“No, thank you,” the child answered. “I just had coffee at the Bosphorous Café.”
The Bosphorous was a swanky café where El Kordi had never set foot.
“Son of a bitch!” he bellowed. “Get out of here or I’ll strangle you.”
The child left, making a disdainful face.
When he was some distance away, El Kordi broke out laughing. “Did you hear that, Master? What spirit! That child is fantastic.”
Gohar smiled and looked at the young man with gentle irony. What pleased him was his utter frivolousness. El Kordi was a revolutionary. He had ideas about the future of the masses and the liberty of the people, but he was frivolous, for he couldn’t get beyond this absurd world. Believing that he and his people were persecuted, he would fight against oppression — but in vain, for as soon as he was left to his own instincts he became superficial, delighting in the most trivial actions.
Now he seemed relieved of his bitterness. The incident with the little scavenger had soothed his worries; he abandoned himself to a childish joy. He was intensely happy with Gohar; everything became easy with him. Gohar’s presence rendered illusory all of life’s difficulties; the worst catastrophes assumed an air of extravagant drollery. El Kordi rediscovered his childhood in his company.
“And this journey, Master?”
“I’m considering it, my son.”
“You should go,” El Kordi said fervently. “It would be marvelous for you.”
When anyone mentioned this journey, Gohar would close his eyes, as if the yearning for a distant countryside demanded all his attention. To leave, to take the train for Syria! This was the dream he’d long cherished, the only dream he allowed himself, because it was linked to the very source of his bliss. Drugs were legal in Syria. Hashish grew abundantly in the fields like ordinary clover; one could grow it oneself. One day Gohar had learned these extraordinary facts by chance and had not stopped dreaming about it ever since. This little neighboring country seemed like paradise. It was truly unjust to be condemned to live here, when only a few hours away drugs were at everyone’s doorstep. Gohar considered the full extent of this injustice; he could never forgive fate for his having been born on this side of the border. He was firmly convinced he would never go there, yet he already lived there in his mind. For him, Syria consisted of a verdant pasture, whose grass was nothing but the drug in its raw form, its first growth. At certain difficult moments, when he’d been long deprived, the evocation of this simple landscape was enough to intoxicate him.
“I can see you planting immense fields of hashish,” El Kordi said.
“First, I’d have to go there,” said Gohar. “It isn’t easy.”
“Oh, yes, the money! Listen, Master, I’d like to ask your advice.”
“I’m at your service.”
El Kordi struck a conspiratorial pose and said, “I must save that poor girl! Even if I must steal. Do you hear me? Even if I must steal! What do you think of that?”
Gohar reflected. He had nothing against stealing; everyone stole. There were simply methods and nuances that escaped El Kordi. He liked this young man; he didn’t want to see him end up in prison. He would miss him. Moreover, El Kordi wasn’t capable of appreciating the security of a prison; he would destroy his own soul and acquire foolish ideas about liberty. But Gohar saw it was useless to explain all that to him.
“You surprise me,” he said. “A respectable official like you.”
“The respectable official, as you say, has lost his pen,” said El Kordi. “That’s right, my boss took away my pen. ‘This poor government pen is growing rusty in your company, my dear El Kordi Effendi. I think that others will make better use of it.’ That’s what he said to me. So you see, I am a clerk without a pen.”
“All the better for you,” Gohar said. “I congratulate you.”
At a nearby table, two blind old sheiks were discussing the artistic qualities of a famous mosque. One of them wound up calling the other a fake blind man. This insult broke up their conversation. They immediately left their table and went off in different directions, muttering invectives of high literary merit. El Kordi seemed to have forgotten his plan to become a thief, as he had forgotten to commit suicide. It was already two o’clock and he didn’t know how to spend the afternoon.
“Will you have lunch with me, Master?”
“No, I never eat at this hour,” Gohar said. “Besides, I’m not hungry.”
He had to find drugs; his craving had become intolerable. He realized that all this time he had been waiting for Yeghen to arrive.
“Have you seen Yeghen today?”
“Yes, I saw him at Set Amina’s, when I went to see Naila. He was sleeping on the sofa in the waiting room. I didn’t want to wake him; I think he spent the night there.”
Gohar was seized with panic. The thought that Yeghen might be nearby and that he could find him made him jump up.
“I must leave you, my dear El Kordi. I’ll see you tonight.”
“What, you’re leaving me to my sad fate?” El Kordi said, assuming his most woeful expression.
“I’m sorry, but I must go. Peace be with you.”
Gohar traversed the café with feverish haste. Customers invited him to sit down, but he courteously declined their offers. A little farther on, he spit out the mint lozenge that had begun to nauseate him. The thought of hashish nearby filled him with new energy. With a spring in his step, he disappeared into the maze of alleys bordered by rickety hovels on the verge of collapse.
2
SUDDENLY bright daylight brutally attacked him, stopping his mad flight. His eyes had grown used to the shade of the covered terrace, and he was now disoriented by the luminous, shifting universe that rose up before him like an impassable obstacle. The alley he was in was particularly narrow, with “keep out” signs everywhere. People, slouched against the walls or standing in immutable poses, were generously spending their age-old inertia to discourage traffic. In hovel doorways the ground was strewn with young children with glairy, fly-covered eyes who resembled little crawling animals. Squatting women washed their clothes in big tin tubs; others were cooking on a kerosene stove that smoked like a locomotive. The abuses they intermittently hurled at their unruly children were so loud and powerful as to exclude all possibility of forgiveness.
Gohar felt dizzy faced with all these barriers blocking his path. He would never manage to push his way through this compact mass, denser than a chain of high mountains. But the thought of the drug and the fear of missing Yeghen made him overcome his weakness. It was a matter of life and death for him, so without waiting any longer, he set off like a blind man and forged ahead oblivious to the cries and curses he stirred up along the way. He felt only that the air around him was growing heavy and that the human debris that barred his route was animated by malicious listlessness. The brothel wasn’t far, but in a strange way it seemed to Gohar that the distance was growing. He advanced like a sleepwalker, one hand gripping his cane, the other stretched in front of him in a childish gesture of defense. A radish vendor called to him by name and invited him, with words filled with nobility, to help himself. Gohar paid no attention; he had better things to do than eat radishes. In his haste to find Yeghen he had even forgotten his usual courtesy.
A moment later he saw the house in the distance and felt somewhat reassured. Set Amina’s brothel was not a place of pleasure for Gohar. He never went there as a client, but only to fulfill an important literary function. Actually, it was an exceptionally amusing job to which he attached a symbolic value. To draw up Set Amina’s business accounts and sometimes write the love letters of illiterate whores seemed to him work worthy of human interest. So despite his superficial decline, he still retained the role of a powerful intellectual that had been his glory in the past, when he had taught history and literature in the biggest university in the country. But his academic side, already so odious then, here no longer had any excuse for existing. In this milieu where life appeared in the raw, unspoiled by established conventions, Gohar fooled no one; he no longer recited the endless philosophical lies he himself — alas! — once believed. The freedom of thought that accompanied his new job was an inexhaustible source of joy, a boundless, generous joy. The infinite human resources of a brothel in the native quarter kept him in perpetual ecstasy. How far he was from the sterile, deadly games of men and their hazy idea of life and reason! The great minds he had so long admired now appeared to him as vile corrupters, stripped of all authority. To teach life without living it was a crime of the most detestable ignorance.