The Beginning and the End

SIXTY-NINE

Smiling, Nefisa entered the flat. These days she seemed to be always smiling, always cheerful. Observing that her mother was absorbed in her thoughts, she approached her and said jokingly, “Mother, now that our troubles are over, you don’t need to worry anymore.”

Depressed, Hassanein mentally echoed his sister’s words. But had their troubles really come to an end? It occurred to him that the entire budget of the army was not enough to resolve their problems. He raised his eyes toward Nefisa. He said to her, “It’s time that you took a rest!”

“Do you mean that I should give up my work?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll give it up with absolutely no regrets. I’ll stay at home as ladies do. I’ll be the lady sister of an officer!”

He could not help saying sarcastically, “And the sister of Master Hassan, too.”

She looked in astonishment from him to her mother, wondering why he referred to his brother with such sarcasm.

“Doesn’t this please you?” he continued.

With tenderness and compassion, the girl replied, “Whatever Hassan may be, his kindness in undeniable.”

“I don’t need to be reminded of that,” the young man added. “God knows that I love him. But I can’t help saying that his way of life is disgraceful.”

This last sentence pierced her heart, and she averted her eyes. As she recalled her own loose behavior, her limbs went cold and she shuddered with horror. Obviously, she thought, he is referring to me and nobody else. The silence made her nervous, and she murmured, “It happens in every family!”

“But not in respectable families,” Hassanein said resentfully.

Overcome with suffocating anxiety, she would have liked to vanish into thin air. Pretending to laugh, she said with affected merriment, “It’s quite possible to have in the same family two brothers, one of them a minister and the other a thief. For God’s sake, don’t disturb our peace. Guess what — I’ve prepared a platterful of kunafa for you. Let’s warm it up and eat it in peace!”

Leaving the room, she headed for the kitchen, her face troubled, her soul disturbed, and her heart fluttering with fear and worry. He had asked her to stay at home as respectable ladies do, and she certainly welcomed this. But what was done could not be undone. She could easily make excuses for her loose behavior, pretending that her object was to earn money to support her starving family. True enough, but only part of the truth. There was the tormenting mortal despair of resisting her sexual urge. How much she wanted to extinguish it, even if it involved her own extinction! Yet this sexual urge, flaring up more desperately and degenerately than before, had become almost uncontrollable. Her sense of guilt caused her great suffering. Her only consolation, if it was any consolation at all, was that fate held no better prospects for her. And she became torn between a wretched past and an irrepressible thirst for sexual gratification. Realizing how impossible it was to ignore this thirst, she was incapable of predicting whether she could adapt to her new way of life at home. Could she possibly be content to wait monotonously, indefinitely, for death to come upon her? She was not quite sure that she could accept this new life faithfully, or that, having lost everything, she could resolutely face up to the torture of sexual deprivation. She loathed and feared the past, but she was bound to it by a demonic force and would cleave to it desperately, stricken with guilt and horror, like a man falling from a mountaintop in a nightmare he was unable to shake off. Absently, she gazed at the slightly burnt surface of the rose-colored kunafa until she imagined her own skin burning black inside the platter. Life at the moment seemed so ruthless, so absurd; ruthlessly absurd. She wondered why God had created her. Yet she had an undeniable gusto for life, and her despair, torture, and fear were merely its manifestations. In spite of it all, she had an appointment with a man and did not want to miss it.

Carrying the platter with a cloth, she entered the room and placed it on the desk. As if she had forgotten her fearful thoughts, she said merrily to Hassanein, “I offer you this kunafa by the sweat of my brow. From now on, it’s your turn to provide our tongues with sweets.”

Putting their worries aside, the family devoured the kunafa. “I wish Hussein were with us,” Samira said as she took a piece from the platter. Waving his finger at her, Hassanein swallowed a mouthful. “It’s high time,” he said, “that we get him transferred to Cairo. Ahmad Bey Yousri had promised to transfer him after a year or so. And now almost two years have passed since his appointment at Tanta.”

He wished to enjoy the company of his brother as he had in the past, and hoped to appeal to Hussein for help in overcoming his troubles. Moreover, he had his personal reasons for paying a visit to Ahmad Bey’s villa.