Zaki opened his eyes and made a sign for him to leave. Then he got up with difficulty, leaned against the wall, and taking his head in his hands grumbled in a low voice, “I’ve got a terrible headache and my stomach hurts a lot.”
“Do you want me to call a doctor?”
“No. It’s nothing. I drank too much. This has happened to me so many times. I drink a cup of Turkish coffee without sugar and I’m fine.”
He was putting on a show of holding up and being tough and she laughed and said, “So listen. That’s enough machismo. You’re an old man now and your health is weak. No more drinking and staying up late. You’re supposed to go to bed early like old people your age.”
Zaki smiled and looking at her gratefully said, “Thank you, Busayna. You’re a good and loyal person. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She put her hands on his face and kissed his brow.
She had kissed him often before, but this time she felt the touch of his face differently. She felt as she pressed her lips to his brow that she knew him well, that she loved his old, coarse smell, and that he was no longer that Bey, who, far removed from her, told her about the old days. He wasn’t any longer even that rebarbative male lover who was different from her. Now he was close to her, as though she had known him for ages, as though he was her father or her uncle, as though he carried the same smell and blood as she. She wanted to hug him hard so that she could take his weak, fragile body in her arms and fill her nostrils with that old, coarse smell of his that she loved.
She thought that what was happening between them was strange and unexpected. She remembered that only yesterday she’d tried to trick him and get hold of his signature, and she felt ashamed. It occurred to her that the trick she’d played on him yesterday had been her last try at resisting her real feelings toward him. Inside she’d wanted to flee from her love for him. She’d have been more comfortable in a way if she had limited her relationship to him to sex and money — he wanted sex and she wanted money, that was how she had pictured the relationship — but she had overstepped the bounds.
Now she is facing her true feelings and she understands them clearly. She wants to stay with him, to take care of him, and to respect him, gratefully confident that he will understand anything she may say to him. She will tell him about her life, her father and her mother, and her old love for Taha; she’ll even tell him the sordid details of her relationship with Talal and she won’t be ashamed with him. She will feel at peace once she’s told him, as though she has relieved herself of a heavy burden. How she warms to the sight of his aged face listening attentively to her as he asks her to explain some detail of her stories, then comments on them!
She cannot describe her feelings with any other word than love. It wasn’t the hot, burning love she’d felt for Taha but another different kind of love, calm and deep-seated, something closer to peace of mind, and confidence, and respect. She loved him, and having worked that out she was freed forever from her misgivings. She began to live carefree and happy and started spending most of the day and a good part of the night with Zaki Bey.
One small, sharp, pointed thing, however, pricks her conscience whenever she remembers that she had been going to betray him. She had put pressure on him to sign the contract so that Malak could get hold of his apartment. She had exploited his confidence in her to do him harm. Wasn’t that what had happened? Hadn’t that been her goal? To make a fool of him and get his signature while he was drunk and get five thousand pounds from Malak in payment for her betrayal? Whenever that word resounded in her mind, she would remember his kindly smile and his interest in her and his concern for her feelings. She would remember that he had always treated her gently and that he had given her his entire trust. At those moments, she would feel she was vile and treacherous and would despise herself and enter a whirlpool of self-reproach.
These feelings continued to torture her until one morning she suddenly went to Malak. It was early and he had just opened his shop. There was a glass of tea with milk in front of him from which he was sipping in a leisurely fashion. She stood in front of him, greeted him, and said to him straight off before her courage could seep away, “Mr. Malak, I’m sorry. I won’t be able to do what we agreed on.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That business of the signature I’m supposed to get from Zaki Bey. I’m not going to do it.”
“Why?”
“That’s just how it is.”
“Is that your last word?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Fine. Thanks.”
Malak spoke calmly and sucked up a sip of tea. He turned his face away from her, and she thought as she left him that she had liberated herself from a heavy worry, though she was surprised all the same that he had accepted her apology without fuss. She’d expected him to get angry and blow up, but he’d stayed calm, as though he’d been expecting that or had something or other in mind. This thought disquieted her for a few days, but she soon rid herself of her misgivings and felt for the first time a deep contentment because she had stopped betraying Zaki and had nothing left to hide from him.
At 8 A.M., Sheikh Shakir and Taha el Shazli took the Metro in the direction of Helwan. They had been engaged over several days in long discussions during which Sheikh Shakir had tried to persuade Taha to forget what had happened and pick up his life again. However, Taha remained so vengeful and angry that he seemed more than once to be on the verge of collapse. Finally, at the end of a long debate, the sheikh shouted in his face, “What do you want then? You don’t want to study and you don’t want to work and you don’t want to see any of your colleagues or even your family. What do you want, Taha?”
“I want to take revenge on the people who assaulted me and humiliated me.”
“And how will you know them, since you didn’t see their faces?”
“From their voices. I could distinguish their voices from a thousand. I beg you, Master, to tell me the name of the head officer, who supervised my torture. You told me before that you know his name.”
Sheikh Shakir was silent, thinking.
“I beg you, Master. I won’t be at peace till I know his name.”
“I can’t be certain as to his identity. But torture at National Security generally takes place under the supervision of two men — Colonel Salih Rashwan and Colonel Fathi el Wakil. They’re both unbelieving criminals destined for Hell —
“I shall take revenge on him.”
“Nonsense! Are you going to spend your life looking for someone you never set eyes on? An insane enterprise, destined to fail.”
“I’ll go after him to the end.”
“You’re going to fight on your own a whole regime, with an army and a police force and huge quantities of terrible weapons?”
“You say that, when you’re the one who taught us that the true Muslim is a nation unto himself? Has not the Truth, Blessed and Almighty, said,
“God indeed speaks truly but your fight with the regime will cost you your life. You’ll die, my son. They’ll kill you the first time you confront them.”
Taha was silent and looked into the sheikh’s face, for the mention of death had had its effect on him. Then he said, “I’m dead now. They killed me in detention. When they trespass on your honor laughing, when they give you a woman’s name and make you answer with your new name and you have to because of the savagery of the torture… They called me Fawziya. Every day they used to beat me and make me say, ‘I’m a woman and my name is Fawziya.’ You want me to forget all that and go on living?”
He spoke bitterly and bit his lower lip with his teeth. The sheikh said, “Listen, Taha. This is my last word, to clear my conscience before Our Lord, Mighty and Glorious: getting involved in fighting this regime means certain death.”
“I’m not afraid of death any longer. I’ve made up my mind to be a martyr. I hope with all my heart to die a
