“What will we do if one of our neighbors complains about you to her husband?” she would reprimand him in a whisper.
“There is nothing to complain about,” he would retort.
When she complained to Amr, Surur poured anger on her and threatened he could marry again whenever he liked, though a second marriage was really an impossible dream. In fact he only betrayed his wife twice — once in a brothel, and then in a short fling that lasted no more than a week. He increasingly resented his poverty and his boorish grandfather even more. He tirelessly bought lottery tickets, but gained nothing from it other than the silent reproach glimmering in the eyes of his eldest son, Labib, and daughters, especially after Zaynab’s health deteriorated. When Amr died, loneliness and depression descended on him, and when the war, the darkness, and the air raids came, he declared life a raw deal. His only consolation was his son Labib‘s success, but his constant boasting about it made him a heavier weight on the family’s hearts. In later life, he stopped going to see the Murakibi and Dawud families but would often visit Amr’s sons and daughters, just as he would his sister’s house, and joined in their joys and sorrows. They had been fond of him since they were young, and became even more so when their own father died. One autumn evening in his final year of government service, as he sat behind the mashrabiya gazing out at the dark cowering above the houses and minarets, expecting the usual air raid siren to come at any minute, he had a heart attack. His life was over in less than a minute.
Salim Hussein Qabil
The last child of Samira Amr and Hussein Qabil, he was born and grew up on Ibn Khaldun Street. His father died when he was only a year old so he was brought up in a disciplined climate, nothing like the comfortable lifestyle his family had enjoyed when he was just a glimmer on the horizon. He was good looking like his mother and tall like his father, and had a large head and intellect like his brother Hakim. His obstinacy and stubbornness, as well as his talent in school, came to light in childhood. His sister Hanuma watched over him closely with her piety and strict morality, and for a long time he believed he was learning the truth about the Unknown from the lips of his grandmother Radia. He loved football and was good at it, enjoyed mixing with girls in al-Zahir Baybars Garden, and hated the English. Dreams of reform and the perfect city toyed constantly with his imagination. He did not incline to any one party, deterred by his brother Hakim, who rejected everything outright. He once heard Hakim say, “We need something new,” and replied automatically, “Like Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab.”
His own temperament and Hanuma’s influence prompted him to turn to the religious books in his brother’s library. His dream of the perfect city vanquished football and girls. He was in secondary school for the July Revolution and welcomed it eagerly, like deliverance from annihilation. The role his brother Hakim played in it strengthened his commitment and, for the first time, it seemed to him the perfect city was being built, brick by brick. He thought that by joining the Muslim Brotherhood he could immerse himself further in the revolution, but when the revolution and the Brothers came into conflict his heart remained with the latter. Disagreement emerged between him and his brother. “Be careful,” Hakim said.
“Caution can’t save us from fate,” Salim replied.
He entered law school and his political — or rather religious — activities increased. But none of his family imagined he would be among the accused in the great case against the Muslim Brothers. Hakim was dismayed. “It’s out of our hands!” he said to his anxious mother. Salim was sentenced to ten years in jail. Samira reeled at the force of the blow; Hakim’s shining star could not console her for his brother’s incarceration. She secretly despised the revolution, and Radia invoked evil on it and its men.
Salim was released from prison a year before June 5, completed the remainder of his studies, earned a degree, and started work in the office of an important Muslim Brotherhood attorney. He saw the great defeat as divine punishment for an infidel government. He did not sever links with his accomplices but conducted his business with extreme secrecy and caution. He found relief in writing and devoted years of his life to it. His labors bore fruit in his book, The Golden Age of Islam, which he followed with a work on the steadfast and pious. At the same time, he achieved considerable success as a lawyer and, with the sales of his two books, his finances improved, especially after Saudi Arabia purchased a large number of them. When the revolution’s leader died, he recovered a certain repose. Samira said to him, “It’s time you thought of marrying.” He responded eagerly, so she said, “You must see Hadiya, your aunt Matariya’s granddaughter through Amana.”
Hadiya was the youngest of Amana’s children. She had recently returned from the Gulf after teaching there for two years and had purchased an apartment in Manshiyat al-Bakri. He went with Samira to Abd al-Rahman Amin and Amana’s house on Azhar Street and saw Hadiya, a fine looking teacher in the prime of youth, whose beauty was very much like her grandmother Matariya’s, the most beautiful woman in the family. Samira proposed to her on his behalf, she was wedded to him, and he moved to her apartment in Manshiyat al-Bakri. He had a lovely wife and flourishing career. He knew love and compassion under Sadat and had no cause for worry other than the new religious currents that had emerged within the Brothers, cleaving new paths surrounded by radicalism and abstruseness. “There is a general Islamic awakening, no doubt about it. But it is also resurrecting old differences which are consuming its strengths to no avail,” he said to his brother Hakim. However, Hakim had other priorities and, despite his personal feelings, saw what befell the regime on June 5 as an absolute catastrophe; the nation was moving into uncharted territory. As the days went by, God granted Salim fatherhood, material abundance, and satisfaction on the day of victory. Yet none of this jostled from his heart his deeply rooted belief in, and eternal dream of, the divine perfect city. He swept Hadiya along in his forceful current until she said, “I was lost and you showed me the right way. Praise be to God.”
Salim became a propagandist writer for the Muslim Brotherhood’s magazine and, like the rest of the group, was filled with rage at Sadat’s reckless venture to make peace with Israel. He reverted once more to vehement anger and rebellion, and when the September 1981 rulings were issued he was thrown back in jail. When Sadat was assassinated he said, “It’s a divine punishment for an infidel government.”
He could breathe freely in the new climate but had lost confidence in everything except his dream. It was for this that he worked and lived.
Samira Amr Aziz
She was Amr’s fourth child and second only to Matariya in beauty. As she played on the roof and beneath the walnut trees in the square and studied at Qur’an school, her serious personality, calm nature, and brilliant mind crystallized. She seldom got involved in quarrels with her siblings and when violence flared up would withdraw into a corner, content to watch what she would later be summoned to bear witness to. Though more beautiful, she resembled her mother in general appearance — except for her height, at which Radia greatly marveled. In contrast to her sisters, she retained the principles of reading and writing that she learned at Qur’an school and nurtured them diligently, so she was the only one to regularly read newspapers and magazines as an adult. On visits to the Murakibi family at the mansion on Khayrat Square and the Dawud family in East Abbasiya, she made a mental note of the elegant setup, table manners, rhythm of conversation, and beautiful style and tried to adopt and emulate them as far as means and circumstances allowed. Mahmud Bey would joke in his crude manner, “You’re a peasant family, but there is a European girl in your midst!”