His chance came when His Excellency Bahjat Noor, the Director General, was awarded the Order of the Nile. He composed a congratulatory column and published it in a newspaper he usually supplied with his translations. He hailed the man’s firmness, propriety, good character, administrative talent, and idealism, and declared him a model Egyptian director, a species once thought incapable of replacing the English one.

When he entered the grand room with the mail, His Excellency smiled at him for the first time and said, “Thank you, Mr. Bayyumi.”

“Thanks are only due to God, Your Excellency,” he said as he bowed.

“Your style is really enviable.”

He admitted that it was not only vile wine that made man drunk. But drunkenness did not last and was often followed by a hangover. And he thought the chariot of time was going ever faster. He only remembered that in the distant past, time did not exist: al-Husayni Alley was simply space. Grade five was nothing great for a middle-aged man, a man who constantly lifted up his eyes toward the polestar, who confined himself to his tiny room packed with books, whose best food was ox cheek and kebab on feast days, and whose only pleasures in life were vile wine and the Negress Qadriyya in the bare room.

He needed real human warmth. A bride and a family. He could no longer bear to be consumed in the fire of life on his own.

How he needed a companion in this universe crammed with millions of universes.

SEVENTEEN

He invited Omm Husni to visit him. He made her a cup of coffee on his little stove. She must have felt he was preparing to say something in a mixture of agitation and pleasant anticipation. She said expectantly, “My heart tells me you’ve called me in for a serious purpose. God be my witness, last night I dreamed…”

“Forget about dreams Omm Husni,” he broke in. “I want a wife.”

Her face beamed with joy and she shouted, “Hurrah! What a happy day!”

“A suitable wife.”

“You can pick and choose.”

“I’ve got certain conditions, Omm Husni. Try to understand me!”

“I’ve got virgin girls, divorcées, and widows both rich and poor.”

“Take your mind off our alley and the whole area,” he said in a voice of decision.

“What do you mean, my son?” she asked, puzzled.

“I want a wife from a good family.”

“What about the daughter of Mr. Hassuna, the owner of the bakery?”

“Forget about our area! A good family, I said!” he interrupted her impatiently.

“You mean…”

“Distinguished people…senior officials…people in power…”

The woman was dumbfounded, as if he were talking about the inhabitants of a different planet.

“It seems you’re no good in this field.”

“You’ve got strange ideas, my son,” she said desperately.

“So?”

“I’m no good, as you said, but I know Omm Zaynab, a matchmaker who lives in al-Hilmiyya.”