Lyrics Alley

V

Ustaz Badr stood in the busy Abuzeid office facing Mahmoud Bey’s imposing desk. He took his time greeting the Bey, expressing with eloquence how grateful he was to Allah for restoring the gentleman’s health and returning him to his place of business. But something was wrong. He could tell from Mahmoud’s puzzled look and the way he frowned sideways at his brother and shook his head as if to ask, ‘Who is this?’ Before Badr could remind him that he was his children’s private tutor, the door of the office was pushed open and, as it seemed to Badr, the sun itself blasted through. The Coptic secretary, who had a minute ago carelessly waved him in, was now standing upright with the utmost energy and expectation, to usher in a tall well-dressed Englishman. To Badr’s astonishment, Mahmoud Abuzeid sprang to his feet and circled from behind his desk to greet his guest in the middle of the room.

‘Mr Harrison, what a pleasure, what a pleasure! Welcome, Sir, to my office. What an honour!’ He pumped the young man’s hand and the Englishman smiled with appreciation.

It seemed to Badr that he was pushed aside. Metaphorically yes, he was discarded but physically, too, he was pushed aside, though afterwards, when he looked back on this scene, he was not sure who had actually touched him and shoved him out of the way. Was it the secretary, Victor, who had a few minutes ago in the reception area, casually asked him his name and occupation without leaving his desk? Or was it Mahmoud Abuzeid himself, or his brother, or the other attendants in the office who had sprung to their feet, not as fast as Mahmoud Bey, but immediately after him? Badr did what was expected of him. He moved out of the way. He shrunk himself, backed out, and slipped out the door, away from the enthusiasm between men who mattered and the exchange of these clipped, sparkling English words.

There was space for him in the streets of Khartoum. He blended with the pre-sunset liveliness when shops and offices re-opened after siesta. The December air was clean and invigorating and this should have been an afternoon of hope and new beginning, of action not delay. Subhan Allah, when something is not meant to happen, it will not happen, no matter what. Who would have thought that his mission would abort? Or that he would fail before even attempting?

‘Go to him at his office,’ Hanniyah had said. ‘You have been relying on his son and his wife to ask him about the apartment but his son has gone away and Madame Nabilah must have forgotten. Go to him yourself.’

Her advice had seemed sound, remarkably solid for an uneducated village woman. But he should have followed his usual habit of doing the opposite of what she suggested. Here he was, now dislodged into the street, having not even mentioned the new building, let alone his request to rent an apartment. If he had gone in a couple of minutes earlier, he would have at least articulated his request before the Englishman blasted through the door. If. This ‘if’ would open the door to Satan. Quell your disappointment. Perhaps there would be another day, another opportunity. Badr felt tired. He had not really wanted to visit Mahmoud Bey in his office. The man could not even remember him! You have made a fool of yourself, Badr. But wallowing in self-pity and humiliation was a luxury he could not afford. What was next on his agenda of chores? Another private lesson? He must buy bread and olives. . his mind was muddled.

He hurried down the road but the grocer closed the door in his face. Another door. No cheese and olives for the children’s supper tonight. Hanniyah was newly pregnant and craving olives. Now he would have to deliver disappointment without even a pickle to quench her need. But a believer does not despair in Allah’s mercy. He needed to remind himself of that.

It was Shukry’s visit that had aggravated the situation. His cousin had been true to his threat of coming to Sudan to search for work, relying on Badr’s hospitality. But three weeks, one month, and Badr’s patience was beginning to strain. Food was not the problem, space was. One cramped room and a narrow hoash was all they had. They had all been sleeping outdoors in the hoash but now the weather was cooler. Last night Radwan had started to cough and Hanniyah had to take him inside. What to do if a cold spell descended? Put the guest in the room as well as the children and his elderly father? But then Hanniyah would catch cold outside. It was an awkward situation, one that made him feel helpless and ashamed. This morning was the worst; he had caught Shukry stealing a lustful look at Hanniyah as she squatted over the stove to heat water. Cousin or not, Badr was willing to pull his eyes out, but in a hurry to get to school on time, he had controlled his anger and avoided a scene. Besides, if he confronted him, Shukry would go back to Egypt and spread nasty rumours about Badr. It was better to be patient and pray that, insha’ Allah, the youth would find a job soon, a job that would provide him with accommodation. Badr couldn’t wait to see the back of him.

One room and a hoash. The difficulty of being with his wife, alone. Always having to be careful, to lower their voices and hide from the children. Night was the best curtain, but even though his elderly father was senile and nearly blind, Badr still felt inhibited by his sleeping presence. Poor Hanniyah! She had no privacy to change her clothes or beautify herself like other women. Always his father and the children were in the way and now, worst of all, his cousin with the roving eyes.

He walked home, but his step had lost its earlier briskness. He took his time, conscious of the swift descent of the sun, the softness and birdsong that accompanied it. He heard the maghrib azan, but it came from random prayer zawias, rather than mosques. There was only one functioning mosque in the city; the other, the Old Mosque, built during Turco-Egyptian rule, had fallen into disrepair. King Farouk was now financing its refurbishment, but extensive work was needed and the project was taking too long. There should be more mosques, Badr thought. Khartoum had seven churches for its communities of Catholics, Greeks, Copts, Armenians and the Anglican British officials and their families. It was the Anglo-Egyptian invasion that had brought all these people in. They revived Khartoum after the Mahdi had neglected it and established his capital in Umdurman. Badr brought his mind to the present and joined a group of men washing themselves in preparation to pray. The water was still warm from the heat of the afternoon. His sons should have been with him. At home, Hanniyah would remind them to pray, but they would evade her and run out to play in the alley. He smiled, thinking of them, mischievous and lively, needing his guidance.

The men lined up in the garden on King Street, near the building site of the Farouk Mosque. Badr liked praying in Sudan. There was something spacious and welcoming about these prayers in the open air and it seemed to him as if they accommodated more of Allah’s creatures. This feeling, when he first arrived in Sudan, had seemed to him fanciful, but he had grown used to it and accepted it. As a child in his village of Kafrel Dawar, he had been terrified of the ghouls and djinns that inhabited the darkness of alleyways and the most deserted of fields. This fear had turned to caution when he was older, and whenever circumstances compelled him to take these haunted routes, he would arm himself with verses of the Qur’an and hurry to his destination. In Sudan, though, he had come to experience more benign spirits.

Today, as he walked forward to pray in the front row, his wet bare feet treading grass, he sensed the congregation swelling with invisible worshippers. So palatable was their presence that it was as if the barrier separating their world from that of mankind had thinned and become transparent. Were they angels, robust and pure, better than him because they never despaired and never tired? Badr felt himself slide into another dimension. It was unexpected and unasked for. A dip into an alternative state, where he was weightless and free, and his concerns, valid and pressing only minutes ago, slackened and moved away. They did not disappear, but receded to the back of his mind as if they were taking a rest. The imam, in his recitation, stumbled over a verse, and Badr, standing right behind him prompted the correct words. This gladdened him; he had made sure that Allah’s words were recited in the correct order. He was a teacher, after all, and his role was to demonstrate and correct. He felt himself elevated, his presence appreciated by all who were present — men, angels and jinn.

Afterwards, he wanted to ask the men who had prayed with him if they, too, had noticed what he had noticed, if they, too, had experienced that thinning of the barriers. He wanted to confirm that this was not an ordinary maghrib prayer, but one in which one or more of Allah’s powerful servants had participated. He was almost certain that inhuman creatures, who could neither be seen nor touched, had prayed too. And the reasons for this attendance, and the consequences of this attendance, he believed, were detached from ordinary day-to-day life. They were reasons and consequences of another realm that would not unsettle Badr’s life or anyone else’s. All that had happened was that two worlds, the spiritual and the material, had touched each other briefly before moving on, each faithful to its own orbit. It had been a privilege to bend in worship at this particular gathering. He was grateful. And it was this that finally restrained him from seeking confirmation with the other worshippers. The villager’s fear that flaunting good fortune, even if it were immaterial, would lead to envy. He kept his experience to himself and walked away from the garden and into the twilight.

If he had not visited Mahmoud Bey, he would have missed this; if Mahmoud Bey had spoken to him and given him good tidings about the flat, he would have dashed back home to Hanniyah. Everything happens for a reason. But Badr was an educated man and knew that coincidence existed too, randomness was created. It was one of the laws of the universe. Imagination existed, too. He could have been hallucinating or, Allah forbid, succumbing to a sickness of the mind. He could have conjured it all up to comfort himself after the disappointment he had experienced. No, his imagination was not that powerful, and he had never been prone to fancies before. It was this country. Something here was different. The twilight was thick with it, pungent and sensuous. He concluded that in Sudan, the barriers between the human and spirit worlds were thin, or that there were cracks and transparencies through which that other, unknown, world could, at times, be sensed.

In this heightened sense of awareness, he understood something of the events of seventy years ago. It was easy now to imagine how a man from the Jezira Abba, a place far west of Khartoum and even more backward than Umdurman, could imagine that he was the Mahdi himself, sent by Allah to fill the earth with justice and warn of an impending Judgment Day. In Badr’s opinion, which was the position of the Azhar and the Sudanese tribes who were allied to Egypt, Muhammad Ahmad al Mahdi was a charismatic, powerful impostor, misguided at best and an apostate at worse. The British had done well to end his state. The Sudanese needed rescuing from superstition and deviation — this was why the Shariah judges were Egyptian and why it was so important for Badr to be here, to teach Arabic and Religious Education. The Sudanese were good people, they loved the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, but they needed to learn more about his sunna so that they would stay strong and not follow individuals who would lead them astray like the Mahdi had done. Yet now, walking in the twilight, Badr gained insight into that man’s psyche and saw, all too clearly, that it was not only the oppression of Turkish-Egyptian rule that prompted the Mahdist rebellion, it was something in the very air and texture of Sudan itself. A place where reality was slippery and fantasy could take over the mind, a place of wayward spirituality, a place where the impossible and the romantic pulsed within reach. A place where intangible, inhuman, forces still prevailed, not yet tamed and restrained by the rules of religion and men.

His home was not far from the Egyptian school, but while the school was within the vicinity of downtown Khartoum, the houses allocated to the staff were on the muddy outskirts. There was no sewage system, only buckets that were collected and replaced at night by carts pulled by camels. The camel-cart must have passed and overturned not far from his door. He walked in, enveloped by the stench, jarred back to the feelings of disgust and injury. He opened the door onto the smallest of hoashs where four beds were arranged in a rectangle around a small table. He immediately looked for Shukry and was relieved not to find him. Hanniyah was preparing dinner in the strip of covered terrace that served as a kitchen. She was bent over, stirring something in a pot. His father sat cross-legged on one of the beds, hunched over, picking and fretting over his toenails. The children left their game of marbles and ran to greet Badr, three boys to shake his hand as they had been taught. He picked Radwan up, felt his forehead and tousled his hair, ‘Are you still coughing, boy?’

‘No, Father.’

There was mucous, dark green and thick, descending from his nose. Badr put him down. His suit had to last him all week, he could not go to school streaked with snot.

‘Where did your Uncle Shukry go?’

‘He went out to the prayer and didn’t come back,’ said Osama the eldest.

‘He went back to Egypt,’ said Bilal.

He was five, but spoke slowly, as if he were younger. Badr laughed and drew Bilal to him. The boys were stripped to their underwear — they only wore clothes when they went out. Osama was distracted by a blue and gold marble, which he tossed from one hand to the other. Badr had never seen it before.

‘Where did you get this marble from?’

‘I bought it from the shop.’

‘Where did you get the money from?’

‘Uncle Shukry gave me a piaster this morning.’ Osama closed his fingers over the marble.

Bilal reached out and pressed his father’s pockets to see if he had brought home anything. Sometimes he got them bubble gum or peanuts. Finding his pockets empty, the boys’ interest cooled and they went back to their game by the light of the lamp. The baby was asleep on one of the beds. If he rolled over, he would fall off. Badr propped a pillow behind his back before turning to greet his father.

He bent down to kiss the old man’s hand. ‘How are you, Father? How are you today?’ Whole days and nights would pass with the old man detached and confused. In this state, he even forgot he was in Sudan and spoke about feeding the water buffalos and milking the cow, as if the fields and canals of Kafr-el-Dawar were outside his door. He would also imagine that Badr’s sons were his own sons, and often address Osama as ‘Walla ya Badr’ or ‘Badr ya zeft’. This always sent Osama into a fit of harsh giggles, for it disturbed him to hear his father’s name, the name of a venerable Ustaz of Arabic language and religion, abused in such a way. If Osama laughed in front of Badr, Badr would give his shaking shoulders a slap to restore order in the household. Behind his back, though, he was sure the boys, and even Hanniyah, had their fair share of laughter at his father’s senility.

Badr never found it funny. His father had been a tough, imposing man in his younger days, a farmer and a fighter who inspired respect and even fear in others. Badr remembered him using his cane to beat petty thieves and highwaymen. He had a special talent with the stick, and at weddings and circumcisions he would dance, twirling it in his hand, a handsome, smiling man, strong and loud in his brown jellabiya. Loyally, Badr held this image in his head. This was his real father, not this mound of sagging flesh with the befuddled mind and naivety of a child.

‘How are you, Father?’

In a flash the reply came, lucid and loud, as if it were being hurled from the healthy past. ‘Isn’t it time that this bastard cousin of yours found himself a job and got out of here?’

Surprise made Badr speechless. No one, in these past few days, had been sure if the old man was aware of the guest’s presence. Badr felt as if he was meeting his father after a long absence and there was so much he wanted to talk to him about.

‘What can I do, Father? I must honour my guest.’

‘Enough! He’s been here too long. And you have other responsibilities. You are busy working all day.’

Badr felt a surge of joy. His father sympathised, his father understood. He wanted to call out to Hanniyah so that she could share in the moment, and he glanced at her, at her moving, active body, but he could not catch her eyes. Her face was in the dark away from the lamplight.

‘We are not in our village where everything is easy,’ his father continued. ‘We are in a foreign land.’

Amazing. Badr pressed his hand.

‘Insha’ Allah he’ll find a job soon.’

‘He won’t get a job. He’s no good. And is he looking for a job? Do you know why he’s here? He’s running from the police, that’s why. He’s committed a crime and now he’s hiding where no one can find him.’

The old man’s mind was wandering, or he knew something that Badr didn’t.

‘What crime, Father? What did Shukry do?’

His father looked caught out and his eyes, previously focused on Badr, lost their intensity. He started to mumble.

‘I have to ask his father. He will know. Your uncle is disappointed in him.’

Shukry’s father had died several years ago and Badr allowed the conversation to drop. It was healing enough to know that his father appreciated his daily struggles. He left him and walked over to Hanniyah.

Would she ask him about his meeting with Mahmoud Bey? He started to gently chide her, ‘I walk into this house and you don’t come and greet me! At least have a sweet word for your man.’

She looked up at him and smiled.

‘I have a sweet dish for you.’

She had flowing light brown hair and a ruddy complexion; her eyes shone, and her lips were beautiful.

He squatted next to her. ‘What are you making?’

She paused in her stirring. ‘Rice pudding.’

She herself was sweet and creamy as pudding. Her ample body was firm, a multitude of orbs, pliant, narrow, convex and intriguing. He was coarse and dreary next to her. It was a miracle that she belonged to him. Grateful for the darkness, he squeezed her thigh and his fingers dug at the back of her knees. She laughed.

‘Don’t get too close to the pot or you’ll mess up your going-out clothes.’ She went back to stirring. ‘I ate feseakh today,’ she said. ‘Our neighbour, Salha, the wife of the post office clerk, came over for a visit and brought me some. She said to me, you have to taste our Sudanese dish and I said to her we have this same dish of salted fish but we only make it on Eid. I tasted it, and it was different — but tasty.’

He had not been able to buy pickles and olives for her today but alhamdullilah, she had received the saltiness she craved. He need not have worried. And now she said: ‘You know I’ve been nagging you to move to a better place? Well, today when Salha was here and she was kind and friendly, I thought how can I move away from her and deliver all by myself? She promised to help me. Who knows what kind of neighbours we will have if we move! So I want to stay here in this house until after I give birth.’

A burden was lifted off his shoulders. Just like that. He need not tell her about today’s visit to Mahmoud Bey’s office, he need not say a thing. She prattled on, and he loved her best like this, when she was occupied with the concerns of the household or with some feminine matter, too busy to make demands of him. She had a sharp tongue and the potential to erupt when provoked. He had seen her haranguing women in the family, and she could spank the boys as hard as any man, yet with him she was soft-spoken and yielding, in awe of his teaching credentials and status. Even when they did quarrel, she was able to restrain her tongue and went so far, but not over the limit. He appreciated this. She was on his side and his fight was her fight.

He went indoors to change. The room was littered with their belonging, as well as their guest’s suitcase, and in the dim light it looked untidy and squashed. There were no beds, now, because they were all out in the hoash. Badr put on his house clothes, which consisted of long johns and a vest. He tossed a pillow on the floor and stretched out. Stealing time, and stealing space. He could hear the children outside the door. Grandpa was trying to leave the house.

‘Quick, stop him, Osama, or he will get lost like last time!’

Then Shukry’s voice, ‘Where are you going, Uncle Hajj? Come and sit with me.’

His father’s voice, but he could not make out the words. Then Shukry, defending himself.

‘Of course I am not escaping from Egypt!’

Badr got up and stepped out into the hoash. Shukry was sitting next to his father on the bed. He was tall compared to Badr, his body one solid, uniform bulk, his face large and tanned with a sunken, bleary look. Badr remembered him as a child in the village, in a striped jellabiya with filthy feet and hands, his face surrounded by buzzing flies. He had a clear memory of him deftly, and with glee, pulling off the sack that covered the face of a water buffalo. The buffalo were blindfolded to prevent them from becoming dizzy as they turned the saqqiya round and round. But a stressed and dizzy beast was what Shukry wanted. There was a cruel streak in him.

Now Badr greeted him and asked him about his day. He sat on the bed next to the baby, who sat up and started whimpering.

‘I’ve been promised work, cousin. Insha’ Allah, in the cotton fields in a place called Gezira.’

Elation. Not only would Shukry leave the house but the whole city too!

‘Alhamdulilah, this is very good news. A thousand congratulations.’ His voice rang out, ‘Osama, come and carry your brother. Take him to his mother.’

After the crying baby was dispatched to Hanniyah, he turned to Shukry, ‘Tell me, who exactly will you be working for? And how much are they going to pay you?’

‘A family called Abuzeid. They favour Egyptians to work for them.’

It was a coincidence, but not particularly remarkable.

‘I know them personally. .’ There was pride in Badr’s voice, he wanted his father to hear, really hear. ‘I teach Mahmoud Bey’s youngest son and daughter. I am at their saraya two or three times a week.’ He was boasting now. ‘I taught Nur Abuzeid until he went to Victoria College and found himself the best student in Arabic!’

Shukry did not pick up on his enthusiasm. He slumped forward and put his elbows on his knees.

‘But I am not sure I want to work as a farmer. I am thinking I should be patient and wait for another opportunity.’

Badr grunted with sarcasm. ‘You want to be like me, an effendi in a suit? You don’t want to get your hands dirty. But I have spent years studying. When did you learn? Did you finish school? No. Do you have a skill? No. You started to train as a nurse and then gave it up. You joined the army, and when you came back from Palestine, they dismissed you. So don’t be proud. You arrived in Sudan thinking the streets are paved in gold. It’s not so easy. Look at me.’ He waved his hand to take in the hoash.

Shukry didn’t look too happy with this lecture.

‘I would rather work as a nurse,’ he said. ‘The pay would be better.’

‘But you’re not qualified as a nurse. The hospitals won’t hire you.’

‘Well, I could work privately.’

Badr started to worry that Shukry might turn the job down or had already turned it down. Would he continue to be their guest indefinitely?

His father startled all of them by saying, ‘Don’t be ungrateful.’

It was never clear whether he was following the conversation or merely repeating a random phrase.

Badr continued, ‘You cannot just sit around doing nothing.’ He stressed the word sit, making it sound unpleasant.

Shukry took the hint.

‘I am a heavy guest, cousin. I should consider this farming job so that I can relieve you.’

Badr murmured the conventional, ‘Don’t say that, man. My home is your home.’ But it was clear that he didn’t mean any of it.

He stood up to get ready for the Isha prayer. It was getting late and Radwan had curled up on the bed next to him and slept. If Hanniyah didn’t wake him up for supper, he would pass the night with an empty belly, waking up at dawn ravenous.

‘Cousin,’ Shukry said.

Badr turned around.

‘Yesterday I had a twenty piaster note in my wallet. I left it with my belongings in the room and today I can’t find it.’

The sentence felt heavy to Badr’s ears. He turned stern, his schoolteacher self. ‘You must have misplaced it or it’s in one of your pockets.’

Shukry shook his head. ‘I looked everywhere for it. Someone must have taken it.’

Badr bristled. ‘You know very well that apart from us no one goes into the room. No strangers come here.’

Shukry looked him straight in the eye. ‘I want my money back. I don’t know who took it.’

Badr lost his temper. ‘Be careful Shukry, in what you are insinuating.’

Shukry gave a little laugh. ‘Why are you angry? Little boys can be naughty.’

Badr remembered the blue and gold marble in Osama’s hand. He became even more angry, and bellowed, ‘Osama, Osama, come here!’

The boy stood in front of them. In the lamplight, his skin was sallow and his rib cage stood out.

‘Did you take money from Uncle’s Shukry’s wallet?’

‘No, Father,’ came the automatic response.

‘Are you sure, Osama? Did Bilal or Radwan?’

‘No, Father, they’re too young.’

‘Too young,’ Shukry interrupted. ‘But you’re not too young. You could have shown them what to do. You could have set them up. If you did this, Osama, you had better own up.’

‘I didn’t do anything, Uncle.’ Osama was looking scared now, caught between his father’s glare and the guest’s.

Badr grabbed his son by the shoulder. ‘I will spank you hard, Osama.’

The boy burst into tears. ‘I didn’t do it! I didn’t do anything. I swear.’

Hanniyah stepped into the lamplight, the baby propped on her hip. Strands of her hair hung loose from her kerchief and she radiated heat as if she had been sitting over the stove, not only stirring the pot, but rousing herself for battle.

‘No one calls my son a thief!’ she shouted. ‘Do you hear me? No one!’

Badr surrendered to the realisation that the evening was not going to pass well. He should say, ‘Shut up, woman!’ but instead he let her speak her mind. He unleashed her, she who was his inner self, his unrestrained half; he let her loose on this burden of a guest.