Karnak Café

Isma‘il al-Shaykh

Yes indeed, I’ve learned things I did not know before. From the very first time we met I found Isma‘il al-Shaykh interesting. He had a strong build, and his features were large and pronounced. I only ever saw him wearing one suit, and he wore it winter and summer long. In summer he used to take the jacket off, but in winter it would be back on, along with a sweater. He was obviously poor, but even so he still managed to win your respect. In spite of intermittent terms spent in prison, he had just recently earned his law diploma.

“I come from a very poor neighborhood,” he told me. “Have you ever heard of Da‘bas Alley in the Husayniya Quarter? My father works there in a liver restaurant, and my mother’s a peddler who also sells sweet basil and palm leaves whenever people go to visit their family gravesite during the Eid festival. My elder brothers are a butcher’s mate, a cart-driver, and a cobbler. Our home consists of a single room that looks out on a tenement courtyard. The whole building feels like one enormous family consisting of over fifty people. There’s no bathroom or running water. The only toilet is in the corner of the yard, and we have to carry the water to it in jerry cans. The women all gather in the yard; on occasion men and women will congregate together. It’s there that they exchange gossip and jokes, and occasionally insults and blows as well. They eat and pray.”

He gave me a frown. “Basically nothing has changed in Da‘bas Alley right up till today,” he said, but then he corrected himself. “No, I’m wrong. Schools have started opening their doors to people like us. That’s an undeniable boon. I was one of the children who went to school, but my father really hoped I would fail; he was anxious to get rid of me like my brothers by apprenticing me off to some tradesman. I thwarted him by doing well in my studies and eventually getting the Certificate of Secondary Education. That made it possible for me to enroll in law school. Once that happened, my father changed his tune and started treating me with pride and admiration. Could his son really turn into a public prosecutor, he wondered? In our part of town, there are always two well-known posts: policeman and public prosecutor. As you know, people have to deal with both types. My mother set her heart on my continuing my studies, ‘even,’ as she put it herself, ‘if it means having to sell my own eyes.’ God knows how much it must have cost her to buy me a suit that would look right for a university student. But for her it was a piece of real estate that needed to be properly looked after: repair it, refurbish, or even replace it, by all means, but never dispense with it.”

He paused for a moment. “These days the place is crawling with boys and girls going to school,” he went on angrily, “but their future is an ongoing problem that nations keep batting back and forth among each other.”

When the 1952 Revolution happened, he had been three years old. Thus he was in every sense of the word a ‘son of the revolution.’ With that in mind, I could see no reason to conceal my amazement at the appalling treatment he had received. “It’s been suggested,” I told him, “that you must be either a Communist or a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“Neither,” he replied. “My only allegiance is to the July 1952 Revolution. But when it comes to the situation today.…” He fell silent and started shaking his head, as though he did not know what to say next. “For a long time,” he went on, “I’ve considered Egyptian history as really beginning on July 23, 1952. It’s only since the June 1967 War that I’ve started looking back earlier than that.”

He admitted to me that he believed in Egyptian socialism. For that reason his faith had remained unshaken.

“But what about your belief in socialist ideas now?” I asked.

“Many people have decided to vent their spleen against socialism as being one of the causes of our defeat. But what we need to realize is that there has never been any genuine socialism in our lives. That’s why I’ve still not abandoned my support for the concept, even though I would dearly like to get rid of the people who have been applying it up till now. Hilmi Hamada — may he rest in peace! — was well aware of that from the very beginning.”

“How come?”

“He was a Communist.”

“So there were some strangers in your group then?”

“Yes, but what did we do wrong?”

He told me a great deal about Zaynab. “I have known her ever since we were both kids growing up in the alley. She lives in the same tenement building. We used to play games with each other and were beaten for doing so. Then she grew up and matured into a young woman. She developed physically; whenever she moved, she used to attract the attention of young men. Youthful passions were stirred, and I took it upon myself to defend her, drawing my courage from old stories about gangs in our quarter. When we were both in secondary school, spies and traditions kept interfering in our lives, but our love was very strong. Our true feelings for each other had flared into the open, and everyone was forced to acknowledge that we were in love. It was when we went to university that at last we found some freedom. We announced our engagement, but, since we both viewed marriage as the final sanctuary, decided to wait before getting married. And now, just look at the way such dreams all come to nothing, and everything dies.…”

He went on to tell me how they had found undreamed-of freedom at university. Their student days could not be subjected to the kind of authoritarian prudery that governed their movements in Da‘bas Alley, where there had had to be a valid reason or excuse for every single absence or lateness. As a result of this new-found freedom, they had spent many long hours together and had got to know each other’s friends. She had joined him and become one of the regular customers at Karnak Café; she had been arrested when he was. Her personality had developed in a way that he had never imagined.

“We found ourselves beset by the issue of sex,” he went on with a laugh. “For a long time we both fumbled around, not really knowing what to do about it. We were both fully aware, of course, that we were surrounded by a variety of temptations urging us to indulge in experiments in free love that were all the rage.

“ ‘We’re in love,’ I told her one day as I gave her a warm hug, ‘there’s no doubt about that. We’re definitely going to get married. So what do you say?’

“ ‘I promised my father I wouldn’t,’ she replied.

“ ‘That’s stupid,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t you hear what people are saying?’

“ ‘I’m not sure about it,’ she replied testily, ‘nor are you!’

“The result was that we both suffered a good deal over the subject.”

So how far is this Isma‘il a genuine revolutionary? I asked myself. He makes no attempt to hide his religious belief, so he’s obviously a particular type of revolutionary. I wanted to ask him about his personal views on sexual freedom, but I was afraid he might get the impression that I wanted to pry into Zaynab’s secrets. With that in mind, I decided not to take him down a path that might lead him to reveal things he preferred not to be public knowledge.

“In spite of everything people believe,” he said, “true love can provide a bulwark against temptation.”

There was something else he told me as well, and I can never forget it.

“In prison we felt a terrible sense of loss, and it managed to shake the entire foundation of our love for each other.”

That reminded me that violent convulsions in a man’s life are followed by cries for help in sexual guise that often verge on the insane. What did it all mean? I wondered. But he seemed reluctant to return to the subject, so I changed the subject.

“What about Hilmi Hamada?” I asked.

“He kept on breaking with tradition and always did it with enormous intensity.”

“Was he from the same background as you?”

“No, certainly not! His father was a teacher of English, and his grandfather worked on the railroad.”

“Was he really in love with Qurunfula?”

“Certainly,” he replied, “I have absolutely no doubt about that. It may have been purely by chance that we initially found the café, but he insisted on going back to it. I can remember him saying, ‘Let’s go back to that woman’s café. She’s very attractive. Didn’t you notice?’ To tell the truth, we wanted to go back too, since we had grown fond of her as friends.”

I had no doubts about Qurunfula’s attractiveness either, since I had fallen under the same spell. But was all that enough to counteract the powerful impression I had that Hilmi Hamada had been in love with Zaynab? Wasn’t it possible, I asked myself, that he had publicized his love for Qurunfula as a way of hiding his true feelings?

“Yes, he really loved Qurunfula. Mind you, his motives may not have been entirely flawless. What he was looking for may have been something similar to love without actually being true love itself. Even so, he was loyal to her and showed her genuine affection. He never gave in to the urge to exploit her feelings, however easy that might have been. There was an idealistic side to his behavior as well. Beyond that his financial situation was fine; on that score all we need tell you is that my general education, and Zaynab’s too, came about thanks to the books that we borrowed from his library.”

“Perhaps he felt some pangs of sympathy for her glorious past?”

“We all used to sit there listening to her talk and pretending to believe it all,” Isma‘il replied with a laugh. “In fact, he didn’t believe a word of it. We loved her for what she is now. Even so, he did poke fun at her claims to have modernized art and to have been the only one of her profession who behaved in a model fashion.”

“With regard to both art and morals,” I commented as a neutral observer, “she was certainly a model for emulation.”

“It’s too late to convince Hilmi of that now,” he replied.

But why had Isma‘il al-Shaykh been put in prison? As before, I was afraid that he would not respond to that question, but the radical change in circumstances seemed to have led him to adopt a different attitude.

“It was nighttime,” he said. “I was asleep on a bench in the yard. In spring and fall I always do that so as to leave the single room for my father. I was sound asleep. Gradually I became aware of daylight impinging on my sleep like a dream. Someone was shaking me roughly. I woke up, opened my eyes, but found myself blinded by a powerful light shining right into my eyes. I sat up with a start.

“ ‘Where’s the al-Shaykh house?’ a voice asked.

“ ‘This is it,’ I replied. ‘What do you want? I’m his son, Isma‘il.’

“ ‘Fine,’ said the voice.

“The flashlight went out, and everything went dark. After a while I could make out some figures.

“ ‘Come with us.’

“ ‘Who are you?’

“ ‘Don’t worry, we’re police.’

“ ‘What do you want?’

“ ‘You just need to answer a few questions. You’ll be back home before daybreak.’

“ ‘Let me tell my father and put my suit on.’

“ ‘There’s no need for that.’

“A hand grabbed me by the shoulder, and I submitted. Wearing only my nightshirt I was frog-marched barefoot outside and thrust into a car. One of them sat on either side of me. Even though it was still pitch-dark, they put a blindfold over my eyes and tied my hands. My knees were left untied.

“ ‘Why are you treating me like this when I’ve done nothing wrong?’ I asked.

“ ‘Shut up!’

“ ‘Take me to someone in authority, and you’ll see.’

“ ‘That’s exactly where you’re going now.’

“With that I felt a deathly terror. I started wondering what the charge might be. I wasn’t a Communist, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, or a feudalist. I had never uttered a single word to undermine the honor of that historical period which I had come to consider my own ever since I had reached the age of awareness.

“Somewhere or other, the car stopped, and I was taken out. With two men holding on to my arms, I was led blindfolded into some building. My arms were released, and I could hear the sound of footsteps retreating and the door creaking as it was shut and locked. My hands had been untied and the blindfold taken off, but I could not see a thing. I felt as though I had lost my sight. I cleared my throat, but there was no response. I expected the darkness to dissipate a little as soon as my eyes were used to it, but that did not happen. There was not a single sound. What kind of place could this be? I stretched out my arms and started feeling my way around, moving very cautiously. The floor felt cold to my bare feet. The only thing I came into contact with was the walls; there was absolutely nothing in the room, no chairs, no rug, nothing standing at all. Darkness, emptiness, despair, terror, that was it. In a dark and silent environment like that, time stops altogether; since I had no idea when they had picked me up, that was even more the case. I had no idea when the darkness was supposed to disappear or when some form of life would emerge from this all-embracing corpse of a place.

“But there is one thing that I need to tell you: when suffering pushes someone too far, he can still get the better of it. Even in moments of the direst possible agony, he can still leap up and express his concerns with a level of recklessness that can be regarded as a sign of either despair or power — both are equally valid.

“So I surrendered myself to the fates and decided to allow the very devil himself to come if that was indeed what destiny had determined was to be my lot, or even death if it came to that. I stopped posing myself questions for which there were no answers, but made up my mind to take the lead from the way influenza behaves, countering antibiotics by creating whole new generations of bacteria that are resistant to medicine.”

“Did you stay on your feet for a long time?” I asked.

“When the strain of it all really got to me,” he said, “I squatted and then sat cross-legged on the floor. I slept as much as I could. Can you imagine? When I woke up, I remembered where I was. I realized that I had completely lost all sense of time. What time was it when I had fallen asleep? Was it daytime or night now? I felt my chin and decided to use its growth as a very inaccurate timepiece.”

“Did they leave you there for long?”

“Yes.”

“How about food?”

“The door used to open, and a tray would be pushed inside with some cheese on it, or else something salty with bread.”

“What about the toilet?”

“At a specific time each day, the door would open again, and a giant man the size of a circus wrestler would call me outside and take me to the latrine at the end of the corridor. As I followed him, I would have to keep my eyes almost closed because the light was so bright. I had hardly closed the door behind me before he would start yelling, ‘Get a move on, you son of a bitch! Do you think you can stay in there all day, you bastard?’ I’ll leave you to imagine how I was managing inside.”

“Have you any idea how long you were there?”

“God alone knows. My beard grew so long, I couldn’t tell any more.”

“But they cross-examined you, for sure?”

“Oh yes,” he replied with a frown. “There came the day when I found myself standing in front of Khalid Safwan.”

For a moment he was silent, his eyes narrowing with the sheer emotion aroused by the memory. Inevitably I now felt myself being drawn into the intense feelings he was experiencing.

“There I stood in front of his desk, barefoot and wearing only a shoddy nightshirt. My nerves were completely shot. Behind me stood one person, or maybe more. I was not allowed to look either right or left, let alone behind me. For that reason I couldn’t tell where I was and had to stare blearily straight at him. Whatever vestiges of my humanity may have been left at this point dissolved in an all-encompassing sense of terror.”

For just a moment his expression was etched with suppressed anger. “In spite of everything that happened,” he went on, “his image is indelibly recorded deep inside me. Of medium height, he had a large, elongated face with bushy eyebrows that pointed upwards. He had big, sunken eyes and a broad, prominent forehead. His jaw was strong, but he managed to keep his expression totally neutral. I can vividly recall all those details. Even so, I was feeling so utterly desperate that I managed to create an illusion of hope for myself concerning his role.

“ ‘Thank God!’ I said. ‘At last, I find myself standing before someone with authority.’

“A sharp cuff from behind cut me off, and I let out a groan of pain.

“ ‘Only speak when you’re asked a question,’ he said.

“He proceeded to ask me for my name, age, and profession, all of which I answered.

“ ‘When did you join the Muslim Brothers?’ he asked.

“The question astonished me. Now I realized for the first time what it was they were accusing me of being. ‘Never for a single moment have I belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood,’ I replied.

“ ‘What’s the beard for then?’

“ ‘I’ve grown it in prison.’

“ ‘Are you suggesting that you haven’t been well treated here?’

“ ‘My dear sir,’ I replied in a tone that was tantamount to an appeal for help, ‘the treatment I have received here has been appalling and utterly unjustified.’

“ ‘God forbid!’

“I realized at once that I had just made a dreadful mistake, but it was too late.

“ ‘So,’ he asked again, ‘when did you join the Muslim Brotherhood?’

“ ‘I never …,’ I started to reply but never finished the sentence. I started falling to the floor in a crumpled mass; it rushed up to greet me in a manner that seemed almost magical. Khalid Safwan soon disappeared into the gloom. Later on, Hilmi Hamada told me that one of the devils standing behind me had hit me so hard that I fainted. When I came to, I was back in the same place they had taken me from — on the asphalt floor in the cell.”

“What an ordeal!” I said.

“Yes, it was,” he replied. “The whole thing ended suddenly and unexpectedly. What’s more, it was actually in Khalid Safwan’s own room.”

“ ‘We now have proof,’ he told me as soon as they brought me in, ‘that your name was recorded on a list because you had donated a piaster to build a mosque. You never had an actual connection with them.’

“ ‘Isn’t that exactly what I’ve been telling you?’ I asked in a voice quivering with emotion.

“ ‘It’s an excusable error,’ he replied. ‘But contempt for the revolution is inexcusable.’ With that he proceeded to deliver his lecture with the greatest conviction. ‘We are here to protect the state that manages to keep you free of all kinds of subservience.’

“ ‘I am one of its loyal children.’

“ ‘Just look on the time you have spent here as a period of hospitality. Always remember how well you were treated. I trust that you’ll always remember that. Just bear in mind the fact that scores of people have been laboring night and day in order to prove your innocence.’

“ ‘I thank both God and you, sir.’ ”

The sheer memory of that moment led Isma‘il al-Shaykh to let out a bitter laugh.

“Were other people arrested for the same reason?” I asked.

“There were in fact two members of the Muslim Brothers in our group,” he replied. “They interrogated Zaynab and learned of her relationship with me, so they released her as well. It was because of us that they had arrested Hilmi. When they discovered that I was innocent, they did the same for him too.”

It was all a very bitter experience for him. As a result he had come to totally distrust a government agency, namely the secret police. In spite of that, his belief in the state itself and the revolution remained rock-solid and unshaken; neither doubt nor corruption could alter his opinion on that score. As far as he was concerned, the secret police were using techniques of their own devising, but the people in authority remained in the dark.

“When I was released,” Isma‘il said, “I thought about complaining to the government authorities, but Hilmi Hamada used every argument he could to stop me.”

“He obviously didn’t believe in the very state itself, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes.”

After the dreadful defeat of June 1967, Isma‘il set himself to study modern Egyptian history for the first time.

“I have to tell you,” he said, “that I’ve been constantly surprised by the power and freedom that the opposition always had and also by the role played by the Egyptian judiciary. It wasn’t a period of undiluted evil. Quite the contrary, there was a whole series of intellectual trends that deserved to continue, and indeed to grow and flourish. It is the very fact that such features have been systematically overlooked that has contributed to our defeat.”

Next he told me about his second period in prison.

“I was visiting Hilmi Hamada’s house,” he told me. “I left at around midnight, and they arrested me on the spot. With that I found myself back in the dark and empty void.”

Once again he found himself forced to ponder what the accusation might be this time. He had a long time to wait before he was to find out, and once again he went through all the tortures of hell. There he was yet again facing Khalid Safwan.

“I stood there silently,” he told me. “This time I could benefit from my previous experience. Even so, I was still expecting trouble from all the same directions as before.

“ ‘You cunning little bastard,’ Khalid Safwan said, looking me straight in the eye. ‘Here we were, thinking you belonged to the Muslim Brothers.…’

“ ‘And I turned out to be innocent,’ I replied emphatically.

“ ‘But what was lurking just below the surface was even worse!’

“ ‘I believe in the revolution,’ I said fervently. ‘That’s the only true fact there is.…’

“ ‘Oh, everyone believes in the revolution,’ he said sarcastically. ‘In this very room, feudalists, Wafdists, and Communists have all avowed their belief in the revolution!’ He gave me a cruel stare. ‘So when did you join the Communists?’

“A denial was immediately on my lips, but I suppressed it. In a purely reflex action I raised my shoulders as though to hide my neck, but said nothing.

“ ‘When did you join the Communists?’ he repeated.

“I felt as though my neck were becoming increasingly constricted. I had no idea what to say, so I said nothing.

“ ‘Don’t you want to confess?’

“I remained silent, using it in much the same way as I had adopted misery inside that dark prison cell.

“ ‘Okay!’ he said.

“He gestured with his hand. I heard the sound of footsteps approaching, and my body gave a shudder. All of a sudden I became aware that someone was standing right beside me; out of the corner of my eye I could make out that she was a woman. I turned toward her in amazement. All the terror I was feeling was completely obliterated by another sensation. ‘Zaynab!’ I yelled, unable to stop myself.

“ ‘So you know this woman, do you?’ he asked. ‘It seems to matter to you what happens to her.’ He looked back and forth between the two of us with those sunken eyes of his. ‘Does it matter?’

“For an entire minute I felt utterly shattered.

“ ‘You’re an educated man, and I’m sure you’ve some imagination,’ he went on. ‘Can you imagine what might happen to this poor innocent girl if you refuse to talk?’

“ ‘What is it you want, sir?’ I asked in a mournful tone that was actually addressed to the world as a whole.

“ ‘I am still asking you the same question: when did you join the Communists?’

“ ‘I don’t remember the exact date,’ I replied, thereby burying any last flicker of hope, ‘but I confess to being a Communist.’

“My confession was recorded on a sheet of paper, and I was taken away.”

He was taken back to his cell. Contrary to his initial expectations, he was not tortured any more. Even so, he was convinced that now he was lost.

An unspecified amount of time went by, then one day a guard came along and took him to a locked door. “Perhaps you’d like to see your friend, Hilmi Hamada,” he said.

He removed the cover from the peephole and ordered Isma‘il to take a look inside.

“I looked inside. What I saw was so grotesque that at first I couldn’t take it all in. It was just like some surrealist painting. What I could make out was that Hilmi Hamada was hanging by his feet, silent and motionless; either he had passed out or else he was dead.

“I was so shocked and disgusted that I staggered backwards. ‘That is in …,’ I started to say but then the words stuck in my mouth as I noticed the guard staring at me.

“ ‘What were you saying?’ he asked.

“I felt utterly sick.

“ ‘This is in—,’ you said, ‘in … what?’

“He pushed me ahead of him. ‘Inhumane, is that what you meant?’ he asked. ‘And what about all those blood-filled dreams you all had, were they supposed to be so humane?’ ”

This was followed by a further interval of time during the course of which he had suffered a bad attack of influenza in the wake of a particularly cold spell of weather. While he was still recovering, he was summoned to Khalid Safwan’s office again. At that particular juncture his greatest desire was to be transferred to any other prison or jail. As it turned out, Khalid Safwan spoke first.

“ ‘You’re in luck,’ he said.

“I looked at him in amazement.

“ ‘Once again you’ve been proved innocent.’

“All my resources of strength deserted me, and I felt an overwhelming desire to sleep.

“ ‘Your visit to Hilmi Hamada’s house was entirely innocent, wasn’t it?’

“I was terrified and had no idea what to say.

“ ‘He’s confessed, but luckily for him too we’ve proof that he never joined any organization or party. It’s the real workers we’re after, not the amateurs.’

“With that my hopes of being released perked up again.

“ ‘You’re still not saying anything,’ he continued, ‘out of respect for the sanctity of friendship, no doubt.’ For a moment he just sat there, but then he went on, ‘It’s that same faith in the power of friendship that makes us want to be your friends as well.’

“When was he going to order my release? I wondered.

“ ‘Be a friend of ours,’ he said. ‘You told us you were devoted to the revolution. I believe you. So why don’t you be one of our friends? How do you like the idea?’

“ ‘I’m delighted, sir.’

“ ‘We’re all children of the same revolution. We’re honor-bound to protect it with all due vigor, isn’t that so?’

“ ‘Of course.’

“ ‘But there has to be a positive attitude as well. The friendship we require has to be a positive one.’

“ ‘I’ve regarded myself as a friend of the revolution from the very beginning.’

“ ‘So how would you feel if you learned that the revolution was being threatened? Would that make you happy? Would you keep your mouth shut about it?’

“ ‘Certainly not!’

“ ‘That’s exactly what we’re asking for. You’ll be going to see a colleague of ours who’ll tell you the proper way to do things. But I’d like to remind you that we’re a force that is in complete control of things. There are no secrets from us. Friends are rewarded, and traitors are punished. That’s the way it is.’ ”

Isma‘il’s face clouded over as he recalled this particular incident. If anything, he now looked even more miserable than before.

“Could you have said no?” I asked, trying to relieve his misery a bit.

“You can always find some excuse or other,” he said, “but there’s no point.”

So that is the way he emerged from his imprisonment, an informer with a fixed salary and a tortured conscience. However hard he struggled with himself to conceptualize his new job in terms of his strong ties to the revolution, he always ended up feeling utterly appalled at what he was doing.

“When I met Zaynab again,” he said, “for the first time ever I felt like some kind of stranger. Now I had a private life of my own about which she neither knew nor was supposed to know anything.”

“So you kept it from her, did you?”

“Yes. I was following direct orders.”

“Did you really believe they had that much authority over you?”

“Absolutely! I certainly believed it. You can add to the equation the terror factor that had totally destroyed my spirit, and also my own profound sense of shame. I couldn’t manage to convince myself that honor meant anything any more. I had to act in a totally reckless manner, and that was no easy matter when you consider not only my moral make-up but also my spiritual integrity. I started meandering around in never-ending torment. What made it that much worse was that, as far as I was concerned, Zaynab was a changed person too. She seemed to be overwhelmed by a profound sense of grief; the way she kept behaving provided no clue as to how she was going to get out of it. That made me feel even more of a stranger to her.”

“But that was all to be expected, wasn’t it?” I commented. “Things would have improved eventually.”

“But I never caught even a glimpse of the Zaynab I had once known. She had always been so happy and lively; I thought nothing could ever dampen her spirit. But something had. I tried offering her encouragement, but one day she stunned me by saying that I was the one who needed encouraging!”

The week after Isma‘il had been released, something absolutely incredible had happened. They had left the college grounds and were walking together.

“Where are you going now?” she asked.

“To the Karnak Café for an hour or so, then I’ll go home.”

“I’d like to walk alone with you for a while,” she said, almost as though she were talking to herself.

He imagined that she had a secret she wanted to share with him. “Let’s go to the zoo, then,” he suggested.

“I want it to be somewhere safe.”

Hilmi Hamada solved the problem for them both by inviting them up to Qurunfula’s apartment (which was his as well). He left the two of them alone.

“Qurunfula will get the impression we’re up to something,” he said in a tone of innocent concern.

“Let her say what she likes!” replied Zaynab disdainfully.

He was not quite sure what to do. He took her hand in his, but she grabbed his and raised it to her neck. Their lips came together in a long kiss, and then she gave herself to him.

“The whole thing was a complete surprise,” he confided to me. “I was thrilled, of course, but at the same time I couldn’t help worrying. A number of unfocused questions formed a cluster inside my head. I almost asked her why she had decided to do it now, but didn’t.”

For a moment we just looked at each other.

“Maybe things had stirred her up?”

“Could be.”

“Afterwards I regretted what I’d done. I blamed myself for taking advantage of a moment of weakness when she herself was obviously in a state of collapse as well.”

“Did it happen again?”

“No.”

“Neither of you thought of trying?”

“No. On the surface our ties remained strong, but something inside, in the very depths of our souls, had started to come apart.”

“What a peculiar situation!”

“It felt like a lingering death. From my side, there are things that can explain it. But where she’s concerned, it’s a total mystery to me.”

“I noticed a change in your relationship while we were at the Karnak Café, but I thought it was just something temporary that would blow over.”

“I asked her what she had had to go through during her short time in prison, but she assured me it had all been short and trivial. From this point on, our beliefs in the revolution were contaminated by a deep-seated anger. We were much more willing to listen to criticism. The enthusiasm was gone; the spark was no longer there. Sure enough, the basic framework was still in place, but what we kept saying was that the style had to be changed; corruption had to be eradicated, and all those sadistic bodyguards had to go. Our glorious revolution had turned into a siege.”

One evening they had discussed the subject again with Hilmi Hamada.

“I’m surprised you can still believe in the revolution!” Hilmi had said.

“Just because the body has bowels,” Isma‘il had replied, “doesn’t diminish the nobility of the human mind.”

“Aha,” commented Hilmi sarcastically, “now I can see that, like everyone else, you resort to similes and metaphors whenever your arguments are weak!”

He had looked at them both. “It’s time for us to do something,” he went on.

He showed them a secret pamphlet that he and some of his colleagues were circulating.

“I was absolutely astonished at his frankness,” Isma‘il told me. “Or, more accurately, I was stunned. I dearly wished I had never heard him say it. I remembered my secret assignment that required me to report him immediately. The very thought of it made my entire universe start to shake. The reality of the deep abyss into which I was falling now became all too apparent to me.

“By now the two of us had been talking for well over an hour; Hilmi was doing the talking while I sat there or made a few terse comments. I was completely at a loss and at the same time felt utterly disconsolate.

“ ‘Stop those activities of yours,’ I told him, ‘and tear up that pamphlet!’

“ ‘What a joker you are!’ he scoffed. ‘This one isn’t the first, and it certainly won’t be the last.’

“We left his house at about ten and walked in silence. By now the time we were spending alone together was agonizing and difficult for both of us. We parted company. She needed to go back to the tenement building, while I felt like going to the Karnak Café. I wandered around the streets, unable to make the fateful decision. All the time I was feeling scared, scared for me and for Zaynab as well. In the end I made no decision, but returned to the tenement building at about midnight. I threw myself down on the bench in the courtyard without even taking my clothes off. I told myself that I faced a choice: either make the decision or go out of my mind. Even then I couldn’t make up my mind. I postponed things till the morning, but I didn’t get any sleep at all. I’d hardly fallen asleep when they came for me.”

“The security police, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“That very same night?”

“Yes, the same night.”

“But that’s staggering, unbelievable!”

“It’s magic. The only explanation I have is that they must have been watching us both and listening in from a distance.”

“But, in any case, you had decided not to report your friend,” I said, trying as best I could to give him a bit of consolation.

“I can’t even claim that much,” he replied. “After all, I had decided not to decide.”

And that is how his third prison term came about. Before dawn had even broken he found himself facing Khalid Safwan again.

“You’ve betrayed our trust in you,” said Khalid Safwan. “You failed the very first test.”

Isma‘il said nothing.

“Very well,” he went on. “We never force anyone to be friends with us.”

He was given a hundred lashes and then thrown into the cell again, that eternal darkness.

Isma‘il then proceeded to tell me about Hilmi Hamada’s final battle. They said he died in the interrogation room. He had both commitment and guts. The answers he gave them stunned them. They started hitting him and in a rage he tried to retaliate. A guard pummeled him with blows until he fainted. It then emerged that he was already dead.

“I languished in that awful dark cell,” he said. “I’ve no idea how long it went on, but I just seemed to fade into the darkness.”

One day he was summoned again. He assumed that he would be seeing Khalid Safwan, but this time there was a new face. He was informed that he would be released.

“I’d found out everything that had happened even before I left the building.” He paused for a moment. “From beginning to end,” he went on, “I heard every single detail about the flood.”

“The June War, you mean?”

“That’s right. May, June, even the fact that Khalid Safwan had been arrested.”

“What a time that must have been.”

“Just imagine, if you can, how it felt to me.”

“I think I can.”

“Our entire world had gone through the trauma of the June War; now it was emerging from the initial daze of defeat. I found the entire social arena abuzz with phantoms, tales, stories, rumors, and jokes. The general consensus was that we had been living through the biggest lie in our entire lives.”

“Do you agree with that?”

“Yes, I do, and with all the vigor used in the torture that had tried to tear me limb from limb. My beliefs in everything were completely shattered. I had the feeling that I’d lost everything.”

“Fair enough. By now though you’ve gone beyond that phase, haven’t you?”

“To a certain extent, yes. At least I can now raise some enthusiasm for the revolution’s heritage.”

“And how were things for Zaynab?”

“The same as for me. At first she had very little to say, then she clammed up for good. I can still vividly recall our first meeting after I was released. We embraced each other mechanically, and I told her bitterly that we would have to get to know each other all over again. We were both faced with an entirely new world and had to deal with it. She told me that, in such a scenario, she would be presenting herself to me as someone with no name or identity. I told her that I could now understand the full meaning of the phrase ‘in the eye of the storm,’ to which she replied that it would be much better for us if we acknowledged our own stupidity and learned how to deal with it, since it was the only thing we had left. When I told her that Hilmi Hamada had died in prison, she went very pale and spent a long time buried in her own thoughts. She told me that we were the ones who had killed him; not only him, but thousands like him. Although I didn’t really believe what I was saying, I replied that we were really the victims. After all, stupid people could be considered victims too, couldn’t they? Her reply came in an angrily sarcastic tone, to the effect that it all depended on quite how stupid people had actually been.

“And then, as you well know, everyone fell into the vortex. We were all assailed by various plans: plans for war, plans for peace. In such a stormy sea all solutions seemed like a far-off shore. But then there came that single ray of hope in the emergence of the fedayeen.”

“So you believe in them do you?”

“I’m in touch with them, yes. Actually I’m seriously thinking of joining them. Their importance doesn’t lie simply in the extraordinary things they’re doing; equally significant are the unique qualities they possess, as clearly shown by these events. They’re telling us that the Arabs are not the kind of people others think they are, nor indeed the kind of people they themselves think they are. If the Arabs really wanted it, they could perform wonders of courage. That’s what the fedayeen believe.”

“But does Zaynab agree with you?”

For a long time he said nothing. “Don’t you realize,” he eventually went on, “that there’s nothing between us any more? All we have left are memories of an old friendship.”

Needless to say, I was anticipating such a response, or something like it, since it corroborated all my own observations and deductions. Even so, I was astonished to hear him describe it that way. “Did it happen suddenly?” I asked.

“No, it didn’t,” he replied. “But it’s difficult to hide a corpse’s stench, even when you’ve buried it. There came the point, especially after we’d both graduated, when we had to think about getting married. I discussed it with her, keeping all my suppressed and bitter feelings to myself. For her part, she neither refused nor consented; better put, she wasn’t enthusiastic. I couldn’t fathom the reason why, but I had to accept the situation the way it was. After that, we only broached the topic on rare occasions and no longer felt the need to spend all our time together as we’d done in the past. We used to sit in Karnak Café acting like colleagues, not lovers. I can clearly remember that signs of this situation began to show themselves after our second term in prison, but they began to assume major proportions after the third. It was then that our personal relationship started to flag. It kept gradually falling apart until it died completely.”

“So it’s over then?”

“I don’t think so.…”

“Really?”

“We’re both sick. At least I am, and I know the reason why. She’s sick too. One day our love may be revived; otherwise it’ll die for good. At any rate, we’re still waiting, and that doesn’t bother either of us.”

So they’re both waiting. But then, who isn’t?