Read The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail for Free Online Page B

tied up in preparing a new radio serial.”
    Omar looked at the case files, then at his friend’s eyes, pleading for an encouraging word. He smiled enigmatically, then finally said, “I worked without stop this morning.”
    Mustapha breathed a sigh of relief, but then Omar murmured, “But…”
    Mustapha inquired anxiously, “But?”
    “Honestly, I’ve regained no desire to work.”
    An uneasy silence prevailed. Mustapha exhaled the cigarette smoke with a tense expression, then suggested, “Maybe you should have taken more rest.”
    “Let’s stop kidding ourselves. The problem is more serious than that.”
    Then he lit a cigarette in turn and continued to the echo of new tunes. “The problem is more serious, for it’s not only work which has become unbearable. This illness is consuming other things, far more precious than work—my wife, for instance.”
    “Zeinab?”
    He said with something like shame, “I don’t know how to put it, but sadly enough, I can’t bear her now. My house is no longer the happy abode.”
    “But Buthayna and Jamila are part of it.”
    “Fortunately they don’t need me…”
    Mustapha frowned and blinked his round, filmy eyes. In his inquisitive glance was a sorrowful, pressing desire to solve the riddle. “But someone of your intelligence can discover the secret.”
    He said, smiling bitterly, “Maybe the universe in its eternal, monotonous revolving is the primary cause.”
    “I’m sure you’re exaggerating, at least as far as Zeinab is concerned.”
    “It’s the appalling truth.”
    He asked with solicitude, “What’s to happen in this state of affairs?”
    “I live, questioning all the time, but with no answer.”
    “By now, you must be convinced, at least, that you’re going through some sort of psychological crisis.”
    “Call it what you wish, but what is it, what do I want, what should I do?”
    “You’re too sensible to be plagued by questions. Probe your hidden desires, look into your dreams. There are things you want to run away from, but where to?”
    “That’s it. Where?”
    “You must find the answer.”
    “Tell me, what makes
you
stick to work and marriage?”
    Because the question seemed somehow funny, he smiled, but the sober atmosphere quickly dispelled his gaiety. “My attachment to my wife is based on reality and on habit. My work is a means of livelihood. Besides, I’m happy with my audience, I’m happy with the hundreds of letters I get from them each week. Acceptance by the public is gratifying, even if it means selling popcorn and watermelon seeds.”
    “I have neither public, nor reality, nor habit.”
    Mustapha paused a while and then said, “In fact, you’ve been extraordinarily successful in your work and your wife worships you, so you’re left with nothing to fight for.”
    Omar smiled sarcastically. “Should I pray God for failure and adultery?”
    “If it would help you regain some interest in life!”
    Each retreated into himself and the tense silence carried ominous forebodings.
    Omar spoke. “It sometimes consoles me that I hate myself just as much.” He squashed his cigarette butt in the ashtray impatiently. “My work, Zeinab, and myself are really all one thing, and this is what I want to escape from.”
    Mustapha looked at him quizzically. “An old dream is enticing you?”
    He hesitated before confiding, “Buthayna wrote some poems.”
    “Buthayna!”
    “I read them, and while we were discussing them, I felt a strange yearning for the old books I’d deserted twenty years ago.”
    “Ah, how often I’ve thought that would happen.”
    “Hold on. Yes, a certain sensation crept into my sluggish brain and I began searching for lost tunes. I even asked myself whether it might be possible to start again. But it was just a fleeting sensation which soon disappeared.”
    “You retreated quickly.”
    “No. I went back to reading, and jotted down a few words, but it came to nothing. One evening when I was at the