Khan Al-Khalili

30

November went by, and the weather got a lot colder, the kind of cold rarely experienced in Cairo. Rushdi Akif got influenza, something he probably caught walking back to Khan al-Khalili very late at night. Ignoring all the symptoms, he just took a few aspirins whenever his headache was really bad. He kept up his normal activities, but the next day his condition worsened while he was working at the bank. First he shivered; then, teeth chattering, he started shuddering all over. He felt so weak that he had to close his eyes. Leaving the bank, he took a taxi home and stretched out on his bed feeling utterly exhausted.

The bank’s doctor gave him a week off, but his condition worsened even more. His health collapsed incredibly quickly, and he lost a lot of weight; he looked like someone who had been ill for an entire month. Ahmad now realized that his younger brother no longer had the necessary resistance to disease that had allowed him to resist these attacks before.

“You’re living in a dream world,” he told his brother, unable to resist the desire to preach. “Your body can’t cope any more with the strains you’re putting on it.”

Rushdi was used to listening to these kinds of comments from his elder brother. “It’s just a cold,” he replied with a wan smile. “I’ll get over it.”

“If you didn’t abuse your health so much,” Ahmad said angrily, “it wouldn’t have been able to make you so ill!”

But nothing could deflect Rushdi from his usual behavior. “Haven’t you noticed that I don’t spend the entire evening on my own? All my friends are as fit and healthy as mules! It’s just a cold. God willing, it’ll go away!”

Ahmad was well aware that his brother would stubbornly defend his lifestyle, so he stopped making pointed comments. He was no stranger when it came to offering Rushdi advice and encouragement, but now the exasperation and displeasure he was feeling made him go even further. It was as though he were using an excessive display of affection and concern to conceal his own feelings of sorrow and shame.

“I still love him as much as ever,” he kept telling himself, “and he deserves nothing else. Had he known how I felt about the girl, he would never have done what he did. He’s entirely innocent. He loves me, and I do him.”

But how could he ignore the anger and defiance boiling inside him? How could he forget the way he’d wished that his younger brother had never come back to Cairo? Indeed, how could he forget that for a single instant he’d actually wished that the world would be emptied of people, his brother among them of course? These thoughts and others like them made him feel miserable and plagued him with malicious ideas.

One night, when Rushdi’s fever was particularly virulent, Ahmad had a strange dream. He had only managed to fall asleep after a good deal of agonized thought. In his dream he saw himself sitting on his bed. He was looking hopefully out of the window at Nawal’s balcony, but, before he knew it, there was Rushdi sitting on a chair between him and the window, smiling a sweet smile. That annoyed him, and he turned away from the window to stare at his brother. Rushdi tried to distract his attention by pretending that he had no idea what the problem was, but he did not succeed. Then he watched as Rushdi gradually turned into a huge balloon; the shock he felt made him forget completely about how angry he was. Such was his surprise at what he was witnessing that he was unable to suppress a loud cry. He watched his brother — shaped like a huge balloon — slowly floating upward as though he were about to head out of the window and high up into the sky. However, the window blocked his ascent; he stayed there stuck between the two sides of the window and blocking out all the light. At first Ahmad was merely shocked, but then he began to be afraid as well. His brother started laughing sarcastically at him; that got on his nerves, and he became very angry. It seemed to him that his brother was playing deceitful games and scoffing at him. He remonstrated with him, but his brother paid him absolutely no heed and kept on laughing. Ahmad went over to his desk, brought back his pen, and stabbed it into his brother’s stomach until it snapped. A cloud of smoke now appeared, filling the entire room with dust. His brother’s body started deflating slowly until it was back to its normal size, at which point he collapsed at Ahmad’s feet. Twisting in sheer agony, he started chewing the chair legs, screaming and coughing until his eyes bulged and blood came streaming out of his eyeballs. Ahmad started to panic and was overwhelmed by a fearsome terror, at which point he woke up and realized that he had been dreaming. Good heavens, a pox on all dreams!

No sooner had he recovered from the dream-induced terror than he heard a groan from beyond the closed door of his room. He listened and realized that it was his brother making the noise; he was groaning and grunting. He leapt out of bed, put on his slippers and went quickly to his brother’s room. He found Rushdi in bed moaning and his mother beside him rubbing his back, while his father sat close to the bed.

“What’s the matter?” Ahmad asked.

“Don’t worry, son,” his mother said. “It’s just the pain of the fever breaking.”

Rushdi realized that Ahmad had come in.

“I’m so sorry,” he said stifling his groans for a moment. “I’ve kept you all awake.”

They all gave him encouragement and prayed for him. Ahmad sat down beside his mother, took his brother’s hand, and started stroking it tenderly, as though he felt the need to compensate for the angry feelings he had expressed during his dream. An hour of agony went by, with the family feeling as much pain as the sick young man. They all stayed by his bed until dawn.