I move rapidly from one newspaper to another, then open a magazine in which I read a quarter of an article here and a few lines of one there. I fold up the newspapers and magazines and put them under the seat. It’s not littering — they’ll collect them with the rubbish when they tidy the train — surely they must tidy the train from time to time! I close my eyes.
The boys went to work in Dubai. Cairo or Dubai — what’s the difference? Besides, that is, the salary and the relative ease of day-to-day life? But the apparatus is what it is. Was it Foucault who said this, or is it a quotation he cited in his book, the one where he characterised prison as the deployment of a system’s power over a person’s behaviour, his freedom, and his time, every day, day in and day out, year after year. It decides for him when to wake up and when to sleep, when to work, when to eat, when to rest, when to talk and when to keep quiet. It defines the nature of his work and the required level of productivity. It dictates the movements of his body, and appropriates his physical and spiritual resources. Such is prison, albeit with variations. Here or there — it makes no difference. I close my eyes. I keep them closed, thinking maybe I’ll have a nap. Perhaps I do nap. I look at my watch: between the time I closed my eyes and when I opened them five minutes have elapsed. I have a long way to go. I observe two women sitting on the opposite side, to my left across the aisle. One of them is wearing a dark-coloured dress, which drapes a flat chest and a long torso. She is lean and stiff, with a hard face and her hair pulled tightly back and secured behind. The other is full-figured and looks amiable, her body generously curved, and she wears a multi-coloured dress. She has left her hair free to wreathe her face in ringlets. Are they sisters? I smile at this foolish notion, and then pursue it: maybe they’re twins. I steal furtive glances at them and establish the difficulty of determining either woman’s age — it is as if they were ageless. Something about the way they sit makes them seem rather like statues — it’s odd: two ordinary statues on adjoining seats in an express train. The skinny one looks straight ahead as if staring into space, or as if she were sightless, blind. As for the plump one, her gaze takes in everything. For a moment, they appear to be two strangers who just happen to be riding the train together, and then all at once they bend at the same moment, inclining their torsos just slightly and whispering for a good while, as though colluding in some affair. I look at the stern one and a shiver of fear pervades my body. I shift my gaze to the other, and relax at the sight of her kind face, her matronly curves.
I gaze out of the window at a prospect of fields, which blurs things, and the women’s two images merge. I murmur the Qur’anic verse, ‘ “No fear, nor shall they grieve.” It’s just a couple of women I happen to have seen in the train.’ ‘The two of them,’ I think, ‘are going to dog me for the whole journey.’ I chide my heart for its forebodings: what ill omen can it find in the two women? I look away from the two of them and go back to Nadir and Nadeem. I miss them. The idea that they live so far away confounds me. Especially Nadeem. Will he never have the chance to become what he wishes? Hamdiya is a fool and a dolt, but she’s kind — she’ll come round, calm down, and the waters will resume their course; perhaps the boys will come home, get married, and then will come the grandchildren. I laugh, and steal a glance at the aisle. Thank God, the buffet-server isn’t in this car at the moment.
A curious anecdote could amuse Hazem for an entire day. I was going to tell him about the two women, tell him they seemed like an apprehension of destiny split in two. He would make fun of me, just as he did the day I told him about the crow. He said, ‘I’m a student at Al-Saïdiyya School, but I skipped school to take part in the sit-in,’ and he didn’t laugh. Like an idiot I believed him, and all the while he was a pre-med student, looking after his mother and three brothers — he was five years older than I was. Shazli held it against him that he wanted to be a successful doctor — and what would Shazli have had him be? An incompetent surgeon at whose hands people would be transformed into the crippled or the dead? My heart skips a beat when I hear anyone mention Hazem, saying, ‘An exceptional surgeon,’ or ‘He taught me…’ or ‘He helped me…’ or… I will hear nothing but good spoken of him, and sincere prayers for his soul.
And Shazli? An odd coincidence. An unexpected encounter in Prague. He said he was working in tourism. ‘What are you doing in the tourist business?’ He was pleased with himself, driving a fancy car, smartly dressed. Perhaps he wanted to dazzle me with his newfound wealth, or perhaps he imagined that I would regret not having accompanied him in his triumphal march. I had escaped — my God, but I had escaped! Why is it that we credit Lady Fortuna only with the catastrophes? Why not give her her due, when at a stroke she saves us from breaking our necks?
But there’s no place for Fortuna here: it was something of reason, common sense, intuition, the intelligence of the heart. I took to my heels and ran. Arwa could have run — why didn’t she? Her legs betrayed her. She was ill, so how could she run? Perhaps she was influenced by the words of that French thinker who saw, in suicide, the attainment of a great person’s victory, an event rather like a grand play without an audience.