Khan Al-Khalili

51

At the end of August Ahmad Akif found an empty apartment in the al-Zaytun neighborhood. It was in a place owned by a civil servant in the Accounting Department at the Ministry of Works. He had heard that Ahmad was looking for somewhere to move, and by chance the civil servant who had been living there had to break his lease because he was being transferred abroad. The owner invited Ahmad to visit him, discussed the possibility, and rapidly reached an agreement, namely that the family would move in at the beginning of September as soon as the other tenant moved out.

Everyone in the family was delighted that they would soon be leaving Khan al-Khalili with all its gruesome memories. Even now they were having to leave with a broken wing. The father was suffering from high blood pressure that interfered with his retirement, while the mother continued to grieve, which made her lose a lot of weight. Her innate jollity was quashed under the burden of it all, and she began to look very old. Ahmad was just as sad, and yet he could see stars twinkling on the horizon. People started talking about fair treatment for workers who had been overlooked for a long time, and it seemed as though a promotion to the seventh grade was within the realms of possibility. He had always despised ranks and civil servants who held them, but deep inside he was happy about the anticipated promotion. He would be in charge of four employees in addition to the incoming mail and genuinely aspired to turn the position into a new initiative in government administration, one that would serve as a model for his boss, “the all-knowing.” Who knows what the future might hold? He could still look forward to some twenty years in government service, so maybe he would be promoted even further. At long last, the government would be getting things right!

Nor was that all. He had taken his mother with him to look at the new apartment. The owner of the house had invited them both to his own apartment. While Ahmad had drunk coffee with him in the lounge, his mother had been invited into the women’s quarters. On their way back to Khan al-Khalili his mother had been full of praise for the owner’s wife and his sister as well. Concerning the latter, his mother had told him that she was a cultured and attractive widow of fifty-three. That set his imagination working: the sister a fifty-three-year-old widow, cultured and attractive, and himself a bachelor of forty and colleague of her brother, both of them living in the same house. As far as he was concerned, the age difference was not significant; she was not that old, nor was he any spring chicken either. So life was not without its hopeful prospects, and only God could know what lay in the future. Even so, such thoughts could not coincide with wearing a black tie. Good God, how could these dreams of his be floating around so openly? At that moment it occurred to him that from now on Nawal might well be casting her glance somewhere else, at Ahmad Rashid, for example. That’s the way life proceeded on its course, oblivious to everything; it was almost as if it had not been just the day before that it had bid farewell to someone who had played such a prominent role. Life was dumb and cruel, like the dirt of the earth, and yet it could nurture hope just as easily as the earth did fresh flowers. Ahmad was still sad, but hope was there as well.

Thus the family started preparing to move. Carpets were folded up, cupboards and beds were taken apart, and utensils, books, and pieces of furniture were put in boxes. The move was to be the next day.

That afternoon the women of the apartment building all arrived to say farewell to the family. Ahmad was still in his room. Sitt Tawhida and Nawal were among the women who came to visit for the last time. They all sat in the central lounge since that was the only place in the apartment where anyone could sit. After the other women had left, Sitt Tawhida and Nawal stayed behind. By that time Ahmad was due to go out to the Zahra Café to say farewell to his friends there. There was no way he could avoid walking past the two visitors. When he came out of his room, Sitt Tawhida stood up.

“How are you, Ahmad Effendi?” she asked, offering him her hand.

“I’m well, thank God,” Ahmad replied softly in his usual flustered manner. “Thank you.”

Nawal had stood up as well. He turned to her and offered his hand. Their hands touched for the first time ever, and his body shuddered. He did not say a word or even look up at her.

“I’m still apologizing to your mother for the way we behaved,” Sitt Tawhida said. “I hope you can find it in you to forgive us as well, Ahmad Effendi. As God knows full well, your late lamented brother was very dear to us.…”

Ahmad was not a little bewildered. “We can all forgive you,” he replied. “Necessity has its own imperatives, dear lady.”

Sitt Tawhida deftly steered her way around the subject. She thanked Ahmad for his politeness and understanding. He then excused himself, said farewell to Sitt Tawhida, and held out his hand to Nawal. This time, as their hands were touching, he snatched a quick look into her eyes, but then headed straight for the door. It was the first time their eyes had met up close; he had barely looked at her since those early days when, bolstered by his initial hopes, he had flirted with her between his window and the balcony. In her eyes he could still detect the same purity, kindness, and curiosity he had seen before. As he quickened his pace, his heart kept pounding and his eyes twitched nervously. Maybe the problem was that they were saying good-bye. Farewells tend to arouse feelings even in people who normally do not get emotionally involved, so it was this farewell psychology that he invoked as an excuse for the fact that he was now feeling so emotional and upset. It was all intensified by the memory of Rushdi; his beloved image appeared before Ahmad’s eyes with a chiding smile on his face. Ahmad found himself addressing his brother’s image: “I’m sorry, Rushdi,” he said, “I was just saying good-bye. You know about that better than anyone. It was painful too, and you know about that too. You won’t need to chide me any more, I promise.”

Ahmad reached the Zahra Café; God alone knew when he would have the chance to go out to a café again. His friends greeted him warmly, as was only appropriate for a farewell occasion. They all stopped talking in order to concentrate on saying good-bye to their dear neighbor.

“Do you think you’ll forget us?” Boss Nunu asked.

“Heaven forbid, Boss!” Ahmad replied, entirely unclear as to whether or not he was telling the truth.

“Al-Zaytun’s a long way away,” Boss Zifta said. “You can only get there by train.”

“Train rides shouldn’t keep friends apart!” Ahmad replied with a smile.

Abbas Shifa raised his eyebrows as though he were recalling something significant. “I know al-Zaytun just as well as I know Khan al-Khalili,” he said. “A while back I used to go there at least once a week. I’d come back with the very best hashish!”

Ahmad grinned. “So can I expect to be seeing a lot of you?” he asked.

“Oh, those days are long gone!” Abbas Shifa said sadly. “They threw the seller into prison, and that’s where he died.”

Everyone said how sorry they were that he was leaving. They complimented him on his fine family and gave their condolences for the loss of his brother. Even Sulayman Ata had nice things to say. At this final moment Ahmad’s heart was bursting with affection for all of them, the ones he liked such as Boss Nunu and the others he did not like such as Ahmad Rashid. He was surprised to realize that, when it came time to say farewell, his heart was always sorry to leave anything, however tedious and burdensome it might have been.

At this point everyone started talking as usual about the war situation. They mentioned that the German advance had been halted at al-Alamein. It was Ahmad Rashid’s opinion that the Germans had now lost the battle for Egypt. Sayyid Arif had another take on it. According to him, Hitler had ordered Rommel to halt so as to avoid attacking Egypt — the throbbing heart of Islam — and all the suffering that an invasion would cause. If it weren’t for the Fuhrer’s merciful judgment, the Germans would already have been in Cairo a month ago. Ahmad stayed with them, listening to their conversation and banter, but when it was nine-thirty, he stood up to say farewell for the last time. Shaking their hands one by one, he received their best wishes with thanks. With that he headed back to the apartment.

Once in his room, he opened the window and looked out on the quarter. It was the middle of the month of Shaaban, and the moon was gleaming brightly in the clear August sky. All around it stars were twinkling coyly as though to express their regret that the moon had again appeared in its youthful guise, something that they had always known would not last. The moonlight bathed the entire quarter in a shimmering silver glow that banished the lonely darkness of night and imbued street corners and alleyways with a particular magic.

It was the night of mid-Shaaban, and the prayers for that holy night could be heard through the neighboring windows. You could hear a boy shouting in his high-pitched voice: “O God, the one and only Bestower, Possessor of Majesty and Honor,” and the family repeated it after him. And he was the only silent one among them. What kind of prayer could he offer to his Lord, he wondered? He thought for a while, then lifted his hands toward the shining moon.

“O God,” he said humbly, “Creator of the universe, Ordainer of everything, envelop him in the broad expanse of Your mercy and let him dwell in Your spacious heavens. Grant to his grieving parents solace and perseverance, and to my own heart bring peace and tranquility. In the days ahead grant that I may find consolation for what is past” (and at this point Ahmad put his hand over his heart). “This heart of mine has endured a great deal of pain and swallowed failure and frustration.”

Was he remembering the day he had arrived in this old quarter, with the same quest for change in mind? Well, change had certainly taken place, but all it had brought were tears and despair. Ramadan would soon be here again. What memories! Could he still remember the last Ramadan, with him poised by the window waiting for the sunset prayer, then looking upward and seeing her there?

Now here was history itself, passing in front of his eyes just as it had been recorded by the onward march of days and nights, written with the ink of hope, love, pain, and sorrow. So this was the final night. Tomorrow he would be living in a new home, in a different quarter, turning his back on the past … a past with all its hopes and dashed aspirations.

Farewell then, Khan al-Khalili!