Khan Al-Khalili

32

Ahmad got dressed and made his way to the Zahra Café; he had managed to rid himself of the regret he normally felt when he abandoned his lonely ways. He started participating in the conversation more than he had before — if only with Ahmad Rashid — and allowed himself to laugh more than he ever had. It suddenly occurred to him that he could join their other evening session, the one he had heard about before but never actually attended. The idea attracted him, and he really wanted to do it. However, he was his usual diffident self and had no idea how to broach the subject. It was still on his mind when everyone stood up to leave.

Boss Nunu usually went home first, then caught up with his friends at their other meeting place, so Ahmad left the café in his company. While they were walking, he managed to pluck up the necessary courage.

“Boss,” he asked shyly, “would you allow me to join you with the rest of the group?”

“Of course! May God continue to guide you well!”

“But I have to tell you,” Ahmad went on, “that on this particular subject I am dumber than the proverbial donkey.”

“Allow me to be your guide,” Boss Nunu responded boastfully. “In any case, it’s a lot easier than all those books of yours and produces much better results.”

They continued to walk along narrow winding alleyways enveloped in total darkness. Entering a building, they climbed the stairs to the third floor. Boss Nunu pressed the button for the bell.

“If you’re on your own and want to get in,” he said, “you need to press the bell five times in a row. Then remember the password that I’m going to say now.”

They heard Abbas Shifa’s voice asking who it was.

“God damn the world!”

The door opened, and Ahmad went in feeling not a little bashful, followed by Boss Nunu. They crossed the hallway to a large room where a large group of people were seated. A soft blue light, like the delicate hues of dawn, enveloped the room, coming from a lamp covered with a blue cloth. All eyes were focused on the new arrivals, especially the newcomer. Ahmad felt so embarrassed that he almost tripped. They were all seated on cushions strewn in the form of a circle. In the middle was all the necessary equipment: the brazier, water pipe, and tobacco.

The two of them greeted everyone else and then sat down next to each other. Ahmad was now able to take a good look around him and noticed that all his friends from the Zahra Café—except for Ahmad Rashid — were there. His attention was drawn to the center of the assembly where a striking woman was seated on a huge cushion of her own. She was striking indeed. Even when seated she was as tall as someone else standing up. She was broad-shouldered and long-necked, with a full, round face and clear features. Her complexion was somewhere between Egyptian and Ethiopian. Her hair was curly and chestnut-colored, tied up in a short, thick ponytail. The most amazing thing about her appearance was her huge eyes: prominent without making her look ugly, they had a gleam to them and could stare through anyone. Her size and strength were enough to inspire awe, while the animal magneticism in her gestures and the allure of her sensuality were clearly sufficient to arouse desires. She was wearing a striped shawl over her shoulders.

She started staring hard at Ahmad with her flashing eyes, and he realized at once that she must be Aliyat al-Faiza whom they all called “husband lover.” Her husband, Abbas Shifa, was sitting on her right and Boss Zifta, the café owner, was on her left. Boss Nunu introduced Ahmad to her, and she held out her henna-decorated hand and greeted him kindly. Boss Zifta gave him a look of reproof.

“So,” he scoffed, “at long last you’ve come to realize that God exists! How many years have you spent buried away in that room of yours? Why have you tortured yourself that way? You’re not married, but you’re not an old man yet either. How can anyone do that to himself?”

Boss Nunu was anxious to give his friend a break and make excuses for Ahmad’s behavior. “My friends,” he said, “my instincts never fail me, and my ever-watchful eye is always on the lookout. From the very first moment I saw him, I realized that our good friend, Ahmad Akif Effendi, was a child of chance, but that, for a while at least, circumstances had decreed that he would go off track, and I would have to be the one to guide him back to the true way, God willing.”

Kamal Khalil was also worried that these jokes would annoy Ahmad, since a combination of new factors had contrived to make Ahmad someone important to him. “Dear friends,” he said, “our learned friend, Ahmad Akif, likes to read a lot, but there’s nothing wrong with him trying to get a bit of pleasure out of life. After all, it can’t be all hardship and nothing else!”

Boss Zifta waved his hand in exasperation. “Why on earth do we voluntarily subject ourselves to hardship, whether it’s ongoing or not?” he asked. “Ahmad’s a ranking civil servant. If you’ll excuse me for saying so, why on earth does he have to keep studying as though he were still a schoolboy? So, Ahmad, promise us that, after tonight, you will never miss this gathering of ours!”

Ahmad gave a tentative smile, and his diffidence only increased when Aliyat al-Faiza responded to Boss Zifta.

“Take it easy, Boss!” she said, looking straight at Ahmad. “How can he possibly make such a pledge when he may not find our little gathering to his liking?”

Ahmad blushed. “Forgive me, Hanem,” he said as quickly as he could.

The others all usually referred to her as “Sitt” so, when Ahmad used “Hanem” with her, it sounded strange.

“You’re always welcome here!” she replied.

Abbas Shifa was busy preparing the wads of tobacco, arranging the coals, putting them on the water pipe, and then offering it to his wife. Ahmad kept eying the water pipe nervously. He leaned over to Boss Nunu.

“Shouldn’t I be a bit worried about taking the water pipe?” he whispered in his ear.

“If someone like you is scared of it,” the Boss chided him in a low voice, “what are our children supposed to do?”

Abbas Shifa was sitting in the middle of the circle and started handing the water pipe round from one person to the next. It came ever closer and reached Boss Nunu. Putting the pipe to his mouth, he inhaled deeply, causing the bubbles to make a loud noise and exhaling dark smoke from his nostrils. Finally, Ahmad saw the pipe reach his own lips, with everyone’s eyes on him. He wrapped his lips around it and took a short puff as though he were really scared.

“Inhale harder … harder,” Boss Nunu shouted at him. “Swallow the smoke.”

So he swallowed the smoke, then blew it out quickly, feeling as if a hand was stopping his breathing. He started coughing so hard that it wracked his entire body and made his eyes tear. Boss Nunu was watching him anxiously.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I should only take small puffs to start with,” he said with a sigh. “You’re a really tough teacher, Boss!”

“Just as you wish,” Boss Nunu replied with a laugh. “It’s best to take things slowly.”

Abbas Shifa sent the water pipe round five times in a row; the smoke rose everywhere and formed into clouds. Ahmad smelled a strange scent, one that took him back to olden times, a scent very similar to this one — in fact, it was the very same scent. Where and when had he smelled it, he wondered. He did not have to wrack his brains for long. It had been the first night in Khan al-Khalili. This strange smell had wafted up to his room and worried him so much that he could not get back to sleep. It had been nothing other than the smell of this incredible, frightening narcotic. Maybe it had come to ease his transition to the new room and to the remarkable quarter to which he had moved, one where it was quite likely that every breath inhaled was like the one he had just taken. He was utterly delighted to have remembered that earlier moment, not least because by now the drug had started to work its magic on his nerves and calm them down. He even managed a smile.

Abbas Shifa went back to his seat to rest a little, while Boss Zifta started loading up the tobacco in preparation for the second round.

All of a sudden Aliyat al-Faiza spoke up. “Have you all congratulated Sayyid Arif Effendi?” she asked.

Everyone looked at her.

“I hope it’s good news,” Boss Nunu said.

“A really clever doctor’s told him about some new pills,” she said with a smile. “He said they’re bound to work.”

Everyone there — the friends from the café and the others — had a good laugh.

Boss Nunu turned to Sayyid Arif. “With all my heart,” he said, “I hope that one day I’ll see you acting just like us.”

“That shows just how bad your intentions are!” Sayyid Arif replied somewhat exasperated.

They all asked him about the new pills, but he refused to say anything about them in case of complications.

“Actions always reveal intentions,” Boss Nunu said.

Whatever the occasion, he was always inserting aphorisms, proverbs, and Prophetic sayings into his conversations, whether relevant or not, without being the slightest bit aware of the total inappropriateness of what he was saying to the matter at hand. Even so, only a few of those present ever noticed this trait of his.

Sulayman Bey Ata could not stand the noise, and his ugly face assumed an expression of sheer misery.

“Quiet, quiet!” he yelled angrily as was his wont when he disliked something. “This special gathering of ours has its own protocols, you know!”

“So what are they?”

“This amount of noise,” the monkey replied angrily, “is the kind of thing you encounter in a bar where people are blowing their minds on drink. A hashish circle like ours is the exact opposite; it should be peaceful and quiet. Hashish is a sultan that demands humility and silence from his subjects. It is that silence and peace that allows the drug to best achieve its effects. Your entire disposition is purified and your imagination becomes crowded with a host of dreams. Humanity can thus overcome all its daily problems and difficulties. As you can ponder them without hindrance, they are all solved one after the other.”

“But we all come here to get away from problems and difficulties, not to ponder them!”

“Bad idea! Running away from problems doesn’t make them go away. All that happens is that you forget how bad they are. When they return, they’re worse than before. The wisdom provided by hashish gives us a confidence that can confront all those difficulties with a will strong enough to treat them as mere trivialities. That way, they are swilled down memory’s drain and erased from existence.”

“This isn’t a hashish session we’re involved in,” commented Sayyid Arif with a laugh, “it’s a confession!”

Boss Zifta agreed. “True enough,” he said, “this is priestly hashish talk! Whoever said, ‘Goha, count your sheep!’ spoke the truth.”

Boss Nunu was not happy with the way the conversation was going. He looked over at Sulayman Bey. “How can anyone with no worries stay silent?” he asked.

“How can anyone have no worries, unless they’re an animal?”

“How can you be sure they don’t?!”

At this point, Sayyid Arif chimed in with, “Maybe he’s a heron!”

Abbas Shifa, his hair all bedraggled and looking like the devil himself, stood up and started the water pipe on its second round. The sound of the bubbles drowned out the conversation. This time Ahmad took deeper puffs, relying on a devil-may-care attitude he had never felt before and a deep-seated desire to forget his troubles. Even though he hated Sulayman Bey Ata, in this particular case he admired his philosophy. He dearly wanted to be rid of his own profound sorrow; that was what had brought him to this stifling assembly — the hope of finding release. Now the drugs were taking control; his eyelids drooped, his eyes turned bloodshot, and his neck slumped a little. Just then he had a terrible thought and leaned over to Boss Nunu.

“Shouldn’t we be worried about the police?” he asked. “What happens if one of them comes to the door and yells, ‘God damn the world’?”

Boss Nunu laughed. “We reply, ‘And God damn your own father!’ ”

Once the second round was over, Abbas Shifa sat down beside his stunning wife. Tongues started wagging again.

Boss Zifta the café owner kept at it. “I’ve good news for you all,” he said. “Once Hitler has managed to conquer Egypt, God willing, he’s going to annul the ban on hashish. Instead he’ll ban drinking English whisky!”

“Hitler’s a wise man,” said Boss Nunu. “I’ve not the slightest doubt that hashish is the reason why his strategy is so clever to begin with!”

“How can we put him in touch with Abbas Shifa?” asked Kamal Khalil Effendi.

“He has no need of Abbas von Shifa,” Boss Nunu replied in a serious tone. “Bunker 13 is chock full of the purest hashish.”

The Boss shook his head sadly. “Haven’t you all heard,” he asked, “that the Japanese are distributing drugs to the peoples they conquer?”

Boss Zifta reacted in the same tone. “If only the English were hashish addicts!”

“Fifty years of British occupation wasted!”

At this point Sayyid Arif stood up suddenly, signs of extreme worry written all over his face. He put on his fez as though making ready to leave. Everyone was astonished.

“Where are you off to, brother?” Aliyat inquired.

He hurried around the edge of the group and sped toward the door. “The pills have worked,” he said as he made his exit.

In a flash he was gone. Everyone burst out laughing.

“Can that be true?” Kamal Khalil asked through a hacking cough.

“False propaganda,” Sulayman Ata interjected sarcastically, “just like that of his German friends.”

“We’ll know the answer in nine months!” said Boss Nunu.

“All in good time!” Aliyat chimed in.

They kept up their banter until Abbas Shifa stood up yet again, holding the water pipe. This was the cue for everyone to stop talking. This time round, Ahmad was in a drugged stupor. He said not a word, feeling unwilling or even unable to talk. He had the feeling that he had lost all control of his limbs. He tried to move his arms to convince himself that he was still in control, but a strange, yet powerful feeling persuaded him not to bother and suggested strongly that there really was nothing in the world that warranted any effort or movement. Slumber, submission, and contentment, they were the best things life had to offer. Through the clouds of smoke he could make out the other people; they all looked like specters from some strange world or inhabitants of another planet. He had no idea where this strange sensation was coming from, but he decided to laugh — a long, elongated chortle whose opening measures sounded like a sigh, while the coda resembled the bubbling of a water pipe. The others could not help laughing too. Even though he was completely stoned, he was aware that they were laughing and sat up in his seat so he could claim to be still awake — to the extent possible.

Now something remarkable happened. Aliyat stood up, and her incredible, sleek body extended itself upward and outward, offering an eyeful to all those present. Her dress was extremely tight fitting and clearly revealed her gorgeous figure. Her magnificent procession now moved off, with her holding on to the edge of her shawl and thus revealing her arm shrouded in gold bracelets. As she passed by in front of Ahmad, he was shaken awake and saw a robe that parted at the hips to envelop a pair of buttocks the like of which he had never seen before: plump, fleshy, and quivering, placed atop thighs that were as finely crafted as the very best woodwork. He could hardly believe his eyes. Boss Nunu noticed how amazed he was.

“Watch out!” he said. “She’s letting you in on a secret that has been the downfall of the quarter’s husbands. That’s not just a pair of buttocks. That’s a treasure!”

“It’s almost inconceivable!” Ahmad commented almost inaudibly.

“And, as if that were not enough, they manage to combine two entirely separate qualities: from one point of view, they’re as firm as an inflated ball; from another, they’re so soft that your fingers can glide over them!”

“That’s one of life’s great mysteries!”

“We ask God to keep us safe!”

“Amen,” replied Ahmad without even thinking.

Abbas Shifa was looking at them. “So what are you two talking about?” he asked Boss Nunu, faking annoyance.

“We’ve plans for the most expensive furniture in the house!” replied the Boss with his usual raucous laugh.

They stopped talking so they could listen to Boss Zifta who was chatting on the other side of the circle and apparently offering advice to some of the newcomers.

“There are three things you should do your best to acquire in quantity: gold, copper, and Persian rugs. They retain their value, so you can sell them when things get rough and make full use of them when it comes to preparing for your daughters’ weddings.…”

A man in a turban named Boss Shimbaki reacted negatively. “Oh, a curse on all daughters, wives, and mothers!”

Abbas Shifa pointed at the speaker. “Are you all aware,” he asked, “that Boss Shimbaki’s wife left him in a huff?”

Everyone voiced their regrets. At this point Aliyat came back, just in time to hear the last comment.

“Why did that happen, Boss?” she asked. “I do hope it wasn’t my fault.…”

“Oh no,” Shimbaki replied. “It’s my son Sinqur’s marriage that’s the trouble. I wanted a quiet, modest affair to be in line with the times, but she’s insisting on singing girls and the whole routine. ‘How come,’ she asked me insolently, ‘your money’s forbidden for me and my children here but is permitted to you over there?’ ”

“And ‘over there’ means my place!” Aliyat commented with a guffaw.

Shimbaki went on in an angry, yet regretful tone. “Here’s what she said to me as she left, clutching her bag of clothes: ‘I’m going to remember you as a man who’s never given me a single day’s happiness!’ Listen, for heaven’s sake. Is that anything for a companion of thirty years to utter?”

“Curse her!” said Aliyat in a bitter, censorious tone. “Too bad you wasted the best days of your life on her. Listen to me, Boss. Show her the way things really are by marrying someone else!”

The man gave a nod, as something resembling a smile crossed his lips. “Is there enough of life left?” he muttered.

“Heaven forbid, Boss,” she replied immediately. “You’re still in the prime of life!”

Now Boss Nunu was warming to the idea. “People who claim that nothing trains a woman better than having her husband marry another wife have it right! Our Lord instructed us to marry four of them.”

“God forbid! God never ordained any such thing. What He did do was to make it legal as long as all four are treated equally.”

“Any other constraints to share with us?”

“Bless the Prophet! I’m an old man. Nothing’s to be gained from this kind of talk.”

“You should get married, using those new pills Sayyid Arif is taking as a blessing!”

At this point Boss Zifta resumed the conversation he had been having before Boss Shimbaki interrupted with his family problems.

“You should try buying Persian rugs in particular. Gold can go down in price, and so can copper. But the value of Persian rugs always increases over time. An old woman isn’t worth a solitary penny, but a rug.…”

Aliyat slapped him on the chest.

“Oh God,” he yelled, “the only molar I have left just fell out.…”

“Listen, you crazy pot-head,” she told him, “we’re talking about marriage. What are you going on about rugs for?”

“Don’t get mad. Patience is the gateway to solutions. As long as you’re determined to get Boss Shimbaki married off again, I’m going to tell him a joke that’ll make him want to do it.”

With that he turned toward Shimbaki.

“A shaykh came home after a long evening out,” he went on, “and saw his wife asleep on the bed. She’d been bragging to him about how beautiful she still was, to such an extent that he felt harassed. Passing by her on his way to bed, he muttered, ‘The siren’s asleep!’ when suddenly, she grabbed the edge of her nightgown, saying. ‘And God curse whoever woke her up!’ ”

Ahmad felt as though he were suffocating. He could not stand the atmosphere in the room any longer. His patience had worn thin, so he staggered to his feet. Everyone stared at him.

“Where are you going?” Boss Nunu asked.

“I’ve had enough,” he replied almost inaudibly.

“This is just the end of the beginning! We still have time ahead of us for punning, singing, and real intoxication.”

But Ahmad insisted on taking his leave, and he did so with slow and heavy steps.

“Have the pills worked for you as well?” Boss Zifta joked as he left.

He left the apartment, clasped the banister, and went slowly, very slowly, down the stairs until he saw the steps leading to the street. Once on the street, he staggered his way home to his room. It was the riskiest journey he had ever taken in his entire life, the time being almost two o’clock in the morning. He undressed wearily, turned out the light, and fell onto his bed. He did not fall asleep as quickly as he expected. He realized that, while his eyes might be closed, he was still wide awake in a peculiar and alarming way and his heart was thumping fast, almost as though to lift the covers off the bed and throw them down. Images kept crowding his imagination, then dissolving and vanishing. Only one image lingered, that incredible woman. Did he want to have sex with her just as much as did all the others? But slowly now … what would he do with her? If she embraced him, he would feel small and puny, like a flea in an elephant’s armpit. No, she was no real woman, but rather a symbol of the world of steaming passions, on which shore his feet had sunk and on whose horizon his eyes had gazed. His heartbeat doubled and his throat felt dry, and he imagined himself falling from a great height into a bottomless abyss. Terrified, he sat up in bed. Fear and despair gripped him and for what remained of the night until daybreak he endured incredible pain, both physical and psychological.