Authors: Naguib Mahfouz
45
.
The days passed in weary monotony. The unending effort, the worry, the absence of the person who had filled her life tired her out. She had difficulty stocking the shop and the takings fell, although they were still more than adequate. She began to hold Samaha responsible for what had happened to her, especially when the worry and loneliness became too much to bear. Rummana, Qurra, and Wahid often ran wild in the street with no one to take
care of them, until the sheikh of the mosque cautioned her. “Your children are exposed to bad influences, Mahasin.”
“What can I do?” she said regretfully. “They're not yet of an age to work in the shop.”
“Wouldn't it be better if they learned a trade, even just to keep them off the street?”
She glowered. “I won't leave them at the mercy of people I don't trust.”
This conversation served only to make her increasingly annoyed and anxious.
46
.
Hilmi Abd al-Basit continued to hover about her. Once he said tenderly to her, “I pity you, Mahasin.”
“I'm strong and successful,” she answered defiantly.
“But you're not free.”
“What do you mean?”
“You're still attached to the hangman's rope.”
“I'm quite content,” she said, frowning.
“But you should free yourself for your own good and the good of the children.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“In a situation like yours a woman can ask for a divorce.”
She laughed scathingly, but he went on undeterred. “Some decent man would come along and ask you to marry him. You're really a pearl, you know.”
He departed, to avoid hearing an unsatisfactory answer.
47
.
A few minutes after he had gone she heard a cry that shook her to the core. She rushed out of the shop in a frenzy and saw Wahid rolling in the dust, his face covered in blood. Two boys were running off in fright. She had to let them go and, wailing, took her son in her arms. She examined his face. “The child's lost an eye!” she screamed.
48
.
Troubled clouds massed in the sky. Misery rained down. Sorrow descended on the world. Temptation glowed like a rainbow.
49
.
A carriage drew up outside the shop. Mahasin rose from her seat, full of curiosity. A middle-aged man descended from it, followed by a younger man, both of them trailing fine camel-hair cloaks. They came toward her and the older one asked, “Mahasin?”
She nodded.
“I'm Khidr Sulayman al-Nagi, your husband Samaha's uncle, and this is his brother Radwan.”
Her heart pounded. She offered them a couple of seats, and murmured a greeting.
“We ought to have got to know one another before, but the news only reached us yesterday!” said Khidr.
“I quite understand.”
She was going to say that she had heard a lot about them, but thought better of it.
“We're pleased to meet you. Your children are ours too and we'd like to help you in any way we can.”
“I'm grateful to you, Master Khidr.”
“We trust in God. The oppressed man will triumph over the wrong done to him,” said Radwan.
“Samaha's told me everything. But can't you prove his innocence?”
“We'd be risking our lives for a lost cause,” said Khidr sorrowfully.
“Where are the children?” asked Radwan.
“At school.” Then the color drained from her cheeks. “The youngest one lost his eye in a fight with some other boys.”
Khidr and Radwan looked visibly upset.
“You've had a lot to put up with, Mahasin,” remarked Khidr.
“I'm quite strong. But it's bad luck,” she responded guardedly.
Khidr could read her thoughts, but still he inquired, “How do you see the future?”
“I suppose they'll work in the shop.”
Khidr let his eyes stray around him.
“It brings in more than enough for us to live on, thank goodness,” she added quickly.
“Perhaps they'd have a better chance if they came to us,” he said gently.
“I don't want to give them up.”
“We won't force you, but wouldn't it be wrong to deprive them of the opportunity of a better life?”
She began chewing at her fingernails, unaware of what she was doing. “We won't force you to do anything you don't want to do,” repeated Khidr.
“Think of this as just a friendly visit to make your acquaintance,” said Radwan.
“To let you know you're not alone,” said Khidr. “We're your family too. Take your time, and think over my suggestion. Come with them if you'd like to. Visit them whenever you want. Or keep them here with you. It's entirely up to you.”
50
.
As soon as the carriage bells had faded in the distance, Hilmi Abd al-Basit appeared in the shop. “What did those gentlemen want?” he asked with interest.
These days it was not unusual for her to talk openly to him. She had long since stopped trying to put him off or stand up to him. He was a regular part of her life. Even his ugliness was no longer repellent or disturbing, and so she confided in him without hesitation.
“It sounds like the right thing to do,” he declared when she paused for breath.
“Desert my children?”
“No. Send them to take advantage of their good fortune.”
“What do you know about a mother's feelings?”
“Real motherhood means making sacrifices!”
“Perhaps what I really ought to do is go there with them,” she said slyly.
“God forbid!”
“They're my family too.”
“But you'd be a stranger there! You're from Bulaq and they're from al-Husayn. This is where you're respected and have some status.” He looked into her face with his small, greedy eyes and murmured, “And this is where there's somebody who loves you more than life itself!”
51
.
Nothing is permanent except change. The eternal circle of suffering and joy. When the leaves turn green again, and the flowers bloom and the fruit ripens, the sting of winter's cold is effaced from the memory.
52
.
Events follow their course, and convention and religion cannot ignore them. Inflexible resolve yields to compassion, like a coconut releasing its sweet milk. Rummana, Qurra, and Wahid moved from Bulaq to Khidr al-Nagi's house. The boys had no idea what it was all about. They were on the verge of tears as they said goodbye, and Mahasin wept bitterly. To justify her decision, she claimed that the Nagi family had threatened to take her to court. She made excuses to herself for this behavior, but she was genuinely and profoundly sad. Her heart beat with conflicting emotions, like an apricot with its sweet flesh and bitter kernel. Achieving happiness for her sons at the cost of giving them up. Being faithful to Samaha and yet constantly aware that he had deceived her, then left her on her own. Choosing whether to endure frustration or yield to life's exuberant flow; whether to give in to temptation or legalize greedy
instincts by getting married again. She convinced herself that she was a weak woman and as such should take steps to avoid improper behavior. The imam of the mosque, the local sheikh, and most of her neighbors backed her up.
“You'll gain nothing from being faithful to a killer.”
“Or from being young and beautiful without a husband.”
Could she forget how a bad reputation had clung to her mother all her days? Moreover, marriage to a detective would be seen as highly desirable by most people.
So Mahasin handed her sons over to Samaha's family, and got a divorce from Samaha, the fugitive killer.
53
.
Her marriage to the detective, Hilmi Abd al-Basit, took place in an atmosphere of warmth and gaiety. She bought new clothes and furniture but stayed in the same flat, and went on working in the shop to preserve her independence and honor, given that she was the man's third wife. She had some trouble adjusting to life with Abd al-Basit after Samaha, but the new generally obscures the old and dilutes past memories, especially if, as in this case, it has its own considerable merits. So she grew fond of him as time passed and bore his children. She paid regular visits to her three sons at Khidr's house and was received with cordial respect by the family, and with great affection by her children. They quickly grew acclimatized to their new environment, and seemed to have changed, but they did not forget their mother, or their old games and companions, or even their father who had been absent for so long. But as time went by and she had more children with Abd al-Basit, the gaps between visits grew longer. In the end they had become so rare that one day her children came to visit her at Bulaq in the carriage, but the cold reception they were given by Abd al-Basit ensured that they never did it again. Relations between mother and sons flagged until they were almost nonexistent. Even the strongest passions are assaulted, either gently or fiercely, by the passage of time.
54
.
Abd al-Basit only spent his money during their honeymoon. After that he announced to her bluntly, “You're rich and I'm poor. Married couples are supposed to help one another.”
She protested at this attitude, which seemed like a devaluing of her love, but she achieved nothing. Both of them could be violent and stubborn, and she was not about to sacrifice the benefits of her new married life after having suffered so much to obtain them.
Abd al-Basit was unmoved and borrowed from her whenever he needed money. His debts piled up and there was not the faintest hope of him repaying them. Because of this they often quarreled, exchanging words and blows and becoming extremely violent toward one another. But life went on and caresses and sighs of desire succeeded the cursing and beating with monotonous regularity. She gave birth to one child after another until she ended up with six. The one thing unaffected by change was the constant care she gave to preserving her beauty and femininity.
55
.
The days passed, life burgeoned, and the fates gathered on the horizon.
56
.
Samaha Bikr al-Nagi endured his life listening to the creaking of time's wheel behind him all the time. If waiting for an hour is hard, what must it be like when life consists of nothing else? From the beginning Samaha decided not to stay in one place. He worked as a peddler, moving from village to village, let his beard and mustache grow and wore a patch over his left eye. He continued to record the passing days in his secret diary, and also noted the ages of his three sons. In his spare time he focused all his thoughts on Mahasin and the children, and as he fell asleep after a hard day's work he would console himself with dreams of the day he would
be free from the threat of the gallows and return to his family; the day he would go back to his alley brandishing his stick to put the world to rights, resurrecting the famous justice of the Nagi covenant from out of the present iniquities. Sometimes when his heart pounded with longing, he had an irresistible urge to disguise himself as a woman and visit his family, but he suppressed it at the thought of the disastrous consequences which could result and invalidate his years of patient waiting.
He lived alone, or rather in the company of specters that never left him. Specters of injustice, tenderness, deprivation, and of the continual fear of discovery. He grew used to conducting dialogues with himself and with these specters either in silence or loud enough for the trees and the river to hear. Once he went crazy because he thought he saw Mahasin. Another time he dreamed he met Muhammad Tawakkul in the market. His best dreams were those where he saw Saint Khidr, but to his surprise all that stayed with him afterward was a heavy heart, a sadness, and some vague hope. “It's always a good sign when he appears,” he told himself. “There's no such thing as meaningless suffering. One day the light will break.”
Although he'd lost everything, his strength and courage hadn't weakened. Perhaps his perseverance had made them more pronounced, and they had helped him endure. But what had become of Mahasin and his sons? He would go back one day and find they were grown men working in the shop. They would look at him in surprise at first, but they couldn't have forgotten him altogether.
With each year that passed he heaved a sigh and said, “Now the rope's a little slacker!”
57
.
The last year was the worst of all. With every passing day the torment grew. He tried desperately to be patient, praying that he would hold out until the last minute, relentlessly fighting the pain. He occupied his mind with everyday concerns, but all the while he
was taken up with the passage of time and each moment seemed like an eternity, frozen solid, and motionless.
58
.
Only one day remained. The next morning it would all be over. Work would take his mind off it. But he was incapable of working. All he could do was follow time like a lover, his will dissolving and evaporating. Out loud, as if the sound of his voice would give him the strength to defy existence, he declared, “I'll sleep the night here, and go home in the morning.”
But his nerves rebelled against this scheme of his, and made a mockery of his defiance, sending their orders to his limbs, which ceased to work. No food or drink passed his lips. No dreams came to keep him company. He watched the bruised disk of the sun sink in the sky. The last drop of patience ran out.
He would spend the night in the bosom of his family. He launched himself toward his hopes.
59
.
Mahasin heard a faint knocking at the door.
The children were asleep on cushions in the living room and she had done her face and was ready for bed.