Khan Al-Khalili by Naguib Mahfouz
“It would have been a good idea, I think,” said the father as he sipped some water, “if we’d kept the beans back for a while until we’d eaten some of the other dishes. We’ll fill ourselves up on beans alone!”
“You say that every year,” the mother replied, “but you never remember until the beans have been eaten!”
In fact there was still plenty of room inside their stomachs. Lima beans were brought in, followed by stuffed peppers and roasted meat. Hands, eyes, and teeth all cooperated in silent resolution. It was not just the food that Ahmad was enjoying so much. His small balding head was teeming with happy thoughts, triggered, no doubt, by his enjoyment of the food. That lovely girl was his neighbor; her apartment overlooked his own. They would inevitably encounter each other; their gazes might well meet again, sentiments would certainly fly, and emotions were sure to be roused. Who knows what might happen after that? He planned to toss his heart into a bottomless ocean topped by hope and with disillusion as its seabed; hope in one direction, despair in the other. The darkness on the horizon worried him, but at the same time a safe haven on the far shore gave him some reassurance. How could he possibly know where security lay and when the final goal would be reached? It was surely enough that happiness had managed to waken a moribund heart; the very process brought its own particular delights, even though they might well cost a man his own blood and peace of mind. How could he possibly deny the fact that his heart was frozen stiff from the cold? It had long since tired of sleep and peace of mind. But now, here it was, alert and awake again; the scene on the balcony suggested that it would continue that way. Who knows what the outcome might be? For the time being he was so happy that he didn’t care what the morrow might bring. Let the horizon have its sunrise or its sunset! Fate might either smile or frown on him. For him it was enough that his heart was alert. For days now he had been quivering with nervous energy, happily unsettled, joyfully perplexed, hopefully confused, fearfully hoping, and joyously scared. Yes indeed, this was life, and life was better than death, even though the living might endure hardships and the dead find peace.
11
After dinner he went to the Zahra Café to join his friends. They started chatting and sipping tea. Conversation revolved around fasting and the way that many people, particularly in Cairo, were not keeping the obligatory fast and for the feeblest of excuses.
Sayyid Arif decided to poke fun at both Boss Zifta and Abbas Shifa.
“Both of them can stop eating and drinking,” he said with a chuckle, “but when it comes to hashish … that’s entirely different, and religion isn’t in the picture!”
“Wouldn’t you rather be a real man, like us?” Abbas Shifa replied with a scoff, “even if it meant embracing some illicit activities?”
“There’s a readily available medicine for my illness,” Sayyid Arif commented, “but there’s no known cure for what you have, my dear ‘Thou Lord of all husbands’!”
Without blushing or batting an eyelid, Abbas Shifa simply shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t blame me, and I won’t blame you.”
“No, no!” retorted Sayyid Arif, “we’ll ask Boss Nunu to adjudicate. So, who would you rather be: Abbas Shifa or Sayyid Arif?”
“May I never have to make such a choice!” Boss Nunu replied with one of his enormous guffaws.
“Praise be to God who can revive decaying bones. Tomorrow those pills will prove all those scheming enviers wrong,” said Sayyid Arif fervently.
Abbas Shifa gave a salacious laugh. “When that happens we can all congratulate ourselves,” he said.
Sulayman Ata told them to stop this obscene kind of talk during the holy month of Ramadan. It was not that he was either sincere in his beliefs or annoyed with them for soiling the holy month with this kind of chatter, but rather that the refrain of “those pills” had long since become tedious; no one had any illusions about coming up with any new witticisms on the topic.
Kamal Khalil started reminiscing about Ramadan nights less than a quarter century ago before the current wave of irresponsible conduct had arrived to overwhelm all the established religious traditions. He talked about the way that the mansions of the patriarchs of the quarter would remain open throughout the night to welcome all kinds of visitors. Famous Qur’an reciters would be asked to perform until the break of dawn. He told them all that his own home—his father’s house in other words—had always been one of those mansions crammed with visitors. Ahmad Akif wondered whether the man was actually telling the truth or merely emulating his corpulent wife?
They chatted for a full hour, and then, having exhausted the conversation, started playing games. Once again, Ahmad Akif found himself alone with the young lawyer. This time, he realized, there would be argument and confrontation; however, as he eyed his adversary, he gave no sign of the pent-up anger inside him. But before either of them had a chance to utter a single word, a group of boys and girls came walking past the café waving lanterns, chanting Ramadan songs, and asking for coins. The young lawyer watched them as they disappeared into the distance and their loud voices diminished.
“We’re a nation of beggars,” he commented, turning to his companion.
Ahmad looked at him and smiled. He had started having deep doubts about the wisdom of engaging the other Ahmad in conversation, despite an apparent disregard. He embarked on a furious confrontation.
“Yes, a nation of beggars,” Ahmad Rashid repeated in exactly the same tone of voice, “and a handful of millionaires. Cheap labor and begging, those are the only jobs available to Egyptians. And cheap labor is no better than begging.”
Ahmad Akif shook his head and gave his companion a blank look. He remained silent, silence in such circumstances being by far the safest strategy since he could avoid getting involved in topics he knew nothing about and at the same time prepare a secure groundwork for grabbing opportunities when they arose.
“There’s nothing worse,” his companion continued, “than a system that requires people to lower themselves to the level of dumb animals. How can life afford intelligent people any pleasure when they are well aware that the majority of the country’s citizens are starving and never have enough to eat? They’re so ignorant that their minds never make it any higher than the brains of riding animals; they’re so sick that bacteria of every conceivable kind infest their emaciated bodies. Has it never even occurred to them to demand equal rights for peasants and animals? No one can question the fact that in the countryside animals have the right to demand that their owners feed them, give them shelter, and keep them healthy. Peasants don’t have the same guarantees!”
At this point Ahmad Akif could no longer resist the urge to protest; it was simply too much for him to allow the young lawyer to continue with this harangue and for him to have to listen to it like some student.
“If peasants have rights, as you say,” he commented, “then why don’t they demand them?”
“Peasants are kept in a state of total oppression and at the very lowest levels of humanity,” the lawyer responded angrily. “They can’t demand anything. But anyone who reckons that they deserve the privilege of belonging to humankind should feel honor-bound to remove that oppression from the overburdened shoulders of the peasantry. In the old days it was free men who battled slavery, not slaves!”
Ahmad found himself struggling with conflicting emotions. There was a part of him that was pleased to hear what the young man was saying. After all, if the scales of equality in his country had been genuinely balanced, nothing would have prevented him from completing his own education and he would have obtained the level of respect that he longed for. But the other side of him detested the young man’s committed focus on social problems. For him such things did not deserve the attention of a genuine intellectual, someone who needed to focus on more cerebral things such as logic, mysticism, and literature. At that moment he remembered how strongly the young man expressed his opinions and how certain he was of his own rectitude. That riled his sense of superiority, and h
“If peasants really deserved more than they’re allotted,” he replied testily, “they would have obtained it by now. Rights pertain to those people to whom they are allotted. Anything beyond that is nonsense!”
The young lawyer adjusted his spectacles in a nervous gesture. “Are you a follower of Nietzsche, Professor?” he asked.
Heavens above, who on earth was Nietzsche? Wasn’t it possible for a school of thought to exist—even if it was inspired by anger and hatred—without needing a spokesman from among all these philosophers of whom he was in complete ignorance? How was he supposed to respond to the nasty little devil? He allowed his mind to direct him toward the single way of getting out of the trap that his foe had set for him.
“My dear Professor Rashid,” he replied in a much less angry tone, “you’re trying to push me to talk about things I don’t even care about.”
“You mean, you don’t care about your own life?”
“Just forget about peasants. Let people who need to be concerned about them deal with all that. Haven’t you read Aristotle or the Brethren of Purity? Haven’t you had any kind of spiritual education?”
The young man looked uneasy. “We’re just like the captain of a ship,” he said, “one that’s ploughing its way through a turbulent channel stirred up by ferocious winds. The waves keep pounding, and the wind howls. The ship heaves up and down and to the left and right, shaken to its core and buffeted hither and yon. In such circumstances can the captain simply turn his back on the steering wheel and stare at the horizon in fond hope?
“At this stage in our history we are passing through the straits of death, enveloped by misery on every side. So let’s make use of those miseries as ammunition for our thoughts about the future. Ivory towers certainly have their particular delights, but for the time being we must resist our own egotistic tendencies.”
“So, while you’re busy rescuing the downtrodden from the pits of animal status, you’re sacrificing the humanity of intellectuals and destroying their spirits!”
“I specifically said, ‘for the time being.’ Just think of the wartime situation we’re now in, and the way that religious scholars—the most moral of people—have turned into outright criminals.”
“But you have your own store of outrageous ideas—the universe and the atom!”
For the first time Ahmad Rashid let out a loud laugh. The game players all looked up.
“You laughed!” said Boss Nunu. “So tell us what it’s about.”
The two of them said nothing, and eventually the game players went back to their games.
“Knowledge is indispensable for the true revolutionary,” the young lawyer went on, “not to bury ourselves in its contemplations but rather to liberate ourselves from the bonds of illusion and humbug. There was a period when religion was able to liberate us from idolatry, but now it’s the turn of science to liberate us from the bonds of religion.”
At this point, Sulayman Bey Ata lost his temper, a normal occurrence when he managed to lose a twenty in a game. Sayyid Arif decided to tangle with him. The whole thing soon degenerated into a vicious slanging match in which all the resident debauchees were eager to participate. Thus ended Ramadan’s first evening of conversation.
With the arrival of midnight Ahmad Akif stood up to go home.
“I’m going home too,” said Boss Nunu as he stood up. “I want to get my coat. The weather’s very wet and chilly close to dawn.”
They walked together.
“Why don’t you stay awake until dawn?” he asked Ahmad as they were walking.
“Between midnight and dawn I normally read,” Ahmad replied wearily.
“You read books?”
“Yes. That’s all I read.”
“What’s the point?”
“It’s my hobby, Boss Nunu!” Ahmad replied with a smile.
“But any hobby is supposed to have some point to it. Do books make you live longer? Stop you getting sick? Stave off the inevitable? Avoid hardship? Fill your pockets?”
By this point Ahmad was feeling so superior, he was thrilled. “I fully intend to write a book as well!” he went on with a smile.
“That’s even worse! Are you a journalist, or what?”
“Suppose I said yes?”
“Impossible!”
“Why?”
“Your parents are decent folk!”
That made Ahmad laugh so loud that it released all the evening’s dark tensions. “But I really am going to write a book,” he said.
“There are more books in the world than people. Just take a look at the Halabi Bookstore just below the Egyptian Club. It has so many books—good heavens!—if you stacked them all side by side, you’d have more than all the students at al-Azhar! Why go to all the bother of adding yet another title to the pile?”
“Okay, okay. But every book has its own qualities.”
“You should develop some other hobby that won’t cost you so much effort.”
“Such as what?”
“You don’t know? Have a guess.”
“I’ve no idea, Boss.”
“People call it Ramadan’s best entertainment and life’s greatest joy.”
“So what’s it called?”
“It comes out of the ground, but its true pasture is above the clouds.”
“Amazing!”
“You’ll find it either in a prison cell or by the Sultan’s throne.”
“There’s nothing in the world like that.”
“Craved by pauper and minister alike.”
“That much?”
“Consolation for the desolate, quaff for the merry.”
“How eager I am to make its acquaintance!”
“Just a tiny bit, and for every tight spot it’s fit.”
“That’s magic!”
“They’ve brought it from the land of the elephant for the delectation of the people of the Nile.”
“Are you serious?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of hashish?”
At the very mention of the word Ahmad started. For his part, the boss laughed.
“Oh, come on,” he said, “play along with me! Life’s full of things that give much more pleasure than books!”
Ahmad’s curiosity got the better of him. “Where?” he asked.
“If you agree and do me the honor,” the Boss continued, “I can take you there.”
“Aren’t you afraid of the police?”
“Let’s just say that I know how to keep them at bay. What about it?”
“That magical pastime doesn’t interest me at all. But thanks anyway, Boss.”
Back in his room he did his best to forget about his conversation with Nunu and his questionable pastimes. Instead he pictured Ahmad Rashid, the young lawyer, with all his complaints, enthusiasms, and violent gestures, and that made him feel angry, jealous, and vicious. He asked himself sadly how he could possibly have failed to absorb the world of modern knowledge, and how he would be able to fill in what he had missed. When would he be able to hold forth on Freud and Marx the way he could on the Brethren of Purity and Ibn Maymun? He spent some time pondering these issues and found it impossible to clear his mind for reading or even focus on it. Even so he stayed there, bent over his book without ever looking up. Such a posture—even when he felt distracted—was enough to convince him that his day would not have gone to waste by not acquiring some piece of culture, that being the thing he worried about the most. As a result an hour slipped by with his sense of superiority going through its own agonies.
Just then he had an idea, one that wafted its way into his heart like a gentle, moist breeze. It managed to douse the flames in his angry heart and leave it clean and fresh. He beamed. How lovely and joyful life would be, he thought to himself, if only chance and fate, coincidences and agreements, people and characters, all of the things he encountered could be like those two honey-colored eyes that exuded such sweet simplicity. Just then he recalled—somewhat to his own s
12
Next afternoon he jumped up and stood in front of the mirror to shave, something he usually did only twice a week. Normally he was not bothered if people saw him unshaven, but now he had decided to change his ways; from now on, he was going to shave every day.
Once he had finished, he put on a clean gallabiya and a gleaming white skullcap (needed to hide his balding head), then sat on the edge of his bed staring hesitantly at the window. It was not merely a matter of shaving or wearing a white skullcap. He had to ask himself what lay behind this burst of enthusiasm and this abrupt change in behavior. Was he careening ahead without any pause for thought or reflection? What exactly was it he wanted? Today it might well seem like a game, but tomorrow things could become serious. Above all he had to keep in mind his own bad luck and miserable history. Would it not be better, he wondered, to leave the window shut and forget about the implications involved in opening it? However, life never listens to logic of such a kind; neither prudence nor caution has a role to play. He was burning with thirst and consumed by desire.