Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
Uncle Kamil moistened his lips and spoke almost in a whisper: “She’s gone. She’s not here anymore. She’s disappeared. No one knows what’s happened to her.”
Abbas listened to him in stunned silence. One by one the words engraved themselves on his brain. Thick clouds seemed to swirl over his mind, and he seemed suddenly to have been transported into a whirling, feverish world. In a quivering voice, he asked, “I don’t understand a thing. What did you say? She’s not here anymore, she’s disappeared? What do you mean?”
“Be brave, Abbas,” Uncle Kamil said soothingly. “God knows how sorry I am and how grieved I was for you from the very first, but nothing can be done about it. Hamida has disappeared. No one knows anything. She didn’t return after going out as usual one afternoon. They searched everywhere for her, but without success. We tried the police station at Gamaliya and Kasr el-Aini Hospital, but we found no trace of her.”
Abbas’ face took on a vacant stare and he sat rigidly, not saying a word or moving, not even blinking. There was no way out, no escape. Hadn’t his instincts warned him of disaster? Yes, and now it was true. Could this be believed? What had the man said? Hamida had disappeared…Can a human being disappear, like a needle or a coin? If he had said she was dead or had got married, then he could foresee an end to his agony. At any rate, despair is easier to accept than torturing doubt. Now what should he do? Even despair was a blessing he could not hope for. Suddenly inertia subsided and he felt a surge of anger. Trembling all over, he glared at Uncle Kamil, and shrieked, “So Hamida has disappeared, has she? And what did all of you do about it? You told the police and looked in the hospital? May God reward you for that. Then what? Then you all returned to work as if nothing had happened. Everything came to an end and you simply returned to your shop and her mother went knocking on brides’ doors. Hamida’s finished and I’m finished too. What do you say to that, eh? Tell me all you know. What do you know about her disappearance? How did she disappear and when?”
Uncle Kamil was visibly distressed by his friend’s outburst of hostility, and he replied sorrowfully, “Nearly two months have passed since she disappeared, my son. It was a terrible thing and everyone was deeply shocked by it. God knows we spared no efforts in searching and inquiring after her, but it was no use.”
Abbas slapped the palms of his hands together, his face flushed and his eyes bulging even more. Almost to himself he commented, “Nearly two months! My God! That’s a long time. There’s no hope of finding her now. Is she dead? Did she drown? Was she abducted? Who can help me find out? What are people saying?”
Gazing at him with sad affection, Uncle Kamil replied, “There were many theories, and people finally concluded she must have had an accident. Nobody talks about it anymore.”
“Of course. Of course,” the young man exclaimed angrily. “She’s not the daughter of any of you and she has no close relatives. Even her mother isn’t her real one. What do you think happened? In the past two months I’ve been dreaming away, happy as could be. Have you ever noticed how a man often dreams of happiness while disaster waits nearby to snatch it? Perhaps I was just having a quiet conversation with a friend while she was being crushed under a wheel or drowning in the Nile…two months! Oh, Hamida!…There is no power or strength except in God.”
Stamping his foot, he rose and made for the door. “Goodbye.”
“Where are you going?”
“To see her mother,” Abbas answered coldly.
Walking out with heavy dragging feet, Abbas recalled that he had arrived tingling with anticipation and joy; now he left crushed and broken. He bit his lips and his feet came to a halt. He turned and saw Uncle Kamil gazing after him, his eyes filled with tears. Suddenly Abbas rushed into the shop and threw himself on the older man’s chest. They stood there whimpering, weeping and sobbing, like two small children.
—
Did he really have no suspicion of the truth of her disappearance? Did he experience none of the doubts and suspicions common to lovers in similar circumstances? The truth was that whenever a shadow of suspicion had crossed his mind he dismissed it immediately, refusing to harbor it for an instant. By nature Abbas was trusting and always tended to think the best of people. He was tenderhearted and belonged to that minority who instinctively make excuses for others and accept the feeblest excuses for the most frightful deeds. Love had not changed his good nature except, perhaps, to make it even stronger; consequently, the whisperings of doubt and suspicion within him went unheard. He had loved Hamida deeply, and he felt completely secure and confident in this love. He truly believed this girl was perfection, in a world of which he had seen so little.
That same day he visited her mother, but she told him nothing new, merely repeating tearfully what Uncle Kamil had said. She assured him that Hamida had never stopped thinking about him, anxiously waiting for his return. Her lies only made him feel sadder, and he left her as heartbroken as he had arrived.
His leaden feet slowly led him out of the alley. Dusk was falling now; it was the time when, in days gone by, he would catch sight of his beloved going out for her evening stroll. He wandered aimlessly, unaware of what was going on about him, but seeming to see her form in its black gown, her large and beautiful eyes searching for him. He recalled their last farewell on the stairs and his heart seemed to stop dead.
Where was she? What had God done with her? Was she still alive or in a pauper’s grave? Why had his heart had no warning all this time? How could this happen? And why?
The crowds in the street jolted him from his dreams and he stared around him. This was the Mousky, her favorite street. She loved the crowds and the shops. Everything was just the same as before, except for her. Now she was gone. It was almost as if she had never existed. He wanted to cry out all the tears in his swollen heart but he would not give way. His weeping in Uncle Kamil’s arms had unknotted his nerves a bit. Now he only felt a deep, quiet sadness.
He wondered what he should do next. Should he go to the police stations and the hospital? What was the point? Should he walk the streets of the city calling out her name? Should he knock on the doors of all the houses one by one? Oh God, how weak and helpless he felt. Should he return to Tell el-Kebir and try to forget everything? But why go back? Why bear the additional strain of being away from home? Why go on working and saving money? Life without Hamida was an insupportable burden and completely without purpose. His enthusiasm for life was gone now, leaving him with nothing but a numbing indifference. His life seemed a bottomless void enclosed by a black despair. Through his love for her he had discovered the only meaning of his life. Now he saw no reason for living. He continued walking, bewildered and purposeless. Whether he knew it or not, life still had a hold on his consciousness, for he was quick to notice the factory girls coming toward him, returning from work. Before he knew it he had blocked their path. They stopped in surprise and immediately recognized him. Without hesitating, he spoke: “Good evening, girls. Please don’t be angry with me. You remember your friend Hamida?”
A vivacious pretty girl was quick to reply, “Of course we remember her. She suddenly disappeared and we haven’t seen her since!”
“Do you have any clues to her disappearance?” A different girl, with a look of spiteful cunning in her eyes, answered him, “We only know what we told her mother when she questioned us. We saw her several times with a well-dressed man in a suit, walking in the Mousky.”
An icy shudder shook his whole body, as he asked, “You say you saw her with a man in a suit?”
The cruel look now left the girl’s eyes as they registered the young man’s anguish. One girl spoke softly: “Yes, that’s right.”
“And you told her mother that?”
“Yes.”
He thanked them and walked away. He was certain they would talk about him all the way home. They would have a good laugh about the young fool who went to Tell el-Kebir to earn more money for his fiancée, who left him for a stranger who appealed to her more. What a fo
Now he was moaning and muttering, “Oh God! How can I believe it? Has she really run off with another man? Who would ever believe it?” She was alive, then. They were wrong to look for her in the police station and the hospital. They had not realized she was sleeping contentedly in the arms of the man she had run off with. But she had promised herself to him! Had she meant to deceive him all along? Or was she mistaken in thinking she was attracted to him…How did she meet the man in the suit? When did she fall in love with him? Why did she run off with him?
Abbas’ face had now turned ghastly white and he felt cold all over. His eyes glowered darkly. Suddenly he raised his head, gazing at the houses in the street. He looked at their windows and asked himself, “In which one is she now lying at her lover’s side?” The seeds of doubt were now gone and a burning anger mixed with hatred took its place. His heart was twisted by jealousy. Or was it disappointment? Conceit and pride are the fuel of jealousy and he had little of either. But he did have hopes and dreams and now they were shattered. Now he wanted revenge, even if it only meant spitting at her. In fact, revenge took such possession of him that he longed to knife her treacherous heart.
Now he knew the true meaning of her afternoon walks: she had been parading before the street wolves. Anyway, she must be in love with this man in the suit; otherwise how could she prostitute herself rather than marry Abbas?
He bit his lip at the thought and turned back, tired from walking alone. His hand touched the box with the necklace in his pocket, and he gave a hollow laugh that was more an angry scream. If only he could strangle her with the gold necklace. He recalled his joy in the goldsmith’s shop when he selected the gift. The memory flowed through him like a gentle spring breeze, but, meeting the glare of his troubled heart, it was transformed into a raging sirocco…
Salim Alwan had scarcely finished signing the contract on his desk when the man sitting opposite him grasped his hand and said, “Well done, indeed, Salim Bey. This is a great deal of money.”
Salim sat watching the man as he passed through the office door. A profitable deal, indeed. He had sold his entire tea stock to this man. He made a good profit and lost a burdensome worry, especially since his health could no longer bear the strains of the black market. Despite all this, he still told himself angrily, “A great deal of money, yes, but with a curse on it. There seems to be a curse on everything in my life.” It was true what people said, that only a faint shadow of the old Salim Alwan remained.
His nerves were slowly devouring him and he was forever thinking about death. In the old days he neither lacked faith nor was a coward, but now his frayed nerves made him forget the comforts of faith. He still remembered how in his illness he had lain there in pain, his chest rising and falling with that lung pain, his eyes failing fast. At such times life seemed to flow out from every part of him and his spirit seemed to have left his body. Could this really have happened? Isn’t it true a man goes mad if his fingernails are pulled out? What happens, then, when his life and spirit are extracted?
He often wished God would give him the good fortune of those who die of a heart attack. They simply expire in the midst of talking, eating, standing, or sitting. It was as if they outwitted death completely by slipping off stealthily. Salim Alwan abandoned hope of this good fortune, for indeed his father and grandfather had both demonstrated to him the sort of death he might expect. He would probably linger in great agony on the point of death for half a day, and this no doubt would turn his sons gray.
Who would ever believe that Salim Alwan—healthy and life-loving—would harbor such fears? But not only dying terrified him, for now his feverish attention was also drawn to death itself. He spent a good deal of time analyzing all aspects of it.
His imagination and the culture from ages past told him that some of his senses remained after death. Didn’t people say that the eyes of a dead person could still see his family staring down at him? After all, he had seen death as clear as daylight before him and he had almost felt eternity enclose him. Indeed, he felt he was already in the darkness of the tomb, with all its eerie loneliness, with bones, shrouds, and its suffocating narrowness and the painful love and longing he would probably feel for the living world. He thought about all this, his heart contracting in painful melancholy, his hands and feet icy and his brow feverish. Neither did he forget the afterlife. The assessment of his life, the retribution…O God, what a vast chasm there was between death and paradise…
So it was he clung to the fringe of life, even though it gave him no pleasure. All that was left for him was to audit the accounts and make business deals.
After his convalescence he had made a point of having a serious consultation with his doctor. He assured Alwan that he was cured of his heart condition but advised him to take care and to live cautiously. Salim Alwan complained about his insomnia and tensions, and the doctor advised a nerve specialist. Now he consulted a procession of specialists in nerves, heart, chest, and head. Thus his illness opened a door to a world populated by germs, symptoms, and diagnoses. It was amazing, for he had never believed in medicine or doctors. Now in his troubled state his faith in them was entire.
His working and leisure hours were now almost completely submerged in his private hell of anxieties. Indeed, he was always in a state of war with himself or with people. His employees saw the transformation before their astonished eyes. His manager left after twenty-five years of service, and those few employees who remained were disgruntled. The alley people thought he was half crazy, and Husniya once commented, “It was the bowl of green wheat that did it.”
One day Uncle Kamil said, trying to humor him, “Why don’t you let me make you a special dish of sweets, which, with God’s grace, will restore your health.”
But Salim Alwan became angry and exploded, “Keep away from me, you devil! Have you gone mad, you blind fool? It’s animals like you whose insides stay healthy until the day of rest.”
After this, Uncle Kamil had nothing more to do with him.
As for his wife, she was an easy target for his outbursts and hatred, and he still attributed his ill health to her jealousy. One time he rebuked her by shouting, “You’ve had your vicious revenge on my health. You’ve seen me crushed before your eyes. Now enjoy your peace, you viper.”
His hostility toward her increased, and eventually he wondered if she had suspected his plans to marry Hamida. He knew there were many eyes watching for this sort of thing, and no shortage of ready tongues to tell the interested party. If she did suspect something, wasn’t it possible that she had put a curse on him that ruined his health? His irrational state only convinced him that he was right. He planned a course of revenge on her. Thus he was rude to her and reviled and insulted her as often as possible. However, she met all his cruelty with polite and patient submissiveness. He yearned to reduce her long-suffering silence to tears. On one occasion he told her directly, “I’m tired of living with you, and there’s no reason why I should hide the fact that I’m planning to get married. I’m going to try my luck once more.”
She believed him, and her self-control was shattered. She fled to her children and told them of their father’s decision. They were amazed and ashamed, and one day they visited him and suggested that he liquidate his business and devote his time to regaining his health. He was aware of what they feared and he rebuked them more sharply and bitterly than he had ever done before. “My life is my own to spend as I wish. I’ll work as long as I please. Please spare me your selfish opinions.”
Then he laughed and went on, his lackluster eyes staring into their faces, one after the other: “Did your mother tell you I plan to marry again? It’s true. Your mother is trying to kill me, and so I’m leaving he
Then he warned them he would have nothing more to do with them and that each must rely on his own resources as long as their father lived.
“As you can see, I can scarcely taste even the bitter medicines, so why should others enjoy my wealth.”
His older son asked, “How can you speak to us like this? We are your devoted sons.”
“From now on you’re your mother’s sons!”
He kept to his threat. From that time on he gave nothing to his sons and deprived his house of the luxurious fare for which it was known. He did this so that everyone, especially his wife, would share in the restrictions imposed upon him. Alwan also constantly referred to his proposed marriage. He found this a most effective weapon for weakening his wife’s patience. His sons all felt a genuine sadness for their father’s condition; when they met to discuss the matter, the eldest one spoke first: “We must abide by his wishes until God works His inevitable will.”
“If he seriously intends to get married,” replied his lawyer son, “then most severe steps must be taken. We cannot leave him to be neglected by someone only interested in his money.”
—
Hamida’s disappearance had been a shattering blow to Salim Alwan. Although he had thought about her occasionally after his illness, she had not really been in the mainstream of his thoughts until she disappeared. This news, however, had roused his anxiety, and he had followed with great concern all efforts to trace her. When the gossip reached him about her having run off with an unknown man, he was extremely upset. That very day he was in such a temper that no one dared go near him. In the evening he came home with shredded nerves and a pounding headache that kept him awake until dawn. His heart burst with resentment and revenge toward the fickle girl. He pictured her dangling from a scaffold, her tongue hanging out and her eyes bulging. When he heard of Abbas’ return from Tell el-Kebir, his frenzy subsided for some obscure reason and he invited the young man to see him.