This excerpt from Alaa Al Aswany's novel The Yacoubuian Building gives a different perspective on the events of the morning when Taha left for his exam. It corresponds to this movie scene.
She started making money and wearing nice clothes and her mother was pleased with her and was comforted by the money that she took from her and tucked into the front of her dress, uttering warm blessings for her after doing so. Listening to these, Busayna was overwhelmed with a mysterious, malign desire to start giving her mother clear hints about her relationship with Talal, but her mother would ignore any such messages. Busayna would then go to such lengths with her hints that the mother's refusal to acknowledge them became obvious and extremely fragile, at which point Busayna would feel some relief, as though she had snatched away her mother's mask of false innocence and confirmed her complicity in the crime.
As time pa**ed her rendezvous with Tala! in the storeroom had an impact on her that she would never have imagined. She found herself no longer able to perform the morning prayer (the only one of the required prayers that she had performed) because inwardly she was ashamed to face "Our Lord," because she felt herself unclean, however much she performed the ablutions. She started having nightmares and would start up from her sleep terrified. She would go for days depressed and melancholy and one day when she went with her mother to visit the tomb of El Hussein, no sooner had she entered the sanctuary and found herself surrounded by the incense and lights and felt that deeply-rooted hidden presence that fills the heart than she burst into a long, unexpected bout of weeping.
On the other hand, since retreat was not an option and she could not stand her feelings of sin, she started to resist the latter fiercely. She took to thinking of her mother's face as she told her that she was working as a servant in people's houses. She would repeat to herself what Fifi had said about the world and how it worked and often she would contemplate the shop's rich, chic, women customers and ask herself with spiteful pa**ion, "I wonder how many times that woman surrendered her body to get to where she is now?"
This violent resistance to her feelings of guilt left a legacy of bitterness and cruelty. She stopped trusting people or making excuses for them. She would often think (and then seek forgiveness) that God had wanted her to fall. If He had wanted otherwise, He would have created her a rich woman or delayed her father's d**h a few years (and what could have been easier for Him?). Little by little, her resentment extended to include her sweetheart Taha himself A strange feeling that she was stronger than he was by far would creep over her-a feeling that she was mature and understood the world, while he was just a dreamy, naive boy. She started to get annoyed at his optimism about the future and speak sharply to him, mocking him by saying, "You think you're Abd el Halim Hafez? The poor, hard-working boy whose dreams will come true if he struggles?"
At first, Taha didn't understand the reason for this bitterness. Then her sarcasm at his expense started to provoke him and they would quarrel, and when he asked her once to stop working for Talal because he had a bad reputation, she looked at him challengingly and said, “At your service, sir. Give me the two hundred and fifty pounds that I earn from Talal and you'll have the right to stop me showing my face to anyone but you." He stared at her for a moment as though he did not understand and then his anger erupted and he shoved her on the shoulder. She screamed insults at him and threw at him an outfit in silver he'd bought for her. In the depths of her heart, she craved to rip her relationship with him to pieces so that she might be freed of that painful feeling of sin that tortured her as soon as she set eyes on him, yet it was not in her power to leave him completely. She loved him and they had a long history full of beautiful moments. The instant she saw him sad or anxious, she would forget everything and envelop him in genuine, overflowing tenderness as though she was his mother. However bad the quarrels between them got, she would make up with him and go back to him, and their affair was not without rare and wonderful times. Very soon, however, the gloom would return.
Busayna spent the whole day blaming herself for her cruelty to him that morning when he had been in need of a word of encouragement from her as he set off for a test that she knew he had been waiting for for many years. How cruel that had been of her! What would it have hurt her to encourage him with a word and a smile? If only she had spent a little time with him! After work she found herself anxious to meet him, so she went to Tawfikiya Square and sat waiting for him on the wall of the flowerbed where they usually met each evening. Night had fallen and the square was crowded with pa**ersby and vendors; sitting on her own she was subjected to a lot of hara**ment but she kept waiting for him for almost half an hour . When he didn't come, she thought he must be angry with her because she had put him off that morning, so she got up and climbed the stairs to his room on the roof. The door was open and Taha's mother was sitting there alone, anxiety showing on her aged face. The mother hugged her and kissed her, then sat her down next to her on the bench and said, "I'm very scared, Busayna. Taha left for the exam in the morning and still hasn't come back. Pray God he's all right!"