Sugar Street

145

Isma'il Latif said, "Perhaps bringing my wife to Cairo to have the baby was a mistake. The air-raid siren goes off every night. In Tanta we know almost none of the terrors of this war."

Kamal replied, "These are just symbolic raids. If they really wanted to harm us, no force would be able to stop them."

This was the second meeting for Riyad Qaldas and Isma'il Latif after their introduction the year before. Riyad laughed and told Isma'il, "You're talking to a man who doesn't know what it means to be responsible for a spouse."

Isma'il asked Riyad sarcastically, "And do you know what it's like?"

"I am a bachelor too, but at least I'm not a foe of matrimony."

They were walking along Fuad I Street early one evening. The darkness was relieved only by the meager amount of light escaping from the doors of commercial establishments. Even so, the street was crowded with Egyptians and British soldiers from different parts of the Empire. There was the damp breath of autumn in the air, but people were still wearing summer clothes.

Riyad Qaldas saw some Indian soldiers and commented, "It's sad that a man should be transported such a long distance from his homeland to kill for someone else's sake."

Isma'il Latif mused, "I wonder how these wretches can laugh."

Kamal answered resentfully, "The same way we can in our bizarre world that reeks of liquor, drugs, and despair."

Riyad Qaldas chuckled and observed, "You're going through a unique crisis. Your whole world is corning apart at the seams. It appears to consist of nothing but a vain grasping at the wind, a painful debate between life's secrets and the soul, ennui, and ill health. I pity you."

Isma'il Latif advised Kamal with great directness, "Get married. I felt the same kind of ennui before I married."

Riyad Qaldas exclaimed, "Tell him!"

As though to himself, Kamal remarked, "Marriage is the ultimate surrender in life's losing battle."

"Isma'il was mistaken in thinking our situations comparable," Kamal mused. "He's a well-behaved animal. But not so fast. … Perhaps you're just conceited, and what's there to be conceited about when you're resting on a dunghill of disappointment and failure? Isma'il knows nothing of the world of thought, only the happiness a man derives from his work, spouse, and children. But isn't happiness right to mock your disdain for it?"

Riyad commented, "If I eventually decide to write a novel, you'll be one of the main characters."

Kamal turned toward him with boyish excitement and asked, "What will you make of me?"

"I don't know, but try not to get angry. Many of the readers who find themselves in my stories become irate."

"Why?"

"Perhaps because each of us has an idea he has created of himself. When a writer strips us of that self-image, we object angrily."

Kamal inquired anxiously, "Are you holding back some secret opinions about me?"

His friend immediately reassured him: "Certainly not. But a writer may begin with someone he knows and then forget all of that person's characteristics in creating a new specimen of humanity. The only relationship between the two may be that the first inspired the second. You seem to be an Easterner teetering uncertainly between East and West. He goes round and round until he's dizzy."

"He speaks of East and West," Kamal thought. "But how could he know about A'ida? It may well be that misery has many faces."

Isma'il Latif said as bluntly as before, "All your life, you've made problems for yourself. In my opinion, books are the source of your misfortunes. Why don't you try living a normal life?"

They reached the corner of Imad al-Din Street and, on turning down it, almost ran into a large group of British nationals. Isma'il Latif said, "To hell with them! Why do they look so optimistic? Do you suppose they actually believe their own propaganda?"

"It seems to me," Kamal observed, "that the outcome of the war has already been determined. It will be over by next spring."

Riyad Qaldas said resentfully, "The Nazi movement is reactionary and inhumane. The world's suffering will increase dramatically under their iron rule."

Isma'il replied, "Be that as it may, what's important is to see the English subjugated in the same manner that they subjugated so many of the weaker areas of the world."

Kamal commented, "The Germans are no better than the English."

Riyad Qaldas said, "We have learned to live with the English, and British imperialism is well into its dotage. It is tempered, perhaps, by some humane principles. With the Germans tomorrow, we'll have to deal with a youthful, greedy, conceited, wealthy, and bellicose imperialism. What will we do then?"

Kamal laughed in a way that suggested a change of mood and suggested, "Let's have a couple of drinks and dream of a united world ruled by a single just government."

"We'll definitely need more than two drinks for that."

They found themselves in front of a new bar they had never seen before. It was probably one of those infernal establishments that spring up overnight during a war. Glancing inside, Kamal noticed the proprietor was a woman with a fair complexion and a voluptuous Eastern body. Then his feet froze to the pavement. He was unable to move, and his companions had to stop to see what he was looking at.

"Maryam!" Kamal whispered to himself. "It's Maryam, no one but Maryam. Maryam, Yasin's second wife. Maryam, the lifelong neighbor. Here, in this bar, after a long disappearance. Maryam, who was thought to have gone to join her late mother…."

"Do you want to go in here? Let's do. There are only four soldiers inside."

He hesitated, but his courage was not adequate for the occasion. When he had recovered from his astonishment, he said, "Absolutely not."

He cast a parting glance at the Maryam who reminded him now of her mother toward the end of that woman's life, and they proceeded on their way. When had he last seen her? It had not been for at least thirteen or fourteen years. She was a landmark of his past, and he would never forget her. His past, his history, and his essence they were all a single entity. She had received him in the apartment in Palace of Desire Alley one last time before Yasin divorced her. He could still remember how she had complained about his brother's deviant behavior and reversion to a life of shameless wantonness. On that occasion he had not foreseen the consequences this complaint would have, for it had landed her in thishellish tavern. She had once been the darling daughter of Mr. Muhammad Ridwan and Kamal's friend, as well as a source of inspiration for boyish dreams. His old house had then appeared to be a setting that overflowed with tranquillity and delight. Maryam and Aisha had been roses, but time is an indefatigable enemy of flowers. He could easily have bumped into her at one of these brothels, just as he had first encountered Madam Jalila. If that had happened, he would have found himself in an indescribable quandary. Maryam, who had begun her flirtations with the English, had ended up with them.

"Do you know this woman?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"She's one of those women… Perhaps she's forgotten me."

"Oh, the bars are full of them: old whores, rebellious servants, every kind of woman."

"Yes…."

"Why didn't you go in? She might have welcomed us warmly for your sake."

"She's no longer young, and we have better places."

He had grown old without noticing it. He was halfway into his fourth decade. He seemed to have squandered his share of happiness. When he compared his current misery to that of the past, he did not know which was worse. But what importance did life have, since he was fed up with living? Death truly was the most pleasurable part of life. But what was this sound?

"Air raid!"

"Where shall we go?"

"To the shelter at the Rex Cafe."

Since there was no place to sit in the shelter, they remained standing in the crowd of Egyptian gentlemen, foreigners, women, and children. People were speaking a number of different languages and dialects. Outside men from the civil defense forces shouted, "Turn off your lights!" Riyad's face looked pale. He hated the ringing sound of the anti-aircraft guns.

Kamal teased him, "You may not get a chance to play with my character in your novel."

Laughing nervously as he gestured toward the other people, Riyad answered, "There's a representative sample of humanity in this shelter."

Kamal observed sarcastically, "If only they would band together in good times the way they do when they're frightened…."

Isma'il cried out nervously, "Right now my wife must be groping her way down the stairs in the dark. I'm thinking seriously of returning to Tanta tomorrow."

"If we live that long."

"The people of London are really to be pitied."

"But they're the source of all the trouble."

Riyad Qaldas's face grew even paler, but he tried to hide his discomfort by asking Kamal, "I once heard you inquire the way to death's station, so that you could disembark from life's boring train. Will it really seem so trivial to you now if a bomb blasts us to bits?"

Kamal smiled. He was listening with increasing anxiety, for he expected, from one moment to the next, to hear the anti-aircraft guns fire with a deafening sound. He answered, "Of course not". Then he continued in a questioning tone: "Perhaps from fear of pain?"

"Is there still some obscure hope for life stirring within you?"

Why did he not kill himself? Why did his life wear a fasade of enthusiasm and faith? For a long time his soul had been torn between the two extremes of hedonism and asceticism. He would not have been able to bear a life devoted entirely to the tranquil satisfaction of his desires. Inside him there was also something that made him shy away from the notion of a passive escape from life. Whatever that thing was, perhaps it was what kept him from killing himself. At the same time, the fact that he clung to the agitated rope of life with both hands contravened his lethal skepticism. The resulting condition was a tormented anxiety.

Suddenly the anti-aircraft guns burst forth with a continuous volley that scarcely left the chest time to breathe. People did not know what they were seeing or saying. Yet, by the clock, the shooting lasted only two minutes. Afterward everyone awaited the odious return of the frightful noise.

Terror gripped their souls, and there was a heavy silence. Isma'il Latif asked, "When do you suppose the raid will be over? I can imagine all too well the state my wife is in now."

Riyad Qaldas asked, "When will the war end?"

Shortly thereafter the all-clear siren sounded, and the shelter's denizens voiced a profound sigh of relief Kamal said, "The Italians were just teasing us."

They left the shelter in the dark, like bats, as doors emitted one ghostly figure after another. Then a faint glimmer of light could be seen co tiling from windows, and the world resumed its normal commotion.

In this brief moment of darkness, life had reminded careless people of its incomparable value.