One afternoon, after Friday prayers at the mosque, he was sitting in the Egyptian Club coffeehouse when he saw Asila passing, accompanied by another woman. He recognized her at once, though the extent to which she had changed was dreadful. She was as flaccid as a punctured ball, and in her face the springs of femininity had dried up, leaving behind an ambiguous shadow that was neither feminine nor masculine. She walked clumsily, a model of misery and degeneration. Something told him that death was hunting her down and that it also was drawing closer to his own time and place; that his time which had once seemed hallowed in eternity was no longer secure behind the screen of sweet illusions and that the proud and everlasting truth was now revealing itself to him in all its awesome cruelty. Did Asila still remember him? She could not have forgotten him. He had penetrated into her very depths with the full weight of his deceit and egoism, leaving her thereafter to hate him and curse him.

As for the companions of his boyhood, they were petty by profession and all they did was father children and fill the air with meaningless laughter. And gone were the innocent passions and the unruly imagination of childhood, buried under thick layers of dust like al-Husayni Alley, which had changed its skin. Many old houses had been demolished and small blocks had taken their place. A small mosque now occupied what used to be the donkey park and a lot of people had left the quarter and gone to al-Madhbah. Everything was changing: electricity and water had been introduced into houses, radios blared night and day, and women were abandoning their traditional wrap. Even good and evil had changed and new values arisen.

All this took place while he was still in grade three and growing old. Was this the reward for his extraordinary effort and dedication? Did they not recognize him as the epitome of expertise based on both theory and practice? That if his official memoranda, his budget analyses, and his original pronouncements on matters of administration and on the purchase and storage of goods were collected in book form, they would constitute an encyclopedia of government affairs? For such a shining light to be hidden away in the position of a Second Deputy Director of Administration was like hanging a 500-watt electric bulb on the wall of a toilet in a tiny village mosque.