Fahmy had only just finished changing clothes when he was summoned to talk to his father. Despite his depleted energy and his distress, Yasin could not keep himself from muttering, "Now it’s your turn".
Pretending not to understand the point of his brother’s remark, Fahmy asked, "What do you mean?"
Yasin laughed, finally able to, and said, "The traitors have had a turn, and now the freedom fighters will have theirs".
Fahmy wished dearly that the terms his friend had used to describe him in the mosque had been forgotten in all the commotion of the disturbance and the family’s dazed reaction, but they had not been. Now Yasin was repeating them. Without any doubt, his father was summoning him to discuss them. Fahmy sighed deeply and departed.
He found his father sitting on the sofa with his legs tucked under him. He was fiddling with his prayer beads, and the look in his eyes was sad and thoughtful. Fahmy greeted him with great courtesy and stopped, submissively and obediently, about two meters away from the sofa. The man nodded his head slightly to return the greeting but the gesture did more to reveal how upset he was than to greet his son. It seemed to imply: "I'm returning your greeting reluctantly and only for the sake of politeness, but this spurious courtesy of yours no longer deceives me".
Al-Sayyid Ahmad directed a frowning glare at his son, which radiated anxiety and thus resembled a lamp used to search for a person concealed in the darkness. He told the boy resolutely, "I've summoned you, to learn everything. I want to know everything. What did he mean when he said you were on the same committee? Don't hesitate to tell me everything with complete candor".
Although Fahmy had grown accustomed during the past few weeks to confronting various dangers and had even gotten used to having bullets whiz past, it was his prerevolutionary heart that surfaced once his father began interrogating him. He was terrified and felt reduced to nothing. He concentrated his attention on skirting this wrath and trying to escape. He told his father gently and politely, "The matter’s quite simple, Papa. My friend probably exaggerated to extricate us from our dilemma".
Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s patience was exhausted. He said, "'The matter’s quite simple…' Great… But which matter is it? Don't hide anything from me".
With lightning speed, Fahmy considered the subject from different perspectives to select something he could say without fear of the consequences. He responded, "He called it a 'committee' when it’s nothing more than a group of friends who talk about patriotic topics whenever they get together".
His father cried out furiously and resentfully, "Is this how you earned the title of 'freedom fighter'?"
The man’s voice betrayed intense disapproval, as though he was hurt that his son was trying to put something over on him. The wrinkles of his frowning face looked threatening. Fahmy rushed to defend himself by making a significant admission, in order to convince his father that in every other respect he had been obedient to his commands, just as an accused man may voluntarily confess to a lesser offense in an attempt to plea for mercy. He said rather modestly, "It happens sometimes that we distribute appeals on behalf of nationalism".
Al-Sayyid Ahmad asked in alarm, "Handbills?… Do you mean handbills?"
Fahmy shook his head no. He was afraid to admit this, since the word was linked in the official pronouncements to the harshest penalties. When he had found a suitable formula to make his confession seem less dangerous, he said, "They're nothing but appeals that urge people to love their country".
His father allowed the prayer beads to fall to his lap. He clapped his hands together. Unable to control his alarm, he exclaimed, "You're distributing handbills!.. You!"
Al-Sayyid Ahmad could not see straight, he was so alarmed and angry: distributing handbills… a friend of the freedom fighters. "We both work on the same committee!" Had the flood reached his roost? He had often been impressed by Fahmy’s manners, piety, and intelligence. He would have lavished praise on his son except that he thought praise corrupted, whereas gruffness was educational and corrective. How had all of this peeled away to reveal a boy who distributed handbills, a freedom fighter? "We both work on the same committee…"
He had nothing against the freedom fighters, quite the contrary. He always followed news about them with enthusiasm and prayed for their success at the conclusion of his normal prayers. News about the strike, acts of sabotage, and the battles had filled him with hope and admiration, but it was a totally different matter for any of these deeds to be performed by a son of his. His children were meant to be a breed apart, outside the framework of history. He alone would set their course for them, not the revolution, the times, or the rest of humanity. The revolution and everything it accomplished were no doubt beneficial, so long as they remained far removed from his household. Once the revolution knocked on his door, threatened his peace and security and the lives of his children, its flavor, complexion, and import were transformed into folly, madness, unruliness, and vulgarity. The revolution should rage on outside. He would participate in it with all his heart and donate to it as generously as he could… He had done that. But the house was his and his alone. Any member of his household who talked himself into participating in the revolution was in rebellion against him, not against the English. Al-Sayyid Ahmad implored God’s mercy for the martyrs both night and day and was amazed by the courage their families displayed, according to what people said, but he would not allow one of his sons to join the martyrs nor would he embrace the courage their families had displayed. How could Fahmy have seen fit to take this insane step? How had he, the best of his boys, chosen to expose himself to certain destruction?
The man was more alarmed than he had ever been before, even more than during the melee at the mosque. In a stern and threatening voice as though he were one of the English police inspectors, he asked Fahmy, "Don't you know the penalty for persons caught distributing handbills?"
Despite the seriousness of the situation, which required Fahmy to concentrate his attention on it, the question aroused a recent memory that shook his soul. He remembered being asked this same question, identical in words and import, by the president of the supreme student executive committee-together with many other questions-when he had been chosen a member of the committee. He also remembered that he had replied with determination and enthusiasm, "We are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for our country". He compared the different conditions under which the same question had been addressed to him and felt the irony of it.
Fahmy answered his father in a gentle and self-deprecating tone: "I only distribute among my friends. I don't have anything to do with general distribution… That way there’s no risk or danger".