a single-storied house fronted by an old courtyard of whose garden nothing remained but a solitary towering date palm. Astonished at the dense darkness that surrounded the house, he wondered why his wife had not as usual turned on the light by the front door. It seemed that the house was manifesting itself in a new, gloomily forlorn shape and that it exuded a smell like that of old age. Raising his voice, he called out. “Hey there!”

From behind the fence there rose before his eyes the form of a man, who coughed and inquired, “Who are you? What do you want?”

Safwan was startled at the presence of this stranger and asked sharply, “And who are you? What’s brought you to my house?”

“Your house?” said the man in a hoarse, angry voice.

“Who are you?”

“I am the guardian for religious endowment properties.”

“But this is my house.”

“This house has been deserted for ages,” the man scoffed. “People avoid it because it’s rumored to be haunted by spirits.”

Safwan decided he must have lost his way, and hurried back toward the square. He gave it a long comprehensive look, then raised his head to the street sign and read out loud, “Nuzha.” So again he entered the street and counted off the houses until he arrived at the fourth. There he stood in a state of bewilderment, almost of panic: he could find neither his own house nor the haunted one. Instead he saw an empty space, a stretch of wasteland lying between the other houses. “Is it my house that I’ve lost or my mind?” he wondered.

He saw a policeman approaching, examining the locks of the shops. He stood in his path and pointed toward the empty wasteland. “What do you see there?”

The policeman stared at him suspiciously and muttered, “As you can see, it’s a piece of wasteland where they sometimes set up funeral pavilions.”

“That’s just where I should have found my house,” said Safwan. “I left it there with my wife inside it in the pink of health only this afternoon, so when could it have been pulled down and all the rubble cleared away?”