Naguib Mahfouz - Midaq Alley (Chapter 18) lyrics

Chapter 18 Umm Hamida ran to her apartment and in the short distance between it and the warehouse her mind began to spin with wild dreams. She fouud Hamida standing in the middle of the room combing her hair, examined her with gimlet eyes, as though seeing her for the first time, or as though seeking to discover the woman who had befuddled the senses of a man of the distinction, age, and wealth of Master Salim Elwan, and discovered an emotion close to envy. Without doubt, she believed that of every piaster the expected marriage would bring the girl she would receive half and of every luxury Hamida tast­ ed she too would enjoy a goodly portion, and yet she could not rid herself of a certain strange sensation, which diluted her pleasure and greed. "Can fate really have such happiness in store for a girl like that, with neither father nor mother?" she thought to hersel£ And she asked herself again, in amazement, "Hasn't Master Salim ever heard her hor­ rible voice when she screams at the neighbors? Hasn't he watched any of her fights? Alas, poor men-what the flesh of women can do to them!" Then she addressed her, her eyes never leaving her, saying "You must have been born on the Night of Power and the Feast of el-Hussein!" Hamida stopped combing her lustrous black hair and asked her, laughing, "Why? What are you talking about? Has something happened?" ****** The woman couldn't bear to wait, so she stood up, wrapped her milaya around her, and left the room, saying, "I'm going to ask his advice and then I'll be right back." The girl saw her off with an angry look. It occurred to her that she hadn't finished combing her hair so she started pa**ing the comb through it with automatic strokes, her eyes glazing as they contemplated the glorious world of her dreams. Then she rose and went over to the window, peered for a while through the slats of the shutters-at the great warehouse, and returned to her seat. Her turning of her back on Abbas el-Helw did not come out of the blue, as her mother thought. True, she'd once believed that her destiny and his were linked forever. She'd given him her lips, with all that that implied by way of pa**ion and love. She'd engaged him in talk of the future as though it was theirs to share and she'd promised him that she would visit el-Hussein to pray for him, which she had in fact done (usually, she only visited him following a fight, to pray for her enemy's ill fortune). And she had waited, hoping that this would bring her the happiness she expected. What was more, el-Helw had raised her status from that of a mere girl to that of a young woman with a fiance, so that Umm Hamida could no longer take hold of her side tresses and say, gloating over her spinsterhood, ''rll cut these off if you ever get engaged!" And yet she had been sleeping by the rim of a volcano, and from the start had failed to experience complete tran­ quillity. She had discovered within herself something unstable, some­ thing that sought an outlet. Abbas el-Helw had indeed provided some fuel for her vaulting ambition but el-Helw himself was not the man she wanted and this had bothered her from their first meeting. She didn't know exactly what her husband ought to be like, but el-Helw, at any rate, hadn't won her heart. All the same, she hadn't surrendered to her apprehensions without a struggle. She had tried to convince herself that perhaps intimacy would pave the way for a life that she had never dreamed of, but then she couldn't stop the thinking, and thinking is a two-edged sword. "What, I wonder," she'd asked herself, "is this happiness that he's promising me?" Might it not be that she was exaggerating it in her dreams? The boy had said that he'd return rich and open a shop on Mouski Street, but was that any guarantee that her life would be any easier than it was now? And was that really what her wild soul aspired to? Such thoughts, increasing her confusion and strengthening her feeling that the youth was not the man she was wait­ ing for, had made her start to realize that her aversion to him was too great to be softened by intimacy. What, though, was she to do? Was she not bound to him forever? Ah God, why hadn't she learned a sk**, like her young girlfriends? If she'd acquired a sk**, she could wait and then marry as she wished, or not marry at all. Thus her enthusiasm had begun to wane and her feelings to cool, and she'd reverted to the way she had been before their meetings had jolted her and beguiled her hopes. Such was her state when Master Salim asked for her hand, and it was because of this that she was able to reject her first betrothed without hesitation, having rejected him in her heart long before. Her mother wasn't away long. She returned from Master Radwan's house with a serious face and said, as she removed her milaya, "Master Radwan absolutely refuses to agree." Then she told her what had transpired between Master Radwan and herself and how he'd told her, comparing the two men, that el-Helw I was a young man and Master Salim an old one, that el-Helw was from her cla** and Master Salim from another, and that the marriage of a man like Master Salim to a girl like her daughter could only cause dif­ ficulties and problems that might well redound to the girl's discredit. She said that he'd concluded by saying, "El-Helw is a good young man and he has gone away in search of a living because of his hopes for this marriage. He must then be given precedence and you must wait. If in the end, God forbid, he returns empty-handed, no one can dispute your right to marry her to whOmever you choose.'' As the girl listened to her, her eyes flashed, and when the woman had done she cried in a harsh voice rendered ugly by her anger, "Master Radwan is a Friend of God, or so he wants everyone to think, so when he gives an opinion, he pays no attention to other people's interests because all he's interested in is playing up to the other Friends of God like him. My happiness doesn't mean a thing to him. Perhaps the reading of the Fatiha made•the difference, which is what it's supposed to to a man who grows his beard double-lengtb. So don't ask Master Radwan who I should marry; ask him to explain a verse or a chapter from the Qur'an to you if you want. But I swear to God, if he were really as good a man as you all say he is, God wouldn't have taken all his children from him!" Shocked, the woman said with pained disapproval, "Is that any way to speak about the most noble and virtuous of men?" Furiously, hevoice warning of evil things to come, the girl shouted, "Call him virtuous if you must, and a Friend of God if you have to, and a prophet too if it pleases you, but he will never get in the way of my happiness!" The woman was pained to hear Master Radwan treated with such disrespect, though not because she supported his opinion, which she actually disagreed with in her heart. However, impelled by a desire to make the girl even angrier and take revenge on her for her bad temper, she insisted, "But you're engaged." Harnida laughed sarcastically and said, ':A girl's free up to the moment she enters into the contract and the only .:.:ontract between him and me right now is some words and a platter of basbousa." ' nd the Fatiha?" "To forgive is divine." "It's a great sin to go back on your word after you've read the Fatiha.'' "Soak it and drink the water!" the girl yelled dismissively. "You little witch!" said the woman, striking her breast with her hand. Natieing the first signs of surrender in her mother's eyes, Hamida said, laughing, "Why don't you marry him yourself?" Overcome with laughter, the woman slapped one hand upon the other, then said sarcastically, ''You're right to trade the pan of basbousa for the pan of cracked wheat...." Hamida looked at her challengingly and said angrily, "On the contrary, I've turned down a young man and chosen an old one." Umm Harnida gave a resounding laugh and muttered, "It's the old birds that have the fat!" Then she sat herself happily down on the couch and, forgetting all about her false objections, pulled a cigarette out of the packet, lit it, and smoked it with an enjoyment the like of which shehadn'tfeltfor along time. Hamida watched her with annoy­ ance and said, "I swear you're twice as happy vvith the new groom as I am and all your objections are just bossiness and stubbornness and because you like to make me mad, God forgive you." Her mother gave her a deep look and said in meaningful tones, "When a man like Master Salim marries a young girl, he's really marrying her whole family. Just like the Nile-when it overflows, it floods the whole country. Understand? Or did you think you'd march off to your new palace straight from the wedding and leave me to the charity of Mistress Saniya Afifi and other do-gooders like her?" Hamida, who had begun to braid her hair, guffawed and said with affected haughtiness, "To the charity of Mistress Saniya Afifi and Mistress Hamida Hanim!" "Naturally, naturally ... you sidewalk foundling, you daughter of an unknown father!" The girl kept laughing and said, "Unknown ... whatever! Plenty of fathers are known and aren't worth a thing." Late in the morning of the following day, Umm Hamida set off for the warehouse in a good mood, her mind at rest, to read the Fatiha once again. However, she didn't find Master Salim sitting in his usual place, so she asked after him and they t,',ld her that he was late com­ ing in that day, so she returned to the house ill at ease and full of alarm. At midday, the news went round the alley that the night before Master Salim had suffered an angina attack and was lying in his bed between life and d**h. Everyone in the alley was sorry, but the news fell on the house of Umm Hamida like a thunderbolt.