“Don’t worry. You can always sell your honor. Not everyone knows what I just told you; only a few of us do. You can relax.”
“I agree,” said Ossama, coming out of his shell. “I’ve learned so many things in such a short time that I will leave here much richer, even though I’ll leave without honor. But what does honor matter if I got to meet a man like you?”
Karamallah looked at Ossama as if he were seeing him for the first time. He had been so fixated on the letter that had been opportunely submitted to his wisdom that he had forgotten who its industrious supplier was. This young thief, Nimr’s ill-fated pupil, had managed to escape his teacher’s miserabilism with a sartorial strategy that allowed him to steal from the rich. He had instinctively grasped the flaw of a society based on appearance. This was worthy of Karamallah’s esteem.
“I know I can count on you,” he said to his young visitor with a surge of that fraternal feeling he reserved for those of his kind. “To begin with, we can use this letter to pressure Suleyman to accept meeting us in public, at a café in town. It is always worthwhile to converse with an individual of this sort. This is how one learns that infamy has no bounds.”
“I am at your service,” said Ossama. “What should I do?”
“Come see me tomorrow. Together we’ll form a joyous battle plan to fight this evil developer of debris.”
“I would love such a battle,” Ossama assured him.
Nimr raised his arms to the ceiling, as if asking a favor of the heavens, but it was only a natural gesture in the face of the insufferable. He was incensed by the shameless and inexplicable complicity between Karamallah and his former pupil.
IV
Atef Suleyman, the developer famous for modern urban genocides, did not wear the sign of infamy on his forehead, but this oversight of nature did not prevent the numerous inhabitants of the apartment buildings constructed by his real estate company from cursing him day and night; nor did it keep certain extremists from calling for his immediate death. Unfortunately, these invectives — from an acrimonious populace deprived of an education in economics that would have allowed them to appreciate the beauty of capitalism — never managed to reach the person at whom they were directed. Suleyman lived in splendor in the residential district of Zamalek, several kilometers from those planned communities that had sprung up in the desert where he practiced his lucrative business. Frustrated by the resilience of the Pharaonic monuments, he saw himself as a developer for the era of ephemeral buildings — symbols of modernity — that would leave to posterity
nothing but rubble and dust; in other words, disposable homes. His most recent product had proved to be of a particularly tawdry modernism, for among the rubble and dust of its premature collapse lay the corpses of fifty or so human beings who had reached the end of their mediocre existences without the slightest advance notice. Although he was not especially superstitious, Suleyman never forgot as he drew up his unbeatable estimates that fate could intervene. Yet the suddenness of a catastrophe that did not bode well for his reputation puzzled him. What sort of fate was it, then, that behaved so hastily, without concern for the havoc wreaked by its untimely clumsiness? Couldn’t it have waited a suitable amount of time before perfidiously attacking a building whose paint was still wet, christened only three months earlier by a government minister? For Suleyman, this sort of fate was suspect; in fact, he suspected it of being linked to a conspiracy of enemies gravely offended by his success. He had always believed the popular adage that holds that wealth, like honey, attracts flies. In this instance, the flies were venomous, and they had already exuded their venom numerous times on the front pages of a newspaper that was independent and — worldwide rarity — incorruptible. Accused of embezzlement and fraud of every sort, Suleyman — like all his peers — would use his honor as his unassailable alibi, asserting that at the time the criminal acts had occurred, he was in the company of his honor. His bad faith went so far beyond the accepted norms of his profession that he aroused the admiration and jealousy of his more moderate competitors.
His obsessive search for the troublemaker who had ruined a real estate deal guaranteed to bring him fame and fortune did not in any way decrease Suleyman’s wrath against his accomplice, the minister’s brother — that cowardly and stupid individual who had dared send him a break-up letter filled with serious allegations, a missive that had now fallen into the hands of a stranger. And at this very moment that son of a louse Abdelrazak was holed up with his mistress, a wizened old belly dancer whom he kept royally with the money Suleyman paid him in exchange for more or less licit services. In truth, the transformation of one of his most beautiful creations into war rubble and those fifty supposedly innocent victims were nothing but minor incidents, no doubt unpleasant, but not to such an extent that his business would be harmed. Sooner or later every bloodbath is followed by another, even more spectacular one. Nothing could prevent a misfortune brought about by destiny, thought Suleyman, suddenly struck by wisdom. He was entitled to hope that this same destiny would soon cause a train to derail or a stadium to burn. (He preferred this latter option because of the throng of degenerates who frequented places of that sort.) And as a result, the human dregs burned to a crisp would number in the thousands, thereby making his own count of fifty dead ridiculously low by comparison.
Setting aside his shameless speculations about improbable, world-class fatal accidents, Suleyman came back to his major problem, the one and only quandary of the famous letter. However it were to occur, the dissemination of this letter with its ministerial letterhead would mark the end of a very lucrative collaboration with certain eminent civil servants whom Abdelrazak, using his kinship with a minister, had managed to lead off the straight and narrow path, down devious roads paved with precious stones. Suleyman swore to himself that once he had recovered the letter he would go fetch that pathetic son of a cross-eyed mother at his mistress’s home, pamper him, and perhaps even take him to a newly opened brothel where the oldest girl was no more than sixteen. That would be a change from his dancer with her sagging belly and would surely make him easier to manipulate. Suleyman had no choice, and he was prepared to stoop to anything to make Abdelrazak go back on his decision to end their collusion — even to tell him that he would make him his heir, which would be a dreadful lie: the fountain of his hatred for this scoundrel was nowhere near drying up. Suleyman was not one to forget that this individual had written him an impertinent, vulgar letter in a style worthy of a cabby, with the intention of dishonoring him. In his distress, however, he had to acknowledge that Abdelrazak was an essential cog in those corrupt networks without which business, for Suleyman in any case, was unimaginable. If he were to consent to work in real estate like an honest businessman, his company’s profits would fall to the level of those of a clay jug factory.
The stranger, in this case a young man who claimed to be a student — without specifying of what — had called to set up a meeting in a well-known café in the working-class El Huseini district. The café owed its reputation to its customers — a mix of intellectuals, philosopher-beggars, and simple actors in life with no apparent specialization. Suleyman had sat on its esteemed terrace for entire nights when he was still preparing his future exploits in the domain of preplanned, legal theft. The young man claimed to have found a letter addressed to Suleyman on the sidewalk of Rifaat Harb Street, and to have picked it up with the altruistic aim of returning it to its owner. He was referring to the letter that had been lost at the same time as Suleyman’s wallet — but no mention was made of this latter object — and promised to return it to him when they met. Obviously he was hoping to extract some money in exchange, and Suleyman was prepared to give it to him without argument. Still, there was something suspicious about this rendezvous; its bizarre and restrictive clauses would have caused the greatest mistrust even in a newborn. First of all, it was to take place at night, as if it were a meeting among conspirators; then there was this working-class district, a fertile ground for shady schemes; finally — and much more alarming — there was the presence of an additional person who, the so-called student claimed, was very eager to talk to him in a solely social way. Talk to him about what? One more witness in this matter and soon the entire city — which was waiting for just such an event to snicker and rejoice — would know absolutely everything about the miracle of his wealth. For what diabolical reason had the young man confided in this person? The question continued to plague Suleyman, like those riddles that remain unsolved for centuries.