From junior civil servant to deputy director of a company! Isa’s desire to boycott work entirely grew suddenly stronger. He knew it was insane, yet he felt even more self-destructive. He stood his ground resolutely while Hasan tried other ways to persuade him. Eventually he departed without any positive result, which left Isa with a feeling of blind joy over a momentary victory.

“I don’t understand anything,” his mother sighed.

“Nor do I,” he replied sarcastically.

“You don’t like your cousin Hasan, do you?” she asked.

“He doesn’t like me either!”

“But he didn’t forget his family ties at the right moment!”

“He didn’t do it for nothing!”

“So what?” she retorted insistently. “His sister is better than Salwa. Have you forgotten? I wish you’d think about it.”

Isa looked fixedly through the tree branches at the clouds bunched up on the horizon.

“I’m really thinking of leaving Cairo,” he said vaguely.

TWELVE

For months he dithered.

“I’m thinking of going to Alexandria,” he told his mother one day.

More accustomed to his strange way of speaking by now, she looked much thinner and had lost her color. “But the summer’s over,” she replied calmly.

“I intend to stay there, not just for the summer.”

Her eyelids quivered anxiously.

“I mean for a period of time,” he continued.

“But why?”

“I want to live somewhere where no one knows me and I know no one.”

“I’m not at all happy about your attitude,” she said irritably. “A man should face up to difficulties in some other way. There’s still an opening waiting for you with your cousin.”

When she saw that he was determined to go, she called on his three sisters to help, and they came hurrying over to Dokki. They were all married and carried the family stamp on their faces, the triangular-shaped features and circular eyes. They all felt a real love for Isa, not just because he was a brilliant person of whom they could feel proud, but also because he was kind enough to arrange for promotions and raises for their husbands during his period of influence. They all agreed that he should not go to Alexandria and that he should accept his cousin’s proposition. “What’s the point of staying in a town like a stranger?”

“Isn’t it enough that I’ll be able to get some rest?”

“What about your future?”

“My future’s a thing of the past,” he retorted.

“No, it isn’t. Now you have an opportunity to recover everything you’ve lost!”

He raised his hand in a decisive gesture that told them to stop. “There’s no point in going on like this,” he said calmly. “What’s new and important is the fact that I’ve decided to move out of this house!”

His mother’s face turned pale.

“There’s no sense in carrying its enormous costs any longer,” he said apologetically.