The Automobile Club of Egypt. Alaa Al aswany

she was exhausted. She had not slept well the night before. She sat staring out the window without seeing anything. She did not even notice the taste of the tea. She realized that in two weeks’ time she would have lived in Cairo for five years. Good Lord, how quickly it had passed. The day she left Daraw for Cairo had been a great event. People said that, apart from the time that the great nationalist leader Sa’ad Zaghloul famously made a visit to Upper Egypt, the train station at Daraw had never been so crowded as on the day she and her four children left for Cairo. On that day the people come to bid them farewell clustered both inside and outside the station, at the entrance, in the station hall and on the platform. All the important families of Daraw had members to bid her farewell: the Mahjubs, the Abd el-Maquds, the Oways and Shayba families, even the Balams in spite of the tense relations with the Gaafar family due to an ongoing dispute over some date palms to the east of the town— their sense of duty had overcome past bitterness, and they sent ten men with their wives and children to take part in the farewell formalities. They were all fond of her. Her husband and first cousin was Abd el-Aziz Gaafar, one of the foremost residents of Daraw. He had inherited property and money from his father and was renowned for his decency and respectability, always doing his utmost to help out his relatives, neighbors, in fact anyone from the town. Alas, his debts had started piling up, and he had to sell off his land bit by bit. Now, over forty years old and almost penniless, he had to move to Cairo in search of whatever work he could find. There was great sympathy from the people of Daraw, since whenever they had needed money, Abd el-Aziz had given them loans from the goodness of his heart, as well as helping them in other ways. They all felt partially responsible for his bankruptcy. Ruqayya saw expressions of deep sympathy and love on the faces of those who had come to see them off. To them, she was the very model of an authentic Upper Egyptian woman, sticking by her husband come what may, supporting him with the same determination in good times and bad.

      All those feelings were present on the day of their departure, like a large cloud casting its shadow on the scene. Ruqayya got out of the carriage with a big beautiful smile on her face, a smile of fortitude and complete acceptance of her fate and what more might come. The younger children, Saleha and Mahmud, were clutching the hem of her black outer coat, and the two older boys, Said and Kamel, walked along behind her. Each of them was carrying a suitcase and a basket on his head. The largest suitcase was being carried by her brother Bashir on his shoulders. The people thronged toward her, surrounding her, and she started greeting them and thanking them one by one. She shook the men’s hands and embraced and kissed the women. Some of the women were crying, while others gave Mahmud and Saleha honey and sesame sweets. Mahmud ate them up straightaway, but Saleha, more clever and with better manners, waited until her mother gestured her permission. Then she took out one of the sweets and said in a clear voice, “Thank you, uncle!”

      Ruqayya was making slow progress. The moment she finished shaking one hand, more hands appeared. Then they started addressing her in the traditional manner, as the mother of her eldest son, “We hope all goes well, Umm Said!”

      “Have a good trip and come back safe and sound, in sha Allah!”

      “Give our regards to Abd el-Aziz!”

      It took Ruqayya ages to reach the platform, where the train was already waiting. She made her way with her children trailing behind her and her brother scurrying along with the suitcase on his shoulder. She pulled herself together amid the well-wishers and caught sight of some women from the Balam family. She made her way toward them and embraced them warmly, and still holding the hand of the clan leader Abd el-Al’s wife, she said loudly so all could hear, “Thank you so much for coming. It means so much to me.”

      Abd el-Al’s wife was so overcome by Ruqayya’s kind words that she embraced her again, looked her in the face, and with her voice full of feeling, she said, “God knows how much I love you, Ruqayya.”

      “And I love you too.”

      “You Gaafars are the cream of our town.”

      “No, you Balams are the ones who have done the most for us all. It was Satan, may God curse him, who came between us. May God guide us all. Kith and kin may have squabbled with each other, but blood is thicker than water.

      “May God preserve and look after you, Ruqayya.”

      At that moment, Bashir came over to his sister, Ruqayya, and whispered something in her ear. She nodded and carried on talking to Abd el-Al Balam’s wife. It would not have been right for her to bring the conversation to an abrupt end. She knew that her every gesture with Abd el-Al al-Balam might be misinterpreted and could reignite the family feud again.

      She carried on talking to the woman for a few minutes more and then moved off to greet some other people. This time, however, Bashir, almost hauled her by her galabiyya toward the train whose angry whistle and thick smoke augured its imminent departure. The onlookers all started shouting, and Ruqayya grabbed Saleha and Mahmud, and with Said and Kamel and Bashir following behind, she started running as fast as she could.

      Ruqayya sipped her tea and a smile appeared on her face as she remembered how, due to the throngs of well-wishers, she missed the train that day. Whenever she recalled that to her neighbor Aisha, she would laugh heartily, joking about the stupidity of the Upper Egyptians. Bashir had to reserve new tickets for them on the next day’s train and then had to go around to all the houses in Daraw asking them not to come to the station again. All complied except for Abd el-Barr, son of her cousin Oways, who insisted on coming to see them off again. When her brother tried to dissuade him, he flushed with anger and said, “Just as she is your sister, Ruqayya is my cousin. I swear to God that even if she were to miss the train a hundred times, I would go to the station to see her off.”

      Abd el-Barr indeed went to the station again, and Ruqayya was grateful to him for that. They had grown up together, and there had even been talk of marriage, but fate is fickle, and she knew that his insistence on seeing her off was not entirely innocent. Abd el-Barr might still have been in love with her after all this time, but she did not even dare to think about that out of respect for her husband, Abd el-Aziz, who meant everything to her. After twenty-five years of marriage, she could still recall her wedding as if it had happened the day before. That night there had been a huge feast, and celebratory gunshots had reverberated all over Daraw. The feasting went on for a whole week, and people commented enviously that the camel carrying her to her husband’s house was groaning from the weight of all the gold that her bridegroom had given her. It was a sight to remember. In Daraw she had a large house with a spacious sitting room, a garden with date palms, servants, jewelry, horses, camels, cattle and poultry, and, most important, a wonderful husband. He never behaved badly toward her or beat her. He never put her down, and she knew that he would never cheat on her. When at first she could not get pregnant, his mother (may God have mercy on her and forgive her) started urging him to take a second wife. She would say to him, within Ruqayya’s earshot, “You’re a man. You have to produce a son. Take another wife alongside Ruqayya. It is what God commands.”

      Any other man would just have taken another wife. Had he done so, no one would have blamed him. He refused, however, and announced that he would have only Ruqayya, even if she could never have children. How could she forget such magnanimity? When his mother asked Shaykh Mash’al to make an amulet to help her get pregnant, Abd el-Aziz received him coolly and said, “You can keep your amulet. I will not do anything the Prophet forbids. Whether we have children, live or die, or manage to support ourselves— they are all matters over which we can never argue with God.”

      He fell silent for a short while and then added sarcastically, “If you are such a good friend of the genies, Shaykh Mash’al, why don’t you ask them to cure the rheumatism eating away at your bones?”

      After two years of trying, they were blessed by God with six children, of whom two died, leaving them with four. Then came the great ordeal of her husband’s bankruptcy. Praise be to God. The Lord chooses some men to receive his bounty and exposes others to catastrophes. Who ever thought that she would end up starting a new life in Cairo? Abd el-Aziz worked his fingers to the bone to provide them with a decent living: he rented a spacious flat in al-Sadd al-Gawany Street in the Sayyida Zeinab district. It had four rooms and a sitting room, plus a room on the roof with a separate entrance and staircase. The