Palace of Desire

106

"There's no one here but the staff!"

"That's because the day's hardly over. The patrons usually arrive with the night. Does the emptiness of the place upset you?"

"Not at all. It encourages me to stay, especially since it's the first time."

"Barshere have the priceless advantage of being situated on a street frequented only by people in search of forbidden pleasures. No scolding critic will trouble your peace of mind. If someone you respect like your father or guardian stumbles upon you, he's more at fault than you are and more apt to pretend he doesn't know you, or even to flee if he can."

"The name of the street itself is scandalous."

"But that makes it safer than any other. If we go to a bar on Alfi, Imad al-Din, or even Muhammad Ali streets, we could be seen by a father, brother, uncle, or some other important person. But they don't come here to Wajh al-Birka, hopefully."

"That makes sense, but I'm still uncomfortable."

"Be patient. The first step's always difficult, but alcohol's the key to joy. I promise you'll find the world a sweeter and more charming place by the time we depart."

"Tell me about the different kinds of drinks. What should I start with?"

"Cognac's strong. If it's mixed with beer, a person drinking it's as good as gone. Whiskey has an acceptable taste and produces excellent effects. Raisin liqueur…"

"That should be the most enjoyable! Haven't you heard Salih sing 'He poured me raisin liqueur'?"

"For a long time I've told you the only thing wrong with you is that you live in a fantasy world. Raisin liqueur's the worst drink of all, no matter what Salih says. It tastes like anise and upsets my digestion. Don't interrupt."

"Sorry!"

"Then there's beer, but that's a hot-weather drink, and, praise God, it's September. There's wine too, but its effect is like a slap from a Ditch."

"So … so … it's whiskey."

"Braao! For a long time I've had great hopes for you. Perhaps you'll soon agree you have an even greater aptitude for fun than for truth, goodness, beauty, nationalism, humanitarianism, and all the other fancy items over which you've pointlessly exhausted your heart". He called the waiter and ordered two whiskeys.

"The wisest thing would be for me to stop after one glass."

"That might be wise, but we didn't come here in search of wisdom. You'll learn for yourself that delirium's more pleasant than wisdom and that there's more to life than books and thought. Remember this day and don't forget who's to thank for it."

"I don't want to pass out. I'm afraid of that."

"Be your own physician."

"For me the important thing is to find the courage to walk down that alley with no hesitation and to enter one of those houses when I need to …."

"Drink till you feel unconcerned about going in one."

"Fine. I hope I won't live to regret what I've done."

"Regret? I asked you repeatedly, but you excused yourself on religious grounds. Then you proclaimed you'd stopped believing in religion. So I renewed my invitation but was amazed to find you refusing in the name of morality. I must admit you finally bowed to logic."

Yes, at last he had… after a long period of anxiety and apprehension, when he was torn between the ascetic skepticism of Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri and the more hedonistic version of Umar al-Khayyam. He was naturally inclined toward the former doctrine, although it preached a stern and sober life, because of its compatibility with the traditions in which he had been raised. But before he had known what was happening, he had found his soul longing for annihilation. A mysterious voice had whispered in his ear, "There's no religion, no Aida, and no hope. So let death come". At that juncture, al-Khayyam had appealed to him, using this friend as an intermediary, and Kamal had accepted their invitation. All the same, he had retained his lofty principles by broadening the range of meaning for "goodness" to include all the joys of life. He had told himself, "Belief in truth, beauty, and humanity is merely the highest form of goodness. For this reason, the great philosopher Ibn Sina concluded each day of deep thought with drinks and beautiful women. In any case, only a life like this offers an alternative to death."

"I agreed, but I haven't abandoned my principles."

"Well, I'm sure you haven't abandoned your fantasies. You've lived with them so long they seem truer to you than reality itself. There's nothing wrong with reading or even writing, if you can find readers. But make writing a way of obtaining fame and fortune. Don't take it too seriously. You were intensely religious. Now you're intensely agnostic. But you've always been intensely concerned, as though you were responsible for all mankind. Life's not nearly that complicated. Get a government position you like, one providing an acceptable standard of living, and enjoy the pleasures of life with a heart free from cares. Be strong and assertive when you need to, and you'll find your honor protected, your success ensured. If this life's compatible with religion, then be proud of that and enjoy it. If it's not, then religion's at fault."

"Life's too profound and vast to be reduced to one activity, not excluding happiness," Kamal told himself. "Pleasure's my recreation, but ascending rugged mountains is still my objective. Aida's gone. So I must create a new A'ida exemplifying everything she meant to me. Otherwise you should abandon life with no regrets."

"Don't you ever give any thought to values that transcend human life?"

"Ha! I've been distracted from all that by life itself, or more precisely by my life. No one in my family's an atheist, and no one's overly devout. I'm that way too."

"A friend's as necessary a part of life as time for relaxation," Kamal advised himself. "He's odd-looking too and linked to your memories of Aida. So his place in your heart's guaranteed. He knows his way around these lively alleys. A tyrant if you defy him, he's at home with pleasures and avoids serious issues. He has no time for spiritual concerns. Your intellectual and spiritual companion has vanished overseas. Fuad al-Hamzawi's bright but has no taste for philosophy. He's self-centered even in the appreciation of beauty. From literature, he desires eloquence to use in drafting legal briefs. Who can ever replace Husayn for me?"

The waiter arrived and placed on the table two tall glasses with polygonal bases. Opening a bottle of soda, he poured some into the glasses, transforming their golden liquid into platinum encrusted with pearls. Then he set out plates of salad, cheese, olives, and bologna before leaving. Kamal looked back and forth from his glass to the smiling Isma'il, who said, "Do as I do. Start with a big swig. To your health!"

Kamal was content to take a sip and savor it. Then he waited expectantly, but his mind did not take flight as he had anticipated. So he took a big drink and picked up a piece of cheese to dispel the strange taste spreading through his mouth.

"Don't rush me!"

"Haste is from the devil. The important thing's for you to be ready for what you want when you leave here."

What did he want? Was it one of those women who inspired disgust and aversion when he was sober? Would alcohol sweeten the bitter sacrifice of his dignity? He had once fought off instinct by appealing to religion and to Ai'da. Now instinct was free to express itself. But there was another incentive for this adventure. He wanted to investigate woman, the mysterious species that included Ai'da herself. Perhaps this investigation would provide some consolation for sleepless nights when tears were shed secretly. It might give some compensation for bloody torment curable only by despair or by a loss of consciousness. He could now say he had emerged from the confining cell of resignation to take a first step along the road to freedom, even if this road was paved with inebriation and bordered by passions and other reprehensible things. He drank again and waited. Then he smiled. His insides celebrated the birth of a new sensation, one exuding warmth and sensuality. Kamal responded with abandon, as though reacting to a beautiful melody.

Isma'il, who was watching him closely, smiled and said, "If only Husayn were here to witness this."

"Where is Husayn?" Kamal wondered silently. "Where?"

"I'll write him about it myself. Have you answered his last letter?"

"Yes. I sent him a note as brief as his."

Husayn wrote long letters only to Kamal. They were so extensive that every thought was recorded. This great happiness was exclusively Kamal's, but he was obliged to keep it secret, for he did not want to arouse his coach's envy.

"His letter to me was brief too, except for the kind of discussion you know we enjoy but you don't."

"Thought!" Then Isma'il laughed. "What need doeshe have for it? He'll inherit a fortune big enough to fill an ocean. So why's he infatuated with such gibberish? Is it an affectation or conceit or both?"

"It's Husayn's turn to come in for a pounding," Kamal reflected. "I wonder what you say about me behind my back."

"Contrary to what you think, there's no conflict between thought and wealth. Philosophy flourished in ancient Greece when some gentlemen were able to devote themselves to learning because they weren't preoccupied by earning a living."

"Your health, Aristotle."

He drained the rest of his glass and waited expectantly. He wondered whether he had ever experienced a state like this before. A discharge of psychic heat raced off through his veins. As it progressed, it swept away the crannies where grief's residue had collected. The sorrow sealing his soul's vessel dissolved. Out flew singing birds of gaiety. One was the echo of a moving tune, another the memory of a promising hope, and yet another the shadow of a fleeting delight. Alcohol was the elixir of happiness.

"What would you think of ordering two more drinks?"

"May your life last longer than mine…". Isma'il laughed out loud and summoned the waiter with the flick of a finger. Then he said with relief, "You're quick to recognize a good thing."

"I have my Lord to thank for that."

The waiter brought two more drinks and fresh appetizers. Customers started to flock in, some in fezzes, some in hats, and others in turbans. The waiter welcomed them by wiping off the tabletops with a towel. Since night had fallen and the lamps had been lit, the mirrors on the walls flashed with reflections of Dewar's and Johnnie Walker bottles. Outside in the street laughter reverberated like the call to prayer, but this summons was to debauchery. Smiling glances of tolerant disapproval were directed at the table occupied by the two adolescent friends. A shrimp seller from Upper Egypt entered the bar. He was followed by a woman with two gold teeth who was selling peanuts, a man offering to shine the customers' shoes, and a kabob vendor who was also a pimp, as the greetings he received from the men demonstrated.

Finally there was an Indian palm reader. Soon nothing was heard except "To your health" and scattered laughter.

In a mirror adjacent to his head, Kamal saw his own flushed face and his gleaming, smiling eyes. Behind his reflection, he saw that of an elderly man, who raised his drink and rinsed his mouth with a rabbitlike twitch before swallowing. In an audible voice, this gentleman told a companion, "Rinsing my mouth with whiskey's a habit I acquired from my grandfather, who died drunk."

Turning away from the mirror, Kamal told Isma'il, "We're a very conservative family. I'm the first to taste alcohol."

Isma'il shrugged his shoulders scornfully and said, "How can you ofler opinions about something you've never observed? Were you there to see what your father did in his youth? My father has a glass with lunch and another with dinner, but he's stopped drinking outside the house … or that's what he tells my mother."

The elixir of the god of happiness stealthily gained entry into the kingdom of the spirit. This strange transformation happened in moments. Unaided, mankind could not have achieved it in countless generations. All in all, it provided a dazzling new meaning for the word "enchantment". Amazingly Kamal did not find it a totally new sensation. His spirit had experienced this briefly once before; but when, how, and where? It was an inner music performed by the spirit. Normal music was like the apple's peel, while this music was the tasty fruit. What could be the secret of this golden liquid that accomplished such a miracle in only a few moments? Perhaps it cleansed life's stream of foam and sediment, allowing the restrained current to burst forth with the absolute freedom and unsullied intoxication life had enjoyed at the very beginning. When liberated from the body's noose, society's shackles, past memories, and fears for the future, this natural feeling of life's forward thrust becomes a clear, pure music, distilled from and exciting emotion.

"I've felt something like this pass through my spirit before," Kamal told himself. "But when, how, and where? Oh, what a memory… it was love! The day she called out, 'Kamal,' that intoxicated you before you knew what intoxication was. Admit your long history with inebriation. You've been rowdy for ages, traveling passion's drunken path, which is strewn with flowers and sv/eet herbs. That was before the transparent drops of dew were trampled into the mud. Alcohol's the spirit of love once love's inner lining of pain is stripped away. So love and grow intoxicated or get drunk and experience love."

"In spite of everything you've said and reiterated, life's beautiful."

"Ha-ha. You're the one who's been doing the saying and reiterating."

The warrior planted a sincere kiss on the cheek of his foe. Then peace settled over the earth. Perched on a leafy bough, the bulbul warbled. Lovers throughout the inhabited world were ecstatic. Stopping at Paris on the way, desires flew from Cairo to Brussels, where they were received with affection and songs. The sage dipped the point of his pen in hisheart's ink and recorded a divine revelation. Then the seasoned man retreated into old age, although a tearful memory inspired a hidden springtime in his breast. Like the black cloth covering of the Kaaba in Mecca, the strands of black hair on her forehead sheltered a shrine toward which drunkards in the taverns of love directed their prayers.

"Give me a book, a drink, and a beautiful woman. Then throw me in the sea."

"Ha-ha. The book will spoil the effect of the drink, the beautiful woman, and the sea."

"We don't agree on the meaning of pleasure. You think it's fun and games. To me it's something extremely serious. This captivating intoxication is the secret of life and its ultimate goal. Alcohol's only the precursor and the symbol for it. In a similar fashion, a bird like the kite was the forerunner of the airplane and observation of fish was a first step in the invention of the submarine. Thus wine's a necessary scout for human happiness. The question boils down to this: How can we turn life into a perpetual state of intoxication without resort to alcohol? We won't find the answer through debate, productivity, fighting, or exertion. All those are means to an end, not ends in themselves. Happiness will never be realized until we free ourselves from the exploitation of any means whatsoever. Then we can live a purely intellectual and spiritual life untainted by anything. This is the happiness for which alcohol provides us a representation. Every action could be a way of obtaining this. If it's not, it serves no end."

"May God devastate your home."

"Why?"

"I hoped I'd find you a charming, witty conversationalist when drunk. But you're like a sick man whose malady only becomes more severe with drink. I wonder what you'd talk about if you had a third drink?"

"I won't have another. I'm happy now and feel capable of soliciting any woman I like."

"Shouldn't you wait a little?"

"Not a single minute."

Kamal walked along bravely and resolutely, arm in arm with his friend. They fell in with the flow of men going their way and ran into another stream coming from the opposite direction, for the curving street was too narrow for its pedestrian traffic. The men swiveled their heads from right to left at prostitutes who stood or sat on either side. From faces veiled by brilliant makeup, eyes glanced around with a seductive look of welcome. At every instant a man would break ranks to approach one of the women. She would follow him inside, the alluring look in her eyes replaced by a serious, businesslike expression. Lamps mounted above the doors of the brothels and the coffeehouses gave off a brilliant light in which accumulated the clouds of smoke rising from incense burners and water pipes. Voices were blended and intermingled in a tumultuous swirl around which eddied laughter, shouts, the squeaking of doors and windows, piano and accordion music, rollicking handclaps, a policeman's bark, braying, grunts, coughs of hashish addicts and screams of drunkards, anonymous calls for help, raps of a stick, and singing by individuals and groups. Above all this, the sky, which seemed close to the roofs of the shabby buildings, stared down at the earth with unblinking eyes. Eyaery beautiful woman there was available and would generously reveal her beauty and secrets in exchange for only ten piasters. Who could believe this without seeing it?

Kamal commented to Isma'il, "Harun al-Rashid struts through his harem."

Laughing, Isma'il asked, "Commander of the Faithful, hasn't one of die maidens found favor with you?"

"She was standing in that empty doorway. Where do you suppose she went?"

"She's with a customer inside, Commander of the Faithful. Will Your Majesty wait while one of his subjects accomplishes his objective?"

"How about you? Haven't you found what you're looking for?"

"I'm a habitue of the street and its inhabitants, but I won't tend to my interests until I've delivered you to your girlfriend. What did you like about her? There are many prettier."

She had a brown complexion, and makeup did not conceal her color. The sound of her voice was slightly reminiscent of that immortal music of A'ida. After all, an eye might even see some resemblance between the skin coloring of a man being strangled and the pure blue surface of the sky.

"Do you know her?"

"Here she's called Rose. Her real name is Ayusha."

"Ayusha-Rose!" Kamal exclaimed to himself. "If only a person could change his essence as easily as he changes his name. There's something of this Ayusha-Rose combination about Ai'da herself, and about religion, Abd al-Hamid Bey Shaddad, and vast dreams. Alas! But wine's raising you to the throne of the gods. So watch these contradictions drown pathetically in waves of uproarious jests."

He felt an elbow nudge him in the side as Isma'il said, "Your turn."

Kamal looked toward the doorway and saw a man leave the house hurriedly. Then the woman returned to her post where he had first seen her. He advanced toward her with firm steps, and she received him with a smile. He went inside, trailed by her. She was singing, "Let down the curtain around us". Finding the narrow stairway, he started climbing it with a pounding heart. At the top was a hallway leading into a parlor. Her voice caught up with him, saying now, "Go right," then, "Go left," and finally, "The door that's partway open."

It was a small room decorated with wallpaper, containing a bed, a dressing table, a clothes rack, a wooden chair, a basin, and a pitcher. Confused, Kamal stood in the center of the room as he examined it. She proceeded to close the door and the window, through which the rattling of a tambourine, whistling, and clapping could be heard. Her face seemed so grave and even glowering and stern that he wondered ironically what she had in mind for him. She confronted him and looked him up and down. When her eyes reached his head and nose, he felt apprehensive. Wishing to quell his anxiety, he moved toward her and put out his arms.

But she brusquely gestured for him to stay back and said, "Wait". So he scood stock-still where he was.

Determined to overcome all obstacles, he said with an innocent smile, "My name's Kamal."

Staring at him in astonishment, she replied, "We're honored."

"Call to me. Say, 'Kamal.'"

All the more amazed, she answered, "Why should I call you when you're staring me in the face like a calamity?"

"I take refuge in God!" he exclaimed to himself Was she making fun of him?

Ever more resolved to rescue the situation, he said, "You told me to wait. What am I waiting for?"

"You're right to ask that," she said. Then she removed her dress with a theatrical gesture and leaped onto the bed, which creaked from her weight. She stretched out on her back and began to caress her belly with hennaed fingers. His eyes opened wide with disapproval. He had not been expecting this acrobatic performance and sensed they were on different sides of a mountain. What a distance there was between the valley of pleasure and that of work. In one moment everything he had built up in his imagination over the past few days was demolished. There was a bitter taste of resentment in his mouth, but his curiosity was still intense. So he overcame his dismay and ran his eyes down the naked body until they reached their target. For a moment it seemed he could not believe his eyes. With uneasy aversion he looked more closely, but in the end experienced something close to alarm. Was this what women really looked like or had he picked a poor example? But even if he had chosen poorly, would that affect the essential characteristics?

"We claim to love the truth," he told himself. "People have been terribly unfair about your head and nose."

His soul instructed him to flee, and he was on the verge of obeying. But he suddenly wondered why the man before him had not fled and what Isma'il would say if Kamal returned right away. No, he would not flee. He would proceed with the ordeal.

"Why are you standing there like a statue?"

"This voice shook your heart," he reminded himself. "Our ears don't mislead us, but our ignorance may. You'll have a good time laughing at yourself later, but you're a winner not a deserter. Suppose life is a tragedy; still, it's a duty to play your role in it."

"Are you going to stand like that till dawn?"

In a curiously calm voice he answered, "Let's turn out the lights."

Sitting up in bed, she said coarsely and cautiously, "On condition that I see you first in the light."

He asked disapprovingly, "Why?"

"So I can be sure you're healthy."

He stripped for this medical examination. The sight seemed ludicrous to him in the extreme. Then it was pitch-black.

When he returned to the street, he took with him a dreary heart filled with sorrow. He imagined that he and everyone else were suffering from a painful decline and that their salvation was remote. He saw Isma'il coming toward him. His friend, who looked satisfied, tired, and sarcastic, asked, "How's philosophy?"

Kamal took his arm and walked off with him, asking earnestly, "Are all women alike?"

The young man cast a questioning glance at him. After Kamal had revealed his doubts and fears in a concise fashion to Isma'il, the latter smilingly said, "In general the essential traits are the same, even if some of the accidental ones differ. You're so laughable, you deserve pity. Should I assume from your state of mind that you'll not be returning here again?"

"To the contrary, I'll come back here more often than you think. Let's have another drink". Then he continued as though to himself: "Beauty… beauty! What is beauty?"

At that moment his soul yearned for purification, isolation, and meditation. He longed to remember the tormented life he had lived in the shadow of his beloved. He seemed to believe that truth would always be cruel. Should he adopt the avoidance of truth as his creed? He walked along the road to the bar, so lost in thought that he scarcely paid any attention to Isma'il's chatter. If truth was cruel, lies were ugly.

"The problem's not that the truth is harsh but that liberation from ignorance is as painful as being born. Run after truth until you're breathless. Accept the pain involved in re-creating yourself afresh. These ideas will take a life to comprehend, a hard one interspersed with drunken moments."