Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz

his attention was drawn to the worries of mankind, as though he were a man of religion rather than a porter. Had a passerby listened in to the conversation that took place between them, he would have been taken aback and would have thought them to be men of consequence disguised as peddler and porter.
    One day Fadil said, “I have opened my heart to you, but you have kept yours closed.”
    Abdullah denied this with a movement of his head.
    “There’s a secret in your life,” he went on, “and you’re no simple porter.”
    “I had a spiritual guide in my native land,” Abdullah said, reassuring him. “There’s no secret about that.”
    “That explains it.”
    “In any event we both quench our intellectual thirsts from one and the same source.”
    “And so I’d like to ask you one favor,” said Fadil boldly.
    Abdullah fixed him with an inquiring look and Fadil said significantly, “By reason of your work you come and go in all sorts of houses.”
    Abdullah gave a knowing smile and was silent while he waited for him to continue.
    “Do you sometimes agree to carry messages?”
    “There are people who find meaning to their lives by pursuing troubles,” he said smiling, remembering Akraman affectionately.
    “Do you accept?” he asked, ignoring what Abdullah had said.
    “As you wish—and more,” he said quietly.
XIV
    He performed this subsidiary task with complete ease and assurance, for he did not reckon it to be a significant addition to his basic function. His personal worries—Rasmiya and Husniya, and his wavering between life and death—though not erased from the surface of his mind, no longer troubled him, while his general worries had disappeared, as the waves of a river disappear into the open sea. The second person in his program was Yusuf al-Tahir or Adnan Shouma, whichever was easier. But he gave precedence over them to Ibrahim al-Attar the druggist, for an anomalous slight that had not previously occurred to him: Abdullah had once carried for him certain goods; they had quarreled about payment, and the powerful merchant had cursed and insulted him.
    The lethal arrow became embedded in Ibrahim al-Attar’s heart as he was returning home after the evening session at the café. Terrorerupted in the city and memories of the killings of al-Salouli, Buteisha Murgan, and al-Hamadhani were awakened.
    Abdullah and Fadil met up on the steps of the drinking fountain at the height of the trouble. They exchanged alarmed looks while in vain trying to conceal their pleasure.
    “What terrible happenings!” muttered Abdullah.
    The other intuited his views and said in all innocence, “The assassination was not part of our plan.”
    Feigning dismay, Abdullah said, “Perhaps it was an act of personal revenge.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “But he was no more corrupt than anyone else.”
    “The upper class know that he was putting poison into the medicine of the governor’s enemies.”
    Abdullah said to himself that his friend knew as many people’s secrets as he knew himself—maybe more. “If the assassination was not part of our plan, then who was the perpetrator?”
    “God knows,” said Fadil irritably. “He kills and we pay the price.”
XV
    When he put out the candle and took himself to bed, he felt the strange presence crowding in on him. His heart quaked and he mumbled, “Singam!”
    The voice asked him coldly, “What have you done?”
    “I do in my own way what I believe is best.”
    “It was more a reaction to the insult inflicted on you.”
    “All I did was to give him precedence,” he said hotly. “His turn would have come sooner or later.”
    “Your account is with Him Who is privy to what is in people’s breasts. Beware, man.”
    Singam vanished, and Abdullah did not sleep a wink.
XVI
    Above the dome of the mosque of the Tenth Imam, in a session replete with tranquillity and the cold of winter, Qumqam and Singam sat enveloped in the cloak of night, while underneath it swarmed the