Children of Gebelaawi (62 page)
Qaasim
followed one another quickly. The fighting stopped. Instinctively they drew together, those who were winni ng and those who were losing, and divided i nto two parties to meet the
attackers. Bruiser shouted furiously:
- I said it was a trick, and you didn't believe me.
They gotready for battle i n a terrible state of exhaustion and
despair. But Qaasim suddenly stopped his approach and so did
Hassan, seeming to act on one plan. Qaasim shouted at the top
of his voice.
- We don 't want to harm anybody. There is no victor and
no vanquished. We are all children of one Alley and one
Ancestor, and the Trust belongs to everybody.
Bruiser shouted:
- A new trick!
Qaasim said angrily:
- Don 'l force them to fight to defend your position as
strongman. Defend it by yourself if you like.
Bruiser screamed:
- Attack!
He rushed at Qaasim 's party, and a number of men fol lowed
him while others attacked Hassan and his men. But many hung
back. The wounded and the exhausted slipped away to their
houses, and the hesitant followed them. Only Bruiser and his
gang were left. Nevertheless they put up a savage fight, lashing
out desperately with cudgels, fists, feet and heads. Bruiser
concentrated his attack on Qaasim with blind hatred. They
fought fiercely, and Qaasi m took his opponent's blows nimbly
and wari ly on his cudgel. Meanwhile Qaasim's men overcame
Bruiser's gang by sheer numbers and they wen t down under
dozens of cudgels. Hassan and Saadiq leapt on Bruiser, who
was still battling with Qaasi m. Saadiq thu mped his cudgel and
Hassan brought his stick down on his head, once, twice, three
times. Bruiser dropped his cudgel and leapt away, then fell flat
on his face like a slaughtered ox. The battle was over and the
sounds of cudgels and screams stopped. The victors stood
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panting and wipi ng the blood from their faces and hands, i n
spite o f which they were grinning a t the thought o f triumph
and peace. There were howls from many windows. Bruiser's
men lay scattered over the ground under the scorching sun.
Saadiq said to Qaasim:
- You've won. God has given you victory. Our Ancestor
doesn't get his choices wrong. The Alley will hear no howls of
sorrow after today.
Qaasim smiled calmly, then turned with determi nation and
looked at Trustee's House. All eyes were fixed on him.
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Qaasim led his men to Trustee's House. They found the
door and wi ndows locked, and all was wrapped in gloomy
silence. Hassan knocked hard on the door but no one answered. Several men banded together to heave at the door till it burst open. Qaasim went in, followed by his men, but they
found no trace of the gatekeeper or any servants. They hurried
to the drawing room, then went over the rooms on all three
floors. It was plain that the Trustee, his family and his servants
had fled. Qaasim indeed was not sorry about this, for deep
down he had not wanted the Trustee harmed, for the sake of
his wife, without whom he himself would have been destroyed
at the outset. But Hassan and the others were furious at the
escape of this man who had made people taste poverty and
humi liation all his life.
Thus Qaasi m completed his victory and became the undisputed headman of the Alley. He took over the duties of the trusteeship, for the Trust had to have a trustee. The Desert Rats
returned to their sector and with them came all those who had
left for fear of the strongmen, led by Yahiaa. Forty days passed
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Qaasim
peacefully, wounds healed, minds were steadied and hearts
were calmed.
Then one day Qaasim stood in front of the Great House and
called everyone to him, both men and women. They came,
nervous and curious, imagining all kinds of thi ngs. The place
was packed with Desert Rats, Rifaaites and Gebelites, all mixed
up together. Qaasim looked at once smiling, modest and aweinspiring. He pointed up towards the Great House and said:
- There lives Gebelaawi, the Ancestor of us all. No sector
is more closely related to him than any other, nor is any
individual, man or woman.
Their faces were fi lled with surprise and relief, especially the
faces of those who had expected to hear the speech of a
conqueror. Qaasi m wen t on:
- Around you is the property of his Trust. It wi ll belong to
you all equally as he promised Adham when he said Lo him:
'The Trust will belong to your descendants . ' We must use it
properly so that we all get our share and live as Adham wanted
to, in plenty and peace and happiness.
The people looked at one another as iftheywere in a dream
as he continued:
- The Trustee has gone, never to return. The strongmen
have been wiped out, and from now on there will be no
strongman in our Alley. You won't pay protection money to a
tyran t or bow down to a drunken brute. Your lives can be spent
in love and mercy and peace.
His eyes roved over their radiant faces.
- I t is in your own hands for things not to go back to what
they were. Watch your Trustee, and if he betrays you, dismiss
him. If one of you is greedy for power, beat him; and if any
person or any sector claim to be lords, punish them. Only in
this way will you insure that thi ngs don't go back to what they
were. God be with you !
That day some people were consoled for their dead, others
for their defeat. They looked to the future as hopefully as they
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Children of Gebelaawi
would watch the full moon rising on a spring night. Qaasim
shared the i ncome of the Trust out fairly after keeping back a
sum for construction and repairs. Of course, each person got
only a small share, but the feeling of justice and honor was
boundless. Qaasim 's life was spent i n building and renovation
and peace. The Alley had never known such unity, harmony
and happiness as it enjoyed i n his time. Of course, there were
a few of Gebel's people who harbored feelings they did not
show and who whispered to one another: 'Are we, chi ldren of
Gebel, to be ru led by a Desert Rat? ' The same was true of some
of Rifaa's people. Indeed, certai n Desert Rats did become
proud and haughty; but not a voice was raised to disturb the
harmony whi le Qaasi m was alive.
The Desert Rats saw in him a model man such as had never
been before nor would ever be again. He combined strength
with gentleness, wisdom with simplicity, warmth with dignity,
lordliness with humility, and efficiency with honesty. Moreover he was lively, cheerful and good-mannered and it was a pleasure to smoke hashish with him. He was an affectionate
companion, not to mention his good taste, his sense of humor
and his love of music. Nothing changed about him, except of
course his further marriages. It was as if he were following the
same course there as he did in his renewal and expansion of
the Trust. In spite of his love for Badria, he married a beautiful
woman from Gebel 's sector and another from Rifaa's, and he
also wooed and won a woman from among the Desert Rats.
Some people said he was looking for somethi ng he had lost
with his first wife, Qamar. His uncle Zakaria said he wanted to
strengthen his ties with all three sectors. But the Alley did not
need any explanation or justification of what happened; the
truth was that much as they admired his character, they
admired his virility and love of women far more. In our Alley
the capacity to love women is a thing men boast of, and it gives
a man a prestige as great as or greater than that of a strongman.
Be that as it may, the people had never before felt that they
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Qaasim
were their own masters, responsible for their affairs without a
trustee who robbed them or a strongman who humiliated
them. Never before had they known the brotherhood, love
and peace they knew i n his day. People said that if the Alley had
been plagued with forgetfulness, the time had come to be rid
of that plague, and we would be rid of it for ever.
That is what they said.
That is what they said, old Alley!
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ARAFA
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No one who looks at the state of our Alley will believe what
the rebec tells in the cafes. Who was Gebel? Who was Rifaa?
Who was Qaasim? Where, outside the world of the cafe, are the
good works that are referred to? All that the eye sees is an alley
sunk in darkness and bards singing of dreams. How did our
affairs come to such a pass? What became of Qaasim and his
united people and the Trust used for the common good?
Where did this greedy Trustee and these crazy strongmen
come from?
You will hear it said, as the hookah goes round in the hashish
dens amid laughter and sighs, that Saadiq succeeded Qaasim
in the trusteeship and followed in his footsteps, bu t that there
was a faction that thought Hassan had more right to the post
because of his close relationship to Qaasim and because it was
he who had ki lled the strongmen. They urged Hassan to take
up his i nvincible cudgel, but he refused to lead them back to
the age of violence. However, the Alley was divided against
i tself, and some of Gebel's and Rifaa's people came out into
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the open with their secret grudges. When Saadiq died the ugly
face of frustrated wishes was revealed, the cudgels came back
i nto action and there was bloodshed within each sector and
between the sectors, til l the Trustee himself was killed i n a
battle. With no one holdi ng the reins, peace and security were
destroyed and the people found no way to avoid recalling the
last ofTrustee Rifaat's descendants to occupy the position that
greedy hands were fighting for.
Thus Qadri became Trustee, and the sectors went back to
their old clannishness, with a strongman ruling over each.
There was a series of battles over who shou ld be Strongman of
the Alley, tiiiSaadallahwasvictorious. He took over Strongman's
House and became the Trustee's right-hand man. Yoosuf
became master of Gebel's sector, 'Fisticuff' of Rifaa's and
' Harpstrings' of Qaasim 's. The Trustee shared out the Trust's
i ncome fairly at first, and the program of building and renovation went on. But soon greed got the better of the Trustee and the strongmen, as was to be expected, and they went back to
the old system, the Trustee taking half the revenue for hi mself
and dividing the remaining half between the other four, who
kept i t for themselves to the detriment of the beneficiaries. Not
content with that, they had the cheek to extort protection
money from their poor followers. Building stopped and houses
were left half finished or worse.
Nothing seemed to have changed, except that the Desert
Rats' sector was now ·Qaasim's sector, with a strongman just
like any other, and it had tenement-houses on either side
instead of hovels and ruins. The people of the Alley had
reverted to what they had been i n the bad old days, without
honor or dignity, worn out by poverty, terrorized by cudgels,
battered with blows. Filth and flies and lice were everywhere,
and the p lace swarmed with beggars and cripples and swindlers. Gebel, Rifaa and Qaasim were only names - songs chanted by drugged bards i n the cafes. Each faction was proud
of its hero, of whom no trace remained, and they quarrelled
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and fought about them. Various phrases went around the
hashish dens: 'What's the use?' (of the world, not of drugs) or
' It all ends in death; let's die at the hand of God and not under
a strongman 's cudgel. The best we can do is get drunk or take
hashish. ' They wailed sad songs about treachery, poverty and
degradation, or chanted bawdy ones i n the ears of any man or
woman who was seeking consolation, however terrible their
misfortu ne. At times of particular misery people would say:
'What is written is written. Gebel can ' t help, nor Rifaa nor
Qaasim. Our fate is flies in this world and dust in the next. '
It's amazing that, after all this, our Alley kept its high
reputation in other alleys. Neighbors would point it out and
say with ad miration: 'Gebelaawi Alley! ' , while we squatted i n
our corners, grave and silent as i f content with our precious
memories, or straining to catch the soft murmuring of a voice
deep inside us: 'IL's not impossible that what happened yesterday wi ll happen tomorrow, and the dreams of the rebec wi ll come true agai n, and the darkness will be lifted from our
world. '
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