Khan Al-Khalili (30 page)

“What on earth have you been doing?” Ahmad yelled. “Have you gone mad? Is this the agreement we made?”

Rushdi remained silent, although the semblance of a smile showed on his face, a mixture of contentment and worry.

“This is unbelievable,” Ahmad went on. “I only found out because your bed was empty. I was feeling anxious, so
I was only sleeping lightly. Then I heard the front door. Is this what we agreed to?”

“As you know full well, brother,” Rushdi finally said in a low voice, “I’ve kept to the agreement for a whole month. Now my inner self urged me to break it, just a bit.…”

“Only someone who’s either completely ignorant or pretending to be could possibly say something so stupid. Don’t you realize that the kind of behavior you’ve shown tonight can negate a whole month’s precautions?”

“But I’m feeling a whole lot better!”

“You’re kidding yourself!” said Ahmad angrily. “Your crass stupidity is doing you harm. Allowing you so much freedom is obviously a huge mistake. If the doctor knew the kind of tomfoolery you’ve been up to tonight, he would immediately demand that you go to the sanitorium for a check-up.”

Rushdi looked defeated. The whole effort of coming home and facing this had completely worn him out.

“Don’t be unkind to me, Ahmad,” he chided his brother. “You don’t usually behave this way.…”

“Now you don’t seem to be able to tell the difference between caring and unkindness,” Ahmad responded. “You call me unkind, when I’ve stayed up in a complete panic wondering where you were. It’s yourself and me you’re being unkind to!”

Rushdi now felt even more tired and worn-out. Tears welled up in his eyes. That made Ahmad cool his temper and feel both sorry and unhappy for his brother. He put his hand on Rushdi’s shoulder.

“Enough of your exhaustion and my pain. You’ve never cried, so don’t start now. I won’t bother you any more.
God alone can tell you what the right thing to do is. My heart is afraid for you and is begging you to do what’s right. Go to bed and trust in God to make you well again.”

As Ahmad went back to bed, he started wondering whether his brother would revert to his old ways despite his serious illness.

E
arly February was greeted by a world that was as concerned as usual about its strong winds and freezing storms. The sky was covered with a thick layer of dark clouds. The ground was like a chicken sitting on its eggs, waiting for the advent of spring that would crack open the dark cloud cover and reveal the clear sunlight and the scent of flowers.

Rushdi still looked very skinny. Deep inside him there lurked a flame consisting of emotions and feelings that would not be quenched. He wanted to throw off the chains that his illness imposed on him. The doctor had given him another check-up and told him that his chest condition had not improved. All his hopes were dashed, and the joy he had felt when his voice and cough had improved simply vanished. He had been patient for so long, abandoning the life that he loved. He kept on hoping and hoping, but when was he going to get better? What was even worse was that the doctor had insisted that he must find a way to get to the
sanitorium in Helwan. Had he given up on the idea that Rushdi could be cured while staying in Cairo? So what then was the point of enduring all this patience and agony? Apart from all that, his brother made it clear to him that he was not happy about how thin and pale he looked. As a result Rushdi was permanently disgruntled and resentful.

One evening he was giving his two pupils their lesson. Nawal asked her brother to go and get a cup of water. When the two of them were alone, she asked Rushdi why he wasn’t meeting her every morning any longer. Couldn’t he do it just once? His heart leapt for sheer joy.

“How about tomorrow morning?” he immediately replied, totally oblivious to the consequences of what he was saying.

It was then that he thought of his brother who was now serving as his jailer. He told himself that, if Ahmad acknowledged that he had to go out at nine o’clock in the morning, then how could he object if he went out three-quarters of an hour earlier?

The next day Rushdi got up early, had his nutritious breakfast, waited until Ahmad went into the bathroom, then hurriedly left the apartment. He spotted his beloved girl a few steps ahead of him, wearing her usual gray coat and with her school bag under her arm. He was so overjoyed that he forgot all about his own miseries. As he followed her up the road to al-Darrasa, he fondly recalled the times when he had felt fit and well as he did this routine. The entire idea made him sigh in regret.

“How precious health is,” he told himself.

He looked up at the Muqattam Hills shrouded in cloud.
The sky always put him in mind of his Lord, and he now begged Him to take him in hand.

After the turn off in the road he caught up with her and clasped her right hand in his. She turned toward him with a smile.

“So,” she teased him in a tone that was not without a touch of reproach, “you have decided that this little jaunt isn’t worth your time, you fickle boy?”

He shook his head remorsefully. “It’s this awful cold,” he muttered.

“You’re supposed to have gotten over your cold a while ago,” she said. “So why so slow?”

“You’re right. It’s hanging on, but it’s nothing really. The truth is that it’s my negligence that’s to blame.”

Obviously she was aware that he had stopped their morning excursions because of his cold. Since the cold had now gone, she encouraged him to resume their walk together since she was keen for them to be alone together.

She sneaked a quick glance in his direction. “Do you know what my grandmother says about you?” she asked.

His heart gave a leap, fearing that he might be about to hear something relevant to the question of an engagement. “What does she say?”

“She asked me with a laugh, ‘How come your professor is as thin as a rake? Do you want me to suggest some recipes to put some weight on him?’ ”

Nawal gave a gentle laugh, and he laughed with her so as to cover up the intense feeling of sorrow that came over him. He started to feel alarmed, but could see no way out of his predicament other than to put a bright face on things.

“I don’t need to get fat. Being thin is all the rage now. Thank your grandmother for me and tell her that I’d actually like to get even thinner!”

Just then she frowned as though she were remembering something. “By the way, you naughty boy,” she chided him, “sometimes when we’re gathered around the table for our lessons, you play footsie with me. You seem to forget that you’re wearing shoes but I’m barefoot!”

Rushdi blushed. “My heart and soul would sacrifice itself for your lovely little feet!” he laughed.

They were passing by the café called The Desert Club. She pointed at the waiter who was eating his breakfast. “Do you realize,” she said, “that cunning waiter over there has cottoned onto our rendezvous every morning? As soon as he spotted me walking on my own these last few days, he started clapping his hands whenever I walked by.

“ ‘Where’s your mate, little bird?’ he’d say as though talking to himself. ‘All lovers work in pairs!’

“Good heavens! How embarrassed I felt; it almost made me pass out!”

Once again they burst into laughter. They had almost reached the turn in the road where the Akif family’s wooden tomb lay on both sides. Nawal looked over at it.

“You owe me at least a hundred prayers,” she said. “Every single day I recite the Fatiha by your family tomb.”

“My dear Nawal,” Rushdi replied with a smile, “you’re a mercy for my grandfather who’s buried there and a gigantic tease to his grandson!”

He too looked over at the tomb. Suddenly a scary thought crossed his mind, like some demon emerging out of a graveyard. Would fate soon decree that this girl of his
would be walking past this tomb and reciting the Fatiha over his departed spirit? His heart froze, and he looked wonderingly at her lovely face. She was his everything in life, he realized; if there was one single thing that could scoff at death, it was surely the deep love shared by two hearts. He now had a very powerful motive for his relationship with her, for holding her close to his heart, indeed inside his heart if possible. She looked back at him and noticed his dreamy-eyed gaze.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked.

“Because I love you, Nawal,” he replied with a break in his voice. “Looking at those graves by the light of your lovely eyes, I’ve come to realize the true meaning of the saying that life is love. The graves have told me that every hour we allow ourselves to be apart from each other is in fact a crime whose penalty is the darkness of the tomb. I heard a voice yelling at me: ‘What a fool you are! All you bother about is trivialities. You’re gambling away the real pleasure of life.’ ”

She blushed, and her eyes sparkled with emotion. Neither of them felt the cold wind that was blowing in from the desert. He clasped her hand, and they walked on together. He started asking himself how he could possibly avoid bringing up the topic of an engagement after everything he had just said. For her part she was expecting him to raise the much beloved topic with every step she was taking. But he said nothing more until they were at the end of the road. They said farewell and parted. He slowed down and watched her walk on, his gaze full of all the love, emotion, and sadness he was nursing in his heart. She turned off toward Abbasiya, and he headed for the trolley stop. It was
only then that he began to feel totally exhausted. He felt short of breath and so dizzy that he almost threw up.

Rushdi now made a point of talking to his brother about the possibility of an engagement and the bad impression her family would get if he did not raise the subject. His brother was already annoyed because Rushdi had gone out so early in the morning and so told him that he was not prepared to broach the topic with Kamal Khalil Effendi until he was completely cured.

“You can make whatever excuses you like,” he told his brother. “You certainly know how to do that. But it’s not right to make anything official until you’re completely well again, God willing. The engagement announcement can be a reward for getting better. We’ll see how strong your resolve really is!”

Ahmad found that he could not dissuade his brother from going out early and exposing himself to the cold. He gave up and entrusted his brother’s welfare to God, begging Him to show mercy and kindness. Ahmad was one of those types who take the sufferings of their nearest and dearest on themselves. In such weak hearts, deeply buried fears and worries can find fertile ground for all sorts of sorts of sorrows and delusions. From the very first his brother’s illness had become his overriding concern, a poisonous thorn in the side of his own sense of security.

His anxieties extended to other spheres as well, so much so that he ended up having to deal with the most delicate of ethical issues, one that had not even occurred to him before. He was well aware that his brother was meeting
the girl every morning; he may even have spent time alone with her in the evening when he was tutoring her. If passion got the better of him—as happens when people are in love—and he stole a kiss, might not the girl be exposed to some serious kind of harm. Did Rushdi not realize the risks he was taking? Was his conscience not serving as a kind of restraint? But then, how could someone who was treating his own life with such levity give any value to those of other people? Ahmad thought about this for a while. He was both exasperated and worried, but he had no idea how to rescue this innocent girl from disaster. His indecisiveness was based entirely on the purest of ethical motives; he was convinced of that and also of the profound moral obligations on which it was based. Even so, he did not seem to realize his natural propensity to indulge in self-examination, or that all too often the eye only sees what it wants to see, so he was both exasperated and worried, both of which only complicated his thinking even more. He could not tell Kamal Khalil the truth since such a betrayal of his beloved brother would be an appalling crime, nor could he reveal his fears to his brother, since that would strike his sensitive soul in its most vulnerable spot. The reluctance, fear, and worry that Ahmad was feeling were all torture for him, but now as always he had neither resolve nor will to act. Disconsolate and confused, he gave up. His worries continued to plague him and prick his conscience, so much so that the entire process wore him out and made him desperate.

“Perhaps the kind of stupor that Boss Zifta enjoys is better than the kind of life I’m living!” he thought to himself in despair.

R
ushdi’s health went from bad to worse, and he became even thinner and paler. Even so, he refused to change his behavior, as though the whole thing had nothing to do with him. From this point on, he was no longer content merely to take his early morning walks. Whenever he felt like seeing his friends at the Ghamra Casino, he would rush over there and spend a riotous evening with them.

“Are you trying to commit suicide?” Ahmad would rail at him.

The truth is that he was on a downhill slide toward suicide without even intending it. He was utterly incapable of resisting his natural inclination to indulge in life’s pleasures and surrendered to a frightening new instinct created by the disease itself, while his propensity for risk-taking and optimism shielded him from the dire outcome involved. He never gave up hope, or rather only occasionally; and remained the daredevil he had always been, contemptuous and always smiling.

Then suddenly his cough came back; in fact, it came back much worse than it had ever been before. Now it was almost continuous, and once again his sputum had blood in it. His fellow workers in the bank noticed how badly he was coughing and began to get suspicious. Work now became pointless, and his parents began to be aware of how dangerous the condition that threatened their son actually was. They advised him to stop working until he had recovered, and yet he still crazily insisted on pretending he was well. Ahmad could take it no longer; one day he called him into his room.

“Are you ignoring how dangerous things are?”