Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery

Resigned, Nour El Dine fell silent. Once again weariness took hold of him. This empty room gave him a feeling of peace and seemed to isolate him from the rest of the universe. He imagined himself sleeping on the pile of newspapers, happy and lazy, freed from his anguish. What was the use of continuing to search for an impossible happiness? It was true that nothing could happen between these walls, in this skillfully arranged emptiness. No doubt Gohar was right. To live like a beggar was to follow the path of wisdom. A life in the primitive state, without constraints. Nour El Dine dreamed of how sweet a beggar's life would be, free and proud, with nothing to lose. He could finally indulge in his vice without fear or shame. He would even be proud of this vice that had been his worst torment for years.

Gohar, a beggar and former professor of philosophy, murders a beautiful young prostitute. The murder happens so quickly and compulsively it seems to be almost without motive: Gohar, yearning for his daily fix of hashish, covets the girl's expensive-looking bracelets; afterward they prove to be made only of paste. This act draws a policeman named Nour El Dine into the world of Cairo's impoverished underground; his investigation draws in several of Gohar's circle, including the hideous and love-starved poet Yeghen and the childish revolutionary El Kordi. And yet, it seems that Gohar himself wears the investigation, and his guilty act, more lightly than these: how can one upend a life that is already pared down basically to nothingness? Gohar's only dream is to travel to Syria, where his beloved hashish is legal, but even this dream seems more powerful to Gohar's acolytes than himself.

As a portrait of Cairo's underground, Proud Beggars is strangely conflicted and complicated. We know little about the life that Gohar has intently abandoned; he seems entirely satisfied with his life of asceticism. When, in the novel's opening scenes, his apartment is flooded by the ritual cleansing of a death next door, there's nothing to worry about, no things to ruin; even his bed is a stack of newspapers that can easily be replaced. Yet it seems impossible to say that Gohar has shaken off all attachments. It's his need for hashish, after all--and the intermediary desire for the golden bracelets--that drive him to commit a terrible crime. The denizens of Cairo's slums exhibit a strange mix of pride and despair. Take Gohar's new neighbor, for example, a man with no arms and legs who must be fed and washed by his wife--yet, whose prowess at lovemaking make him much in demand with the local women.

Nour El Dine, the policeman, is tormented by what he calls his "vice," his attraction to men. He is smitten with a young man named Samir who clearly despises him, and only hangs around, it seems, for the pleasure of torturing the desperate cop. Nour El Dine is the representative of a repressive political system, perhaps, but he is its victim as well as its agent--as I suppose is fairly common. Bourgeois Cairene life has trapped him in a cycle of desire, disappointment and guilt, and though he quickly zeroes in on Gohar as the killer, he, too, falls under the spell of Gohar's asceticism. If he were to live as Gohar does, would he be free to pursue his desires? Or is it the bourgeois life that keeps men like Nour El Dine from giving in wholly to their desires, as Gohar does? 

With the addition of Egypt, my "Countries Read" list is up to 87!