He wished he could establish a relationship with her: an unholy relationship! But he was only likely to be rejected, even more flatly than he had been by Saniyya. Even if she agreed, it would not be an occasion for happiness, as one might think, for that would require him to rent and furnish a flat somewhere else. His heart was full of apprehensions and in the end he simply said to Omm Husni, “No.”

“You can’t be serious!” the old woman shouted.

“I said no.”

“You’re a riddle, my boy.”

He laughed mirthlessly.

“What do you want? Do you not like the female sex?”

He laughed again.

“God forgive you!”

“I’m sad, my son,” she said.

“In sadness,” he said to himself, “man is hallowed and made ready for divine joy.”

TWENTY

Onsiyya Ramadan arrived at a time when Othman had fallen victim to feelings of melancholy and depression which he had not experienced with such force before. He told himself that he was lost in an arid and blazing desert, that he had gained nothing of value, that ambition needed time, and life was short and the past despicable. For all his intimate personal emotions, he was despicable. His true emblem was a charity grave and the prison. The one martyr in his family had died on the side of oppression and injustice. He was friendless. Relations between him and the companions of his boyhood had ceased altogether. At work he had colleagues who respected and envied him but he had no friends. The only man with whom he could sit and talk was a servant at al-Husayn Mosque, and the only touch of romance in his arid life was a bare room and a whore who was half Negro. “What’s the meaning of this life?”

True, he had dedicated himself to the glorious path of God, but he was wading in sin and suffering pollution hour by hour. And it seemed he did not resist death with sufficient fortitude. “It looks like a losing game!”

As he burned in the furnace of his mental hell, a soft breeze with a new fragrance was wafted into Archives. It was new not only to Archives but to the whole administration, and new in the full sense of the word. It was the first girl to join the administration and, specifically, the Archives Section. A handsome dark-skinned girl of delicate features and simple dress. Her appearance as she stood in front of his desk to introduce herself left him at once confused and astonished and moved. As he asked her to sit down, he glimpsed the clerks’ heads beginning to protrude from between the lines of filing cabinets. They were amazed and unable to believe what they saw.

“Welcome!”

“Thank you! My name is Onsiyya Ramadan.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance! You seem to be very young?”

“No, I’m eighteen!”

“Wonderful…wonderful! And what qualifications do you have?”

“The General Certificate of Education in science.”