Naguib Mahfouz - Midaq Alley (Chapter 16) lyrics

Chapter 16 What have we here? My, what a dignified-looking man you are!" As Zeita said this, he was scrutinizing the face of an old man of erect bearing who stood humbly and submis­sively in front of him. His gallabiya was in rags and he was thin, but, as the cripple-maker said, he looked dignified, with a large head, white hair, an oval face, calm, meek eyes, and the bearing, height, and posture one might expect of a retired military man. Zeita looked him over with astonished care in the dim light of the lamp, and then repeated, "What a dignified-looking man you are! Are you sure you want to be a professional beggar?" "I'm a beggar already," the man responded in a quiet voice, "but rm not having any luck." Zeita cleared his throat and spat on the ground. Then he wiped his lips on the sleeve of his black gallabiya and said, "You're too deli­ cate to stand any strong pressure on your bones and the fact is, after twenty it's too late to apply for a fake deformity: fake and real defor­ mities take the same amount of trouble to make and the softer the bones, the better the guarantee for the beggar that the deformity will really last." He thought for a while. When lost in thought, Zeita would open his jaws wide and wiggle his tongue, making him look as though he had a snake's head inside his mouth. Suddenly his burning eyes lit up and he cried, "Dignity is itself a deformity!" "What do you mean, sheikh?" the man asked him uncompre­ hendingly. Zeita's face grew angry and he shouted at him furiously, "Sheikh? Have you ever heard me reciting the Qur'an over graves?'' The man, taken aback by Zeita's anger, held up !tis open hand in a conciliatory gesture and said in a subdued voice, "God forbid. I only wanted to do you honor.'' Zeita spat twice and said, proudly, "The greatest doctors in the country couldn't do what I do if they tried. Don't you know that making a fake deformity is a thousand times harder than making a real one? I hardly have to raise my little finger to make real deformity." With enormous courtesy, the man said, "I apologize, master. God is forgiving and merciful." The anger disappeared from Zeita's face and he fixed the man with a hard stare. Then he said in a voice from which the traces of his earlier sharpness had not entirely disappeared, "As I said, dignity is the most precious of deformities." "How so, master?" "Dignity on its own will be enough to guarantee you rare success as a beggar." "Dignity, master?" Zeita reached for the tin mug on the shelf, extracted from it half a cigarette, then returned the mug to its place and lit the cigarette from the lamp's gla** chimney. Narrowing his burniug eyes, he inhaled at length and said quiedy, "It isn't a deformity you need. What you need is additional improvements and beautification. Wash your gallabiya well, get hold at any cost of a second-hand tarbush, and walk about with that erect posture of yours looking humble and polite. Go up to the patrons in caf€:s as though worried, then stop in embarra**ment and stretch out your hand with a pained expression and without saying a word. Speak with your eyes. Don't you know the language of eyes? Everyone will stare at you in amazement. The patrons will say; 'One of our best ! men, fallen on hard times!' and 'He can't possibly be one of those pro­ fessional beggars!' Now do you understand what I mean? You'll earn with your diguity far more than the others earn with their deformities." He commanded the man to rehearse his new role and stood for a while watching him, smoking his cigarette and thinking. Then he said with a frown, "Greed may tempt you to pocket my fee on the excuse that I didn't make you a deformity worth paying for. You're free to do as you like, but on condition that, if you don't pay, you take yourself off to anywhere but el-Hussein's busy streets." ! The man denied, with an oath, any intention of doing such a thing, saying, with a pained expression, "God forbid that I should betray a benefactor!" The interview ended there, and Zeita walked in front of the man to show him the way, escorting him to the front door of the bakery On his way back, he caught sight of Boss Husniya sitting cross-legged on a reed mat, alone. There was no sign of Giada and, as it was Zeita's custom to create an excuse to exchange a word or two with the woman whenever-he came across her, both to curry favor with her and to dis­ play his clandestine admiration, he asked her, "Did you see that man?" "He came for a deformity, right?" responded Boss Husniya, show­ ing litde interest. Zeita laughed and launched into the man's story, the woman laughingly telling him off for being such a devil. Then he made his way toward the. low wooden door that led to his refuge, and paused for a moment on its threshold. "Where's Giada?" he said. ':At the bathhouse," replied the woman. At first, the man thought that she was mocking him for his leg­endary filthiness and gave her a wary look, but he saw that she was serious and realized that Giada really had gone to the bathhouse on Gamaliya Street, which was something he did twice a year, and that he wouldn't be back before midnight, more or less. The devil within him, encouraged by the fact that she had enjoyed his story, then suggested to him that he keep Boss Husniya company for a litde, and he sat down on his doorstep, resting his back against the door itself and stretching his legs out in front of him like two thin sticks of charcoal, oblivious to the surprise and distaste that his posture created in her and which showed in her eyes. The woman was used to treating him as did the other people of the alley, other than exchanging a few words with him in her role as owner of his refuge as he went in or out. It would never have occurred to her that any relationship she might have with him could go any further than that and she had no idea that he was used to observing many of the intimate details of her life. To a creature such as Zeita, however, it was nothing to find an aperture in the wall that separated him from the bakery via which he could vicariously satisfy his parasitical pa**ions and bestial dreams. As a consequence, he was like one of the family now, a witness to its labor and its rest, and took special pleasure in watching Boss Husniya raining blows on her husband for the slightest offense-and many were Giada's daily offenses and daily punishments. In fact, beatings had become his daily diet, accepted sometimes with patience and fortitude and sometimes with tears, cries, and howls. Not a day went by without his burning a loaf in the baking, stealing another to devour secretly between meals, or buying half a piaster's worth of basbousa from the money he'd collected by selling bread from house to house. Nor could he restrain him­ self from committing these crimes day after day, and without the slightest success at concealing .the evidence or preventing his wife's implacable punishments. Zeita found the man's pa**ivity, cowardice, and dim-wittedness amazing. St;ill more amaZing, though, was that Zeita, of all people, thought the man ugly, and made biting fun of his appearance. Giada was exceedingly tall, with long arms and a projecting lower jaw, sunken eyes, and thick lips, and Zeita had long resented his enjoyment of his wonderful wife, whom he admired and desired. Consequently, Zeita both hated and despised him and wished he could throw him into the oven along with the dough and the housewives' platters. By the same token, he was happy to find an opportunity, in the brute's absence, to spend a little time with Boss Husniya, which is why he had sat down and stretched out his legs so obliviously. Boss Husniya, however, with her accustomed boldness, did not hesitate to ask him, in a cold, harsh voice, "What do you think you're doing, sitting like that?" "Dear God, lift Your anger and hatred from us!" thought Zeita to himself. In a polite and affectionate tone, he answered her, "I'm a guest, Boss Husniya, and guests should be treated nicely." ****** Zeita wondered for a moment if she might in fact like living with that animal. He'd often asked himself the question but he couldn't believe it. The woman couldn't say anything else, but she must feel differently inside. He looked at her enormous well-built body with furious eyes, his distaste and stubbornness growing, and his imagi­ nation stirred brilliantly and madly as he pictured in glowing colors how his future might be. The emptiness of the place inspired in him fevered fantasies and his terrifying eyes gleamed. Husniya herself was enjoying his jealousy and it didn't scare her at all to find herself on her own with him, so confident was she of her own strength. Mockingly, she told him, "Even you, you scum? Get yourself free of the dirt you're covered in first, and then talk to people." The woman wasn't angry: if she had been, she wouldn't have hid­den it and would have beaten him viciously. She must be just joking with him, and it wouldn't do to let this golden opportunity get away from him. He said, "You can't tell the difference, Boss Husniya, between dust and diamonds." Angrily the woman replied, "Can you deny you're mud?" "We are all from mud," he responded simply, shrugging his shoul-• ders dismissively. "Beat it!" the woman went on, sarcastically. "You're mud through and through and dirt from top to bottom, which is why the only work you can do is deform human beings, as though the devil were driving you to drag people down to your own filthy level." Zeita faked a laugh and only became more hopeful. He said, "But I make people more handsome, not uglier. Can't you see that a beggar without a deformity isn't worth a penny, but when I make him one, he's worth his weight in gold? Men are judged by their value, not their looks, but our brother Giada has neither value nor looks." ':Are you going to start talking like that again?" the woman mut­ tered in a threatening voice. Pretending not to have heard her warning, he dropped the topic, which he had brought up deliberately, and pa**ed on to another as he said, ':And on top of that, all my customers are professional beggars, so what do you want me to do with them? Would you like me to decorate them and beautifY them and send them out onto the streets to seduce the charitable?" "What a devil you are! You have the tongue of a devil and the looks of a devil." He gave an audible sigh and said with the resignation of one try­ ing to make peace, ':All the same, I was a king once." Shaking her head, the woman inquired sarcastically, "Of afreets and demons?" In the same resigned and conciliatory tones, he said, "No, of man­ kind itsel£ The world welcomes every one of us as a king, and then each goes his own way as his bad luck dictates. This is a clever trick on life's part. Otherwise, if it made plain to us from the beginning what it has in store for us, we'd refuse to leave the womb!" ''Wow, hear the man ta-lk!" Enjoying himself, Zeita went on earnestly, "That means that once I was a happy baby, a baby that hands loved to pick up and surround with care and kindness. After all that, can you doubt that I was once a king?" "Certainly not, Your Majesty." Intoxicated by the warmth of his words and the pleasure of hope, he went on, "My birth was a good omen, and a blessing too. That's because my parents, who were professional beggars, used to hire a child for my mother to carry when they were out on their rounds. Then, when God blessed them with me, they didn't need other people's children any more, so they were very happy to see me." Husniya couldn't resist letting out a resounding laugh, so he grew yet more earnest and heated, and resumed, saying, ':Ah, what happy memories I have of my childhood! I can still remember the spot where they used to lay me down on the sidewalk. I'd crawl on all fours until I got to the edge next to the street, where, next to the place they'd chosen, there was a hole in the ground in which rainwater, or the water that had been used to settle the dust, or from the horses and donkeys, would collect. Mud clotted on its bottom, flies sang over its surface, and around its shores the refuse from the streets gathered. A magical and captivating scene! The water was turbid, its beach made up of multicolored garbage-tomato skins, parsley stalks, dust, and mud-around which the flies hovered and settled. When I opened my fly-laden lids and gave free rein to my limbs in that merry summer playground, the world could not contain my joy." "How lucky you were!- What good fortune!" exclaimed Boss Husniya sarcastically. Encouraged by her enjoyment and responsiveness, he went on, "This is the secret behind my infatuation with what people unjustly call garbage. People will become fond of anything, no matter how odd or unusual-which is why I fear for you, should you become too used to that animal." "Back to that again?" Blinded and deafened by lust, he said, "Of course. A man cannot turn his back on the truth." "You sound like a holy man who has renounced the world." ''As I said, I tasted God's mercy once, in the cradle." Then he gestured with his hand toward the garbage dump where he lived and went on, "And my heart tells me that I shall have the good fortune to taste it once more in this refuge of mine." He nodded toward the inside, as if to say, "Come, then!" but the woman, exasper­ ated to the point of fury by his daring, yelled in his face, "Beware, you son of Satan!" "And how is a son of Satan to beware of his father's wiles?" he said in a trembling voice. "How about if I break your bones?" "Who knows ... maybe I'd enjoy that too." Suddenly the man rose and fell back a little. He believed that he'd achieved his desire and that Boss Husniya was now putty in his hands. A state of insanity took possession of him, causing him to I shake violently, and his eyes fixed themselves on the woman's in a bestial trance. Then suddenly he reached down to the hem of his gal­ labiya, stripped it off with remarkable speed, and stood there stark naked. For a few instants, Boss Husniya was dumbfounded. Then she reached for a nearby metal mug and threw it at him hard and fast. It struck his belly and he let out an involuntary moan like the bellow of a bull and fell writhing to the ground.