We went on talking for a long time. Medhat was a skilled conversationalist who knew how to communicate with ease and warmth. His laugh was loud like his father’s, though without his father’s coldness or harshness. Hence, it wasn’t long before I’d come to love and admire him, and I wished I had some of his joviality and ease of expression. Eventually the conversation came around to the subject of his future. He’d completed the Intermediate Agricultural Certificate in the summer of that year, and he said, “I went to see my uncle in Fayoum in hopes that he might help me find a job through one of his acquaintances, but he didn’t take to the idea of my looking for work with the government. Instead, he proposed that I practice on his farm for a high wage with the idea that he would rent out some land to me in the near future. I saw his offer as a way to start making a good living through agriculture, so I accepted it.”
As for my mother, she wasn’t so sanguine about the idea.
“Wouldn’t it be more respectable to get a job with the government?” she objected.
My brother let forth a long laugh, then said, “My diploma doesn’t qualify me for a decent job. But my uncle can give me valuable work opportunities and the chance to make a fortune.”
“And live the rest of your life in Fayoum?”
“It’s a suburb of Cairo!” he replied consolingly.
“For so long I’ve hoped for the day when you could be on your own and we could live together!”
He kissed her hand gently and said with a smile, “You’ll see me so often, you’ll get sick of me!”
Then he bade us farewell and departed.
Heaving a deep sigh, my mother said forlornly, “He spent the first half of his life in that madman’s house, and he’ll spend the latter half off in Fayoum!”
After a moment’s reflection, she said as if talking to herself, “His uncle didn’t make that offer just because he happens to like him so much. He must be planning to marry Medhat to one of his daughters.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” I asked ingenuously.
In response, she cast me a strange look. More than once she began to speak, but thought better of it and held her tongue.
My mother’s hunch proved correct. It wasn’t long before we received a letter from Medhat, informing us of his engagement to his paternal cousin, telling us the wedding date, and inviting us to attend. Scandalized that he would have become engaged without consulting her first, my mother made no attempt to conceal her indignation.
“Do you see how that madman’s brother has gone and stolen my son?” she asked my grandfather furiously.
We didn’t attend because I fell ill not long before the wedding and was bedridden for two weeks. Hence, my mother forgot all about the wedding with its joys and sorrows. And thus it was that Medhat’s nuptials were attended by neither his mother nor his father.
Commenting sardonically as usual, my grandfather said, “God created this family as one of the wonders of mankind. Every family is a unit except this one, which is scattered this way and that and never comes together. O God, Your pardon and good pleasure!”
* * *
The summer drew to a close and it was nearly time for the schools to be back in session, so my grandfather enrolled me in Saidiya. We went there together, and on the way he said, “If you were really a man, you wouldn’t need me to come with you, but you’re seventeen years old and you still don’t know the way to Giza. Memorize the route we take to get there. I was an officer at your age!”
My grandfather was putting on a show of discontent and offense. However, in my heart I sensed that he was happy, even overjoyed, and I could feel his affection wrapped about me. Consequently, it shamed me to think of all the trouble he was going to for my sake even though by this time he was a seventy-year-old man.
When we came home, he thumped me gently with his cane, saying, “You’re now a student at Saidiya, so do your best and make us proud. I want to see you an officer before I pass away.”
And I prayed with all my heart for him to be granted length of days.
He fell silent for quite some time. Then, without any apparent occasion, he said, “Back in my generation, a primary school certificate was a great thing. In fact, it was rightly considered the equivalent of the highest degrees they give out these days.”
Then he continued with a nod of his head, saying, “Those were the days! And we were real men!”
14
The summer vacation ended and I was smitten with gloom. School was the bane of my existence, and I genuinely and profoundly detested it. It was true, of course, that I was about to start out at a new school that was associated in my mind with manliness and glory. However, it was still a school, which meant that like any other school, it would have scheduled times, classrooms, students, teachers, punishments, and lessons that were bound to be more difficult than the ones in primary school.
On the first Saturday morning of October I woke up early, four months since the last time I’d had to engage in this wearisome habit. I put on a suit, spruced myself up as usual and chose a necktie out of my grandfather’s wardrobe. My mother took a long look at me, then said to me with satisfaction, “You’re as beautiful as the moon, I swear to God! You’ve got your mother’s face, but with a fair complexion the likes of which I’ve never had. May the Merciful One’s care protect you.”
She instructed me to be careful when I walked, got on and off the tram, and crossed the street, then uttered a long prayer of supplication for me. When I left the house, she stood on the balcony watching me till I rounded the bend and disappeared from view. I kept walking, all the while feeling worried and dejected until I reached the tram station on Qasr al-Aini Street. As I stood waiting for the tram alone for the first time in my life, I had a sense of independence that I’d never had before. The feeling consoled me and afforded me some relief from the distress I was suffering. Then suddenly I began to entertain the hope of beginning a new life — a life untroubled by the misery that had been my constant companion at the Aqqadin School. I thought to myself: Here I am on my way to a new school. I’ll be meeting new people, so why can’t I turn over a new leaf? Just maybe, if I applied myself diligently, could I avoid the teachers’ cruelty? And if I managed to be friendly toward the other students, I could win their affection and keep them from despising me. It’s something that lots of other people can do, so why should I be the only one who can’t? A joyous enthusiasm danced in my heart, and I said to myself: If I succeed in what I’ve failed at in the past, I can make a good life for myself.
In this way I endeared to myself the school life I’d been fated to endure whether I liked it or not, and I continued on my way to Saidiya, luxuriating in the new hope that had sprung up suddenly in my heart at the tram station.
* * *
However, life at the new school was harsher than hope had given me to believe. My extreme shyness and aversion to people prevented me from making a single friend, while my tendency to daydream made my diligent efforts go up in smoke. And oh, the suffering I endured on account of that tendency! It robbed me of my senses and of all ability to pay attention and focus my thoughts. Hence, it made me easy prey for teachers. During the second week of my new school life, I was jolted awake from a daydream by the teacher’s ruler as it struck my forehead, and by his voice as he asked me menacingly, “I said, what borders it on the north?”
I gazed into his face in bewilderment, so terrified I even forgot to stand up.
“Please be so kind as to stand when you answer your father’s servant!” he screeched.
I rose to my feet in a fright, then stood there motionless without making any reply.