He counted the grades he needed to pass through before ascending to the pinnacle of glory: grade five, grade four, grade three, grade two, grade one. He counted them and he counted the years they would claim of his life. It made him giddy and a sense of profound sorrow overwhelmed him. Some great event, he said to himself, must take place; his life could not be wasted away in vain. As he had an appointment with Sa‘fan Basyuni at the café, he put on his clothes and went out. He found Omm Husni waiting for him on the landing in front of her flat.

“I’ve got some visitors,” she said. “You should come in and say hello. It’s Sayyida and her mother…”

He walked in and greeted them. He was a little frightened at first, but he soon realized that everything was dead and buried. Not a single look of aversion or reproach, but one of unaffected disinterest without a glimmer of recollection. It confirmed for him that the past had fallen into the infinite abyss of death. What added to his profound awareness of the passage of time was the hearty reception the mother gave him. He saw death devouring a loved image which he had believed to be eternal; and all it amounted to was a mere memory that hardly seemed to have once been real, any more than Adam in the Garden of Eden. There was Sayyida, growing fat and stupid. She reminded him of Qadriyya and his agitation grew. The top of her wrap had slipped from her head and rested on her shoulder, leaving both her head and neck free. Her embroidered kerchief was drawn back to disclose a shiny forehead and parted hair. As for the luster he used to gaze at in her eyes, it had gone out. The meeting passed in a lifeless atmosphere tinged with an ironic sense of estrangement. And he tried in vain to trace on those thick lips any sign that his own lips had kissed them. He stayed only as long as courtesy demanded, and when he left, his heart was beating in supplication to the mysterious unknown which wreaked havoc with a smile at once soft and cruel. He was going to meet his old chief, who was going to be pensioned off in a few days, and spend a friendly evening with him. The old man had become skin and bone and lost the last hair on his head, not because of senility, but because of a stomach disease. However he was still as kindhearted and resigned as he had always been. It was obvious that he faced the end of his service in a depressed and melancholy state of mind. Othman tried to cheer him up.

“I wish you a long and happy rest,” he said.