Isa was called inside for the announcement of the engagement. Everyone was watching him and there was complete silence; for Hasan it was a very heavy silence. Then the shrill cries of joy echoing through every part of the mansion pierced the air.

Salwa stood with her mother on one side and Isa on the other. Then she walked around among the guests before taking her seat in the red room on a chair banked with roses. She looked really beautiful. She had inherited her mother’s stature and long, thin neck, and had her father’s eyes set in a face that seemed to have a white translucence like moonlight, but with a sweet gentle expression that showed not only a kindly temperament but also an almost total lack of intelligence or warmth. She looked at her mother continually, as if asking her guidance and help, fearful and insecure at the thought of separation. The guests discussed her dress at length.

As the party continued, the piles of food prepared for the buffet disappeared and guests started to leave, carrying souvenir tins of sweets with them. The engaged couple and Susan Hanem were finally left alone in the sitting room. Its huge veranda looked out onto Baron Street. Night was spreading through the pure spring air, and the full-grown trees around the garden, swimming in the brilliance of the electric lights, swayed from side to side in the gentle breeze, moist with refreshing coolness.

“Today I think I’ve reached the peak of happiness,” Isa said.

“Thank you!” Salwa whispered with a bashful smile. “I hope I can tell you how I feel—when I find enough courage.”

Susan Hanem watched them both happily. “When you are married in July, God willing,” she said, “our happiness will be complete.”

Isa wondered when he would be allowed to kiss Salwa. He was so drunk with happiness that it almost worried him. He would follow in Ali Bey’s footsteps, he told himself, and eventually come to occupy the same kind of position. He had never tasted the feeling of love before, except once when he was in secondary school. He’d fallen in love with a nurse at the morning tram stop, and had plunged into the experience headlong—foolishly—but his father had eventually brought him under control again. Now here he was today, having gone through imprisonment, beatings, dismissal, promotion, and demotion, here he was engaged to a fiancée whom he hadn’t seen in more than ten years. Now, he knew about love and had already drunk from its nectar. He felt almost as if he was clutching guaranteed happiness with his hands. “You’re the image of your mother, my beloved,” he said, “so dazzling I can’t conceive how happy I really am.”