Khan Al-Khalili

26

On Saturday morning he woke up exhausted. He had not slept at all well, and he was now paying the price for the joyful interlude of love, however short it may have been. What was past was past. True enough, but, as long as the possibility of forgetting it all still lurked behind all his sorrowful memories, then consolation in some form or other was still something to be devoutly desired. Where was that lovely Jewish girl from al-Sakakini now with her ideal kind of love? By now time had done its work, drawing a veil of forgetfulness over the past and swallowing up all such memories. Still he clearly understood that from now on he needed to remain unaffected, or at least to make a show of doing so. He had to show Nawal that he was barely even aware of the fact that he had been jilted by a young girl.

When he went to the bathroom, he noticed that his brother’s door was ajar. He could see him getting dressed, which was amazing in itself because his brother always got up later than he himself did. He also noticed his brother looking up at the window opposite. That gave him a jolt, as though someone had stuck a needle into him. He let the cold water flow over his head for some time as a way of calming his shattered nerves. Back in his room he put on his suit, then went to the table to drink his cup of morning coffee, smoke a cigarette, and eat something light. He had decided to greet his younger brother in a perfectly normal way, not least because he was anxious to keep his real feelings hidden. Rushdi came in wearing a suit and fez, and gave him his usual smile.

“Good morning!” he said.

“Good morning to you too!”

Ahmad was surprised to see his brother wearing a fez, since he would usually appear for breakfast bareheaded. “Why the hurry to put on the fez?” he asked.

“I’m going to eat breakfast elsewhere,” his brother replied, still smiling. “I’ve some urgent business to attend to.”

“What can be that urgent?”

“I have to finish some things for work.”

Rushdi bade him farewell, as he did to his mother who was making breakfast, then, with his graceful appearance and his radiant smile, he left. Not for a single second did Ahmad believe this story about “urgent business.” He was pretty sure that Rushdi had got up so unusually early and rushed out of the house because he was going to meet Nawal somewhere on her way to school. That at least is what his gloomy heart told him was going to happen. Had the two of them really made such an arrangement? He recalled angrily how, for the duration of their relationship — such as it was — he had procrastinated and had been unable to make up his mind what to do. However, where his brash younger brother was concerned, it was just the blink of an eye between by his boldness as he was by the way he had managed to strut his youthful appearance and slender figure in front of him just a couple of minutes earlier. However, mixed in with the admiration he felt was a strong dose of self-contempt and defiance, with a bit of malice and anger thrown in as well. It was as though he were swimming in the eternity of the Creator but all the while lamenting the ephemerality of the created world itself.

After a while he put on his own fez and left the apartment. He decided to walk along al-Azhar Street as a way of calming his nerves. He kept to the sidewalk on the left-hand side and walked fast.

“Just forget about the root causes of this profound sorrow you’re feeling,” he muttered to himself sagely. “There’s no need to keep it all stored in your consciousness. Simply heave it into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. If reading has not as yet guided you to wisdom, then learn a lesson from someone like Boss Nunu who’s happy.”

At which point Ahmad visualized Boss Nunu, with all his good health and merriment. Why, he asked himself with a deep sigh, was he trying to bear the burden of so much misery, like the bull that, as legend has it, carried the globe on its horn? How could he possibly be so abjectly incapable of finding any kind of happiness in life? Why didn’t he go looking for people who are always laughing and consult them about the best ways to laugh and be happy? There was no point in going through life feeling this miserable and woebegone. Somehow he had to find a way to bring a little bit of joy into his broken heart.

He kept repeating these thoughts to himself until he reached Queen Farida Square. He got on a trolley that was packed, so he had to stand squashed between all the other standing passengers. He was naturally averse to crowds, so once again his anger mounted; it had only had the briefest of respites in any case. A strange and terrifying idea occurred to him: how would it be if the world could be devoid of human beings. He was not sure whether the idea came to him because he was on a packed trolley or whether there might be other reasons. It was not the first time, or so he imagined, that he had thought to himself how nice it might be if Cairo could be emptied as the result of a bombing raid. But then he felt ashamed to be contemplating such apocalyptic thoughts of terrible destruction, all because he had been adversely affected by a truly lovely young girl. Even so, he repeated to himself in disgust, “Isn’t betrayal as vile as destruction?”