Morning and Evening Talk (19 page)

“You must stop secluding yourself,” his father would tell him.

“I know where to find peace and quiet and I’m not interested in anything else,” he would cut back.

“What do you do locked in your room?”

“Listen to records and read.”

But he did not reveal any literary or intellectual talents.

He adopted his father’s political views, probably because they fitted his sense of superiority and inborn contempt for the masses. He saw nationalist pursuits and popular leadership as a variety of banal political posturing. It did not escape his attention that he was held in lower esteem than other members of his family, and the degree of ignorance that prevented him from attaining the eminence his social status and class arrogance merited challenged his self-importance. He was hard on himself and put himself through intolerable and unsustainable exertions, staying up all night studying only to gain average marks that were just good enough to take him from one grade to the next at the tail end of the top students. He put himself through torture in order to excel but to no avail. He eyed the victorious with resentment and respect and was filled with distress at his own incompetence. How could he be incompetent when his grandfather, father, and older brother were all pashas? The future loomed before him as a stark battle bristling with provocation and aggravation. Nor could he find consolation in religion since, like his brothers and sisters, he knew it only in name, not in substance. Thus, he worshiped work and gave himself to it wholly, only to be forced to content himself at the end with the tiny fruit his arid land could produce.

When he enrolled in the faculty of law, he found his cousin Labib, Surur Effendi’s son, crowned in a halo of admiration for
his achievements and tender age, which compounded Ghassan’s depression and wretchedness. He took exception to the divine decree that conferred genius on his penniless cousin, a pauper’s son, while denying it to him, a descendant of pashas and highranking lawyers and doctors. Perhaps part of his contempt for nationalism was to do with the fervor of his poor relations, Amr and Surur’s families. He was unenthusiastic about the 1919 Revolution as it unfolded and quickly sought refuge with his father and his family on the side of those opposing it. When he graduated, he watched his cousin be appointed to the public prosecutor’s office while he was left behind despite his noble descent and late nights. With the help of his father, the grand councilor, he was assigned to the legal department at the ministry of education, and started his career angry and peeved though he had no right to be. He became known in the workplace for introversion, industry, and ignorance; all his promotions were through the intercession of his father. He continued to seclude himself both at the office and at the villa. He had no friends or girlfriends and only left the library, which he built up year after year, when absolutely necessary. He could sometimes be seen alone in a public garden or at the club, or sneaking with extreme caution into a secret high-class brothel.

“It’s time you thought about marriage,” said Farida Hanem Husam.

He looked at her with surprise and annoyance and muttered, “This is all there is.”

He had several reasons to hate the thought of marriage. For a start, it would invade his sacred solitude, which he could not abandon, and he was afraid the right girl would reject his job or family due to the various shortcomings of which he was not unaware. Farida worried about him constantly, especially after Abd al-Azim Pasha’s death, when she sensed her time was approaching and that she would be leaving him in a big empty villa. The July Revolution brought afflictions he had not
predicted. “Have we sunk so low as to be ruled by a band of illiterate army fellows?” he asked himself anxiously. He watched what happened to his family’s rank and the value of its lawyers and doctors in dismay, asking himself, “Should I now be sorry the Wafd rabble have gone?”

“I’ll be joining your father sometime soon. You need a wife and children,” Farida said to him.

“Bachelorhood is the final solace,” he replied rudely.

He persisted in this malevolent obstinacy and his resolve was not shaken after his mother’s death. He retired at the beginning of the 1970s and went on living alone like a ghost. It was as though the world could offer him nothing but enduring health, and his only pleasure was to be found in food and books, then television and the new maid.

T
HE FOURTH CHILD OF
S
AMIRA
and Hussein Qabil, he was born and grew up on Ibn Khaldun Street. Like his brothers and sisters, he greeted the world with a slender, vigorous body and good looks and he had a promising, brilliant mind. He was, however, brought up in the disciplined climate that prevailed on the family after Hussein Qabil’s death. From childhood, he dreamed of becoming a doctor and, with strong determination, fulfilled his dream, surmounting the obstacles of the system. His heart was divided between enthusiasm for the July Revolution, because of his birth and a disposition he shared with his brother Hakim, and occasional aversion to it out of sympathy for the Muslim Brothers and affection for his brother Salim, who had been thrown in prison. He found deliverance from the contradictions by concerning himself with his work. When he got his license to practice he opened a private clinic alongside his hospital work. He fell in love with a colleague, Doctor Aqila Thabit, and they married and moved into a modern apartment in New Cairo. Faruq was greatly saddened by the fate of his brother Hakim and the absence of his other brother, Salim. Samira’s sons learned the strength of their tenacity just as, like their mother, they learned to stand firm in the face of adversity. He was careful not to let his political views be known outside
the family environment, taking the suffering of his brothers as a lesson, and devoted himself to his work. In this arena he achieved a unique position as a surgeon, and his wife, similarly, held high-ranking posts as a midwife. She gave birth to two daughters, who gravitated competently to medicine. Faruq was among the few who believed in Sadat’s politics, with the exception of his unregulated infitah policy, whose gates opened with an exuberance that brought the country significant economic problems. Thus, he did not belong to the section of the population that rejoiced at Sadat’s death. He once commented to his uncle Amr, “Sadat took Gamal Abdel Nasser’s place and so was assassinated in his place.”

He was remembered as a rare doctor, meaning that he always stood by his principles and never overcharged for his troubles.

The third son of Amer and Iffat, like his two brothers he was born and grew up in the house in Bayn al-Ganayin. With his fair complexion, beautiful eyes, and slender figure he bore a close resemblance to his grandmother, Farida Husam. He soaked up a good portion of the heritage of Amr and Radia and the old quarter but was sated by the customs of his other grandparents, Farida and Abd al-Azim Pasha Dawud. From childhood, he adored the law and the glory of legal office, just as he adored modern culture—cinema and radio, then television. He loved his two grandfathers, Amr and Abd al-Azim, but took no interest in the Wafd, nor indeed any other political party. He graduated from law school among the top students and, with his achievements and Abd al-Azim Pasha’s standing, was immediately appointed to the public prosecutor’s office. Of Amer and Iffat’s children, he was perhaps the only one whose behavior and ideas did not cause them worry, in contrast to his brothers, Shakir and Qadri. When he announced one day that he was in
love with a student from law school, a girl called Magida al-Arshi, Iffat became agitated because of bitter past experience. However, she was happy when she was reassured that the girl was a doctor’s daughter, a doctor’s granddaughter, and from a very good, suitable family. “It’s the first wedding to whet the appetite!” she remarked to Amer.

Fayyid married and moved into an apartment in New Cairo. He was not averse to the July Revolution, although it invalidated his grandfather and uncle’s rank. Indeed, he was rather drawn to it and made no attempt to hide this from his mother and father.

“It came at the perfect time,” he said.

Fayyid advanced with familiar speed until he became a councilor. His attitude to the revolution and its leader remained the same; even the ordeal of June 5 did not change his mind, though it rent his heart. As for Sadat, he supported him in his war and turning of a new page in democracy but had severe misgivings about the peace plan, then cursed him for the infitah policy and relapse of democracy. Thus, while he did not condone his assassination, he was not sad and believed Sadat had got what he deserved. Fayyid only had one daughter, who specialized in chemistry. Iffat named her Farida after her mother.

She appeared in al-Ghuriya at the age of fourteen with a strong body and nice face, walking about in a blue gallabiya, carrying a basket with fish and a set of scales on her head. She was forced to foray from her house in al-Sukariya after her father died and her mother was paralyzed, and was looked after by neighborhood customs and piety. One day a robust man with an accent from outside Cairo called her over to buy some fish. She lowered her basket to the ground and, squatting behind it, began balancing the weights. He gazed at her for a while and said, “Dear girl, you’re so sweet.”

“Do you want fish or the scales smashed in your face?” she replied rudely.

The man snorted unconsciously. She got to her feet, appealing to the onlookers. Some men dived on the stranger and the situation became aggravated. However, a man they recognized—Ata al-Murakibi—stepped forward from the crowd and shouted, “Praise the Prophet.” He laughed and said, “He’s an Alexandrian. He lives in my building. He’s not familiar with local custom. When they snort it’s like when we take a deep breath.” Ata recovered his neighbor and took him to his shop.

For his part, Ata saw the man’s arrival as a bad omen since it dragged in its wake an army of infidels, Napoleon’s troops. “What brought you here?” he asked.

“The plague killed my family so I decided to leave Alexandria,” he replied.

Things changed when Ata married his master’s daughter, Sakina; he began to regard the Alexandrian’s arrival as a good omen and started liking him. “Dear old Yazid, you brought blessings!”

Yazid al-Misri did not forget Farga al-Sayyad. He said to his friend, “I want to marry the fish seller.” Ata al-Murakibi asked the mother for her daughter’s hand and Farga was wedded to Yazid at his apartment in the house in al-Ghuriya. Ata al-Murakibi claimed that as soon as he closed the door on the bride and groom, the guests outside in the salon could hear the snorts boring a hole through the door, like water gurgling in a narghile. Yazid al-Misri was happy in his marriage and Farga gave birth to many children, of whom only Aziz and Dawud survived. The couple lived to see their grandchildren. One night, Yazid dreamed he saw a man who said he was Nagm al-Din, at whose tomb he sometimes prayed. He advised him, “Build your grave next to mine so we may come together as friends.” Yazid did not waver. He constructed the enclosure in which he was
buried and which, to this day, welcomes his deceased descendants from all over Cairo.

She was known as The Flowers’ Friend because of the long hours she spent in the garden of the villa on Sarayat Road. She was the most beautiful of Abd al-Azim’s children and prettier than Farida Hanem Husam. She may not have been as clever as Iffat, but her heart was kinder and her soul purer. She was educated with her sister at La Mère de Dieu with the same end in mind, namely to prepare her to marry into high rank. Yet her marriage nonetheless came about in the traditional way, as she was engaged—by way of a neighbor—to a public prosecutor called Ali Tal’at. Abd al-Azim Pasha Dawud had a house built for her in Bayn al-Ganayin, as he had done for Iffat, and she was wedded to her groom there. The marriage was very successful and she gave birth to Dawud, Abd al-Azim, and Farida. However, the bad luck waiting round the corner for the family became proverbial. Fahima lost her children once they had made it through youth and raised hope: Dawud died of typhoid in his third year of law school, Abd al-Azim died of cholera a month after graduating from the faculty of science, and Farida died of rheumatism of the heart in secondary school. Profound grief distracted the parents to the point of renouncing the world. Ali Tal’at, then a councilor at the court of appeals in Cairo, requested his pension and devoted himself to worship and religious readings in constant seclusion at home or in the cemetery. Fahima, in contrast, who came from a family where religion crouched on the margins, began asking questions about fate and the day she would be united with her dead children once more. She started buying all the books she could find at the market about spirits, how to summon them, and secret powers, and finally put faith in Radia and the heritage she had previously looked on with a mocking smile.

“Have patience, dear daughter,” her father, Abd al-Azim Pasha, said. “If only I could ransom myself for your children.”