Khan Al-Khalili (25 page)

Just then he spotted Kamal Khalil and Sayyid Arif standing close to the former’s family chatting to his brother. Ahmad was utterly astonished. How on earth had his brother managed to make their acquaintance? When had that happened? Did Rushdi have a specific goal in mind? He was certainly self-confident and brash, traits that he, Ahmad, could not even conceive of imitating. At that
moment his feelings toward Rushdi were a mixture of admiration and hatred, but he did not have the chance to reflect further on the matter because there was a huge explosion that deafened everyone. Soon afterward the sound of rapid anti-aircraft fire could be heard. Like a ravenous kite swooping down on a clutch of terrified chickens, a horrible feeling of panic hovered over their pounding hearts. There was only one explosion, but the anti-aircraft fire went on for some time. Then silence returned and everyone recovered their breath. A quarter of an hour later, the all-clear siren went off.

When Ahmad looked for his brother, he could not find him. People were leaving the shelter in groups. He had a feeling of déjà vu; searching for Kamal Khalil’s family, he spotted them close by waiting for the crowd by the shelter door to thin out. But he didn’t see Nawal with them. It all reminded him of that night when she had gestured to him to catch up with her but he had hesitated and been a coward. Rushdi however would never behave that way!

L
ife resumed its normal course. Even though Rushdi and Kamal Khalil had only known each other for a short while and they were so far apart in age, their friendship was soon on a firm footing, not least because Rushdi was so elegant and astute. Kamal invited Rushdi to the Zahra Café, and he came and sat down with his brother’s friends—and his brother as well. His mild manner and bright expression both insured that he soon earned their admiration.

He liked this group of friends and decided to spend some time there once in a while. Soon afterward, Kamal Khalil invited him to visit his home. Rushdi was, of course, delighted to do so, and bonds of friendship soon developed. The elder man trusted Rushdi to such a degree that he even introduced him to his wife and daughter, thus lifting the veil separating Rushdi from Kamal’s family life. For Rushdi the invitation came out of the blue. He had never expected anything like it from a family in the al-Husayn quarter, which was very conservative in its values. Actually,
his own family was considered extremely conservative even though there were no daughters. Neither he, nor his brother—let alone their father—would even consider introducing a strange man to their mother. Even so, Rushdi was delighted by Kamal’s gesture; it thrilled him to find himself trusted to such an extent. He now managed to portray himself as a serious thinker and put on a display of stolid conservatism. As a result, he found himself taking over Professor Ahmad Rashid’s position as tutor to Nawal and Muhammad.

When Rushdi’s brother heard about this turn of events, he was thunderstruck; he did not know how this had come to pass. It was as though Rushdi had become a member of their neighbor’s family. In a single day he had somehow managed to train himself to achieve this kind of responsible position, one that Ahmad had not managed to achieve in twenty years! Once again Ahmad found himself staring at his brother with a blend of amazement and envy, but he managed to put on a show of complete ignorance about what was going on. He had already closed the window on his miseries, so now he would have to turn a blind eye to all this as well. He surrendered himself to patient endurance, with which he had long become inured.

From the outset their mother was fully aware of exactly what was going on. Rushdi was not one to hide secrets. Whenever he was at home, he would be by the window; when time came for tutorials, he would rush over to their neighbor’s home. A passion had grabbed him by the heart; signs of it were visible in the way he paid unusual attention to his appearance, in the nostalgic tone in his singing, and in the fact that he went out so early in the morning—the real reason for which was no longer a secret from anyone.
In fact, the neighbor’s family seemed to be just as aware of something to which he had long since become inured; they all seemed to have high hopes for a happy outcome. Sitt Dawlat, the boys’ mother, was well aware of all of this. She questioned herself about it, but could not come up with any strong objections to the idea.

“How long, O Lord,” she would sometimes mutter to herself sorrowfully, “How long must I wait until I can be like every other mother and celebrate my own sons being happily married?”

But did Nawal really deserve her son? Why not? She was pretty and educated, from a good family; her father was a civil servant. Everything seemed right. But one thing troubled her: could Rushdi get married before his elder brother? But what was she supposed to do? She would have to wait and see what transpired in the days ahead, all in accordance with the all-prudent will of God Almighty.

This time Rushdi had fallen victim to his own love game. What had started as a usual case of flirting had now turned into true love. He was feeling a genuine affection for Nawal. After all, she was his beloved neighbor at the window; companion on the morning road to the hills garlanded with fluffy clouds; infatuated student with whom he could exchange loving looks over the table while they did arithmetic, algebra, and geometry; and cinema companion every Friday morning. Love hovered over these two joyful hearts and joined them together in a craving for affection and felicity.

By now Rushdi’s life had turned into a never-ending string of activities, one that preyed on his body and nerves. He was either focusing on his job at the bank, floating in a haze of passion, or carousing at the Ghamra Casino. He
could only snatch a bit of sleep early in the morning. This new love of his had not managed to break his habits when it came to chronic gambling, indulgence in heavy drinking, or indeed in illicit sex. He told himself he was quite capable of handling such pleasures without any problems, and the plain fact that they had become habitual led him to forget entirely that they were actually major flaws in his character. Not for a single moment was he willing to forego his indulgence in all of them, nor did it occur to him that somehow his life might need to change. Money, booze, and love, those were the things he worshipped, although he may have had the occasional qualm over the amount of money and trouble this lifestyle managed to cause him.

“When I get married,” he used to say by way of consolation, “I’ll put a stop to it all!”

If he had been really honest with himself, he would have decided to forget about all this inappropriate frivolity in his life and to focus on marriage. However, what allowed him to make light of it all was that one day he managed to deposit the sum of fifty pounds in the bank—his profits from gambling. He told himself that if he could save enough of his salary for a whole year and add it to that amount, he would certainly have enough for his marriage expenses. But when would that year need to start?

It was this plan that he kept postponing, surrendering himself instead to the tyrannical demands of his own desires. He had yet to learn how to control his passions, impose limits on his desires, or curb his will. Eventually, however, he did begin to pause to contemplate his dilemma, with one eye on the debauched life he had been leading and another on the girl he desired.

N
ovember went by, and the weather got a lot colder, the kind of cold rarely experienced in Cairo. Rushdi Akif got influenza, something he probably caught walking back to Khan al-Khalili very late at night. Ignoring all the symptoms, he just took a few aspirins whenever his headache was really bad. He kept up his normal activities, but the next day his condition worsened while he was working at the bank. First he shivered; then, teeth chattering, he started shuddering all over. He felt so weak that he had to close his eyes. Leaving the bank, he took a taxi home and stretched out on his bed feeling utterly exhausted.

The bank’s doctor gave him a week off, but his condition worsened even more. His health collapsed incredibly quickly, and he lost a lot of weight; he looked like someone who had been ill for an entire month. Ahmad now realized that his younger brother no longer had the necessary resistance to disease that had allowed him to resist these attacks before.

“You’re living in a dream world,” he told his brother, unable to resist the desire to preach. “Your body can’t cope any more with the strains you’re putting on it.”

Rushdi was used to listening to these kinds of comments from his elder brother. “It’s just a cold,” he replied with a wan smile. “I’ll get over it.”

“If you didn’t abuse your health so much,” Ahmad said angrily, “it wouldn’t have been able to make you so ill!”

But nothing could deflect Rushdi from his usual behavior. “Haven’t you noticed that I don’t spend the entire evening on my own? All my friends are as fit and healthy as mules! It’s just a cold. God willing, it’ll go away!”

Ahmad was well aware that his brother would stubbornly defend his lifestyle, so he stopped making pointed comments. He was no stranger when it came to offering Rushdi advice and encouragement, but now the exasperation and displeasure he was feeling made him go even further. It was as though he were using an excessive display of affection and concern to conceal his own feelings of sorrow and shame.

“I still love him as much as ever,” he kept telling himself, “and he deserves nothing else. Had he known how I felt about the girl, he would never have done what he did. He’s entirely innocent. He loves me, and I do him.”

But how could he ignore the anger and defiance boiling inside him? How could he forget the way he’d wished that his younger brother had never come back to Cairo? Indeed, how could he forget that for a single instant he’d actually wished that the world would be emptied of people, his brother among them of course? These thoughts and others like them made him feel miserable and plagued him with malicious ideas.

One night, when Rushdi’s fever was particularly virulent, Ahmad had a strange dream. He had only managed to fall asleep after a good deal of agonized thought. In his dream he saw himself sitting on his bed. He was looking hopefully out of the window at Nawal’s balcony, but, before he knew it, there was Rushdi sitting on a chair between him and the window, smiling a sweet smile. That annoyed him, and he turned away from the window to stare at his brother. Rushdi tried to distract his attention by pretending that he had no idea what the problem was, but he did not succeed. Then he watched as Rushdi gradually turned into a huge balloon; the shock he felt made him forget completely about how angry he was. Such was his surprise at what he was witnessing that he was unable to suppress a loud cry. He watched his brother—shaped like a huge balloon—slowly floating upward as though he were about to head out of the window and high up into the sky. However, the window blocked his ascent; he stayed there stuck between the two sides of the window and blocking out all the light. At first Ahmad was merely shocked, but then he began to be afraid as well. His brother started laughing sarcastically at him; that got on his nerves, and he became very angry. It seemed to him that his brother was playing deceitful games and scoffing at him. He remonstrated with him, but his brother paid him absolutely no heed and kept on laughing. Ahmad went over to his desk, brought back his pen, and stabbed it into his brother’s stomach until it snapped. A cloud of smoke now appeared, filling the entire room with dust. His brother’s body started deflating slowly until it was back to its normal size, at which point he collapsed at Ahmad’s feet. Twisting
in sheer agony, he started chewing the chair legs, screaming and coughing until his eyes bulged and blood came streaming out of his eyeballs. Ahmad started to panic and was overwhelmed by a fearsome terror, at which point he woke up and realized that he had been dreaming. Good heavens, a pox on all dreams!

No sooner had he recovered from the dream-induced terror than he heard a groan from beyond the closed door of his room. He listened and realized that it was his brother making the noise; he was groaning and grunting. He leapt out of bed, put on his slippers and went quickly to his brother’s room. He found Rushdi in bed moaning and his mother beside him rubbing his back, while his father sat close to the bed.

“What’s the matter?” Ahmad asked.

“Don’t worry, son,” his mother said. “It’s just the pain of the fever breaking.”

Rushdi realized that Ahmad had come in.

“I’m so sorry,” he said stifling his groans for a moment. “I’ve kept you all awake.”

They all gave him encouragement and prayed for him. Ahmad sat down beside his mother, took his brother’s hand, and started stroking it tenderly, as though he felt the need to compensate for the angry feelings he had expressed during his dream. An hour of agony went by, with the family feeling as much pain as the sick young man. They all stayed by his bed until dawn.

R
ushdi recovered and left his bed. It had not been easy for him to stay there for a whole week, particularly since he was the kind of person whose only delight in life involved games, nightlife, and pleasures. For that reason he balked when his brother suggested that he should stay at home and get some rest so he could recoup his energy.

“It’s bad enough that I’ve wasted a week already,” he chuckled apologetically.

Ahmad who had devoted most of his adult life to his brother got angry. “I think it’s a very bad idea to plunge straight back into the kind of life you’ve been leading. You keep squandering your youth away as though it’s an inexhaustible resource. You never get enough rest. What kind of insanity is this?”

Rushdi detected in his brother’s tone of voice a note of jealousy because he, Rushdi, was always so healthy.

“You’re a wonderful big brother!” he said with a beatific smile on his face. “May God grant me always to have the benefit of your large heart.”

“It’s all for your own good!”

“Do you think I have the slightest doubt about that?” the loving, grateful younger brother asked.