There was nothing of the happy young man about Rezk; being part of this city weighed on him like a curse. Gentle and sensitive by nature, he would have liked to enjoy the company of young men like himself, and even form brotherly ties with the city’s residents, but the hatred he felt for a single man checked his slightest impulse to friendship or kindness. He despised the hatred that kept his affection from blossoming as powerfully as he despised the man who was its object. It had been sheer chance that this hatred was born in him, to grow stronger over the years. Despicable acts were committed by the thousands in the world every day; why had he had to bear witness to one of them — the most abominable of all, because it was an affront to the dignity of the person whom he revered above all others? Rezk blamed fate more than human failings for the irruption of this hatred that was debasing his soul and making a cripple of him.
He had been fourteen when this wound that could never heal was opened in him. His father, an often unemployed worker, was a good man with weak lungs. He had managed to survive with his wife and two children by some kind of ever-renewed miracle. Chronic poverty had not demoralized or embittered him; on the contrary, he countered his bad luck with constant good spirits. Even in the worst wretchedness, he would find a way to cheer up his family with his witticisms and his indomitable sense of humor. Rezk adored him because in his company poverty took on a sort of joyous uncertainty, as if the next day
one might wake up wealthy and thriving. Of course that never happened, but one felt such a reversal of fate were indeed possible. Their life could have gone on like this, without any remarkable occurrence, had it not been for his father’s weakness for beautiful women and his compulsive need to seduce them at all costs. It was this obsession, inherent to his optimistic nature, that had wound up playing a dirty trick on him. At the time, the family was living in the basement of an ancient house located on a narrow, quiet street inhabited by shopkeepers and minor public officials in whose eyes they were no more than human wrecks. This third-tier bourgeois community acted offended by the behavior of this family of starving proletarians who, rather than spending their days whining about their misfortune, filled the alleyway with carefree laughter. But the contemptuous hostility of his neighbors barely made an impression on Rezk’s father, who was above such concerns. Unaware of his unworthiness, he had spotted the young wife of a newly-married civil servant on the third floor of the house across the way; she had a languid body and a disdainful expression, and Rezk’s father had been trying for some time to win her over. One afternoon when he was alone in his house, seeing her leaning on her windowsill, he tried his luck yet again. Sticking his head through the bars of the tiny basement window, he began to pester her with impassioned looks as he whispered rapturous words about her voluptuous charms. The beauty seemed to appreciate these rather coarse advances, but nonetheless took great care not to display any immodesty by showing too obvious an interest. This romance had been going on for some minutes when suddenly the husband appeared at her side and, although not blessed with particularly good eyesight, quickly perceived the danger to which his honor was being exposed. The sudden arrival of this new character on the scene stopped Rezk’s father’s ardor in its tracks and he quickly pulled back but, to his mortification, his head remained caught. He made frantic attempts at extricating it, but he had to face facts: his head was stuck, irremediably welded to the window bars. So, with his usual good spirits, he gave in to his fate and stopped moving. He closed his eyes and patiently prepared to submit to the legitimate wrath of his adversary. The latter, exercising both his rights as a cuckold and his strategic advantage, revealed himself to be a master of the art of insults and threats; he felt all the more at ease since his victim was immobilized far below, and would remain for a long time within his range. He could, at his leisure, refine his curses and even dream up new ones as yet unheard in the neighborhood. This verbal avalanche brought out the alley’s idle residents and was followed with enchantment by the local connoisseurs. All the while, no one thought to free the miserable womanizer who, like a martyr whose neck is shackled in irons, languished in disgrace. He was counting on his enemy’s exhaustion, but in vain. Far from growing tired, his tormentor seemed on the contrary to grow ever more spiteful in his abuse. His voice became hoarse; several times he could be seen lifting the earthenware jug cooling on the window sill and taking a sip of water to relieve his thirst, like a politician who for a moment has run out of lies, haranguing his constituents. It was a great opportunity for him to show publicly that he knew how to defend his honor, and to discourage thereby all the single men lying longingly in wait to sleep with his wife. He could not be stopped. In fact the crowd was having too much fun to take the initiative to intervene in any way that would have put an end to the crazy dispute. The people remained attentive and joyful, they even began wondering about bringing out mounds of food in order to eat where they were; it seemed as though the performance would go on until nightfall. This is when Rezk, coming home from school, saw the gathering and then spotted his father with his head trapped between the window bars like a marionette in a puppet show dying a villain’s death. At first he did not realize the scope of the catastrophe; he thought his father was playing some kind of game he had invented to dazzle the mob. But the silent distress signals emanating from the livid face sticking out of the basement window soon led him to grasp the tragedy of the situation. His father was not there to get a breath of fresh air; he had to be suffering from his uncomfortable position and he needed help. But what to do? To pull apart those cursed bars required incredible strength. Rezk was in despair over his helplessness and tears were welling up in his eyes when a man stepped out of the crowd, dressed like a rich city landlord, haughty and full of self-confidence. He walked toward the window then stopped in front of the torture victim’s face, examined it closely, knitting his brows with something evil and nasty in his gaze. For a moment the alley fell completely silent; even the offended husband ceased his diatribes, as if someone — this man from a higher class — had taken over his role as dispenser of justice. Rezk held back his tears and waited anxiously for the result of this painstaking examination to which the newcomer seemed to attach exaggerated importance. He supposed the man to be no less than an engineer and imagined he was thinking about the best way to free the poor soul who had fallen into his own trap. Rezk was getting ready to help him with his spindly arms when suddenly the man leaned forward — no doubt to take better aim — and sent a fat stream of spittle onto his father’s face; then he sniggered and left the scene, the delighted look of a sadist in his eyes. This man was Chawki.