Read Online The Time and the Place by Naguib Mahfouz - Free Book Online
Authors: Naguib Mahfouz
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He was ablaze with pain and, groaning, he abandoned the suitcase on the ground. At that moment it seemed to him that he had regained his balance, that he wascapable of taking the few steps that still remained. He waited for his companion to do something, but the man was sunk in silence. Safwan wanted to converse with him, but talk was impossible, and the overwhelming silence slipped through the pores of his skin to his very heart. It seemed that in a little while he would be hearing the conversation that was passing between the stars.
The Ditch
Despite the great care I take in respect to personal hygiene and health in general, the sensation of dirt and disease besets me like some constant nagging thought.
I do not dwell solely in a human body, but also in an ancient and dilapidated flat in a decrepit alley submerged in garbage. The ceiling of the flat is bare of paint and reveals in places colorless veins, the walls are split into parallel and intersecting lines, while the floor has burst out into bulges and cavities that are in constant strife, through threadbare rugs, with the soles of one’s feet. In summer the ceiling and walls exude a scorching heat, in winter a damp drizzle. The stairs are being eaten away, and one of the steps has come apart, so that half of it has collapsed, presenting an obstacle to anyone going up or down, and a not inconsiderable danger in the dark. On top of all this there is the crack that runs down the outside of the house on the side that abuts the lavatories, a side where the mortar and lime have flaked off and the stones have become exposed.
Hosni Alley is now without a sidewalk altogether, and no one recollects that it used to have two—no one, that is, other than myself, since I was actually born in the house. In this I am unlike the families of Ibrahim Effendi, the occupier of the middle floor, and of Sheikh Moharram, the tenant on the ground floor, who came to the house at the very earliest twenty years ago.
In my childhood days, the house was of mature age and in fair shape, and the alley, paved with stones and with two sidewalks, was no less splendid than Shurafa Street, to which it sloped down. The two sidewalks have by now disappeared underdirt and garbage, which, accumulating day by day, advances from the two sides toward the middle of the narrow road. Soon all that will be left will be a ditchlike passageway by which to come and go; it may even become so narrow as not to admit the body of Sitt Fawziyya, the wife of Ibrahim Effendi.
The shadow of times long past, the expectation of the house collapsing, and the diffusion of filth all pervaded my feelings and gave me a sensation of disease—and of fear as well. I was alone in a flat whose earlier occupants had been dispersed among new houses and the cemeteries. In addition, I was a civil servant, the one and only civil servant in a house that was well on its way to falling down, a civil servant groaning in the grip of rising prices and asking himself what would be his fate were an earthquake to occur or—in these days ominous with the possibilities of war—an air raid. Or what would happen were the house to bring to a close its exhausted life and die a natural death. Then I would make up my mind to chase away these anxieties with the same intensity as they were chasing me, and to commit myself to God’s care and not to anticipate trouble before it actually came. At the café among my friends (overworked civil servants), or in front of the café television, I would become oblivious of my worries. But they would return in their most concentrated form on the first day of every month. This was a day about which both Sheikh Moharram and Sitt Fawziyya (who because of her strong personality used to act for her husband in all business matters) were extremely anxious, while I too would be full of apprehension. It was on that day that Abd al-Fattah Effendi, a postman and owner of the old house, would show up.
A man in his fifties,
The Ditch
Despite the great care I take in respect to personal hygiene and health in general, the sensation of dirt and disease besets me like some constant nagging thought.
I do not dwell solely in a human body, but also in an ancient and dilapidated flat in a decrepit alley submerged in garbage. The ceiling of the flat is bare of paint and reveals in places colorless veins, the walls are split into parallel and intersecting lines, while the floor has burst out into bulges and cavities that are in constant strife, through threadbare rugs, with the soles of one’s feet. In summer the ceiling and walls exude a scorching heat, in winter a damp drizzle. The stairs are being eaten away, and one of the steps has come apart, so that half of it has collapsed, presenting an obstacle to anyone going up or down, and a not inconsiderable danger in the dark. On top of all this there is the crack that runs down the outside of the house on the side that abuts the lavatories, a side where the mortar and lime have flaked off and the stones have become exposed.
Hosni Alley is now without a sidewalk altogether, and no one recollects that it used to have two—no one, that is, other than myself, since I was actually born in the house. In this I am unlike the families of Ibrahim Effendi, the occupier of the middle floor, and of Sheikh Moharram, the tenant on the ground floor, who came to the house at the very earliest twenty years ago.
In my childhood days, the house was of mature age and in fair shape, and the alley, paved with stones and with two sidewalks, was no less splendid than Shurafa Street, to which it sloped down. The two sidewalks have by now disappeared underdirt and garbage, which, accumulating day by day, advances from the two sides toward the middle of the narrow road. Soon all that will be left will be a ditchlike passageway by which to come and go; it may even become so narrow as not to admit the body of Sitt Fawziyya, the wife of Ibrahim Effendi.
The shadow of times long past, the expectation of the house collapsing, and the diffusion of filth all pervaded my feelings and gave me a sensation of disease—and of fear as well. I was alone in a flat whose earlier occupants had been dispersed among new houses and the cemeteries. In addition, I was a civil servant, the one and only civil servant in a house that was well on its way to falling down, a civil servant groaning in the grip of rising prices and asking himself what would be his fate were an earthquake to occur or—in these days ominous with the possibilities of war—an air raid. Or what would happen were the house to bring to a close its exhausted life and die a natural death. Then I would make up my mind to chase away these anxieties with the same intensity as they were chasing me, and to commit myself to God’s care and not to anticipate trouble before it actually came. At the café among my friends (overworked civil servants), or in front of the café television, I would become oblivious of my worries. But they would return in their most concentrated form on the first day of every month. This was a day about which both Sheikh Moharram and Sitt Fawziyya (who because of her strong personality used to act for her husband in all business matters) were extremely anxious, while I too would be full of apprehension. It was on that day that Abd al-Fattah Effendi, a postman and owner of the old house, would show up.
A man in his fifties,
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