The Time and the Place: And Other Stories

A Long-Term Plan

Yesterday the challenges were hunger and utter destitution; today the challenge is excessive wealth. An ancient house for half a million. Isam al-Baqli was born again, born again at seventy.

He enjoyed looking at his image in the old mirror: a decrepit image ravaged by time, hunger, and afflictions; the face a mold of protruding bones and repugnantly tanned skin, a narrow sunken forehead, and lackluster eyes with but a few lashes remaining; black front teeth and no molars; and a skinny, wrinkled neck. What is left of life after seventy? Yet despite everything the fortune that had alighted upon him carried an intoxication that would not evaporate. Innumerable things must be achieved. Isam al-Baqli, indigent loafer, was now Isam al-Baqli, millionaire. All those old friends who were still in the land of the living were exclaiming, “Have you heard what’s happened to Isam al-Baqli?” “What’s happened to the layabout?” “The house has been bought by one of those big new companies for half a million.” “Half a million!” “I swear it by the Koran!”

Consternation spread through Sakakini, Qubeisi, and Abbasiyya like a hurricane. The house, with its spacious courtyard, faced onto Qushtumur Street. He had inherited it from his mother, who had passed on ten years ago after old age had turned her into a wreck. She had clung doggedly to life until the threads had been ripped to pieces and she had tumbled down. He had not grieved for her — life had accustomed him not to grieve for anything.

The family had had nothing except for his mother’s small pension and the roof over their heads. He had had no success at school, had learned no trade, had never done any work — a good-for-nothing loafer. He might win a few piasters at backgammon through cheating and the indulgence of numerous friends won at school, or friends who had been neighbors in the days of childhood, boyhood, and youth. He possessed a certain charm that made amends for his many bad attributes and made one forgive him his faults, and his extreme wretchedness and the hopelessness of his situation always excited people’s sympathy. His father had been an employee in the post office, and his mother had inherited the one-story Qushtumur house with its spacious and neglected courtyard. He was entitled to say that he was the son of a good family but had been unlucky, though the fact was that he was stupid, lazy, and ill-mannered, and it was not long before he was expelled from school. Practically his whole life was spent in the Isis Café, either in debt or in the process of settling his debts through cheating and the generosity of friends. His friend the lawyer Othman al-Qulla thought about taking him into his office on Army Square, but al-Baqli, with his absolute loathing for work, refused.

When left on his own after his friends had gone off to their jobs, he would spend his time indolently daydreaming. At election festivities and at weddings and funerals, he would indulge himself a little. His whole life he had lived off his charm and his friends’ generosity; he made a profession of poking fun, singing, dancing, and cracking jokes in order to earn himself a meal of beans, a piece of sweet basbousa, or a couple of drags of hashish.

His natural impulses had remained starved, repressed, crazed. The Qushtumur house knew no food but beans (and the various dishes made from beans), eggplant, and lentils. As for his dreams, they revolved around fantasies of mysterious banquets and repressed sex. There were stories about his affairs with widows, divorcees, and married women too, but no one believed him, though no one called him a liar. The story everyone did believe was of his affair with a widowed servant woman ten years his senior, an affair that had quickly turned to discord and strife when it became clear that she was of a mind to marry him. In fact she had also stipulated that he find himself a job because, as the saying goes, idle hands are unclean. The affair broke up after a row in which humiliating blows were exchanged. That was the only real affair he had had, and his neighbor Mr. Othman al-Qulla had been a witness to the fight and had recounted it at the café. “You missed a scene better than a circus. A woman as fat as a sack of coal bawling out our dear friend al-Baqli and making him a public spectacle in the courtyard of his gracious house and within sight and earshot of his gracious and dismayed mother. The battle wasn’t over till he was at his last gasp and some kind folk had intervened — when right away a new battle started up with his mother herself!”

Apart from that dismal experience, he would become boggle-eyed as he gawked at the women walking in the street, his heart suffering emotional pain as his stomach suffered hunger. He found no one but his mother on whom to vent his fury and frustration, despite her great love for him, the love of an old woman for an only son. Whenever she urged him to take a job or pull himself together, he would challenge her, “And when are you going to depart this world?”

“May God forgive you,” she would say with a smile. “And what would you do if my pension was no longer available to you?”

“I’d sell the house.”

“You wouldn’t find anyone to buy it for more than five hundred pounds, which you’d fritter away in a couple of months, and you’d then take up begging.”

He never said a kind word to her. His friends advised him to change his manner so he would not kill her off with worry and grief and actually expose himself to beggary. They reminded him of God’s words and of what the Prophet had said about respect for one’s parents, but his feeling of utter hopelessness had plucked out the roots of faith from a heart brimful with hunger and afflictions. He stuck to his scoffing, embittered attitude toward the events that passed by him, such as the battles between the political parties and the World War, calling down upon the world, with exaggerated mockery and scorn, yet more ruin and destruction. His mother completely despaired of him and resigned herself to the will of God. Sometimes, overwhelmed by distress, she would say, “Why do you repay my love with disrespect?”

And he would say derisively, “One of the causes of ill-fortune in this world is that some people live longer than necessary.”

—

The cost of living continued to rise. Was there to be further deprivation? And so he suggested to his mother that he should take in a person, or a family, as lodgers in his bedroom and that he should sleep on the couch in her room. “And open our house to strangers!” cried his mother in disbelief.

“Better than dying of hunger,” he shouted at her. He cast a glance at the courtyard of the house and muttered, “It’s like a football ground and it’s good for nothing.”

An agent brought along a student from the country, who took the room for a pound. Friends made a joke of the incident and said that the Qushtumur house had become a boardinghouse, and they gave his mother the name “Madame al-Baqli.” But he did not try to evade their ridicule and would sing “Days arrive when a man of breeding is humiliated.”

Unlike many he made light of the air raids. He never responded to the siren — he would not leave his seat at the café and did not know the way to the shelter. He did not mind this. What he did mind was that life was rushing past him and he was approaching his forties without having enjoyed a decent meal or a beautiful woman. He had not even been affected by the Revolution. “It seems,” he had remarked ironically, “that this Revolution is directed against us landlords!”

He never in his life read a newspaper, and got his information haphazardly at the gatherings of his friends. He became older, passed fifty. His mother became advanced in years; she grew frail and began to lose interest in things. She became critically ill. A doctor friend of his examined her and diagnosed a heart condition and prescribed medicines and rest. Rest, however, was out of the question, and medicines not feasible. In the meantime he continued to wonder how he would make out if he were to be deprived of her pension. Hour by hour she drew nearer to death, until one morning he woke up to find her dead. He looked at her for a long time before covering her face. He felt that he was recollecting dimmed memories from a distant past and that he was compelled to desist from his sarcasm and to recognize that that particular moment of the morning was a sad and melancholy one.

Right away he sought out the richest of his friends, Mr. Nuh, a dealer in property, who undertook to make the necessary arrangements for the burial of the deceased, and who also warned him against selling the house if he should find himself after a while down and out in the street. Isam al-Baqli wondered, though, how long cheating at backgammon and the letting out of the room would support him. Might there not be too a limit to one’s friends’ generosity? He made a venture into begging in the outskirts of the city, and it was not a barren exercise.

Days followed one upon the other, one leader died and another took his place, and then the “open-door” policy came in when he was knocking on seventy, his seventieth year of desperation and the squandering of life. The cost of living continued to rise in real earnest, and the scales wavered perilously. Begging was no longer of any avail, the generosity of friends was suddenly cut off (some of his friends had, for his bad luck, departed this world, while the remainder had betaken themselves to a quiet old age in which they were happy to sit around and chat), and he plunged headlong into the abyss of ruin. What a wretched, desperate old man he was!

Then one day the darkness of his existence dissolved to reveal the face of the broker making his descent on angelic wings straight down from the heavens. In the presence of his two friends, the lawyer and the property dealer, the transaction was concluded and the fabulous sum deposited in the bank. The three of them then sat in a low-class café on al-Azhar Street, a café whose unpretentiousness was in keeping with the wretched appearance of the millionaire. Isam al-Baqli gave a deep sigh of satisfaction that dispensed with any words. For the first time in his life he was totally happy. Yet, feeling at a loss, he said, “But don’t you two leave me on my own.”

“From today on you’re not in need of anyone,” said Othman al-Qulla, the lawyer, laughing.

But Mr. Nuh said, “He’s mad and needs someone to guide him at every step.”

“You two,” said al-Baqli gratefully, “are the best persons I’ve known in my life.”

“There are certain priorities,” said Mr. Nuh, “before we get down to any work — things that can’t be put off. First and foremost, you must go to the Turkish baths and get rid of all that accumulated dirt so that you can show your true self.”

“I’m afraid they won’t know me at the bank….”

“And have a haircut and a shave, and today we’ll buy you a ready-made suit and other clothes so that you can put up at a decent hotel without arousing suspicion.”

“Shall I stay at a hotel permanently?”

“If you want to,” said the lawyer. “You’ll find full service and everything….”

“A flat also has its merits,” said Mr. Nuh.

“But a flat’s not complete without a bride!” exclaimed al-Baqli.

“A bride?”

“Why not? I’ll not be the first or last bridegroom at seventy!”

“It’s a problem.”

“Don’t forget the bridegroom’s a millionaire.”

“That’s a strong incentive, but only to the unscrupulous….” said the lawyer, laughing.

“Scrupulous or not — it’s all one in the end!” said al-Baqli scornfully.

“No, you might find yourself back at begging quicker than you imagined,” said Nuh.

“Let’s put that off for the time being,” said the lawyer.

“The question of a woman cannot be put off,” said Isam al-Baqli. “It’s more important than the ready-made suit.”

“There are plenty of opportunities, and nightclubs galore.”

“My need of the two of you in this respect is particularly urgent.”

“But we said goodbye to riotous living ages ago.”

“How can I get along on my own?”

“Someone accompanied by money is never alone.”

“We’ll have another session,” said Mr. Nuh, “after giving thought to the investing of the fortune. It would be wise to spend from the income and not from the capital.”

“Remember,” protested al-Baqli, “that I’m in my seventies and have no one to inherit from me.”

“Even so!”

“The great thing is for us to make a start,” said the lawyer.

When they got together in the evening, Isam al-Baqli had a new look and a new suit. But while the filth had vanished, the signs of the wretchedness of old age and former misery still remained.

“Valentino himself, by the Lord of the Kaaba!” said the lawyer, laughing.

As Othman al-Qulla was on friendly terms and had business with the manager of the Nile Hotel, he rented a fine room there for al-Baqli, and the latter at once invited his two friends to dinner. They had a few drinks before the meal and then sat together after eating, planning a meeting for the following day. Then al-Baqli accompanied them to Mr. Nuh’s car but did not return to the hotel. Instead he took a taxi to Mohammed Ali Street and made straight for a restaurant famous for its Egyptian cooking. He did not consider what he had just eaten a meal, but merely something to whet his appetite. He ordered hot broth with crumbled bread and the meat of a sheep’s head, and ate to his heart’s content. He left the place only to pick and choose among such sweets as baseema, kunafa, and basbousa, as though afflicted by a mania for food. Just before midnight he returned to the hotel, so drunk with food he was nearly passing out. Locking his room, he experienced an unexpected feeling of sluggishness creeping through his limbs. Still with his trousers and shoes on, he threw himself down on the bed without turning off the light. What was it that lay crouched on his stomach, chest, and heart? What was it that stifled his breathing? Who was it that grasped his neck? He thought of calling for help, of searching for the bell, of using the telephone, but he was quite incapable of moving. His hands and feet had been shackled, his voice had gone. There was help, there was first aid, but how to reach them? What was this strange state he was in that wrested from a man all will and ability, leaving him an absolute nothingness? So, this is death, death that advances with no one to repulse it, no one to resist it. In his fevered thoughts he called upon the manager, upon Nuh, upon Othman, upon the fortune, the bride, the woman, the dream. Nothing was willing to make answer. Why, then, had this miracle taken place? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense, O Lord.