Naguib Mahfouz - Midaq Alley (Chapter 6) lyrics

Chapter 6 Boss Kersha's thoughts were absorbed by a matter of importance, a matter of a kind that absorbed them practically every year, despite all the misery and vexation that it caused him. On the other hand, he was a man bereft of willpower, hashish having left him with too little of it to be of any use. Unlike the majority of traders in 'the stuff,' he was as badly off as any pauper, not because his trade was unremunerative but because he was (outside his own household) a spendthrift, who dissipated everything he made and scattered his money without reckoning in pursuit of the satisfaction of his animal pa**ions, and above all of a certain noxious malady. He left the cafe as the sun prepared to set, giving Sunqur no indi­ cation of where he was going. Wearing his black mantle, he walked leaning on his thick stick and moving at a slow and heavy pace. His murky eyes, almost invisible behind their thick lids, gave little indica­ tion that he could see the road properly. His heart was racing; the heart can race even when its owner is nearing fifty. The strange thing is that Boss Kersha had always lived a life of deviancy and had come, from long familiarity, to think of it as normal. He was a drug dealer accustomed to conduct his business in the shadows; he was an outcast with no ties to normal life; and he was a prey to perversion. His indul­ gence in his lusts kneW no limits, and neither regret nor remorse was likely to be forthcoming from him. On the contrary, he railed against the government for punishiJ_Ig his fellow dealers and cursed those who made that other appetite of his an object of derision and contempt. Of the government, he said, "It allows alcohol, which God has declared unlawful, and declares hashish, which He allows, unlawful! It protects bars that disseminate poisons and at the same time raids the tea-houses where they sell hashish, the medicine of hearts and minds." Sometimes he would shake his head in sorrow and say, ''W'hat's wrong with hashish? It's a comfort to the mind and an adornment to life, and in addition to that, it acts as a stimulus to procreation!" ********* Boss Kersha continued on his path until he found himself close to the last shop on his left after Azhar Street. His heart beat faster now. He ignored people's suspect greetings, and a dim, evil light shone in his dead eyes. With open mouth and slack lip, he approached the place and crossed its threshold. It was a small store, and at its front sat an old man behind a small desk, while leaning his back against the piled shelves stood a sales a**istant blessed with a radiantly youthful beauty. The moment the youth saw the man enter, he straightened his back and welcomed him with the smile of a suave salesman. For the first time, Boss Kersha's heavy lids rose and his eyes fixed themselves upon the youth. He greeted him quietly and the young man returned his greeting pleasantly, aware from the first instant that he was seeing this man for the third time in as many days and wondering why the man didn't buy what he wanted at one go. ****** Boss Kersha smiled or, more accurately, his mouth opened with a brief mechanical movement accompanied by a slight spasm of the eyelids, and he said slyly, "Thank you, my boy." And then, in a lower voice, "Praise God!" He paid and left the shop with the same excitement as he had entered it and set off in the direction of Azhar Street, which he crossed at a trot. Then he stood next to a tree opposite the store, blending into the now spreading shadows, one hand holding his stick, the other grasping the parcel, his eyes never moving from the store. The boy had returned to the position in which he had been standing when he had entered the shop, his arms crossed, and the man stared at him. He could make out litde more than a vague outline but his memory and his imagination helped to supply the details that his failing sight could not. He thought to himself, "He understood, I'm sure of it." He recalled how delicate, refined, and well-mannered the boy was, and then the sound of his voice as he murmured "Enjoy!" came delight­ fully back to his- ars and he sighed from the depths of his being. He remained where •he was for a short while longer, on fire with anxiety and tension, and then saw that the store was closing its doors. The old man and the boy now went their separate ways, the old man setting off in the direction of the gold market while the boy went toward Azhar Street. Boss Kersha moved slowly away from the tree and walked toward the boy. Two-thirds of the way along, the latter caught sight of him but paid him no attention and would have pa**ed him unconcernedly hy had not Boss Kersha gone up to him and said pleasantly, "Good evening, my boy." ****** Boss Kersha was distracted. He couldn't sit still on his seat for a minute at a time as he suffered the bitterness of victory in gloomy silence. With every few minutes that pa**ed, he would twist his neck, craning to see the bottom of the alley, and then return his gaze to the tokens box, resigning himself to patience, and saying to himsel"He will come. He'll come •as others of his sort came before," and the boy's face would appear before his eyes and he'd look at the chair that stood between him and the bench where Sheikh Darwish sat and see him, in his mind's eye, sitting there, happy to be with him. In his early days, he had been too concerned with concealment and too ashamed to dare to invite anyone like this youth to his cafe. Then he had been exposed and his exposure had become widely spoken of, so he had showed his true face and taken to practicing his sin openly. The dramas that took place between him and his wife were pa**ed on as scandals from one tongue to another and lapped up by the likes of Doctor Bushi and Umm Hamida, but he didn't give a danm. No sooner had the fire died down for a while than he would pour more oil on it with his disgraceful behav­ ior and it would flare up again, as though he had come, in the end, to enjoy notoriety and was running after it. Thus it was that he sat ill at ease, his polluted soul unable to find rest, as though he were sitting on a grill, his neck almost worn through from so much twisting. Noticing his agitation, Doctor Bushi said slyly to ei-Helw, "The signs are upon us!"At this moment,Sheikh Darwish suddenly emerged from his silence and started chanting: You yearn.for her; my souyet you it was who quit your trysting place with Rayya when your two tribes were camped not.for apart. Meet it is not that you should act so of your own accord And then feel sad when love's call sounds within your heart. "Ah, Mistress! Love is worth millions. A hundred thousand pounds have I spent on your love, Mistress, and yet it is but a paltry sum!" Eventually Doctor Bushi noticed Boss Kersha staring hard at the bottom of the alley and saw him straighten his posture, his face breaking into a smile. Then he looked expectantly at the entrance to the cafe, where the face of the young man soon appeared, casting a doubtful look with his dark eyes at the evening's throng.