Morning and Evening Talk (23 page)

When the Urabi Revolution came, the shaykh was full of enthusiasm. He was drawn to its current and supported it with heart and tongue. When it failed and the English occupied Egypt, he was one of many arrested and tried and was sentenced to five years in prison. Galila toured the tombs of saints invoking evil upon the khedive and the English. She managed the family with some money she had inherited from her father. Shaykh Mu‘awiya left jail to find a changed world. No one remembered the revolution or any of its men, and if names were mentioned they were accompanied by curses. He found no sympathy except in the eyes of his old friend Yazid al-Misri, the watchman of Bayn al-Qasrayn’s public fountain. He felt like an outsider. He
was sad and kept to himself until he found a teaching post in a state school.

One day his friend Aziz said to him, “My son Amr works at the ministry of education. He’s twenty and I want him to get married.”

The shaykh grasped what Aziz was driving at and said, “By God’s blessing.”

“It’s in your hands, with God’s permission, and from your house,” said Aziz.

“Radia my daughter and Amr my son!” said the shaykh.

Ni‘ma Ata and her daughter, Rashwana, went to court Radia. They returned dazzled by Sadiqa’s beauty and satisfied with Radia’s good looks and lofty demeanor. Even so, Ni‘ma asked, “Is she taller than Amr?”

“Not at all, mother. He’s taller,” said Rashwana reassuringly.

However, time overtook the shaykh before he could witness his daughter’s wedding. The bridal hamper arrived by coincidence on the day he died, prompting Galila, with her individual interpretation of her heritage, to release a stream of ululation from the window then resume wailing for her dear deceased, which the quarter joked about for the rest of her life. The shaykh was buried in an enclosure nearby Aziz’s own in the vicinity of Sidi Nagm al-Din.

H
E WAS BORN AND GREW UP IN
D
ARB AL-AHMAR
, the only son of Habiba Amr and Shaykh Arif al-Minyawi. He had no memory of his father but grew up in the abundant tender love of his mother and paternal grandmother. His grandmother died when he was six, but he found in the affection of Amr, Radia, and the rest of the family a way to forget he was a lonely orphan. It was perhaps fortunate that he yearned for success and was carried away by ambition from childhood. Yet he never appreciated the insane sacrifice his mother made on his behalf in refusing an excellent marriage proposal and remaining a widow for the rest of her life, after only two years married to his father.

Nadir grew into a handsome and fine young man and no period of his life was devoid of romantic adventures within his limited means. He obtained the baccalaureate in commerce during the First World War and found work in the Treasury. He despised his poverty and was always looking for a better future. To this end, he enrolled at an institute teaching English, mastered the art of typing, and put himself forward for an exam advertised by an English metal company. He was successful, so he quit the civil service to work for the company’s accounts department. The move frightened his maternal aunts and uncles, cousins, and mother, but he said with a confidence unknown in the family, “There’s no future in government employment.”

His finances improved but his ambition was not sated. As an ambitious young man dreaming of fortune he was uncomfortable with the course of the July Revolution. His fears were realized after the Tripartite Aggression and the impounding of British companies, at which point he reluctantly found himself a civil servant once more. He studied the situation in his family and its branches in the light of the revolution’s new reality. He found representatives of the revolution, like Abduh Mahmud, Mahir Mahmud, and his cousin Hakim, in the families of Ata al-Murakibi and Aunt Samira, and secretly made up his mind to marry either Abduh and Mahir’s sister Nadira or Hakim’s sister Hanuma. He consulted his mother, who said, “Hanuma’s closer to us and prettier.” At his suggestion she proposed to her on his behalf. Hanuma was a radio broadcaster with strong principles and a similar nature to her brother Salim. She had refused the hand of her cousin Aql, but agreed to marry Nadir. The wedding was held in an apartment on Hasan Sabri Street in Zamalek. Nadir urged his mother to come and live with him, but she refused to leave Darb al-Ahmar or move away from the blessed old quarter, where her dear mother and many of her sisters and uncle’s daughters lived. The new family was blessed with happiness and Hanuma gave birth to three daughters, Samira, Radia, and Safa. Relations between Nadir and Hakim strengthened and, thanks to Hakim, Nadir was promoted to Head of Accounts. His salary increased beyond the dreams of his other civil servant relatives but his ambition knew no limits. With nationalization, he was appointed Chairman of Company Administration but still was not satisfied. “What more do you want?” Hanuma asked him.

“I don’t like fixed salaries,” he replied ambiguously.

“I don’t mind wealth so long as it’s combined with purity,” Hanuma said with clarity.

He noticed a look of fear in her eyes and said quickly, “Of course.”

He sensed the partner of his life was not partner to his ambition. He believed deep down that the only difference between people inside and outside jail was luck, not nature or principles, and that mankind was a wretched bunch from which only the shrewd and strong escaped. He regarded his wife as an extension of the foolish general attitudes he had to flatter if he wanted to realize his ambition. He began consolidating relations with certain officers and men in the private sector until June 5, when they were all exposed. He was satisfied to be simply pensioned off, again thanks to Hakim, but Hanuma raised a storm that culminated in divorce.

“You’re only responsible for yourself,” Samira assured Hanuma with her usual calm.

“But I can’t just shut my eyes and destroy everything my life is built on,” the young woman replied fiercely.

Hanuma kept the apartment and their daughters while Nadir began to live between hotels and Darb al-Ahmar, explaining the divorce to his innocent mother in terms of a disagreement that ruined the marriage. When the situation changed and the first indications of the infitah policy appeared he began to breathe once more. He derived from this unexpected situation a life he had never before dreamed of. He busied himself determinedly with imports and finally realized the dream he had entertained since childhood. The world spread out before him at home and abroad. On one of his journeys he met an Australian widow, married her, and moved in with her in a villa in al-Ma’adi. He would often laugh and say, “It’s my rightful share; fortune is for the strong, morality for the weak.”

She was the fourth child of Mahmud Bey Ata. She was born and grew up in the mansion on Khayrat Square in an environment steeped in splendor and comfort. She was nice looking but less
so than her brothers. She was similar in nature, principles, and piety to her older sister, Shakira, and very compliant and gentle too. She had a sharp mind and loved school. Her father, having been conquered by current trends, did not object to her continuing her education. Her childhood happiness was crowned by the love that united her with her cousin Mazin. He was her knight in shining armor from adolescence until the day he died, or rather all her life. She loved him like nothing else in the world and pinned all her dreams, happiness, and hope on him. How she fretted over the quarrel that rent the family! How she feared its implications for her happiness and aspirations! “Papa is too angry,” she said to her mother.

Their bond was not severed through the many years of dispute. Meanwhile, she passed the baccalaureate and enrolled at the faculty of medicine. Then came the disaster in which Mazin perished. He vanished from her world and she virtually went mad with grief, or rather anger. She spent a year in the mansion, prisoner to depression, then continued her studies with a hardened heart, set on renouncing the world. She emerged from that period with two bitter experiences: the death of her beloved and her sister’s disappointing marriage. She applied all her energy to work, solitude, and religious readings. Good opportunities to marry came her way but she instinctively thought the worst and hated the idea of married life. She specialized in pediatric medicine, took a doctorate, and was more and more successful every day. She paid no attention to her brothers’ advice to reconsider marriage and persisted with her work, solitude, and piety until the train left her behind, unapologetic, registered in the sad world as a unique, unrepeatable entity. Shakira, Abduh, Nadira, and Mahir assembled in the mansion in old age, as they had done at the start of their lives, living examples of success and failure.

Ata al-Murakibi and Sakina Gal‘ad al-Mughawiri’s daughter, she was born and grew up in the house in al-Ghuriya. She inherited her mother’s wide eyes and copious black hair together with good health, which her mother had not known. When Yazid al-Misri decided to arrange a marriage for his son Aziz, she fulfilled the criteria: chaste, beautiful, and the daughter of his neighbor and friend, Ata al-Murakibi. Ni‘ma was wedded to Aziz and moved to a different floor of the same house in al-Ghuriya. She was a good example of a sensible, economizing, and obedient wife and gave birth to Rashwana, Amr, and Surur. Her father’s marriage to the rich widow came as a shock. She watched bewildered as he climbed into a different class. She visited the new mansion on Khayrat Square and the farm in Beni Suef and was utterly dazzled by what she saw; she could not believe her eyes. She anticipated a shower of charity but was disappointed, for, with the exception of a few gifts on festivals, the man was tight-fisted, as though she were not his daughter or Mahmud and Ahmad’s older sister. “He’s a miser. He holds back his prosperity,” said Aziz.

She defended her father despite some resentment, “No. He’s just afraid the lady will accuse him of squandering her fortune!”

She was God-fearing but nevertheless hoped the widow would depart for the Hereafter before her father so she could inherit and bequeath some of the money to help Rashwana, Amr, and Surur in their lives. But the man died a short while before his wife, frustrating her hopes in death as he had in life. In the end, the fact that her two brothers, Mahmud and Ahmad, interacted with her and her children and were dutiful to them made her forget her sorrows. She reciprocated their love until the end of her life. She lived to delight in her grandchildren and departed the world two years after Aziz.

The first child of Sadriya and Hamada al-Qinawi, she was born and grew up in Khan Ga‘far. She was cheerful in Bayt al-Qadi as a child and enjoyed special favor with Amr and Radia as the first grandchild. She was moderately pretty and received a small measure of education, which she soon forgot. When she was nearly fifteen, a middle-aged village mayor, a relative of her father, asked to marry her. Her father welcomed him enthusiastically and Sadriya realized with profound sorrow that she was to be separated from her daughter forevermore, that she would only see her on special occasions, and that from now on her daughter’s roots would be in Upper Egypt.

Nihad acclimatized to her new surroundings, adopted new mannerisms, and took on a new dialect. She bore the village mayor ten children, half of them boys, the other half girls. Whenever she visited Cairo as a stranger, eyes would gaze at her curiously, for she was the picture of a typical village mayor’s wife with her vast body and gold jewelry covering arms and neck. But she was the kind of stranger who provoked laughter.

T
HE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF
S
AMIRA
and Hussein Qabil, she was born and grew up in the house on Ibn Khaldun Street. Her beauty was like her mother’s and she was tall, slim, and intelligent, had firmly held morals and principles, and was very similar to her younger brother, Salim. She excelled at school and enrolled in the French language department of the faculty of arts. She was enthusiastic about the July Revolution as a movement for reform and morality but changed her mind when it sentenced Salim to jail and did not hesitate to criticize Hakim for supporting it. She graduated from college and went into radio, thanks to her good results on the one hand, and Hakim’s recommendation on the other. Sadriya’s son Aql wanted to marry her but she rejected him on account of her height and his shortness. “We would make a ridiculous sight walking down the street together,” she told her mother. She agreed to marry Nadir, for he had a good job, was good looking, and she thought highly of his morals. They lived their life together in an elegant apartment on Hasan Sabri Street in Zamalek and she gave birth to Samira, Radia, and Safa. When his deviation came to light, she raised a violent storm, which Nadir had not expected from his life partner. She told him frankly, “I refuse to go on living with a man who has clearly gone astray.” Samira hated the idea of divorce
and tried to convince her that it was not her responsibility, that she must weigh up the consequences of her decision for her daughters. But she said to her mother, “He is diminished in my opinion and there’s nothing I can do about it.”