Free The House of Jasmine by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid Page B

Strong-willed men stopped making love to their wives, while the weaker ones sent their wives to their parents or divorced them until the end of the year.
    â€œNo sooner had I graduated from the school of agriculture than I was drafted into the army. I was dragged into defeat in my first war, and I was surrounded in the second. I was neither sad nor frustrated, but now that I’m out, I feel like I’m on one side and the rest of this universe which God created for us is on the other. Do you really think that I like backgammon or sitting at the café? Do you think that we’ll keep doing this forever? If so, then the tragedy will be complete. The normal thing would be for us to separate, for each of us to go his own way, and make a life for himself, and for each of us to remember the others from time to time. Yet we can’t, not because Dikhayla is so small—nothing more than one street and a few alleys—but because none of us has a purpose to his life. Do you know why Hassanayn insists on studying at his age? Don’t tell me that it’s to get a university degree. What is a degree worth in the age of people like ‘Abdu al-Fakahani? In reality, it’s because if Hassanayn doesn’t study, he will find time to think about himself!
    â€œAnd you. You have an apartment and you live alone and have no responsibilities. But you also don’t want to get a life of your own. Why don’t you get married, now that you have taken the most difficult step? Are you enjoying the life you’re living? I don’t think so, but I don’t think it’s too bad either. It’s just bland. You must be aware of this, but unwilling to face it. The only one who has found a purpose to his life is Magid. Now he’s the manager of his own pharmacy. Yet instead of making it serve a real purpose in his life—that is, to make it a base for further progress—it has become his life. He hides in it from the world, and rarely leaves.
    â€œI’m just like the rest of you, or maybe worse. My days present no new challenges in which I can prove myself a winner or a loser, only a routine job in agricultural inspection in Rashid. I often feel too lazy to go to work. I sleep until noon, and my boss never questions me. If you ask me about agriculture, you’ll discover that I have forgotten everything about it, but if you ask me about any other job, I will tell you that I’m only an agricultural engineer. None of us has been successful at anything, but we have not been failures either. We stand in a vacuum.
    â€œNow I’m out of the army, and I don’t like talking about my experiences there. I don’t know how I survived. This is my final conclusion. I try to put an iron curtain between me and my past.
    â€œI only failed with one person, a young soldier who joined the army five years after I did. I was drawn to his beautiful baby face and his calm soothing voice. I always felt that he was older than I was. He used to fill our trenches with stories from every time and place. He always had a new novel for you to read. I could hardly believe that he was a medical doctor. A few days before the war, he met with me alone after midnight and said that we had to meet after the war. ‘I agree. After the war,’ I said, with a smile. He said that he was not joking and that the war was going to begin in a few days. How did he know that? I, and thousands like me, were bored with the military drills and the waiting, but we didn’t see a war coming. He was different from everyone I knew. He wasn’t in contact with any authority which could inform him of the date of the war. He was just an ordinary soldier, and none of us knew anything about the war until it started. Even the officers didn’t know about it, and the rest of the people must not have known about it either. You must have read about this in the newspapers. I asked him why he wanted us to meet after the war. He