Morning and Evening Talk Read Free

banquet and invited everyone—men and women alike—from Amr, Surur, and Dawud’s families. The mansion was decorated as if for a wedding. Ahmad immersed himself in his private life up to the top of his head and did not let the nation’s worries infiltrate his solitude and sully it. However, as time passed and his children grew up, he encountered trouble from unexpected quarters. His eldest son opposed his decision to place himself under the trusteeshipof his brother and entered into a long and obstinate dispute with his mother to start with, then his father. He pestered his father until he promised to reclaim the property he had renounced entirely of his own accord. The spark ignited a fire, which blazed in every corner of the close-knit family. Ahmad seized the opportunity when Mahmud next visited Cairo on business. He raised the subject timidly and concluded the speech with an apology, “The children have grown up. They have their own ideas.” Mahmud mulled over what he had heard for a while, seething with anger. He was marked by unlimited power. At the mansion his family enjoyed more prestige than his kind, meek brother’s. Fawziya Hanem feared him and complied with his orders while she debated with her husband as an equal. Ahmad’s two sons were decorous and obedient in his presence but affectionate, exuberant, and casual in front of their father. The reins were slipping out of his hands.
    “You’re weak! How can you allow your son to behave like this?” Mahmud demanded.
    Ahmad was hurt but did not want to lose his children’s respect. “There’s no need to speak cruelly, brother,” he said.
    “Do you doubt my good care?” Mahmud asked brutally.
    “God forbid,” he said hurriedly. “But I’m entitled to take charge of my own affairs.”
    “So you’re entitled to ruin yourself at your idiotic children’s instigation?”
    Ahmad frowned. “I seek refuge in God.”
    There followed a discussion with Ahmad’s eldest son, Adnan, which Mahmud Bey regarded as an unacceptable impertinence. The young man addressed his uncle with a bluntness the elder found offensive. The fire spread. The two brothers quarreled, each wife rallied to her husband’s side, ripping their sisterly loyalty apart, and the nieces and nephews traded the worst insults. The family bond was lacerated. Each branchwithdrew to its own floor of the mansion, as though they did not know one another. The efforts Rashwana, Amr, and Surur expended to repair the rift failed and Amr’s son Hamid, who lived with his wife, Shakira, on Mahmud Bey’s floor, found himself torn and hard-pressed to maintain good relations with his great-uncle Ahmad’s family. Ahmad Bey moved to the farm in Beni Suef to assume management of his land in old age. He cultivated what was his to cultivate and leased what was his to lease. It brought him troubles he had not foreseen and losses he had not anticipated. Shortly before the Second World War, he developed hemiplegia and was taken to his bed in Cairo to wait for the end. He was the first of the second generation to fall; various illnesses would soon call the rest to join him in some way or other. Amr was still healthy and went to visit Mahmud Bey and said, “It’s time to forget the quarrel and its reasons and return to your brother.”
    Mahmud was silent, pensive. “The matter will never be forgotten but I will do what is appropriate.…”
    Ahmad’s family knew only that Mahmud Bey sought permission to enter the room. They gathered and stood for him courteously with tears in their eyes. His wife and children were with him. When the handshaking was over he announced, “The rift is over and forgotten. My heart beats as kin.”
    He approached his brother, who was lying prostrate on his bed, silent and motionless. Fawziya leaned over his ear and whispered, “Your brother, Mahmud Bey, has come to reassure you.”
    Mahmud leaned over him, kissed his cheek then stood up and said, “Forgiveness is God’s. Take