| 2 subtle ways, but there were older brothers to be married off and no one had got around to Sayeed yet. He did not know how to talk to girls, in any event, even though he had known most of the ones his own age all his life. But, since they had all grown up, the girls had become strangers and it was no longer proper to be familiar with any of them, even if one could think of something to say besides “Good evening”. Although Sayeed had been fully prepared to do manual labor, he applied for a position as a security guard at the big Cairo Egyptian Museum and was quite surprised when he was told to report for work. Sayeed thought that the life of a night watchman promised to be lonely and confining. Certainly, he was unaccustomed to working indoors but, as the museum had something to do with his books, it seemed to Sayeed fitting that he should be employed there. Perhaps the act of memorizing the two books had been an unwitting preparation for this job, a work of Fate, even though it was true that no one at the museum had asked him anything about his ability to read. He was merely informed that the place contained items of great value and a man there, sizing him up, seemed to think Sayeed had the muscle to protect them. Sayeed, himself, did not doubt this. The young farmer was confident of little besides his own strength and stamina. After all, these things had been tested nearly every day of his life for a long time. As for courage, that had been put to test once or twice in the past also. Sayeed did not like fighting but, since his mid teens, no man or boy who had challenged him had managed to prevail against him. For the last few years, nobody had bothered him at all and even his father, who had once knocked out the front teeth of one of his elder brothers in a rage, never raised his hand to Sayeed. Anyway, Sayeed was a dutiful son and tried to keep out of trouble, so there was little provocation. His father, a hardened, taciturn man, had wept at Sayeed’s departure as though someone had robbed him of all he owned. Curiously, Sayeed’s mother had not shed more than a couple of tears and regarded her son in a manner that seemed to the young man to contain some measure of relief. Or perhaps it was hope. Sayeed preferred to believe the latter, although he could not comprehend just what his mother hoped for as Sayeed had no prospects at all on the day he left the village, nor even enough money to feed himself for a week. At the time when the city began to slacken its pace and other men repaired to coffee-houses to smoke and socialize, Sayeed el Kashef began his watch. He had no interest in coffee-houses, in any case, because these were nothing without friends, and he was glad to spend the better part of the day sleeping as he had no use for Cairo’s littered alleys or bustling boulevards. The peasant was not used to seeing so many people at once and all this movement and proximity made him uneasy. And his village had been a neat and orderly one in its poor way with nobody throwing any slop on anyone from an upper window, as had happened to him a few times in Cairo. Yes, Cairo was dirty in a way no film had ever revealed to him. At least the part where he stayed was in a sorry condition. Sayeed’s own cubicle in a decaying rooming house had no window and seemed to him as airless as a tomb, a torture for a person who had spent nearly all his time in the open air, even sleeping most nights on the roof of his house, the stars overhead like a splendid canopy. The newcomer soon began to understand that a large, teeming metropolis like Cairo could prove the loneliest place on earth. Sayeed felt that his life was now that of an exile. NEXT PAGE |