The Thief and the Dogs

"But I'm a very determined fellow," you reply, "and if you want me to go back, you'll have to come along with me. Just a few steps. Back to the palm tree. You see, I've got to talk to you.

And why shouldn't I? Aren't I respectable enough?"

She shakes her head vigorously, but she does slow down. Murmuring an angry protest, she does slow down, her neck arched like an angry cat's. She did slow down and I no longer doubt I've won, that Nabawiyya is not indifferent and knows very well how I stand sighing there at the students' hostel. You know that casual stares in the street will become something big in your life, in hers, and in the world at large too, which would grow larger as a result.

"Till tomorrow then," you say, stopping there, afraid for her, afraid of the biting tongue of the old Turk who lives like an enigma at the bottom of the street. So you return to the palm tree and climb it, quick as a monkey, out of sheer high spirits, then jump down again, from ten feet up, into a plot of green. Then you go back to the hostel, singing, in your deep voice, like a bull in ecstasy.

And later, when circumstances sent you to al-Zayyat Circus, to work that took you from quarter to quarter, village to village, you feared that "out of sight, out of mind" might well be applied to you and you asked her to marry you. Yes, you asked her to marry you, in the good old legal, traditional Muslim way, standing outside the university that you had — unfairly — been unable to enter, though so many fools did. There was no light in the street or the sky, just a big crescent moon over the horizon. Gazing shyly down at the ground, her forehead reflecting the pale moonlight, she seemed overjoyed. You told her about your good wages, your excellent prospects and your neat ground-floor flat in Darrasa, on Jabal Road, near Sheikh Ali's house. "You'll get to know the godly Sheikh" you said, "when we marry. And we've got to have the wedding as soon as possible. After all, our love has lasted quite a while already. You'll have to leave the old lady now."

"I'm an orphan, you know. There's only my aunt at Sidi al-Arbain."

"That's fine."

Then you kissed her under the crescent moon.

The wedding was so lovely that everyone talked about it for ever after. From Zayyat I got a wedding present of ten pounds. Ilish Sidra seemed absolutely overjoyed at it all as if it was his own wedding, playing the part of the faithful friend while he was really no friend at all. And the oddest thing of all is that you were taken in by him — you, clever old you, smart enough to scare the devil himself, you the hero and Ilish your willing slave, admiring, flattering, and doing everything to avoid upsetting you, happy to pick up the scraps of your labor, your smartness. You were sure you could have sent him and Nabawiyya off together alone, into the very deserts where our Lord Moses wandered, and that all the time he'd keep seeing you between himself and her and would never step out of line. How could she ever give up a lion and take to a dog? She's rotten to the core, rotten enough to deserve death and damnation. For sightless bullets not to stray, blindly missing their vile and evil targets, and hit innocent people, leaving others torn with remorse and rage and on the verge of insanity. Compelled to forget everything good in life, the way you used to play as a kid in the street, innocent first love, your wedding night, Sana's birth and seeing her little face, hearing her cry, carrying her in your arms for the first time.

All the smiles you never counted — how you wish you'd counted them. And how she looked — you wish it was one of the things you've forgotten — when she was frightened, that screaming of hers that shook the ground and made springs and breezes dry up. All the good feelings that ever were.

The shadows are lengthening now. It's getting dark in the room and outside the window. The silence of the graves is more intense, but you can't switch on the light. The flat must look the way it always has when Nur is out. Your eyes will get used to the dark, the way they did to prison and all those ugly faces. And you can't start drinking, either, in case you bump into something or shout out loud. The flat must stay as silent as the grave; even the dead mustn't know you're here. God alone can tell how long you'll have to stay here and how patient in this jail. Just as He alone could tell you'd kill Shaban Husayn and not Ilish Sidra.