His house was in the most crowded part of the village, near the square, where the dwellings were packed so close together that the ricks of straw piled on their roofs almost came together above the narrow, twisting lanes. It was a very small house, a couple of mud-walled rooms with a low, tunnel-like door. ‘Amm Taha called out to me to enter when I knocked, but so little light penetrated into the house that it took a while before I could tell where he was.
He was lying on a mat, his thin, crooked face rigid with annoyance, and he began to complain the moment I stepped in: he was ill, too ill to go anywhere, he didn’t know what was going to happen to all his eggs, he had had to send his wife to the market because he hadn’t been able to go out for two days.
‘But what’s happened, ya ‘Amm Taha?’ I asked. ‘Do you know what’s wrong?’
His good eye glared angrily at me for a moment, and then he said: ‘What do you think has happened? It’s the Evil Eye of course — somebody’s envied me, what else?’
I looked slowly around the room at the ragged mats and the sooty cooking utensils lying in the corners.
‘What did they envy?’ I said.
‘Can’t you see?’ he said irritably. ‘Everyone’s envious of me nowadays. My neighbours see me going to the market every other day, and they say to themselves — that Taha, he has his business in eggs and then he sells milk too, sometimes, as well as vegetables; why, he even has a donkey-cart now, that Taha, and on top of all that, he has so many other little jobs, he’s ever so busy all day long, running around making money. What’s he going to do with it all? He doesn’t even have any children, he doesn’t need it.’
He sat up straight and fixed his unmoving eye on me. ‘Their envy is burning them up,’ he said. ‘They’re all well-off, but they can’t bear to see me working hard and bettering my lot. Over the last few days they’ve seen me going off to your house, carrying food, and it was just too much for them. They couldn’t bear it.’
I began to feel uncomfortable with the part I had been assigned in this narrative: I was not sure whether I was being included amongst the guilty. ‘But ya ‘Amm Taha,’ I said, ‘isn’t there anything you can do?’
He nodded impatiently; yes, of course, he said, he had already been to the government clinic that morning and they’d given him an injection and some tablets; and now a woman who lived a few doors away was going to come and break the spell — I could stay and watch if I wanted.
The woman arrived a short while later, a plump, talkative matron who seemed more disposed to chatter about the wickedness of their neighbours than to perform her duties. But ‘Amm Taha was in a bad temper and he quickly cut her short and handed her a slip of paper, telling her to hurry up if she wanted her fee. She flashed me a smile, and then shutting her eyes she began to stroke his back with the slip of paper, murmuring softly. At times when her voice rose I thought I heard a few phrases of the Fâti
a, the opening prayer of the Quran, but for the most part her lips moved soundlessly, without interruption.
After a few minutes of this she opened her eyes and declared plaintively: ‘You haven’t yawned once, ya ‘Amm Taha. You’re fine, nobody’s envied you.’
This excited a squall of indignation from ‘Amm Taha. ‘I haven’t yawned, did you say?’ he snapped. ‘How would you know, with your eyes shut?’
‘I know you didn’t yawn,’ she insisted. ‘And if you didn’t yawn while I was reciting the spell, it means you haven’t been envied.’
‘Oh is that so? Then look at this,’ said ‘Amm Taha. Opening his mouth he leaned forward, and when his nose was a bare inch away from hers he produced a gigantic yawn.
She fell back, startled, and began to protest: ‘I don’t know, ya ‘Amm Taha, if you’d really been envied I’d be yawning too. And I haven’t yawned at all — can you see me yawning?’
‘You’re not doing it properly,’ he said. ‘That’s all. Now go on, yalla, try once more.’
She shut her eyes and began to run the slip of paper over his back again, and this time within a few minutes they were both yawning mightily. Soon it was over, and she leant back against the wall, swelling with pride at her success, while ‘Amm Taha began to pump his kerosene stove so he could brew us some tea.
‘Do you know who it was who envied you?’ I asked.
They exchanged a knowing glance, but neither of them would tell me who it was. ‘God is the Protector,’ ‘Amm Taha said piously. ‘It doesn’t matter who it was — the envy’s been undone and I’m fine now.’
The next morning, sure enough, he was back at work, collecting eggs and driving his cart to Damanhour.
Having known of ‘Amm Taha’s gifts for a while now, I was confident that he would be able to tell me exactly when Ustaz Sabry would be at home.
I was not disappointed.
‘Go there this evening,’ he said. ‘An hour or so after the sunset prayers, and you can be sure you’ll find him in.’
5
SURE ENOUGH, USTAZ Sabry was at home when I went to his house that evening: he was sitting in his guest-room surrounded by some half-dozen visitors. He was talking in his clear, powerful voice, holding a shusha in his hands, while the others sat around the room in a circle. A couple of the visitors were dressed in shirts and trousers and looked like college students while the others were fellaheen who had dropped by to spend some time talking at the end of the day.
Ustaz Sabry exclaimed loudly when he saw me at the door, and asked me why I hadn’t come earlier, he had been expecting me several days ago. Since his mother had clearly failed to mention my earlier visit, I began to tell him myself, but I had already forfeited Ustaz Sabry’s attention: he had launched upon an introduction for the benefit of his visitors.
I was a student from India, he told them, a guest who had come to Egypt to do research. It was their duty to welcome me into their midst and make me feel at home because of the long traditions of friendship between India and Egypt. Our countries were very similar, for India, like Egypt, was largely an agricultural nation, and the majority of its people lived in villages, like the Egyptian fellaheen, and ploughed their land with cattle. Our countries were poor, for they had both been ransacked by imperialists, and now they were both trying, in very similar ways, to cope with poverty and all the other problems that had been bequeathed to them by their troubled histories. It was a difficult task and our two countries had always supported each other in the past: Mahatma Gandhi had come to Egypt to consult Sa‘ad Zaghloul Pasha, the leader of the Egyptian nationalist movement, and later Nehru and Nasser had forged a close alliance. No Egyptian could ever forget the support that his country had received from India during the Suez crisis of 1956, when Egypt had been subjected to an unprovoked attack by the British and the French.
One of the men sitting across the room had been shifting impatiently in his seat while Ustaz Sabry made his speech; a small, wizened, prematurely aged man, with a faraway look in his deeply-lined eyes. His name was Zaghloul, I later learnt, and he was a self-taught weaver, who spun his own woollen yarn and wove it on a rudimentary loom.
Now, Zaghloul had a question to ask, and as soon as he found an opportunity he said, in a breathless rush: ‘And in his country do they have ghosts like we do?’
‘Allah!’ Ustaz Sabry exclaimed. ‘You could ask him about so many useful and important things — religion or politics — and instead you ask him about ghosts! What will he think of you?’