“During the Mahmal ceremony,” he had once said to her, “you and Nefisa will have an excellent opportunity to see me on horseback at the head of the cavalry band!”
“I’ll be there,” she could not help answering, “only if you buy me a decent overcoat to wear before the multitudes crowding the street!”
“Have patience until I receive my salary!” the young man said with a laugh.
These were days of unadulterated happiness and pleasure, although Hassanein had many things to be concerned about. Hoping to establish his happiness on solid, unshakable foundations, when he was alone with his mother in the house he said to her with unusual gravity, “Mother, Nefisa must stop her shameful work at once. It doesn’t become an officer’s sister to work as a dressmaker.”
His mother smiled. “My son, she’d welcome this from the bottom of her heart,” she said simply.
Although he had anticipated these words, they failed to wipe out the thoughts which preoccupied him. “I wish we could erase the past out of existence,” he continued with a melancholy sigh. “I’m afraid some people might bring it up to hurt us. You know how people are! If my colleagues ever heard of it, my prestige would suffer.”
His concern partly infecting her, she smiled and patted his shoulder to banish his worries. “We were poor, and most people are poor,” she said. “There’s nothing in that to be ashamed of.”
He shook his head in protest. He said with sorrow, “This is more idle talk. You know people better than I do.”
“My son, I don’t want you to poison your peace of mind with such thoughts!”
As if deaf to her words, he added, “This alley knows the humble circumstances of our life. So I can’t bear to stay in it.”
Fearing that her happiness might be totally destroyed, she begged him. “Don’t you worry. Time will straighten out these matters.”
Staring curiously at his mother, he envied her self-control. But soon he became angry at her indifference to the dangers, which were exaggerated in his imagination. “True,” he said sharply, “time will straighten matters out, but only after destroying me.”
A look of terror appeared in the woman’s eyes. Gently reproachful, she replied, “I see you’re impatient and anticipating trouble as usual. My advice to you is not to get your actual happiness mixed up with insignificant sorrows, which are only imaginary.”
“Insignificant!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, insignificant.”
“You consider insignificant Nefisa’s past and the things the inhabitants of this quarter know about us?”
“Unless you have faith in God, you’ll never know real happiness.”
“I wish I could drop a heavy curtain on our past,” Hassanein sighed.
“Have patience and it will happen.”
Inflamed with anger, the young man grew impatient. “I fear nothing,” he said, “more than this patience you’re asking me to have. Look at this mean alley and this house, which is bare of furniture. Do you think I can hide them forever from my colleagues?”
Feeling miserable, the woman realized that her life was doomed to anguish. “Do things gradually!” she said bitterly. “We had no food to eat, but look where we are now!”
Shaking his head with sorrow, he said, “Mother, I didn’t mean to make you angry. But these days I think very much of the troubles that threaten us. I’ve only mentioned some of them, and perhaps those I’ve not mentioned are much graver. Look, for example, at my brother Hassan and his way of life. Surrounded by these troubles, how can we possibly lead a quiet life?!”
She studied his face, astonished by his ability to fish for worries. Desperately, she murmured, “Leave God’s creatures to their Creator. We have always been so. Yet we neither perished nor were we destroyed.”
“I wasn’t an officer then,” Hassanein protested. “But now that I’ve become one, my reputation is in jeopardy.”
Frowning, the mother took refuge in anguished silence.
“Everything must change,” Hassanein sighed. “Even my father’s grave, out in the open amidst charity burial places, must change. Imagine what my colleagues would think of me if they knew where he is buried!”
She concealed her feelings beneath a smile. “I hope for these things as much as you do. But I advise you to be patient and I warn you against the sad consequences of your futile revolt. You desire to wipe out the past, change the house, build a tomb, and reform your brother. Yet it’s impossible for you to achieve these things for a long time to come. What will you do then? It was the hope of my life that you be happy with us as well as make us happy. But if you don’t acquire patience and resign yourself to reality, you’ll be miserable and will make us miserable, too.”
He fell silent, fed up with the conversation and his own troubles. His rebellious nature refused to be persuaded by her arguments; to him, she seemed unsympathetic to his hopes and feelings and he felt alone in the battle of life and death. He yearned for a cleaner, more decent life, and he would never deviate from this goal. Let him then defend his hopes and happiness with whatever power and enthusiasm he could muster.
He heard a knock on the door. Evening was spreading its wings. Surmising that it was Nefisa returning from her work, he hurried with fresh determination to open the door.
SIXTY-NINE
Smiling, Nefisa entered the flat. These days she seemed to be always smiling, always cheerful. Observing that her mother was absorbed in her thoughts, she approached her and said jokingly, “Mother, now that our troubles are over, you don’t need to worry anymore.”
Depressed, Hassanein mentally echoed his sister’s words. But had their troubles really come to an end? It occurred to him that the entire budget of the army was not enough to resolve their problems. He raised his eyes toward Nefisa. He said to her, “It’s time that you took a rest!”
“Do you mean that I should give up my work?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll give it up with absolutely no regrets. I’ll stay at home as ladies do. I’ll be the lady sister of an officer!”
He could not help saying sarcastically, “And the sister of Master Hassan, too.”
She looked in astonishment from him to her mother, wondering why he referred to his brother with such sarcasm.
“Doesn’t this please you?” he continued.
With tenderness and compassion, the girl replied, “Whatever Hassan may be, his kindness in undeniable.”
“I don’t need to be reminded of that,” the young man added. “God knows that I love him. But I can’t help saying that his way of life is disgraceful.”
This last sentence pierced her heart, and she averted her eyes. As she recalled her own loose behavior, her limbs went cold and she shuddered with horror. Obviously, she thought, he is referring to me and nobody else. The silence made her nervous, and she murmured, “It happens in every family!”
“But not in respectable families,” Hassanein said resentfully.
Overcome with suffocating anxiety, she would have liked to vanish into thin air. Pretending to laugh, she said with affected merriment, “It’s quite possible to have in the same family two brothers, one of them a minister and the other a thief. For God’s sake, don’t disturb our peace. Guess what — I’ve prepared a platterful of kunafa for you. Let’s warm it up and eat it in peace!”
Leaving the room, she headed for the kitchen, her face troubled, her soul disturbed, and her heart fluttering with fear and worry. He had asked her to stay at home as respectable ladies do, and she certainly welcomed this. But what was done could not be undone. She could easily make excuses for her loose behavior, pretending that her object was to earn money to support her starving family. True enough, but only part of the truth. There was the tormenting mortal despair of resisting her sexual urge. How much she wanted to extinguish it, even if it involved her own extinction! Yet this sexual urge, flaring up more desperately and degenerately than before, had become almost uncontrollable. Her sense of guilt caused her great suffering. Her only consolation, if it was any consolation at all, was that fate held no better prospects for her. And she became torn between a wretched past and an irrepressible thirst for sexual gratification. Realizing how impossible it was to ignore this thirst, she was incapable of predicting whether she could adapt to her new way of life at home. Could she possibly be content to wait monotonously, indefinitely, for death to come upon her? She was not quite sure that she could accept this new life faithfully, or that, having lost everything, she could resolutely face up to the torture of sexual deprivation. She loathed and feared the past, but she was bound to it by a demonic force and would cleave to it desperately, stricken with guilt and horror, like a man falling from a mountaintop in a nightmare he was unable to shake off. Absently, she gazed at the slightly burnt surface of the rose-colored kunafa until she imagined her own skin burning black inside the platter. Life at the moment seemed so ruthless, so absurd; ruthlessly absurd. She wondered why God had created her. Yet she had an undeniable gusto for life, and her despair, torture, and fear were merely its manifestations. In spite of it all, she had an appointment with a man and did not want to miss it.