Khan Al-Khalili (21 page)

Nawal now turned her head to look at the dove, but found that it had flown away. Meanwhile, there he was staring at her in his usual brazen fashion. There was no longer any point in addressing the dove.

“Hello!” he said quietly.

Once again she turned her head away and slowly moved toward the door. With that he moved toward her in alarm.

“Aren’t you going to say anything to me?” he asked.

Still she said nothing, although she was blushing and her eyelids were blinking hard. He moved even closer.

“Won’t you say just one word, one single word? If you like, you can tell me off or even rebuff me!”

Instead, she hurried toward the door. He moved to stand in her way.

“Get out of my way,” she said faking her exasperation. “You should be ashamed of yourself, behaving this way to a neighbor!”

“Can a neighbor be blamed for falling in love with a beautiful girl?”

“Yes!”

“But what if her beauty compels him to fall in love with her. Who’s to blame then?”

“Don’t start dragging me into conversation. Now stop blocking my way.”

But, in spite of her warning, he did block her way. She started to panic and rushed toward the door, slipping under his outstretched arm. He was not able to catch up with her. Her heart racing, she rushed downstairs and
headed for Sayyid Arif’s apartment. She was neither angry nor exasperated, quite the contrary in fact. She sat on the balcony waiting for her mother to arrive, with the image of the handsome face of the young man and the affectionate tone of his voice still in her memory. She started to recall the stories her school friends had told her about the wiles of young men, love letters, and famous tales of romance. From tomorrow, she wondered, should she enact her own love story? But what kind of young man was he?

After a while, Rushdi too came downstairs, his face wreathed in smiles. As of yet, his heart had not felt any genuine emotion; it was almost as though he were playing a much-loved role. Even so, he was one of those genuine actors who get so involved in playing their part that his heart catches fire and sparks fly, in laughter or in tears. Soon after, he took off for the casino with a renewed appetite to spend an evening drinking and amusing himself.

F
or Ahmad Akif, the Eid went by without him seeing her again. He assumed that she was busy with the feast itself and the various entertainments associated with it. With all his heart he wished her happiness. At this stage, all he wanted was for her to see him dressed in the new suit that he had had made especially in her honor.

“This suit will last me for a long time,” he told himself, “and at some point she’s bound to see me wearing it with pride.”

He too was busy with the Eid, although he spent most of it with his friends in the Zahra Café. Sulayman Bey Ata was the only one not there, since he had gone to celebrate the festival in his village. What was amazing was that even though he had by now been spending a lot of time with this group, not a single one of them had become a real friend. That was because when it came to friendship he was always looking for a pair of traits that were never combined: firstly, an acknowledgment of his own superior
intellect and education, and secondly, that the friend be cultured—albeit only to a certain extent—so that he could enjoy his company. What he normally found was that the person in question was somewhere in the middle: one friend might be a bit plebeian in outlook (or at least in popular opinion), someone whom he liked as a person and who was prepared to acknowledge Ahmad’s intelligence, while another who was better educated would not be willing to submit to his will and would prefer to argue with him. It might well be that he could love the first and hate the second, but, truth to tell, neither of them could fulfill the role of a real friend. That was why he liked Boss Nunu, Kamal Khalil, and Sayyid Arif but hated Ahmad Rashid. And that was why he remained friendless, or rather his brother Rushdi was his only real friend in the world.

The Eid passed without his setting eyes on her again. Even so, he never stopped thinking about her, nor did he ignore the need to think about the more important things in his life and future. His emotions had become engaged, his heart was awakened, and hope was bestowing a smile. This was doubly true—two hearts were awakened, not one. After thirty years deprived of love, now here he was experiencing love, and that with a heart that was bidding adieu to his youth. He would have to cling to love as a last hope for real happiness in this world. This sensation had arrived quite by chance when he had almost abandoned all hope. An old song had now come back into his heart, fresh and sweet, almost as though risen from the dead. That meant that he had to look at his affairs carefully and organize his life.

As the Eid passed, he was much involved in thought and planning. Life was now erasing the frown from his brow
and affording him a golden opportunity to try his luck once again. He had no intention of either flinching or hesitating. He was keen to be much more frank with himself and uttered the magic word “marriage” to himself. Yes indeed, but he was forty years old and she was under twenty. He was old enough to be her father, but what was wrong with that? Hadn’t she shown that she was fond of him? His heart gave a flutter at the very thought. Wasn’t he the one her heart had chosen? Thinking of his friend, Kamal Khalil, Ahmad assumed that he would welcome the idea of giving his daughter to him in marriage, even if it was a bit of a shock at first. Ahmad imagined that people would be making inquiries about him. They would find out that he was forty years old, a clerk in the record department at the Ministry of Works, eighth level, someone as inconspicuous within the government hierarchy as he was in the world in general; his salary was fifteen pounds. Wouldn’t Kamal Khalil be a bit anxious about that? After all, he thought Ahmad was a department head. Wouldn’t Sitt Tawhida—Nawal’s mother—say that he was very substantial in years and yet very insubstantial in salary? That thought made him bite his lip, and the old feelings of despair and misery came flooding back. He was on the point of losing his temper and saying something that he had said once before when faced with this particular situation: “Whenever someone persuades themselves into belittling me, the weight of the entire world is not worth a pile of garbage!” However, his determination to try his luck denied him any indulgence in fits of temper. All thoughts of despair were wiped from his mind, bringing in their wake feelings of joy and fond hopes for a new life.

As the three days of the Eid came to an end, he was thinking about all the things he needed to do immediately before acting. The first Friday after the Eid arrived, he had yet to put any of his plans into effect. However, that morning he saw her again for the first time since the first day of the Eid, and his lovelorn heart was thrilled. It was early November, and from time to time the fresh air wafted a cool breeze in his direction. The sky was covered by a thin veil of white clouds that shielded the bright light of the sun. He opened the window—“Nawal’s window”—and looked up. There was his beloved girl looking down at him like a radiant hope, a wonderful dream. He smiled at her and gave her a wave, and she smiled back. How he adored that smile of hers! He stayed there for a while, taking in the pure loveliness of her complexion. Just then it occurred to him that he should try to signal to her, to the extent possible, that he was about to talk to her father about marrying her. But she beat him to it, resting her head on her arm as a way of indicating that she wanted to take a nap. She pointed to her head, frowned, then twisted her lips to imply that she had a headache. With that she turned away and went inside. He was sorry to have lost the opportunity, but his determination now became even stronger. He needed to have a cigarette, so he went over to Rushdi’s room to get one from him. The door was ajar, so he pushed it and went inside. He noticed that his brother was standing by the window looking upward. Rushdi was so involved in whatever he was doing that Ahmad was halfway across the room before his brother even realized he had come in. From where he was standing he could clearly see the other window that his brother was looking at. From the middle
of the room he managed to spot Nawal’s head—no one else’s—which proceeded to withdraw at lightning speed! The way in which she disappeared—or, more appropriately, ran away—made Rushdi aware that his brother had arrived. He turned round and gave his brother a smile. For his part, Ahmad was totally shocked by what he had seen, a shock far worse than the one he had experienced on the night of the bombing raid. This hit him like a bolt out of the blue, stripping away his initial equanimity and pulling him apart like clouds during a sudden lightning strike.

He was well aware of the way his younger brother had turned to look at him, so, in an instinctual gesture, he closed his eyes and called up all his hidden reserves so as to seem calm. He even managed to fake a smile, then looked at his brother who was coming toward him with a sweet, innocent smile of his own.

“I’d like a cigarette, please,” he said calmly.

Rushdi took the cigarette pack out of his pajama pocket, opened it, and offered it to his brother. Ahmad took one and thanked his brother by raising his hand to his forehead. With that he went back to his room.

O
nce back in his room, he was so distraught that he could barely see straight. He threw the cigarette on his bed, then went over to the window and looked up. He could see the balcony just as she had left it, open and empty. He lowered his gaze with a frown and closed the window so loudly that it made the glass rattle. Going back to his bed, he sat down on the edge.

“I didn’t realize,” he muttered to himself, “that there was another window in her apartment that looked out directly onto his just like this balcony. I honestly didn’t realize.”

By now his blood had turned into oil, sending tongues of flame to his heart. Hadn’t he seen her moving backward in shock when he had appeared in his brother’s room? Was it a feeling that she was doing something wrong that shocked her? If not, then what had made her go to the window when she had convinced him that she was going to take a nap? It could only mean one thing, and it was not
pleasant: the girl had been deliberately deceitful, and that meant an end to all his futile hopes. The amazing thing was this younger brother had only come home ten days ago, and in that short time everything had changed—the very idea hit him like a slap on the face. From now on his heart would declare all his passions to be invalid; any smiles of welcome were simply examples of hypocrisy and outright deceit. How could these changes happen so fast, he wondered. Could it be this easy and noncommittal, almost a victimless process? Or was there bound to be an appropriate level of reluctance and pain? Was the girl toying with both of them? Behind that sweet smile could there really be a thoroughly nasty and cunning little vixen? Why had she exchanged greetings with him just a few minutes ago? Did she feel awkward and shy, or was it more a matter of sheer cunning?

His younger brother was blameless; he was totally unaware of the circumstances involved. Rushdi had set eyes on her and found her attractive, so he had started flirting with her (as he usually did with girls). He had managed to attract her attention, and she had fallen for him. With a single glance and gesture she had forgotten all about the elder brother. That was all there was to it! She had forgotten the older man, with his balding pate. He had only himself to blame. Did he not know enough by now about his own hard luck and his negative view of the world in general and women in particular to steer well clear of false hopes and glimpses of happiness?

As he stood up, his expression was one of profound sadness and utter despair. He started pacing back and forth in his room between bed and desk until he began to feel dizzy.
He went back to sit down on the bed. Was there any point, he asked himself, in engaging in a contest with his own brother? The very thought aroused his innate arrogance. No, it was out of the question for him to lower himself so far as to engage in any rivalry with another human being; genuine rivalry could only take place between equals. It was also out of the question to let his younger brother know about his secret love. Ahmad’s sense of his own self-importance made it absolutely impossible for him to even contemplate begging for happiness or love. No, someone like him should rather stand aloof from such trivialities—love, the girl, and whoever wins her. He was far above all that. But what about the agony he was feeling? Why did this dreadful pain not appreciate his genuine worth and simply disappear? Jealousy kept stinging his heart like a scorpion bite. And what was the point of all this pain and grief? Truth to tell, he had stretched out his hand to unveil his bride, but, when the embroidered veil had been taken off, what was beneath it turned out to be a skull. In his imagination he could see a picture of the two of them together: Rushdi in the prime of his youth, and she with her lovely, honey-colored eyes. The very idea was painful and only managed to make him feel even more disdainful and supercilious.

How was it that Rushdi always managed to interfere with his happiness, he wondered; especially since Ahmad loved no one else to the same extent as he did his brother? It was his younger brother who had forced him—twenty years ago now—to sacrifice his own future in order to devote himself to his brother’s education. Now here was Rushdi plucking the fruits of the happiness that should
have been his and trampling all over his hopes with hobnail boots.

At this point raw anger got the better of him, and he surrendered totally to an erupting volcano of hatred. Even so, he could not find it within himself, even for a single instant, to hate his own brother, even though he was the focus of his towering rage. The love he felt for his brother certainly suffered a kind of spasm during which it was unconscious; but while it may have fainted for a short while, it didn’t actually die. Not only that, but he did not feel any hatred toward Nawal either, even though she was guilty enough. It seemed as though his anger could go on forever, but, as it turned out, his temper calmed down remarkably quickly; indeed, it was a total surprise to see how soon it disappeared. The anger, malice, and superciliousness all disappeared, to be replaced by a profound sadness, despair, and sense of failure, all of which lingered and refused to go away. He recalled the happiness he had felt just the day before, but, instead of feeling any sense of regret or sorrow, he was contemptuous and not a little embarrassed.