“It’s what we raise them to do. You should be glad and praise God,” Radia told her.
“I’ve sacrificed so much for him!” she said broken-hearted.
“It’s like that for every mother. Visit Sidi Yahya ibn Uqab,” Radia replied.
She was the last of Amr’s family to pass away. She wept for everyone with renowned passion until her tears dried up. However, when it was her turn there was no one left to weep.
Hasan Mahmud al-Murakibi
He grew up in comfort in the grand mansion on Khayrat Square and on the farm in Beni Suef. It was as though Nazli Hanem was brought into the Murakibi family to improve its pedigree, which showed in the male descendants, including Hasan, who was known for his height, good looks, and sturdy build. The customs of the day and Cairo’s magnanimity at the time meant not a week went by without exchange visits between Khayrat Square and Bayt al-Qadi Square. Mahmud Bey wanted his first son to study agriculture, which would benefit him later on, but, like his cousin Hamid, his approach to study was lax so the man had them both enrolled at the police academy. The 1919 Revolution flooded Hasan with powerful emotions, but he did not expose himself to the kind of harm Hamid suffered and it did not take long for him to join the rest of his family in its stance with regard to the revolution’s leader and allegiance to the Crown. This also better suited his job at the interior ministry as it meant he was not, like Hamid, divided between Wafdism in private and the government in public. Thanks to his father’s influence he never knew the hardship of working in the provinces. He did not defer to his father’s wish and marry early. Instead, he lived a licentious life, capitalizing on the fascination occasioned by his colorful uniform, the abundant money brought by his rank, and the gifts bestowed on him by his mother. However, he yielded in the end and married a girl called Zubayda from his mother’s family. She was wedded to him in an apartment in Garden City, where he enjoyed a standard of living that even the interior minister himself envied.
During the period of political turmoil he became famous for his violence in dispersing demonstrations. He weathered successive attacks in the Wafdist newspapers, which damaged his public reputation to an extent, but raised his credibility at the mansion and with the English and granted him exceptional promotions.
“You entered the academy in the same year but he’s made the rank of captain and you’re still a second lieutenant,” Amr Effendi remarked to his son Hamid.
“He’s a traitor. The son of a pantofle-seller,” Surur, who was with them at the lunch table, said viciously. But Hasan and Hamid were friends as well as relatives and they became even closer when the latter married Shakira. Hasan was nearly killed during Sidqi’s time when bricks hit his head and neck. He spent an entire month in hospital. He was the most aggressive of his siblings toward his uncle Ahmad’s family when the disagreement divided the two brothers. Indeed, he came to blows with Adnan and beat him up at the mansion — a sad day in the history of the family. Hasan produced three sons, Mahmud, Sharif, and Omar; all of them fine specimens of good looks and intelligence. By the July Revolution he was a general and very rich, owing to his and his wife’s inheritances, but the revolution pensioned him off as part of a police purge. He exited on the same list as Hamid, though their friendship had broken down after Shakira’s divorce.
“We should sell our land. Fortune has turned on landowners,” he said to Zubayda.
The losses he suffered with the revolution did not compare with those of others in his class, including his cousin Adnan, but he still found himself in the opposite camp. He began acting like a supporter of the new revolution. He started selling off his and Zubayda’s land in bursts and used the money to set up a business on Sharif Street. He managed it himself and his wealth flourished. His sons, Mahmud, Sharif, and Omar, were educated in schools of the revolution. They were saturated with its philosophy and filled with the heroism of its leader. Hasan did not mind; rather, his sons and two brothers, Abduh and Mahir, provided a protection against the hurricanes of the day. His brothers were probably the reason his business escaped nationalization in 1961. When the disastrous event of June 5 took place, Mahmud, Sharif, and Omar had graduated as doctors and worked in government hospitals. The Setback that shook Nasser’s generation and dispersed it with the winds of loss and despair overtook them. Thus, the leader had barely died and Sadat taken over before Mahmud and Sharif emigrated to the United States to launch successful careers in medicine while Omar secured a contract to work in Saudi Arabia. Hasan found purpose and consolation for past defeats in Sadat and his infitah policy. He buckled down to work and illusory wealth. He built a mansion in Mohandiseen for himself and his wife and lived the life of a king, dreaming his sons would one day return and inherit the millions he had accumulated for them. His life ended in an accident in the 1980s: he was driving his Mercedes along Pyramids Road when it flipped and caught fire. They extracted his body from it, blackened, stripped of the world and its millions.
Husni Hazim Surur
He was Hazim and Samiha’s first child. He had a sporty build, a handsome face, and a brilliant mind. He grew up in comfort in the villa in Dokki and graduated as an engineer in 1976. Like his brother, he encountered no problems in life and did not know the worry of party affiliations, and, like his father, he proceeded down the path of fortune and success in his father’s office. Samiha tried to control him, as she did his father, but found him insubordinate. Like her, he would get worked up over the smallest things. She perceived a dangerous unruliness in him so was keen to arrange his marriage, but he told her clearly, “It’s nothing to do with you.”
“But you’re just a child,” she said angrily.
He laughed loudly and looked toward his father, who avoided his eyes.
“It’s my life,” he said.
“You don’t know anything about a good marriage.”
“What’s a ‘good marriage’?” he inquired sardonically.
“Roots and money. They’re synonymous!” she shouted back.
“Thanks, then I don’t need a fiancée!” he continued in his sardonic tone.
He fell in love with a dancer called Agiba from one of the Pyramid nightclubs and, as his feelings were more than a passing whim, suggested they get married.
“If it wasn’t love I’d never accept the shackles of marriage,” she said.
He was overjoyed, but she made it a condition that he allow her to continue her art, which he contemplated worriedly before saying, “Let’s remain as we are in that case.”
“No. Then we can both go our own ways,” she snapped back.
He acquiesced in spite of himself and married her. His brother, Adham, was the first to know, his father the second. When the news reached Samiha she raised a storm that brought the servants running and prompted inquiries from the neighbors. Husni moved to an apartment his wife owned on Pyramids Road.
“I haven’t given up my art because the cinema has started to take notice of me,” she said to him.