The Beginning and the End

EIGHTEEN

Hussein raised his head from the desk. Scrutinizing his brother’s face, he said, “What is the matter with you?”

Hassanein answered with only a short laugh. In a meaningful tone, his brother asked, “Did you give your lesson?”

Hassanein threw himself on the bed. “Do I look changed?” he inquired.

“Certainly.”

Hassanein sighed. “I have to thank God that our mother is sitting in semi-darkness,” he said.

“What happened?”

Would he tell him what happened? But what would he get from him but reproof? “Nothing happened,” he replied.

“But you look confused! And when you are confused, your nostrils twitch like a donkey’s.”

After saying this, Hussein paused to ask himself if the nostrils of a donkey actually twitched. How did such a smile come to his mind? His brother laughed.

“Just a bit of excitement. That is all,” he said.

“So what?”

“Nothing.”

Then Hussein said in earnest, “I want to understand your intentions.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t feign ignorance. You understand everything. Why don’t you leave her alone? Aren’t you afraid that Farid Effendi will discover your forwardness, or that the girl herself will tell him about it? That will put us in a difficult situation.”

“My brother,” Hassanein said, smiling, “if they place the sun on my right hand and the moon on my left and ask me to leave her, I won’t. I’d rather perish.”

Hussein laughed in spite of himself. Reassuming his seriousness and solemnity, he inquired, “What do you want from her?”

What a question. Too simple, yet unanswerable. Had he asked himself that question, he would have found no answer. He was motivated by his impulses and instincts, without need for thinking. He said in bewilderment, “In my case there is no distinction between cause and effect.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Neither do I.”

“So leave her alone, as I told you.”

“I shall keep chasing her until…”

Hussein pressed on. “Until what?”

“Until she falls in love with me as I have with her.”

“Then?”

The young man replied, perplexed, “That’s enough.”

Hussein shook his head angrily. “You are mistaken,” he said. “She is a decent girl of a good family, and your conduct will displease her.”

“She is that and even more; but I shall never give up hope.”

He stood up and went to the desk. He put his books on the sill of the closed window immediately adjacent to his bed. He sat cross-legged before the sill, as though he were sitting at a desk.

“Why don’t you sit at the desk?” his brother asked.

“I want to sit cross-legged to warm my legs.”

He was preoccupied with an important matter. He opened a copybook, cut out a page from it, and took up a pen. Intense with love and deep distress, he thought: I shall write to her. There is no alternative. I shall not have another opportunity to speak to her again. But what should I write?

The silence in the room, punctuated only by the sound of Hussein turning pages in his copybook, helped Hassanein to concentrate. His ears began to distinguish the sound of a wireless stealthily murmuring through the closed window from one of the houses in the alley. He knit his brows, pretending to be annoyed, but he actually felt relieved to hear it since this helped him to escape his perplexity. He listened to the melody of “Happy Nights Are Here Again,” which completely swept him away. Tenderness gushed into his breast. His heart overflowed with affection, yearning, ecstasy, love, and life. Engulfed in his enthusiasm, he was filled with energy, he wanted to go free into the open air, concealed by the dark. He gradually became oblivious to the song, once it had opened up before his soul the gates of a paradise full of visions and dreams. I must write a few words, he thought, just two sentences on a small piece of paper that nobody will detect if I throw it at her feet. He started to write: “Dear Bahia, I am extremely sorry for making you angry.” Is it not better to say, “Do not be angry, my dear”? Both are the same. What, then? I should confess my love to her? I want to write a decent sentence. Oh, God! Help me.

Hussein interrupted his thoughts, inquiring, “What are you writing?”

“A composition subject.”

“What is it about?”

“The influence of music on the renaissance of countries,” he replied without hesitation.

“Dear Bahia. I am awfully sorry for making you angry. Do you have the right to get angry because I love you?” That is enough, as there is nothing better than to be brief and significant. No, that is not enough. Something is missing. Shall I quote a line of verse? No, it usually sounds ridiculous when people do that, and if she laughs once, the whole letter will misfire. Let me write another touching sentence. Oh, God! I implore you to help.

A fairly good sentence suddenly came to his mind. He started to write: “I swear by God that I have done what I have done…”

But once more he was interrupted by Hussein. “Did you finish the points you plan to tackle in the subject?”

Hassanein was disturbed and in suppressed anger he said, “Almost. Excuse me for a second.”

He returned to the letter, determined to complete it.

“I swear by God,” he wrote, “that I have done what I have done only because I love you, and shall go on loving you as long as I live. To please you gives me reason to live.”

He carefully reread the message and heaved a deep sigh of relief. He folded the paper, tucked in its edges, and put it in his pocket. When she comes near the door, or passes by me in the hall, I shall seize the opportunity to throw this paper at her feet, come what may.