"That's why I came to you instead of anybody else."
"But you only ran into me by chance," she said with a pout. "You might even have forgotten all about me!"
"Do you think I can't find anywhere else?" he said, framing his face into a scowl.
As if to head off an outburst, she came up close to him and took his cheeks between the palms of her hands. "The guards at the zoo won't let visitors tease the lion. I'd forgotten that.
Please forgive me. But your face is burning and your beard is bristly. Why not have a cold shower?" His smile showed her he welcomed the idea. "Off you go to the bathroom then! When you come out you'll find some food ready. We'll eat in the bedroom, it's much nicer than this room. It looks out over the cemetery, too."
TEN
What a lot of graves there are, laid out as far as the eye can see. Their headstones are like hands raised in surrender, though they are beyond being threatened by anything. A city of silence and truth, where success and failure, murderer and victim come together, where thieves and policemen lie side by side in peace for the first and last time.
Nur's snoring seemed likely to end only when she awoke in late afternoon.
You'll stay in this prison until the police forget you. And will they ever really forget?
The graves remind you that death cheats the living.
They speak of betrayal; and thus they make you remember Nabawiyya, Ilish and Rauf, telling you that you yourself are dead, ever since that unseeing bullet was fired.
But you still have bullets of fire.
At the sound of Nur's yawning, loud, like a groan, he turned away from the window shutters towards the bed. Nur was sitting up, naked, her hair dishevelled, looking unrested and run down. But she smiled as she said, "I dreamed you were far away and I was going out of my mind waiting for you."
"That was a dream," he observed grimly.
"In fact you're the one who's going out and I'm the one who'll wait."
She went into the bathroom, emerged again drying her hair; and he followed her hands as they recreated her face in a new form, happy and young. She was, like himself, thirty years old, but she lied outright hoping to appear younger, adding to the multitude of sins and sillinesses which are openly committed. But theft unfortunately was not one of them.
"Don't forget the papers," he reminded her at the door.
When she'd gone he moved into the reception room and flung himself down on one of the sofas.
Now he was alone in the full sense of the word, without even his books which he'd left with Sheikh Ali.
He stared up at the cracked white ceiling, a dull echo of the threadbare carpet, killing time.
The setting sun flashed through the open window, like a jewel being carried by a flight of doves from one point in time to the next.
Your coldness, Sana, was very disquieting. Like seeing these graves. I don't know if we'll meet again, where or when. You'll certainly never love me now. Not in this life, so full of badly-aimed bullets, desires gone astray.
What's left behind is a dangling chain of regrets. The first link was the students' hostel on the road to Giza. Ilish didn't matter much, but Nabawiyya — she'd shaken him, torn him up by the roots. If only a deceit could be as plainly read in the face as fever or an infectious disease! Then beauty would never be false and many a man would be spared the ravages of deception.
That grocery near the students' hostel, where Nabawiyya used to come shopping, gripping her bowl. She was always so nicely dressed, much more neatly than the other servant girls, which was why she'd been known as the "Turkish Lady's maid,": The rich, proud old Turkish woman, who lived alone, at the end of the road, in a house at the center of a big garden, insisted that everyone who had to do with her should be good-looking, clean, and well-dressed. So Nabawiyya always appeared with her hair neatly combed and plaited in a long pigtail, wearing slippers. Her peasant's gown flowed around a sprightly and nimble body, and even those not bewitched by her agreed that she was a fine example of country beauty with her dark complexion, her round, full face, her brown eyes, her small chubby nose, and her lips moist with the juices of life.
There was a small green tattoo mark on her chin like a beauty spot.
You used to stand at the entrance to the students' hostel and wait for her after work, staring up the street until her fine form with her adorable gait appeared in the distance. As she stepped closer and closer, you'd glow with anticipation. She was like some lovely melody, welcomed wherever she went. As she slipped in among the dozens of women standing at the grocer's your eyes would follow her drunk with ecstasy. She'd disappear and reemerge again, your desire and curiosity increasing all the time — so did your impulse to do something, no matter what, by word, gesture or invocation — and she'd move off on her way home, to disappear for the rest of the day and another whole night. And you'd let out a long, bitter sigh and your elation would subside, the birds on the roadside trees would cease their song and a cold autumn breeze would suddenly spring up from nowhere.
But then you notice that her form is reacting to your stare, that she's swaying coquettishly as she walks and you stand there no longer, but, with your natural impetuosity, hurry after her along the road. Then at the lone palm tree at the edge of the fields you bar her way. She's dumbfounded by your audacity, or pretends to be, and asks you indignantly who you might be. You reply in feigned surprise, "Who might I be? You really ask who I am? Don't you know? I'm known to every inch of your being!"
"I don't like ill-mannered people!" she snaps.
"Neither do I. I'm like you, I hate ill-mannered people. Oh, no. On the contrary, I admire good manners, beauty, and gentleness. And all of those things are you! You still don't know who I am? I must carry that basket for you and see you to the door of your house."
"I don't need your help," she says, "and don't ever stand in my way again!" With that she walks away, but with you at her side, encouraged by the faint smile slipping through her pretence of indignation, which you receive like the first cool breeze on a hot and sultry night. Then she had said: "Go back; you must! My mistress sits at the window and if you come one step more she'll see you."
"But I'm a very determined fellow," you reply, "and if you want me to go back, you'll have to come along with me. Just a few steps. Back to the palm tree. You see, I've got to talk to you.
And why shouldn't I? Aren't I respectable enough?"
She shakes her head vigorously, but she does slow down. Murmuring an angry protest, she does slow down, her neck arched like an angry cat's. She did slow down and I no longer doubt I've won, that Nabawiyya is not indifferent and knows very well how I stand sighing there at the students' hostel. You know that casual stares in the street will become something big in your life, in hers, and in the world at large too, which would grow larger as a result.
"Till tomorrow then," you say, stopping there, afraid for her, afraid of the biting tongue of the old Turk who lives like an enigma at the bottom of the street. So you return to the palm tree and climb it, quick as a monkey, out of sheer high spirits, then jump down again, from ten feet up, into a plot of green. Then you go back to the hostel, singing, in your deep voice, like a bull in ecstasy.
And later, when circumstances sent you to al-Zayyat Circus, to work that took you from quarter to quarter, village to village, you feared that "out of sight, out of mind" might well be applied to you and you asked her to marry you. Yes, you asked her to marry you, in the good old legal, traditional Muslim way, standing outside the university that you had — unfairly — been unable to enter, though so many fools did. There was no light in the street or the sky, just a big crescent moon over the horizon. Gazing shyly down at the ground, her forehead reflecting the pale moonlight, she seemed overjoyed. You told her about your good wages, your excellent prospects and your neat ground-floor flat in Darrasa, on Jabal Road, near Sheikh Ali's house. "You'll get to know the godly Sheikh" you said, "when we marry. And we've got to have the wedding as soon as possible. After all, our love has lasted quite a while already. You'll have to leave the old lady now."