Children of the Alley Read online

  “Dates, cheese, halva and hot falafel,” said Gabal.

  Balqiti smiled and pointed first at the pipe, then at the package, saying, “The best nights come from this and that.” He clapped Gabal warmly on the shoulder. “Isn’t that right, estate boy?”

  Gabal’s heart contracted in spite of himself. His imagination was overcome by images of the lady who had taken him in, the garden—its music, jasmine arbors, birds and rushing streams—the security, peace and tender dreams of that lost world of grace, until life almost seemed rotten. Then a wave swept away his despairing memories and he felt secure, thinking of this friendly, sweet girl, of the magic power that had drawn him to a house with a den of snakes. He said with an enthusiasm that surprised him, like the flicker of a lantern blown by a gust of wind, “What a nice life you have here.”

  35

  Sleep did not come to him until shortly before dawn—he was tormented by fear. Her specter visited him in a vision of fears as jasmine leaves on dry grass crawling with insects. He was seized by illusions bred by the shadows of this strange house. He told himself in the dark, “What are you but a stranger in a house of snakes, stalked by a crime, your heart shaken by love.” If he were left alone, all he would want would be peace and quiet. He was not afraid of the snakes as much as he was afraid of treachery from the man whose snores rose and fell from his bed. And how did he know that those snores were real? He did not trust anything anymore. Even Daabis, who owed him his life, would broadcast his secret folly; Zaqlut would be enraged; his mother would weep, and the whole miserable alley would be in flames. The love that had drawn him to this house, to the room of his companion, the snake tamer—how did he know he would live long enough to give his feelings a voice? Thus sleep did not come to him until shortly before dawn—he was tormented by fear.

  His heavy eyelids opened when morning light shone through the window. He saw Balqiti sitting bent over on his bed, rubbing his legs under the covers with his skinny hands. He smiled with pleasure despite the familiar giddiness in his head from lack of sleep. He cursed the visions that had nested in his head in the dark, and scattered in the light like bats. Weren’t they visions appropriate for a killer’s dark mind? Yes, our noble family has had murder in its blood since the very beginning. He heard Balqiti yawn loudly in a voice as undulating as a charmed snake, but then his chest shook with a long, hacking fit of coughing until Gabal thought his eyes would pop out. When the coughing fit passed, he emitted a deep moan.

  “Good morning,” said Gabal. He sat on the couch and Balqiti turned to him, his face still red from the coughing.

  “Good morning, Gabal, sir, who barely slept last night!”

  “Do I look it?”

  “No, but you tossed and turned in the dark, and turned your head toward me as if you were afraid!”

  You snake! Only be a nonpoisonous snake, for the sake of her dark eyes.

  “The truth is, it was sleeping in an unfamiliar place that kept me up.”

  “You couldn’t sleep for one reason,” laughed Balqiti, “which is, you were afraid of me. You said, ‘He’ll kill me and take my money, then bury me in the desert, as I did with the man that I killed.’ ”

  “You—”

  “Listen, Gabal, fear is a terrible thing. It is the thing that makes snakes strike!”

  “You read things that are not there in men’s hearts.”

  “Look, you know I did not go beyond the truth, former estate manager.”

  “Sayida, come here!” called a powerful voice from inside. His heart bounded with unexpected pleasure. This dove in a snake pit who had found him innocent and led him to the shady tree of hope. Balqiti spoke as if commenting on Shafiqa’s action.

  “Ours is a busy house from first thing in the morning. These girls set off and come back with water and beans to feed their old father, then send him out with a bag of snakes to make a living for himself and for them.”

  Peace filled his heart: he felt like a member of this family. Friendly warmth flooded his soul, and he longed with irresistible spontaneity to open his heart and surrender fully.

  “Sir,” he said, “I am going to tell you the truth—my whole story.”

  Balqiti seemed preoccupied with rubbing his legs but smiled.

  “I am a killer, as you said, but I have my story.”

  He told him what had happened.

  “What a tribe of tyrants,” said Balqiti when he had finished. “But you, you are a decent man, and I think no less of you.” He shifted triumphantly as he sat. “You deserve that I should be equally frank with you. You should know that my origins are in Gabalawi Alley.”

  “You!”

  “Yes, and I fled from it when I was very young because of trouble with the gangsters!”

  “They are the worst thing about the alley,” said Gabal, whose surprise was still evident.

  “Yes, but we have not forgotten our alley, gangsters or no gangsters. That’s why I liked you when I found out your background.”

  “What neighborhood are you from?”

  “Hamdan, the same as you.”

  “Marvelous!”

  “Don’t marvel at anything in this world, but this is all long-gone history, and no one remembers me anymore except for Tamar Henna herself, who is related to me.”

  “I know that courageous woman! But which gangster was making trouble for you? Zaqlut?”

  “Back then all he ran was one squalid little neighborhood.”

  “As I said, they are the worst thing about our alley.”

  “I spit on the past and all its works!” he added energetically. “From this very moment you should start thinking of your future. I’ll tell you again, you’d make a wonderful snake charmer, and there’s a good area to work in, south of here, far from our alley. In any case, your gangsters and their hoodlums can’t show themselves in this alley.”

  Of course, he knew nothing of the art of snake charming, but he welcomed it as a means of joining this family, and spoke in a voice that gave away how pleased he was. “Do you really think I’d be good at it?”

  The man jumped to the floor with acrobatic speed and set his short frame before him, thick white hair visible in his wide collar. “Yes, and I’m never wrong about these things.” He extended his hand, and they shook. “I’ll tell you the truth—I like you more than any of my snakes.”

  Gabal laughed as hard as a child and grasped the man’s hand to keep him from going. Balqiti stood looking quizzical until Gabal blurted out what he could no longer keep inside. “Sir, Gabal wants to be part of your family.”

  Balqiti smiled with bloodshot eyes. “Really?”

  “Yes, by God!”

  Balqiti laughed briefly and said, “I was wondering when you would ask me that. Yes, Gabal, I’m no fool, but you are a man I can give my daughter to with an easy mind. Fortunately, Sayida is a wonderful girl, just like her late mother.”

  Gabal’s delighted smile faltered as a wilted flower’s petals droop, afraid that his dream would vanish just as he was about to seize it.

  “Only—”

  “Only you want Shafiqa! I know, my friend. Your eyes told me, and the girl’s talk, and my experience with snakes. Forgive me—this is the way snake charmers make deals among themselves.”

  Gabal sighed from the bottom of his heart and felt a soothing rush of peace and relief; youth, freedom and enthusiasm filled his chest. He forgot the beautiful house and his privileged rank, and no longer feared the pain and hardship in store for him. Let an impenetrable curtain fall over the past; let oblivion swallow up all the pain of bygone days, and his heart’s longing for the mother he had lost.

  That morning, Sayida trilled with joy. The happy news spread quickly through the neighboring alleys. And Gabal’s wedding procession wound through Muqattam Marketplace.

  36

  “It does a man no honor to live the life of a rabbit or a rooster!” said Balqiti in a tone of rather scornful criticism. “But here you are. You haven’t learned a thing, and
your money has almost run out!”

  They were sitting on an animal-skin rug by the door of the house. Gabal’s legs were stretched out on the sunny sand, a blissful calm shimmering in his eyes. He turned to his father-in-law and smiled. “Our father, Adham, lived and died desiring the lovely, innocent life he had singing in the garden!”

  Balqiti laughed loudly. “Shafiqa!” he called. “Come get your husband before his laziness kills him.”

  Shafiqa appeared in the doorway, sorting lentils on a dish in her hand. She wore a purple scarf over her head that set off the purity of her face. “What is it, Father?” she asked without even lifting her eyes from the dish.

  “He wants just two things: your happiness and a life without work.”

  “How can I be happy if he starves me to death?” she asked, laughing reproachfully.

  “That’s a conjurer’s secret,” said Gabal.

  Balqiti poked him in the side with his elbow and said, “Don’t make light of the hardest of professions. How do you hide an egg in a spectator’s pocket and pull it out of another pocket on the other side of the show? How do you turn marbles into chicks? How do you charm a snake?”

  “Teach him, Father,” said Shafiqa, looking radiant with happiness. “All life has taught him is how to sit in a cozy chair in the estate office.”

  “Time to go to work,” said Balqiti, getting up and going into the house.

  Gabal contemplated his wife lovingly. “Zaqlut’s wife is a thousand times less lovely than you, but she spends all day on an elegant couch, and twilight in the garden smelling the fragrance of jasmine and frolicking in the running brook.”

  “That’s the way with people who live off other people’s work,” she said, sarcastic but bitter.

  Gabal scratched his head, thinking, then said, “But there is a way to complete happiness.”

  “Stop dreaming—you weren’t dreaming when you got up and came to my side in the marketplace, and you weren’t dreaming when you drove that human vermin away from me. That’s why I fell in love with you.”

  He wanted to kiss her; his conviction that he knew better than Shafiqa did not lessen the worth of what she was saying.

  “I fell in love with you for no reason at all,” he said.

  “In these alleys around us, only crazy people dream.”

  “Sweetheart, what do you want from me?”

  “To be like my father.”

  “What a sweet thing to say,” he reproached her gently. “Where does your sweetness come from?”

  Her lips parted to form a smile, and her fingers worked quickly through the lentils.

  “When I fled the alley, I was the most miserable person in the world, but if that hadn’t happened I would never have married you!”

  She laughed. “We owe our happiness to the gangsters in your alley, the same way my father owes his living to snakes and serpents.”

  “Even so,” sighed Gabal, “the finest citizen our alley ever knew believed there was a way to provide people with a living while they could stay in their gardens and sing.”

  “Oh, not that again! Look, here comes my father with his bag—get up, and God go with you.”

  Balqiti came in with his bag, Gabal got up, and the two men set off on their accustomed road.

  “Learn with your eyes as much as you learn with your mind,” Balqiti said. “Watch what I do. Don’t ask me anything in front of people, and be patient until I explain what you miss.”

  Gabal found the work truly difficult, but he applied himself to it from the very start and got used to its demanding dexterity regardless of how much effort it cost him. The fact is that he had no other job open to him unless he could be happy as a wandering peddler, a gangster, thief or bandit. The alleys in his new neighborhood were no different from his own alley, except for the estate and the stories that had grown up around it. Any lingering sorrow over the dreams of his past, memories of his bygone grandeur or hopes for which the Al Hamdan had suffered, as Adham had suffered before them, had vanished somewhere in the depth of his heart. He was determined to forget by propelling himself into the vastness of his new life, to embrace it and open his heart to it. He would take refuge in his dear, beloved wife whenever he felt the danger of depression or shame in his rootlessness. He overcame his sorrows and memories and learned so brilliantly that Balqiti himself was surprised. He practiced tirelessly in the desert and worked day and night. He spent days, weeks and months, and his resolve did not weaken, nor did fatigue overtake him. He learned the lanes and alleys, and got used to the snakes and sepents. He performed in front of thousands of children, and tasted the sweetness of success and profit. He received the good news that he was going to become a father. He lay on his back to gaze at the stars when he was able to relax. He spent the nights passing the pipe to Balqiti and back again and spinning the tales told by the rebec in Hamdan’s coffeehouse. Every now and then he wondered where Gabalawi was. When Shafiqa expressed her fear that his past would ruin his life, he said, “The child in your belly belongs to those people. Hamdan’s people are his people. Effendi is the king of criminality and Zaqlut is the king of terrorism. How good can life be with people like that around?”

  —

  One day he was showing off his tricks in Zainhum, in the middle of a crowded circle of children. He turned around and there in front of him he saw Daabis, who had cut through to the front row and was now gaping at him in amazement. Unsettled, Gabal avoided looking at his face and could no longer go on with his act. He stopped, despite the clamor of protest from the children, took up his bag and walked away.

  It was not long before Daabis came up behind him, shouting, “Gabal! Is that you, Gabal?”

  He stopped walking and turned around. “Yes, what brings you here, Daabis?”

  “Gabal a snake charmer!” Daabis had not recovered from his surprise. He then asked, “When did you learn this—how?”

  “It isn’t the strangest thing in the world,” said Gabal casually.

  Gabal walked along and the other followed him until they reached the foot of the mountain, then they sat in the shade of a knoll in a place where there were only grazing sheep and a naked shepherd, sitting and picking lice from his clothes. Daabis scrutinized his friend’s face.

  “Why did you flee, Gabal? How could you think so badly of me that you’d expect me to betray you? By God, I would never betray any of the Al Hamdan, not even Kaabalha! To whom would I betray you? Effendi? Zaqlut?! May Almighty God burn them all. They asked about you so much, and when I heard them asking I nearly drowned in my sweat.”

  “Tell me,” Gabal asked him earnestly, “how did you risk their revenge by sneaking away from your house?”

  Daabis made an insouciant gesture with his hand. “They lifted the siege a long time ago. No one asks about Qidra anymore, or his killer.

  They say that Lady Huda is the one who saved us from death by starvation, but we have been condemned to permanent degradation. We have no honor. We have no coffeehouse! We go to work far from the alley, and when we go home we vanish behind our walls. If any gangster finds one of us he’ll have some fun slapping him or spitting on him. They think more highly of the dirt in our alley than they do of us, Gabal. How fortunate you are in your exile.”

  “Forget my good fortune and tell me if anyone has been mistreated,” said Gabal resentfully.

  Daabis picked up a brick and smacked it against the ground. “They killed ten of us during the siege!”

  “God in Heaven!”

  “They took them as ransom for rotten Qidra of the even rottener mother, but they weren’t our friends!”

  “Weren’t they all of the Al Hamdan, Daabis?”

  Daabis blinked shyly and moved his lips in an inaudible apology.

  “And the others were blessed only with slaps and spit.”

  Gabal felt responsible for the souls that had gone, and the pain wrung his heart. He felt bloody regret staining every moment of peace that had passed since his flight. Daabis took him by sur
prise when he said, “You may be the only happy member of the Al Hamdan today.”

  “I have never stopped thinking of all of you for a single day!” exclaimed Gabal.

  “But you’re far away from all the trouble.”

  “I have never fled from the past,” said Gabal sharply.

  “Don’t lose your peace of mind over something hopeless. We no longer have hope.”

  “We no longer have hope,” repeated Gabal, but in a mysterious tone of voice.

  Daabis stared at him with concern and curiosity, but said nothing out of respect for the grief etched on Gabal’s face. He looked at the ground and saw a beetle creeping hastily along until it disappeared under a heap of stones. The shepherd shook out his garment to cover his sunburned body with it.

  “Honestly,” said Gabal, “I have not been happy. I only look it.”

  “You deserve happiness, you really do,” Daabis soothed him.

  “I got married and found new work, as you can see, but I have always had a secret voice nagging me in my sleep.”

  “God bless you! Where are you living?”

  He did not answer. He seemed to be talking to himself. “Life will never be good with thugs like that around.”

  “That’s the truth, but how can we be rid of them?”

  The shepherd raised his voice to call his sheep, and he walked toward them with his long staff under his arm. Then they heard him singing an indistinct melody.

  “How can I meet you?” Daabis asked.

  “Ask in Muqattam Marketplace for the house of Balqiti the snake charmer, but don’t tell anyone about me yet.”

  Daabis rose and gripped his hand, and walked away followed by grief-stricken eyes.

  37

  It was nearly midnight. Gabalawi Alley was sunk in shadows except for the faint light trickling out of the coffeehouse doors, all but closed to keep out the cold. The winter night was starless, youths were confined in their rooms, and even the dogs and cats had sought shelter in the courtyards. In the overpowering silence the monotonous rebec melodies could be heard telling their stories, but the Hamdan district was swathed in mute blackness. Two shapes moved in from the direction of the desert and kept close by the mansion walls, then passed in front of Effendi’s house, traversing the Hamdan district until they stopped before the middle building. One of them knocked at the door, and the knock echoed like a drumbeat in the silence. The door opened to show the face of Hamdan himself, pale in the light of the lamp in his hand. He raised the lamp to see his visitor’s face and hesitated briefly before crying out in surprise, “Gabal!”