Respected Sir, Wedding Song, the Search by Naguib Mahfouz
“That’s the way it is—in the theater!” he answered.
Like the coming of night, a vague change crept over them. Their silence wasn’t the same silence, their talk wasn’t the same, Father wasn’t the same, nor was Mother. Our household had not been by any means without its minor differences or petty bickerings, but in general our life together had flowed along quite congenially. What, then, was the dark mystery that had slipped in between them? Her radiance had vanished; and he, who had always been an extrovert, laughing boisterously, making fun of everything and treating everyone amiably, had now become withdrawn. My mother’s attachment to me—though still full of the same old tenderness—was tinged with a kind of grief which she could not succeed in hiding, while Father neglected me completely. An anxious dread of something unpleasant and unknown penetrated my soul.
At teatime one day, before they left, I heard Tariq advising them “not to give in to the devil.”
“There is no devil except you,” Mother answered bitterly.
“I’m not an adolescent,” protested Father.
In deference to my presence, I surmised, Mother said nothing more. After they left the house I was struck with a sense of sadness and loss.
It was painfully clear that something had happened. I asked Mother about it, but she evaded the question, pretending nothing was wrong. When she and Father were alone in the hall I would hear them arguing fiercely. I would cower behind the open door listening.
“There’s still a chance to be cured.”
“Keep out of my private affairs!”
“But what you’re doing reflects on us. Don’t you realize that?”
“I hate being preached at.”
“Opium killed my aunt’s husband.”
“Which proves that it has its uses.”
“Your whole personality has changed. You’re unbearable!”
I was seized by fear. I knew what opium was. I had learned about it watching a play, The Victims, from which the scenes depicting those doomed addicts had haunted me. Was Father to become one of them? Was my beloved father headed for ruin?
Before Father and Tariq returned I found myself alone with Mother. I gazed at her sadly.
“What’s the matter, Abbas?”
“I know all about it.” My voice was trembling. “It’s something dangerous. I haven’t forgotten The Victims.”
“How did you learn about it? No, son. It’s not quite as you imagine.”
Father arrived at this point, upset, revealing that he had heard me. “Mind your own business, boy!” he yelled.
“I’m afraid for you,” I said.
He shouted, in a voice more terrifying than I’d ever heard before, “Shut up, or I’ll bash your head in!”
In my eyes at that moment he was transformed into a beast. The happy dream I’d had for so long was shattered. I retreated to my room, there to conjure up the whole panorama of a play that began with Tariq’s eviction from the house and ended with my father’s rehabilitation—as a result of my efforts, naturally. I told myself that good would still triumph if he could only find someone to help him.
But conditions went from bad to worse. He became more withdrawn; the father I had known no longer existed, and in his new personality he cut himself off from us on every occasion except when his anger was aroused for whatever reason. Then he would rain down curses and insults on us. I began to be afraid of him and kept my distance. Mother was miserable and didn’t know what to do. “My salary isn’t enough for the household,” she told him once.
“So go butt your head against a wall!” he said.
We were certainly no longer living as we used to, spending much less and eating very simply. Food and money didn’t interest me, but how was I going to buy books? It is unfortunate that the life of the soul cannot do without money. The most terrible blow, however, was that I had lost my father. Where was the man he’d once been? The look in my eyes seemed to anger him. “You’re a poor specimen, not fit for life,” he’d tell me. Things between him and Mother deteriorated to the extent that they each went their own ways and had separate rooms. Our home was disintegrating and we were living as strangers under the same roof. My mother’s fate was hard for me to bear. In my mind sprang a scene revolving around a fight between Father and Tariq: Father kills Tariq and is arrested, and as he’s leaving he turns to me and says, “If I had only listened to what you said,” after which the old house regains its purity. Later, of course, I felt remorse for the cruelty of my imagination.
I asked Mother, “How do you manage to make ends meet all by yourself?”
“I sell little things. Pay attention to your work. You’re the only hope we have left.”
“My heart is with you.”
“I realize that, son, but the time hasn’t yet come for you to bear our burdens. You must study, to get a good job.”
“My ambition is to become a playwright.”
“A profession that won’t guarantee you security.”
“I scorn material possessions. You understand my nature.”
“You may hate materialism, Abbas, but don’t try to ignore it altogether.”
“Good will triumph, Mother,” I assured her fervently.
I was as addicted to my dreams as my father was to his opium. I imagined changing everything around me and shaping it anew: I swept the gravel market, sprinkled the streets, and dried up the ever-flowing sewers; I tore down old houses and replaced them with towering apartment blocks; I smartened up the policemen, improved the conduct of the students and teachers, condemned drugs and drink, and conjured food from the air.
One afternoon the two of them were sitting in the hall, Father plucking his mustache with a pair of tweezers, Tariq darning his socks.
“Don’t be taken in by the destitution of the poor,” Tariq was saying. “This country is full of rich people no one knows about.”
“Al-Hilaly is mining gold,” said Father.
“Don’t talk to me about al-Hilaly and his gold. Talk about women—and the petrodollar glut!”
“This scheme appeals to me. But our hands are tied.”
“Abu al-Ala*1 used to live on a diet of lentils,” I piped up.
“Deliver these pearls of wisdom to your mother!” Father yelled at me.
I fell silent, telling myself that they were just a couple of savages.
—
There was Tahiya, standing right in front of me, so incredibly attractive with her captivating eyes that I looked at her in a daze, not believing what I was seeing.
During the period before exams I used to stay up late at night and sleep in the daytime. The door had opened while I was pacing up and down in the hall studying, and Tahiya had come in, with Tariq Ramadan close behind. Father and Mother had already gone to bed. I knew Tahiya. I’d often seen her onstage, doing bit parts, like Tariq, and I stared at her now in bewilderment.
“What’s keeping you up at this late hour?” she said, smiling.
“He’s a striver. He stays up at night in the pursuit of learning, and next week he is going to take the middle school exams.”
“Good for you.”
They went upstairs to Tariq’s room. My head spun; my blood boiled. Was he bringing her to his room behind my parents’ backs? Didn’t she have a house they could go to? Was our house being brought down to the lowest depths? I couldn’t concentrate. My head was aflame with all the unquenchable desires of puberty. Temptation had launched an attack, which, in my struggle for purity, I fought off by sheer willpower: my whole being raged furiously until at last sleep overcame me.
In the afternoon, when they were sitting in the hall, I approached my parents, and at the sight of me Father asked apprehensively, “What’s the matter with you?”
“Something very strange! You’d never imagine!” I burst out heatedly. “Tariq brought Tahiya to his room last night!” His heavy eyes turned toward me, fixing on me. He said nothing, so I assumed he didn’t believe me. “I saw it with my own eyes!”
“I wanted to let you know, so you can set him straight and make him understand ours is a respectable home. You must tell him to leave.”
“Pay attention to your studies, and leave matters belonging to the house to its owner,” he replied sharply.
“She’s engaged to him,” Mother explained, in a voice that was muffled and abject.
“But they aren’t married yet!”
“He wants to die of starvation,” Father said to Mother sarcastically, pointing in my direction.
“We have made ourselves poor,” I remonstrated in a burst of anger.
He seized his glass of tea to throw it at me, but Mother jumped between us and took me to my room. Her eyes were threatening tears. “There’s no use hoping for anything from him,” I said, trying to comfort her. “Just don’t have anything more to do with him. I wish we could go away together, but where could we go? Where would we find a place to live? And where would our money come from!”
I couldn’t find an answer. The truth stood before me in all its naked ugliness: Mother’s moral reserves had collapsed in the face of the circumstances created by my father’s addiction, for which he was obviously responsible, but from which he was helpless to escape. But even apart from his addiction, it struck me at times that he was totally without principles. I despised him and I rejected him. He’d made a brothel out of our old home. But I was weak, too. All I could do was cry.
I passed my examinations, but my success didn’t make me as happy as it should have. I couldn’t rid myself of my sense of shame; sorrow had settled deep within me. During the long vacation I took refuge in the library, and there I wrote a play. I begged Father to show it to Sirhan al-Hilaly, but he only replied, “We’re not a children’s theater.”
Mother volunteered to submit it to him. Two weeks later she brought it back, saying, “Don’t expect your first play to be accepted. What you must do is try again.”
I was upset, but I didn’t despair. How could I despair when my only hope was the theater? One day I happened to meet Fuad Shalaby in the reading room. We shook hands, I reminded him who I was, and his cordiality gave me the courage to ask, “How can I write an acceptable play?”
“How old are you?” he inquired. “What grade are you in now?”
“I’ll be in secondary school next year.”
“Can’t you wait until you finish your education?”
“I feel as if I can write now.”
“No, you don’t understand life yet.”
“I have a pretty good idea what it’s all about.”
He smiled at me. “What is life, in your view?” he asked.
“It’s the struggle of the soul against materialism.”
“And what role does death play in this struggle?” he asked with a broadening grin.
“It’s the soul’s final victory,” I answered confidently.
“If things were only that simple.” He patted my shoulder. “You need a lot more experience. Find out what interests people and what arouses them. I’d strongly advise you to plunge into life, taste it to the full, and wait for at least another ten years.”
His words made me retreat even further within myself. He imagined that I’d been sheltered from temptation! Perhaps he was ignorant of what was going on in our house. And ignorant as well of the struggle in an adolescent soul, the unabating conflict of lust and loftiness, the battle in the mind between the erotics of Omar Khayyam and the epic romance of Magnun Layla, divided by the same contrast as between Tahiya, the wanton in the room upstairs, and the vision of her that haunted the imagination, or as between dirt strewn on the ground and banks of white clouds floating in the sky.
Strange things were going on in the room next to Tariq’s. The old furniture had been sold, replaced by beautiful new things bought at a public auction. A table covered with green baize stood in the center on a large carpet that had been laid over the Masarany tiles, and against the middle wall was a buffet. These were mysterious preparations. When I asked Mother she said, “Your father is getting it ready to spend his evenings there with friends and colleagues, as all men do.” I stared at her suspiciously, the very mention of Father filling me with misgiving. “They’ll spend the rest of the night here after the theater closes,” she added.
I got into the habit of crouching in my room in the dark so that I could see things.
The truth of what was going on in our house could only be seen at night. These friends used to arrive very late. I would watch them come dribbling in—first Father, then al-Hilaly, Ismail, Salim al-Agrudy, Fuad Shalaby, Tariq, and Tahiya—then I’d sneak up to the top floor in the darkness. They would be seated around the table and the cards would already have been dealt.
It was gambling, just as I had seen it in the theater. The dramas of the stage, with their heroes and victims, had moved into our house, with the difference that these people, who contested with each other on the stage, here stood solidly together all on the side of evil. They were all actors, even the critic, and nothing was sure except lies. If the Deluge came again and if good intentions are worth anything, only Mother and I would deserve a place in a lifeboat. These changes were not our doing. But even Mother went so far as to prepare the food and drink. “You shouldn’t have to serve these riffraff,” I protested.
“They are colleagues, and I am the mistress of the house,” she said by way of excuse.
“What house? It’s nothing but a whorehouse, a gambling den.”
“I’d like to get away from it, if we could only leave together. But what can we do?”
“This is why I hate money,” I said, exasperated.
“But we can’t get along without it. That’s the tragedy. In any case, you are my only hope.”
What is goodness? What is it without action? I had no energy for anything but daydreams, imagination, the domain of the theater. The house was infested with obscenity, and youth was no excuse for accepting the situation, but my hands were tied. I had no other recourse. The lives my schoolmates lived I could share only in the fire of my imagination, where beautiful words became images, not deeds, a Danse Macabre that I could only applaud from the edge of the ballroom floor.
Then Fuad Shalaby began bringing Doria, so that they could whisper together in the third room under the framed Bismallah*2 that had been a gift from my grandfather. “Shalaby and Doria, too,” I said to Mother. “We must leave.”
“Not before you’re able to,” she replied, her eyes red.
“I’m suffocating.”
“So am I, son, and more so.”
“Is only opium responsible for all this?” She didn’t answer. “Perhaps this opium itself is the result of something else. Perhaps it’s not the real reason.”
“Your father is mad,” she sighed. “But it’s my fault that I let him mislead me.”
“I’d like to kill him.”
She patted my arm. “Lose yourself in your studies,” she whispered. “You are the only hope I have left.”
The night that burned away my last illusion: through the doorway of my room I made out Sirhan al-Hilaly staggering downstairs in the dark, his hair disheveled, his eyes dull, driven by what looked like a kind of blind madness. I wondered why he’d fled so enraged from the battlefield of the card room. Mother came out of her room—I’d thought she was upstairs—to see what was happening, and met him below the last step. They whispered something I could not catch. She went into her room, and he slipped in after her. I jumped up, impetuously, but then stood stock-still, sensing that it was more important to me to learn the truth than to try to stop her. My mother, too? It is possible that for a few minutes I even lost consciousness. This was the blow that would leave my world in scorched ruins, echoing with the jeers of demons. I darted into the hall, then into her room, drowned in darkness, where I switched on the light. It was empty. I turned the light off again, backed into the hall, switched on the light there, and stood in a quandary. At that point
“What woke you up at this hour?” he said brusquely.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I answered, not knowing what I was saying.
“Have you seen Sirhan al-Hilaly?”
“He left the house.”
“When?”
“A while ago. I don’t know exactly when.”
I returned to my room and stood there, in the dark, my head burning with insane thoughts, oblivious to the passing of time until the sound of footsteps brought me to my senses. People were leaving. Then no one was left in the hall except Mother and Father. I put my ear to the keyhole to hear what they were saying. “What went on behind my back?” I heard him asking her. She didn’t answer, so he asked her another question. “Did Abbas see?” Again no answer. “He’s the one who gave you the job. It’s common knowledge that al-Hilaly hasn’t spared anyone, not even Umm Hany.” I didn’t hear a sound from her, and he went on: “Everything has its price, that’s what concerns me. As for you, though, you aren’t worth being jealous over.”
At last she spoke. “You’re the lowest kind of vermin.”
“Except for one little worm.”
This was the reality. This was my father and this was my mother. The flames consuming my world grew fiercer. Sheathe your dagger, for even Caesar has been slain. Cyrano de Bergerac fought against ghosts.
I disowned both my parents, the pimp and the whore—whom I now remember having seen once whispering together with Fuad Shalaby, when I hadn’t thought anything of it, and another time with Tariq Ramadan, when I hadn’t had any doubts or suspicions. All of them, all, without any exception. Why not? She is my foremost enemy: Father is insane, an addict, but Mother is the engineer of all the evil in the world.
My mother’s voice, calling my name, reached me in my room. How strange that my hatred of Father had taken a definite form, while my feelings toward her expressed themselves not in simple aversion, but in a confused tumult of resentment.
She hurried in and took me by the hand. “Leave your reading for a while—it’s not often we have the chance to sit together and talk.”