Forid Mian brushed her hand away. You’re laughing at me, Zindi, he said sharply. You know quite well I don’t have a family or a wife or children. I was too young when I left, and there was no money in the house anyway. Then I was at sea, and there was no time. And then here in al-Ghazira …
Zindi raised a hand to cover her mouth: No wife, no children! Nothing? What are you going to do? Are you going to stay here for ever, in the Souq? Until your fingers are too stiff to hold a needle?
What can I do? Forid Mian’s head fell until he was staring at his crossed feet. I have some money saved, I could afford to get married now, even start a small shop of my own. But I have no family left there now. Who would find me a wife? I’m afraid, Zindi: going back to a place alone, starting again, a man can’t do that at my age.
How old are you, Forid Mian? Zindi asked.
Fifty? Sixty? Something like that.
Forid Mian shrugged.
Zindi gurgled with laughter: Just the right age to get married. Something will have to be done for you, Forid Mian.
She tweaked his bottom, and Forid Mian broke into laughter: Zindi, you don’t know, you can’t imagine, how I long for a wife. I’ve spent too many nights thrashing about on dry sheets. You don’t know how it hurts. You wake up in the morning and you’re bleeding, but you can’t stop …
Zindi laughed with him, her huge shoulders rolling like round-bottomed pots. But Forid Mian noticed people turning to look at them, and he frowned in embarrassment. Zindi tapped him on the knee and said: Forid Mian. But he shook his head and pointed across the room, at Hajj Fahmy. The Hajj was holding his hand up and waiting for silence. Zindi decided to say no more; she had said enough for one day.
Hajj Fahmy, eyes shining, smiled across the room at Abu Fahl. I have a question for Abu Fahl, he said to the room. Let us see if Abu Fahl can answer it. I’ve understood what Abu Fahl has said — why he couldn’t get Alu out today, and so on and fulan — I’ve understood it all, but for one thing, and this thing troubles me. Abu Fahl talks of how strong the concrete and the steel in the Star was, and how that concrete can hold up a mountain of rubble and a shopful of cars, and how you could hang the whole of the Ras on one of those girders. But here is my question: if that concrete and steel was so strong, why did the Star fall?
Abu Fahl slid a finger under his cap and scratched his head. It wasn’t strong all over, he said, only in parts. He stopped, flustered.
If it was strong only in parts, why did the whole of it fall?
Abu Fahl recovered himself. It’s quite simple, he said confidently. Everyone knows that the contractors and architects put too much sand in the cement. They’ve been doing it for years. A cement shortage, they say. But actually they’re busy putting up palaces with the money they make from that cement — for themselves at home in England, or India or Egypt, America, Korea, Pakistan, who knows where? The cement they were using for the Star was nothing but sand. Not all of it, of course. For those parts of the building which were going to bear really heavy weights they cast very strong concrete. It’s one of those parts that Alu is lying under. The rest of that building was like straw. Anybody who had any experience of construction at all knew that it wouldn’t last. I wasn’t surprised when it fell; I’d been expecting it. That day I actually saw the whole thing begin, and I knew at once what was going to happen. Rakesh, Alu and some of the others were the only people working at the time. It was lunchtime, just before the afternoon prayers, and everybody else had stopped work. Our people had something to finish, so they were still inside. I was sitting outside talking to some people and suddenly a piece of plaster fell right beside me. I looked up and I distinctly saw the whole building beginning to shake, and somewhere, deep inside the Star, I heard rumbles. I knew at once what was going to happen, so I raced in and called out to Rakesh and the others to run, for the Star was going to fall. Ask them. If it weren’t for me, they wouldn’t be alive today. They all ran, except Alu, and that was because Alu has no experience; he knows nothing of buildings and construction. But let that be. The Hajj asks why did the Star fall. The answer is this: because, though parts of it were strong, the whole of it was weak because of bad cement and sandy concrete.
Abu Fahl sat back, assured and commanding, accepting the thoughtful silence that had fallen on the room as a tribute to his good sense. Hajj Fahmy was the first to speak, smiling, teasing him: You’re wrong, Abu Fahl.
Abu Fahl frowned: What do you mean, I’m wrong?
Just that. I know you’re wrong.
How?
Because I know the real story; the true story.
If it’s true, how’s it a story?
All right, then, it’s a story.
Abu Fahl challenged the old man: If you’re so sure, ya Hajj, why don’t you tell us?
Hajj Fahmy looked around him: Are you sure everyone wants to hear it?
Voices rose: Yes, there’s tea, there’s tobacco and what else have we got to do?
Hajj Fahmy inclined his head, smiling.
It’s just a story.
Once many, many years ago, so long ago that the time is of no significance, an odd-looking man, a very odd-looking man, appeared suddenly one day in al-Ghazira. Thin and small he was, of course, as people often were in those days, though his wasn’t the thinness of hunger so much as that of the mangled rag: he looked as though he had been twisted and pulled inside out, for his colour was a strange yellowish brown, as though he were carrying his bile on his skin. At first people would have nothing to do with him; he upset everyone he met, because when one of his eyes looked this way the other looked that. He was so painfully cross-eyed it was said of him that when other people only saw Cairo he could see Bombay as well. And, in addition, one of his eyes was always half-shut, as though his eyelid had been torn off its hinges. That was the deceptive one; it roamed about, taking everything in, while the other acted as a decoy.
No one knew anything about him. He didn’t even have a name for a long time. But then someone discovered that he was from northern Egypt, from the town of Damanhour, and so of course he was named Nury — Nury the Damanhouri. Soon he was found to be a quiet man, always willing to laugh, and never any trouble to anyone, so people grew to like him.
It’s true; he was a quiet man, but in his quiet way he changed things while nobody noticed. Take his trade, for example — he brought something altogether new to al-Ghazira. But that’s a story in itself.
Now, no one ever really knew why Nury had left Damanhour and come to al-Ghazira; in those days Damanhour was probably a better place to make a living than al-Ghazira. But a few months after he arrived a rumour went around al-Ghazira. People whispered that Nury had tried to divorce his wife because she had borne him no children. But when the council of elders was called they said everything was turned upside down — it was she who accused him of being as impotent as a wet rag, and challenged him to prove otherwise. They said he had fled Egypt in shame.
People were curious, of course, but it wasn’t known for certain whether the story was true. Here, Nury married a widowed Mawali woman decades older than himself and they were happy together, for she never once talked of how they spent their nights. It didn’t matter. Nury was a philosopher; he knew that people always believe the worst. Though nobody knew for certain, there wasn’t a man in al-Ghazira who didn’t, at heart, believe the rumour to be true. No one ever stopped to ask where the story came from; no one ever imagined that perhaps it came from Nury himself. Once it began to be whispered, people believed it absolutely, indisputably.
In his own small way Nury was a great man; he had the wisdom to see the world clearly. And like a logician he drew clear conclusions from what he saw.