The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail (16 page)

He went over to the other sofa to pick up the scissors lying on a pile of pieces of fabric, then returned to snip the picture carefully out of the newspaper. By the time Nur emerged from the bathroom he felt calmer. When she called him, he went into the bedroom, wondering how she could have brought him all those news reports and know nothing of them herself.

She'd spent a lot of money. As he sat by her side on a sofa, facing the food-covered table, his mouth watered, and to show his pleasure he stroked her moist hair and murmured, “You know, there aren't many women like you.”

She tied a red scarf around her head and began filling the glasses, smiling at the compliment. To see her sitting there, proud and confident of having him, if only for a while, made him feel somehow glad. She was wearing no makeup over her light brown skin and she looked invigorated from her bath, like a dish of good food, somehow, modest and fresh.

“You can say things like that!” she said, giving him a quizzical stare. “Sometimes I almost think the police know more about kindness than you.”

“No, do believe me, I'm happy being with you.”

“Truly?”

“Yes. Truly. You're so kind, so good. I don't know why anyone could resist you.”

“Wasn't I like that in the old days?”

No easy victory can ever make one forget a bloody defeat! “At that time, I just wasn't an affectionate person.”

“And now?”

“Let's have a drink and enjoy ourselves,” he said, picking up his glass.

They set about the food and drink with gusto, until she said, “How did you spend your time?”

“Between the shadows and the graves,” he said, dipping a piece of meat in tahini. “Do you have any family buried here?”

“No, mine are all buried in al-Balyana, God rest their souls.”

Only the sounds of their eating and the clink of glasses and dishes on the tray broke the silence, until Said said, “I'm going to ask you to buy some cloth for me—something suitable for an officer's uniform.”

“An army officer?”

“You didn't know I learned tailoring in jail?”

“But why do you want it?” she said uneasily.

“Ah, well, the time has come for me to do my military service.”

“Don't you understand I don't want to lose you again?”

“Don't worry about me at all,” he said with extraordinary confidence. “If no one had given me away the police would never have caught me.”

Nur sighed, still troubled.

“You're not in any danger yourself, are you?” Said asked, grinning, his mouth stuffed with food. “No highwayman's going to waylay you in the desert, right?”

They laughed together, and she leaned over and kissed him full on the lips. Their lips were equally sticky.

“The truth is,” she said, “that to live at all we've got to be afraid of nothing.”

“Not even death?” Said said, nodding toward the window.

“Listen, I even forget that, too, when time brings me together with someone I love.”

Astonished at the strength and tenacity of her affection, Said relaxed and let himself feel a mixture of compassion, respect, and gratitude toward Nur.

A moth overhead made love to a naked light bulb in the dead of the night.

           

N
ot a day passes without the graveyard welcoming new guests. Why, it's as though there's nothing more left to do but crouch behind the shutters watching these endless progressions of death. It's the mourners who deserve one's sympathy, of course. They come in one weeping throng and then they go away drying their tears and conversing, as if while they're here some force stronger than death itself has convinced them to stay alive.

That was how your own parents were buried: your father, Amm Mahran, the kindly concierge of the student's hostel, who died middle-aged after a hard but honest and satisfying life. You helped him in his work from your childhood on. For all the extreme simplicity, even poverty of their lives, the family enjoyed sitting together when the day's work was done, in their ground-floor room at the entrance to the building, where Amm Mahran and his wife would chat together while their child played. His piety made him happy, and the students respected him. The only entertainment he knew was making pilgrimage to the
home of Sheikh Ali al-Junaydi, and it was through your father that you came to know the house. “Come along,” he'd say, “and I'll show you how to have more fun than playing in the fields. You'll see how sweet life can be, what it's like in an atmosphere of godliness. It'll give you a sense of peace and contentment, the finest thing you can achieve in life.”

The Sheikh greeted you with that sweet and kindly look of his. And how enchanted you were by his fine white beard! “So this is your son you were telling me about,” he said to your father. “There's a lot of intelligence in his eyes. His heart is as spotless as yours. You'll find he'll turn out, with God's will, a truly good man.” Yes, you really adored Sheikh Ali al-Junaydi, attracted by the purity in his face and the love in his eyes. And those songs and chants of his had delighted you even before your heart was purified by love
.

“Tell this boy what it's his duty to do,” your father said to the Sheikh one day
.

The Sheikh had gazed down at you and said, “We continue learning from the cradle to the grave, but at least start out, Said, by keeping close account of yourself and making sure that from whatever action you initiate some good comes to someone.”

Yes, you certainly followed his counsel as best you could, though you only brought it to complete fulfillment when you took up burglary!

The days passed like dreams. And then your good father disappeared, suddenly gone, in a way that a boy simply could not comprehend, and that seemed to baffle even Sheikh Ali himself. How shocked you were that morning, shaking your head and rubbing your eyes to clear away the sleep, awakened by your mother's screams and tears in the
little room at the entrance to the student's hostel! You wept with fear and frustration at your helplessness. That evening, however, Rauf Ilwan, at that time a student in law school, had shown how very capable he was. Yes, he was impressive all right, no matter what the circumstances, and you loved him as you did Sheikh Ali, perhaps even more. It was he who later worked hard to have you—or you and your mother, to be more precise—take over Father's job as custodian for the building. Yes, you took on responsibilities at an early age
.

And then your mother died. You almost died yourself during your mother's illness, as Rauf Ilwan must surely remember, from that unforgettable day when she had hemorrhaged and you had rushed her to the nearest hospital, the Sabir Hospital, standing like a castle amidst beautiful grounds, where you found yourself and your mother in a reception hall at an entrance more luxurious than anything you could ever have imagined possible. The entire place seemed forbidding, even hostile, but you were in the direst need of help, immediate help
.

As the famous doctor was coming out of a room, they mentioned his name and you raced toward him in your gallabiya and sandals, shouting, “My mother! The blood!”

The man had fixed you in a glassy, disapproving stare and had glanced where your mother was lying, stretched out in her filthy dress on a soft couch, a foreign nurse standing nearby, observing the scene. Then the doctor had simply disappeared, saying nothing. The nurse jabbered something in a language you did not understand, though you sensed she was expressing sympathy for your tragedy. At that point, for all your youth, you flew into a real adult's rage, screaming and cursing in protest, smashing a chair to the floor with a crash, so the veneer wood on its
back broke in pieces. A horde of servants had appeared and you'd soon found yourself and your mother alone in the tree-lined road outside. A month later your mother had died in the Kasr al-Aini Hospital
.

All the time she lay close to death she never released your hand, refusing to take her eyes off you. It was during that long month of illness, however, that you stole for the first time—from the country boy resident in the hostel, who'd accused you without any investigation and was beating you vigorously when Rauf Ilwan turned up and freed you, settling the matter without any further complications. You were a true human being then, Rauf, and you were my teacher, too
.

Alone with you Rauf had said quietly, “Don't you worry. The fact is, I consider this theft perfectly justified. Only you'll find the police watching for you, and the judge won't be lenient with you,” he'd added ominously with bitter sarcasm, “however convincing your motives, because he, too, will be protecting himself. Isn't it justice,” he'd shouted, “that what is taken by theft should be retrieved by theft? Here I am studying, away from home and family, suffering daily from hunger and deprivation!”

Where have all your principles gone now, Rauf? Dead, no doubt, like my father and my mother, and like my wife's fidelity
.

You had no alternative but to leave the students' hostel and seek a living somewhere else. So you waited under the lone palm tree at the end of the green plot until Nabawiyya came and you sprang toward her, saying, “Don't be afraid. I must speak to you. I'm leaving to get a better job. I love you. Don't ever forget me. I love you and always will. And I'll prove I can make you happy and give you a respectable home.” Yes, those had been times when
sorrows could be forgotten, wounds could be healed, and hope could bring forth fruit from adversity
.

All you graves out there, immersed in the gloom, don't jeer at my memories!

He sat up on the sofa, still in the dark, addressing Rauf Ilwan just as though he could see him standing in front of him. “You should have agreed to get me a job writing for your newspaper, you scoundrel. I'd have published our mutual reminiscences there, I'd have shut off your false light good and proper.” Then he wondered aloud: “How am I going to stand it here in the dark till Nur comes back near dawn?”

Suddenly he was attacked by an irresistible urge to leave the house and take a walk in the dark. In an instant, his resistance crumbled, collapsing like a building ready to give way; soon he was moving stealthily out of the house. He set off toward Sharia Masani and from there turned toward open wasteland.

Leaving his hideout made him all the more conscious of being hunted. He now knew how mice and foxes feel, slipping away on the run. Alone in the dark, he could see the city's lights glimmering in the distance, lying in wait for him. He quaffed his sense of being alone, until it intoxicated him, then walked on, winding up at last in his old seat next to Tarzan in the coffeehouse. The only other person inside apart from the waiter was an arms smuggler, although outside, a little lower down, at the foot of the hill, the sounds of people talking could be heard.

The waiter brought him some tea at once and then Tarzan leaned over. “Don't spend more than one night in the same place,” he whispered.

The smuggler added his advice: “Move way up the Nile.”

“But I don't know anyone up there,” Said objected.

“You know,” the smuggler went on, “I've heard many people express their admiration for you.”

“And the police?” Tarzan said heatedly. “Do they admire him, too?”

The smuggler laughed so hard that his whole body shook, as if he were mounted on a camel at the gallop. “Nothing impresses the police,” he said at last, when he'd recovered his breath.

“Absolutely nothing,” agreed Said.

“But what harm is there in stealing from the rich anyway?” the waiter asked with feeling.

Said beamed as if he were receiving a compliment at some public reception in his honor. “Yes,” he said, “but the newspapers have tongues longer than a hangman's rope. And what good does being liked by the people do if the police loathe you?”

Suddenly Tarzan got up, moved to the window, stared outside, looking to left and right, then came back. “I thought I saw a face staring in at us,” he reported, clearly worried.

Said's eyes glinted as they darted back and forth between window and door and the waiter went outside to investigate.

“You're always seeing things that aren't there,” the smuggler said.

Enraged, Tarzan yelled at him, “Shut up, will you! You seem to think a hangman's rope is some sort of a joke!”

Said left the coffeehouse. Clutching the revolver in his pocket, walking off into the open darkness, he looked cautiously around him, listening as he went. His consciousness of fear, of being alone and hunted, was even stronger now and he knew he must not underestimate his enemies,
fearful themselves, but so eager to catch him that they would not rest till they saw him a corpse, laid out and still.

As he neared the house in Sharia Najm al-Din he saw light in Nur's window. It gave him a sense of security for the first time since he'd left the coffeehouse. He found her lying down and wanted to caress her, but it was obvious from her face that she was terribly tired. Her eyes were red. Clearly, something was wrong. He sat down at her feet.

“Please tell me what's wrong, Nur,” he said.

“I'm worn out,” she said weakly. “I've vomited so much I'm exhausted.”

“Was it drink?”

“I've been drinking all my life,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears.

This was the first time Said had seen her cry and he was deeply moved. “What was the reason, then?” he said.

“They beat me!”

“The police?”

“No, some young louts, probably students, when I asked them to pay the bill.”

Said was touched. “Why not wash your face,” he said, “and drink some water?”

“A little later. I'm too tired now.”

“The dogs!” Said muttered, tenderly caressing her leg.

“The fabric for the uniform,” Nur said, pointing to a parcel on the other sofa. He made a gesture with his hand affectionately and in gratitude.

“I can't look very attractive for you tonight,” she said almost apologetically.

“It's not your fault. Just wash your face and get some sleep.”

Up in the graveyard heights a dog barked and Nur let
out a long, audible sigh. “And she said, ‘You have such a rosy future!' ” she murmured sadly.

“Who?”

“A fortune-teller. She said there'd be security, peace of mind.” Said stared out at the blackness of night piled up outside the window as she went on: “When will that ever be? It's been such a long wait, and all so useless. I have a girlfriend, a little older than me, who always says we'll become just bones or even worse than that, so that even dogs will loathe us.” Her voice seemed to come from the very grave and so depressed Said that he could find nothing to say in reply. “Some fortune-teller!” she said. “When is she going to start telling the truth? Where is there any security? I just want to sleep safe and secure, wake up feeling good, and have a quiet, pleasant time. Is that so impossible—for him who raised the Seven Heavens?”

You, too, used to dream of a life like that, but it's all been spent climbing up drainpipes, jumping down from roofs, and being chased in the dark, with badly aimed bullets killing innocent people
.

“You need to get some sleep,” he told her, thoroughly depressed.

“What I need is a promise,” she said. “A promise from the fortune-teller. And that day will come.”

“Good.”

“You're treating me like a child,” she said angrily.

“Never.”

“That day really will come!”