What he said was the truth, a truth accompanied by a sense of dejection and grief; and he hated himself. He said to himself that life was a grand and awesome experience, but tiresome.

FIVE

He stood at his parents’ grave, lost among other countless graves, and recited the opening verse of the Qur’an. Then he said, “God have mercy upon you…”

Next he whispered to them in a spirit of gratitude, “Othman is now a respectable government employee taking his first steps on a difficult path, but he is resolved to follow it to the end.” He bowed slightly and added with humility, “All the good things I have I owe to the Lord and to you…”

A blind boy was reciting some of the shorter chapters of the Qur’an. He gave him a half-piastre. Yet, insignificant as the amount was, he still had that feeling of resentment which always possessed him when he gave someone money. When the boy was gone, he addressed his parents again: “Before God I vow to move you to a new grave when He has made my wishes come true…”

He had no idea how much of their dead bodies would remain with the passage of time, but he reckoned that there would be something remaining at any rate. To his surprise his thoughts reverted to Sayyida, and her smiling image took shape before his eyes. It seemed to him that she was on the verge of passing some pointed remark, outspoken and sarcastic. His heart contracted with pain and he murmured, “Guide me, O God, onto the straight path, for all I do is done at Your inspiration.”

He lived once again his father’s last days. There was no escape from this. Sickness and old age had crippled him till his only recreation was to sit on a sheepskin in front of the house, hardly able to see or hear. He would contemplate his helplessness, crying aloud in his grief, “O Lord, have mercy…”

In his day, he had been counted among the strong men of the alley. Throughout his long life he had relied on the muscles of his arms and legs, toiling without a break and enduring to the end a harsh and poverty-stricken existence. His strength, which had nothing to nourish it, had been wasted; and in his misery he would break into a cackle of laughter, without meaning or reason. One evening he was found dead where he customarily sat on the sheepskin. So no one ever knew how death had come to him or how he had met it. As for his mother, her death was even more shocking. She had been doing the washing when suddenly she had bent over and begun to scream in terrible pain. An ambulance had come and carried her to Qasr al-’Ayni Hospital, where she died during an operation for appendicitis.