“No. Agriculture. You have land you can farm afterward,” said Shakira.
He preferred his mother’s idea and Hamid privately cursed the two of them. After graduation he traveled to Beni Suef, determined to make a modern farm out of the land his mother inherited when his tyrant grandfather died. He married a woman called Galfadan, a relative of his grandmother Nazli Hanem, and with high hopes dedicated himself to working on the land. He bred calves and set up a beehive to produce honey. He dressed in the clothes of a country nobleman and only wore a suit when he visited Cairo. His heart was hostile to the July Revolution, even though it did not harm him personally and two of his uncles, Abduh and Mahir, were among its men. In the period of the infitah, his livelihood increased, his family expanded and he remained loyal to his principles. His indignation at his father intensified after the man divorced his mother and married a second time, but he was genuinely sad when he died. He grew accustomed to country life. He loved it and was passionate about his work and success, and began to refer to Cairo as “The City of Pain.”
Sadriya Amr Aziz
She was rightly said to be a gift in Amr’s family. Like the others, she was born and grew up in the old house on Bayt al-Qadi Square. Her skin was a deep shade of brown and she was small with a slender, well-shaped body and pleasant features. She was received with subdued joy for she disappointed hopes of a male child. As the eldest, she took on a motherly role toward her brothers and sisters from childhood. She was her mother’s confidante and heiress to her heritage, but she was not without a measure of conventional religion, and her domestic skills, from cooking to cleaning and needlework, were exemplary. She was sent to Qur’an school and learned how to read and write but reverted to illiteracy when they were not put to use. She worked and sang unceasingly even though she was not endowed with a particularly good voice. You would find her in the kitchen helping her mother or laboring in her mother’s place, sitting at the sewing machine, or on the roof checking on the chickens and rabbits. When the house crowded with Amer, Matariya, Samira, Habiba, Hamid, and Qasim, she played deputy to her mother while joining in the games, gaiety, shouting, and battles, and excelling all round. She obtained a status enjoyed by no one else, which she maintained for the rest of her life. She shared everyone’s worries, despite the burden of her own, and had total faith in her mother, whom she saw as a miracle worker.
She had barely turned fifteen when a country nobleman from Upper Egypt called Hamada al-Qinawi came forward to ask for her hand and a dream she had entertained since the age of ten came true. Her departure represented the first farewell and first wedding celebration in the family. Hamada was an acquaintance of Amr’s. He adored Cairo, so when his father died he had moved there with his mother and leased his thirty feddans of land to an uncle in Qina. Rashwana, Radia, and Surur’s wife, Zaynab, visited the man’s house in Darb al-Qazzazin.
“Hamada’s mother is devout. No religious duty is above her,” Rashwana said to her brother Amr.
At a gathering in Amr’s house attended by Amr, Surur, and Mahmud Bey Ata, Surur Effendi said, “The groom is unemployed and has no skills. That’s bad.”
“He has thirty feddans,” said Amr.
“Even so, he is barely literate,” replied Surur with unfounded conceit.
“A man’s value is in his money,” said Mahmud Ata.
“He is from a good traditional family,” said Amr.
From what she could see through the gap in the mashrabiya Sadriya was pleased with Hamada’s appearance; he was tall and strong, smartly dressed in a jubbah and caftan, and had manly features. She was wedded to him in a house in Khan Ga‘far that he rented from the dimwitted pastry man. Mahmud Ata furnished the reception room, Ahmad Bey gave jewelry and clothes, and Abd al-Azim Dawud provided the wedding dress. Sadriya began her married life with Hamada resting on her mother’s instructions, her blessings, and superior skills as a mistress of the house. Hamada represented a complex problem. They were mutually affectionate and each felt a strong need for the other, but Sadriya was naturally sensitive and irascible and very stubborn while her husband was a narrow-minded chatterbox who loved glory and authority. His unlimited spare time left him free to interfere in things whether or not they concerned him. She was not accustomed to a man snoring away until noon, waking up, and interrupting her housework to talk endlessly about his family, its merits, and his own illusory virtues, followed by foolish comments on her work, about which he understood nothing. He knew his religion only by name and did not pray or fast. Barely a night went by when he did not stay up late at the Parisienne, drinking wine and dining on appetizers. Yet they did not shun marital relations or children, and so she gave birth to Nihad, Aql, Warda, and Dalal. Nor did they refrain from futile debates, hence he would boast about his family of landowners and she would in turn extol the families of Ata and Dawud and Shaykh Mu‘awiya, the hero of the Urabi Revolution. The discussion would sometimes become heated and they would exchange cruel insults. She strove to hide the steam from the cooking pot under a tight lid and solve her problems herself without involving her family. But Radia perceived what was going on through her own intuition as well as from the man’s excruciating chatter. “A wife has to be a doctor,” she said to her daughter.
“You must visit the relevant tombs,” said Sadriya.
“What is the point in visiting tombs for this? The best remedy is to cut off his tongue!” said Radia.
The truth was that it was not just Hamada’s wife who suffered from his irritating chatter; on visits he would inflict it on the families of Amr, Surur, al-Murakibi, and Dawud until it became a joke among the relatives. It became clear that her husband’s eyes knew no shame and followed every pretty girl who passed by. Sadriya grew increasingly uneasy.
“Have you no shame?” she asked him disapprovingly.
“There’s no harm in looking,” he scoffed.
But she caught gestures between him and the beautiful widow who lived in the house opposite. A fire ignited inside her and blew the sleep from her eyes. She stayed awake until the time he usually came home from an evening at the Parisienne then left the house and went out into the street, wrapped in the darkness, with a bucket of water in her hand. Hamada approached, cleaving his way through the pitch-dark night. She felt the door of the widow’s house open and the woman’s blurred outline appeared dimly in the doorway. The man paused and turned toward it. Sadriya hurried into the middle of the road and hurled the water at the woman in the doorway, who screamed and tumbled backward into the house. Hamada was startled. He looked in Sadriya’s direction, “Who are you?”
“Get home, you shameless creature!” she shouted enraged.
He was staggering that night. He entered the house in silence then shouted angrily, “I’ll show you how savage I can be when I need to.”
But in his drunkenness he was overcome by laughter. He collapsed onto the sofa saying, “You’re a madwoman like your mother!”
She quarreled with him for a while, then they reverted to friendly relations and bickering, although the matter was not laid entirely to rest until he fell ill. He developed high blood pressure that affected his heart and he had to give up drinking. A general apathy came over him, which in certain guises took on the appearance of wisdom. Then came sorrow; Sadriya lost her daughter, Warda, in the prime of youth, and then lost her father and her sister Matariya. Finally, Hamada died on a visit to his family in Qina. Sadriya remained in Khan Ga‘far, refusing to move to her son Aql’s house despite his strong devotion to her. When Radia sensed her health was deteriorating she said to Sadriya, “I want you by my side to close my eyes.…” Thus, she shut up her house and returned to the house of her birth to be beside her mother, who favored her above everyone. Radia was over a hundred years old and Sadriya was herself approaching ninety, although she was in full possession of her strength and still active. The final days passed in a turmoil of memories; her mother recalled songs she had sung in the last quarter of the nineteenth century then passed away. Sadriya closed her eyes, wanting to cry but unable to.