Morning and Evening Talk

Ghayn

Ghassan Abd al-Azim Dawud

HE WAS BORN AND GREW UP IN THE VILLA on Sarayat Road, the second child of Abd al-Azim Pasha Dawud. He was perhaps the only one of Abd al-Azim Pasha’s sons not to inherit any of his mother, Farida Hanem’s, good looks. He was small and thin with a dark complexion and most of the time his face wore a frown and conveyed a look of disgust, as though someone was squeezing a lemon in his mouth. It was as if he was born to detest the world and everything in it. He would shut himself off in his room at the villa, take walks through the quiet streets to the east in the shade of their tall trees, and venture deep into the open desert. He did not make friends with any of the neighbors and he did not form a fraternal bond with either of his brothers, Lutfi and Halim, or his sisters, Fahima and Iffat. On the rare occasions he played with his brother Halim in the garden of the villa or in the street, it ended in misunderstanding and argument. Once it concluded in a fight in which Ghassan was defeated despite being the elder. His father took him to visit relatives, Amr’s family in particular, and he was once invited with his family to the Ata family mansion on Khayrat Square. He would look on but barely utter a word and did not make a single friend; they called him “Men’s Enemy” and mocked his silent, nauseated countenance, thin body, eternal reticence, and reclusive haughtiness. Gleams of hunger may have shone in his eyes as he gazed at his beautiful female cousins but they were not accompanied by a smile or gesture.

“You must stop secluding yourself,” his father would tell him.

“I know where to find peace and quiet and I’m not interested in anything else,” he would cut back.

“What do you do locked in your room?”

“Listen to records and read.”

But he did not reveal any literary or intellectual talents.

He adopted his father’s political views, probably because they fitted his sense of superiority and inborn contempt for the masses. He saw nationalist pursuits and popular leadership as a variety of banal political posturing. It did not escape his attention that he was held in lower esteem than other members of his family, and the degree of ignorance that prevented him from attaining the eminence his social status and class arrogance merited challenged his self-importance. He was hard on himself and put himself through intolerable and unsustainable exertions, staying up all night studying only to gain average marks that were just good enough to take him from one grade to the next at the tail end of the top students. He put himself through torture in order to excel but to no avail. He eyed the victorious with resentment and respect and was filled with distress at his own incompetence. How could he be incompetent when his grandfather, father, and older brother were all pashas? The future loomed before him as a stark battle bristling with provocation and aggravation. Nor could he find consolation in religion since, like his brothers and sisters, he knew it only in name, not in substance. Thus, he worshiped work and gave himself to it wholly, only to be forced to content himself at the end with the tiny fruit his arid land could produce.

When he enrolled in the faculty of law, he found his cousin Labib, Surur Effendi’s son, crowned in a halo of admiration for his achievements and tender age, which compounded Ghassan’s depression and wretchedness. He took exception to the divine decree that conferred genius on his penniless cousin, a pauper’s son, while denying it to him, a descendant of pashas and highranking lawyers and doctors. Perhaps part of his contempt for nationalism was to do with the fervor of his poor relations, Amr and Surur’s families. He was unenthusiastic about the 1919 Revolution as it unfolded and quickly sought refuge with his father and his family on the side of those opposing it. When he graduated, he watched his cousin be appointed to the public prosecutor’s office while he was left behind despite his noble descent and late nights. With the help of his father, the grand councilor, he was assigned to the legal department at the ministry of education, and started his career angry and peeved though he had no right to be. He became known in the workplace for introversion, industry, and ignorance; all his promotions were through the intercession of his father. He continued to seclude himself both at the office and at the villa. He had no friends or girlfriends and only left the library, which he built up year after year, when absolutely necessary. He could sometimes be seen alone in a public garden or at the club, or sneaking with extreme caution into a secret high-class brothel.

“It’s time you thought about marriage,” said Farida Hanem Husam.

He looked at her with surprise and annoyance and muttered, “This is all there is.”

He had several reasons to hate the thought of marriage. For a start, it would invade his sacred solitude, which he could not abandon, and he was afraid the right girl would reject his job or family due to the various shortcomings of which he was not unaware. Farida worried about him constantly, especially after Abd al-Azim Pasha’s death, when she sensed her time was approaching and that she would be leaving him in a big empty villa. The July Revolution brought afflictions he had not predicted. “Have we sunk so low as to be ruled by a band of illiterate army fellows?” he asked himself anxiously. He watched what happened to his family’s rank and the value of its lawyers and doctors in dismay, asking himself, “Should I now be sorry the Wafd rabble have gone?”

“I’ll be joining your father sometime soon. You need a wife and children,” Farida said to him.

“Bachelorhood is the final solace,” he replied rudely.

He persisted in this malevolent obstinacy and his resolve was not shaken after his mother’s death. He retired at the beginning of the 1970s and went on living alone like a ghost. It was as though the world could offer him nothing but enduring health, and his only pleasure was to be found in food and books, then television and the new maid.