But run away from it he did, and without regret. In any case he couldn’t conceivably bring Qadriyya to live in al-Husayni Alley. He generally thought of the place as a symbol of decay, of privation, of a wasted life, and of sad memories. He sought to drown his visible as well as his secret sorrows in what pleasures were available. And he determined to remind himself, or rather convince himself, that Qadriyya was the only woman he had really loved. Or else how could he have kept up his relationship with her for a lifetime? As for her, she spared no effort in playing her part as a housewife in her new and “fashionable” surroundings which represented a fantastic leap from the old lane. He prayed to God that none of her old customers would ever set eyes on her and advised her not to mix with the neighbors.

“Why not?”

“I don’t like their manners.”

But what he really feared was that she might have a disagreement with one of her neighbors and that this would put an end to her reserve and cause the volcano of obscenities latent in her to erupt. Otherwise, he could not deny that she was making a real effort to make him happy and to adapt to her new situation, and as time went by he grew more confident about his new life and accepted it for what it was. He enjoyed the company and the comfort, the discipline and the cleanliness that it afforded him. And now he was able to perform his prayers with a clean conscience. He even felt that having saved a soul that had gone astray (perhaps two souls rather than just one), he was closer to God than ever before.

Thus he bought a plot in al-Khafir Cemetery, after consulting people who knew about such things, and made preparations for the building of a suitable tomb. He frequently went to inspect the progress of the work in the company of an architect from the Engineering Section in the ministry. The architect asked him once, “Hasn’t the family got an old tomb?”

“A very old one indeed,” he answered, unshaken by the question. “It’s become pretty crowded with so many generations of the family. There was nothing for it but to have this one built.”

“There’s no comparing old tombs with new ones,” commented the architect. “A new tomb is a beautiful, modern structure.”

“Personally I wouldn’t bother to own a house in this world; a rented flat will do. But a tomb is a must, or else one’s dignity is lost.”

“In India they cremate the dead,” the architect said, laughing.

“How awful!” Othman said with disgust.

The architect laughed again and went on: “If you want my opinion, a dead man loses dignity less by being burned than by being buried. Do you ever think about the process of decomposition that a corpse undergoes in the grave?”