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  “Remember you’re her younger brother,” his mother said.

  “But our reputation!”

  “I know my daughter inside out. She’s a paragon of good breeding,” said Zaynab with the calm that never deserted her.

  When Amir overstepped the mark his father, Surur Effendi, said, “Leave the matter to me.”

  Surur Effendi tended toward tolerance and at the time was wondering why his brother Amr’s son had preferred Iffat, Abd al-Azim Pasha Dawud’s daughter, over Gamila.

  “God will disappoint him. Isn’t our daughter prettier?” he said to his wife.

  “Isn’t he the son of the mad Radia?” Zaynab said scornfully.

  “My brother claims he is a Sufi but his desire to be close to the rich transcends his desire to be close to God.”

  The truth was that Gamila frightened the conservative families in the neighborhood, and they shrank from her despite her beauty until destiny brought her a newly arrived officer at the Gamaliya police station called Ibrahim al-Aswani. He was tall, slim, and dark skinned. He saw her and found her very attractive and, finding she had a good reputation, proposed to her without hesitation. Qasim knew only that his seducer and teacher had changed overnight, like an apple gone rotten. The girl he knew vanished and was overtaken by a sobriety that did not dissolve for some time. She was wedded to her groom at his house in Darb al-Gamamiz in a celebration brought to life by al-Sarafiya and the singer Anur.

  It was not long before the husband’s work took the new family away from Cairo. Years went by, and they rose and went to bed without the birth of a child. Surur Effendi died before he was able to see any grandchildren through Gamila. Meanwhile, matters transpired for Ibrahim al-Aswani. He was a Wafd sympathizer. His sentiments became known through the lack of zeal he displayed in executing his duties during the dictatorship and, in the end, he was dismissed. He had inherited twenty feddans so traveled to his family in Aswan and publicly joined the Wafd party. He was elected to the House of Representatives and remained a permanent member of the Wafd. After fertility treatment, Gamila gave birth to five sons, of whom Surur and Muhammad survived. Marriage transformed her frivolity into impressive composure, extraordinary gravity, and generous motherhood. Her ever-increasing corpulence became proverbial. Ibrahim al-Aswani was prone to agitation and mood changes, but she was an ocean capable of receiving high waves and surging emotions and absorbing them with patience and perseverance, so as to restore him to perfect calm and self-control. Thus, it was right that she should be the one to advise Matariya’s daughter, Amana, that, “A wife must be a tamer of wild beasts.”

  When the July Revolution came, Ibrahim al-Aswani was sure his political life was over. He retired to his land and devoted himself to farming. His sons, Surur and Muhammad, had joined the air force, but this branch of the family was destined for irrevocable extinction: Ibrahim al-Aswani was killed in a train crash in 1955 when he was fifty-five and Gamila only fifty; Surur’s plane was hit in the war of 1956 and he perished; and his brother, Muhammad, followed in the war of 1967. Gamila was delivered from her loneliness and sadness in 1970, dying of stomach cancer at the age of sixty-three. At the time of her death she resembled a branch without shoots on a family tree.

  Hazim Surur Aziz

  FROM THE VERY BEGINNING he was antisocial and reclusive. He would stand in front of the house, away from his brothers and sisters and cousins, and watch people coming and going from the alleys off the square. He never once entered his uncle Amr’s house. Amr would laugh and say to Surur, “Your son Hazim hates mankind.” He was good looking like his mother, small like Bahiga, and nearsighted to the point of blindness in his left eye. He was never seen laughing or excited. His brilliance became clear in Qur’an school and he was near to repeating the success story of his older brother Labib. He kept to himself and had no goal in life other than to succeed; his relatives from Ata and Dawud’s families did not even know he existed. His outstanding achievements meant his father did not spend a millieme on his education and he entered the faculty of engineering with a remission of fees fully deserved. It was clear to his brother Amir that he did not know the prime minister’s name, read the papers, or connect emotionally with any wave in the sea of events stirring the nation. “Do you think the world is just about study?” Amir asked him. But no one could draw him into a discussion. When Amir was martyred in his jihad, Hazim was perplexed, silent, and dejected. But he did not utter a word or shed a tear and it was not long before he resumed life as usual.

  He graduated as an engineer in 1938 but, because of his disability, did not head for the civil service. Instead, he found a better job at the building contractors of Dr. Muhammad Salama, who had been one of his teachers at school. The engineering professor was impressed by him and liked him. He regarded him as a model of intelligence and action, who steered clear of trouble. He would visit his teacher at his villa in Dokki and carry out various tasks, and there got to know Samiha, his daughter. Samiha was acceptable looking, but more importantly she was the daughter of his manager and teacher. He noticed the bey encouraged the acquaintance and this surprised him, given the man knew his humble origins and poverty. Nevertheless, he let vanity get the better of him until they were married and he had taken up residence in one of the apartments in a building the doctor owned and reckoned himself king of the world. The truth then began to emerge and he faced a situation that bespoke trouble: the bride’s nervous side. She soon revealed a personality that was impossible to get along with. She was a hurricane that blew up and spread for the feeblest reasons, sometimes no reason whatsoever. He had a constitution that naturally deflected lightning bolts, inherited from his mother, Sitt Zaynab. He lived by his head, not his heart. Thus, seated in his living room, wrapped in navy blue silk robes and submerged in an armchair, he said to himself: So be it. The marriage is equitable at any rate. It promised him a future free of the need to dream while he possessed the intelligence and ambition to exploit what advantages there might be. If Samiha had been a perfect bride, or even just average, she would have married someone from the upper class to which she belonged, or a diplomat. Her father had given her to him after much thought and deliberation and he must accept the gift with similar thought and deliberation. He also said to himself: If she’s the patient then I’m the doctor. And so he was.

  The major deaths in Surur and Amr’s families came in succession shortly before the Second World War: first Amr, then Surur, then Zaynab. Samiha tired of visiting Hazim’s mother, father, and siblings and decided in a moment of madness not to take part in the mourning ceremonies.

  He looked at her pleadingly. “But.…”

  His tone was loaded with meaning but she shot back vehemently, “I’m not going anywhere near that vermin-infested square. Nor do I want anyone from it coming to me.”

  He did not get angry and his face gave nothing away. Relations between him and his family were soon severed and he merged into her family, becoming a shadow of it and forgetting his roots. Yet his blind obedience did not guarantee him peace. Once, when he and his wife were alone after an evening in his apartment with his mother-in-law, her sister, and some of her relatives, she said to him, “I’m not impressed. You were too quiet. What few words escaped you were meaningless.”

  “Too much talking gives me a headache and no interesting subjects came up,” he apologized with the utmost decorum and delicacy.

  “So if we’re not talking about engineering it’s nonsense?” she bellowed.

  He obliged her with a smile but she flew into a rage and roared the cruelest insults. She grabbed an expensive vase and hurled it at the wall. It shattered and the shards showered onto the embroidered sofa cover. He looked at her and smiled apprehensively then said affectionately, “Nothing in the world is worth you getting this angry about.”

  But the apartment also witnessed embraces and parenthood, and she gave birth to Husni and Adham. Hazim rose through the company, relying on perseverance and aptitude, and Muhammad Bey Salama relied on
him increasingly as the days passed. Then, after the bey’s death, he took his place as Samiha’s proxy. He added to the capital with his own savings and, under him, the company prospered even more than it had previously. He built a villa in Dokki and his family moved there. He digested all Samiha’s outbursts with extraordinary heroism, though some were difficult to stomach. For instance, Muhammad Bey Salama had been a member of the Wafd party whereas Hazim was indifferent to politics but, confronted with Samiha’s zeal, would profess Wafdism in the home at least. His cool announcements were not, however, enough. He returned to the apartment one day to find a picture of al-Nahhas hanging in place of the picture of his father, Surur Effendi. He looked in silence without daring to comment. “I’m superstitious about pictures of the dead. This is a picture of the nation’s leader,” Samiha said. He said nothing, even when Muhammad Bey Salama and al-Nahhas died and their pictures remained in their places. On the day the family moved to the new villa she laughed loudly and said, “Praise be to God, you fool. We’ve raised you from the bottom to the top.”

  “Praise God for everything,” he said submissively.

  She frowned. “Don’t forget the gratitude you owe me.”

  “You are generous and blessed,” he replied with usual cool.

  When the July Revolution came he worried his feigned Wafdism had spread beyond the walls of the house, but he was not exposed to any trouble. He assiduously applauded the revolution in the workplace while berating it at home in front of Samiha, his eyes scrutinizing his surroundings and seeking refuge in God. “Have you heard of a country ruled by a group of constables?” she would say in exasperation at every opportunity.

  He would interrupt and whisper in her ear, “Be careful of the servants … the walls … the air.…”

  How Samiha delighted at the Tripartite Aggression, and how her hopes were dashed. On June 5 she locked herself in her room and began to dance. When news arrived of the leader’s death she trilled until Hazim stood up and, for the first time, shouted, “Have mercy on me!”

  The company was nationalized but the rest of his family’s acquisitions were left untouched. During Sadat’s era, Hazim reached his true zenith: he opened an engineering office and became a millionaire. Samiha said of the new leader, “His face may be black but his heart is white.” Yet the defeat she suffered at the hands of her son Husni was probably more savage than her political defeat. From the outset she tried to control her children as she did their father but failed completely. Husni broke all barriers and shackles whereas Adham lived up to her dreams after he created a life for himself away from everyone. Samiha found no one on whom to vent her anger but Hazim. “If it weren’t for your weakness and idiocy things would have been different,” she said with contempt. In old age she fell victim to depression and was forced to convalesce for a month at a sanatorium in Helwan. Hazim remained healthy despite developing diabetes and was indeed rather pleased to be living with a sick wife; indeed he had long wished her dead, especially after the death of his patron. Strange dreams would entice him; he would see her the victim of a car accident or chronic illness, or drowning in the Mediterranean, or … or…

  But he stopped having the dreams. The house was deserted when she was in the sanatorium, and he believed he had realized his eternal dream of success and fortune.

  Hamid Amr Aziz

  From the beginning he was an irregular plant in the family’s soil. Amr Effendi probably did not slave as hard in raising any of his children as he did Hamid. He liked playing and fighting, acquired a wealth of vocabulary from the lexicon of street talk, and was routinely aggressive with his siblings, despite ranking sixth among them. As a result, he stumbled through Qur’an school and primary and secondary school and often returned to the old house with a torn gallabiya or a bloody nose, risking confrontation with his older brother, Amer, who had no qualms about beating him from time to time. Amr Effendi, on the other hand, made do with chastisements, gentle advice, and threats, while Radia endlessly resorted to spells and incantations and scattered vows about saints’ tombs on his account. He harbored wicked intentions toward the girls in the family—like Gamila and Bahiga, his uncle’s daughters, and Dananir, his aunt Rashwana’s daughter—but his bad reputation put their mothers on guard. He also stood out in the family with his heavy build and large distinct features, which granted him manhood early. His greatest dream was to lead a gang like the celebrated strongmen who brought misery to the ancient quarter.

  When, after several attempts, he attained the higher certificate, Mahmud Ata al-Murakibi advised his father to cut the path short and enroll him at the police academy: “It’s the solution I’ve found for my son Hasan.”

  Amr Effendi welcomed the advice and Mahmud Ata promised to use his unassailable powers of intercession as an important noble to overcome any obstacles. Thus, Hamid entered the college the same year as his cousin Hasan. Mahmud made known his wish that Hamid marry his eldest daughter, Shakira, and Amr was delighted, for it would cement his relationship with the Murakibi family in the same way his son Amer had cemented his relationship with the Dawud family. The marriage paved the way for a grandeur his withered branch of the family had never dreamed of and enforced his position on the towering tree; he was honored and pleased. Hamid was happy too, even though his fiancée’s appearance did not satisfy his hunger for beautiful things. Only Radia was annoyed.

  “What a lamentable choice,” she commented.

  “Give praise to God, dear woman,” said Amr.

  “Praise God, the only one we praise for loathsome things!” she retorted angrily.

  “Happy houses are founded on roots and morals,” said the man hopefully.

  “And money! How frustrating!” she said with contempt.

  Surur Effendi informed his brother of his displeasure and began inwardly interpreting the matter as Amr’s indomitable desire to cling to the coattails of rich relatives; Mahmud Ata had only chosen a groom like Hamid for his daughter because he was conscious deep down of her insipidity and that if he didn’t find someone humble, who would be fettered by the favor, nobody would come forward except a freeloader eager to get hold of her money and take advantage of her and her loot. When Sitt Zaynab accused Radia of not wishing them well, Surur said to her, “It’s not just Radia. On the outside the deal makes it look like Hamid is the beneficiary, but in fact the real beneficiaries are al-Murakibi and his daughter, who couldn’t find a groom to oblige. My brother’s a good man, but gullible.”

  One of Amr’s daughters was not pleased. When Sadriya heard the news she commented, “My brother’s marrying a man!”

  When the 1919 Revolution came, Hamid was in his final year at the academy. He inclined to the revolution with all his heart and was accused of spurring on the strike, arraigned, and put back to the first year. Everyone was competing to make sacrifices so Amr Effendi was not especially upset, but praised God his son had not been expelled and thrown into the street. By the time he graduated as an officer, Mahmud Bey’s standing had risen, having pledged allegiance to the Crown, and he was able to have Hamid admitted into the interior ministry’s central offices with his son Hasan. Shakira was wedded to him soon after, without any real outlay on his part. He moved from the old house in Bayt al-Qadi to the mansion on Khayrat Square, where he and his wife would occupy a small wing on the private middle floor belonging to Mahmud’s family.

  It was without question a revolutionary migration: the boy from the alley and its stagnant corners found himself from one day to the next in a tall mansion surrounded by a lush garden and adorned with objets d’art, statues, and sumptuous furniture, where the sweet, melodious language of hanems rang out, the tables were embellished with the finest food, and the air was scented with piety and culture, without a trace of Radia’s mysteries. Hamid also found himself in a cage guarded by a tyrant, Mahmud Ata al-Murakibi, and a hanem of immense sweetness and beauty, Nazli Hanem. As for his cousin and life partner, she was the image of her father in terms of sturdy build and a repli
ca of her mother in terms of culture and piety. He could not change his nature, however, having dealt with gangsters since youth, and would behave like a police officer with them when they went too far. It was impossible for love to breed in his little world. All his life he knew only transient pleasure. From the first weeks of marriage he revealed his true colors in both word and deed. He did not, of course, forget the cage and its two guards; he was more in awe of Mahmud Bey than of his own father and stood before him as he would the august heads at the interior ministry. He curbed his unruliness as much as he could and tried to teach himself to be content with his situation, but habit compels and the tongue betrays. The bride was alarmed and whispered to her mother, “He is very vulgar—the way he eats, drinks, and talks.” The hanem was mistress of the house in the true sense of the word. She asked for wisdom and patience and told her daughter, “None of this prevents him from being a man of virtue.”

  She was a good mediator between the two parties, and no one knew a thing about what went on in the new wing. But the hanem soon encountered a new problem: Radia and Shakira’s mutual loathing. Radia could not conceal her feelings and Shakira did not disguise hers. Nazli Hanem and Radia were genuine friends, but deep down Nazli believed Radia was dangerous. “Be careful,” she said to her daughter. “Your mother-in-law knows all about magic and its secrets and the saints. I believe the stories of her fraternizing with ifrit. Treat her with all due respect and courtesy.”

  She would entreat Radia too, saying, “Forgive my daughter. For the sake of our friendship, wipe her mistakes on my face instead.”