The Thief and the Dogs

Nur watched him as he tried on the uniform, staring at him in surprised delight, until he'd done up the last button. Then, after a moment or two, she said, "Do be sensible. I couldn't bear to lose you again."

"This was a good idea," Said said, displaying his work and examining his reflection in the mirror. "I suppose I'd better be satisfied with the rank of captain!"

By the next evening, however, she'd heard all about his recent dramatic adventure and seen pictures of him in a copy of a weekly magazine belonging to one of her transient male companions. She broke down in front of him.

"You've killed someone!" she said letting out the words with a wail of despair. "How terrible!

Didn't I plead with you?"

"But it happened before we met," he said, caressing her.

She looked away. "You don't love me," she said wanly. "I know that. But at least we could have lived together until you did love me!"

"But we can still do that."

"What's the use," she said, almost crying, "when you've committed murder?"

"We can run away together," Said said with a reassuring grin. "It's easy."

"What are we waiting for then?"

"For the storm to blow over."

Nur stamped her foot in frustration. "But I've heard that there are troops blocking all the exits from Cairo, as if you were the first murderer ever!"

The newspapers! Said thought. All part of the secret war! But he hid his feelings and showed her only his outward calm. "I'll get away all right," he said, "as soon as I decide to.

You'll see." Pretending a sudden rage, he gripped her by the hair and snarled: "Don't you know yet who Said Mahran is? All the papers are talking about him! You still don't believe in him? Listen to me; we'll live together forever. And you'll see what the fortune-teller told you come true!"

Next evening, escaping his loneliness and hoping for news, he slipped out again to Tarzan's coffee-house, but as soon as he appeared in the doorway Tarzan hurried over and took him out into the open, some distance off. "Please, don't be angry with me," he said apologetically. "Even my café is no longer safe for you."

"But I thought the storm had died down now,"

Said said, the darkness hiding his concern.

"No. It's getting worse all the time. Because of newspapers. Go into hiding. But forget about trying to get out of Cairo for a while."

"Don't the papers have anything to go on about but Said Mahran?"

"They made such a lot of noise to everyone about your past raids that they've got all the government forces in the area stirred up against you." Said got up to leave. "We can meet again — outside the café — any time you wish," Tarzan remarked as they said good-bye.

So Said went back to his hideout in Nur's house — the solitude, the dark, the waiting — where he suddenly found himself roaring, "It's you, Rauf, you're behind all this!" Almost all the papers had dropped his case, all, by this time, except al-Zahra. It was still busy raking up the past, goading the police; by trying so hard to kill him, in fact, it was making a national hero of him. Rauf Ilwan would never rest until the noose was round his neck and Rauf had all the forces of repression: the law.

And you. Does your ruined life have any meaning at all unless it is to kill your enemies — Ilish Sidra, whereabouts unknown, and Rauf Ilwan, in his mansion of steel? What meaning will there have been to your life if you fail to teach your enemies a lesson? No power on earth will prevent the punishing of the dogs! That's right!

No power on earth!

"Rauf Ilwan," Said pleaded aloud, "tell me how it is that time can bring such terrible changes to people!" Not just a revolutionary student, but revolution personified as a student. Your stirring voice, pitching itself downward towards my ears as I sat at my father's feet in the courtyard of the building, with a force to awaken the very soul. And you'd talk about princes and pashas, transforming those fine gentlemen with your magic into mere thieves. And to see you on the Mudiriyya Road, striding out amidst your men you called your equal as they munched their sugar cane in their flowing galabiyyas, when your voice would reach such a pitch that it seemed to flow right over the field and make the palm tree bow before it — unforgettable.

Yes, there was a strange power in you that I found nowhere else, not even in Sheikh Ali al-Junaydi.

That's how you were, Rauf. To you alone goes the credit for my father enrolling me in school. You'd roar with delighted laughter at my successes. "Do you see now?" you'd say to my father, "You didn't even want him to get an education. Just you look at those eyes of his; he's going to shake things to their foundations!" You taught me to love reading. You discussed everything with me, as if I were your equal. I was one of your listeners — at the foot of the same tree where the history of my love began — and the times themselves were listening to you too: "The people! Theft! The holy fire! The rich! Hunger! Justice!"