The Seventh Heaven (18 page)

A great man, but blighted just the same. Temptations surround him from all sides, like water and wind. I found the urge of conquest aroused in me, for right before me were his wife and family. What’s more, it was a household
fully aware of what was going on around it. Here you have a conversation that shows the divisions between a husband and his spouse:

“What kind of world is this?” she asked. “Are we doomed to all this torment simply because we’re good?”

He cut her off firmly. “This is the lot of the honest in hellish times.”

“They’re all thieves, as you know very well!” she declared.

“Yes, they are—they’re all thieves.”

“And how will it all end?”

“My sole possession is patience,” he rejoined.

This display was both an objection to the way things were going, and a reproach to her husband’s virtue, as well.

The daughter listens a great deal; she reads the daily papers, and takes time to think about worldly affairs. Shall her marriage take place under these dreadful conditions? I did not shrink from sending her a beguiling young man, as well as a female colleague with know-how in finding furnished flats—yet the young couple stopped at the edge of sin.

“The crooks are safe, playing around as though they’re above the law,” the daughter declared. “Meanwhile, the law itself is wretched—and is only applied against the wretched.”

“All doors are open for their children,” said one of Muhammad’s own. “Only they have good opportunities.”

“All we get is suffering, and honey-coated lies.”

“Our father is an honorable man. An honest judge— but weaker than a wealthy criminal!”

I was delighted by what I heard and prepared myself for work. Everything in my existence is done in seconds. My task seemed extremely easy. I decided to leave the man alone to focus on his children. If one wants to subdue a fortress, then he must first look for a weak point in its walls. There is where he must put his toughest toil.

The ecstasy that precedes effort lit up my heart. Soon, though, it was mixed with something, and—O how quickly and strangely!—this something resembled an odor of dubious origin. The euphoria ebbed away like a wave fleeing the shore. I fell into a state of lassitude, a torpor like a sense of being foiled, as though I were ashamed of myself for the first time in my deep-rooted history. I hesitated, when I had never hesitated before. I flinched, when I had never flinched before. Whatever lust I had had for battle, my victory in it was cause for derision, a defeat sure to bring shame.

No, Satan—this is not mere indolence, it is renunciation. I have never had such a contretemps before. I will leave you, Mr. Muhammad, to your blameless travail, to your trying personal circumstances, and your torturous dependents. You are not happy, but still they envy you. You do not succumb to them, so they try to provoke you. No one loves you. No one empathizes with you. They bear a grudge against you and plot ceaselessly to spite you with the worst of wills.

Now I will bid you adieu. I’ll follow your news from afar. You shall remain a black stain on my being forever.

If ever I’m asked about you, I will reply, “That man stopped the Devil from doing his job.”

A
ll
of it happened such a long time ago. The shaykh of our alley told me the story as we sat one day in a garden full of roses….

Hamza Qandil was found after a long disappearance, a stiffened corpse lying out in the desert. He had been stabbed in the neck with a sharp object. His robe was soaked with hardened blood, his turban strewn down the length of his body. But his watch and his money had not been touched— so clearly robbery had not been the motive. As the authorities began to look into the crime, word of what happened spread through the quarter like a fire through kindling.

Voices rang out from within Hamza’s house. The neighbor-women shared in the customary wailing, and
people traded knowing looks. An air of tense drama spread out through the
hara.
Yet some felt a secret satisfaction, mixed with a certain sense of guilt. “Uncle” Dakrouri, the milk peddler, expressed some of this when he whispered to the prayer leader of our alley, “This murder went beyond what anyone expected—despite the man’s pig-headedness and lack of humor.”

“God does what He will,” answered the
imam.

The prosecutor’s office asked about the victim’s enemies. The question exposed an atmosphere of evasion, as his widow said that she didn’t know anything of his relations with the outside world. Not a soul would testify that they had ever seen a sign of enmity between the murdered man and anyone else in the quarter. And yet, no one volunteered any helpful testimony. The detective looked at the shaykh of the
hara
quizzically, saying:

“The only thing I’ve been able to observe is that he had no friends!”

“He got on people’s nerves, but I never bothered to find out why,” the shaykh replied.

The investigation revealed that Qandil used to cut through the empty lot outside of our alley on his way to and from work in the square. No one would accompany him either coming or going. When the traditional question was asked—”Did the folks here complain about anyone?”—the consistent response was a curt denial. No one believed anybody else, but that’s how things were. But why didn’t Hamza Qandil have a single friend in the alley? Wasn’t it likely that the place held a grudge against him?

The shaykh of the
hara
said that Qandil had a bit more
learning than his peers. He used to sit in the café telling people about the wonders of the world that he had read about in the newspapers, astounding his listeners, whom he held entranced. As a result, every group he sat in became his forum, in which he took a central place considered unseemly for anyone but local gang bosses or government officials. The neighbors grew annoyed with him, watching him with hearts filled with envy and resentment.

One day, tensions reached their peak when he talked about the cemetery in a way that went far beyond all bounds of reason. “Look at the graveyard,” he grumbled. “It takes up the most beautiful place in our district!”

Someone asked him what he wanted there instead.

“Imagine in the northern part houses for people, and in the south, a rose garden!”

The people become angry in a way they had never been before. They hurled reproaches at him in a hail of rebuke, reminding him of the dignity of the dead and the obligation to be faithful to them. Most agitated of all was Bayumi Zalat; he warned him not to say anything more about the cemetery, shouting, “We live in our houses only a few years—but we dwell in our tombs till the Day of Resurrection!”

“Don’t people have rights, too?” Qandil asked.

But Zalat cut him off, enraged. “Religion demands respect for the dead!”

With this, Zalat, who didn’t know the first thing about his faith, issued his very own religious ruling. But later, after the battle began to cool, the shaykh of the
hara
came, bearing a decree from the governor’s office. Thep
order called for the removal of the cemetery by a fixed deadline—and for the people to build new tombs in the heart of the desert.

There was no connection between what Qandil had said and this decision, though some thought there was— while others believed, as the Qur’an says, that it’s wrong to suspect someone unless you have proof. Meanwhile, most people said, “Qandil certainly isn’t important enough to influence the government—but in any case, is he not like an evil omen?”

All in all, they blamed him for what happened, while, from his side, he made no effort to hide his pleasure at the decree. The people’s frustration and anger kept getting stronger and stronger. Finally, they gathered before the shaykh of the
hara,
the men crying out and the women lamenting, and demanded that he tell the authorities that the government’s order was void and forbidden: that it was against religion, and fidelity to the dead.

The shaykh replied that his reverence for those who have died was no less than theirs. Nonetheless, they would still be moved, in absolute compliance with the laws of God, and of decency. But the people insisted, “This means that a curse will fall upon the
hara,
and upon all who live there!”

Then the shaykh called out to them that the government’s decision was final, and charged them to ready themselves to carry it out. At this, Zalat pulled away from them. In a braying voice, he declared:

“We haven’t heard anything like that since the age of the infidels!”

Their anger with the government mixed with their anger at Qandil until it became a single, seething fury. Then, one night, as Bayumi Zalat was returning from an evening out, he took a shortcut through the tombs in the cemetery. There, at the little fountain, a skeleton loomed before him, wrapped in a shroud. Zalat halted, nailed where he stood, while everything that had been in his head instantly flew out of it. Then the skeleton spoke to him:

Woe unto those who forget their Dead, and who neglect the most precious of all their possessions—their graves.

Z
alat
stumbled back to the
hara,
his heart filled with death’s whisperings. And in truth, he didn’t conceal from anyone that it was he who had killed Qandil. Yet no one divulged his secret, whether out of fear, or out of loyalty. Gossip said that this fact had even reached the police commissioner himself. But he, too, had been against moving the cemetery in which his ancestors were interred. The blame was laid against a person unknown—and so Hamza Qandil’s blood was shed unavenged.

The shaykh of the
hara
ended his talk on a note of regret, as we sat in the rose garden that—once upon a time—had been the graveyard of our ancient quarter.

T
oday is my birthday. The feast of life renewed. We gather in the grand reception hall and our emotions warm it in the full force of winter. All that is delicious and delightful in food and drink and sweet song surrounds us. We come singly and in couples and in groups. Love guides us forward and good camaraderie binds us together. Differing moods and tempers blend in our hearts. We have no need to hire entertainers, for among us are excellent singers and glorious dancers—and what are these but our joy of life bursting out? Our joking evening banter is completely informal and unrestrained. The fragrance of flowers wafts through the room, which glitters with pleasure and contentment. The soirée stretches on till the coming of dawn, when we go out little by little, the same way we came in,
eyelids sagging with satiety, throats hoarsened by laughter and loud talk, as dreams draw us on to happy slumber.

We are decreed from birth to be divided only by the Destroyer of Delights—but he seems quite far away. Security, it appears, is granted us. Of course, our numbers dwindle and faces disappear in the passing of days. The span of life has its dominion, and circumstances have their dominion, and what lasts forever but the One who is eternal? In the flood of pleasure and its warmth, we overlook the losses and savor what is fated for us, but with a deep sense of grief.