A woman who wished to add a flattering comment appropriate for the mother of the bride said, 'Anyone with a face as beautiful as Mrs. Amina’s doesn't have to worry about her husband’s eyes straying to another woman'.
Amina was deeply moved by the praise, and her vivacious smile returned. In any case, it provided her some consolation for the silent pain she was suffering. Yet when Jalila began a new song, filling their ears with her voice, Amina suddenly became angry and felt for a few seconds she was about to lose control of herself. She quickly suppressed her anger with all the force of a woman who did not acknowledge that she had a right to get angry. Meanwhile Khadija and Aisha received the news with astonishment and exchanged an anxious glance. Their eyes were asking what it was all about. Their astonishment was not coupled with panic like Fahmy’s nor with pain like their mother's. Perhaps they understood that for a woman like Jalila to leave her troupe and take the trouble of going down to where their father was sitting to greet him and talk to him was something to be proud of. Khadija felt a natural desire to look at her mother’s face. She stole a glance at her. Although Mrs. Amina was smiling, her daughter grasped right away the pain and uneasiness she was enduring, which were robbing her of her peace of mind. Khadija felt upset and became angry at the entertainer, Widow Shawkat, and the gathering as a whole.
When it was time for the wedding procession, everyone forgot his personal concerns. No matter how many weeks and months passed, the picture of Aisha in her wedding gown would not leave their minds.
Al-Ghuriya was dark and quiet when the family left the bride’s new home to return to al-Nahhasin. Al-Sayyid Ahmad walked alone in front followed a few meters back by Fahmy and Yasin. The latter was exhausting himself by trying to act sober and walk straight, for fear his giddiness would reveal he had drunk too much. At the rear came Amina, Khadija, Kamal, and Umm Hanafi. Kamal had joined the caravan against his will. If his father had not been there to lead them, Kamal would have found some way to free himself from his mother’s hand and run back to where they had left Aisha. He was looking behind him at Bab al-Mutawalli from one step to the next to bid farewell sadly and regretfully to the last trace of the wedding, that shining lamp a worker on a ladder was removing from its hook over the entrance to Sugar Street. Kamal was heartbroken to see that his family had relinquished the person he loved best after his mother. He looked up at his mother and whispered, 'When will Aisha come back to us?'
She whispered, 'Don't say that again. Pray for her to be happy. She'll visit us frequently and we'll call on her a lot'.
He whispered to her resentfully, 'You've tricked me!'
She motioned toward al-Sayyid Ahmad up in front, who had almost been swallowed up by the darkness. She pursed her lips to whisper, 'Hush'.
But Kamal was preoccupied with recalling images of things he had happened to see during the wedding. He thought them extraordinarily odd, and they made him uneasy. He pulled his mother’s hand his way to separate her from Khadija and Umm Hanafi. Then, pointing back, he whispered to her, 'Do you know what’s going on there?'
'What do you mean?'
'I peeked through a hole in the door'.
The mother felt distressed and alarmed, because she could guess which door he meant, but refusing to trust her intuition, she asked, 'What door?'
'The door of the bride’s room!'
The woman said with alarm, 'It’s disgraceful for a person to look through holes in doors'.
He immediately whispered back, 'What I saw was even more disgraceful'.
'Be quiet'.
'I saw Aisha and Mr. Khalil sitting on the chaise longue… and he was…'
She hit him hard on his shoulder to make him stop. She whispered in his ear, 'Don't say shameful things. If your father heard you, he'd kill you'.
He persisted and told her, as though revealing something to her she could not possibly have imagined, 'He was holding her chin in his hand and kissing her'.
She hit him again, harder than she ever had before. He realized that he had certainly done something wrong without knowing it. He fell silent and was afraid. When they were crossing the courtyard of their house, straggling behind the others except for Umm Hanafi, who had waited behind to bolt the door, lock it, and latch it, Kamal’s anxiety and curiosity overcame his silence and fear. He asked pleadingly, 'Why was he kissing her, Mother?'
She told him firmly, 'If you start that again, I'll tell your father'.
41
Yasin was quite intoxicated when he retired to the bedroom. Since Kamal had fallen sound asleep the moment his head touched the pillow, Yasin was alone with Fahmy. Free at last from parental supervision, he felt in the mood for a noisy row as a release from the nervous strain he had been under all evening, especially on the way home when he had struggled to control himself and act right. Since the room was too cramped for rowdiness, he felt like relieving his tensions by talking. He looked at Fahmy, who was getting undressed, and said sarcastically, 'Compared with our brilliant father, we're failures. He’s truly some man'.
Although this statement revived Fahmy’s pain and anxiety, he was content to answer with a bitter smile, 'You've been blessed too. What an excellent son!'
'Are you sad our father’s one of the great skirt chasers?'
'I wish there had been no change in the ideal picture I've had in my soul'.
Rubbing his hands merrily, Yasin said, 'The real picture is even more splendid and delightful. He’s more than a father. He’s the ultimate. Oh, if you had only seen him grasping the tambourine, with a glass shining in front of him. Bravo… bravo, al-Sayyid Ahmad!'
Fahmy asked uneasily, 'What about his prudence and piety?'
Yasin frowned in order to concentrate on the question, but he found it easier to merge opposites than to reconcile them. Motivated by nothing but admiration, he replied, 'There’s absolutely no problem there at all. Your cowardly intellect’s just creating the problem from nothing. My father’s prudent, a Muslim, and loves women. It’s as simple and clear as one plus one equals two. Perhaps I'm the one who most resembles him, because I'm a Muslim believer and love women, although I'm not too prudent. You yourself are a believer, prudent, and love women, but you base your acts on faith and prudence while shying away from the third alternative: women'. He laughed. 'It’s the third that lasts'.
Yasin’s final statement was only remotely linked to his admiration for his father that had started him rattling on and was only superficially in defense of him. It was really an expression of a burning feeling Yasin’s intoxication had aroused. Once the guardians he respected were out of the way, he experienced a raging lust incited by an imagination charged with alcohol. His body felt a mad craving for love, and his willpower was unable to bridle it or coax it away. But where could he find what he wanted? Did he have enough time?… Zanuba?… What was keeping him from her? It wasn't far. It wouldn't take long to make love with her. Then he could come home and sleep deeply and calmly. He was delighted by these visions and seemed not to have a brain to make him think twice. He was in a rush to bring them to pass with no further delay. He quickly told his brother, 'It’s hot. I'm going up to the roof to enjoy the moist night air'.
He left the room for the outer hall and groped his way down the steps in total darkness, being extremely careful not to make a sound. How could he get in touch with Zanuba at this hour of the night? Should he knock on the door? Who would open it? What could he say when the person asked him what he wanted? What if no one woke up to answer the door? What if the night watchman, with his knack for arriving at the wrong time, should catch him? These thoughts floated on the surface of his brain like bubbles and then were carried off by the swift current of the wine. They did not seem obstacles with consequences to be taken seriously. They were little jokes to make him smile during this lonely adventure. His imagination flew past them to Zanuba’s room overlooking the intersection of al-Ghuriya and al-Sanadiqiya streets.
He pictured her in a diaphanous white nightgown that curved obediently around her breasts and buttocks, with the bottom pulled up to reveal rosy legs with gold bangles. He went wild and would have leapt down the steps had it not been so dark. In the courtyard it was brighter because of the faint light from the stars. After the total darkness of the stairway it appeared almost light. When he had taken two steps toward the outer door at the end of
