There was nothing for it therefore but to forget the whole incident, and how difficult and painful that was — not to mention the anxiety weighing on his heart over the theft of his sister’s ring. He started blaming himself: when he had got the ring back from Papasian the jeweler’s after it was mended, why had he kept it in the office instead of hurrying to return it to Dawlat? What was he to do now? He could not afford to buy a new ring and even if he could, Dawlat knew her jewelry as she did her own children. He feared his confrontation with Dawlat more than anything else — so much so that when he arrived in front of their apartment in Baehler Passage, he stood hesitating at the entrance and it occurred to him to go and spend the night at one of his friends’ houses, and this he almost did. But it was late and his exhaustion was driving him to go upstairs, so he went.
“And just where has His Lordship been?”
These were Dawlat’s opening words to him as he stepped into the apartment. She was waiting for him in the reception room, on the seat facing the front door. She had wrapped her chestnut-dyed hair on her “boucles” and covered her lined face with thick layers of powder, while a lighted cigarette in a small gold holder dangled from the corner of her mouth. She had on a blue house robe that covered her thin body and had stuffed her feet into her “pantoufles,” which were shaped like white rabbits. She sat knitting, her hands moving in a quick, mechanical way, never stopping or slackening their pace, as though they were divorced from the rest of her body. Habit had taught her the skill of smoking, knitting, and talking simultaneously.
“Good evening.”
Zaki said the words quickly and tried to move on directly to his room, but Dawlat launched her attack immediately, screaming in his face, “What do you think you are? Living in an hotel? Three hours I’ve been waiting for you, to and fro between the door and the window. I was just going to call the police. I thought something must have happened to you. It’s too bad of you! I’m sick. Do you want to kill me? Have mercy on me, Lord! Lord, take me and let me rest!”
This was a kind of brief overture to a quarrel in four movements that might stretch out till the morning and Zaki, quickly crossing the hall, said, “I’m sorry, Dawlat. I’m extremely tired. I’m going to sleep and in the morning I’ll tell you what happened, God willing.”
Dawlat, however, was alert to his attempt at flight and, throwing the knitting needles from her hands, rushed at him screaming at the top of her voice, “Tired from what, you poor thing? From the women you spend all your time sniffing after like a dog? Wise up, mister! You could die any day. When you meet Our Lord, what are you going to tell Him then, mister?”
With the last cry, Dawlat gave Zaki a hard shove in the back. He staggered a little but rallied his forces and slipped inside his room, where despite Dawlat’s fierce resistance he managed to lock his door, stuffing the key into his pocket. Dawlat continued to shout and rattle the doorknob to make him open up, but Zaki felt that he’d made it to safety and told himself that it wouldn’t be long before she got tired and went away. Then he lay down fully clothed on the bed. He was tired and sad and he started to review the events of the day, muttering in French, “Quelle journée horrible!” Then he thought of Dawlat and asked himself how his beloved sister could have been transformed into this vicious, hateful old woman.
She is only three years older than he, and he still remembers her as a beautiful delicate girl wearing the yellow and navy school uniform of the Mere de Dieu and learning selections of La Fontaine’s animal verses by heart. In the evenings she would play the piano in the reception room of their old house in Zamalek (which the Basha had sold following the Revolution). She played so well that Mme. Chedid the music teacher approached the Basha about the possibility of her applying for the international amateurs’ competition in Paris, but the Basha refused and Dawlat soon married Airforce Captain Hassan Shawkat and had a boy and a girl (Hani and Dina). Then the Revolution came and Shawkat was pensioned off because of his close relations with the royal family and soon after died a sudden death while still less than forty-five years of age.
Dawlat remarried twice after him but had no more children — two failed marriages that left her bitter, nervy, and a cigarette smoker. Then her daughter grew up, married, and emigrated to Canada. When her son graduated from the School of Medicine, Dawlat waged a fierce battle to stop him emigrating. She wept and screamed and implored all her relatives to convince him to remain with her, but the young doctor, like most of his generation, was sick to despair of the situation in Egypt. He was determined to emigrate and offered to take his mother with him but she refused and was left on her own.
She rented out her flat in Garden City furnished and moved in to live with Zaki downtown, and from the first day the two old people had not stopped feuding and battling as though they were sworn enemies. Zaki had got used to his independence and freedom and it had become difficult for him to accept anyone else sharing his life — to accept that he would have to stick to appointed times for sleeping and eating and that he would have to tell Dawlat ahead of time if he intended to stay out late. Her presence prevented him from inviting girlfriends home, and her barefaced interference in his most private affairs and her constant attempts to dominate him made her even harder to put up with.
From her side, Dawlat endured loneliness and unhappiness and it grieved her that she should end her life without accomplishments or achievements after failing in marriage and seeing her children leave her in her old age. It provoked her greatly that Zaki seemed in no way like a failing old man waiting for death, but still wore scent and played the fop and chased women. No sooner did she catch sight of him smiling and humming in front of the mirror as he primped his clothes or notice that he was happy and in high spirits than she would feel a resentment that wouldn’t subside until she’d picked a quarrel with him and flayed him with her tongue. She attacked his childish ways and whims not from a standpoint based on any moral objections but simply because his clinging to life in this way didn’t match her own despair, her fury at him being akin to that felt by mourners at the man who guffaws in the middle of a funeral.
In addition, there lay between the two old people all the irritability, impatience, and obstinacy that go with old age, plus that certain tension that develops when two individuals live in too close proximity to one another — from one using the bathroom for a long time when the other wants it, from one seeing the sullen face the other wears when he wakes from sleeping, from one wanting silence while the other insists on talking, from the mere presence of another person who never leaves you day and night, who stares at you, who interrupts you, who picks on everything you say, and the grating of whose molars when he chews sets you on edge, and the ringing noise of whose spoon striking the dishes disturbs your quiet every time he sits down to eat with you.
Zaki Bey el Dessouki stayed stretched out on the bed going over these events and gradually drowsiness started to overcome him. However, his bad day wasn’t over yet, for it was not long before he heard, as he lay between sleeping and waking, the grating of the spare key, which Dawlat had known where to find. She opened the door, approached him, and, eyes wide with resentment and voice gasping with emotion, said, “Where’s the ring, Zaki?”
Thus Your Excellency Mr. President will see that your son Taha Muhammad el Shazli has suffered injustice and the violation of his rights at the hands of the presiding general of the interviewing committee at the Police Academy. The Prophet — God bless him and give him peace — has said, in a sound hadith, “Verily, your people who were before you would leave alone a nobleman if he stole, and would invoke the punishment against a poor man if he stole. By God, even if Fatima, daughter of Muhammad, stole, I would cut off her hand.” The Prophet of God has spoken truly.