The Time and the Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

no one. In terrorI realized I had lost my way and that countless difficulties lay in wait for me before I found my way home. Should I resort to asking one of the passersby to direct me? What, though, would happen if chance should lead me to a man like the seller of beans or the tramp of the waste plot? Would a miracle come about whereby I would see my mother approaching so that I could eagerly hurry toward her? Should I try to make my own way, wandering about till I came across some familiar landmark that would indicate the direction I should take?
    I told myself that I should be resolute and make a quick decision. The day was passing, and soon mysterious darkness would descend.

The Answer Is No
    The important piece of news that the new headmaster had arrived spread through the school. She heard of it in the women teachers’ common room as she was casting a final glance at the day’s lessons. There was no getting away from joining the other teachers in congratulating him, and from shaking him by the hand too. A shudder passed through her body, but it was unavoidable.
    “They speak highly of his ability,” said a colleague of hers. “And they talk too of his strictness.”
    It had always been a possibility that might occur, and now it had. Her pretty face paled, and a staring look came to her wide black eyes.
    When the time came, the teachers went in single file, decorously attired, to his open room. He stood behind his desk as he received the men and women. He was of medium height, with a tendency to portliness, and had a spherical face, hooked nose, and bulging eyes; the first thing that could be seen of him was a thick, puffed-up mustache, arched like a foam-laden wave. She advanced with her eyes fixed on his chest. Avoiding his gaze, she stretched out her hand. What was she to say? Just what the others had said? However, she kept silent, uttered not a word. What, she wondered, did his eyes express? His rough hand shook hers, and he said in a gruff voice, “Thanks.” She turned elegantly and moved off.
    She forgot her worries through her daily tasks, though she did not look in good shape. Several of the girls remarked, “Miss is in a bad mood.” When she returned to her home at the beginningof the Pyramids Road, she changed her clothes and sat down to eat with her mother. “Everything all right?” inquired her mother, looking her in the face.
    “Badran, Badran Badawi,” she said briefly. “Do you remember him? He’s been appointed our headmaster.”
    “Really!”
    Then, after a moment of silence, she said, “It’s of no importance at all—it’s an old and long-forgotten story.”
    After eating, she took herself off to her study to rest for a while before correcting some exercise books. She had forgotten him completely. No, not completely. How could he be forgotten completely? When he had first come to give her a private lesson in mathematics, she was fourteen years of age. In fact not quite fourteen. He had been twenty-five years older, the same age as her father. She had said to her mother, “His appearance is a mess, but he explains things well.” And her mother had said, “We’re not concerned with what he looks like; what’s important is how he explains things.”
    He was an amusing person, and she got on well with him and benefited from his knowledge. How, then, had it happened? In her innocence she had not noticed any change in his behavior to put her on her guard. Then one day he had been left on his own with her, her father having gone to her aunt’s clinic. She had not the slightest doubts about a man she regarded as a second father. How, then, had it happened? Without love or desire on her part the thing had happened. She had asked in terror about what had occurred, and he had told her, “Don’t be frightened or sad. Keep it to yourself and I’ll come and propose to you the day you come of age.”
    And he had kept his promise and had come to ask for her hand. By then she had attained a