The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail (31 page)

           

T
he next evening he rushed to El Bodega with his head full of comforting and encouraging news from the newspapers. The weather was really marvelous as they clustered together around the table on the pavement. A warm and powerful force drew them all together, a force restless with the combined feelings of danger and hope. Ibrahim Khairat drew his small frame up to its full height. “Do you think,” he asked excitedly, “that Israel will just make this one move?”

They looked at one another in a strange way which expressed their inner feelings clearly, as though some kind of drunkenness had put them all into a daze.

“France, England, and America are all behind Israel,” Ibrahim Khairat continued.

Isa wondered anxiously how he could define his own position in the midst of such turbulent thoughts and emotions as these.

“It looks as though our army will be finished,” said Samir Abd al-Baqi, “before our allies declare themselves.”

They all laughed. The evening brought with it a quiet and secrecy. Ibrahim Khairat lowered his voice. “Things are clear now,” he said. “This is the end!”

They listened to him with a sense of nervous joy, and some of them even felt a little guilt. Abbas Sadiq raised his head from the
nargila
. His bulging eyes were gleaming brightly. “They have supporters behind them too,” he said.

“No one could be so crazy,” said Ibrahim Khairat scornfully, “as to think seriously that a world war is going to flare up over a spot which can hardly be seen on the world map.”

Isa found that their feelings reflected some of what he himself was thinking. He decided, however, that the other side of it should be voiced. “Do you really want the Jews to defeat us?” he asked.

“There will be a superficial defeat,” Ibrahim Khairat said, “which will rid us of the new occupation army. Then Israel will be forced to retreat and maybe even to be satisfied with taking over Sinai and making peace with the Arabs. England and France will intervene to settle the problems connected with the Near East and return things to normal in Egypt.”

“Doesn't that mean a reversion to Western influence?” Isa asked.

“That's better than the present situation, at any rate.”

“What a trap we've fallen into!” said Isa, as though he were talking to himself. “We stumble about, then we're torn to pieces, and finally we suffer terribly. We betray either our homeland or ourselves. However, from my point of view, a defeat in this particular war would be worse than death.”

“You're very romantic,” Abbas Sadiq said.

“Why should we be unhappy?” Ibrahim Khairat asked. “There's nothing left to be unhappy about, and, in a dead man's view, any kind of life is better than death.”

“Sometimes,” Isa replied, “I tell myself that death would be more bearable than going backwards, and at other times I tell myself that it would be better to remain without a role in a country which has one, rather than to have a role in a country which has none.”

“By your own admission,” said Ibrahim Khairat with a smile, “you've got a split personality. We're not concerned about the side of you which is talking; the opinion of the silent side is good enough for us!”

They all laughed loudly. It was getting dark. Ibrahim Khairat looked at Samir Abd al-Baqi as if to urge him to say something.

“I would like all our fellow citizens to live to enjoy human generosity,” said Samir.

“So you agree with us, do you?” Ibrahim Khairat asked.

“My words have a more profound significance than that,” Samir replied tersely.

“Are you opposed to our views then?”

“My words have a more profound significance than that,” he repeated.

Isa was lost in his own troubled thoughts. The side of him which was speaking had to defeat the silent side. He had to help it out; he had to show his scorn for the assailant quite shamelessly and thereby show his scorn for the silent side of himself. What has led us to this really sorry state of affairs? he wondered. Was there no way to forget personal defeats? The disease was raging throughout the country.

The air-raid siren sounded like a wall collapsing on
them suddenly. All light left the world, and the street was filled with the sound of people running in the dark. Samir suggested they go inside the café, but the idea got no encouragement from anyone. Isa thought of his wife on her own in Dokki with Umm Shalabi and felt sorry for her. Suddenly they were frightened by the sound of distant explosions, coming one after another. They quickly hurried into the café to the corner where they sat in the winter. The distant blasts kept coming with a frightening regularity. People started guessing in what parts of town they were falling. Shubra? Heliopolis? Hulwan?

“Where did the Jews get such forces?”

“And where are our planes?”

The attack continued and was certainly severe enough to be termed a real raid. The country had probably seen nothing like it throughout the Second World War. Their nerves were really on edge. A man came rushing in from outside. “It's British planes that are dropping the bombs!” he said in a voice which the whole blacked-out café could hear.

“Impossible!” scores of people yelled.

“I heard it on the Near East station!” he replied to confirm the news.

Comments began to pour out like hallucinations. Then the bombing stopped. Minutes passed in an anxious silence, and then the all-clear siren sounded. They released themselves from the grip of tension, and as the lights came on, gazed at each other with the same look of bewilderment that covers your face when you wake up after a long sleep. They were deciding whether to go or stay when the air-raid siren sounded again. Before long the explosions started again.

“The end seems even nearer than we thought,” Ibrahim Khairat whispered.

“Pray God we're not a part of it,” Samir Abd al-Baqi whispered.

After an hour of torture, the all-clear siren sounded. They left the café quickly and got into Ibrahim Khairat's car. They had only just gotten to Abu Ala's bridge when the siren sounded for the third time. They stopped the car near the pavement. As there were no shelters nearby, they decided to stay in the car. “We've got to live!” Ibrahim Khairat said with a nervous laugh. “The price of stock in our lives keeps going up.”

About an hour later, they heard the all-clear siren. The Ford sped across the bridge, and then crossed the Zamalek Bridge headed for Sharia an-Nil. Just at the start of it, the air-raid siren sounded for a fourth time. They stopped the car near an open space. The raid continued and the bombing was heavy.

“Maybe they're bombing particular targets,” Isa said to calm himself.

“Maybe they're bombing at random,” said Samir anxiously.

“Bombing civilians is a terrible responsibility in the face of world opinion,” Abbas Sadiq said in a voice which sounded as though he had been hit by shrapnel himself.

“The best thing is to keep calm,” Ibrahim Khairat said.

The all-clear siren sounded half an hour later. The car sped along at top speed to get them home before the air-raid siren came on again.

           

T
he Cairo sky was crisscrossed with planes day and night. The incredible thing was that daily life in houses, offices, shops, and markets carried on as usual, even though planes were screaming incessantly overhead and explosions kept going off. People still thought that the bombs were not falling indiscriminately, but there were many rumors of casualties. They carried on as usual, but death was looking down at them from a nearby window; its harbingers flew into their ears and it intruded into their innermost thoughts. The city was turned into an army camp; convoys of armored vehicles and trucks moved along the streets, and normal life was drowned in a sea of thoughts and misgivings.

Inayat Hanem came to live with her daughter in Dokki till things settled down. At night, the world looked as it had before history. They gathered around the radio in the house; their mouths felt very dry and they hoped that listening to the voices of the announcers and the national songs would help to relieve the dryness.

The explosions and gunfire carried on like street vendors' cries. Eventually the old lady's eyes began to wander and lost their color. She clutched the rosary in her palm as though it were a lightning conductor. Qadriyya broke down as quickly as her mother, and her robustness was of no help to her. Her languid eyes lost their look of majestic apathy. The discussions at the United Nations emerged from the radio like air for a suffocating man. The tales from Port Said followed and they began to grieve.

“Can we stand up to the English and French?” Qadriyya asked in a moment of alarm.

“Port Said is fighting back,” Isa replied anxiously, “and the world's in a state of revolution!”

“They're all talking, and we're being hit!”

“Yes. What can be done?”

“There has to be a solution,” she shouted nervously, “any solution. If there isn't, my nerves will be destroyed.”

His nerves were on the verge of collapse too. Sadness, darkness, and prison. The darkness inspired him to hope desperately for victory. Many things melted away in the darkness. He forgot about the past and the future, and focused on the desire for victory. Perhaps the fact that he could not leave the house gave him a better chance to think about the situation and become thoroughly aware of the danger, to yearn for victory and keep the hidden side of his own nature quiet. Deep down inside him, a well of enthusiasm began to move which almost pushed him toward self-sacrifice. As he dawdled around in the daytime, he could read in hundreds of other faces the same feelings which tied him to life in spite of all the dust, oblivion, and undercurrents of selfishness. He was like a drowning man, thinking only of saving himself. It seemed to him that the barrier which stood between him and the revolution
was dissolving at a rate which he would never have thought possible before.

Ibrahim Khairat came to visit him one afternoon on his way to his office in the city. He seemed extremely self-confident and serious. “The whole tragedy will be over in a few hours,” he said.

Isa looked at him in bewilderment with his big, round eyes.

“Some of our men are meeting the responsible authorities at this moment,” said Ibrahim. He was frowning because he felt a sense of authority. “We're trying to persuade them to surrender so that we can save whatever can be saved!”

Isa got the impression that he was seeing the High Commissioner's procession just as he had done in the old days. “What's left to be saved?” he asked.

“Don't be overly pessimistic,” Ibrahim retorted, and then continued angrily: “People who regard life and death as the same thing are really miserable creatures.”

“It's like a nightmare,” Isa said sorrowfully.

“With the state of mind we're in,” said Ibrahim angrily, “defeat is easy to live with.”

“We'd soon get tired if we started counting mankind's troubles. I'm asking myself whether life is really fit for human beings!”

Ibrahim Khairat shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

“Maybe it's some sort of idiocy to hang on to life in spite of all its miseries,” Isa continued. “But as long as we're alive, we should wage an unflagging war on all types of stupidity.”

“Tell me,” Ibrahim asked him, “have you really changed?”

Isa did not say a word, but his face contracted into an expression of utter disgust. However, when the crisis reached its peak, new factors came rushing into the whirlpool. The world gave its decision, the threats disappeared, and the enemy was forced to swallow its pride and submit to an unprecedented reality. Then there was an outburst of joy greater than any bomb.

Life returned to the corner in El Bodega, and the friends all met again. A faded smile, and a languid look which could not see into the future.

“There's some hope that we'll gain some weight,” said Ibrahim Khairat mockingly, “like people who are condemned to death!”

Abbas Sadiq brandished the stem of his
nargila
. “This is a chance,” he said, “which is a million times rarer than winning money at roulette.”

Even Samir al-Baqi's green eyes showed signs of disappointment deep down. Even more remarkable was the fact that Isa himself—even after he had felt the taste of victory—rapidly sank into a profound lethargy like a pile of ash. His thoughts turned in on themselves and were buried in darkness once more.

           

E
veryone has a job, but he had none. Every wife has children, but she had none. Every citizen in a country has his own abode, but he was an exile in his own homeland. After the usual escapist roles, what was left? In the mornings, he dawdled from one café to another; in the evenings, he would mull over his sorrows at El Bodega and make boring visits within the family circle. After the usual escapist roles, what was left? He went through terrible agonies, and felt lonely and bored. How much longer can this miserable existence last? he asked himself.

There he was sitting by the windowpane, sunning himself in the bitter cold, jobless and hopeless. Qadriyya was concentrating on some crocheting. She no longer dispelled his feeling of loneliness. With her disheveled hair and swollen features, she showed all the signs of an all too common neglect. She had become fatter and fleshier, and her face showed clearly that in its natural state it was a complete stranger to the comeliness of youth.

He looked at her sorrowfully, and then turned away to
read the headlines in the papers; he no longer bothered to read the news. Then he gave up and started talking to himself; in recent years he had been doing a great deal of this. Qadriyya was not the wife he had been looking for, and he still felt bitterly sorry about Salwa, even though the love itself had died long since. If it had not been for the wine, he would not have been able to give himself up to Qadriyya's arms. Nor would he have tolerated the hints about her wealth, which she kept using to hem him in, if it were not for the utter despair he felt. It was pure agony for him every time he remembered that she was spending money on her home while he was not spending a penny of his pension, except that is, on himself. Even his bank balance did him no good at all in his family life. So what was the point of all this sponging?

One day, she proved to him that she too was thinking about other things besides mealtimes and crocheting. “Isa,” she said, “you seem very distracted, and sometimes you look so miserable. It makes me very worried.”

Isa said that he was sorry that she was worried. “I'm quite well,” he continued, “so don't worry yourself about that.”

“Some things can be harmful for a man.”

“Such as?”

“Not working when he can.”

He smiled even though he was really furious. “Maybe you're annoyed,” he said, “to find your husband out of a job.”

“It doesn't worry me at all,” she replied emphatically, “apart from the effect which it has on you.”

“What do you suggest I do?”

“You know best about that, my dear.”

“There aren't any ministerial posts vacant at the moment,” he replied simply.

They both laughed with no feeling at all. However, she carried on hopefully. “Think about it seriously,” she said. “Please.”

He told himself that she was right, and that she did occasionally have a sensible idea in that stupid head of hers. He himself was convinced that he needed to get a job, but why did his ambition let him down? Did his will have some kind of disease? Why didn't he open an office, or else join one?

He was thinking about a job, but living without one and without any serious initiative about taking the required steps. His bank balance gave him a certain amount of security, and this had been increased by his prosperous marriage. And apart from all that, his pension could cover his daily expenses. So he gave in to laziness and arrogance, and his eternal sense of alienation was too great to let him begin at the bottom of the ladder. He sought consolation in any way he could, at home or outside, in Ra's al-Barr* or Alexandria, without paying any attention to the passage of time.

“You're getting heavier all the time,” Samir Abd al-Baqi told him. “You should look after yourself.”

It was true that he was eating too much, sweets especially, and no meal went by without having a glass or two. “I'm quite aware of that,” he replied. “People will say that my wife is fattening me up well.”

“I was only thinking of your health,” replied Samir timidly.

“Yes, I daresay,” said Isa. “But sometimes I can read it in people's eyes.”

“It's entirely your own fault,” said Samir with a frown. “You're so lazy. I often wonder in amazement where that Isa who used to leave the ministry after midnight almost every day has disappeared to, to say nothing of the one who put so much into the party and the club.”

One day, the radio announcer spoke about the space flight and the dawning of a new era. Isa woke up from his slumber, and a new interest intruded into his apathetic spirit. He started reading the papers avidly again and listening closely to the radio. The gathering at the corner in El Bodega found something else to do apart from talking about political misfortunes and chewing over rumors.

“Isn't it marvelous,” Abbas Sadiq remarked, “to read the papers every morning with this feeling of excitement?”

“This marks the setting of the politicians' star,” said Ibrahim Khairat maliciously. “Why don't they relinquish their positions to the
ulama
⁴³
and then go to blazes?”

“Now we should start looking hopefully to the heavens again!” said Samir Abd al-Baqi.

Isa raised his eyes to the ceiling as though he were looking at the heavens, and pictured the stars and planets to himself with a childlike desire for some magical and imaginary means of escape. “How wonderful it would be to leave the earth forever,” he muttered, and then continued complaining. “It's all become so boring it's like a disease!”

He wondered if it would be possible for him to establish his connection with mankind in general and to forget his compulsory affiliation with this country.