Correcting himself, he said, 'This kind of modesty has gone out of style. If you don't speak up, Na'ima, you'll find that your life's over and that all the decisions have been made for you.'
Aisha replied bitterly, 'We're not used to talk like this.'
Paying no attention to his mother's warning look, Ahmad complained, 'I bet our family's four centuries behind the times.'
Abd al-Muni'm asked scornfully, 'Why precisely four?'
His brother answered nonchalantly, 'I was being polite.'
Khadija shifted the conversation to Kamal by asking, 'And you! When are you getting married?'
Kamal was caught off guard by this inquiry, which he attempted to evade by saying, 'That's an old story!'
'And a new one at the same time…. We won't abandon it until God unites you with a decent girl.'
Amina followed this last part of the conversation with redoubled interest. Kamal's marriage was her dearest wish. She hoped fervently that he would turn her wish into a reality. Then she could rest her eyes on a grandchild fathered by her only living soq. She said, 'His father has proposed brides to him from the best families, but he always finds some excuse or other.'
'Flimsy arguments! How old are you, Mr. Kamal?' asked Ibrahim Shawkat with a laugh.
'Twenty-eight! It's too late now.'
Amina listened to the figure incredulously, and Khadija said angrily, 'You love to make yourself out older than you are.'
Since he was her youngest brother, revelation of his age indirectly disclosed hers. Although her husband was sixty, she hated to be reminded that she was thirty-eight. Kamal did not know what to say. [n his opinion this was not a subject to be settled with a single word, but he always felt compelled to explain his position. So he said apologetically, 'I work all day at school and every evening in my office.'
Ahmad said enthusiastically, 'What a fantastic life, Uncle… but even so, a man needs to marry.'
Yasin, who knew more about Kamal than any of the others, said, 'You shrug off commitments so that nothing will distract you from your search for the truth, but truth lies in these commitments. You won't learn about life in a library. Truth is to be found at home and in the street.'
Doing his best to escape, Kamal said, 'I've grown accustomed to spending my salary each month down to the last millieme. I don't have any savings. How can I get married?'
Khadija blocked his escape by retorting, 'Make up your mind to get married, and then you'll figure out how to prepare for it.'
Laughing, Yasin observed, 'You spend every millieme so you won't be able to get married.'
'As if the two were equivalent,' Kamal thought. But why did he not marry? That was what people expected and what his parents wanted. When he had been in love with Ai'da, marriage had seemed absurdly out of reach. After that, love had been replaced by thought, which had greedily devoured his life. His greatest delight had come in finding a beautiful book or in getting an article published. He had told himself that a thinker does not and should not marry. He looked aloft and imagined that marriage would force him to lower his gaze. He had been — and still was — pleased to be a thoughtful observer who avoided, whenever possible, entry into the mechanics of life. He was as stingy with his liberty as a miser is with money. Besides, women no longer meant anything to him beyond a lust to be gratified. He was not exactly wasting his youth, since he did not let a week go by without indulging in intellectual delights and physical pleasures. If these reasons were not enough, he was apprehensive and skeptical about everything. Marriage seemed to be something a person should believe in.
Kamal said, 'Relax. I'll get married when I feel like it.'
Zanuba smiled in a way that made her look ten years younger and asked, 'Why don't you want to marry now?'
Almost in exasperation, Kamal replied, 'Marriage is an anthill. You're making a mountain out of it.'
But deep inside he believed that marriage was a mountain, not an anthill. He was overcome by a strange feeling that one day he would give in to marriage and that his fate would then be sealed.
He was rescued by Ahmad's comment: 'It's time for us to go up to your library.'
Welcoming the suggestion, Kamal rose and headed for the door, trailed by Abd al-Muni'm, Ahmad, and Ridwan. As usual, they would borrow some books during this visit to the old house.
Kam al's desk in the center of the room under an electric light was flanked by bookcases. He sat down there to watch the young men read the titles of books on the shelves. Abd al-Muni'm selected a book of essays on Islamic history, and Ahmad took Principles of Philosophy. Then they stood around his desk as he looked silently at each of them in turn.
Finally Ahmad said irritably, 'I'll never be able to read as much as I want until I master at least one foreign language.'
Glancing at a random passage in his book, Abd al-Muni'm muttered, 'No one knows Islam as it truly is.'
Ahmad remarked sarcastically, 'My brother discovers the truth of Islam in the Khan al-Khalili bazaar from a man of the people.'
Abd al-Muni'm shouted at him, 'Hush, atheist!'
Looking at Ridwan questioningly, Kamal asked, 'Aren't you going to choose a book?'
Abd al-Muni'm answered for his cousin, 'He's too busy reading the Wafd Party newspapers.'
Gesturing toward Kamal, Ridwan said, 'Our uncle has this in common with me.'
His uncle believed in nothing but was a Wafdist all the same. Similarly, he doubted truth itself but worked pragmatically with other people. Looking from Abd al-Muni'm to Ahmad, he asked, 'Since you support the Wafd Party too, what's strange about this? All Egyptian patriots are Wafdists. Isn't that so?'
In his confident voice, Abd al-Muni'm answered, 'No doubt the Wafd is the best of the parties, but considered in the abstract it's not completely satisfying.'
Laughing, Ahmad said, 'I agree with my brother on this. To be more precise, it's the only thing we do agree on. And we may even disagree1 about the extent of our satisfaction with the Wafd Party. But the most important thing is to question nationalism itself. Yes, there is no argument about the need for independence, but afterward the understanding of nationalism must develop until it is absorbed into a loftier and more comprehensive concept. It's not unlikely that in the future we'll come to regard martyrs of the nationalist movement as we now do victims of foolish battles between tribes and clans.'
'Foolish battles! You fool!' Kamal thought. 'Fahmy did not die in a foolish battle. But how can you be certain?' Despite these reflectionshe said sharply, 'Anyone slain for a cause greater than himself dies a martyr. The relative worth of causes may vary, but a man's relationship to a cause is a value that does not.'
As they left the study, Ridwan told Abd al-Muni'm, 'Politics is the most significant career open to a person in a society.'
When they returned to the coffee hour, Ibrahim Shawkat was commenting to Yasin, 'We rear our children, guide them, and advise them, but each child finds his way to a library, which is a world totally independent of us. There total strangers compete with us. So what can we do?'
119
The streetcar was packed. There was not even room left for riders to stand. Although squeezed in among the others, Kamal towered over them with his lanky physique. He assumed the other passengers were also heading for the celebration of this national holiday, the thirteenth of November. He looked around at their faces with friendly curiosity.
Convinced that he believed in nothing, he still celebrated these holidays like the most ardent nationalist. Buoyed by their common destination and mutual Wafdist allegiance, strangers discussed the political situation with each other. One said, 'Commemoration of our past struggle is a struggle in every sense of the word this year. Or it ought to be.'
Another observed, 'It should provide a response to Foreign Secretary Hoare and his sinister declaration.'
Aroused by the reference to the British official, a third shouted, 'The son of a bitch said, '… we have advised against the re-enactment of the Constitutions of 1923 and 1930.' Why is our constitution any business of his?'
