“I depend on God alone,” Shakira replied.
She and Amer’s wife, Iffat, also detested one another, compounding the envy and aversion between Ata and Dawud’s families. When the older generation passed away, Hamid could breathe freely. His wrath was unleashed in an atmosphere free of constraints and the matter ended in divorce. Shakira began to despise Hamid and his family deeply and her rage never subsided. She continued to curse and cut him to pieces for the rest of her life. In her loneliness religion claimed her. She performed the hajj more than once and was as bent on the rituals of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving as she was on cursing her enemies and damning them in this world and the next.
Shahira Mu‘awiya al-Qalyubi
She was the second daughter of Shaykh Mu‘awiya and Galila al-Tarabishi. She was born and grew up in the old family house in Suq al-Zalat in Bab al-Sha‘riya. The hallway of the house was her playground, between the stove, well, and family sofa, where she, Radia, Sadiqa, and Baligh would congregate. There sounded her father, the shaykh’s, exhortations, and there circulated Galila’s mysteries of times past. From the beginning, Shahira showed no interest in religion or religious duties. Yet she eagerly embraced popular heritage and would add to it from her abundant imagination. In body and face she resembled Radia, though she was fairer, remarkably blunt and impudent, and eccentric to the point of insanity. Two years after her father died, one of his students, a Qur’an reciter with a sweet voice, nice appearance, and ample means, sought her hand in marriage. She was wedded to him in his house in Bab al-Bahr, not far from the family residence. She gave birth to a fine-looking son, whom his father called Abduh because he thought the name of the man whose voice he adored, Abduh al-Hamuli, would be a good omen. The marriage prospered in spite of Shahira’s irascibility and impudence. “It’s the spice of married life,” the husband, Shaykh Ali Bilal, would joke.
Shaykh Ali Bilal made friends with Amr Effendi and his family, and whenever he visited the house on Bayt al-Qadi Square, Amr would ask him to bless it with one of his recitations. Thus, he would sit cross-legged in the reception room after supper, drinking coffee, and recite something easy from the Qur’an in his sweet voice. He was impelled by his voice and friends to recite eulogies to the Prophet at festivals. His livelihood grew and his admirers multiplied. Before long he was invited to enliven weddings with his panegyrics. Amidst the festive atmosphere and pleasant evenings, he got into the habit of smoking hashish. Eventually one of the composers suggested he try singing, foreseeing a rosy future in it for him. The shaykh met the invitation with a merry heart. He saw nothing wrong in abandoning the holy suras of the Qur’an to sing, “Don’t Speak to Me, Papa Is Coming,” “Draw the Curtains So the Neighbors Can’t See,” and “Yummy Scrummy Fried Fish,” and was remarkably successful in so doing. He made recordings, which were circulated in the market, and people started talking about him. Amr clapped his hands together. “What a comedown!”
The temptations of the new milieu made Shahira anxious about her position as wife. “You were a blessed shaykh when I married you,” she said. “Now you’re a chanteuse!”
The man was intoxicated by his success and became the organizer of many a hashish gathering. He was soon drinking heavily and the house would be filled with horrid trenchant fumes at the end of the night, reminding Shahira of the tragedy of her brother, Baligh. The sound of her upbraiding and scalding him with her vicious tongue would drown the dawn muezzin. Then reports of him flirting with singers reached her ears. She pounced on him with a savagery that flung open the gates of hell upon him and he made up his mind to divorce her. But one night, before he could put his decision into action, he overdid the drinking and singing and had a heart attack. He died among friends, plucking the strings on his lute.
Shahira performed the rituals of mourning without emotion. She leased the house and the shop below and returned with Abduh to the old house to share her loneliness with her mother, Galila. “Let Abduh be your eye’s delight,” said Radia. But Abduh was snatched away in a fever, as though in a dream. By this time his mother was already known as Umm Abduh about the quarter, and the eponym would stick for the rest of her life. She became passionate about breeding cats and dedicated her time to looking after them until they filled the gap in her life and crowded the old house. She started to believe she could understand their language and the spirits that inhabited their bodies, and that through them she was in touch with the Unknown. She found her best friend in Radia. Whenever they met up, whether in Bayt al-Qadi or Suq al-Zalat, a curious session invariably ensued during which they would exchange anecdotes about the realm of the jinn, the Unknown, and the offspring of mysteries. In such things they were of one heart and one mind, despite Radia’s misgivings and suspicion that Shahira begrudged her her children and happy marriage. Shahira was famous in Suq al-Zalat for her inscrutable, fearful personality and impudent tongue. She was not known to perform any religious duties and would prepare her meal at sunset in Ramadan saying, “People don’t need religious duties to bring them closer to God.” After her mother died she was wholly immersed in solitude, submerged to the top of her gray head in a world of cats. Her brother, Baligh, saw to her upkeep. He would invite her to visit his sublime mansion, but she hated his wife for no real reason, and only ever left her cats to visit Sidi al-Sha‘rani or Radia. She fell victim to the cholera epidemic of 1947 and moved to the fever hospital after instructing a neighbor to go to Radia for the cats’ care. She died in hospital, leaving some forty cats behind. Radia’s sons and daughters mourned the aunt whom they had laughed at in life.
Ṣad
Salih Hamid Amr
HE GREW UP IN THE MANSION ON KHAYRAT SQUARE in the wing set aside for Hamid and Shakira. He and his sister, Wahida, represented the first generation of grandchildren in the Murakibi family and, consequently, enjoyed special deference from their grandparents and maternal aunts and uncles. The big garden was his playground and dream; he loved it in spring, with its abundant medley of pure fragrances, and he loved it in winter, when it was cleansed by the water of precious rains. He was closer to his mother than his father, whose time was taken up with work, and became even more so each time he perceived signs of the ordeal the man put her through. He was strong bodied like his father and good looking like his grandfather, but his mother gave him a pious, aristocratic, and urbane upbringing so he grew into a man of integrity and religious principles. He was also headstrong like his mother, which led some to believe him ignorant, which was far from the truth. The impression was intensified by the harsh way in which he judged people by the Qur’an and Sunna, intolerant and inflexible. His father was probably his first victim despite the fact that the man loved him dearly. He loved his father too, but considered him vulgar and placed him in the same bracket as sinners and good-for-nothings while granting him his full due of reverence and loyalty. Hamid instinctively grasped his position and complained about it to his brother, Amer. “Shakira has brought them up to dislike me.”
Thus, Amer said to him one day, “You’re a good man, Salih. Don’t forget to respect your father.”
“I never neglect my duty to my father,” he replied.
“Perhaps he isn’t content with formalities.”
“He abuses Mama, Uncle,” he said with absolute frankness.
He was similar in temperament to his cousin Salim, but with one difference; Salim combined emotion with action, whereas he would say to himself: The heart’s enough; it’s still conviction. Thus, he loved the Muslim Brothers without joining the organization and pledged loyalty, as a Murakibi, to the Crown just as he lent money to all the parties. As a result of the eternal struggle between his parents he generally shunned his father’s relatives — the families of Amr and Surur — and despised the Dawud family. Like his mother, he believed his grandmother Radia was quite simply mad. Because he continued to achieve in school Hamid said to him, “You should study medicine. You’re right for it.”