Naguib Mahfouz - Midaq Alley (Chapter 28) lyrics

Chapter 28 Uncle Kamel was sitting on his chair at the threshold to his shop, sunk in drowsiness, his head bent to meet his chest, the fly whisk on his lap. Feeling something crawl over his bald patch, he awoke and moved his hand automatically to brush off what he thought must be an insect. It fell instead on a human hand. Uncle Kamel grasped this angrily and let out a grumbling moan, lifting his head to see who the unfunny joker who had woken him from his deli­ cious nap might be, and beheld Abbas el-Helw. Hardly able to believe his eyes, he stared at him in stupefaction until joy started to turn his round and shiny face an even darker shade of red than normal. He made to get up but the young man wouldn't allow him. Instead he put his arms around him and they embraced warmly, el-Helw asking him with great emotion, "How are you, Uncle Kamel?' 'And how are you, Abbas?" responded the other, with joyful earnest­ ness. "Welcome, welcome, welcome! rve missed you so much, you rascal!" El-Helw stood in front of him, smiling, while the other regarded him with devoted eyes. He was wearing a white shirt and gray pants and was hatless, his hair nearly combed. He looked elegant, personable, healthy, and ruddy-cheeked. Uncle Kamel gazed at him in admiration and said in his fluting voice, "Heavens above! You look wonderful, you Tommy!" "Thank you!" said Abbas el-Helw with the sort of laugh that comes from a joyous heart. "From now on it's not just Sheikh Darwish who's going to be gabbling away in English." ******* He was expecting the man to say something but Uncle Kamel sought refuge in an oppressive silence, averting his eyes as though wanting to hide them. The young man looked at him with concern, and for the first time noticed the gloom and despondency expressed in his face. Uncle Kamel wasn't one of those who are good at hiding the workings of their souls, and his inner feelings appeared nakedly there. EI-Helw's brows immediately knitted and he was seized by anxiety. Closing the box and returning it to his pocket, he looked closely at his friend, a**ailed by a fear that stopped his heart and filled it with the apprehension that his joy and high spirits were about to be extinguished by some unkuown and unexpected disappointtnent­ an apprehension that brought with it acute pain. Nevertheless, his eyes detecting the warning signs of grief in the face of the embarra**ed, dumbstruck man and, impatient with Uncle Kamel's unresponsive­ ness, he asked him suspiciously, "What's wrong, Uncle Kamel? You're behaving strangely. What's made you change? Why won't you look at me?" Slowly, the man raised his face and gazed at him with mournful, gloomy eyes and he opened his mouth to speak. His tongue, however, refused to obey him. Abbas's suspense grew unbearable and his heart felt intimations of the coming catastrophe. Aware that despair was extinguishing the lights of his joy and strangling his hopes, he exclaimed brusquely, "What's on your mind, Uncle Kamel? What do you want to say? I'm sure you have something to tell me. In fact, it looks like you've got lots and lots on your mind, so don't-make me suffer with your hesitations. Is it Hamida? I can see it's Hamida. Say what you want. Don't torture me with your silence. Spit it out." The man swallowed and said in a barely audible voice, "She isn't here. She didn't come back. She's disappeared. No one knows what's happened to her." El-Helw listened to him with stupefaction and terror. The words engraved themselves on his consciousness one after the other but a pall of fog and dust had descended over his understanding, as though he'd been transported suddenly to the world of the fever-stricken. "I don't understand," he said in a shaking voice. "VVhat did you say? She's disappeared? What do you mean?" Uncle Kamel replied sadly, "Be brave, Abbas. God only knows how sad I am for you and I've been feeling bad about you from the moment it happened, but what conld I do? Hamida disappeared and no one knows what's happened to her. She went out one day as she always did, in the late afternoon, and never came back. They looked for her in all her favorite places but it was no use. We made a report at the Gamaliya police station and we looked in Qasr el-Aini Hospital but we couldn't find a trace of her." Abbas's face took on a grave expression, and he remained for a while neither moving, speaking, nor blinking an eyelid. There was no way out. Hadn't his heart felt intimations of the coming disaster? It had, and now he had to believe it. It was crazy! What had the man said? Hamida had disappeared? Could a human being disappear, like a needle or a c\'in? If he'd said that she'd died or got married, he might have found a term or end for his inner turmoil. Despair, after all, is easier to bear than doubt, confusion, and torment. VVhat was he to do now, though? Despair was a comfort for which he had no appetite whatsoever, and all of a sudden he snapped out of his trance, aroused now, his limbs shaking, and, fixing Uncle Kamel with reddened eyes, shouted at him, "Hamida's disappeared? What did you do? You made a report to the Gamaliya police station and you looked in Qasr el-Aini? Thank you so much. And then what? Everything was finished so you went back to your shop and her mother set off again to knock on brides' doors and that was it for Hamida, and for me too. What are saying, man? Tell me what you know. What do you know about her disappearance? How did she disappear? And when did it happen?" Seeing how angry his friend was, Uncle Kamel became very upset and told him in a sorrowful voice, "It's been about two months since she disappeared, my boy. It was a terrible and scary thing and gave everybody a fright. Lord knows we spared no effort looking and mak­ ing inquiries but there was nothing to be done." Abbas struck one palm against the other in frustration. His face red with anger, his eyes bulging even more than normal, he said, as though to himself, "About two months! Dear God, that's a long time. There can't be any hope of finding her now. Is she dead? Did she drown? Was she kidnapped? Who should I go to to find out? Tell me what people are saying." Uncle Kamel looked at him sadly and tenderly and said, "There were many different opinions but they decided in the end that she'd probably been the victim of an accident. Now they don't say anything:" "Of course!" exclaimed the young man with a moan. "Of course! She's not one of their daughters or one of their relatives. Even her mother isn't really her mother. What can have happened to her? I had the hap­ piest dreams in the world during those two months. Have you ever noticed how happily a person dreams when unhappiness is just waiting for him-mockingly, tauntingly, hiding his fate in its cruel hands-to wake? Maybe I was relaxing in the evening while she was being crushed beneath the wheel of a car or bumping around at the bottom of the Nile. Two months, Harnida! There is no strength and no power but in God!" He jumped suddenly to his feet and said, witheringly, "Good day to you!" "What are you going to do?" Uncle Kamel asked him urgently, and he replied listlessly, "I shall go and see her mother." As he left the shop with sluggish steps, he thought of how he had been almost flying for joy when he arrived and how he was now leaving devastated and broken. He bit his lip, his legs refused to move, and grief had its way with him. Turning toward his friend, he saw that he was looking at him with his eyes full of tears. Losing all inhibition and without realizing what he was doing, el-Helw ran to him and, throwing himself upon his breast in despair, burst into sobs like a child. Did he have no doubts as to why she had really disappeared? Did he not suffer through the suspicions and distrust that lovers usually experience in such situations? The truth is, though the ghost of a doubt did indeed arise in his mind, he paid no attention to it and it dissipated. He was extremely trusting by nature. He gave everybody the benefit of the doubt without thinking. His good-heartedness made him one of that minority of people who spontaneously make up excuses for others and choose the least damaging of interpretations for the most horrible of acts. Love had done nothing to change his nature in this. On the contrary, it may have grounded and strengthened it, so that the insinuations of jealousy and whisperings of doubt found no receptive ear in him. He had felt for Hamida a great love, which his good-natured instincts had then blessed with serene confidence, and he was convinced, moreover, that his girl was the most perfect girl in the world (of which he had seen hardly anything worth mentioning). Doubt, therefore, did not affect him, or at least, that ghost of a doubt that had arisen in his mind could find no room in his heart for its games. He went and met her mother the same day but she told him nothing new, repeating in a voice choking with tears what Uncle Kamel had said and claiming that the girl had never ceased thinking about him and had waited for his return with extraordinary patience. Her lies only exacerbated his sorrows and he left her as he had gone to her, his heart broken, his thoughts restless, his soul in torment, and he departed the alley to go wherever his heavy feet might lead him. The late afternoon suulight had touched the crown of the day with a saffron light. It was that hour at which he had been accustomed in times past to watch his beloved appear as she set off on her daily stroll and walked the length of the street unconscious of her surroundings. She arose before his mind's eye in her black milaya with her well-turned body and huge, beloved eyes. The memory of their last farewell on the landing flashed before him and he sighed from the depths of his being, gasping, in sorrow and despair, "Where can she be now? What is she doing? And what has God done with her? Is she still on this earth, or is she lying in a pau­ per's grave?" Dear God, how had his heart been so unfeeling that it had had no inkling throughout that period that anything was amiss, had felt no presentiment? How could he have yielded to the tranquillity of his dreams and the ecstasy of his hopes only to then return to his work oblivious of what the future held in store? The crowds woke him from his stupor and he became aware of the street. It was Mouski Street, her favorite because of its people and its stores. Everything about it was just as it had been, except for her. She had disappeared, as though she had not, only yesterday, filled the world with joy. A desire to weep overcame him but this time he did not yield. Weeping on Uncle Kamel's chest had brought him comfort, relaxed his nerves, and left with him a deep, cahn sorrow; now it was time for him to think about what he was going to do. Should he make the rounds of the police stations and Qasr el-Aini Hospital? What, though, would be the point of that? Should he wander the streets of Cairo calling her name? Should he knock on the doors of the houses one by one? God, how impotent and incapable he felt himself to be! Should he then go back to Tell el-Kebir and try to leave all this behind him? Why should he go back? Why should he insist on burdening himself with the hardships of exile? Why labor and struggle and make money? Life without Hamida was a heavy burden that had no meaning. All the emotions in his heart had faded away leaving only a la**itude that made it exhausting to breathe and a lethargy that k**ed feeling. He was close to that debilitating state in which life seems to be a dreary void enclosed by towering walls of despair. He had lived by instinct, unaware of whatever might lie behind that, obedient to the first laws of life, and thus had found in love its essential meaning and eternal value, but when he lost that, he lost the ties that connected him to life and plummeted, convulsing, like an atom spinning aimlessly through space: Were it not that life, which gulps down even choking lumps of pain, were sk**ed at seducing its children into clinging onto it even in its darkest moments, he would have ended his and had done. As it was, he continued on his way, confused, with no goal, and feeling indeed at that moment that he would never have one again. Despite this, he remained suspended by a thin thread of hope at which his consciousness plucked. Catching sight of the girls from the workshop coming down the street toward him on their way home, he found him- self walking toward them and barring their path. They stopped in surprise. They remembered him immediately, and without the slight­ est hesitation he said to them, "Good evening, girls. Excuse me, but do you remember your friend Hamida?" "We all remember her," one of them responded, "and we remember how she suddenly disappeared and we haven't seen her siuce that day." In a grief-stricken voice, he asked, "And you know nothing about her disappearance?" Another girl responded, a crafty look on her face, 'We don't know anythiug for sure, except what I told her mother when she came to see me the day she disappeared. !just said we'd seen her a few times iu the com­ pany of an effendi, and they were walkiug together on Mouski Street." He stared into the face of his interlocutor in stupefaction and somethiug in him shook. "You saw her in the company of an effendi?" he asked. His appearance had its effect on the girls, the sly, mocking looks vanished from their eyes, and they forced themselves to look serious. The girl who had spoken said gently, "Yes, sir." "And you told her mother this?" "Yes." He thanked them tersely and continued up the street, certain they'd make him their topic of conversation the rest of the way home, perhaps laughing often at the gullible boy who'd gone away to Tell e!-Kebir to make a fortune for his beloved while she chose another over him and ran away with him. He had indeed been gullible! Perhaps everyone in the alley had gossiped about how gullible he was, and Uncle Kamel had taken pity on him and hidden the truth from him, as had Hamida's mother. But what else could they have done? Still sunk in his trance, he said to himself, "This is what my heart told me from the first instant." This wasn't true, since doubt had barely touched him, but in his tribulation he scarcely could remember anything but that light touch. The next instant, though, he moaned and asked himself, clenching and unclenching his hands spasmodi­ cally, "How, dear God, am I to make sense of it? Did Hamida really run away with another man? Who can believe that? So she isn't dead, she didn't have an accident, and they made a big mistake in searching for her in the police stations and at Qasr el-Aini Hospital. It never occurred to them that she was sleeping happily and peacefully in the arms of the man who abducted her. She'd promised him, though, and given him reason to hope. Had she been deceiving him? Or had she just been deluding herself in thinking she was attracted to him? How had she got to know this 'effendi'? When had she come to love him? And what diabolical daring had seduced her into running away with him? His face was drawn, his limbs cold, and a dark, grave look appeared in his eyes, though from time to time they would flash. A thought occurred to him and he raised his head to look at the houses on either side of the street, gazing at their windows and asking him­ self, "In which one does she lie now, next to her man?" The haze of indecision cleared, to be replaced by fiery anger and voracious hatred. His heart shrank and twisted under the pressure of jealousy's cruel hands, albeit the disappointment, generated by the loss of hope and the gleeful descent of his idol into the dirt, was worse than the jealousy itself. Conceit and pride are jealousy's fuel and feed its flame. Neither particularly characterized him but he was a person of great hopes and dreams. Now his hopes had withered, his dreams were shattered, and he exploded with rage, and the rage, coming to him from he knew not where, helped him, for it rescued him from that dull, speechless misery and consoled him with the thought of one day taking revenge, even if only by spitting on her or showing his contempt. In fact, in that hellish hour of grief and fury, the idea of revenge possessed him, and he felt like plunging a sharp knife into her treacherous heart. Now he could understand the secret of her regular afternoon outings: she had been setting off to parade herself before the wolves of the street. She must, though, have gone mad, utterly mad, over this effendi, or she would never have preferred whoring with him to marriage with himself. He bit his lip in pain and distress at this thought and turned to go back, sick now of walking and being on his own. His hand happened to touch the box containing the necklace in his pocket and he gave a mirthless, sarcastic laugh like a cry of rage dressed up as hilarity. Would that he could strangle her with this golden chain! He recalled how he had stood in the j**eler's shop running his eyes over his wares, his heart almost leaping from his chest with glee and happiness. The memory pa**ed over his heart like a dying breeze, but the breeze was met by the blast of a blazing fire, and turned into a sirocco.