Lyrics Alley

XIX

Usually, on holidays, Mahmoud slept in late and had the tea tray brought to his bedroom, but today was a special day. He stood on the roof of the saraya and, because it had been a long time since he had come up here, the views captured his attention. The Nile was a pale blue-grey, not yet lit up by the rising sun. On the bank, a few farmers were bending over with hoes. Mahmoud walked to the northern side of the roof, which overlooked Umdurman’s Great Square. This was an excellent vantage point, an ideal place for the Harrisons to breakfast, with an unobstructed view of the celebrations. He called the servants and instructed them on how to arrange the seating. The best armchairs were carried from downstairs, the best coffee tables and the newest tablecloths. Once they completed the heavy work, he would release some of them so that they could take part in the celebrations. It had been a remarkable week since the signing of the Self Government Agreement between Britain, Egypt and Sudan. On the day itself, crowds had thronged the streets of Khartoum and people climbed the trees overlooking the Civil-Secretary’s Office in order to hear the Governor-General announce the news. On the following day, when the government’s Official celebration was held, Mahmoud was invited and had a good front seat, but there were as many as fifty thousand Sudanese standing to hear the speeches, punctuated by parades of the guards of honour and RAF planes flying overhead. Today’s affair would be more indigenous, a huge, all-party gathering in which the ordinary people of Umdurman would take part. The Harrisons, he was sure, would enjoy the spectacle. He knew them well now and understood the mixture of folklore and personal comfort, exotica and distance that would ensure their highest level of enjoyment.

It was cool this February morning. Once the sun was up, it would become warmer but now he found the breeze unpleasant, even though he was wearing a cardigan. He went downstairs and wandered around the empty house. It was silent and static without Nabilah and the children. They had been gone for months, but he still wasn’t used to their absence. Nabilah had packed up and left as soon as Ferial’s stitches were removed. He had tried to stop her, but she was adamant. So he gave up and thought, let her mother talk some sense into her, but the signs from Cairo were unfavourable. In the summer he travelled there, as was his custom, but Nabilah was not waiting for him in their flat. Instead, she was at her mother’s apartment. When he went to visit, she repeated her ridiculous conditions and did not yield an inch. Most people now thought that they had reverted to their first arrangement of her living permanently in Cairo and he visiting from time to time. Perhaps, in the end, it would come to that.

He went into his room and felt a pang of loneliness; what had Fate given him: three good-for-nothing sons: the eldest undependable, then the wreck, and now the youngest taken away. But Mahmoud was a man of action and not prone to indulging in despair. These moments of introspection were few and far between. Perhaps, he thought now, he should move back to his ‘bachelor’ quarters in the centre of the saraya, close to Nur and Waheeba. However, that room reminded him of his last serious illness, when he had spent several weeks in bed. For this reason he was reluctant to go back there. Nor did he want a closer proximity to Waheeba. The solution for his loneliness would be to bring Nassir, Fatma and their children to live in the saraya. With Soraya married off, Idris would not need Fatma. If it were up to Mahmoud, Idris would come over, too, but he knew his brother was difficult and independent in his ways. It would be enough for Mahmoud to have Nassir and Fatma. After the wedding he would broach the subject. Already a date had been set, three weeks from today, before the warm weather closed in and made the preparations that much more arduous. He would feel relieved when the girl was finally married off. Perhaps then, Nur would become even more resigned to his fate. It surprised Mahmoud that the boy had reacted so badly to the announcement of Soraya’s engagement. Surely it was inevitable? But young people always have difficulty living beyond the moment. That was the excuse he always had for Nabilah. She is young, she will grow, she will learn in time. And then she threw everything in his face without any hesitation or mercy.

‘Cut off her allowance,’ Idris had advised him. ‘She’ll come scurrying back to you.’ But Mahmoud, though acknowledging the tactical logic of this move, was unable to bring himself to execute it. He was generous by nature and loathed the prospect of Nabilah scrimping and deprived. What bewildered him was how unreasonable her demands were. She continued to ask for the same things, no matter who he sent to intercede with her. She wanted him to divorce Waheeba and leave Umdurman altogether. If she ever returned to Sudan, she said, she would only return to a villa in Khartoum, which would be hers alone. Women were indeed complicated and capricious. There was Nabilah, ready to hand over to Waheeba the whole of the saraya in exchange for a villa in Khartoum, half or even a quarter of its size. How, in God’s name, did this make sense?

She was a little girl; that was how he was tending to view her, a daughter with an unhealthy attachment to her mother, a youngster who was refusing to grow up and become a woman. His mouth twisted and he made a face. Everywhere he looked he could see evidence of the comfortable life he had lavished on her, and she had spurned it and gone. He lay down on his bed, fully clothed. Impressions he had overlooked now came to haunt him.

‘Let’s never go back to Umdurman,’ she had said gaily, in their room in the Ritz.

He was lying in bed, watching her sitting at the dressing table brushing her hair. She was in her nightdress and he could see her smooth armpit, the cleave of her breasts, while her hand moved up and down with the hairbrush. When their eyes met in the mirror, she smiled and said, ‘Ya Bey, you are a man of the world, too sophisticated for Umdurman!’

Another memory was of him walking in, with tremendous good news, to find her absorbed in some alterations she was making on a dress. There were pins in her mouth and her eyes were focused on the material in her hand. He was happy because Nur, after many dark days, was eating and talking again. He was reading and chatting to his friends, listening to the radio and smoking cigarettes. But Nabilah received the news with a dry smile and a conventional, polite remark. To Mahmoud, an obvious fact was underlined. Nur was his son, not hers, and she was keeping her distance — as if she was holding back so that she would not be contaminated by his bad luck.

In her last letter she had written, ‘If you won’t fulfil my wishes, then our marriage cannot continue.’

But he had no intention of divorcing her. Why should he give up something he possessed and cherished? She would eventually have her fill of Cairo and return to her senses. Let her indulge herself in her mother’s company; let her pique and petulance play itself out. He would be waiting. Certain women in Khartoum were already making advances at him. If he wanted a wife or a mistress, all he had to do was point his finger. But he was waiting for Nabilah. He would forgive her everything if she came back: that she had thrown the necklace in his face, that she had deprived him of his children and that she had spoken to him in the bitterest and most callous of ways. Only one thing stuck in his throat, only one thing would be hard to overlook. She had shared his life and not understood him. Not understood that he could not leave Umdurman, not understood that Waheeba, for all her faults, was Nur’s mother and always would be. Umdurman was where Mahmoud belonged. Here on this bed was where he would one day die, and down these alleys his funeral procession would proceed. And every shop owner in the souq, every tradesman pulling his cart, the beggars and the neighbours would know who Mahmoud Abuzeid was, where he came from and what he had done or not done.

Even if Nabilah came back, he brooded, her dismissiveness might continue to rankle, her desire to wrap his Sudanese identity and limit it with spatial classification. From early on she had mistaken his spirited love of modernity for a wholehearted conversion, and she had not taken account of the vicissitudes of Fate. But perhaps he expected too much from her. She was young, after all, and no one should be expected to predict the future. Indirectly, with cunning, Nur’s accident had dealt a blow to his second marriage. The ingredients of his life, which he had kept in balance, irrevocably altered. The modern-to-traditional ratio shifted; Nabilah’s dining table versus Waheeba’s hoash, Cairo’s avenues versus the alleys of Umdurman. He had prided himself in harnessing both, in gliding gracefully between both worlds, but now he was faltering; now he was unsure.

‘Move to Cairo,’ Nabilah had suggested. ‘Being away from the misery and backwardness would be better for us.’

But this misery was his misery, and this backwardness his duty. She had no idea, nor would she be interested in the fact that he sat nearly every day on one committee or the other: he was on a committee to build the first football stadium in Umdurman, on another to build a charitable hospital and on the board of trustees for the premier woman’s college, established by Sheikh Babiker Badri. He did not find these positions tedious, or a waste of his time. On the contrary, they filled him with the satisfaction that he was contributing to his country’s progress.

A more intimate gratification was the personal petitions he received, and on which he threw his energy and utilised his connections to carry out. These days it was Nur’s progress as a poet that was bringing in the requests. Mahmoud regarded Nur’s poetry as a hobby, simply because it did not generate any significant income. He had opposed the early public broadcast of Travel is the Cause because he found it embarrassing that his son, who carried his name, should make such a gratuitous exposure of his tragedy. In addition, Mahmoud shared his generation’s contempt for popular music and viewed it with suspicion, disdaining the milieu of musicians, dancers and singers whom he and the rest of his class associated with debauchery and loose morals.

‘But let the poor boy comfort and occupy himself,’ his friends had advised him.

And with time, Mahmoud’s reservations thawed. He still regarded Nur’s lyrics as silly jingles, but he smiled when his friends and acquaintances mentioned that they had heard Nur’s songs on the radio. It was clear, too, that the boy’s spirits were lifted with this new pursuit. And anything was welcome as long as it kept the wretched boy amused and out of the pit of despair. It became Mahmoud’s duty to help those who helped his son (after, of course, checking up on their morals and reputation). Hamza Al-Naggar’s eldest brother was now a new accountant in the Abuzeid office, and today Mahmoud would talk to Nigel Harrison about employment prospects for Hamza’s younger brother at Barclays Bank. Letters of recommendation written by Mahmoud had helped secure a position for the father of one of Nur’s new poet friends, and for Hamza’s accordion player.

And then, of course, there was young Zaki, Nur’s right arm, whose further education Mahmoud would foster and finance. As for Ustaz Badr, whose case Nur kept putting forward despite the episode of the robbery, Mahmoud was finally going to lease him a small flat with a nominal rent. Yes, the new building was finally up, the first tall building in downtown Khartoum. Mahmoud felt a surge of pride. There was even a photograph of it in a new monogram about Sudan published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office in London. It was good to build something that was strong and tangible, something that would last. It was an achievement to be proud of. And he would be generous, yes, he would. Let Ustaz Badr have one of the flats. Not every transaction must bring in a profit.

‘Thank you Father,’ Nur would say, and that was what Mahmoud wanted most of all, that smile and the shining eyes.

He checked his watch and found that he still had time to walk over to Waheeba’s hoash and have his coffee. He found Fatma sitting with her aunt while Nur was indoors being given his morning bath.

‘He was up late last night,’ Waheeba explained. ‘He had about thirty guests! Till past midnight they stayed with him. I sent out the dinner and fell asleep.’

‘Yesterday’s was such a jubilant gathering,’ said Fatma. ‘Patriotic poems and songs so loud that total strangers walked in from the alley!’

‘I don’t understand why they’re celebrating now, when the English are staying on another three years.’ Waheeba shifted on her bed.

Mahmoud smiled. ‘It’s a transition period. Change can’t happen overnight.’

‘We’ve won self-determination,’ explained Fatma to her mother-in-law, ‘much earlier than anyone ever expected.’

Batool placed the tray with the jabana, cup and a glass of water on a small table in front of him.

‘You are always here,’ Mahmoud joked with her. ‘Don’t you ever go to your husband?’

‘I’m staying here, Uncle, until after the wedding.’ She smiled as she poured out the coffee.

‘Of course — we can’t do without her these days,’ murmured Waheeba.

‘We are very busy,’ Fatma reiterated.

She looked happier than she had for a long time. Mahmoud knew that Nassir was not the best of husbands and that Fatma’s patience was often strained. However, Soraya’s upcoming wedding seemed to have plunged her into an array of pleasurable preparations and responsibilities and all her maternal feelings for her younger sister were now concentrated on the details and success of the next few weeks.

‘Our bride,’ she now said, ‘wants to do something new, something extra and special.’

Mahmoud smiled. Soraya was now reverentially referred to as ‘the bride’ or ‘our bride’. She was secluded, so that the sun would not darken her skin, and she was fed on copious amounts of milk and honey to fatten her up.

Fatma continued, ‘She wants, on one of the wedding evenings, to wear a white dress like brides do in Egypt.’

Waheeba grunted. ‘Oh, these new-fangled ideas!’

‘Just for one day. .’ Fatma squeezed her mother-in-law’s arm. It was obvious she was in favour of this idea herself. ‘Soraya would wear a European bridal dress and her bridegroom would wear a dinner suit — a white one, with a bow tie. And she would have bridesmaids, little girls Zeinab’s age, all wearing the same dress and walking in front of her in a procession, holding candles. And, Uncle, this is what I wanted to ask you for: could we, please, have a belly dancer from Cairo?’

Mahmoud nearly choked on his coffee. The aspirations these young people had!

‘You want me to import a belly dancer for one wedding? Certainly not! It would be too extravagant.’

‘Please, Uncle?’

He shook his head. ‘There are Egyptian dancing troops here in Sudan. We can hire them. I approve of the idea of the European clothes — and I was thinking of a European evening when I would invite my Egyptian and English acquaintances. I would have a brass band in the garden and a special menu.’

While they talked over the details, he finished his coffee. Fatma was bright with ideas, Waheeba vocal with her experience and Batool an avid listener. But when Nur was carried out into the hoash, they immediately changed the subject.

*

From the roof, Mahmoud and the Harrisons watched the Great Square fill up. The banners of the political parties were raised high, and tents of different colours gave the square a festive look. But before the speeches, the focus was on the bulls that were being slaughtered for the poor. The slaughter itself proceeded smoothly, but there was a scuffle when it came to distributing the meat. A fight broke out, the women even more strident and determined than the men, and a jumble of skinny arms and colourful to bes in disarray.

‘Look at that boy!’ cried Sue. ‘He got off with the head!’

Sure enough, they could see him on his bicycle, with the head of a bull balanced on his own head. Blood dripped onto his smiling face and sweaty neck while he peddled off in haste. A lorry now drove onto the square, carrying loaves of bread. The driver climbed up on top and began tossing off the loaves in every direction and this caused another scramble, but the bread was more plentiful than the meat and the crowd was less frantic.

Every political party was granted its own entrance and they marched in, carrying their flags and chanting their particular slogans and anthems. The speeches followed, one after the other, while Mahmoud and his guests had brunch. There was on offer fried eggs and ful, a variety of cheeses, sausages and fried liver, and a selection of pastries and fresh grapefruit juice. ‘Long Live the Free Sudan!’ was followed by ululations and the beat of drums. It was only when the scheduled march through the town started that the roof became quiet and the birds in the garden could be heard again.

‘The situation is still confusing,’ said Nigel Harrison, sipping his tea. ‘The police, the administration and the SDF are up for Sudanisation, but the British officials in the technical departments are to be held. Yet how will they be able to do their work when all the standards decline.’ He presented this as a statement rather than a question.

‘They will decline,’ Mahmoud leaned forward, ‘simply because all this is happening too soon and too fast. Do you think the technicians will voluntarily leave?’

‘The advice they are hearing is “wait and see”. It all depends on whether their existing contracts are legally abrogated or not by “change of master”. And again, this is up in the air while the politicians negotiate and negotiate.’ There was impatience in his voice, enough for Mahmoud to try and sooth him.

‘But you are a private employee Mr Harrison. You need not have these concerns.’

Nigel Harrison crossed his legs.

‘It’s only a matter of time before the demand for Sudanisation spreads to the private sector.’

Sue spoke for the first time.

‘If we leave soon, we can start off somewhere else and save time. We don’t have to go home — it would be wonderful to move to Nigeria or Kenya.’ She sounded anxious for a change, her eyes on her husband’s face.

It must be unsettling, Mahmoud thought, to feel that those below you are surging upwards, crowding you out, waiting and wanting you to leave so that they could pounce and take your place. ‘You will be sorely missed if you do go,’ he said.

‘And we will miss Khartoum too and all our good friends,’ said Sue.

‘I don’t think a move is imminent, dear,’ said her husband. ‘Not for six months at least.’

‘Excellent!’ Mahmoud beamed. ‘My niece’s wedding is in a few weeks’ time and you must promise to attend.’

He walked the Harrisons down the stairs and through his empty home, across the terrace, down the garden path, and to the front gate. He basked in their expressions of thanks, their appreciation for the wonderful morning they’d had. He remained standing until they got into their Ford Anglia and drove off. Their admiration for the saraya was gratifying, and he now looked forward to preparing the garden as a venue for Soraya’s wedding; especially that European evening when the bride and groom would dress in white. Mahmoud visualised the coloured lights against the bougainvillea and oleander plants, the Sudan Defence Force band in their white uniform playing European music. He would order a banquet with cold meats, salads and fruit. The road would be crowded with the cars of his guests; the red Rolls Royce of Sudan’s last Governor-General parked next to the green Cadillac of the prominent Sudanese leader, Sayyid Siddiq. It was high time to start initiating a good relationship with those most likely to form the first national government.