Morning and Evening Talk (14 page)

Shaykh Ali Bilal made friends with Amr Effendi and his family, and whenever he visited the house on Bayt al-Qadi Square, Amr would ask him to bless it with one of his recitations. Thus, he would sit cross-legged in the reception room after supper, drinking coffee, and recite something easy from the Qur’an in his sweet voice. He was impelled by his voice and friends to recite eulogies to the Prophet at festivals. His livelihood grew and his admirers multiplied. Before long he was invited to enliven weddings with his panegyrics. Amidst the festive atmosphere and pleasant evenings, he got into the habit of smoking hashish. Eventually one of the composers suggested he try singing, foreseeing a rosy future in it for him. The shaykh met the invitation with a merry heart. He saw nothing wrong in abandoning the holy suras of the Qur’an to sing, “Don’t Speak to Me, Papa Is Coming,” “Draw the Curtains So the Neighbors Can’t See,” and “Yummy Scrummy Fried Fish,” and was remarkably successful in so doing. He made recordings, which were circulated in the market, and people started talking about him. Amr clapped his hands together. “What a comedown!”

The temptations of the new milieu made Shahira anxious about her position as wife. “You were a blessed shaykh when I married you,” she said. “Now you’re a chanteuse!”

The man was intoxicated by his success and became the organizer of many a hashish gathering. He was soon drinking heavily and the house would be filled with horrid trenchant fumes at the end of the night, reminding Shahira of the tragedy of her brother, Baligh. The sound of her upbraiding and scalding him with her vicious tongue would drown the dawn muezzin. Then reports of him flirting with singers reached her
ears. She pounced on him with a savagery that flung open the gates of hell upon him and he made up his mind to divorce her. But one night, before he could put his decision into action, he overdid the drinking and singing and had a heart attack. He died among friends, plucking the strings on his lute.

Shahira performed the rituals of mourning without emotion. She leased the house and the shop below and returned with Abduh to the old house to share her loneliness with her mother, Galila. “Let Abduh be your eye’s delight,” said Radia. But Abduh was snatched away in a fever, as though in a dream. By this time his mother was already known as Umm Abduh about the quarter, and the eponym would stick for the rest of her life. She became passionate about breeding cats and dedicated her time to looking after them until they filled the gap in her life and crowded the old house. She started to believe she could understand their language and the spirits that inhabited their bodies, and that through them she was in touch with the Unknown. She found her best friend in Radia. Whenever they met up, whether in Bayt al-Qadi or Suq al-Zalat, a curious session invariably ensued during which they would exchange anecdotes about the realm of the jinn, the Unknown, and the offspring of mysteries. In such things they were of one heart and one mind, despite Radia’s misgivings and suspicion that Shahira begrudged her her children and happy marriage. Shahira was famous in Suq al-Zalat for her inscrutable, fearful personality and impudent tongue. She was not known to perform any religious duties and would prepare her meal at sunset in Ramadan saying, “People don’t need religious duties to bring them closer to God.” After her mother died she was wholly immersed in solitude, submerged to the top of her gray head in a world of cats. Her brother, Baligh, saw to her upkeep. He would invite her to visit his sublime mansion, but she hated his wife for no real reason, and only ever left her cats to visit Sidi al-Sha‘rani or Radia. She
fell victim to the cholera epidemic of 1947 and moved to the fever hospital after instructing a neighbor to go to Radia for the cats’ care. She died in hospital, leaving some forty cats behind. Radia’s sons and daughters mourned the aunt whom they had laughed at in life.

H
E GREW UP IN THE MANSION ON
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in the wing set aside for Hamid and Shakira. He and his sister, Wahida, represented the first generation of grandchildren in the Murakibi family and, consequently, enjoyed special deference from their grandparents and maternal aunts and uncles. The big garden was his playground and dream; he loved it in spring, with its abundant medley of pure fragrances, and he loved it in winter, when it was cleansed by the water of precious rains. He was closer to his mother than his father, whose time was taken up with work, and became even more so each time he perceived signs of the ordeal the man put her through. He was strong bodied like his father and good looking like his grandfather, but his mother gave him a pious, aristocratic, and urbane upbringing so he grew into a man of integrity and religious principles. He was also headstrong like his mother, which led some to believe him ignorant, which was far from the truth. The impression was intensified by the harsh way in which he judged people by the Qur’an and Sunna, intolerant and inflexible. His father was probably his first victim despite the fact that the man loved him dearly. He loved his father too, but considered him vulgar and placed him in the same bracket as sinners and good-for-nothings while granting him his full due of reverence and
loyalty. Hamid instinctively grasped his position and complained about it to his brother, Amer. “Shakira has brought them up to dislike me.”

Thus, Amer said to him one day, “You’re a good man, Salih. Don’t forget to respect your father.”

“I never neglect my duty to my father,” he replied.

“Perhaps he isn’t content with formalities.”

“He abuses Mama, Uncle,” he said with absolute frankness.

He was similar in temperament to his cousin Salim, but with one difference; Salim combined emotion with action, whereas he would say to himself: The heart’s enough; it’s still conviction. Thus, he loved the Muslim Brothers without joining the organization and pledged loyalty, as a Murakibi, to the Crown just as he lent money to all the parties. As a result of the eternal struggle between his parents he generally shunned his father’s relatives—the families of Amr and Surur—and despised the Dawud family. Like his mother, he believed his grandmother Radia was quite simply mad. Because he continued to achieve in school Hamid said to him, “You should study medicine. You’re right for it.”

“No. Agriculture. You have land you can farm afterward,” said Shakira.

He preferred his mother’s idea and Hamid privately cursed the two of them. After graduation he traveled to Beni Suef, determined to make a modern farm out of the land his mother inherited when his tyrant grandfather died. He married a woman called Galfadan, a relative of his grandmother Nazli Hanem, and with high hopes dedicated himself to working on the land. He bred calves and set up a beehive to produce honey. He dressed in the clothes of a country nobleman and only wore a suit when he visited Cairo. His heart was hostile to the July Revolution, even though it did not harm him personally and two of his uncles, Abduh and Mahir, were among its men. In the period of the infitah, his livelihood increased, his family expanded and he remained loyal to his principles. His indignation at his father
intensified after the man divorced his mother and married a second time, but he was genuinely sad when he died. He grew accustomed to country life. He loved it and was passionate about his work and success, and began to refer to Cairo as “The City of Pain.”

She was rightly said to be a gift in Amr’s family. Like the others, she was born and grew up in the old house on Bayt al-Qadi Square. Her skin was a deep shade of brown and she was small with a slender, well-shaped body and pleasant features. She was received with subdued joy for she disappointed hopes of a male child. As the eldest, she took on a motherly role toward her brothers and sisters from childhood. She was her mother’s confidante and heiress to her heritage, but she was not without a measure of conventional religion, and her domestic skills, from cooking to cleaning and needlework, were exemplary. She was sent to Qur’an school and learned how to read and write but reverted to illiteracy when they were not put to use. She worked and sang unceasingly even though she was not endowed with a particularly good voice. You would find her in the kitchen helping her mother or laboring in her mother’s place, sitting at the sewing machine, or on the roof checking on the chickens and rabbits. When the house crowded with Amer, Matariya, Samira, Habiba, Hamid, and Qasim, she played deputy to her mother while joining in the games, gaiety, shouting, and battles, and excelling all round. She obtained a status enjoyed by no one else, which she maintained for the rest of her life. She shared everyone’s worries, despite the burden of her own, and had total faith in her mother, whom she saw as a miracle worker.

She had barely turned fifteen when a country nobleman from Upper Egypt called Hamada al-Qinawi came forward to ask for her hand and a dream she had entertained since the age of ten
came true. Her departure represented the first farewell and first wedding celebration in the family. Hamada was an acquaintance of Amr’s. He adored Cairo, so when his father died he had moved there with his mother and leased his thirty feddans of land to an uncle in Qina. Rashwana, Radia, and Surur’s wife, Zaynab, visited the man’s house in Darb al-Qazzazin.

“Hamada’s mother is devout. No religious duty is above her,” Rashwana said to her brother Amr.

At a gathering in Amr’s house attended by Amr, Surur, and Mahmud Bey Ata, Surur Effendi said, “The groom is unemployed and has no skills. That’s bad.”

“He has thirty feddans,” said Amr.

“Even so, he is barely literate,” replied Surur with unfounded conceit.

“A man’s value is in his money,” said Mahmud Ata.

“He is from a good traditional family,” said Amr.

From what she could see through the gap in the mashrabiya Sadriya was pleased with Hamada’s appearance; he was tall and strong, smartly dressed in a jubbah and caftan, and had manly features. She was wedded to him in a house in Khan Ga‘far that he rented from the dimwitted pastry man. Mahmud Ata furnished the reception room, Ahmad Bey gave jewelry and clothes, and Abd al-Azim Dawud provided the wedding dress. Sadriya began her married life with Hamada resting on her mother’s instructions, her blessings, and superior skills as a mistress of the house. Hamada represented a complex problem. They were mutually affectionate and each felt a strong need for the other, but Sadriya was naturally sensitive and irascible and very stubborn while her husband was a narrow-minded chatterbox who loved glory and authority. His unlimited spare time left him free to interfere in things whether or not they concerned him. She was not accustomed to a man snoring away until noon, waking up, and interrupting her housework to talk endlessly about his family, its merits, and his own illusory virtues,
followed by foolish comments on her work, about which he understood nothing. He knew his religion only by name and did not pray or fast. Barely a night went by when he did not stay up late at the Parisienne, drinking wine and dining on appetizers. Yet they did not shun marital relations or children, and so she gave birth to Nihad, Aql, Warda, and Dalal. Nor did they refrain from futile debates, hence he would boast about his family of landowners and she would in turn extol the families of Ata and Dawud and Shaykh Mu‘awiya, the hero of the Urabi Revolution. The discussion would sometimes become heated and they would exchange cruel insults. She strove to hide the steam from the cooking pot under a tight lid and solve her problems herself without involving her family. But Radia perceived what was going on through her own intuition as well as from the man’s excruciating chatter. “A wife has to be a doctor,” she said to her daughter.

“You must visit the relevant tombs,” said Sadriya.

“What is the point in visiting tombs for this? The best remedy is to cut off his tongue!” said Radia.

The truth was that it was not just Hamada’s wife who suffered from his irritating chatter; on visits he would inflict it on the families of Amr, Surur, al-Murakibi, and Dawud until it became a joke among the relatives. It became clear that her husband’s eyes knew no shame and followed every pretty girl who passed by. Sadriya grew increasingly uneasy.

“Have you no shame?” she asked him disapprovingly.

“There’s no harm in looking,” he scoffed.

But she caught gestures between him and the beautiful widow who lived in the house opposite. A fire ignited inside her and blew the sleep from her eyes. She stayed awake until the time he usually came home from an evening at the Parisienne then left the house and went out into the street, wrapped in the darkness, with a bucket of water in her hand. Hamada approached, cleaving his way through the pitch-dark night. She felt the door
of the widow’s house open and the woman’s blurred outline appeared dimly in the doorway. The man paused and turned toward it. Sadriya hurried into the middle of the road and hurled the water at the woman in the doorway, who screamed and tumbled backward into the house. Hamada was startled. He looked in Sadriya’s direction, “Who are you?”

“Get home, you shameless creature!” she shouted enraged.