The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail by Naguib Mahfouz
He started laughing and joking with all his guests. “Happy occasions should bring together people who disagree about politics!” he said.
“Do you think,” Shukri Pasha Abd al-Halim whispered in Isa’s ear, “that your relative is acknowledging by that joke that the King’s men—and consequently the King himself—aren’t above the parties?”
Shaikh Abd as-Sattar as-Salhubi leaned over in their direction to hear what they were whispering and then laughed silently. “In that case,” he whispered in turn, “the parties should be above the King!” He then looked anxiously at the picture of the King hanging on the central wall of the room.
Isa smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “People are heaping curses on him quite openly in cafés.”
But as the party and the drinks proceeded, the bitterness of politics vanished. Even Isa, who was a political creature above all else, abandoned himself wholeheartedly to his feelings of sheer joy. He knew that he was immaculately dressed, that there was a glow on his triangular face, and that his round eyes looked serene and limpid. The happiness he felt at the thought of marrying into a wealthy and influential family was a mere trifle compared with his feelings about his bride-to-be and his sincere hopes for a really pleasant life, for a tomorrow packed with happiness, a future which would hold the promise of real prestige. He forgot about the burning of Cairo, his dismissal from the ministry and transfer to the archives, the depressing apathy that had dampened popular enthusiasm, the indolence that seemed to be endemic in official quarters, and the gloomy melancholy that, even while the glories of spring were giving physical life an intoxicating stimulus, tinged the horizon.
In his present excited state, Isa did not have to stay in one spot any longer than suited him. He went over to Susan Hanem and they took a final look at the buffet together; everything seemed to be there and it all looked very colorful. Then he made for the green room and sat down with his closest friends, where he would have liked to stay until he was called for the announcement of the engagement. Ibrahim Khairat was looking into the red room. “There’s a whole lot of white flesh in there,” he said. “It looks beautiful!”
“Do you mean al-Hajja,19 Isa’s mother?” Abbas Sadiq asked jokingly.
Isa looked at his mother in her expensive but modest gown and was happy that she looked more dignified than Hasan’s mother in spite of the latter’s beauty. Abbas Sadiq started to complain to him about Hasan. “Your cousin’s fiercer than the Cairo fire itself!” he said. Hasan gave a long laugh and Abbas carried on in a cautionary tone. “Get married yourself and you’ll be convinced that it isn’t all that bad to belong to a party.”
“Things are very confused at the moment,” Samir Abd al-Baqi interjected.
They all realized that it was politics he was talking about.
“There’s no question about that,” Isa replied.
“But they’re even more confused than is generally apparent,” said Samir emphatically.
“May the good Lord honor you!” Hasan said sarcastically.
“They say the King is going to hire mercenaries. Because he doesn’t trust anyone any longer!”
“Nothing shows more clearly how bad things are,” Abbas Sadiq commented with a laugh, “than what one of the Liberal Constitutionalists said. He declared he’d rather have the Wafd47 return to power than put up with the present chaotic state of affairs.”
“May God increase the confusion and chaos!” Hasan replied with great emphasis.
Isa was called inside for the announcement of the engagement. Everyone was watching him and there was complete silence; for Hasan it was a very heavy silence. Then the shrill cries of joy echoing through every part of the mansion pierced the air.
Salwa stood with her mother on one side and Isa on the other. Then she walked around among the guests before taking her seat in the red room on a chair banked with roses. She looked really beautiful. She had inherited her mother’s stature and long, thin neck, and had her father’s eyes set in a face that seemed to have a white translucence like moonlight, but with a sweet gentle expression that showed not only a kindly temperament but also an almost total lack of intelligence or warmth. She looked at her mother continually, as if asking her guidance and help, fearful and insecure at the thought of separation. The guests discussed her dress at length.
As the party continued, the piles of food prepared for the buffet disappeared and guests started to leave, carrying souvenir tins of sweets with them. The engaged couple and Susan Hanem were finally left alone in the sitting room. Its huge veranda looked out onto Baron Street. Night was spreading through the pure spring air, and the full-grown trees around the garden, swimming in the brilliance of the electric lights, swayed from side to side in the gentle breeze, moist with refreshing coolness.
“Today I think I’ve reached the peak of happiness,” Isa said.
“Thank you!” Salwa whispered with a bashful smile. “I hope I can tell you how I feel—when I find enough courage.”
Susan Hanem watched them both happily. “When you are married in July, God willing,” she said, “our happiness will be complete.”
Isa wondered when he would be allowed to kiss Salwa. He was so drunk with happiness that it almost worried him. He would follow in Ali Bey’s footsteps, he told himself, and eventually come to occupy the same kind of position. He had never tasted the feeling of love before, except once when he was in secondary school. He’d fallen in love with a nurse at the morning tram stop, and had plunged into the experience headlong—foolishly—but his father had eventually brought him under control again. Now here he was today, having gone through imprisonment, beatings, dismissal, promotion, and demotion, here he was engaged to a fiancée whom he hadn’t seen in more than ten years. Now he knew about love and had already drunk from its nectar. He felt almost as if he was clutching guaranteed happiness with his hands. “You’re the image of your mother, my beloved,” he said, “so dazzling I can’t conceive how happy I really am.”
Susan Hanem laughed. “I hope you’ll remember what you’ve just said in the future,” she said. “People say that we mothers-in-law get to hear nice things like that only on this one occasion!”
Salwa gave a gentle laugh and Isa felt even happier. Suddenly he felt the urge to show off. “I wonder if you’ll dislike living abroad,” he asked, “if circumstances make it necessary in the future to work in the diplomatic service?”
“Salwa graduated from a German school,” Susan Hanem replied for her daughter.
He smiled to show how pleased he was. “Let’s hope our life will be happy,” he murmured. “We’ve seen real suffering and I hope our happiness will be real too.”
FIVE
“There’s a secret in our life,” Isa told Salwa, “which you ought to know.” They were sitting together on the veranda, the scent of roses and carnations all around them. It was almost sunset; daylight had half-closed its eyelids and the sun was withdrawing its lashes from the mansion rooftops. Spring seemed to be breathing with the pure energy of youth. Susan Hanem had disappeared for a while and left them alone. They were drinking lemonade. A crystal decanter stood on a table of painted rattan.
“A secret?” Salwa whispered inquisitively.
He lifted himself, beginning with his eyebrows, something he always did when he was on the point of speaking. “Yes,” he said. “You may think that I hadn’t seen you before when I asked for your hand. But in fact I loved you tremendously ten years ago; you were ten and I was twenty. We were living in my mother’s house in Al-Wayiliyya48 and your family lived out by the Pyramids. Your father was a lawyer in those days and a close friend of my father and they used to visit each other a lot. You were very beautiful then, as you are now, and I fell in love with you. Don’t you remember those days?”
She stifled a laugh by biting the inside of her lip. “Only a little,” she replied. “I remember seeing rockets on the Prophet’s birthday at your house once, but I don’t remember anything about your loving me…”
<
“No one remembers such things,” he said. “But my late father had to restrain me once when I was looking at you in utter infatuation and on another occasion when I kissed you!”
“No!”
“Yes! A pure kiss to match your tender age.”
“But you weren’t a child.”
“No, but you were! It doesn’t matter anyway. Work hard and you’ll marry her, my father told me at the time; make sure you turn out to be a young man who is worthy of her and I’ll see you’re married! I asked what degree of worthiness was required, and my father replied that Ali Bey Sulaiman was his relative and close friend but we needed Susan Hanem’s approval. She was rich and not concerned with wealth; what she wanted for her daughter was a successful young man—a judge, for example. The fact of the matter is that my own rapid promotion has impressed a number of people. I’ve become an important civil servant—no, politician even—at a very early age. But no one knew what the real reasons were for this unusual energy on my part!”
With a graceful gesture, she opened an ivory fan. On its outer edge was a picture of a swimming duck. “All this, and yet you hadn’t been to see me for ten years!” she said with mild irony.
“Don’t forget,” he said earnestly, “that your father was appointed a justice after that, that he worked for years plying between Asyut and Alexandria, and that I myself got heavily involved in politics.”
“How were you to know that ten years hadn’t turned me into something awful?” she asked with a coquettish smile.
“My heart! I trust its feelings. And when I saw you again my confidence in it was doubled. So our betrothal may seem traditional on the surface, but there’s a real love story behind it even though it was all one-sided.”
“Well, at any rate,” she murmured, gazing into the distance, “it’s not that way any longer.”
He took her chin between his fingers, turned her head gently, leaned forward until his hungry mouth met her soft lips in a throbbing kiss, then drew his head back again, smiling with a sense of happiness so deep that as his eyes wandered over the collection of flowerpots on the veranda, they were misted with emotion like a fog-covered windowpane. The tale he’d told her was not a complete fabrication. Not all along the line, in any case. He had often admired her beauty in the past and he really loved her now, even if he’d forgotten her for ten years. So what harm was there in a little white lie, which was a shining example of good sense and which would give their relationship a magical beauty of its own?
His beloved was not ready, however, to be parted from her mother; it was almost as though the midwife had forgotten to sever the umbilical cord. This attachment worried him sometimes. He looked forward eagerly to the day when he would really have her completely as his own and was somewhat disturbed by the way she looked at her mother during breaks in conversation. But his happiness swept all misgivings away, just as a big wave will sweep away the flotsam from a beach and leave it smooth and clean, and he found delight in the fact that she had so appallingly little experience of life’s normal happenings. Her innocence may in fact have flattered his own feelings by simply giving him a sense of superiority. He was also pleased at her love of music and her wide reading of travel literature.
“For me your love is a treasure without price,” he said. “When I came to meet you for the first time, I asked God that I might make a good impression on you.”
“I’d seen you before in the newspapers.”
“If I’d known that at the time, I’d have taken more care getting ready for the photograph!” he replied delightedly.
“That doesn’t matter. But I also heard about your misfortunes in politics.”
As he laughed, he threw his head back once again like the pasha. “I wonder what you make of that?” he asked. “I’m an old friend of police truncheons and prison cells. I’m quite used to being dismissed and expelled. What do you think of that?”
She bit the inside of her lip once more. “Papa says…”
“There’s no need to quote Papa on the subject,” he interrupted quickly. “I know what he thinks already; he belongs to the other side. But don’t you think about anything but music and travel books? From now on, you’re going to have to prepare yourself for the role of a politician’s wife—a politician in every sense of the word.”
Susan Hanem came back into the room. “Everything is as you wish,” she said, sounding like someone announcing that a project had been successfully concluded.
“Thank you, madame,” Isa replied, standing there in his sharkskin suit. They both sat down. “The marriage will be in August, then,” he continued, smoothing his trousers over his knees, “and afterwards we’ll travel directly to Europe.”
Their eyes met in delight. The last ray of the sun had disappeared. “I was telling Salwa that I’ve loved her for ten years!” he told Susan Hanem.
The lady raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Don’t believe everything he tells you,” she warned her daughter. “Your fiancé is a politician and I know all about these politicians!”
All three of them dissolved in laughter.
SIX
Isa was at breakfast on the morning of the twenty-third of July42 when the radio interrupted its normal broadcast to announce the Army declaration. At first he did not fully comprehend what he was hearing. Then he leapt up and stared at the radio, listening dry-mouthed to these strange words which kept following each other, forming startling sentences. When he realized what he was hearing, his immediate reaction was dismay. He reeled, like someone suddenly coming out of darkness into brilliant light. What could it all mean?
He went into the sitting room and sat down next to his mother. “Very grave news,” he said.
She raised her dim eyes in his direction.
“The Army’s defying the King!” he said.
She found the news hard to digest. “Is it like the days of Urabi Pasha?”45 she asked.
Ah! Why had that thought not occurred to him? He was really in a very agitated state. “Yes,” he muttered, “like the days of Urabi.”
“Will there be war?” she asked anxiously.
What would really happen? He couldn’t get any more news now since there was no one left in Cairo to consult. The only reason why he himself was not on vacation was that he’d postponed it until the time for his trip abroad.
“No, no,” he told his mother, “the Army’s making some demands and they’ll be met. That’s all there is to it.”
He traveled to Alexandria, mulling over what had happened en route. Here was the tyrant himself being dealt a blow of steel: it should match the brutality of his own tyranny and should be final—let him burn, in the contemplation of his own crimes. Just look at the consequences of your errors and stupidity! But where would this movement stop? What would be the party’s role in it? At one moment, Isa would feel intoxicated by a sense of hope; at others, he would be overcome by a feeling much like the whimpering uneasiness dogs show immediately before an earthquake.
He found Abd al-Halim Pasha in Athenios2 wearing a white suit of natural silk with a deep red rose in the buttonhole of the jacket. In the glass on the table in front of him, all that was left was the froth of a bottle of stout, looking as though it was stained with iodine. The Pasha narrowed his eyes languorously. “Forget about the Army’s demands,” he said. “The movement’s bigger than that. The demands can be met today and the people who are putting them forward will hang tomorrow. No, no, my dear sir! But it’s very difficult to judge what’s behind it all.”
“Haven’t you any news, sir?”
“Things are moving too fast for news. Goodwin, the English journalist, was sitting where you are just an hour ago, and he assured me that the King’s finished.”
The shock was tremendous. It overwhelmed him for a moment. “Don’t we have any connection with what’s going on?” he asked.
“
“Maybe their journey abroad has got something to do with the movement?” Isa suggested.
The Pasha’s expression showed no signs of optimism. His only comment was a barely audible “Maybe.”
They continued their conversation without saying anything new; this became an end in itself, providing a release for their anxieties.
He found Ali Bey Sulaiman in his villa at Sidi Bishr,36 sitting in a bamboo rocking chair, his forehead contracted into a frown and looking haggard and sickly, all healthy good looks and innate haughtiness gone. When he looked up and saw Isa approaching, he gave him an anxious stare. “What news have you got?” he asked impatiently.
Isa sat down. He could feel the burden as the Bey, his wife, and his daughter looked at him. As he spoke, there was a superficial calm to his voice, concealing a certain pride at the new factor he was about to introduce to the situation. “The King’s finished,” he said.
The last gleam went out of the Bey’s eyes. He threw a sickly glance through the balcony toward the pounding sea. “What about you? I mean you people. Do you approve?”
For a moment Isa enjoyed a sense of exultation, a moment that seemed itself to swing to and fro above a painful wound. “The King’s our traditional enemy,” he mumbled.
The Bey sat up straight in his chair. “Has the party got anything to do with what’s happening?” he asked.