Children of the Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
“Maybe you want to get along without working. That would have to be at the expense of others.”
Adham persevered in his silence.
“Or maybe you want to get along without working and without hurting anybody!” He cackled. “It’s a puzzle, slave boy!”
“Spite the devil and go home,” shouted Umaima angrily.
Idris’ shrill wife called him home, and he left as he had come, singing, “Strange world, O God, strange world!”
Umaima turned pleadingly to her husband. “Please avoid arguing with him at any cost.”
“He just appears. I have no idea where he comes from.”
Silence fell and soothed their irritation. Again Umaima spoke up tenderly. “I know in my heart that I’ll make this hut into a mansion like the one we left, right down to the garden and nightingales, and our child will be happy and secure there.”
Adham got up with a smile she could not make out in the dark and brushed the dirt from his clothes. “ ‘Sweet pickles! Get your cucumbers here!’ And the sweat pours off me, the children harass me, the ground burns my feet—all for a few coins.”
She followed him into the hut. “But someday we’ll be rich and happy.”
“If you had to work, you wouldn’t have time to dream.”
As they lay down on their straw pallet, Umaima said, “Isn’t God mighty enough to turn our hut into a mansion like the one we left?”
“All I want is to go back to the mansion,” Adham said, yawning. Then he yawned more deeply. “Work is a curse!”
“Maybe so,” whispered Umaima, “but it is a curse that can only be defeated by more work!”
12
One night Adham was awakened by low cries. He floated a moment between sleep and waking before he recognized Umaima’s agonized moans of “Oh, my back! Oh, my belly!” He sat up and looked toward her.
“You’re always doing this now, and it turns out to be nothing. Light the candle.”
“Light it yourself,” she groaned. “This is really it.”
He got up and groped among the kitchen utensils for the candle, found and lit it and stuck it on their low table. In the feeble light, Umaima lay half propped on her elbows, groaning and raising her head to breathe with obvious difficulty.
“That’s what you think whenever you’re in pain,” the man said.
Her face fell. “No, this time I’m sure this is it.”
He helped her support her back against the wall of the hut.
“It will be this month, anyway. Can you hold on until I go to Gamaliya and get the midwife?”
“Be careful. What time is it now?”
Adham went outside to look at the sky, then said, “It’s almost daybreak. I’ll be quick.”
He set out walking briskly toward Gamaliya, and before long was threading his way through the blackness holding the hand of the elderly midwife to guide her. Umaima’s screams were shredding the silence as he neared the hut. His heart pounded and he lengthened his strides until the midwife protested.
They entered the hut together, and the midwife took off her cloak and spoke cheerfully to Umaima. “This is your happy ending—be patient and you’ll be fine.”
“How are you?” Adham asked.
“I’m almost dead from the pain,” she moaned. “My body is being broken apart—my bones are breaking—don’t leave me.”
“He’ll be fine waiting outside,” said the midwife.
Adham left the hut for the open air, and discerned a figure standing nearby, someone he recognized before he saw him clearly. His chest constricted, but Idris affected politeness.
“Is she in labor? The poor thing—my wife went through it not that long ago, but the pain doesn’t last. Then you take your luck, whatever fate has in store—that’s how I got Hind. She’s a sweet thing, but all she does is wet herself and cry. Take it easy.”
“It’s in God’s hands,” said Adham through clenched teeth.
Idris laughed harshly. “Did you get her the Gamaliya midwife?”
“Yes.”
“She’s a filthy, grasping old thing. We used her, and she cost too much, for what she did, so I kicked her out. She still curses me out every time I go past her house.”
“You shouldn’t treat people that way,” said Adham a little hesitantly.
“Little man, your father taught me to treat people badly.”
Umaima’s voice rose in a ragged scream, like an echo of the tearing going on inside her; Adham pressed his lips together to keep in what he wanted to say, then went worriedly over to the hut and called out in a gentle voice, “Be brave.”
“Be brave, Umaima,” Idris repeated very loudly.
Adham was concerned that his wife would hear Idris, but he swallowed his anger and said only, “I think we should stand farther away from the house.”
“Come home with me. I’ll give you tea, and we can watch Hind snore.”
But Adham moved away from his hut without heading toward Idris’, silently cursing his brother. Idris followed him.
“You’ll be a father before sunup,” said Idris. “It’s a big change, but one of the good things is that you can enjoy the kind of bond your father broke with such ease and empty-headedness.”
Adham gave voice to his exasperation: “You’re bothering me with that kind of talk.”
“What else do we have to talk about?”
Adham kept reluctantly silent for a few moments, then said almost pityingly, “Idris, why do you always follow me around when you know we’re not even friends?”
Idris burst into laughter. “You impudent boy! I was woken up from a deep sleep by your wife’s screaming, but I didn’t get mad. On the contrary, I came over to help you. Your father heard the screaming just as well as I did, but he just went back to sleep, like some heartless stranger.”
“We both know the fate he had in store for us,” said Adham crossly. “Can’t you ignore me the way I ignore you?”
“You hate me, Adham, not because I was the cause of your being kicked out—you hate me because I remind you of your weakness. What you hate in me is the reflection of your own sinfulness. I no longer have any excuse for hating you; in fact, now you are my comfort—you help me to forget. And remember, we’re neighbors, and the first living things in this desert. Our children will learn to walk here side by side.”
“You love to torment me.”
Idris did not reply for such a long time that Adham hoped the conversation was over, but then he asked, “Why can’t we get along?”
“Because I’m a peddler earning a living, and you’re a man whose hobbies are fighting and trouble.”
Umaima’s screams intensified and rose in pitch, and Adham raised his head imploringly, seeing suddenly that the darkness was lifting—that dawn was ascending over the mountain.
“How terrible pain is!” cried Adham.
“And how wonderful leisure is!” laughed Idris. “You were born to run the estate and play your flute.”
“Go ahead and laugh. I’m in pain.”
“Why? I thought your wife was the one in pain.”
“Just leave me alone!” yelled Adham, touchy with anxiety.
“Do you think you can become a father without paying a price?” asked Idris with maddening calm.
Adham exhaled but said nothing.
“You are wise,” said Idris sympathetically. “I came to offer you some work that could help make your descendants happy. What we hear happening in there is a beginning, not an end—our yearnings can only be satisfied by building a hill of noisy children over our heads—what do you think?”
“It’s nearly light—go and get some sleep.”
Sustained screams rose again, until Adham felt useless where he was and went back to the hut, now emerging from the dark. As he got there Umaima was letting out a deep sigh, like the end of a sad song.
“How are you?” he asked as he came to the door.
“Wait,” said the midwife. His heart was eager for relief, as the vo
“Two boys!”
“Twins?”
“God bless them both!”
Idris’ laughter rang out behind his back, and he heard him say, “Idris is now the proud father of a girl and uncle to two boys!”
He headed back to his hut, singing, “Where have luck and fortune gone? Tell me, Time, tell me.”
“Their mother would like to name them Qadri and Humam,” said the midwife.
Transported by joy, Adham murmured, “Qadri and Humam—Qadri and Humam.”
13
“Let’s sit down and eat our food,” said Qadri, wiping his face on his shirttail.
Humam looked at the sinking sun and said, “Yes—it’s late.”
They sat cross-legged on the sand at the foot of Muqattam, and Humam untied the knot of the red-striped handkerchief and took out their bread, falafel and leeks. They began to eat, glancing up now and then at their sheep, some of which roamed while others ruminated peacefully. There was nothing in the twins’ features or physiques to help tell them apart, though the hunter’s look so striking in Qadri’s eyes lent his appearance a certain distinctive sharpness.
“If this desert were ours, and we didn’t have to share it,” said Qadri with his mouth full, “we could let the sheep graze all over the place and we wouldn’t have to worry.”
“But this desert is for shepherds from Atuf, Kafr al-Zaghari and al-Husseiniya, and we can avoid trouble by being friends with them.”
Qadri laughed mockingly, spraying bits of food from his mouth.
“In these dead-end neighborhoods, they have only one way of handling people who look for their friendship: they slap you around.”
“But—”
“No buts, Humam, there’s only one way. You grab a man by his shirt and hit him on the head and let him fall on his face. Or his back.”
“That’s why we have more enemies than we can count!”
“What, is someone paying you to count them?”
Humam was deep in thought, at a profound distance, whistling softly for a moment before reverting to wise silence. He selected a single leek, hefted it and stuffed it into his mouth with gusto, then smacked his lips.
“That’s why we’re alone and spend so much time not talking.”
“What do you need to talk for? You sing all the time anyway.”
Humam looked at him confidingly and said, “I get the impression that being alone depresses you sometimes.”
“I can always find something to be depressed about, being alone or whatever else.”
Silence fell, interrupted only by eating sounds. They saw from this distance a group coming down from the mountain toward Atuf, chanting. One called out and the rest sang responses.
“This part of the desert is part of our own area. If we were to head north or south, we probably would never make it back,” said Humam.
Qadri yelped with laughter. “You’d find people in the north and south both who’d love to kill me, but not one who’d dare fight me.”
Humam was gazing at the sheep. “I’m not saying you have courage, but don’t forget that we live thanks to our grandfather’s name and our uncle’s fearsome reputation, regardless of whatever feud we have with him.”
Qadri knit his eyebrows in disagreement, but did not speak his protest. He looked over at the mansion, which loomed even at a distance, far off to the west, like a colossal temple of obliterated features, and said, “That place! I’ve never seen anything like it. Surrounded on all sides by the desert, near streets and alleys known for their fights and nastiness, owned by the worst tyrant around, and that’s our grandfather, the one his grandchildren have never seen, even though they live under his nose!”
Humam looked toward the mansion and said, “Father talks about him with nothing but respect and admiration.”
“All Uncle Idris does is curse him!”
“Anyway, he’s our grandfather,” said Humam mildly.
“So what good is that, boy? Our father slaves behind his cart and our mother wears herself out all day and half the night, we go around with these sheep, barefoot and practically naked, while he sits up there behind his walls, heartless, enjoying an easy life we can’t even imagine.”
They finished eating. Humam shook out the handkerchief, folded it, thrust it into his pocket and threw himself on his back, his arms behind his head, to stare up at the crystalline sky that radiated invisible peace. The horizon was filled with flapping kites. Qadri got up and faced away to piss.
“Father says that he used to go out a lot in the past and pass them as he went out and came back, but today no one sees him, as if he’s afraid.”
“How I would love to see him,” said Humam dreamily.
“Don’t think you’d be seeing anything too incredible. You’d find that he looks like Father or Uncle Idris, or like both of them. I’m amazed how Father talks about him with nothing but respect after what he did to him.”
“Well, either he loves him very much or he accepted that the punishment was justified.”
“Or he still has hopes of a pardon!”
“You don’t understand our father. He’s a kind and friendly person.”
Qadri sat down again. “I don’t much like him, and I don’t like you. I swear, there is something wrong with our grandfather. He doesn’t deserve anyone’s respect—if he had one particle of decency in him, he wouldn’t have treated his own flesh and blood so insanely. I think of him the same way our uncle does—as one of the curses of the age.”
“Maybe the worst things about him,” Idris said, smiling, “are things you’re so proud of—I mean, strength and bravery.”
“He was given this land for nothing—he didn’t work for it, but he’s cruel and tyrannical.”
“Don’t deny what I came to admit not that long ago—the ruler himself couldn’t stand to live alone in this wasteland.”
“Do you really think that story they tell us justifies his being so mad at the world?”
“You find lesser reasons to push people around!”
Qadri took a drink from the jug until he was full, then burped. “And what sin have his grandchildren committed? Does he know anything about shepherding, the bastard? I wish I knew what he’s leaving us in his will!”
Humam sighed. “A fortune,” he said dreamily, “that will spare us hardship. We’ll be free to do what we want, and spend our lives having fun and singing.”
“You sound like Father—we work in the dirt and the mud and dream of playing the flute in the shade of the garden. You want the truth? I like Uncle Idris better than our father.”
Humam sat up and yawned, then stood and stretched. “Anyway, we amount to something. We have a home that’s big enough for us, and a living that feeds us, and goats to tend—we sell their milk, and fatten them up to sell them too, and Mother makes us clothes from their wool.”
“What about the flute and the garden?”
Humam did not answer. He picked up the staff laid at his feet and headed off in the direction of the sheep.
Qadri stood up and shouted mockingly at the mansion, “Is it all right with you that we’re your heirs, or will you punish us in your death as you did in life? Answer, Gabalawi!”
“Answer, Gabalawi!” rang the echo.
14
From a distance they saw someone coming toward them, though they could not make out its features. The figure approached slowly until at last they recognized her, and when they did, Qadri straightened up instinctively and his beautiful eyes shone. Humam watched his brother with a smile, then looked nonchalantly at the sheep and reminded him in a low voice, “It will be dark soon.”
“Let dawn come—who cares?” Qadri said disdainfully. He took two steps forward, waving his arms to welcome the young woman. She had to struggle to get close to where they stood, partly because of the distance she had come and partly because it was hard for her to walk in the sand in her slippers, fixing them both
Qadri called out with charm that swept all sign of harshness from his face.
“Greetings, Hind!”
“Greetings,” she said to him, adding, to Humam, “Good afternoon, cousin.”
“Good afternoon, cousin, how are you?” said Humam with a smile.
Qadri took her hand and guided her to the great boulder that stood a few yards from where they stood, and they went around the boulder until they were on the side facing the mountain, apart from the desert and its inhabitants. He pulled her toward him, put his arms around her and gave her a long kiss on the mouth until their front teeth met, and the young woman was lost for a moment in a stuporous surrender. She managed to free herself from his embrace, and stood breathing heavily, adjusting her cape. She met his intense gaze with a smile, but her smile vanished as if something flitted through her mind, made a face and said with a bored air, “I only got away after a battle! Some kind of life this is!”
Qadri frowned to show that he knew what she meant. “Don’t think about it,” he said sharply. “Our parents are idiots. My kind father is stupid, and if anything your cruel father is even stupider. They want to bequeath us nothing but their hatred! Idiots! Tell me how you were able to get away.”
She exhaled noisily. “It was just like any other day—my parents fighting all day long. He slapped her a couple of times, and she screamed at him and swore, and took out her anger on a jug—she smashed it. But that’s all she did today. Sometimes she grabs him and tries to strangle him, even while he’s smacking her, and curses him when he beats her. But when he’s drunk, the only safe thing is to get out of there. I’ve wanted to run away so many times. I hate my life so much. But I calm myself down by crying until my eyes hurt. Never mind. I waited until he got dressed and went out, then I took my cape—as usual, my mother tried to stop me, but I got her out of my way and left.”
Qadri held her hand in his and asked, “Didn’t she guess where you were going?”