Khan Al-Khalili (31 page)

“What are you implying?” his brother asked him in a resigned tone he had not been expecting.

“You can’t keep working any more. Let alone going out at night and carousing!”

“So the scandal is out, is it?”

“This illness isn’t a scandal!” Ahmad responded emphatically. “Necessity has it own rules.”

Rushdi looked at the floor. He had lost all will to resist. “It’s all in God’s hands!” he said with a sigh.

The way Rushdi had given way so suddenly was a sign of exhaustion, not of conviction. No sooner did the bank’s doctor establish the real cause of his illness and give him sick leave than his strength completely collapsed. He retired to his bed, feeling utterly weak and wracked by coughing fits. Ahmad still kept the true facts from his parents, but Rushdi’s condition deteriorated with frightening speed. His mother noticed the blood in his sputum, and his father heard about it. Both of them were terrified. Rushdi’s condition demanded a consultation with the
doctor. Ahmad suggested inviting him to the house, but Rushdi decided they should both go to his clinic. He got dressed, helped by his mother who was now deeply concerned about her younger son. They took a taxi to the doctor’s clinic, and Ahmad went with his brother into the consulting room. The doctor had not seen Rushdi for a couple of weeks.

“What on earth have you done to yourself?” he asked in his usual loud voice as soon as he set eyes on Rushdi.

“I’m coughing a lot and feel very weak,” Rushdi responded with a wan smile.

The doctor examined him. There was a long pause. “Just one word to you,” he said. “The sanitorium now!”

Rushdi’s sallow face showed a frown. “Is it worse?” he asked softly.

“Undoubtedly,” the doctor replied with raised eyebrows. “You clearly haven’t been taking my advice. But if you get to Helwan as soon as possible, there’s no need to worry. Get there today if you can. You’ll find me there right beside you.”

“Will he need to stay in Helwan for long?” Ahmad asked.

“Only God knows the answer to that,” the doctor replied. “I’m not a pessimist, but it has to be done now.”

The two of them returned home to find their parents waiting impatiently.

“What’s the matter with him?” the father asked Ahmad.

Ahmad realized there was no point in lying any more.

“He needs to go to the sanitorium,” he replied with deliberate terseness.

There was silence. Sitt Dawlat’s eyes turned red, a sign that she was about to burst into tears.

“God be kind to us!” their father muttered.

“There’s no need for alarm,” said Ahmad trying to reassure them. “But he must go to the sanitorium.”

Rushdi still did not want to go there, but he did not dare refuse now that his condition was so bad. He called his brother over. “Okay then, so be it: the sanitorium,” he said in his mother’s hearing. Then pointing to the window he went on, “but please don’t tell them the truth!”

Ahmad was overwhelmed and felt utterly depressed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I can easily say that you’ve some fluid in your lungs and you need to go to the sanitorium.”

“Will that be enough, do you think?” Rushdi asked sadly.

“Getting rid of fluid in your lungs takes a long time,” Ahmad replied. “Whatever the case may be, it’s more important now to look after your own health than anything else.”

W
ithout wasting any time Ahmad followed the instructions of the doctor who had been treating his brother and immediately started making arrangements to have Rushdi admitted to the sanitorium. A bed had become available at the beginning of March because the patient involved had completed his treatment. It was therefore decided to take Rushdi to the sanitorium on that date. Only a short wait was involved, but during that period the family suffered all manner of emotions, a mixture of worry and hope.

Rushdi’s coughing was causing him a great deal of pain and making it difficult for him to sleep. His parents sank into a deep depression, the serenity of their life totally destroyed; the expressions on their faces were a mixture of hope and anxiety.

Now Ahmad fell victim to all his pent-up anxieties, feeling gloomy and worried all the time. Kamal Khalil Effendi came to visit and assured Rushdi that fluid in the lungs was nothing to worry about. Sitt Tawhida and her daughter,
Nawal, also called in when Ahmad was not at home. The mother told him that his insistence on staying so thin was what had made him so ill; with a laugh she assured him that, once he got better, she would make sure that he got fatter. With Rushdi’s parents listening, Nawal did not know what to say; even he could not risk looking at her all the time. Even so, they managed to exchange fleeting glances that communicated messages of love, thanks, and silent sorrow.

Rushdi was very happy that they had paid him a visit, the kind of happiness he had not felt since he had taken to his bed. When mother and daughter had both left, he shared with his mother his fears that the true nature of his illness might become public knowledge, but the poor woman managed to reassure her son that it would remain a secret known only to the people who loved him the most.

On the first of March a taxi took the two brothers to Bab al-Luq Station. The last thing Rushdi heard inside his parents’ home were his father’s prayers; the last thing he saw were his mother’s tears.

“If the cure takes a long time,” Rushdi told his brother on the way, “I’ll be fired for sure.”

“Even if that happens, heaven forbid,” Ahmad replied confidently, “it’ll be easy to get your job back. The only thing you should be worried about is getting better.”

They got on the train, which soon left for Helwan. They sat side by side. Ahmad remained silent, his thin face a mirror of deep anxiety. Rushdi coughed from time to time. Ahmad was struck by the string of bad luck that had afflicted his family. They had already lost one child, and now here was Rushdi afflicted with a very serious illness. He himself had been set up by fate for a series of failures
and missteps. If only fate had made do with him alone, that would have been tolerable to him, but unfortunately it had not. Glancing at his younger brother, he was shocked to see how thin he was, how scrawny his neck looked, and how bleary his eyes were. Where was that bright, mocking gleam that had once been there?

“O Lord,” he prayed silently to himself, “will this tragedy ever end? Will I ever be able to open my eyes and not be confronted by specters of memories long past?”

Staring out of the window, he watched as a long line of buildings and villas went flashing by. The train then took them through lush, green fields and captivating rural scenery, before finally approaching the beginning of the endless, barren desert, fringed on the horizon by lofty hills. The progression of buildings, fields, and desert made him feel sad, and he found himself once again sliding into a deep depression.

The train reached Helwan, and the two of them left the train station. The journey had exhausted Rushdi, so they took a taxi to the sanitorium. It went down a deserted road, until the sanitorium loomed in front of them at the foot of the mountains, like some forbidding castle. Both brothers stared at it, their hearts beating fast.

“Let us pray,” said Ahmad, “that our Lord will take you by the hand, bestow a cure on you, and let you leave this place fully restored to health.”

When they got to the sanitorium, they took the elevator to the third floor, where the nurse showed them to the room they were looking for. It consisted of two beds, on one of which a young man of Rushdi’s age was lying down; he looked just as thin and pale as Rushdi. They all exchanged greetings, and Rushdi sat down to recover his breath. With his brother’s help he changed his clothes and lay down on
the bed. Ahmad sat down on a comfortable chair, then pointed to the other young man in the room.

“I’m sure he’ll be a good companion for you,” he said. “You’ll be able to help each other kill time and avoid feeling lonely until you both get out of here, hale and hearty, God willing!”

Ahmad spent some time chatting with his brother and the other young man. He discovered that his name was Anis Bishara; he was a final year student in the School of Engineering. However, it was obvious that the journey had exhausted Rushdi—he simply lay there on the bed in a kind of stupor—so Ahmad chatted with them both for a bit longer until he was sure that Rushdi was settled in, then he stood up to leave. As he clasped his brother’s hand to say farewell, he could feel tears welling up inside him and had to grit his teeth to stop them emerging from his eyes. Once he had left the room, it occurred to him that Rushdi had also been on the verge of tears when bidding him leave. He was on the point of going back, but rejected the idea and continued on his way out of the building. Walking down long corridors with patient rooms on either side, he shuddered as he noticed ghost-like human beings all wearing billowing white garments. On his way back to the station he kept looking back at the imposing sanitorium building and muttered yet another prayer.

The Akif family spent a miserable evening together. The father looked totally distracted, and the mother wept so much that her eyes were red. Ahmad tried to make things easier for them by talking in hopeful terms, but the fact of the matter was that he too needed someone to lighten his own burden of misery.

T
he family had to wait impatiently until Friday, which was visiting day at the sanitorium. Kamal Khalil decided that he and his family would go with them. Both families made preparations for the visit. Ahmad bought his brother a box of chocolate biscuits, while Sitt Tawhida, Nawal’s mother, prepared a pastry dish for which she was renowned. At noon they all went together—the three men, two wives, and Nawal—to Bab al-Luq Station and sat opposite each other, the men on one side and the women on the other. That is how Ahmad found himself directly opposite Nawal. From the very first moment he avoided looking at her. He had not seen her since that fateful day when he had discovered what had been going on between her and Rushdi, but the fact that she was sitting so close to him now brought back old memories and triggered some painful feelings. He was afraid of succumbing to his emotions, so he decided to avoid the possibility by engaging Kamal Khalil in conversation for a while and then reading the
al-Ahram
newspaper. However, even though he managed to avoid looking at her, the flood of emotions he was feeling got the better of him. How was he supposed to forget his thwarted hopes or the bitter anger he had once felt toward his own brother? How could he overlook the terrible disease that had converted his anger into an unstaunchable wound in his own conscience? How could he forget that at one point he had even been worried in case the girl herself got infected? He had even considered accusing his brother of exposing her to all kinds of risk. All these worries had turned his entire life into a firetrap. He was quite ready to believe what he had once told himself, “Rushdi may have a lung disease, but my disease is in the mind!”

He started wondering what kind of feelings Nawal was having now that she was sitting directly opposite him in the train. Sorrow? Shame? Wasn’t it reasonable for her to feel sad that the illness had afflicted her beloved and to pay no attention to his middle-aged brother? There was absolutely nothing unfair or unreasonable about that. But he still had to ask himself: what was the point of his own life, and how was he supposed to make use of the fact that he was healthy? He immediately began to feel the familiar sensation of being persecuted, one that was both painful and enjoyable. There was something else as well that he had to admit: he was happy to know she was there in the train compartment with him, even though he was avoiding looking at her. Why was that? he wondered. Was he testing his ability to forget and feel dismay? Or was it rather that he wanted to slake his old urge to show her how easily he could ignore her and rise above his feelings?

He came to himself for a moment and decided that it
was wrong to be entertaining such thoughts when he was on his way to visit his dear brother at the sanitorium. Such was the pain he felt inside him that he found himself wishing that there were some kind of operation that could suture the wounds in the human soul as was possible with the limbs of the body.

The journey came to an end, and everyone walked along the road, their eyes glued to the sanitorium looming in front of them. Even though Rushdi had only been there for three days, the fact that he was now forced to relax and take things easy led Ahmad to hope that his brother would already be feeling better. He walked ahead of the rest of them, went into the room and looked at Rushdi’s bed. His brother was lying down. Even though he was aware of their arrival, he did not move. He received their greetings with a wan smile on his pale lips, and then they all gathered around his bed. Ahmad’s hopes rapidly faded. His brother’s appearance shocked him, and he immediately realized that his condition had actually worsened since the day he had brought him there. That confounded him, and his heart sank. Rushdi’s visitors sat down, and Ahmad put the chocolate biscuits and pastry down on a small table near the bed.

“I’m hardly eating anything,” Rushdi said weakly as he spotted them. “I don’t feel hungry at all.”

His mother kept staring at him, trying desperately not to show how absolutely devastated she was. “Don’t you like the sanitorium food, Rushdi?” she asked.

“The food’s fine, but I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Don’t worry,” Sitt Tawhida said. “This always happens when the disease is in its early stages. Tomorrow this pure, dry air will make you feel hungry again.”

Rushdi gave her a smile and then Nawal too, since she was sitting beside her mother.

“The last three nights have been dreadful,” he told Ahmad. “I keep waking up and can’t get back to sleep. The pain is much worse, and the.…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Ahmad realized at once that he was avoiding the word “coughing.” It was at this moment that he realized that the decision to bring Kamal Khalil’s family with them had been a huge mistake. Even so, he was anxious to give his brother as much encouragement as possible.