The Cheapest Nights Page 13

  At the bridgehead they are joined by streams of cars pouring from Zamalek and Gezira and Dokki and Quizeh. Bright, colorful, shining, like flocks of birds. In the whirlpool of Kasr el Nil Square their ranks are swelled by shabby cars and taxicabs before they diverge to other streets where movement never stops; narrower, with closer buildings, noisier, with more pedestrians. At Ataba it becomes one great merry-go-round. Automobiles and buses and tramcars and pedestrians and horse-drawn carts mill around in utter chaos. It reaches a peak when they turn into Al Azhar Street. Here, it is a madhouse of pedestrians and automobiles, screeching wheels, howling claxons, the whistles of bus conductors and roaring motors. Policemen blow their whistles, and hawkers yell in the blistering heat. The roads and pavements are a moving mass of flesh. Everything is wholesale. Riding a vehicle, trading, and even accidents come wholesale. From time to time a warning to be careful rises above the din like the last cry of a drowning corpse.

  Driving becomes an agony under volleys of abuse from pedestrians and the eloquent retaliations of Farghali, and Abdallah’s determination to get even with Shohrat and avenge his wounded pride. He would strangle her willingly. Get his fingers around her neck and press, tighter and tighter. He is pressing the claxon which lets out a hoot that falls noiselessly on the enormous crowds. Traffic goes at a crawling pace, exasperating, maddening. The mosque of Al Azhar rises indomitable on the skyline, behind a haze of dust. It has stood for generations, watching the deadly struggle while it has remained constant, insusceptible to change. Then they turn to the right.

  Acting on Farghali’s advice they park the car and do the last leg on foot. A few paces and Abdallah begins to feel hollow as though he had been left alone in an ancient deserted place. The noise dies down, the quiet is almost tangible. He is Egyptian through and through. His father came from El Mounira and his mother from Abbassich. He has poor relations in Upper Egypt. He has traveled a good deal, gone to many places, and seen the extremes of poverty. Yet here was Cairo, and this place where he finds himself is part of it. The incredible scenes unfolding before his eyes amaze him beyond belief as he delves further in as though he were sinking in a bottomless pit.

  The streets are long and broad at first, carrying illustrious names. They are macadamed and they have a pavement. There are crowded dwellings on both sides but they have numbers and terraces and decorated gates and the windows have panes and shutters. The shops have owners and tools and assistants and elegantly written signs. The people are clean-shaven and healthy looking. Their clothes are neat and colorful and well cut. Language is polite. The smell of burning fuel and fabrics and perfume fills the air.

  The deeper inside, the narrower the streets. The houses shrink and shed their numbers. Windows have no shutters. Shops give way to stalls where the proprietor is himself the assistant and his bare hands his tools. Faces are paler and darker. Clothes are old and faded. Language degenerates into abuse, and the air carries the smell of spices and leather and glue and sawdust.

  Still they continue, and the streets grow narrower until they become mere lanes with names that jar on the ear. Rough blocks of stone take the place of macadam and there is no pavement. Eons of time separate the dilapidated dwellings from modern times, the windows are narrow slits with iron bars. There is less movement, stalls are few and far between. Features are coarse, faces are darker and beards begin to sprout. There is less clothing. No shirts with the trousers, no underpants with the gallabieh. Language breaks down to a jargon of grunts, and kitchen smells ride on the air. Still they continue and the winding lanes lead to alleys paved with dirt, covered with filth and water and slime. There are no stalls; goods are displayed on pushcarts or a showcase nailed to the wall. The houses have shed their coating of paint and the iron bars on the windows. Children and flies swarm in abundance. Features are coarse and swollen as though bitten by wasps. Clothes are threadbare, some are unclothed; language is loud and shrill, and the smell of slime and decay falls like a pall on the dismal scene.

  As they keep on toward their destination the winding lanes and alleys lead to a place without substance where everything melts into everything else. The raised ground, compounded of years of accumulated dirt, welds with the dilapidated buildings groaning with age. The slimy ground is the same color as the dusty walls. The smell of the earth mingles with the smell of humanity, and the low broken murmurs mix with the barking of dogs and the creaking of old gates, and the dead slow movement of inanimate creatures. The low grimy dwellings are a continuation of the graveyard, stretching forward as far as the eye can see. And the obsequious Farghali leads the way, a grave expression on his face, befitting the grave situation. People greet him and he answers curtly. They all know him and ask how he is getting on. They treat him with deference, him, the mean janitor, while back in El Gabalaya Street nobody knows the all-powerful judge.

  They walk on through the crumbling buildings propped, like the people, against one another for support. The old lean on the young, the children lead the blind, and the walls support the sick. All are strung together like the beads of a rosary. One spirit inhabiting many bodies. Time does not exist. The child suckling at its mother’s breast is the same one who crawls on the garbage heaps, and the same one girt with talismans against the evil eye. He is the child who died and the child who escaped death. He is the apprentice at the workshop, the one who fools around imitating actors and calling abuse. He is the youth in overalls drawing on the stub of a cigarette. The one with a job or out of work. He is that one near the wall, crazed with opium and Seconal and unemployment. He is the old man who prays all day calling benedictions on the children, lamenting the past as he paints himself a glowing picture of the world to come.

  And the betrothed bride. She is the children’s mother with the colored headcloth or the black veil. She is the beating mother and the beaten wife. She is that one rummaging for food to feed the hungry brood.

  Farghali’s voice comes dimly to Abdallah. He is pointing at the only upright building in the lane saying proudly it is his house, insisting they go in, not forgetting to curse Shohrat who is the cause of his disgrace. Abdallah asks where the blind alley is and whether Shohrat’s house is still far. Farghali replies that they have almost reached it. They walk on, followed by inquisitive looks. And behind every suspicious look the word “stranger” forms, implying danger and distrust.

  The women at their doorsteps are weaving conversation out of their idleness. They lean their heads together as they watch the strange procession. The whisper travels from doorstep to doorstep. “Police,” some say in a hoarse whisper. “Health authorities,” hope the optimistic. Then they recognize Farghali, and their whispers die down.

  And children. Scores upon scores gather in front and behind and on either side, their eyes bleary with ophthalmia and trachoma, and misery looks out of their haggard faces. Swarms of flies come in their wake. One child shouts as he hurls a stone at Farghali who reproves him mildly. Soon it is a game. The children gather around Farghali who chases after them and they scamper away with the flies behind them. Soon they come back and resume their game as the flies resume their buzzing.

  Farghali is not sure which is Shohrat’s house. He asks one of the women sitting at their doors who points to a house not far off. The name is carried from mouth to mouth, collecting conjecture as it travels. The women leave their places to join the procession of children. Their black veils and the dirt ground and the shouting of the children and the low mumble of adults are all one. The earth boils under the hot sunshine and the stench from its bowels escapes to the sky.

  Farghali and Sharaf, surrounded by the curious crowd, wait at the door while Abdallah goes up alone. The house is dark. The interior is like the mouth of a toothless hag. Matches won’t light and they drop to the slimy floor. Shohrat is on the second floor, at least that’s what they said. The first floor is pitch-black and the stink is foul; an army of rats seems to have gnawed at the decaying walls streaked with tr
aces of brine and leakage. Dank, moldy, as if just emerging from a flood. A woman washing at the door of a room in the entrance, one bare white leg exposed, stares at him with suspicion. Her hands stiffen; she can neither let go of the washing nor cover her bare leg. The stairs are worn and shaky, their wooden steps rotten and missing in places. His shoe creaks, and he is panicky with the danger of falling. For the hundredth time the light from the match is blown out by a dank breeze blowing from an invisible source. A cool dank breeze that chills his marrow, while outside the sun burns hot. The second floor can hardly be called a floor. A bare framework like the ribs of a skeleton forms the roof. Old tottering sloping walls, and a door on the landing. It is made of old rough unpolished wood, grayish blue, smudged with the remains of dried-up dough, the excreta of birds and animals, and the bloody imprint of a human palm, flanked by the drawing of a face like a witch’s, chalked by some child.

  He stretches a hesitant hand to knock on the door.

  “I want a word with you,” he says to the face that appears in the doorway.

  She pales beneath the look he pours on her like a searchlight. Apprehension and fear look out of her eyes. It’s Shohrat. She greets him in a broken voice and opens the door wider to let him in. She is wearing a man’s old gallabieh slit down the front. Her paleness has traveled to her feet making her toenails white. He is embarrassed. This trembling woman stole his watch. He was out for her blood when he started on her trail, but now he wavers. He stands debating whether to go on or to turn back. Having come this far, he must go on.

  “I want a word with you,” he says as he had planned. But his tone is not as he had planned. She lets him in, pale and apprehensive. She tries to hide her embarrassment behind a wan smile. He plans his retreat as he enters. Anything might happen. She might scream for help; he might be assaulted and robbed or killed. Three children emerge from somewhere. A girl, ten years old, tall, dark, skinny, with beady eyes and an expressionless face. Her hair is black and shiny, exuding an odor of petrol, one plait undone and a wooden comb planted in the crown of her head. Two other children, a boy and a girl, or possibly two girls or two boys. They cling to their mother’s skirt. Out of the dark, penetrating the smell of petrol, four pairs of eyes are fixed on him with mistrust. He swallows.

  “I want a word with you,” he repeats mechanically. Shohrat comes to abruptly as though in response to a stimulant.

  She sends the children away and shuts the door, but they linger behind it, their eyes shining through the cracks like glow-worms. His head is spinning. The room is close and narrow. A faint light filters through a window high in the wall. A decrepit four-poster, rusted all over, with a grubby mattress. A coarse moth-eaten sack full of something is propped against the wall. A rabbit is sitting on it. At the other end is another grubby mattress, and empty tin cans and chips of wood and a miscellany of junk lie scattered about. There is a picture of the Imam Ali on the wall. He is shown smiting an infidel with his sword, but the infidel is still sitting upright in his saddle, his feet firmly in the stirrups, in spite of the gash in his head. Something stirs on the mattress: a man, tall and dark and bald as the water cooler standing beside him. He is stretched out with a scowl on his face, his belt unbuckled, with filthy underwear showing through his open trousers.

  “I want a word with you,” for the third time.

  “Yes?” Faintly with a tremor.

  “Where is the watch?”

  She stiffens and beats her breast with indignation. She denies with the fluttering of her eyelids and the increasing paleness of her face. He repeats his question. She repeats her denial. Intuition assures him she is the thief and he returns more vehemently to the attack. She tries to reply and the words die on her lips. He shouts and she cowers, holding on desperately to her pride. The screams of the children rise above theirs. The eldest tries to take them away as she hears what is being said to her mother. Scenting danger they refuse to go and leave her alone.

  His anger grows and he threatens her with the police. He is at the door. She appears not to believe him so he goes to the door. It creaks open. Then he takes her to the window and they both lean out. “All right, Officer,” he calls and Sharaf replies with a wink. Abdallah’s face remains frozen and he pulls Shohrat back inside. “Hand it over or you get a year in jail.” She stumbles on her way. “Think of your children.” She stops dead in her tracks at the word “children” so he batters her again with more stress on “the children.”

  There are no tears in her eyes. The sleeping man turns and groans as he dreams. Shohrat calls out to him but he sleeps on in despair. Abdallah’s anger grows and he repeats his threat while something inside him whispers: this mother is fighting for the entity of her family.

  And his anger rises, giving his face a fearful mask, and he makes a final threat, and her eyes look into his. There is not a grain of pity in them, nor is there a grain of cruelty in his heart. He does not know why he threatens, why he persists, why he has no mercy, nor why he is not more ruthless. “You can search,” she says, and he knows she is guilty. He kicks things over with his foot. The sack is full of dry corncobs. Under the bed there is an old wooden doll and old rags and the smell of mildew. A pile of worn shoes in a blanket of dust beside an iron tube. The cupboard is one meter wide, painted brown under a thick coat of grime. Inside, a dead roach and a boiled potato, two onions and a sealed packet of salt. Looking below, his eyes shine as he starts identifying some of his belongings. Decorated candy boxes, a wooden box with inlay, red pencils, lead pencils, the top of a fountain pen, part of an old lighter. “For the children, to play with,” Shohrat explains. Also an old mended sock. A deep sense of shame makes his heart sink and the blood rise to his head. “Hand it over,” he hisses for the last time.

  The husband stirs as he shoos away the flies with a sleepy hand, and the voices of the children at the door grow louder. Shohrat opens her mouth and then shuts it again. Noises come from her throat and her hair is disheveled. She trembles inside the floating gallabieh, one hand frozen on the other, and a distraught look in her eye. There are moments when he comes to his senses and he realizes he is putting on an act while this woman is standing bare in her misery. The powerful traits of her face which once had brought him low have withered with her suffering. There is no joy in victory. He is torn by many factions.

  The tears come. She has found her voice. “Those things, I found them, I swear. I was going to return them.” The simpleton! How could she cave in so soon. And he had thought he was in for a long struggle.

  She moves to the open cupboard and fumbles inside and comes up with a broken glass. She pokes two trembling fingers inside and pulls out his watch. She hands it over without looking up. Buckets of iced water are pouring on him. The storm quietens down and his heart feels like lead and the horrible putrid room becomes unbearable. The watch is shining brightly in his outstretched palm, and the sight of it fills him with a childish joy. He turns it over in his hand, shakes it, puts it to his ear. It is still running, pointing at the exact time. Four twenty-five. He must go.

  At the top of the stairs as he starts to move, he suddenly slows down, gripped by a feeling that he has done wrong. He calls Shohrat who reappears, her little brood clinging to her dress. The eldest girl watches her mother, her face expressionless, her hands holding on to her undone plait. Abdallah hesitates then he asks Shohrat why she did it.

  “My pay is too little. You refused to lend me . . .”

  He asks her again.

  “The blouse, I had to pay the seamstress.”

  He presses her.

  “I am ashamed to appear in a melaya.”

  She doesn’t weep though tears are falling from her eyes like rain from a cloudless sky. Her answers are vague. He wants to know why she didn’t pawn the bed or sell it instead of stealing. Because it isn’t their bed, and more tears stream down.

  “Then whose bed is it?”

  “Om Hanem
’s.”

  “And who’s Om Hanem?” She is the woman with whom they share the room.

  A gruff voice from inside is asking with a big yawn what the matter is. She turns to answer as he steps aside to go downstairs in a hurry. Once in the open he takes a big gulp of fresh air and dashes forward unheeding of the crowd before the door. They follow him with their eyes. Large probing eyes that want to know what the gentleman has done to one of their own. Farghali presses him with an ugly smile. “Well?” he asks, but Abdallah pays no heed and Farghali won’t give up. He persists, relentlessly, like the splutter from his mouth. The curiosity of the crowd closes in on Abdallah like a ring of barbed wire. They want to know. He pulls out the watch and straps it on his wrist and he hears their murmurs grow to a rumble. The news is starting to travel. The women huddle together whispering, and they send their voices to the sky asking God to protect them from evil. The men growl while the children prattle and reports of the incident fly from casement to casement. Shohrat is being torn to pieces and her mangled remains are tossed from mouth to mouth, while she stands pale, silent, frightened, resigned and helpless.

  When he reaches his car it is like reaching a life buoy. Sharaf is not there. He’s washed his hands of the whole affair, explains Farghali, he said he could stand it no longer. Abdallah is not astonished, he expected that from Sharaf. Farghali’s profuse apologies alternating with threats and menaces as though he counted himself responsible for the whole universe, irritate him. He gets into his car and presses the starter the same way he presses on his bad conscience.