The Thief and the Dogs

The day you were imprisoned you rose up in my eyes to the very sky, higher still when you protected me the first time I stole, when your remarks about theft gave me back my self-respect. Then there was the time you told me sadly, "There's no real point in isolated theft; there has to be organization." After that I never stopped either reading or robbing. It was you who gave me the names of people who deserved to be robbed, and it was in theft that I found my glory, my honor. And I was generous to many people, Ilish Sidra amongst them.

Said shouted in anger to the darkened room: "Are you really the same one? The Rauf Ilwan who owns a mansion? You're the fox behind the newspaper campaign. You too want to kill me, to murder your conscience and the past as well. But I won't die before I've killed you: you're the number one traitor. What nonsense life would turn out to be if I were myself killed tomorrow — in retribution for murdering a man I didn't even know! If there's going to be any meaning to life — and to death, too — I simply have to kill you. My last outburst of rage at the evil of the world. And all those things lying out there in the graveyard below the window will help me. As for the rest, I'll leave it to Sheikh Ali to solve the riddle."

Just when the call to the dawn prayers was announced he heard the door open and Nur came carrying some grilled meat, drinks and newspapers. She seemed quite happy, having apparently forgotten her two days of distress and depression; and her presence dispelled his own gloom and exhaustion, made him ready again to embrace what life had to offer: food, drink, and news. She kissed him and, for the first time, he responded spontaneously, with a sense of gratitude, knowing her now to be the person closest to him for as long as he might live. He wished she'd never leave.

He uncorked a bottle as usual, poured himself a glass, and drank it down in one gulp.

"Why didn't you get some sleep?" Nur said, peering close at his tired face.

Flipping through the newspapers he made no reply.

"It must be torture to wait in the dark," she said, feeling sorry for him.

"How are things outside?" he asked, tossing the papers aside.

"Just like always." She undressed down to her slip and Said smelled powder moistened with sweat. "People are talking about you," she went on, "as if you were some storybook hero. But they don't have any idea what torture we go through."

"Most Egyptians neither fear nor dislike thieves," said Said as he bit into a piece of meat. Several minutes passed in silence while they ate, then he added: "But they do have an instinctive dislike for dogs."

"Well," said Nur with a smile, licking her fingertips, "I like dogs."

"I don't mean that kind of dog."

"Yes, I always had one at home until I saw the last one die. That made me cry a lot and so I decided not to have one again."

"That's right," said Said. "If love's going to cause problems just steer clear of it."

"You don't understand me. Or love me."

"Don't be like that," he said, pleading. "Can't you see the whole world is cruel enough and unjust enough as it is?"

Nur drank until she could hardly sit up.

Her real name was Shalabiyya, she confessed.

Then she told him tales of the old days in Balyana, of her childhood amid the quiet waters, of her youth and how she'd run away.

"And my father was the umda," she said proudly, "the village headman."

"You mean the umda's servant!"

She frowned, but he went on. "Well, that's what you told me first."

Nur laughed so heartily that Said could see bits of parsley caught in her teeth. "Did I really say that?" she asked.

"Yes. And that's what turned Rauf Ilwan into a traitor."

She stared at him uncomprehendingly. "And who's Rauf Ilwan?"

"Don't lie to me," Said snarled. "A man who has to stay in the dark, waiting by himself, a man like that can't stand lies."

THIRTEEN

A little after midnight, with a quarter moon shining faintly in the west, Said headed off across the wasteland. A hundred yards or so from the café he stopped, whistled three times and stood waiting, feeling that he had either to strike his blow or else go mad, hoping that Tarzan would have some information at last.

When Tarzan appeared, moving like a wave of darkness, they embraced and Said asked him, "What's new?"

"One of them's finally turned up," the stout man replied, out of breath from walking.

"Who?" Said asked anxiously.

"It's Bayaza," said Tarzan, still gripping his hand, "and he's in my place now, clinching a deal."

"So my waiting wasn't wasted. Do you know which way he's going?"

"He'll go back by Jabal Road."

"Thanks very much indeed, friend."

Said left quickly, making his way east, guided by the faint moonlight to the clump of trees around the wells. He moved on along the south side of the grove until he reached its tip, ending in the sands where the road up the mountain began. There he crouched behind a tree and waited.

A cool breeze sent a whisper through the grove. It was a desolate, lonely spot.