The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail (2 page)

           

T
he faces peered at him expectantly even before they'd exchanged greetings. Their concern was sincere, and he was troubled by his dissatisfaction, the bitterness which spoiled the remaining affection. Behind them the balcony overlooked the Nile. He focused on his wife's thick neck above her white collar and on her fleshy cheeks. She stood as the pillar of faith and virtue. Her green eyes were pouched in fat, but her smile was innocent and affectionate as she said, “My heart tells me all is well.”

Mustapha al-Minyawi stood beside her in his sharkskin suit, his slender build overshadowed by her sturdiness. His pale oval face, lackluster eyes, and bald head were turned toward Omar.

“Tell us about our old school friend. What did he say? Did he recognize you?”

Buthayna stood with her elbow leaning on the shoulder of a bronze statue, the statue of a woman stretching out her arms in welcome. Her green eyes looked at her father expectantly. She had the fine figure of her mother when she
was fourteen, but it seemed unlikely that she would grow obese with the years, that she would allow fat to mar her beauty. As was often the case, the glance in her eyes expressed an unspoken communication. Jamila, her younger sister, played with her teddy bear between two armchairs, oblivious of his arrival.

They all sat down and he said calmly, “Nothing.”

Zeinab exclaimed gratefully, “Thank God. How many times did I say that you only needed rest?”

Her complacency exasperated him. Pointing to his wife, he said to Mustapha, “The responsibility is hers.” And he repeated the charge after summarizing the doctor's remarks.

Mustapha said gleefully, “This is no more than play therapy!” But then he added ruefully, “Except for food and drinking. Curse them.”

Why should he curse them? He's not the one affected. The one who sets out on the mysterious voyage, perplexed by love and dissatisfaction, unable to speak to himself in a suitable language, what is
he
to do? Omar said to Mustapha, “Dr. Hamid asked about Baldy.” After the burst of laughter had subsided, he added, “And congratulations on winning his wife's admiration.”

Mustapha grinned boyishly, displaying his white teeth. “Thanks to the radio and TV, I've developed into a plague, striking those with weak resistance.”

Omar reflected about his other friend in jail. Ennui dulls even the sensitive conscience. Omar had been in the heat of danger, but his friend had not confessed. In spite of torture, he had not confessed. Now he'd melted into the darkness as though he'd never existed, while Omar grew sick with luxury, and his wife had become the exemplary symbol
of the kitchen and the bank. Ask yourself whether the Nile beneath us doesn't despair.

“Papa, should we get ready to travel?”

“We'll have a great time. I'm going to teach your sister to swim as I once taught you.”

“Away to the life buoys.”

Here is your mother resembling a giant life buoy. How oppressive the horizon is. Freedom is hidden somewhere beyond it and no hope remains except a troubled conscience.

“Unfortunately my wife prefers the beach at Ras el Bar, and someone like me never gets a vacation unless he's stricken with cancer.”

Jamila raised her head from her teddy bear, asking, “When will we leave, Papa?”

Mustapha was a monument to his love and marriage; counselor, helper, and witness. Every day he proved anew his friendship to Omar and the family. As yet he knew nothing of the waters which drifted in the river's depths.

“The doctor reminded me of my poetical youth!”

Mustapha laughed. “It seems he hasn't heard of my recent dramatic masterpieces.”

“I wish I'd told him of your experiences with art.”

“I wonder if the great physician believes in art.”

“His wife is fond of you. Isn't that enough?”

“Then she's fond of watermelon seeds and popcorn.”

Zeinab, who'd been watching the servant through the arched doorway, then said, “Let's go in to dinner.”

Omar announced that he would restrict himself to a chicken breast, fruit, and one glass of whiskey, to which Mustapha replied, “How about the caviar? Do I consume it alone?” Then he proceeded to give the description of
Churchill's breakfast which appeared in one of the newspapers during his visit to Cyprus. Although Omar hesitated a bit at the beginning of the meal, he soon ate and drank without restraint. Zeinab likewise couldn't resist temptation and drank a whole bottle of beer. Buthayna ate with moderation, a perversity in the eyes of her mother.

Mustapha remarked, “Food offers a better explanation of human behavior than sex does.”

Omar forgot himself for the first time, exclaiming merrily, “It seems you've got chickenitis!”

After dinner they sat together for half an hour, then Jamila was taken to bed and Buthayna and her mother went to visit friends in the same building. So Omar and Mustapha were left alone on the large balcony, a bottle of whiskey and an ice bucket on the glass-topped table between them. Not a movement stirred the trees and the lamps were covered with a veil of sand. The Nile appeared through the gaps of the treetops, silent, pale, devoid of life and meaning. Mustapha drank alone and muttered despairingly, “One hand on its own does not clap.”

Omar said, lighting a cigarette, “It's awful weather, and nothing pleases me anymore.”

Mustapha laughed. “I remember you couldn't stand me at one time.”

Omar disregarded the interruption. “I'm afraid my attitude toward work will continue indefinitely.”

“If you stick to your diet and exercise, you won't indulge in despair and let Buthayna down.”

“I'm going to drink another glass.”

“Okay, but you'll have to be stricter in Alexandria.”

“What do you mean, I couldn't stand you? You're a liar like most of those who practice your profession.”

“You were disgusted with me at the time of my great commitment to art.”

“I was undergoing an agonizing conflict within myself.”

“Yes, you were battling a secret urge which you suppressed cruelly, and my commitment must have been alarming to you.”

“But I never despised you; I found in you simply a tortured conscience.”

“I respected your conflict and forgave you, determined to keep you and art.” Then Mustapha laughed and said, “You must have been reassured when I decided to forsake art. Here I am, selling watermelon seeds and popcorn via the mass media, while you scale the summit of the legal profession in Al-Azhar Square.”

Repeated memories as stifling as the summer heat and the perennial dust revolve in a closed cycle. The child imagines he's riding a genuine horse. “He was exasperated, he is exasperated, be exasperated, so he is exasperated, she is exasperated, and the plural is they are exasperated.”

“Diet and sports.”

“You're a riot.”

“Amusement is my mission in life, and the plural is amusements. Art had meaning in the past, but science intruded and destroyed its significance.”

“I deserted art without being influenced by science.”

“Why did you give it up, then?”

He's as aggravating as the summer heat. The night lacked personality and merriment. There was noise in the street. How clever he is, posing questions to which he knows the answer. “Let me ask you the reason.”

“You told me at the time you wanted to live well and succeed.”

“So why did you ask the question?”

A look of recognition flickered in the eyes dulled by a past illness.

“You yourself didn't give up art for the sake of science alone.”

“Enlighten me further.”

“You couldn't create art that measured up to science.”

Mustapha laughed with an abandon bestowed by the whiskey and said, “Escape is always partly caused by failure, but believe me, science has robbed art of everything. In science you find the rapture of poetry, the ecstasy of religion, and the aspirations of philosophy. All that is left to art is amusement. One day it will be no more than a bridal ornament worn during the honeymoon.”

“This marvelous indictment springs from a revenge against art rather than a love of science.”

“Read the astronomy, physics, or other science texts, recall whatever plays and collections of poetry you wish, and note the sense of shame which overwhelms you.”

“Similar to my feelings when I think of legal cases and the law.”

“It's only the feeling of the artist out of step with time.”

Omar yawned, then said, “Damn it, I smell something serious in the air, and I have the horrible feeling that a building is going to be demolished.”

Mustapha filled a new glass and said, “We won't let the building be demolished.”

Omar leaned toward him and asked, “What do you think is wrong with me?”

“Exhaustion, monotony, and time.”

“Will diet and sports be enough?”

“More than enough, rest assured.”

           

F
rom now on you're the doctor and you're free. Freedom of action is a type of creativity, even while you're struggling against the appetites. If we say that man was not created to gorge himself with food, then with the liberation of the stomach the spirit is free to soar. Thus the clouds grow limpid and the August storms thunder. But how oppressive are the crowds, the humidity, and the smell of sweat. The exercise exhausted you and your feet ached as though you were learning how to walk for the first time. Eyes stared as the giant slowed his steps and, overcome by fatigue, sat down on the nearest bench on the Corniche. After a quarter of a century's blindness, you looked at people again. Thus had the shore witnessed the birth of Adam and Eve, but no one knows who will emerge from paradise. As a tall, thin youth, the son of a petty employee, he'd walked the length and breadth of Cairo without complaint, and generations of his ancestors had bruised their feet struggling with the land and had collapsed in the end from
fatigue. Soon the past will emerge from prison, and existence will become more of a torment.

“Othman, why are you looking at me like that?”

“Don't you want to play ball?”

“I don't like sports.”

“Nothing except poetry?”

Where can one escape your piercing glance? What's the use of arguing with you? You know that poetry is my life and that the coupling of two lines begets a melody which makes the wings of heaven dance.

“Isn't that so, Mustapha?”

The balding adolescent stated, “Existence itself is nothing but a composition of art.”

One day Othman in a state of revelation proclaimed, “I found the magic solution to all our problems.” Trembling with fervor, we raced up the heights of Utopia. The poetry meters were disrupted by convulsive explosions. We agreed that our souls were worthless. We proposed a gravitational force, other than Newton's, around which the living and dead revolved in an imaginary balance; none rising above or falling beneath the others. But when other forces opposed us, we preferred comfort to failure and thus the giant climbed with extraordinary speed from a Ford to a Packard until he settled in the end in a Cadillac and was on the verge of drowning in a quagmire of fat.

The umbrellas with their tassels touching each other formed a huge multicolored dome under which seminude bodies reclined. The pungent smell of perspiration dispersed in the bracing sea air under a sun which had renounced its tyranny. Buthayna stood smiling, a slim wet figure with red arms and legs, her hair shoved under a blue nylon cap. He himself was almost naked, the bushy black
hair of his chest exposed to the sun. Jamila was sitting between his legs building a sand pyramid. Zeinab reclined on a leather chaise longue stitching rose petals on an embroidery frame, her healthy bulk and swelling breasts inviting the stares of imbecilic adolescents.

“Don't forget to write him about the medicine.”

“I haven't, dear.”

How sweet you are, Buthayna. Your budding breasts are proof of the world's good taste. Perhaps I'm an old conservative, for I've let your mother take over your instruction about the facts of life. It's regrettable that you know nothing about life, that I've kept you enclosed like a little canary in your school bus. What lies behind your dreamy look? Despite the frankness of our talks, haven't you withheld certain secrets from me? Are you affected by the scent of these bare bodies, by the flirtations exchanged among the waves? God, let society conform with her thoughts and deeds so that she won't be exposed to evil. He said to her as she was sitting with her bare legs stretched under his beach chair, “We haven't had such a good time together before.”

“It's your fault.”

“I've stayed in the office all my life for your sake alone.”

She leaned back on her elbows, exposing her stomach and chest to the sun, which shone in the clear sky while one lonely white cloud floated above the curve of the bay. Her mother said without raising her head from her embroidery, “Tell him that his health is now more important than anything else.”

“More important than the building nationalizations?”

She answered defiantly, “Even than the building nationalizations.”

He remarked factually, “Social conformity is a fine thing.”

She said nothing. A pretty girl strutted in front of them and the glance he caught from her delighted his senses like the scent of jasmine.

“When I return to normal, I'll have to develop a philosophy of life which allows true happiness.”

“God help us.”

“God wishes us to be concerned about the welfare of all.” He glanced at her teasingly, then said, “But how would God respond to supplication in this case?”

She understood the implication, but withheld comment. He forgot the subject and turned to other thoughts. Although he felt lighter and more energetic, a nagging exasperation remained—the flies, his work, and his wife. One day Buthayna will be preoccupied by someone other than you, as will Jamila, who now builds pyramids in the sand. For God's sake, what do you want? Why does silence reign amid all the clamor? Why do you have the foreboding of fantastic perils? You hear the distressing sound of links snapping and feel that your footing is shaking so violently that your teeth will fall out. In the end you'll lose all your weight and float in space. Hold fast to things and regard them carefully, for soon their forms will disappear and no one will heed you. The waves are destroying Jamila's sand pyramid and the wind blows away the newspapers in which truth is relegated to the obituary sections. The client says to you, “I want to entrust my case to the Master.” How ludicrous! Honorable counselors. All that's left for us is to work in the national circus.

“Why are you so distracted, dear?”

“It's nothing.”

“Are you really all right?”

“I think so.”

“Judging from experience, I think you're in need of care.”

“We must respect experience.”

“Shall I tell you the cook's opinion?”

“Does the cook have an opinion?”

“She said that the man who's satisfied and successful is vulnerable to the evil eye.”

“And you believe that?”

“Of course not, but sometimes confusion drives us to seek any explanation.”

“So all you have to do is consult an exorcist.”

“Sarcasm was not in your nature before.”

He said, smiling, “A little sarcasm doesn't do any harm.”

“Let's forget it, dear.”

On their way home, she detained him briefly as the two girls walked ahead. “I have some good news for you.”

He looked at her with secret despair.

“I discovered something unexpected in Buthayna.”

“Other than what you discovered last year?”

“Yes. She's a poet, Omar.”

He raised his thick eyebrows in surprise.

“I'd noticed her absorption in writing and that she'd tear up what she'd worked on only to start it again. At last she confided to me that she writes poetry, so I laughed and told her….”

Zeinab hesitated, so he asked, “What did you tell her?”

“I told her that you also started out as a poet.”

He frowned and asked, “Didn't you tell her how I ended up?”

“But it's lovely for a girl her age to write poetry.”

“It is.”

“You must read her poetry and give her some advice.”

“If my advice had any value it would have benefited me!”

“You're pleased with the news?”

“Very much so.”