“When I met Zaynab again,” he said, “for the first time ever I felt like some kind of stranger. Now I had a private life of my own about which she neither knew nor was supposed to know anything.”
“So you kept it from her, did you?”
“Yes. I was following direct orders.”
“Did you really believe they had that much authority over you?”
“Absolutely! I certainly believed it. You can add to the equation the terror factor that had totally destroyed my spirit, and also my own profound sense of shame. I couldn’t manage to convince myself that honor meant anything any more. I had to act in a totally reckless manner, and that was no easy matter when you consider not only my moral make-up but also my spiritual integrity. I started meandering around in never-ending torment. What made it that much worse was that, as far as I was concerned, Zaynab was a changed person too. She seemed to be overwhelmed by a profound sense of grief; the way she kept behaving provided no clue as to how she was going to get out of it. That made me feel even more of a stranger to her.”
“But that was all to be expected, wasn’t it?” I commented. “Things would have improved eventually.”
“But I never caught even a glimpse of the Zaynab I had once known. She had always been so happy and lively; I thought nothing could ever dampen her spirit. But something had. I tried offering her encouragement, but one day she stunned me by saying that I was the one who needed encouraging!”
The week after Isma‘il had been released, something absolutely incredible had happened. They had left the college grounds and were walking together.
“Where are you going now?” she asked.
“To the Karnak Café for an hour or so, then I’ll go home.”
“I’d like to walk alone with you for a while,” she said, almost as though she were talking to herself.
He imagined that she had a secret she wanted to share with him. “Let’s go to the zoo, then,” he suggested.
“I want it to be somewhere safe.”
Hilmi Hamada solved the problem for them both by inviting them up to Qurunfula’s apartment (which was his as well). He left the two of them alone.
“Qurunfula will get the impression we’re up to something,” he said in a tone of innocent concern.
“Let her say what she likes!” replied Zaynab disdainfully.
He was not quite sure what to do. He took her hand in his, but she grabbed his and raised it to her neck. Their lips came together in a long kiss, and then she gave herself to him.
“The whole thing was a complete surprise,” he confided to me. “I was thrilled, of course, but at the same time I couldn’t help worrying. A number of unfocused questions formed a cluster inside my head. I almost asked her why she had decided to do it now, but didn’t.”
For a moment we just looked at each other.
“Maybe things had stirred her up?”
“Could be.”
“Afterwards I regretted what I’d done. I blamed myself for taking advantage of a moment of weakness when she herself was obviously in a state of collapse as well.”
“Did it happen again?”
“No.”
“Neither of you thought of trying?”
“No. On the surface our ties remained strong, but something inside, in the very depths of our souls, had started to come apart.”
“What a peculiar situation!”
“It felt like a lingering death. From my side, there are things that can explain it. But where she’s concerned, it’s a total mystery to me.”
“I noticed a change in your relationship while we were at the Karnak Café, but I thought it was just something temporary that would blow over.”
“I asked her what she had had to go through during her short time in prison, but she assured me it had all been short and trivial. From this point on, our beliefs in the revolution were contaminated by a deep-seated anger. We were much more willing to listen to criticism. The enthusiasm was gone; the spark was no longer there. Sure enough, the basic framework was still in place, but what we kept saying was that the style had to be changed; corruption had to be eradicated, and all those sadistic bodyguards had to go. Our glorious revolution had turned into a siege.”
One evening they had discussed the subject again with Hilmi Hamada.
“I’m surprised you can still believe in the revolution!” Hilmi had said.
“Just because the body has bowels,” Isma‘il had replied, “doesn’t diminish the nobility of the human mind.”
“Aha,” commented Hilmi sarcastically, “now I can see that, like everyone else, you resort to similes and metaphors whenever your arguments are weak!”
He had looked at them both. “It’s time for us to do something,” he went on.
He showed them a secret pamphlet that he and some of his colleagues were circulating.
“I was absolutely astonished at his frankness,” Isma‘il told me. “Or, more accurately, I was stunned. I dearly wished I had never heard him say it. I remembered my secret assignment that required me to report him immediately. The very thought of it made my entire universe start to shake. The reality of the deep abyss into which I was falling now became all too apparent to me.
“By now the two of us had been talking for well over an hour; Hilmi was doing the talking while I sat there or made a few terse comments. I was completely at a loss and at the same time felt utterly disconsolate.
“ ‘Stop those activities of yours,’ I told him, ‘and tear up that pamphlet!’
“ ‘What a joker you are!’ he scoffed. ‘This one isn’t the first, and it certainly won’t be the last.’
“We left his house at about ten and walked in silence. By now the time we were spending alone together was agonizing and difficult for both of us. We parted company. She needed to go back to the tenement building, while I felt like going to the Karnak Café. I wandered around the streets, unable to make the fateful decision. All the time I was feeling scared, scared for me and for Zaynab as well. In the end I made no decision, but returned to the tenement building at about midnight. I threw myself down on the bench in the courtyard without even taking my clothes off. I told myself that I faced a choice: either make the decision or go out of my mind. Even then I couldn’t make up my mind. I postponed things till the morning, but I didn’t get any sleep at all. I’d hardly fallen asleep when they came for me.”
“The security police, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“That very same night?”
“Yes, the same night.”
“But that’s staggering, unbelievable!”
“It’s magic. The only explanation I have is that they must have been watching us both and listening in from a distance.”
“But, in any case, you had decided not to report your friend,” I said, trying as best I could to give him a bit of consolation.
“I can’t even claim that much,” he replied. “After all, I had decided not to decide.”
And that is how his third prison term came about. Before dawn had even broken he found himself facing Khalid Safwan again.
“You’ve betrayed our trust in you,” said Khalid Safwan. “You failed the very first test.”
Isma‘il said nothing.
“Very well,” he went on. “We never force anyone to be friends with us.”
He was given a hundred lashes and then thrown into the cell again, that eternal darkness.
Isma‘il then proceeded to tell me about Hilmi Hamada’s final battle. They said he died in the interrogation room. He had both commitment and guts. The answers he gave them stunned them. They started hitting him and in a rage he tried to retaliate. A guard pummeled him with blows until he fainted. It then emerged that he was already dead.