Children of Gebelaawi (20 page)
Adham roared:
- If your punishment is not as bad as your deeds, the world
is done for.
- Done for .. . done for .. .
Painful days passed, fu 11 of sorrows. Grief overcame U mayma
and her health worsened and she wasted away. In a few years
Adham had aged more than most men do in a long life. The
couple constantly suffered from frailty and sickness. One day
they both felt very ill and retired to bed, Umayma i n the i nner
room with her two youngest children, and Ad ham in the outer
room that had belonged to Humaam and Qadri. The day
passed and nigh t fell, but they lit no lamp. Adham was content
with the moonlighL coming in from the yard. He dozed for
short spel ls, half waking bel ween them. He heard the voice of
ldrees outside asking sarcastically:
- Do you need any help?
He was upset and did not answer. He used to dread the hour
95
Children of Gebelaawi
when ldrees left his hut for his nights out. He heard the voice
again saying:
- Let every one witness my devotion and his obstinacy!
ldrees went off singing:
Three of us hunt in the Jebel above;
Longi ng kills one and the next falls to love.
Adham's eyes filled with tears. 'This evil that never stops
taunti ng, fighti ng, ki lling, tossing aside all respect, acting
harshly and tyran nically, mocking at the consequences, and
laughing ti ll the horizons echo! It torments the weak, enjoys
funerals, sings over tombstones. I am near to death and still he
mocks me wi th his laugh ter. The murderer has vanished and
his victim lies in the dust, and in my hut we cry for them both.
Time has turned the laugh ter of childhood in the garden to
frowns and tears. What's left of my body is filled with pain. Why
all this suffering? Where oh where is the happiness of our
dreams? '
Adham imagi ned he heard footsteps, slow and heavy. Submerged memories flooded back like a wonderful but elusive fragrance. He turned his head towards the door of the hut and
saw it open. Then the doorway seemed to be filled by a huge
person. He gazed in astonishment and with a mixture of hope
and despair. He sighed deeply and murmured:
- Father? !
It seemed that he heard the old voice saying:
- Good evening, Adham !
His eyes swam wi th tears and he tried to stand up but could
not. He felt a joy h e had not known for over twenty years. He
said in a quavering voice:
- Let me believe ...
- You cry, but you are the one who did wrong.
Adham said in a tearful voice:
- It was a terri ble wrong but a terrible punishment. Still,
96
Adham
even insects don' L lose hope of finding shelter.
- And so you teach me wisdom? !
- Forgive me! Forgive me! I'm crushed by sorrow and
i llness. Even my sheep are threatened wi th destruction.
- How good of you to be afrai d for your sheep.
Adham asked hopefully:
- Have you forgiven me?
l-Ie answered after a pause:
- Yes.
Adham 's whole body trembled as he exclaimed:
- Than k God ! A li ttle while ago I was touchi ng the pit of
hell.
- And now you 've found the way out?
- Yes, like a clear sky after a nightmare.
- Because of that you 'rc a good son.
Adham sighed and said:
- I'm the father or a murderer and his victim.
- The dead can ' t come back. What do you want?
Adham groaned and said:
- I used to long for the music in the garden, but today
nothing wou ld seem good to me.
- The Trust wi ll be for your descendants.
- Than k God !
- Don ' t tire yourself; try to sleep.
Within a short time of one another Adham and Umayma
and then ldrees passed away. The children grew up, and after
a long absence Qadri returned with Hind and their children.
They grew up side by side, inter-married and i n creased their
numbers. The settlcrncnl expan ded, thanks to money from
the Trust, and our Al ley came into existence. From these
ancestors are desce nded its people.
97
GEBEL
2 4 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Trust's houses were built in the two rows that form our
Alley. They start in fran l of the Great House and run westward
towards Gemalia. As for the Great House, i t stands isolated on
all sides where the Alley meets the desert. Gebelaawi Alley is
the longest in the district. It consists mostly of tenementhouses like those ofi-Iamdaan's sector, but there are plenty of hovels in the half nearer Gemalia. To complete the picture
Trustee's House musl be mentioned, standing at the top of the
right-hand row, and Strongman's House facing i t on the left.
The gates of the Great House were closed on i ts master and
his trusted servants. Gebelaawi 's sons had died young, and the
only surviving descendant of those who had lived and died i n
the Great House was the then Trustee, known as 'the Effendi'.
As for the people of the Alley in general, some of them were
street traders, and there were also shopkeepers and cafe
owners, but a great many were beggars. There was a general
trade in drugs, especially hashish, opium and aphrodisiacs, in
which anyone who was able took part.
The Alley was - as it sti ll is - full of crowds and noise. I n
every corner urchins played barefoot and almost naked, filling
99
Children of Gebelaawi
the air with their squeals and covering the ground with their
filth. In every doorway women clustered, one chopping jute
leaves, another peeling onions, another lighting a brazier, all
gossiping and joki ng - and, when need be, cursing and
swearing. There was an unending din of singi ng and crying,
the insistent beat of the exorcist's drum, the rumble of barrows, the cries as people fought with words or with fists, the miaowing of cats and the growling of dogs, often scrapping
over heaps of garbage. In every yard and along every wall
scurried rats and mice, and it was not uncommon for people
to band together to ki II a snake or scorpion. As for the flies they
were rivalled in numbers only by the lice, and they ate from
everyone's plate and drank from everyone's mug, played
round every eye and buzzed into every mouth, as if they were
people's closest friends.
If a young man happened to be bold or muscular, in no time
he was attacking decent people and bullying peaceful citizens,
making himself the strongman of one of the sectors of the
Alley, extorting protection money from the hard-working,
living for trouble. Such men were Qidra and 'Lionheart',
Barakaat, H a mooda and ' Quicksi lver ' . One of them,
'Thudclub', fought wi th one after another, till he had beaten
them all and become Strongman of the Alley, making all the
others pay him proteclion money. The Effendi - the Trustee
-saw that he needed am an like this to carry out his orders and
to ward off any threatened danger. He took him into his
confidence and gave him a large salary out of the revenues of
the Trust. Thudclub set up house opposite the Trustee and
consolidated his power. The battles between strongmen became rare because the Chief Strongman could not abide contests that might lead to one of them gai ning strength and
thus threatening his own position; and so they could find no
outlet for their bottled-up aggression other than the poor,
peaceable people.
How had our Al ley come to this pass? Gebelaawi had
100
Gebel
promised Ad ham that the Trust would be used for the benefit
of his descendants. The tenement-houses were built, the
revenues were shared out, and the people enjoyed a period of
happiness. When the old man finally closed his doors and cut
himself off from the world, the Trustee followed his good
example for a while. Then greed took hold of him, and soon
he was keeping the income of the Trust for himself. He began
by fiddling the accounts and paring down the allowances, and
ended up by grabbing everything, confident in the protection
of the Chief Strongman whose allegiance he had bought.
After that the people could not avoid the vilest kinds of
work. Their numbers grew and their poverty increased and
they were plunged in misery and filth. The stronger took to
bullying, the weaker to begging and all of them to drugs. A
man would slave and suffer to earn a few morsels which he then
had to share with a strongman, in return not for thanks but for
cuffs and insults and curses. The strongmen alone lived i n ease
and plenty, with their Strongman over them and the Trustee
over everybody, while the ordinary people were trodden underfoot. If some poor man cou ld not pay his protection money, a strongman would take his revenge on the whole
sector, and if the victim complai ned to the Chief Strongman
then the Chief would beat him up and hand him back to his
local strongman for a repeat of the lesson. If he took it i nto his
head to complai n to the Trustee, then he wou ld get a beating
from the Trustee and all the strongmen.
I myself have seen this wretched state of affairs in our own
day - a faithful image of what people tell us about the past. As
for the bards in the cafes up and down the Alley, they tell only
of the heroic ti mes, avoiding anything that could offend the
powerful, singing the praises of the Trustee and the strongmen,
an d celebrati ng ajusticewe never enjoy, a mercy we never find,
a nobility we never meet wi th, a restraint we never see and a
fairness we never hear or.
I ask myself what kept our forefathers, what keeps us, i n this
101
Children of Gebelaawi
accursed Alley. The answer is simple: i n any other we would
find only a worse life than we endure here- iftheir strongmen
did not destroy us in revenge for the treatment they have had
from ours. The worst of it is that we are envied. The people of
the neighborhood say: 'What a fortunate alley! They have a
u nique Trust and strongmen whose very name is enough to
make your flesh creep ! ' But we get from our Trust nothing but
trouble, and from our strongmen nothing but pain and
humiliation. Yet we stay, in spite of all that, and bear the
sorrow, looking towards a future that will come no one knows
when. We point to the Great House, saying: 'There is our
venerable Ancestor.', and we point to the strongmen saying:
'And these are our men. All things are in the hand of God.'
2 5 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The patience of Hamdaan's people gave out and waves of
revolt swept through their sector. They lived at the top of the
Alley, next to the houses of the Effendi and Thudclub, around
the place where Adham had built his hut. Their head was
Hamdaan, the owner of a cafe, the best in the whole Alley,
which stood in the middle of the sector.
Hamdaan was sitting to the right of the entrance of his cafe,
wearing a grey cloak and with an embroidered turban round
his head. He kept an eye on Abdoon, the serving boy, who
scurried to and fro, and he exchanged news with some of the
customers. The cafe was narrow but ran back a long way to the
bard's bench, which stood at the far end under an idealized
painting of Adham on his deathbed looking at Gebelaawi in
the doorway of the hut. Hamdaan signalled to the bard, who
took up his rebec and prepared to chant. To the drone of his
strings he began with a salute to the Effendi, 'the man dearest
102
toGebelaawi', and Thudclub, 'thefinest of men', then related
an episode of Gebelaawi's life a little before the birth of
Adham. There were sounds of the slurping of coffee and tea
and cinnamon, and smoke rose from the hookahs and collected round the lamp in wispy clouds. All eyes were on the bard, and the listeners nodded their approval of the beauty of
the telling or the soundness of the moral. Passions were roused
as the time of romance flowed towards its conclusion. Then
the listeners showered the bard with compliments. At that, the
groundswell of revolt welled up and swept over Hamdaan's
people. Blear-eyed 'Mulehead' spoke from his seat in the
middle of the cafe, following on from thestory aboutGebelaawi
that they had heard.
- There was some good in the world; even Adham was
never hungry, not even for a day.
Old Henna appeared at the door, lowering the basket of
oranges from her head. She said:
- Bless you, Mulehead! Your words are as sweet as my
oranges.
Hamdaan scolded her:
-Go away, woman, and spare us your blabber.
But Henna sal down on the floor in the doorway of the cafe.
- How nice it is lO sit beside you! I've been tramping
around calling my wares all day and half the night, and all for