Morning and Evening Talk (18 page)

His relations with his old friends weakened but he never stopped visiting Ni‘ma and Aziz in al-Ghuriya. He would descend on the quarter in his carriage, ignoring looks of envy and proffering occasional gifts on festival days. He would invite the family to the mansion on Khayrat Square, so Rashwana, Amr, and Surur became good friends with Mahmud and Ahmad. However, there were always limits to his expressions of generosity and his two sons were probably more sympathetic to their poor sister, Ni‘ma, than Ata was himself. He naturally sent his sons to school but, like their cousins Amr and Surur, they ran out of breath with the primary school certificate. This did not especially bother Ata and he began preparing them to farm beside him. He was delighted by Mahmud’s keen response and steel character, but Ahmad dashed his hopes and in the end he left him in despair at his docile ways. Bakri al-Arshi, the head of the Mamluk family on the next-door farm, had two daughters, Nazli and Fawziya, equal in beauty and sophistication. Ata requested they marry his sons, Mahmud and Ahmad, and the marriages were celebrated in a joint wedding feast brought to life by Abduh al-Hamuli and Almuz.

Ata lived through the Urabi Revolution. His emotions were not conquered via nationalism but by way of land and money. So when the waves of the revolution rose high and he was sure of its victory, he announced support and donated money, hiding the pain this caused him, and when hostile forces assailed it and its failure glimmered on the horizon he declared allegiance to the khedive. When the British Occupation began he was gripped once more by anxiety over events whose effect on his land he did not know, but his father-in-law, Bakri al-Arshi, assured him, “The English won’t leave the country and we won’t leave the British Empire in our lifetime.”

When he felt he was approaching the end he said to his son Mahmud, “Here’s some advice that is more valuable than money. Consider the farm your country and devote all your heart to it. Beware of sermons and slogans.”

Ata died of old age and his wife joined him a month later. Mahmud and Ahmad inherited the entire fortune and Aziz and Ni‘ma’s hope was forever extinguished.

Khan Ga‘far was where he was born and Bayt al-Qadi, Bayn al-Qasrayn, Watawit, Ibn Khaldun, East Abbasiya, Bayn al-Ganayin, and Khayrat Square were where he played, wandered, made friends, and loved. He was the second child of Sadriya and Hamada al-Qinawi, borrowing his beautiful eyes from his mother and his flat nose and sturdy body from his father, though he was not very tall. His father loved him dearly and hallowed him with great glory as the heir apparent. The man watched happily and proudly as his son achieved in school and abundantly compensated for his own ignorance and illiteracy. From childhood, Aql was interested in religion and engineering. He enrolled in the faculty of engineering but continued his religious readings and was also drawn to Islamic philosophy. He
was swept away in a current of conflicting ideas and remained in a state of confusion all his life.

As he roved about the branches of the family he was attracted to his aunt Samira’s daughter Hanuma. He wanted her reserved for him but the girl said to her mother, “He is obviously shorter than me. He isn’t suitable!” He was shocked and his limbs blazed with anger. Despite his doubts, he continued to pray and fast assiduously; he could not be confident but refused not to believe and sought refuge in his religious duties. Doubt suffused his very being and he could not connect with anything. He watched the decline of the Wafd, detested the abstruseness of the Marxists, and held the duplicitous Misr al-Fatah in contempt. He eschewed the July Revolution, though the sentiment had nothing to do with the opposition of the landowning class, the class to which he ultimately belonged. He was very sad about his sister, Warda, and father. When he graduated he found a job in an engineering office and began thinking seriously about marriage. Perhaps it would deliver him from the emptiness that suffocated him. He liked Hikmat, his brother-in-law’s sister, so proposed to her and married her. They moved into an apartment in a small building near his uncle Amer’s house in Bayn al-Ganayin. He desperately wanted children, as did his father’s relatives, but it became apparent he was sterile. He was deeply saddened and pained. “Don’t trust doctors and don’t despair of God’s mercy,” said his grandmother Radia.

Life stood before him in the image of unattainable desires: always sweet and insurmountable. When there was no one left in the family house and Sadriya was all on her own, he said to her, “You know I’m devoted to you. Come and live with us in Bayn al-Ganayin.”

But his mother replied smiling, “I won’t leave al-Hussein or your grandmother.”

He strove harder to perform his religious duties and reap the fruit of his talents as an engineer. One day he said to his wife,
Hikmat, “I don’t want you to spend a day with me that you don’t want to.”

She frowned for a minute then said, “I am completely happy, praise God.”

Doubts about the future of his relationship with his wife began to assail him. He was also possessed by concerns about the future of his country, which was moving from one crisis to the next. He did not breathe easily again until Sadat’s time. He found in the infitah policy a great commercial opportunity that made him forget his doubts and misgivings. He chose property as his business arena, using his savings and the sale of his portion of his father’s property. He made an immense amount of money and worked with remarkable energy until he was over sixty. At that point he asked himself, “Now what?”

He thought for a long time then said to Hikmat, “I’m bored of working. It’s time we enjoyed our money.”

“What do you lack?” she asked guilelessly.

He laughed sarcastically. “Travel. We must travel,” he said. “We’ll see the world and taste its delights.”

She was bewildered. She knew nothing of the world beyond her father’s village and Bayn al-Ganayin, nor did she have any desire to. When he saw her confusion he said, “With me you won’t need a translator.”

He said to himself: If she hates the idea I’ll go alone. But as usual she obeyed him. She began packing suitcases. A spark of doubt shot out from his belly and he examined his surroundings for a while. The airplane will probably burst into flames. I know how these things work! he said to himself. But the airplane did not burst into flames. Nor did his misgivings abate.

He was born and grew up in the house in al-Ghuriya with Rashwana and Surur. He took the essence of the quarter into his
heart, lovingly and eagerly, thus Egyptian peasant traditions swaggered in his soul and his sleeves exuded their spirit and religion. He was probably the dearest of the three to Aziz and Ni‘ma, as he resembled his father in his well-proportioned body, wheat-colored skin, and wide clear eyes. He was the sensible one, steering and checking Surur and Rashwana as they played and wandered between Bab al-Mutawalli and the fountain of Bayn al-Qasrayn. Later he became known for his wisdom and was consulted on all kinds of matters. He enjoyed a similar status among his uncles, Mahmud and Ahmad, and his cousin Abd al-Azim. He faithfully performed his religious duties from childhood and played the role of policeman in Surur’s frequent outbursts. He entered Qur’an school, memorized what he could from the Holy Qur’an, and learned the principles of reading and writing. At the age of twelve he started primary school and, after much strain and effort, obtained the primary school certificate. With Dawud Pasha’s help he was appointed a bookkeeper in the ministry of education.

He always earned the respect of his superiors and colleagues. He enriched his life with friendships, enlightened it reading the Qur’an and writings of the saints, and varied his sphere of activity through generosity that exuded love of religion and the world. Thus, he attended Sufi gatherings in al-Sanadiqiya, listened to al-Hamuli at weddings, and met his good friends at the Misri Club. He was peaceful by nature, achieving through clemency what could not be achieved through force or anger. The moment his father pronounced marriage a good idea he gave it the welcome of a robust and pious young man. The choice fell on Radia, the eldest daughter of his father’s friend Shaykh Mu‘awiya. She was wedded to him in a newly built house on Bayt al-Qadi Square. It was the beginning of a successful and prosperous marriage. Radia was his opposite. She was nervous and stubborn and her mysteries were unrestrained; were it not for his peaceful nature and clemency, things would
not have proceeded along the same peaceful course with his dignity at home remaining intact. He did not escape Radia’s influence, however, for he believed in her heritage and popular medicine and was obliged to let her visit saints’ tombs, even if he would have preferred her to stay in the house like his brother’s wife, Zaynab, and the hanem wives of Mahmud, Ahmad, and Abd al-Azim. “They are all nice hanems but they are ignorant and have no hand in matters of the Unknown,” Radia told him haughtily.

At the same time, she made his house an abode of mercy and love and gave birth to Sadriya, Amer, Matariya, Samira, Habiba, Hamid, and Qasim. Unlike Surur, Amr took pride in his relatives: the mansion on Khayrat Square, the villa on Sarayat Road, the land, money, and rank; and his house enjoyed everyone’s affection accordingly. Carriage after carriage came by, transporting to him the nobles and hanems of Beni Suef and the family of Dawud Pasha with its hanems. They would sit around Amr’s table, shower him with gifts, take pleasure in Radia’s quirks and heritage, and commend the bravery of her father, the hero of the Urabi Revolution. It was these profound friendships that opened the door of marriage into the families of Ata and Dawud, elevating and strengthening Amr’s status and provoking dissension between him and Surur, which could have ruined their relationship, were it not for solid foundations and long memories. Surur often commented regretfully, “If Huda al-Alawzi had died before Ata al-Murakibi we would have inherited!”

“God’s will is unopposed,” Amr would reply.

He surmounted any such twinges with his tolerant faith and it was his habit, when feeling resentful, to remind himself of the many blessings granted him, like good health and children. True, the day Dawud’s family smothered Lutfi’s affection for Matariya he erupted in anger and let Radia rant, saying to himself: They aren’t wrong when they say relatives are scorpions!
But it was a cloud that quickly dissolved under the beams of an eternal sun.

His heart was also full of patriotism. He was too young to share his father’s disappointment at the demise of the Urabi Revolution, but he often watched the occupying troops circling the old quarter like tourists and his heart was soon brimming with the speeches of Mustafa Kamil and Muhammad Farid. His excitement reached a climax with the 1919 Revolution; he adored its leader and joined in the civil servants’ strike. He remained loyal to the leader even when his important relatives, Mahmud, Ahmad, and Abd al-Azim, broke away, and eagerly followed the leader’s successor, Mustafa al-Nahhas, by dishing out cups of sherbet the day the treaty was signed. Amr wholeheartedly supported the leader against the new king and, despite the weak heart that was soon to kill him, was angry when he was discharged from government service.

He bore his children’s burdens while they were in his care and shared in their worries once they had each settled in their own homes. “We always dream of rest but there’s no rest in life,” he would say. He sought refuge in his faith and left mankind to the Creator. How many hopes he had pinned on Qasim and to what effect? When he was pensioned off a melancholy spread over him. Heart disease descended out of nowhere, curbing his movements and pleasures and plunging him into the depths of depression. One evening, sitting in the Misri Club, he fell unconscious. He was carried to his bed dying and passed away in Radia’s arms a little before dawn.

H
E WAS BORN AND GREW UP IN THE VILLA
on Sarayat Road, the second child of Abd al-Azim Pasha Dawud. He was perhaps the only one of Abd al-Azim Pasha’s sons not to inherit any of his mother, Farida Hanem’s, good looks. He was small and thin with a dark complexion and most of the time his face wore a frown and conveyed a look of disgust, as though someone was squeezing a lemon in his mouth. It was as if he was born to detest the world and everything in it. He would shut himself off in his room at the villa, take walks through the quiet streets to the east in the shade of their tall trees, and venture deep into the open desert. He did not make friends with any of the neighbors and he did not form a fraternal bond with either of his brothers, Lutfi and Halim, or his sisters, Fahima and Iffat. On the rare occasions he played with his brother Halim in the garden of the villa or in the street, it ended in misunderstanding and argument. Once it concluded in a fight in which Ghassan was defeated despite being the elder. His father took him to visit relatives, Amr’s family in particular, and he was once invited with his family to the Ata family mansion on Khayrat Square. He would look on but barely utter a word and did not make a single friend; they called him “Men’s Enemy” and mocked his silent, nauseated countenance, thin body, eternal reticence, and reclusive
haughtiness. Gleams of hunger may have shone in his eyes as he gazed at his beautiful female cousins but they were not accompanied by a smile or gesture.