“It’s not as bad as you think,” said Muhammad Ibrahim.
“He deserves a better bride,” she complained.
“He knows best what makes him happy,” said the man.
She followed Amana’s success at school with satisfaction and hope. Then her beloved husband unexpectedly developed cirrhosis of the liver and was confined to his bed. His health deteriorated and he died in the summer holiday after Amana had passed the baccalaureate. Matariya met the harshest blow of fate yet and found herself a widow before fifty. Amana was forced to marry Abd al-Rahman Amin while Matariya stayed on in the house in Watawit with her maid, lonely and sad. Her worries were compounded by the troubles her daughter encountered in her marriage. She would console herself by visiting relatives — her mother, sisters, brothers, cousins, the families of Ata and Abd al-Azim, and, first and foremost, Shazli and Amana. She began to wither. Her features changed, though her unique quality — the love she gave and received from the family and people in general — remained. She was probably the only person in the family not to sever relations with her brother Hamid’s wife, Shakira, after the couple separated in divorce. How she grieved over the premature deaths of Shazli’s children! While Shazli’s son, Muhammad, was still warding off his fate, she invoked God to preserve him for the sake of his father and herself, and entreated her mother, Radia, to shield him using whatever means. News of his martyrdom in the Tripartite Aggression came as the final blow. She withered even more.
It became clear she was suffering from cancer. Her health declined, going from bad to worse, until she died in her sixties. She was the first of the second generation in Amr’s family, or rather the whole family, to pass away. Circumstances dictated that those closest to her did not mourn her as they might have; Shazli’s sadness over his children did not leave much room for mourning, Radia was in her eighties and the grief of an octogenarian is short-lived, and Qasim lived in a neutral state of sadness and joy. Amana did not find anyone with whom to weep and strike her face in despair.
Mu‘awiya al-Qalyubi
He was born and grew up in the house in Suq al-Zalat. His upbringing was purely religious and he took on his father’s learning and manners even before they were together at al-Azhar. He displayed nobility and talent, with a particular fondness for grammar, which he taught at al-Azhar after obtaining his religious diploma. A few months before Mu‘awiya’s father died, he married his son to Galila al-Tarabishi, the daughter of Salman al-Tarabishi, who worked at a factory making tarbooshes for pashas. Mu‘awiya took part in activities in the mosques around the quarter, which won his father-in-law’s love and respect. Galila was taller than him, eccentric, high-strung, and full of popular superstitions. He was determined to teach her the true principles of her religion and a long but amicable struggle broke out between them. He gave to her and took from her. When he was sick he would surrender readily to her folk medicine. Her reputation spread around the quarter until it almost eclipsed his own. They were bound by love and, thanks to this, their marriage endured despite Galila’s irascible nature and fanatical ideas. As the days passed, she gave birth to Radia, Shahira, Sadiqa, and Baligh.
When the Urabi Revolution came, the shaykh was full of enthusiasm. He was drawn to its current and supported it with heart and tongue. When it failed and the English occupied Egypt, he was one of many arrested and tried and was sentenced to five years in prison. Galila toured the tombs of saints invoking evil upon the khedive and the English. She managed the family with some money she had inherited from her father. Shaykh Mu‘awiya left jail to find a changed world. No one remembered the revolution or any of its men, and if names were mentioned they were accompanied by curses. He found no sympathy except in the eyes of his old friend Yazid al-Misri, the watchman of Bayn al-Qasrayn’s public fountain. He felt like an outsider. He was sad and kept to himself until he found a teaching post in a state school.
One day his friend Aziz said to him, “My son Amr works at the ministry of education. He’s twenty and I want him to get married.”
The shaykh grasped what Aziz was driving at and said, “By God’s blessing.”
“It’s in your hands, with God’s permission, and from your house,” said Aziz.
“Radia my daughter and Amr my son!” said the shaykh.
Ni‘ma Ata and her daughter, Rashwana, went to court Radia. They returned dazzled by Sadiqa’s beauty and satisfied with Radia’s good looks and lofty demeanor. Even so, Ni‘ma asked, “Is she taller than Amr?”
“Not at all, mother. He’s taller,” said Rashwana reassuringly.
However, time overtook the shaykh before he could witness his daughter’s wedding. The bridal hamper arrived by coincidence on the day he died, prompting Galila, with her individual interpretation of her heritage, to release a stream of ululation from the window then resume wailing for her dear deceased, which the quarter joked about for the rest of her life. The shaykh was buried in an enclosure nearby Aziz’s own in the vicinity of Sidi Nagm al-Din.
Nun
Nadir Arif al-Minyawi
HE WAS BORN AND GREW UP IN DARB AL-AHMAR, the only son of Habiba Amr and Shaykh Arif al-Minyawi. He had no memory of his father but grew up in the abundant tender love of his mother and paternal grandmother. His grandmother died when he was six, but he found in the affection of Amr, Radia, and the rest of the family a way to forget he was a lonely orphan. It was perhaps fortunate that he yearned for success and was carried away by ambition from childhood. Yet he never appreciated the insane sacrifice his mother made on his behalf in refusing an excellent marriage proposal and remaining a widow for the rest of her life, after only two years married to his father.
Nadir grew into a handsome and fine young man and no period of his life was devoid of romantic adventures within his limited means. He obtained the baccalaureate in commerce during the First World War and found work in the Treasury. He despised his poverty and was always looking for a better future. To this end, he enrolled at an institute teaching English, mastered the art of typing, and put himself forward for an exam advertised by an English metal company. He was successful, so he quit the civil service to work for the company’s accounts department. The move frightened his maternal aunts and uncles, cousins, and mother, but he said with a confidence unknown in the family, “There’s no future in government employment.”
His finances improved but his ambition was not sated. As an ambitious young man dreaming of fortune he was uncomfortable with the course of the July Revolution. His fears were realized after the Tripartite Aggression and the impounding of British companies, at which point he reluctantly found himself a civil servant once more. He studied the situation in his family and its branches in the light of the revolution’s new reality. He found representatives of the revolution, like Abduh Mahmud, Mahir Mahmud, and his cousin Hakim, in the families of Ata al-Murakibi and Aunt Samira, and secretly made up his mind to marry either Abduh and Mahir’s sister Nadira or Hakim’s sister Hanuma. He consulted his mother, who said, “Hanuma’s closer to us and prettier.” At his suggestion she proposed to her on his behalf. Hanuma was a radio broadcaster with strong principles and a similar nature to her brother Salim. She had refused the hand of her cousin Aql, but agreed to marry Nadir. The wedding was held in an apartment on Hasan Sabri Street in Zamalek. Nadir urged his mother to come and live with him, but she refused to leave Darb al-Ahmar or move away from the blessed old quarter, where her dear mother and many of her sisters and uncle’s daughters lived. The new family was blessed with happiness and Hanuma gave birth to three daughters, Samira, Radia, and Safa. Relations between Nadir and Hakim strengthened and, thanks to Hakim, Nadir was promoted to Head of Accounts. His salary increased beyond the dreams of his other civil servant relatives but his ambition knew no limits. With nationalization, he was appointed Chairman of Company Administration but still was not satisfied. “What more do you want?” Hanuma asked him.