The Cheapest Nights Read online

  As he wrote out his first summons for the day in his mind he was already romping in the pastures of bliss that were promised for the coming night, when he intended to shake off the dullness of that week of illness. But the cares of the day and the busy flow of traffic which he controlled from under the rim of his cap took his mind off the matter for a while and he remembered again only when he got home. He had thrown his tired body on the divan and was struggling to pull off his heavy uniform boots.

  “Here, let me,” said his wife as she squatted on the floor to help him. Her soft hand went around the calf of his leg and the tip of his shoe dug between her breasts, which reminded him of the romp he had in mind and he began to tickle her with his foot while she leaned back and giggled and pushed him away. Then she rolled on her side, tightening her grip around his calf. He enjoyed the game and thrilled to the woman’s voice as she squealed with pleasure, half of her willing, half of her holding back, and all of her tingling with desire.

  * * *

  —

  Though a fog veiled the beginning, Ramadan could remember that night clearly. Every minute he had struggled, soaking in streams of sweat, shutting off his mind to the entire world until he and his wife and the bed were all that existed.

  She pushed him from her again and again, and he damned her to hell over and over, and the struggle went on, halting only when the sleeping boy stirred and resuming when he was heard snoring again, as he drooled down the side of his mouth.

  He gave up at dawn, and the woman went to sleep, but not he.

  That night went and other nights came and every time he renewed the struggle, fighting desperately for his virility until at last he was forced to give up, saying to himself one morning in a voice he hardly recognized as his own:

  “‘There is no might or power but in God.’ You’re beaten, man. Finished, washed up.”

  Often before, he had avoided his wife at breakfast, but that day he wanted her out of his sight altogether. He could have knocked his head against the wall in his misery. It was a strange thing that was happening to him. The painful struggling every time, and the sweating, and the long nights should have forced him to admit he was no longer a man. But he could not bring himself to do it. He burned with shame and humiliation just as if he were being paraded through the town sitting naked on a donkey, his head heaped with mud. “You’re finished, man; washed up,” he kept repeating to himself as though he were reciting the ayah3 of the Chair against evil spirits.

  He cut himself a big chunk of bread but left it untouched. He got up and stood looking out of the window. Then he spat. A large mouthful which he aimed at the chicken coops on the facing rooftop. He came back and sat down at the eating board, staring at his food without touching it, chewing on his silence until it choked him. Then he got up again and slipped on his clothes, feeling his body dissolve and his limbs melt into nothing as he stole out of the house.

  Standing in the middle of the square where cars milled around him and heaven and earth moved and only he stood dazed and fixed in his place, he suddenly realized the triviality of this kingdom that was his. The white gloves bothered him. His cap weighed on his head like a millstone. All day he did not trouble to write down one summons. And why should he? The world could go to hell for all he cared. He wasn’t there to put it right. Damn the cars and their drivers and the traffic, and everything to do with the crazy shrieking merry-go-round where he stood.

  For the first time in his life he hated the thought of his home and the wretched face of his wife, and he was in no hurry to return to either. He slid his cap down his forehead and loosened his belt as he trudged heavily down the street, the grooves in his face overflowing with despair, wishing some vehicle would knock him down and put an end to his misery. At last he reached the door of the only man in town who was a friend to all. He stood there and knocked, a thing he did not do frequently. Tantawi was not astonished. He let him in and made him welcome, asking many questions about his health and his friends and his relatives and his hometown and who had married and who had died and who was still alive. But when Ramadan said, “Tantawi, boy, I want a whiff,” Tantawi was astonished.

  Ramadan was not in the habit of taking much hashish, but that night he took an overdose to the point that Tantawi thought it best to see him home. Ramadan was too dazed to refuse or accept, much less take in his friend’s questions about what was troubling him.

  As he walked Ramadan wandered far with his mind, delving deep in time and place until he reached Sekina, his neighbor, in the old house by the stream, and the years following his puberty. From time to time he stopped in his tracks for no reason and Tantawi would tug at him and he had to walk on, while his mind still rambled. “Suppose it works, boy. Suppose hash will do the trick,” he would cry as the sudden thought struck him, and he’d burst out laughing, stopping in his tracks again.

  “By the Prophet, he’s gone. Quite stoned,” murmured Tantawi with pity for his friend.

  Ramadan nearly blurted it all out but caught himself in time and shoved the words back into his dry throat, as his shoes hit the road once more and Tantawi pulled him along by the hand.

  * * *

  —

  Hashish didn’t work that time, or any other time.

  On the nights when he took it he would remain silent, speaking little, and when he managed to say something it was as if the words had been sucked out of him like a bad fluid; an acrid mixture of anger, resentment, and mortification. His wife would chatter on in the meantime, even though he hardly moved a muscle. His duty in the square became an agony he was forced to swallow slowly, like the hours he spent there, only half standing. The brisk salute he usually gave to his superiors deteriorated to a halfhearted motion he wrenched from himself like a bad tooth. And all the time he got more and more entangled in a coil of lies he was forced to tell the doctor in order to obtain a day or two of leave.

  Normally he never went home without something for his wife. Now she became used to seeing him come with his hands empty and dangling at his sides as if they didn’t belong to him.

  One day he came home to find his wife’s mother had just arrived for a visit. His cool and indifferent greeting made his wife blush, and her vexation reached a peak as the day wore on and his talk with her mother did not go beyond an occasional “And how are you?”

  Finally, having had enough, the old lady retired to bed after barely going through her evening prayers, moaning and groaning from her rheumatic joints. An hour later he too was stretched out on the straw mat at the foot of the bed together with his wife and son.

  He was awakened at dawn when the old lady stumbled on him as she rose to perform her ablutions for the dawn prayer. And while she recited the Fatihah,4 incorrectly as usual, in her rasping voice, he couldn’t help asking himself what in all hell she was doing there.

  The answer awaited him in the evening when the Hagga5 cleared her throat as she squatted on the floor and leaned her back to the wall, draping herself in her large white veil. “Well, son, I shall not hide it from you,” she began.

  In actual fact she was hiding from him that her daughter had sent her a letter behind his back and she began to put the matter forward with the cunning of old women. She took heart from his silence and went on to play mother and sister and bosom friend.

  “And for every problem there is a solution, son, don’t you worry,” she said.

  “Problem my foot!” he fumed inwardly. “Solution my arse!” he raged. “What business is it of yours? And what brings you here in the first place, you crumped-up old witch?” The curses he sought to pour out but which he was forced to hold back stoked his fury all the more for until that moment his wife had nothing to do with his problem. She existed nowhere in that vast wilderness where he staggered alone. Now it was obviously no longer his concern alone, and God knows who else was in on it too.

  The evening ended with a tremendous conflagration
which overturned the eating board and blew out the lamp, and the neighbors heard it crash to the floor as he roared, “By God, you will not sleep under my roof!”

  The Hagga and her daughter were given shelter by the neighbors that night; and by daybreak the train was carrying the mother back to her village alone. And had there been room in her brother’s house for her daughter too, she would not have left her behind.

  At that same hour Ramadan was stealing out of their lane. When he met Abu Sultan, his greeting was curt and he avoided his eyes, hurrying along, the sooner to get out of sight. It was the same with Abdel Razek, the newspaper boy, and Hagg Mohamed who sold beans, and everyone else he knew or did not know. Every movement betrayed his secret; every word was a calculated jab; in every smile he saw irony. Everybody knew; even the fellow near him clutching at the ceiling-strap in the train: when their eyes met, it was evident that he knew.

  He darted to the center of the square wishing miserably that his body would shrink and disintegrate and vanish out of sight. Standing there in the middle was like being on display in a showcase open to the curious gaze of the crowds whose only wish was to expose him. When he failed to protect himself from their prying looks he vented his fury on the people, dealing out summonses with a heavy hand, muttering obscenities, and dragging more than one victim to the police station on the slightest provocation.

  It was a sad man who stood there every day from now on. Glum, unsmiling, his face dark and lined behind the bushy mustache he no longer bothered to trim. His area became one of dread, and he became the scourge of drivers going through. Everyone knew the dark cop with the bushy mustache. His bad temper, his biting tongue and his aversion to women drivers, particularly those crossing his square, were proverbial.

  And then there was his wife.

  He had worn himself out, fretting about her. Where was she that day he went home and didn’t find her? She said she’d gone to Om Hamida’s whose brother was Mehanni—that boy who dressed in ironed silk caftans which clung to his thighs, and wore his skull-cap tilted at an angle. What was she doing at Om Hamida’s? And the day he caught her looking out of the window with her head uncovered. The bitch. With her head uncovered!

  By and by he took to coming home late at night after he became a regular knocker on Tantawi’s door. One night, after he had undressed and got into his white gallabieh, fixing his woolen cap firmly on his head, he stretched his weary drugged body on the bed while the voices of the day hummed in his ear and Tantawi’s talk flickered on his memory. When the humming ceased and Tantawi faded out he realized his wife was still awake, sobbing bitterly. Ramadan that night had reached the end of his tether. The solid barrier he had placed between them was slowly eroding with her tears until only the quilt remained. He lay still, listening in silence, unable to do anything else. Finally he spoke.

  “Just tell me, Naima, what is there I can do?” he asked, every fiber in him crying out in pain.

  She only buried her head deeper in the pillow and sobbed louder. He shook her gently, with humility, and asked her again. Not that he expected her answer to help him much. He was simply trying somehow to cover up his failure, or at least to get someone to help him find a way out.

  * * *

  —

  He began to look around to see how others in his predicament acted. He consulted the writings of old. He went to the wise and learned, he visited the shrine of every holy man in town, and he ate the pigeons and mangoes provided by Naima out of her own savings. He sucked the acid tops of sugarcane and he swayed to the beat of the tambourine when a zar6 was held in his honor. Many times he was up at dawn in order to throw the charms written for him into the sea. Obediently he ate the pies his wife baked him, kneaded with her own blood, and he drank all the potions the herbalist concocted specially for him.

  Nothing worked.

  Then he made his way to the VD hospital, and there among the rows of patients waiting their turn he met many others like himself. There was comfort in being with them. The canvas bag which Naima had sewn was filled and refilled with bottles of medicine which he dutifully swallowed. His veins and muscles were pricked with hypodermics, and he was admitted for treatment and discharged. His mother-in-law paid them another call, and the money she brought was spent and much more besides. Night and day she kept on pouring out advice, and so did relatives and the relatives of relatives.

  Ramadan went on desperately in pursuit of his lost virility, looking everywhere, following every lead. All his thoughts, all his actions centered on that one goal. It was his sole topic: at prayers on Friday, and at the café; at the fish market and the railway station; with the male nurse from the hospital and even with his commanding officer; and still nothing changed.

  * * *

  —

  They were talking quietly one day, Ramadan and Naima, sitting lazily in a spot of sunshine on the roof. Conversation flowed gently; Ramadan was relaxing on his day off, and Naima, having bought the sardines for lunch early that morning, had given herself up to the luxury of doing nothing. Ramadan was speaking in the gentlest tone, for he had been giving a good deal of thought to his wife, and he was blaming himself for much of what was on his mind. He had chosen that day and that hour to unburden himself.

  “Listen, Naima,” he began. He hesitated for an instant then gathered up his courage and went on.

  “I . . . I want to do what’s right in the sight of God.”

  She looked at him languidly. The shadow of a smile, playing on her face, was about to break at his stumbling speech.

  “I . . . I think it would be better if I divorced you, Naima,” he blurted out at last.

  At this she sat up sharply and turned to face him. She beat her breast with her hand and looked at him with eyes full of reproach.

  “Ramadan! For shame! What is this you’re saying! You are everything to me,” she exclaimed with indignation, “father and brother; the crown upon my head. I am not worth the ground under your feet. I am only your servant, my love. How could you say such a thing! After my hair’s turned gray, and yours too. . . . It’s not as if we’re young anymore . . . how could you . . .” A gush of tears stopped the words in her mouth and she couldn’t continue. She unfastened her head-kerchief and wiped her tears with it as she got up and stumbled downstairs, leaving Ramadan behind, absently passing his fingers over the wrinkles on his face. He smoothed his balding head and passed his hands across his bloated belly. Absently he plucked at the hairs of his leg, most of them turned white, as his eyes strayed to Sayyed, his son.

  He gazed at the boy as if he had just discovered him.

  Sayyed was lying near him, his face covered with his arithmetic copybook. Wide-eyed and incredulous Ramadan was devouring the boy with his eyes. God almighty! How could he forget Sayyed in his mad pursuit of his virility! How could he forget he had a son, and think only of himself in this whole wide world?

  “Sayyed . . . Sayyed, my boy, come over here,” he whispered hoarsely. “Come, sit here by me . . . let me look at you. My, but you’ve grown, son. You’re almost as big as I am. You’ll be a man, soon . . . a man! And I’ll have you married . . . that’s right, I’ll have you married to a beautiful girl. No . . . four! Four beautiful girls, and you’ll be their man, son. Do you understand? Do you understand what it means to be their man? Never mind. You will, you will. And you’ll have children. Do you hear? You’ll have children, Sayyed, and I’ll carry your little ones in my arms. These arms of mine . . . do you hear me, son . . . ?”

  THE ERRAND

  Whenever anyone mentioned Cairo in his presence El Shabrawi got terribly upset. It made him feel cheated of his life and he would suddenly long to go back if only to spend one hour at El Kobessi or Mo‘allem Ahmed’s in the quarter of El Tourgouman. His memory took him back to the days when he was a conscript and he used to go the length and breadth of Cairo every week, and he would hanker for one of those daytime shows he used to attend at
the National Cinema. He sighed bitterly every time, for it was not too much to ask God to arrange for the proper circumstances and a little money to make his wish come true. “I’ll give my life for one hour in Cairo,” he never tired of saying.

  But he didn’t have to go to quite that extreme, for things looked up unexpectedly, all of a sudden, and his wish came to be realized in a way he least suspected. One day as he was sitting in his usual place at the police station, as he had for the past four years, a large crowd of people suddenly came barging in. After many questions and in spite of the racket, he was able to make out that they were bringing in a madwoman from Kafr Goma‘a accompanied by her relatives and friends. Everyone was yelling at once as more and more people kept coming in, attracted by the noise, until the place was in an uproar.

  A beam of hope made his heart flutter. Obviously the woman would have to be sent to the asylum in Cairo with a special escort, and he couldn’t think of anyone better qualified for the task than himself.

  He found it no problem to get the job. There was no need to send mediators to plead with the adjutant, since all his colleagues bluntly refused to have anything to do with it, and when he volunteered of his own free will there were no objections and the matter was settled right away.

  Immediately he dispatched Antar, the errand boy from the station canteen, to inform his wife he was going away. She was to send him some food wrapped in his large handkerchief and the fifty-piastre note she would find hidden in the pillowcase.

  In half an hour everything was ready: the Health Inspector’s report written and the railway ticket forms filled. All he had to do was board the train and he would be in the heart of Cairo.

  He could hardly believe his luck. He couldn’t believe he was going to see Cairo again and go on a tram ride and meet his old friends and dine on grilled meat at Mo‘allem Hanafi’s. His joy knew no bounds as he walked resolutely to the station at the head of more than a hundred people all recommending that he be kind and patient with Zebeida.