Morning and Evening Talk by Naguib Mahfouz Page B

Hamid were friends as well as relatives and they became even closer when the latter married Shakira. Hasan was nearly killed during Sidqi’s time when bricks hit his head and neck. He spent an entire month in hospital. He was the most aggressive of hissiblings toward his uncle Ahmad’s family when the disagreement divided the two brothers. Indeed, he came to blows with Adnan and beat him up at the mansion—a sad day in the history of the family. Hasan produced three sons, Mahmud, Sharif, and Omar; all of them fine specimens of good looks and intelligence. By the July Revolution he was a general and very rich, owing to his and his wife’s inheritances, but the revolution pensioned him off as part of a police purge. He exited on the same list as Hamid, though their friendship had broken down after Shakira’s divorce.
    “We should sell our land. Fortune has turned on landowners,” he said to Zubayda.
    The losses he suffered with the revolution did not compare with those of others in his class, including his cousin Adnan, but he still found himself in the opposite camp. He began acting like a supporter of the new revolution. He started selling off his and Zubayda’s land in bursts and used the money to set up a business on Sharif Street. He managed it himself and his wealth flourished. His sons, Mahmud, Sharif, and Omar, were educated in schools of the revolution. They were saturated with its philosophy and filled with the heroism of its leader. Hasan did not mind; rather, his sons and two brothers, Abduh and Mahir, provided a protection against the hurricanes of the day. His brothers were probably the reason his business escaped nationalization in 1961. When the disastrous event of June 5 took place, Mahmud, Sharif, and Omar had graduated as doctors and worked in government hospitals. The Setback that shook Nasser’s generation and dispersed it with the winds of loss and despair overtook them. Thus, the leader had barely died and Sadat taken over before Mahmud and Sharif emigrated to the United States to launch successful careers in medicine while Omar secured a contract to work in Saudi Arabia. Hasan found purpose and consolation for past defeats in Sadat and his infitah policy. He buckled down to work and illusory wealth. He built a mansion inMohandiseen for himself and his wife and lived the life of a king, dreaming his sons would one day return and inherit the millions he had accumulated for them. His life ended in an accident in the 1980s: he was driving his Mercedes along Pyramids Road when it flipped and caught fire. They extracted his body from it, blackened, stripped of the world and its millions.
Husni Hazim Surur
    He was Hazim and Samiha’s first child. He had a sporty build, a handsome face, and a brilliant mind. He grew up in comfort in the villa in Dokki and graduated as an engineer in 1976. Like his brother, he encountered no problems in life and did not know the worry of party affiliations, and, like his father, he proceeded down the path of fortune and success in his father’s office. Samiha tried to control him, as she did his father, but found him insubordinate. Like her, he would get worked up over the smallest things. She perceived a dangerous unruliness in him so was keen to arrange his marriage, but he told her clearly, “It’s nothing to do with you.”
    “But you’re just a child,” she said angrily.
    He laughed loudly and looked toward his father, who avoided his eyes.
    “It’s my life,” he said.
    “You don’t know anything about a good marriage.”
    “What’s a ‘good marriage’?” he inquired sardonically.
    “Roots and money. They’re synonymous!” she shouted back.
    “Thanks, then I don’t need a fiancée!” he continued in his sardonic tone.
    He fell in love with a dancer called Agiba from one of the Pyramid nightclubs and, as his feelings were more than a passing whim, suggested they get married.
    “If it wasn’t love I’d never accept the shackles of marriage,”