Khan Al-Khalili Read online

  “By God,” he would say angrily, “I couldn’t be a person of prestige in Egypt now, even if I wanted to … but may God Himself launch a campaign against the very idea of dignity!”

  This anger kept burning away inside him until all that was left was an unholy flicker of flame and a pile of ashes. However, life cannot endure anger on a continuing basis; there have to be some intervals of calm, even if the calm involved is actually more akin to resignation. Thus, whenever his anger got the better of him, he would resort to despair.

  “What’s the point of stubborn persistence in this world of ours?” he would tell himself. “If we’re all going to die like animals and rot in the grave, what’s the point of thinking like angels? Just suppose I’d filled the world with writings and inventions. Would the worms in the grave respect me? Would they instead devour me like some common murderer? No! The whole world consists of lies and vanities; in such a context the quest for glory is the acme of lies and vanities.”

  Therefore, he surrendered himself to a bitter isolation of mind and heart. He despaired of life in general and fled from it. But, even as he was turning his back on it in impotent despair, he was still arrogant enough to imagine that he was in fact the one who was depriving life of the benefits of his own personality. For that reason he did not give up reading, the idea being that books were the things that provided man with the kind of life he wanted. He used the world of books as a way of looking down on the ordinary world and adopted them as a kind of salve to treat his wounded pride. From them he derived a kind of strength, one that he kidded himself was personal. It felt as though the ideas they contained were actually his own; their authority and eternal validity were his too.

  After his succession of failures, he stopped reading things in an organized and goal-oriented way, and started reading whatever fell into his hands. He had a particular fondness for old volumes with yellowing paper because they were valuable and hard to find. He now began to read voraciously and quickly. He felt on edge and no longer enjoyed reading anything useful or serious; it gave him a kind of mental indigestion. He may have learned all sorts of different things but he was master of none of them. His brain was not used to indulging ideas in and of themselves, and he relied on books to do the thinking for him. Ideas and reflection on them did not interest him at all; his only real concern was that he be able to address the morrow on the basis of what he had read the day before and to harangue his friends and colleagues (all in a learned philosophical tone) with the inspired fruits of his memory. For that very reason the employees working in the archives section of the Ministry of Works nicknamed him “the philosopher.” That delighted him, even though the gesture was as much one of derision as of respect.

  This “philosopher” had no fixed views on anything because, while he may have been reading things, he never reflected on them; he might well forget what he had said the day before and even totally contradict everything he had said earlier. He would always rush to adopt an opinion that served to boost his own arrogance, delusion, and total concern with superficialities. He relished confrontation and argument. If an interlocutor said “right,” he would say “left”; if the former said “white,” he would reply “black.” He would then plunge headlong into an argument, becoming more and more angry and worked up until he would almost be grabbing his opponent’s lapels. None of this implied that he was stupid; in fact, he was of average intelligence. His mind was one that never sank to the level of stupidity, but neither did it rise to any kind of excellence, let alone the notion of genius. The thing that totally deceived him about his own person was his crushing ambition to achieve prestige and his delusions of genius, all of which led him far from the path of reason. What made his sense of misery even more acute was that he was extremely sensitive and easily roused. Patience, perseverance, reflection, and contemplation—these traits were in short supply where he was concerned. As a result, his brain was full of an intellectual mixture of facts rather than being the focused mind of a penseur. There can be little doubt too that the insomnia that had afflicted him for fully six months of his life had had a negative effect on his mental make-up. It had brought him to the very brink of madness and death; he had spent countless nights wide-awake and raving. But then God’s mercy had descended on him, and despair had been replaced by cure. He attributed the reason for his illness directly to a risky venture that he had embarked on without considering the possible consequences.

  He had long believed in magic and never doubted the veracity of the tales he had heard about it. One day he happened to meet an old civil servant who was a fervent believer in magic and demons, so he began to devote himself assiduously to getting to know him better. Once their friendship was firmly established, the old man lent him some ancient tomes dealing with magic and the invocation of demons, such as Solomon’s Ring, The Magic Bottle, and O Mighty Lords. He had been utterly thrilled and treated the entire subject as the loftiest kind of knowledge and truth that he had yet laid hands on. With the enthusiasm of conviction he embarked upon a process of solving its mysteries and penetrating its secrets; with all his heart he longed for the arrival of a time when he would gain control over the forces of the universe and acquire exclusive possession of the keys to knowledge, power, and authority. The idea almost drove him crazy, and the desire took complete hold of him: when would he be given infinite power to take and leave whatever he wanted, to toy with whomever he wished, to raise and lower, to make rich or poor, to give life and death? But his nerves could not stand the prolonged efforts involved, and he was incapable of spending long nights in seclusion with demon spirits. His confidence let him down and his nerves collapsed; he found himself hounded by fears and delusions. His health deteriorated rapidly and he felt the approach of insanity and death. At this point he realized that he had to stop these activities and give up his plans. He returned the books to their owner and for the last time gave up on the idea of achieving glorious heights now that he had tried every single avenue in an attempt to get there.

  “What’s my problem?” he asked himself sorrowfully. “Is there any solution for a corrupted soul? Why is it that I am forever struggling when only an arm’s length separates me from my goals?”

  He now collapsed beneath the rubble of his failed initiatives, dashed hopes, and lost illusions. As day followed day, he grew older without ever losing that profound sense of injustice; quite the contrary in fact, he even began to feel some obscure sense of pleasure in the pain it still gave him. He would now imagine injustice to be occurring, with or without due cause, and would proceed to counter it with this same peculiar blend of pain and cryptic pleasure.

  “Isn’t it just great,” he would tell himself with a defiantly sarcastic tone, “that the entire world rises up in order to fight the individual?”

  Didn’t his disillusioned self find great comfort in the thought that the abundance of bad luck he had suffered was an indication of other people’s envy and fear? Indeed he managed to surrender to the ancient notion that genuine misery is the lot of all rare geniuses in this world.

  This decision of his to relish his own misery had an effect on his fluctuating political leanings. He always sided with the losing party, whatever its political principles may have been, and regularly placed himself in the role of the party leader who has to take all the inimical and malicious blows aimed in his direction and bear the brunt of all kinds of responsibilities and pressures. In all of it he discovered almost limitless pain and at the same time unparalleled pleasure.

  Truth be told, this trait of his did not happen merely by chance or as a consequence of his failures; instead it traced its origins back to his early years when he was his parents’ firstborn child. He had become used to being cared for, loved, and even spoiled, but he was also the child whom fortune had kept in reserve so that he could take on all the responsibilities of his shattered family when he was not yet twenty years old. The world may have pandered to him just a bit, but not for a single hour had it treated him kindly!r />
  He lay there stretched out on the bed, but didn’t close his eyes. He started looking round at the ceiling, walls, and floor of his room. Could he ever find contentment living in this strange quarter, he wondered. He felt a wave of nostalgia for Qamar Street, the Sakakini quarter, and the old house, but at the same time he still had that emerging sensation of hope alive with aspiration. Once again the apartment began to be filled with the sound of movement, and he listened to the noise as his mother and the servant started moving the furniture around and arranging the various rooms. From the street below came the sound of an annoying din. Listening more carefully with a disapproving ear, he made out that it was a group of children playing and singing. Shaken out of his slumber he went over to the window looking out on to the apartment buildings and opened it. Looking down on the street below, he could make out groups of boys and girls yelling and laughing. They had divided themselves up into teams, and each team was playing a particular sport. It was as if the entire street had been turned into a primitive sporting club; one group was playing with new stuff, and another amused itself with old rags. Some were skipping, others fighting. The young ones stayed on the sidewalk, dancing, singing, and clapping. Dust flew up in the air and noise was everywhere. He realized that from now on an afternoon snooze was out of the question. He heard some amazing tunes too: “Dear friend, what a beauty!” “Children of our alley, mulberries ahoy!” “That’s a high mountain, my friend!” and so on and so on. He did not know whether to feel amazed, angry, or happy. Just then he heard a nasty, gruff voice let out a yell like a clap of thunder: “God damn the world!” and then intoned the same phrase to a clapping rhythm. The voice was almost certainly coming from the store immediately below the window, but from inside. He could not see who this person was singing curses against the world in general, but he could not stop himself laughing, something that put a bloom on his pale face. He stretched as far as he could out of the window and was able to make out the sign over the store: “Nunu the Calligrapher,” it said in elegant script. So, he wondered, did this craftsman make signs that cursed the world and then sell them to grumblers and malcontents? He needed to buy some himself in order to slake his own thirst for such things!

  3

  He watched as the sun’s rays, reflected in the glass of the upper windows of the apartment blocks opposite his own window, started to disappear, a sign that the sun was setting behind the domes of al-Mu’izz’s Cairo. He looked up at the lofty minaret of the al-Husayn Mosque soaring in splendor over the fine mesh of sunset shadows. Leaning on the windowsill, he looked out on the roofs of the stores in between the apartment blocks and the windows and balconies that overhung the fronts of the buildings and the various alleyways that branched off. He could see fully locked windows and others that were half open. On the balconies housewives were busy collecting the washing or filling pots. By now the street was almost empty of children, as though the approach of nighttime had managed to scare them away. He secretly longed to venture outside, see the sights of the quarter up close, and explore the streets and alleyways, but he had spent so much energy organizing his room that he gave up on the idea. In fact, he usually stayed at home these days; once he arrived back from the ministry, he would only go out once in a while. He decided to postpone his little expedition for a later time. That decided, he left the window and sat cross-legged on his mattress, that being his favorite position for reading. Taking a book from his library shelves he proceeded to read until it was time to go to sleep.

  His father, meanwhile, was sitting cross-legged on his prayer mat with the Qur’an open in front of him. He was reciting portions of the text in an audible voice, not paying any attention to the numerous mistakes he kept making in the reading of the text. Akif Effendi Ahmad was in his sixties now; he had a long white beard, and his face had a haggard and august look to it. After he had been pensioned off in the very midst of his working life and with great aspirations for the future, he had imposed a severe isolation upon himself. He seemed to be spending his entire life on devotions and Qur’an recitation. He only left the house on rare occasions, and then it was for a solitary stroll or to visit a particular shrine. The fact that he was financially hard up (his pension amounted to no more than six pounds) was probably primarily responsible for the regulated life he led, but eventually he reconciled himself to his new way of life and fell into its routines; indeed, he even felt grateful and grew to like it. The time that had been most painful for him had been the period after he had been dismissed and pensioned off. He had lost his entire source of income, or almost so, and a life of poverty loomed over his wretched family. He had been forced to leave his work and the activities it involved and to abandon the prestige that came with his position. With that he sprang to his own defense like a madman and started looking for intermediaries who might intercede on his behalf.

  However, all that went up in smoke, so he started submitting petition after petition and application after application, but all to no avail. Eventually he came to realize the sad truth, namely that the doors of government employment were now firmly and forever closed. In fact, he had not actually done anything wrong, but his general lassitude and his insolence toward the people who had investigated his conduct only made things that much worse. Once it was all over, all he could talk about was how he had been wronged and who had done it to him, calling down curses on all of them. Anger, hatred, and despair took hold of him, and he started scoffing at government work and civil servants in general. He claimed he had been pensioned off because he refused to do anything corrupt; government jobs were simply too constricting for someone like himself who insisted on keeping his self-respect. At first he had denied that he had been insolent when questioned by the government investigators, but then he turned that round and took pride in it to the point of exaggerating about the way he had behaved. It became his only topic of conversation, to the extent that he became the butt of jokes and started to drive his friends and relatives away.

  Initially he maintained his relationships with people he knew; he used to frequent the Gita Café in Ghamra and play backgammon with his friends. But then his misfortunes had a bad effect on his demeanor, and he started becoming more and more intolerant and irascible. One day he lost his temper with someone who was playing backgammon with him. “You can’t talk!” roared the man. “You’ve been fired by the government!” From that day he never went back to the café and retreated from the world and its people. His refuge was the world of religious devotion; there was no longer any trace of the past. What speeded his recovery was the fact that his son Ahmad was able to take on responsibilities for the family, inheriting thereby his father’s obligations and ailments.

  At the same time, we should not overlook another key factor in the father’s recovery, namely the role of the mother. When it came to keeping the family content, she possessed a number of estimable qualities. She was a beautiful woman; when she was young, she had attracted the attention of Cairo’s menfolk who clearly admired her looks.

  By now she was fifty-five years old, and yet she was still comely and elegant, well made-up and colorful in her choice of dresses. Full-figured and well padded, there was just a touch of flabbiness about her. She knew all there was to know about cosmetics. Above all, she was known everywhere for her sense of humor, her funny stories, and jokes; no other woman came close to her when it came to making friends and telling stories. She had lots of friends, and would spend a lot of time welcoming visitors and visiting people. She would be gladly welcomed into homes by women, married and unmarried alike. That was how it came about that, when her husband’s tragedy struck the house, she was not really affected. When her husband was no longer able to provide her with the things she needed, other hands, those of her female friends, were glad to step in and offer her presents; all of which meant that she was able to keep herself well presented and made-up. She was able to stay one step ahead of her husband too; her gentleness, sense of humor, and optimism all combined to sweep away any res
idual feelings of sorrow.

  “You’re done with the government, Akif Effendi,” she would chuckle, “so now you can concentrate on me!” “If it’s roses you’re after,” she would say as she toyed with his beard, “then you have to water the weeds as well!”

  But in spite of it all, she still felt sad when she watched her husband bent over the Qur’an and her eldest boy at his desk.

  “Why don’t you both teach me how to read?” she would yell at them, “so I can sit by you.”

  The way Ahmad neglected his appearance made her furious. She used to rub her cheeks as though she were about to slap them. “You’ve made your mother feel old,” she yelled in exasperation, “and ruined her reputation! Get your scruffy clothes properly ironed and your beard nicely trimmed. There are all kinds of celebrations going on in the world, and all you do is sit there pouring over those yellowing books of yours. How come you’ve let yourself go bald and your temples turn gray? You’ve made me feel so old, so old!”

  Ahmad would smile sarcastically at her. “You can slap your cheeks all you like,” he would reply to aggravate her. “But you’re in your forties, aren’t you?”

  The brutal frankness with which he told her the truth horrified her. “Shut your mouth,” she yelled at him, “and watch that insolent tongue of yours! Has any son ever before dared to mention his mother’s actual age?”

  For all that, her life was not without its sorrows. She was ill, or at least she thought she was, and yet no one around her showed any sympathy. As the years went by she became convinced that secret powers were at work and the only way she could be cured was through the zar ritual. Many times she had asked her husband for permission to hold such a ceremony, but Ahmad disliked the idea, even though he had no doubts about the existence of such spirits. At the time he could vividly recall his own experiences with the occult, something that had almost driven him mad. The mother had eventually despaired of ever convincing the two men and made do with attending zar rituals at the homes of friends.