The Seventh Heaven (7 page)

“She was accusing you of killing him,” Anous told himself. “Do you have any doubt about that? You could erase the crime from your record if you rose up to confront your father—but the time for love has already gone.”

She got off the tram before him. As he followed her movements with longing and resentment, his imagination was seized by uncontrollable visions of lust and violence.

“Everyone’s talking about that amazing man who summons the dead,” Rashida’s mother said. “So why don’t you give him a try, since it won’t even cost you a single millieme!”

Raouf’s stricken mother stared at her in confusion, then muttered, “If you’ll go with me.”

“Why not? I’ll get in touch with Rashida’s dearly departed father.”

“Many respectable people believe in the art of contacting the spirits,” interrupted Rashida, who had been following their conversation with interest.

And so, under the strictest secrecy, they made an appointment to try this experiment.

Raouf turned to Abu jubilantly, “This is my chance to expose the culprit!”

“You were assigned as a guide for him—not against him,” rebuked Abu.

“Would you let this opportunity slip out of our hands?”

“You are not a police counselor, Raouf,” Abu cautioned him. “You are a spiritual advisor. Your goal is to save Anous, not deliver him to the hangman.”

“But he’s like a hunk of rock. The winds of wisdom simply bounce right off him,” Raouf rejoined.

“That is a confession of your own incapacity.”

“No, I haven’t given up yet,” Raouf said excitedly. “But what should I do if they call upon my spirit?”

“You are free,” replied Abu. “It would not benefit your freedom to seek guidance from me.”

The séance was convened, attended by Raouf’s mother, along with Rashida and her own mother. They appealed to Raouf beyond the veil of the Unseen—and he entered the darkened chamber.

“Raouf greets you, mother,” he called, in a voice that all present could hear.

“What happened to you, Raouf?” she said, sobbing at the confirmation that her son was dead.

“Don’t be sad, mother,” he answered without hesitation. “I am happy. Only your sorrow grieves me. My greetings to you too, Rashida….”

With that, he instantly rushed from the room.

Raouf’s mother, Rashida, and her own mother returned from the séance, asking each other, “Why didn’t he reveal the secret of his murder?”

“He was taken in the prime of his youth!” Raouf’s mother lamented, drying her tears.

“Don’t sadden him with your mourning,” implored Rashida.

“Who knows? Maybe he died in an accident,” her mother wondered.

“But why didn’t he tell us how he died?” Raouf’s mother persisted.

“That’s his secret, whatever it is!” insisted Rashida.

The séances became Raouf’s mother’s sole consolation in life; she would go to them accompanied by both
Rashida’s mother and Rashida. But in the final days before her exams, Rashida stopped taking part in them.

On one of these nights, as she was at home studying on her own, Anous Qadri burst into the room. He had slunk up the open central stairwell of her building, then forced his way in. Raouf shouted at him to go back where he had come from, and not to take a single step toward her. But Anous attacked Rashida, stifling her voice by jamming his palm over her mouth.

“You’re going to run after
me
from now on, you … you stubborn bitch!” he snarled.

Then he began to brutally assault her, as she resisted as hard as she could, but to no avail.

“I’m going to take you alive or dead!” he taunted her.

Her hand groped for a pair of scissors on the table. With an insane strength, despite being pinned under his heavy weight, she plunged it into the side of his neck. He pressed upon her with vicious cruelty. Then his vitality ebbed away until he fell motionless upon her body, his warm blood pouring over her face and her torn blouse.

She threw him off of her and he lay sprawled on the tattered carpet. Then she staggered to the window and shrieked at the top of her lungs.

The people came running to the apartment, where they found Rashida like a demented murderess spattered with gore. They saw Anous’ body and started to scream, while
Rashida curled into herself like a ball, murmuring, “He wanted to rape me….”

If not for the arrival of the detective and the shaykh of the
hara,
then the news might have led Boss Qadri the Butcher to murder her on the spot.

“My son—my only son!” he roared. “I will make the world burn!”

“Everyone out now!” the officer ordered, as his assistants surrounded Rashida.

“I will drink your blood,” said Qadri, aiming his storming rage at the girl.

The news soon spread like wildfire through their quarter.

Anous stared insensibly down at his body. Raouf came up to him, smiling, as the other looked at him and blurted, “Raouf, what brought you here?”

“The same thing that brought you here,” he replied. “Come along with me quickly, far away from this room.”

“And leave this behind?” Anous asked, still peering at his corpse.

“That is your old robe. It won’t do you any good to wear it now!”

“Have I … have I … ?” Anous stuttered.

“Yes, you have departed the world, Anous.”

He was silent for a while, then he said, referring to Rashida, “But she is innocent.”

“I am aware of that,” Raouf assured him. “But you can’t save her—so come with me.”

“I’m sorry for what I did to you,” said Anous.

“Regret has no importance.

” “I’m glad to see you,” answered Anous. “And I’m glad to see you,” responded Raouf.

Raouf rapidly began to acquaint Anous with his new environs, then told him, “Here is Abu—your lawyer,” when the ancient ex-Egyptian arrived.

“Welcome, Anous, to the First Heaven,” said Abu.

“You mean, it was written that I should go to heaven?” Anous asked in shock.

“Be patient. The road is much longer than you conceive,” Abu replied with his well-practiced smile.

Abu then began to inform him of the facts he needed to know about his new world, about the system of trials, and the kinds of verdicts to expect in them. He paraded Anous’ beastly actions in front of him like ugly ghosts, until the young man’s face grimaced and—wobbling with despair—he could endure no more.

Despite this, Abu said, “In any case, it is my mission to defend you.”

“Is there a chance you could succeed in that?” Anous pleaded. “Will it lighten the burden of my sins that I was deprived of life at an early age?”

“You lost it at the hand of a girl defending her honor as
you attacked her. Then you left her facing a charge for your murder.”

“That’s true,” admitted Anous. “How I wish I could become her spiritual guide.”

“She was successful, as was her spiritual mentor. She has no need of you.”

“Does that mean I’m damned?”

“No doubt your father lurks behind your corruption,” said Abu. “He is the one who led you astray, who filled you with selfishness, who suggested that you harm people, who whispered in your ear that you should perpetrate crimes as though you owned the whole world.”

“You’ve spoken the truth,” Anous said animatedly, seeing his hopes revived.

“Yet, since you have your own mind, heart, and will, you are judged on your own account,” said Abu.

“My father’s power numbed all my powers completely!”

“Heaven holds you responsible for yourself—and for the world altogether.”

“Isn’t that responsibility far above the abilities of any human being?”

“But you bear it in exchange for the gift of life itself,” reproved Abu.

“But I was born without any say in the matter!”

“Rather, you took this pact upon yourself while you were still in the womb.”

“In all honesty, I have no memory of that.”

“It is incumbent upon you to remember.”

“This is a prosecution, not a defense!”

“We must establish the truth,” explained Abu.

“I was not without good qualities—I sought knowledge, and I loved sincerely, as well,” said Anous.

“You sought knowledge merely as a means to achieve status, while your love was but a presumptuous urge to possess the girl who belonged to your poverty-stricken friend.”

“She never left my mind for one moment….”

“That was nothing but arrogance and desire.”

Clinging to any thread, Anous pointed at Raouf. “I maintained a pure friendship!” he claimed.

“Did you not ultimately kill it off brutally?”

“I suffered enormous sadness afterward,” said Anous.

“That is uncontestable,” admitted Abu.

“And what of my love for cats and my tenderness toward them?”

“That, too, is beautiful.”

Abu reflected for a moment, then resumed his interrogation. “What was your attitude toward your father’s tyranny?”

“I was just a dutiful son!”

“Such devotion was hardly appropriate in a case like yours.”

“Some of his actions always disgusted me.”

“Yet you greatly admired other things he did that were no less appalling.”

“If only I had lived long enough to change all that….”

“You are being tried for what was, not for what might have been.”

“… Or if I could be given another chance.”

“Perhaps that could be arranged,” mused Abu.

“When will I appear in court?”

“Your trial is already concluded,” replied Abu solemnly. “Anous Qadri, I regret to inform you that you have been condemned.”

At these words, like a wisp of fog in the rays of the sun, Anous vanished into the void.

Raouf gazed at Abu questioningly. “Will I continue as his spiritual guide?”

“He will not be reborn on earth for at least a year, or perhaps even longer.”

“What then, will my new assignment be?” wondered Raouf.

Mournfully, Abu told him, “You must present yourself for trial once again.”

“Did I not put every effort into it?”

“Indeed, you did, but you failed. Your man was condemned, as you have seen.”

“The important thing is the work, not the result.”

“The work and the result are both important,” Abu admonished. “Moreover, you made a monstrous mistake.”

“What was that, Abu?”

“It was not your mission to make him confess to killing you, as though that had been the only or the biggest crime in your quarter.”

“But wasn’t that his main problem?”

“No,” said Abu.

“What was it, then?”

“His father was the problem,” Abu advised. “If you had goaded him against his father, then you would have attained higher goals!”

Raouf fell into a pained silence as Abu continued to lecture him, “You did not choose the right target. Your egoism got the better of you, though you did not know it. It would have been easier to provoke him to rebel against his father. If he had succeeded in that, he would not have been disgraced. But it was hardly easy for a foolish, pampered young man to sacrifice his own life—while his father’s felonies included your murder.”

“Please tell me the verdict,” Raouf said in resignation.

“Raouf Abd-Rabbuh, I regret to inform you that you have been condemned.”

As soon as Abu pronounced his sentence, Raouf, too, was gone.

There was a lengthy inquiry into the case of Rashida Sulayman. She went to trial, where she convinced the court that she had acted in self-defense. The result was acquittal. Her mother decided that to remain in the
hara
at the mercy of Boss Qadri the Butcher posed an unpredictable danger, so she fled that night with her daughter, destination unknown.

At the same time, the bursting stream of life in the alley began to wash away the froth of sadness. Raouf’s destitute mother married Shaykh Shakir al-Durzi six months after the death of his wife. She bore him a son that she named Raouf to immortalize the memory of the one she had lost. Yet this was not really Raouf returning, but the
soul of Anous in a new guise. Likewise, one of Boss Qadri’s wives gave birth to a boy that the father called Anous, in honor of the son taken from him—but this was none other than Raouf’s spirit transmigrated to a new body.

The child Raouf (Anous) grew up in the house of Shakir al-Durzi, along with many brothers and sisters, in a life of luxury, thanks to the bribes that Qadri the Butcher paid the shaykh of the alley. Yet the shaykh did not preoccupy himself with raising his children, or with marrying off his daughters. None of the boys were educated beyond Qur’an school, but worked in the lowest trades, whether in the
hara
itself or outside it. Nor was Raouf more fortunate than his brothers. At the beginning, his mother insisted that he excel in learning, only to be harshly reprimanded by her husband. Soon the boy was given a petty job in a bakery. Raouf was glad for that, because he did not find within himself either the true inclination or drive to study. As he grew older he understood the actual situation in his alley—the cocky dominance of Boss Qadri the Butcher, and the despicable role played by his father. And there was the life of poverty to which he was fated, in the service of Rashad al-Dabash, the bakery’s owner.