Khan Al-Khalili

6

Next evening Ahmad left the apartment building, heading for the Zahra Café. He found it at the start of Muhammad Ali Street, just before it turned into Ibrahim Pasha Street. It was as large as any store, with two entrances, one of which was on Muhammad Ali Street itself, while the other was on a long passageway leading to the New Road. There were dozens of cafés like this one in the quarter; he estimated that there must be a café per every ten inhabitants. He approached the café with a certain hesitation because he was not a habitué of such places and was not used to their atmosphere. But no sooner had he entered the place than he spotted Boss Nunu sitting in the middle of a group of government officials including some locals as well. Nunu noticed him and stood up with a smile.

“Welcome, Ahmad Effendi!” he shouted in his usual loud voice.

Ahmad moved over in his direction, with a bashful smile on his face. He held out his hand in greeting, and Nunu grabbed it with his own rough palm.

“This is our new neighbor, Ahmad Effendi Akif,” he said turning to the assembled group. “He’s a civil servant in the Ministry of Works.”

Everyone stood up in unison out of kindness and respect, something that made Ahmad even more nervous and shy. He went round shaking hands with everyone and being introduced by Boss Nunu: “Sulayman Bey Ata, primary school inspector; Sayyid Effendi Arif from the Survey Department; Kamal Khalil Effendi, also from the Survey Department; Ahmad Rashid, a lawyer; and Abbas Shifa, an eminence from the provinces.”

They cleared a space for him and made him feel very welcome. He started to feel more at home and forgot about his shyness and discomfort at coming to the café. Before long he was feeling happily superior to them all, although he managed to keep it well hidden by smiling sweetly and exchanging amiable looks.

There was not the slightest doubt in his mind that he was superior to these people in every conceivable way. After all, he was from al-Sakakini, and families who lived there were the children of quarters like al-Darrasa and al-Gamaliya. He was an intellectual, with a fully fashioned mind, while these folk had none of that. Indeed, he pictured his presence in their midst as a nice gesture of sympathy, an engaging display of humility on his part. What continued to baffle him was the question as to how he would make these people aware of his importance and introduce them to his sterling intellectual and cultural qualities. How on earth was he going to convince them that he was a person of real significance and earn their respect? Needless to say, as long as this new friendship developed and they continued to get together, such respect would inevitably follow; so there was no harm in delaying things for a couple of sessions.

He looked round at the people sitting there and studied them carefully. There was Sulayman Ata the inspector, fifty years old or more — ugly to the point of contempt, small, and with a stoop. His face reminded you of a monkey: sloping forehead, bulging cheeks, round, tiny eyes, wide jaw, and stub nose. Even so, he had none of the deftness and energy of monkeys. He wore a fixed glowering frown as though to reflect his own outrageous ugliness. The best thing about him was his amber rosary; his fingers were incessantly playing with the beads. The amazing thing is that, even though he looked so ugly, it did not provoke any hateful feelings, but rather sheer mockery and sarcasm.

The person called Sayyid Arif was about the same age, small and thin, with a soft complexion and an innocent look about him. By contrast, Kamal Khalil’s expression exuded an aura of respectability; he was obviously meticulous about his appearance, of average height and somewhat portly. He was the one who gave their new guest the warmest welcome. Ahmad then concentrated his attention on Ahmad Rashid. He discovered him to be a young man in the prime of his youth, with a round face and large head, although the heavily tinted dark glasses he wore almost completely obscured his facial features. Ahmad was particularly interested in this young man because he was a lawyer and thus an educated person. The legal profession had been one of his aspirations when he still had hopes in life but had yet to inure himself to failure. He still hated lawyers just as much as literature scholars and learned people; his feelings were like those of a man toward one who has married a girl he himself was in love with. For that reason he immediately regarded him as an enemy and made ready to pounce on him at the earliest available opportunity. The other member of the group was Boss Abbas Shifa, a youngish man with a dark complexion whose coarse, ugly features suggested a humble obsequiousness. He was wearing a loose-fitting gallabiya and slippers and had left his head bare so that his peppery-colored hair stuck up all over the place. All of which made him look even more ugly; sufficiently vile, in fact, that all he needed was a prisoner’s uniform. Even though the group was fairly small, it took up a good third of the café. The café owner sat by the cash register nearby as though he too was a member of the assembled company and one of the participants in their conversation.

Boss Nunu and Kamal Khalil extended the warmest of welcomes to Ahmad Akif, but Sulayman Ata maintained his frowning posture as though he had completely forgotten about the new arrival. Ahmad Rashid started listening to a broadcast on the radio.

“We’ve heard that you’ve just come here from al-Sakakini,” said Kamal Khalil to open the conversation.

“Yes, sir,” replied Ahmad lowering his head, “that’s correct.”

“Is it true,” the man asked anxiously, “that very few people made it out of their houses?”

“The truth of the matter is,” replied Ahmad with a laugh, “that only one house was destroyed.”

“So much for rumors! What was it then that made such a terrible noise, the one that sounded as though it was inside our very homes?”

“That was in the sky!”

At this point Ahmad Rashid turned away from the radio; he obviously had not been paying much attention to it. “Is it true that a bomb landed but didn’t explode?” he asked.

Ahmad was delighted that the young man was now talking to him. He replied, “People say that two bombs did fall, but they were cordoned off and experts defused them.”

“What we need,” Ahmad Rashid went on, “is that Canadian specialist whom we’ve read about in reports on war news. Apparently he’s saved whole quarters in London.”

Sayyid Arif was an admirer of the Germans. “Are there any whole quarters of London left?” he asked with a scoff.

Ahmad Rashid smiled. “As you can tell, our friend supports the Germans!” he said.

“For medical reasons!” laughed Boss Nunu, completing Ahmad Rashid’s comment.

That made Sayyid Arif blush, but Boss Nunu refused to spare him. “Our friend, Sayyid Arif believes,” he went on with one of his enormous laughs, “that German medicine can restore one’s youth.”

Sayyid Arif frowned angrily. Obviously it was utterly inappropriate to make such a statement in the company of someone who had only just made their acquaintance. Ahmad Akif was well aware of what Boss Nunu’s motivations were in saying it, and yet he made sure that his facial expression showed no sign of having heard anything. Boss Nunu was anxious to repair any damage his remark may have caused, so he started telling their new guest about the new quarter he was living in, praising its virtues to the skies.

“This quarter is the real old Cairo,” said Ahmad Rashid, commenting on Boss Nunu’s description. “Crumbling remnants of former glories, a place that stirs the imagination, arouses a real sense of nostalgia, and provokes feelings of regret. If you look at it from an intellectual perspective, all you see is filth, a filth that we’re required to preserve by sacrificing human beings. It would be much better to knock the whole thing down so we could give people the opportunity to enjoy happy and healthy lives!”

Ahmad immediately realized that his new conversation partner had a seriousness about him that suggested that he might well be a smooth talker, and indeed someone of genuine intelligence; especially as his law degree gave him the kind of prestige that ignorant and naive people respected enormously. He was afraid that this man might outshine him, so he immediately assumed the offensive, ready to counterattack at any cost: “But old quarters do not necessarily imply filth; there are the memories of the past that are far more worthy than present-day realities, memories that can serve as the impetus for any number of qualities. The Cairo you’re anxious to wipe off the map is the city of al-Mu’izz, reflecting the glories of eras past. Compared with that city, where does today’s Cairo, all modern and indentured to others, belong?”

This ringing statement by Ahmad had a positive effect on the group, as was obvious from their expressions. That made him happy. Feeling pleased with himself, he was eager to use the moment to display his knowledge. “Forgive me, Ahmad Sir, but I’ve read many, many volumes about our history. I can tell you that what I’ve just said is established fact.”

“It’s clear,” Sayyid Arif commented, “that our friend Ahmad Effendi is fond of history.”

Ahmad was thrilled because this comment allowed him to show off his learning even more. “Actually,” he went on, “I am no fonder of history than any other branch of learning. Truth to tell, I’ve spent over twenty years in a quest for knowledge of all kinds.”

Everyone in the group looked in his direction with considerable interest. That made him feel even happier; it was the kind of admiration that made his heart leap for joy. He would have liked to read Ahmad Rashid’s expression behind his dark glasses.

“But why are you studying all these things, ‘Professor’?” Kamal Khalil asked Ahmad Akif. “Are you studying for a degree or something?”

Ahmad was thrilled to be called professor, but he didn’t like the rest of the question. “What degree is there,” he asked arrogantly, “that could possibly justify the long and comprehensive study that I have made of things? Degrees are just a kind of game young people compete over. My studies have only one quest, genuine learning. Maybe one day I’ll have done enough to think about publishing something.”

“But what do you mean when you say that degrees are merely a game?” Ahmad Rashid asked him with the kind of smile on his face that made the other Ahmad furious.

“A degree is no indication of learning,” Ahmad replied, doing his best to control his anger.

“Does it indicate ignorance then?”

His temper kept rising, so much so that he had to consciously suppress it. “What I mean,” he went on, “is that a degree merely demonstrates that a young person has spent a few years memorizing certain topics. Genuine learning is nothing like that!”

Ahmad Rashid gave a cryptic smile but then let the subject drop. In fact, he felt some sympathy for the sentiments that Ahmad Akif was expressing about university degrees. Beyond that, he was well aware of the passion with which the opinion was being expressed. All of which led him to surmise that there had to be other reasons for adopting the posture beyond the ones that had already been discussed. Ahmad Akif in turn was delighted by Ahmad Rashid’s withdrawal from the argument because he assumed it meant he had won in front of the group of plebeians he was sitting with in the café.

For a moment no one said anything. Boss Nunu started pouring more tea into the cups. Ahmad Akif looked around. For the first time he noticed a young boy sitting on a chair alongside Kamal Khalil Effendi; he could not decide whether the boy had been there when he arrived or whether he had come in while Ahmad was preoccupied with his argument about degrees. However, it took no more than a moment to confirm that the boy was Kamal’s son; even a passing glance made the family resemblance clear. Ahmad looked around some more, but soon focused on the boy again. There was something about his face, but he could not put his finger on it. He obviously could not stare at him for a long time, so he started sneaking perplexed glances in the boy’s direction from behind his teacup, from which he kept taking sips. What was it that so attracted his attention to that face and made him almost forget about the fierce argument he had just been having? He had a vague feeling that he had seen him before, particularly those wide eyes with their sweet, simple expression. Such feelings will nag their owner till some recollection will shed light on memories shrouded by the past. As a result he fell back on asking himself where and when he had seen that face before. Was it in al-Sakakini? On the trolley? At the ministry? In response to his stubborn inquiries, his memory treated him with a cruel mockery: an image would float up into his consciousness with glimpses back into times and places past, and he would tell himself he almost had it, but then everything would vanish into a profound darkness. The image would disappear, leaving behind yet more obscurity, ambiguity, and despair.

Eventually he reached the point of not wanting to recall anything that was not relevant to his chief concern, but the truth of the matter was that at this point his memory was not the only thing impinging upon his consciousness and confusing him. In fact, deep down he could feel something pulling his heart back in the direction of those honey-colored eyes and their sweet, simple expression. Every time he sneaked a look in that direction, a wave of longing and attraction swept over him. He was totally confused and felt abashed by the whole thing. The watchful eyes of the assembled company were warning enough. Clutching the handle of his teacup he stared at the floor, his heart pounding. Yet his imagination totally refused to forget about the boy, something that showed in both his facial expression and the look in his eyes, while his heart overflowed with affection and longing. His eyes were on the point of giving him away, but a combination of fear and anger managed to keep them under control. What on earth had come over him, he wondered.

It was Boss Nunu who dragged him out of these personal reveries. “Do you play any recreational games?” he asked.

Ahmad looked at him, his expression that of someone who has just been jolted awake. “I don’t know anything about games,” he said.

Kamal Khalil laughed. “Our professor, Ahmad Rashid, is exactly the same,” he said. “You can chat to each other while we play a game for an hour or so.…”

“Come on, Muhammad,” he said turning to his son, “It’s time to go home.”

Ahmad’s heart gave a flutter. He looked at the boy once again and followed their progress as they made their way toward the door and then vanished from sight. Once again he asked himself in frustration how it was he could not remember where he had seen that boy before. By now the company had split up into separate groupings: Boss Nunu and Kamal Khalil were playing dominoes; Sulayman Ata and Sayyid Arif were playing backgammon; and Abbas Shifa had moved his chair so he could sit with the group around the café owner. Ahmad Rashid moved his chair to make room for the game players and came over to sit beside Ahmad Akif. The latter realized that he had come over, and that made the feelings he had just been having disappear, to be replaced once again by argument and conflict. Out went all notions of love, and in came anger and hatred.

“How are you, sir?” Ahmad Rashid asked, turning in his direction. “By the way, I don’t want you to think that I’ve known Khan al-Khalili for a long time. I came here just two months before you.”

Ahmad was delighted that the other man wanted to befriend him. “Was it the air raids that made you move as well?” he asked.

“Pretty much. The fact is that our old house in Helwan was vacated for military reasons. I thought that a move into Cairo would mean I was much closer to work. I found it difficult to locate a vacant apartment until a friend happened to point me to this district.”

Ahmad Akif lowered his voice. “What an unsettling neighborhood it is!”

“You’re right. Even so, it has its consolations. It’s weird, but it’s also full of art and amazing examples of humanity. Just take a look at the café owner to whom Abbas Shifa is talking. Notice the drowsy look in his eyes. He takes a dose of opium every four hours. He goes about his work without ever really waking up; or, to put it another way, without ever wanting to wake up.”

“And does this improve life?”

“I don’t know. The only thing that’s certain is that he and others like him totally abhor the state of wakefulness that we enjoy and try to maintain by drinking tea and coffee. Were he to be compelled for some reason or other to remain in a wakeful state, you would find him yawning all the time, bleary-eyed, bad-tempered, and completely incapable of staying on an even keel until he found a way of canceling the world and floating in the universe of delusion. So is it some kind of nervous pleasure habitually obtained, or a purely illusory sense of happiness to which the human soul resorts as a way of escaping the hardships of reality? Only the café owner can provide the answers to that.”

Ahmad told himself that he too was scared of the hardships of reality, just like one of these drug addicts. He too ran away from it regularly in order to seek refuge in his isolation and his books. Was he any happier than they were? He felt an urge to explore the subject further.

“How can I concentrate on my studies,” he asked with a changed tone of voice, “with all this hubbub going on?”

“Why not? The noise is very loud, it’s true, but habit is that much stronger. You’ll get used to the noise, and eventually you’ll be disturbed if it’s not there. At first, I found it annoying and despaired of ever getting anything done, but now I can write my briefs and review legal materials in a completely calm and relaxed fashion amid this incessant din. Don’t you think that habit is a weapon with which we can face anything except fate itself?”

Ahmad nodded his head in agreement. Not wanting the other to outdo him, even with such a trite phrase, he said: “Here’s what the poet Ibn al-Mu’tazz has to say on the subject: ‘Adversity brings a sting of distress; should a man suffer it for a while, it lessens.’ ”

Ahmad Rashid gave another of his cryptic smiles. He never memorized poetry and hated hearing it cited. “So, Professor Akif,” he asked agreeably, “are you one of those people who are always citing poetry?”

“What’s your opinion about that?” Ahmad asked dubiously.

“Nothing at all. It’s just that I notice that people never cite modern poetry, only the old stuff. What that means is that, if they cite poetry a lot, it is always ancient poetry. I hate looking back into the past.”

“I don’t think I understand you.”

“What I’m trying to say is that I hate to hear poetry cited because I hate any resort to the past. I want to live in the present and for the future. When it comes to the provision of guidance and direction, I’m quite content to rely on the sages of this era.”

Unlike his colleague, Ahmad Akif was someone who believed that genuine greatness resided in the past. Or rather, the only examples of greatness that he was familiar with were in the past; he had no knowledge of greatness in the contemporary era. As a result, the other Ahmad’s statement made him angry again.

“Why would anyone wish to deny the greatness of times past,” he asked, “with their prophets and messengers?”

“Our era has messengers of its own!”

Ahmad was about to express his sense of outrage, but he didn’t want to express it in words unless it was his companion’s ignorance that was involved rather than his learning. “So,” he asked calmly, “who are the messengers of this era?”

“Let’s take those two geniuses: Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx.”

He felt as though a hand had grasped his neck and was throttling him. Indeed, he felt as if his honor had just suffered a deep wound, because he had never heard either of those two names before. He was now insanely angry with his companion, but was obviously unwilling to display his own ignorance. He shook his head as though he was well acquainted with the views of the two men.

“Do you really see them as being the equals of geniuses of the past?”

The young lawyer was thrilled to come across another educated person and was eager to argue points of principle. He pulled his chair up so close that they were almost touching.

“Freud’s philosophy concerning the individual,” he said in a low voice so no one else could hear, “has shown us the way out of the ills of our sexual existence that play such an essential role in our lives. Marx for his part has provided us with ways to liberate ourselves from the miseries of society. Isn’t that so?”

Ahmad Akif’s heart was pounding and his fury was barely suppressed. This time he did not know how to object, let alone to come out on top. All of which led him to dodge the whole issue.

“Take it easy, Professor,” he said gently, although his chest was bursting, “take it easy! In the old days we were all as enthusiastic as you are, but the passage of time and further thought on the matter both demand that we maintain a certain balance.”

“But I do think a great deal about the things I read!” protested Ahmad Rashid.

“I’m sure you do,” he replied, “but you’re still young. As you get older, you’ll acquire genuine wisdom. Haven’t you heard people say, ‘Someone one day older than you is a whole year wiser’?”

“Some ancient proverb, no doubt.”

“A sage one too!”

“There’s no wisdom in the past.”

“Oh yes, there is!”

“If there were any genuine wisdom in the past, it wouldn’t have become just our past.”

“What about our religion then?”

The young man raised his eyebrows in amazement. If Ahmad Akif had been able to look behind the dark glasses, he would have spotted a look of sheer contempt.

“Utter naiveté!” the young man muttered.

Ahmad Akif had read the religious philosophy of the Brethren of Purity. There were two reasons why he was anxious to summarize it for his obnoxious companion: firstly to defend himself against the charge of merely following the popular view of religion; and secondly as a means of baffling his companion just as much as the latter had done to him.

“Religion constitutes a sensory phenomenon for people in general and a rational essence for intellectuals. It involves truths that intellectuals should have no problems believing in, such as God, divine law, and the active intellect.”

His companion gave a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders. “Come now,” he said, “our contemporary scholars know about the elements contained in the atom and the millions of stars that lie beyond our own galaxy. Where is God in all that? A load of religious myths! What’s the point of thinking about issues that cannot be solved, when we face any number of problems that can and must be solved?”

The young man gave Ahmad a furtive smile. “Needless to say,” he went on, altering his tone of voice, “we mustn’t include anyone else in this particular conversation.”

“Of course, of course! But never forget that disbelief is always the point at which knowledge begins.”

Their conversation was interrupted by an angry outburst from Sulayman Ata. Apparently Sayyid Arif, his opponent at backgammon, had finally provoked him with all his blather.

“What a wise and just God who’s deprived you of your powers!”

Ahmad Akif recalled what had been said about Sayyid Arif just an hour earlier and smiled at Ahmad Rashid, who smiled back meaningfully.

“Our friend keeps taking those pills,” he said, “with sincere hope and belief in their effectiveness!”

At this point both of them noticed a group of men in gallabiyas gathered around the café entrance, each of them clutching a huge wad of bank notes. The entire scene was astonishing for the contradictions it implied.

“Maybe they’re war profiteers,” Ahmad Akif suggested.

“You’re right,” his companion responded. “They’re leaving one class in order to join another.”

“The war’s managed to lift a number of people out of the lower classes.”

“Lower classes, you say! True enough, but there’s no real gap between lower and upper classes any more. Today’s aristocrats are yesterday’s poor. Surely you realize that in the past marauding mobs could grab our land by right of conquest. The same is true now with the upper classes. They all wallow in their prestige, power, and privileges without limit.”

For the first time he was inclined to concur with his companion without any argument.

“I agree with that,” he said.

“It’s Marx’s view,” the young man went on, “that the working classes will eventually win, and the world will turn into a single class where everyone can enjoy the necessities of life and human fulfillment. That’s what socialism is.”

Neither of them said any more, as though they were both exhausted. Ahmad Akif started pondering: What ideas! Freud and Marx, atoms and millions of planets, socialism! His facial expression showed signs of a burning hatred and disgust. It had never occurred to him that in Khan al-Khalili he would come across someone who could challenge his own cultural identity and force him to acknowledge that there was always going to be more to be learned. Would he never be able to find any peace in this world?

With that the young man took off his glasses to wipe his eyes with his handkerchief, only to reveal that his left eye was actually made of glass. For just a moment he was astonished, but then a wave of malicious satisfaction poured over him as he realized that the other man’s eye condition gave him at least one way of exerting his sense of superiority.

He stayed there for a short while longer, but then left to go home, his mind churning and his dignity outraged. Fortunately for him, at that very moment he remembered the young boy, and that completely changed his mood. A cool moist breeze wafted across his burning senses and blew away the anger and hatred. Those honey-colored eyes appeared once again, with the coy expression. He gave a deep sigh. “I’m bound to see him again,” he told his heart.