The Time and the Place: And Other Stories

By a Person Unknown

There was nothing unusual in the flat to attract attention, nothing that could be of any help to an investigator. It consisted of two rooms and an entrance hall, and in general was extremely simple. What was truly worthy of surprise was the fact that the bedroom should have remained in its natural state, retaining its normal tidiness despite the ghastly murder that had been committed there. Even the bed was undisturbed, or altered only to the extent that occurs when a bed has been slept in. However, the person lying on it was not asleep but had been murdered, the blood not yet dry. As evidenced by the mark of the cord around the neck and the protruding eyeballs, he had been strangled. Blood had coagulated around the nose and mouth, but apart from this there was no sign of any struggle or resistance in the bed, in the bedroom, or in the rest of the flat. Everything was normal, usual, familiar.

The officer in charge of the case stood aghast, his trained eyes searching out the corners, examining and noting, but achieving nothing. Without doubt he was standing before a crime, and there was no crime without a criminal, and the criminal could not be brought to light other than through some clue. Here all the windows were securely closed, so the murderer had come in and gone out by the door. Also, the murdered man had died of strangulation with a cord. How, then, had the murderer been able to wind the cord around the man’s neck? Perhaps he had been able to do so while his victim was asleep. This was the acceptable explanation, there being no trace of any resistance. Another explanation was that he had taken his victim unawares from behind, done him in, laid him out on the bed, put everything back in order, and then gone off without leaving a trace. What a man! What nerves! He operated with patience, deliberation, calm, and precision, as happens only in fiction. In control of himself, of the murdered man, of the crime, and of the whole location — then off he goes, safe and sound! What a murderer!

In his mind the officer arranged the investigatory steps (the motive for the crime, the questioning of the concierge and the old servant woman), and also made a number of possible hypotheses. As much as he could he suppressed his strong emotions, then went back to thinking about the strange criminal who had crept into the flat, done away with a human being, and then gone off without a trace, like a delightful waft of breeze or shaft of sunlight. He searched the cupboard, the desk, and the clothes, and found a wallet containing ten pounds; he also came across the man’s watch and a gold ring. It would seem that theft was not the motive for the crime. What, then, was the motive?

He asked for the concierge to be brought for questioning. He was an elderly Nubian who had worked in the small building on Barrad Street in Abbasiyya for many years. He made statements of some relevance. He said the murdered man had been a retired teacher named Hasan Wahbi. He was over seventy years of age and had lived alone ever since the death of his wife. He had a married daughter in Asyout and a son working as a doctor in Port Said. He himself was originally from Damietta and was being looked after by Umm Amina, who used to come at about ten in the morning and leave around five in the afternoon.

“And you, don’t you sometimes perform services for him?”

“Not once in a year,” said the old man quickly and emphatically. “I see him only at the door when he’s going out and coming back.”

“Tell me about yesterday.”

“I saw him leaving the house at eight.”

“He didn’t ask you to clean the flat?”

With a certain asperity the man answered: “I’ve told you, not once in a year, not once in his lifetime. Umm Amina comes at ten to cook his food, clean the flat, and wash his clothes.”

“Does she leave any windows open?”

“I don’t know.”

“Isn’t it possible for someone to enter by the window?”

“As you can see, his flat is on the third floor, so it’s not possible. Also, the building is faced on three sides by other buildings, while the fourth side overlooks Barrad Street itself.”

“Go on with what you were saying.”

“He left the house at eight, then returned at nine. This has been his usual routine every day for more than ten years. After that he stays in his flat until the next morning.”

“Does no one visit him?”

“Except for his son and daughter, I don’t remember seeing anyone visit him.”

“When were they last here?”

“On the occasion of the feast of Greater Bairam.”

“Doesn’t the milkman or the paperman call?”

“The papers he brings back with him after going out in the morning. As for the yogurt, Umm Amina takes it in during the afternoon.”

“Did she take it in yesterday?”

“Yes, I saw the boy going up to the flat and saw him leaving.”

“When did Umm Amina leave the flat yesterday?”

“At about sunset.”

“And when did she come today?”

“About ten. She rang the bell, and he didn’t answer the door.”

“Did he go out today as usual?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“I didn’t see him go out. I was sitting at my place by the door until Umm Amina arrived. Then, after a quarter of an hour, she returned to tell me he wasn’t answering, so I went up with her. I rang the bell and knocked on the door, and when he didn’t answer we went off to the police station….”

The officer decided that this concierge was not capable of strangling a chicken, nor was Umm Amina, though they might make it possible for someone else to come in and go out. But why was Mr. Hasan Wahbi murdered? Was there some undiscovered theft? Had the wallet been left untouched for the purpose of putting the police off the scent? And was the presence of the key to the flat in the desk drawer another trick?

Umm Amina said she had been working in the schoolmaster’s house for a quarter of a century — fifteen years during the lifetime of his wife and ten years following her death. The man had decided that she should spend the night at her own home ever since he had become a widower. She herself was a widow, she said, and the mother of six girls, all of whom were now married to workers or craftsmen; and she provided all their addresses.

“Yesterday he was in good health. He read through the newspapers, recited aloud a portion of the Koran, and when I left the flat, he was listening to the radio.”

“What do you know of his family?”

“They are from Damietta, but he’s hardly in touch with them and no one visits him except for his son and daughter at feast times and holidays.”

“Do you know if he had any enemies?”

“None at all.”

“No one used to visit him at home?”

“Never. Very rarely he would sit at the café on a Friday with some of his colleagues or former students.”

The officer wondered how it was possible for the crime to have occurred without any motive or clues.

The necessary formalities were completed and, with the help of his assistant, the living quarters of the concierge were searched, as well as the homes of Umm Amina and her six daughters. Then the few friends of the deceased were summoned for examination, but not one of them gave evidence of any significance. The murder of the man appeared to be a complete and baffling mystery. The news of it spread through the street and later appeared in the papers, then the whole of Abbasiyya learned of it, and many people were saddened. The doctor, the murdered man’s son, confirmed that his father possessed nothing of value and that his bank account had contained no more than the one hundred pounds he had saved in case of emergency and had in the end taken out. He also confirmed that the old man had had no enemies and that his murder might well have been from greed for some imaginary fortune the criminal had supposed him to have at his home. A thorough questioning of the concierge and Umm Amina took place and came to nothing, both of them being released without bail.

The investigating officer found himself in a fog of confusion and suffered from a sense of frustration he had not previously known. He had an honorable history in the fighting of crime, both in the towns and in the countryside, and was in general an officer with a high reputation. This was the first crime to defeat him so utterly and without his being accorded so much as a ray of hope or consolation. He sent off his scouts among the suspicious characters in the Muqattam Hills, on the borders of the district of Waili, and in Arab al-Mohammedi, but they all came back with nothing. The forensic doctor reported that Mr. Hasan Wahbi had died of strangulation, and he examined all his belongings in the hope of coming across a fingerprint or a hair or any clue that the criminal might have left behind him, but his efforts were in vain. Everyone found himself standing before a silent void.

Because of the severe defeat he had suffered, Officer Muhsin Abd al-Bari, who lived not far away, in a street that led to the police station, felt disconcerted, and his peace of mind was disturbed. When his wife noticed his depression, she said gently, “Don’t get yourself into a state about it for nothing.”

He retreated into silence and kept his mind off things by reading. He was fond of the mystical poets, such as Saadi, Ibn al-Farid, and Ibn al-Arabi, a rare enough hobby for a police investigation officer, and he therefore hid it even from his best friends.

The incident continued to be the talk of Abbasiyya, both because of its bewildering mystery and because the deceased had been the teacher of many of the young and middle-aged inhabitants of the district. But with the passing of a week or so the news became lost in the fearsome sea of oblivion, and even Muhsin Abd al-Bari entered it among the crimes committed by “person or persons unknown,” saying to himself as he chewed over his bitter defeat, “Unknown! This one certainly is unknown!”

A month later the officer was called to an old mansion in the main street of Abbasiyya, the scene of a similar crime. It was as though the first crime had been repeated. Muhsin could hardly believe his eyes. The murdered man was a former army major general. He was living with his family, which consisted of a wife of sixty, a widowed sister also of sixty, and his youngest son, who was a twenty-year-old university student. Also living in the mansion were the concierge, the gardener, the chauffeur, the cook, and two other servants.

The major general was found one morning apparently asleep in bed as usual. It was, however, later than was normal, and it was this that had led his wife to come to see if he was all right. But he had not been sleeping, he had been strangled, the mark of the cord scored around his neck, his eyes bulging horribly, and sticky blood around his mouth and nose. As for the room, it was undisturbed, even the bed itself, and no sound had been heard during the night to awaken any of his family, who slept on the same floor. The long and short of it was that the officer found himself once again facing the deadly mystery that had crushed him a month before at the home of the teacher Hasan Wahbi, facing too the person unknown, with his silence, his obscureness, his singular cruelty, his preposterous mockery.

“Was anything stolen?”

“No.”

“Did he have any enemies?”

“None.”

“And the servants, did he have a good relationship with them?”

“Very good.”

“Do you have any suspicions about anyone?”

“None at all.”

The officer went through the formalities without hope. He examined the mansion thoroughly and questioned the family and the servants. He had a sensation of fear of some person unknown, and felt that a plot was being hatched in the dark to do away not only with many victims, but also with his reputation and all the values in his life. He likewise felt that there was some sort of an enigma that was about to suffocate him with the weight of its mystery, and that if once again he were to fail, he would not be able to face up to life, that life itself would not be worthwhile for anyone.

Owing to the status of the murdered man, a number of senior investigation officers came to take charge of the case. “There’s certainly been a crime,” said one of them in astonishment, “but it’s as though it has been committed without a criminal.”

“But the criminal’s there all right, and maybe he’s closer to us than we imagine.”

“How did he do it?”

“He passed a thin cord around the neck, pulling it tight until the man was dead. But how did he reach the site of his crime? How did he get away without leaving a trace?”

“And what’s the motive for the killing?”

“Motives for killing are as numerous as those for living!”

“Could he kill for no reason?”

“If he were mad he would kill for no reason — or without such reason as would convince us.”

“What’s the connection between the major general and the teacher?”

“Both were susceptible to death!”

The news was printed on the front pages of the newspapers in sensational headlines. Public opinion was shaken, in particular among the inhabitants of Abbasiyya, for the major general had been known since the time of the elections, having put himself forward as a candidate on a number of occasions and having once been elected to the Senate. Muhsin mobilized all the detectives on the force to investigate and make inquiries. He issued them strict instructions and applied himself to his work with a feverish desire to succeed. At the end of the night, he returned home utterly fatigued in body and spirit. He resolved to keep his worries from his wife, who had at the time begun to suffer the discomforts of pregnancy. The thing he feared most was that he would be transferred from the police station of al-Waili, bearing the mark of disgrace at his defeat, and be replaced by someone else, just as he had replaced others in the countryside at the time of his victories and successes. He tried to rid himself of his worries by reading poetry, but in vain, for his mind fixed itself solely on the crime that had become for him the symbol of his defeat.

Who could this terrible killer be? He was not a thief, or someone seeking revenge, nor even a madman — a madman might kill, but he would not carry out his crime with such devastating perfection. He was confronted by a strong, overpowering riddle from whose wantonness there was no escape. How, then, was he to bear the responsibility of protecting lives?

People, especially those of Abbasiyya, lost interest in the subject and calmed down slightly. The officer’s apprehension turned into a composed sadness harbored within the depths of his soul.

It was then that the third murder occurred. It happened forty days after the death of the major general. The location was a medium-sized house in Bain al-Ganayen, its victim a young woman in her thirties, the wife of a small contractor and the mother of three children. As usual everything was normal, other than the livid mark of the cord around the neck, the blood around the mouth and nose, and the bulging eyeballs. Apart from this there was no trace of anything. Muhsin carried out his routine duties in a quiet spirit of despair, for he believed that his torture would never come to an end and that he had been set up as a target by some merciless power. The mother of the murdered woman had lived with her. “In the morning I went in to find out how she was and I found her…” She was choked by tears and kept silent until the outburst of crying had passed. “The poor thing had typhoid ten years ago….”

“Typhoid!” Muhsin called out in surprise at this irrelevant piece of information.

“Yes, her condition was serious, but she was not to die from it.”

“You were not aware of any movement during the night?”

“None at all. The children were asleep in this room, while I slept on that sofa close by her room so as to be within earshot if she called. I was the last to go to sleep and the first to wake up. I went into her room and found her, poor love, as you can see….”

The husband came at noon, having returned from Alexandria in a state of extreme grief. It was some time before he found himself in a state to answer the officer’s questions, and he had nothing to say that could help the inquiry. He had been in Alexandria on business, having spent the previous day at the Commercial Café with some people whom he named, and he had spent the night with one of them in Qabbari, where he received the calamitous telegram. Giving a deep sigh, the man exclaimed, “Officer, this is unbearable — it’s not the first time. Before this the teacher and the major general were killed. What are the police doing about it? People aren’t killed without there being a murderer. You should be arresting him!”

“We’re not magicians,” burst out Muhsin, unable to endure such an attack. “Don’t you understand?”

He quickly regretted his words. He returned to the police station, saying to himself that in actual fact it was he who was the criminal’s number one victim. He wished that he could somehow declare his sense of impotence. This criminal was like the air, though even the air left some trace of itself in houses, or like heat, yet it too left its trace. How long would the crimes continue to have to be recorded among those committed by “a person unknown”?

Meanwhile Abbasiyya was in the throes of a terror that set the press ablaze. There was no other subject for conversation in the cafés than the stranglings and the terrible unknown perpetrator. It was a peril that had suddenly made its appearance, and no one was safe. There was no longer any confidence in the security forces, and suspicions were centered on perverts and madmen, this being the fashion in those days. From investigations it appeared that none of the inmates of the mental asylum had escaped. The police station received letters from anonymous informants, as a result of which many houses were searched, but no one of any importance was discovered; most of those involved were elderly. Somebody reported a young man known for being crazy or abnormal, who lived in Sarayat Street. He was arrested and taken off for questioning, but it was established that on the night the major general was killed he had been in detention in Ezbekiyya for importuning a girl in the street, so he was released. All efforts came to nothing, and Muhsin said sadly, “The sole accused in this case is myself!”

And so it was in his view and that of the residents of Abbasiyya, and that of the newspaper readers. Rumors spread without anyone knowing how they did so. It was said that the murderer was known to the security men but that they were covering up for him because he was closely related to an important personality. It was also said that there was in fact no murderer and no crime, but that it was all the result of an unknown and dangerous disease and that the laboratories of the Ministry of Health were working night and day to uncover its secret. Confusion and uneasiness reigned.

One day, a month or thereabouts after the murder of the woman, the policeman on duty at the al-Waili station found a corpse in the lane alongside it. Nothing like this had ever been heard of before. Officer Muhsin Abd al-Bari hurried to the place where the corpse lay — though it would have been possible to see it from the window of his room, had he so wanted. He found it to be the almost naked body of a man, certainly a beggar, lying against the wall of the police station. From sheer agony he almost let out a scream as his eyes alighted on the mark of the cord round the neck. Good Lord! Even this beggar! He searched the man, as though there might be a hope of coming across something. The local district official was summoned, and he identified the body as that of a mendicant from al-Wailiyya al-Sughra, a man of no fixed abode though known to many people.

The investigations took their course, not with any hope in view but as a cover to humiliating defeat. The residents of the houses close by were questioned, but what could be expected? Why not also ask those at the police station, which adjoined the scene of the crime? Detectives took themselves off to areas of suspicion, but they were searching for nothing in particular — for a specter, a spirit. As a reaction to the rancor that overwhelmed people’s hearts, dozens of perverts and dubious characters were rounded up and detained, till the whole of Abbasiyya was cleared of them. But what was achieved? In addition, the number of policemen patrolling the streets was increased, particularly during the hours of night. The Ministry of the Interior allocated a thousand pounds as a reward for anyone leading the police to the mysterious killer. The press took up the matter in emotionally powerful tones on its front pages. All of this served to exacerbate the situation in the minds of the inhabitants of Abbasiyya until it was turned into a crisis of frightening proportions. Terror ruled as people’s minds were tortured by evil presentiments, conversations turned into hysterical ravings, and those who could left the district. Were it not for the housing crisis and the circumstances under which people lived, Abbasiyya would have been emptied of its population.

Perhaps, though, no one suffered quite as much as Officer Muhsin Abd al-Bari or his unfortunate pregnant wife. By way of consolation and encouragement, she said, “You’re not to blame, this is something beyond man’s imagining.”

“There’s no longer any point to staying on in my job.”

“Tell me how you’ve been at fault,” she said anxiously.

“Wasted effort and being at fault are one and the same thing so long as lives are not safeguarded.”

“In the end you will triumph as usual.”

“I doubt it. This is something quite out of the ordinary.”

He did not sleep that night. He remained awake with his thoughts, overwhelmed by a desire to escape into the world of his mystic poetry, where calm and eternal truth lay, where lights melted into the ultimate unity of existence, where there was solace from the trials of life, its failures, its manipulations. Was it not extraordinary that both the worshiper of truth and this bestial killer should belong to one and the same life? We die because we waste our lives in concerning ourselves with ridiculous things. There is no life for us and no escape except by directing ourselves to the truth alone.

Hardly had two weeks gone by than an incident no less strange than the previous one occurred. A body fell from the last car of Tram 22, in front of Street Ten late at night. The conductor stopped the tram and went toward where the sound had come from, and the driver followed him. They saw on the ground a man dressed in a suit — they thought he must be drunk or under the effect of drugs and that he had stumbled. The driver flashed his torch at him and immediately let out a scream and pointed at the man’s neck. “Look!”

The conductor saw the well-known mark of the cord. They called out, and a number of police and plainclothesmen posted throughout the nooks and crannies of the vicinity hurried toward them. Two people who happened to be passing close by were arrested on the spot and taken to the police station. The incident caused a terrible shock, and Muhsin had to expend yet more hopeless and drastic efforts to no avail. One of those arrested was released (it turned out that he was an Army officer in civilian clothes), while several others were questioned without result. Muhsin tasted the bitterness of defeat and frustration for the fifth time, and it seemed to him that the criminal had none other than him in mind with his devilish pranks. The personality of the criminal made him think of mysterious characters in fiction, or of those creatures which in films descend to Earth from other planets.

—

Inwardly raging with his affliction, he said to his wife, “It’s only sensible for you to go to your father’s house at the Pyramids, far from all this atmosphere charged with terror and torment.”

“Isn’t it wrong for me to leave you in this state?” she protested.

Sighing, he said, “I just wish I could find some good reason for putting the blame on myself or one of my assistants.”

The matter was discussed at length in the press and in detailed articles by psychologists and men of religion. As for Abbasiyya, it was seized by panic. At sundown it became depopulated, its cafés and streets empty: it was as though everyone was expecting his own turn to come. The crisis reached its peak when a child at the preparatory school for girls was found strangled in the lavatories.

Incidents followed one upon another in horrifying fashion. People were stunned. No one any longer paid attention to the tedious details about the examinations and inquiries being made, or to the opinions of the investigators as given to the press. All thoughts were directed to the impending danger that advanced heedless of anything, making no distinction between old and young, rich and poor, man and woman, healthy and sick, a home, a tram, or a street. A madman? An epidemic? A secret weapon? Some foolish fable? Gloom descended upon the semi-deserted district. Terror consumed it. People bolted their doors and windows. No one had any subject of conversation apart from death.

Muhsin Abd al-Bari roamed about the district like a man possessed, checking with the police and plainclothesmen, scrutinizing faces and places, wandering around in a state of utter despair, talking to himself about this despair and the pain of his defeat, wishing he could offer his neck to the murderer on condition that he would spare others from his devilish cord.

He visited the maternity hospital where his wife lay. He sat beside her bed for a while, gazing at her and the newborn child, relaxing his mouth into a smile for the first time recently. Then he kissed her on the forehead and left. He returned to the world in which he wished to be seen by no one. He felt something resembling vertigo. Life: terminated by the cord of some unknown person so that it becomes nothing. Yet without doubt it was something, and something of value: love and poetry and the newborn child; hopes whose beauty was limitless; being in life, merely being in life. Was there some error that had to be put right? And when to put it right? The feeling of vertigo intensified as when one suddenly awakes from a deep sleep.

Reports reached the station superintendent that it had been decided to transfer and replace Officer Muhsin Abd al-Bari. Extremely upset, the superintendent at once went to the room of the officer for whom he had such a high regard. He found him with his head flopped down on the desk as though asleep. He approached and softly called out, “Muhsin.”

There was no answer. He called again, but the man still did not answer. He shook the officer to wake him, and the head tilted grotesquely. It was then that the superintendent spotted the drop of blood on the blotter. He looked at his colleague in terror and saw the mark of the infernal cord around his neck. The police station and its occupants were shattered.

A series of weighty meetings were held at the Governorate and urgent and important decisions were made. The director-general summoned all his assistants and told them in firm, rousing terms, “We shall declare unremitting war until the criminal is arrested.” He thought momentarily and then went on. “There is something no less important than the apprehension of the criminal himself — it is to control the panic that has seized people.”

“Yes sir.”

“Life must go on as normal, people must go back to feeling that life is good.” The questioning look in the probing eyes was answered by the director. “Not one word about this matter will be published in the press.”

He discerned a certain listlessness in the men’s eyes. “The fact is,” he said, “that news disappears from the world once it disappears from the press.” He scrutinized the faces. “No one will know anything, not even the people of Abbasiyya themselves.”

Striking his desk with his fist, he declared, “No talking of death after today. Life must go on as usual, people must go back to feeling that life is good — and we shall not give up the investigation.”