The Beginning and the End

FORTY

His strength, vitality, and fighting experience had enabled Hassan to regain his composure. It was an hour or more past midnight when the last intoxicated customer staggered out of Ali Sabri’s café. The darb was almost completely dark once the lights outside were turned off. Houses were closing their doors so that the parties inside could begin, usually to last until dawn. Two policemen were passing by, and the street resounded with their heavy footsteps. Hassan was sitting with Ali Sabri at the back of the café discussing the night’s take when a boy who worked as a waiter in the house of Zeinab the Twanger walked up and greeted them.

“Someone wants you,” he whispered in Hassan’s ear.

When Ali Sabri overheard the boy’s whisper, an interested look appeared on his face. “A woman?” he murmured.

“I think so,” Hassan answered indifferently.

“Don’t you prefer transitory love, as I do?”

Hassan gave a meaningful smile. “But this kind of love doesn’t amount to much,” he replied.

“Wait and see.”

Hassan bade his companion goodbye and followed the boy to the house opposite the café. The boy knocked on the door; it opened warily to a narrow slit. The boy slipped inside; Hassan followed. The door closed. Just at the front entrance, a blind man sat in a chair playing a flute, while Mistress Zeinab the Twanger, wearing a black cloak and a veil with a big gold clasp in the center to hide her decaying nose, sat on a raised divan. Casting a scrutinizing look around him, Hassan saw that all the girls were engaged. Leaning toward the drawn curtain at the threshold of the stairs, the boy pulled it aside and entered. Hassan followed. They climbed the stairs together in silence.

“Who is it?” Hassan asked, breaking the silence.

“Lady Sana’a.”

Hassan remembered her. She was a woman of dark complexion, curly hair, fleshy body, coarse lips, and large black eyes. She spent most of the day sitting at the entrance to the house, her crossed legs exposing her thigh all the way up to her white silk panties. They climbed to the second floor and passed through a long corridor leading to a small hall with three doors. The boy went to the middle door and knocked three times. A brassy, resonant voice shouted, “Come in!”

The boy pushed the door open slightly and stepped aside. Hassan entered the room. Before closing the door behind him, he felt the boy’s hand stroking his back. As he turned, the boy laughed.

“Recite the Exordium of the Koran for us,” he said as he departed.

Hassan closed the door. The room was pitch-dark. It occurred to him to grope for the switch to turn on the light, but he soon changed his mind. He stood leaning against the door, waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the surrounding darkness. For a while, the silence seemed complete. Then he became aware of someone breathing, and he listened, smiling. He expected something to be said or done, but nothing happened. He walked slowly to his left, toward the sound of breathing, until his knee bumped against something solid. Groping with his hands, he recognized it as the edge of a wooden bed. He stood looking down with glistening eyes until he could distinguish in the darkness an obscure, featureless mass stretched out on the bed. He lowered his thumb little by little until it pressed into the soft flesh of a body that quivered at the touch. A suppressed laugh emerged from the dark.

Afterward, turning on the light, he started to put on his clothes. He took ten piasters from his pocket and put the money on the bed while the woman watched him with laughing eyes. She jumped to the floor and walked naked to the table. She opened a drawer and returned with a fifty-piaster note, which she silently placed on top of his ten piasters.

“Are you bringing me the change?” he asked with a laugh.

“This is your fee,” she said calmly.

Pretending indifference, he casually finished dressing, controlling his features lest they betray his delight. He picked up the money and put it in his pocket.

She cast a deep glance at him. “Would you be my lover?” she asked.

“I have a mistress,” he lied.

Her glistening eyes betrayed her. “In this darb?”

“No, in another.”

“Is she a foreigner?”

“No, an Arab.”

Silence prevailed for a moment.

“Do you still desire her?” she asked.

He decided to keep silent and replied only with a smile.

“Where do you live?” she inquired, laughing.

“In Shubra.”

“It’s too far from your work. Do you have to sleep there?”

“No.”

“I live nearby, in Gandab alley in Clot Bey. Do you know where it is?”

“From now on I shall know where it is.”