Morning and Evening Talk by Naguib Mahfouz
They were not reunited until Ahmad’s death, a few months after which Mahmud developed serious diabetes. Amr and Surur had passed away by this time and a melancholy compounded by the illness settled in Mahmud’s heart. His determination flagged and he withdrew from the business. He spent most of his time in the mansion on Khayrat Square until a heart attack seized him one morning and he died. Nazli Hanem joined him two years later and Fawziya Hanem died in the same year. Only those destined for extra long life from that generation, like Radia, Abd al-Azim Pasha, and Baligh, remained; they were the ones whose lives stretched until the July Revolution.
Matariya Amr Aziz
She was born and grew up in Bayt al-Qadi, the third child of Amr and Radia. With her pretty face, slender figure, and amiability she most resembled Sadiqa, the aunt who committed suicide. She was also the most beautiful of the sisters, and quite possibly of all the girls in the family. Though she came into maturity in an atmosphere of religion and mysticism, she did not assimilate their underlying significance and believed that loving God and His messenger exempted her from religious duties. Her exquisite beauty stirred jealousy in her sisters’ hearts, but as events unfolded this turned to pity. In her childhood and early teens, she was known for grace and mirth and for loving generously and being loved in return; not a woman or girl in Surur, Ata, or Abd al-Azim’s families escaped her charm. Yet none of this could intercede on her behalf when her charm enticed a young man like Lutfi Abd al-Azim to contemplate marrying her, for charm too is limited by class consciousness. The first happy experience in her life thus became an emotional trial that immolated her tender heart and injured her pride. Her pain was slightly eased by the blaze of anger that flared up around her in her and her family’s defense, as it was by the fact that she had not revealed her feelings. The battle thus turned on pride, then fell into the age-old chasm of tradition.
Not long after, a friend whom her mother had met at the tomb of Sidi Yahya ibn Uqab came with a proposal. Her mother regarded the location of their first meeting as a good omen and judged the woman, who lived not far away in the quarter of Watawit, to be a good person. The bridegroom—Muhammad Ibrahim—was a teacher at the Umm Ghulam School and in terms of diploma and profession was Amer’s equal. Matariya saw him through the gap in the mashrabiya and was attracted to his wheat-colored face, plump body, and the pipe he smoked like the English. She was wedded to him in the house his mother owned in Watawit. Through good fortune, Matariya won her mother-in-law’s heart, and enjoyed a bond of true love with her husband until the day he died. Year upon year radiated with happiness and harmony, and she gave birth to Ahmad, Shazli, and Amana—all three satellites of purity and grace. People were right to consider the house in Watawit among the happiest, in the true sense of the word. Muhammad Ibrahim was the second man to join Amr’s family after Hamada al-Qinawi but he was urbane, gentle natured, cultured, and had a diverse library. His prim conversation and Hamada’s chatter and groundless conceit could not have been more different. Muhammad found it impossible to genuinely make friends with Hamada but was very amiable with him in deference to Sadriya, whom he admired and whose virtues as a housewife had not escaped his notice. Those happy years would remain in Matariya’s heart forever; the minutiae of daily life, the warmth of her husband’s love, her mother-in-law’s compassion and patience, the children with their bright promise. Then came the first blow of fate; Ahmad died in his fifth year. Matariya tasted the pain and profound sadness of a bereaved mother. Part of her throbbing heart, and the scent of her bereft spirit, began dwelling in the grave that spread in a swathe of new emotions before her tearful eyes. She loved Qasim all the more when she saw how inconsolable he was at the loss of her young son. She focused her wounded motherly love on Shazli and Amana, though her heart did not rejoice as she had hoped it would with their marriages. Her mother-in-law died in the 1930s, loading her with a burden to which she was not accustomed, and she mourned the death of her own father shortly before the Second World War and her uncle Surur’s a few years later. She truly suffered for her strong attachment to her family. She regarded Shazli’s marriage as a grave disappointment and considered it part of her bad luck.
“It’s not as bad as you think,” said Muhammad Ibrahim.
“He deserves a better bride,” she complained.
“He knows best what makes him happy,” said the man.
She followed Amana’s success at school with satisfaction and hope. Then her beloved husband unexpectedly developed cirrhosis of the liver and was confined to his bed. His health deteriorated and he died in the summer holiday after Amana had passed the baccalaureate. Matariya met the harshest blow of fate yet and found herself a widow before fifty. Amana was forced to marry Abd al-Rahman Amin while Matariya stayed on in the house in Watawit with her maid, lonely and sad. Her worries were compounded by the troubles her daughter encountered in her marriage. She would console herself by visiting relatives—her mother, sisters, brothers, cousins, the families of Ata and Abd al-Azim, and, first and foremost, Shazli and Amana. She began to wither. Her features changed, though her unique quality—the love she gave and received from the family and people in general—remained. She was probably the only person in the family not to sever relations with her brother Hamid’s wife, Shakira, after the couple separated in divorce. How she grieved over the premature deaths of Shazli’s children! While Shazli’s son, Muhammad, was still warding off his fate, she invoked God to preserve him for the sake of his father and herself, and entreated her mother, Radia, to shield him using whatever means. News of his martyrdom in the Tripartite Aggression came as the final blow. She withered even more.
It became clear she was suffering from cancer. Her health declined, going from bad to worse, until she died in her sixties. She was the first of the second generation in Amr’s family, or rather the whole family, to pass away. Circumstances dictated that those closest to her did not mourn her as they might have; Shazli’s sadness over his children did not leave much room for mourning, Radia was in her eighties and the grief of an octogenarian is short-lived, and Qasim lived in a neutral state of sadness and joy. Amana did not find anyone with whom to weep and strike her face in despair.
Mu‘awiya al-Qalyubi
He was born and grew up in the house in Suq al-Zalat. His upbringing was purely religious and he took on his father’s learning and manners even before they were together at al-Azhar. He displayed nobility and talent, with a particular fondness for grammar, which he taught at al-Azhar after obtaining his religious diploma. A few months before Mu‘awiya’s father died, he married his son to Galila al-Tarabishi, the daughter of Salman al-Tarabishi, who worked at a factory making tarbooshes for pashas. Mu‘awiya took part in activities in the mosques around the quarter, which won his father-in-law’s love and respect. Galila was taller than him, eccentric, high-strung, and full of popular superstitions. He was determined to teach her the true principles of her religion and a long but amicable struggle broke out between them. He gave to her and took from her. When he was sick he would surrender readily to her folk medicine. Her reputation spread around the quarter until it almost eclipsed his own. They were bound by love and, thanks to this, their marriage endured despite Galila’s irascible nature and fanatical ideas. As the days passed, she gave birth to Radia, Shahira, Sadiqa, and Baligh.
When the Urabi Revolution came, the shaykh was full of enthusiasm. He was drawn to its current and supported it with heart and tongue. When it failed and the English occupied Egypt, he was one of many arrested and tried and was sentenced to five years in prison. Galila toured the tombs of saints invoking evil upon the khedive and the English. She managed the family with some money she had inherited from her father. Shaykh Mu‘awiya left jail to find a changed world. No one remembered the revolution or any of its men, and if names were mentioned they were accompanied by curses. He found no sympathy except in the eyes of his old friend Yazid al-Misri, the watchman of Bayn al-Qasrayn’s public fountain. He felt like an outsider. He was sa
One day his friend Aziz said to him, “My son Amr works at the ministry of education. He’s twenty and I want him to get married.”
The shaykh grasped what Aziz was driving at and said, “By God’s blessing.”
“It’s in your hands, with God’s permission, and from your house,” said Aziz.
“Radia my daughter and Amr my son!” said the shaykh.
Ni‘ma Ata and her daughter, Rashwana, went to court Radia. They returned dazzled by Sadiqa’s beauty and satisfied with Radia’s good looks and lofty demeanor. Even so, Ni‘ma asked, “Is she taller than Amr?”
“Not at all, mother. He’s taller,” said Rashwana reassuringly.
However, time overtook the shaykh before he could witness his daughter’s wedding. The bridal hamper arrived by coincidence on the day he died, prompting Galila, with her individual interpretation of her heritage, to release a stream of ululation from the window then resume wailing for her dear deceased, which the quarter joked about for the rest of her life. The shaykh was buried in an enclosure nearby Aziz’s own in the vicinity of Sidi Nagm al-Din.
Nadir Arif al-Minyawi
HE WAS BORN AND GREW UP IN DARB AL-AHMAR, the only son of Habiba Amr and Shaykh Arif al-Minyawi. He had no memory of his father but grew up in the abundant tender love of his mother and paternal grandmother. His grandmother died when he was six, but he found in the affection of Amr, Radia, and the rest of the family a way to forget he was a lonely orphan. It was perhaps fortunate that he yearned for success and was carried away by ambition from childhood. Yet he never appreciated the insane sacrifice his mother made on his behalf in refusing an excellent marriage proposal and remaining a widow for the rest of her life, after only two years married to his father.
Nadir grew into a handsome and fine young man and no period of his life was devoid of romantic adventures within his limited means. He obtained the baccalaureate in commerce during the First World War and found work in the Treasury. He despised his poverty and was always looking for a better future. To this end, he enrolled at an institute teaching English, mastered the art of typing, and put himself forward for an exam advertised by an English metal company. He was successful, so he quit the civil service to work for the company’s accounts department. The move frightened his maternal aunts and uncles, cousins, and mother, but he said with a confidence unknown in the family, “There’s no future in government employment.”
His finances improved but his ambition was not sated. As an ambitious young man dreaming of fortune he was uncomfortable with the course of the July Revolution. His fears were realized after the Tripartite Aggression and the impounding of British companies, at which point he reluctantly found himself a civil servant once more. He studied the situation in his family and its branches in the light of the revolution’s new reality. He found representatives of the revolution, like Abduh Mahmud, Mahir Mahmud, and his cousin Hakim, in the families of Ata al-Murakibi and Aunt Samira, and secretly made up his mind to marry either Abduh and Mahir’s sister Nadira or Hakim’s sister Hanuma. He consulted his mother, who said, “Hanuma’s closer to us and prettier.” At his suggestion she proposed to her on his behalf. Hanuma was a radio broadcaster with strong principles and a similar nature to her brother Salim. She had refused the hand of her cousin Aql, but agreed to marry Nadir. The wedding was held in an apartment on Hasan Sabri Street in Zamalek. Nadir urged his mother to come and live with him, but she refused to leave Darb al-Ahmar or move away from the blessed old quarter, where her dear mother and many of her sisters and uncle’s daughters lived. The new family was blessed with happiness and Hanuma gave birth to three daughters, Samira, Radia, and Safa. Relations between Nadir and Hakim strengthened and, thanks to Hakim, Nadir was promoted to Head of Accounts. His salary increased beyond the dreams of his other civil servant relatives but his ambition knew no limits. With nationalization, he was appointed Chairman of Company Administration but still was not satisfied. “What more do you want?” Hanuma asked him.
“I don’t like fixed salaries,” he replied ambiguously.
“I don’t mind wealth so long as it’s combined with purity,” Hanuma said with clarity.
He noticed a look of fear in her eyes and said quickly, “Of course.”
He sensed the partner of his life was not partner to his ambition. He believed deep down that the only difference between people inside and outside jail was luck, not nature or principles, and that mankind was a wretched bunch from which only the shrewd and strong escaped. He regarded his wife as an extension of the foolish general attitudes he had to flatter if he wanted to realize his ambition. He began consolidating relations with certain officers and men in the private sector until June 5, when they were all exposed. He was satisfied to be simply pensioned off, again thanks to Hakim, but Hanuma raised a storm that culminated in divorce.
“You’re only responsible for yourself,” Samira assured Hanuma with her usual calm.
“But I can’t just shut my eyes and destroy everything my life is built on,” the young woman replied fiercely.
Hanuma kept the apartment and their daughters while Nadir began to live between hotels and Darb al-Ahmar, explaining the divorce to his innocent mother in terms of a disagreement that ruined the marriage. When the situation changed and the first indications of the infitah policy appeared he began to breathe once more. He derived from this unexpected situation a life he had never before dreamed of. He busied himself determinedly with imports and finally realized the dream he had entertained since childhood. The world spread out before him at home and abroad. On one of his journeys he met an Australian widow, married her, and moved in with her in a villa in al-Ma’adi. He would often laugh and say, “It’s my rightful share; fortune is for the strong, morality for the weak.”
Nadira Mahmud Ata al-Murakibi
She was the fourth child of Mahmud Bey Ata. She was born and grew up in the mansion on Khayrat Square in an environment steeped in splendor and comfort. She was nice looking but less so than her brothers. She was similar in nature, principles, and piety to her older sister, Shakira, and very compliant and gentle too. She had a sharp mind and loved school. Her father, having been conquered by current trends, did not object to her continuing her education. Her childhood happiness was crowned by the love that united her with her cousin Mazin. He was her knight in shining armor from adolescence until the day he died, or rather all her life. She loved him like nothing else in the world and pinned all her dreams, happiness, and hope on him. How she fretted over the quarrel that rent the family! How she feared its implications for her happiness and aspirations! “Papa is too angry,” she said to her mother.
Their bond was not severed through the many years of dispute. Meanwhile, she passed the baccalaureate and enrolled at the faculty of medicine. Then came the disaster in which Mazin perished. He vanished from her world and she virtually went mad with grief, or rather anger. She spent a year in the mansion, prisoner to depression, then continued her studies with a hardened heart, set on renouncing the world. She emerged from that period with two bitter experiences: the death of her beloved and her sister’s disappointing marriage. She applied all her energy to work, solitude, and religious readings. Good opportunities to marry came her way but she instinctively thought the worst and hated the idea of married life. She specialized in pediatric medicine, took a doctorate, and was more and more successful every day. She paid no attention to her brothers’ advice to reconsider marriage and persisted with her work, solitude, and piety until the train left her behind, unapologetic, registered in the sad world as a unique, unrepeatable entity. Shakira, Abduh, Nadira, and Mahir assembled in the mansion in old age, as they had done at the start of their lives, living examples of success and failure.
Ni‘ma Ata al-Murakibi
Ata al-Murakibi and Sakina Gal‘ad al-Mughawiri’s daughter, she was born and grew up in the house in al-Ghuriya. She inherited her mother’s wide eyes an
She defended her father despite some resentment, “No. He’s just afraid the lady will accuse him of squandering her fortune!”
She was God-fearing but nevertheless hoped the widow would depart for the Hereafter before her father so she could inherit and bequeath some of the money to help Rashwana, Amr, and Surur in their lives. But the man died a short while before his wife, frustrating her hopes in death as he had in life. In the end, the fact that her two brothers, Mahmud and Ahmad, interacted with her and her children and were dutiful to them made her forget her sorrows. She reciprocated their love until the end of her life. She lived to delight in her grandchildren and departed the world two years after Aziz.
Nihad Hamada al-Qinawi
The first child of Sadriya and Hamada al-Qinawi, she was born and grew up in Khan Ga‘far. She was cheerful in Bayt al-Qadi as a child and enjoyed special favor with Amr and Radia as the first grandchild. She was moderately pretty and received a small measure of education, which she soon forgot. When she was nearly fifteen, a middle-aged village mayor, a relative of her father, asked to marry her. Her father welcomed him enthusiastically and Sadriya realized with profound sorrow that she was to be separated from her daughter forevermore, that she would only see her on special occasions, and that from now on her daughter’s roots would be in Upper Egypt.