Karnak Café by Naguib Mahfouz

and I told them I’d never been a member of the Brotherhood. I was only held for a couple of days, then released unharmed.” She gave me a sad smile. “The real trouble was at home. My mother told me that those were precisely the kind of difficulties I should have expected to find myself in because of my being with Isma‘il. It so happened that my own arrest came one week after my father had been taken in; he’d been accused of rowdiness and assaulting a police officer.”
    â€œIn such circumstances,” I commented admiringly, “the way you have managed to move ahead is remarkable.”
    â€œI asked Khalid Safwan why they were badgering us like this. We were all children of the revolution, I told him; we owed it everything. How could they accuse us of being opposed to it? His sarcastic response was to the effect that the very same excuse was being used by ninety-nine percent of the people who were genuinely opposed to the revolution.”
    She talked to me about her former belief in the revolution and about the fact that their imprisonment had done nothing to alter or take away their core belief in its values. “However, whereas we had previously thought that we had all the power in the world, that feeling had been severely jolted by the time we’d emerged from prison. We’d lost much of our courage and along with it our self-confidence and belief in the workings of time. We had now discovered the existence of a terrifying force operating completely outside the dictates of law and human values.”
    Zaynab told me that she had discussed with Isma‘il the agonies she had gone through when he had suddenly disappeared. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea,” she had suggested, “for us to keep to ourselves for a while and avoid meeting friends and other groups?”
    â€œIt was my fault that they were all arrested,” he had replied sarcastically, “not vice versa!”
    I did my best to console her. “This is the kind of thing humanity has to go through,” I said. “It’s part of the price of all great revolutions.”
    She let out a sigh. “When will life be really pleasant, I wonder? Will we ever be finally rid of these dreadful miseries?”
    She now started talking about her second prison term. I immediately realized that I was about to hear a tale with some truly awful memories attached to it.
    â€œThis time we were accused of being Communists,” shesaid and then went on nervously, “it’s a period in my life that I’ll never forget.”
    She told me how she’d been taken to see Khalid Safwan again.
    â€œSo here we are again!” he had said sarcastically. “Our friendship is becoming well established!”
    â€œWhy have I been arrested?” she asked. “For my part I’ve no idea.”
    â€œAh, but I do.”
    â€œThen what’s the reason, sir?”
    â€œIt all goes back to those two distinguished gentlemen, Marx and Lenin.” He stared at her angrily. “Now answer my questions, but make sure you don’t use that silly nonsense again. You know: ‘Why do you keep on badgering me?’ ‘We’re all children of the revolution,’ and so on. Understand?”
    â€œWe’re not Communists,” she replied, totally despairing of ever being able to persuade him.
    â€œThat’s a shame!” he uttered cryptically.
    She told me that she had been thrown into a cell and subjected to the most humiliating forms of torture, the pain of which only a woman could possibly appreciate fully.
    â€œI had to live, sleep, eat, and carry out my bodily functions all in one place! Can you imagine?”
    â€œNo,” I responded sadly.
    â€œAt any moment,” she went on, “I might look up and see the guard leering at me through the peephole in the door. Can you appreciate what that meant?”
    â€œUnfortunately I can.”
    â€œOne day I