When she left, he was burning with anger. She should have accepted him for herself, he thought, or for one of her friends or relatives. He had become unwanted scrap then, like the rubbishy surplus from the ministry’s Supply Section, which he put up for sale every year after the annual stocktaking. Evidently his lot in the marriage stakes was to be no better than that. Not even if he achieved his most cherished hope and the dream of his life, by occupying the office of His Excellency the Director General. The whip of time continued to lash his back, and he could run no longer. And with each day that passed he became more and more obsessed with the idea of marriage till it bulked as large as his obsession with promotion. Ihsan brought him back no answer. Madly he began to make advances to women in the streets and on buses but he had no experience in that sort of thing and had to give it up. “What a waste my life has been,” he would often sigh to himself.

Indignantly he asked himself what it was which so stood in the way of his getting married even after he had relinquished his early cumbersome conditions. Age was no doubt a negative factor, but it was not everything. People probably inquired about him and knew all there was to know about his origins. That was the other shameful fact. The truth was, he was a man past his prime and also of lowly background. God knew what else they said about him; for an outstanding personality like himself would naturally arouse envy in the hearts of others. He had long felt that he was without a true friend in this world; that he stood aloof, high above human frailty.

Night took him as usual to Qadriyya and the bare room.

“How nice,” he would say to himself with bitterness, “to have a Deputy Director’s job and a whore who is half Negress as my lot in life!”

“This is the first time you have drunk a second glass of wine!” she said laughingly. “It must be the end of the world!”

The end of the world it was, for he felt a strange giddiness in the head.

“Qadriyya, you must know I’m a man of faith,” he said apropos of nothing in particular.

“Thank goodness!” she said as she tied a red kerchief around her coarse hair.

“And if I didn’t believe that the world is sanctified by being the creation of God,” he went on, “I would be content to live like an animal.”

She gazed at him stupidly and said, “They’ve decided to abolish us, damn them!”

“And God in His greatness…” he continued, disregarding what she said.

“They’ve decided to abolish us,” she interrupted.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Haven’t you heard the news about the abolition of prostitution?”