Midaq Alley (Chapter 2)

She looked into the mirror with an uncritical eye or, to be more accurate, with an eye that lingered only on the parts that grat­ ified, the mirror returning the reflection of a slender oval face on whose cheeks, eyebrows, eyes, and lips, art had wrought wonders. She turned it to the right and then to the left, her fingers working on the braid as she muttered in a barely audible voice, "Not
bad. Nice. Very nice indeed!" In reality, the face in question had looked out on this world for some fifty years and after fifty years the world leaves no face unblemished. Her body was slender (or "skin and bones," to use the description of the women of the alley) and her chest flat, though a pretty dress concealed its deficiencies. It was Mistress Saniya Afifi, the owner of the second house in the alley, on whose first floor lived Doctor Bushi. That day she was getting herself dressed up for a visit to the middle apartment, where Umm Hamida resided. She wasn't in the habitof making visits to her tenants and she rarely entered this particular apartment other than on the first day of each month, to collect the rent. It was a different motive that moved her now,
however, and made a visit to Umm Hamida a matter of great urgency. She left her apartment, descended the stairs, her lips moving n the invocation, "O Lord, grant our hopes!" and knocked on the door with her prominently veined hand. Hamida opened it, welcomed her with an

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It was borne in upon Mistress Saniya then that such a thing could be, and the idea quickly assumed such control of her will that she threw herself into its realization with utter abandon. At one time she had believed herself to have forgotten all about marriage. Now, she discovered that it was her greatest hope, one that neither money, coffee, cigarettes, nor new banknotes could take the place of She started asking herself in panic how so much time could have gone by with nothing to show for it, how she could have got through the ten years that had brought her to the threshold of her fiftieth alone. She told herself it was madness, held her late husband responsible, and determined to make amends to herself, and that as soon as she possibly could. The matchmaker listened to her affected expressions of distaste sagely and with contempt, saying to herself, "You can't fool me, woman." Addressing her in reproachful tones, she said, "Don't exag­gerate, Mistress Saniya. Your first marriage may have been a disap­pointment, but there are happy marriages all over the place."