The Doors Are Locked (A Story)

He is in a place surrounded on every side by closed doors, and these doors have big, shiny knobs. Salim approached one of these doors and turned the shiny knob to open it, but the door did not open; so he left it and approached another door and tried to open it, but it too was locked. Then anxiety began to creep into him, and he hurried, agitated, to a third door and tried in vain to open it; and he did the same with the fourth, anxiety and fear overwhelming him, and he began running, panting, from one door to another... finding all the doors locked, none of them opening, while the terror in his breast all but choked him...

— May you bury me, mama — Salim, get up! What's the matter with you?
— Nothing; a bad dream. The quilt came over my face and made it hard for me to breathe. Go back to your bed.

Salim felt no inclination to sleep again after he had reassured his mother and she had returned to her sleep; and he was ashamed before himself of the panic that had come over him, even if only in a dream.

Strange, this dream — how simple its interpretation! Here he is, two years without work, ever since the glass factory closed — the one founded in the days of the war, which flourished for a time. But some while after the war ended, shipments of glass poured in from Europe and America, flooded the market, and were sold at the cheapest prices; the result was that the owner of the factory went bankrupt and was forced to close it down. So Salim found himself out of work along with a number of his comrades, and they went about asking how and why the factory had failed, and why we were deprived of work, and how they could allow foreign goods to threaten us with hunger. After that Salim kept knocking on the doors of livelihood, one after another, and finding them all locked in his face. Tomorrow afternoon they will give him an answer as to whether there is work for him at a sewing factory — and this is his last hope. Will the answer be no, as in the dream?

What is to be done if they answer no? He is the head of a family; his father died in the first year of the war, and he was forced to leave school early, despite his wish to go on studying... Salim's thoughts go back to his school days: how he had longed then to learn chemistry and its wondrous secrets! But when his father died and left them nothing to live on, they found him work in the glass factory, and his sister Farida learned sewing. His pay at the factory and what his sister earned barely sufficed to keep them. Now two years have passed since he left work, and they all live off Farida's needle a life of want; she is paid low wages, for seamstresses are many and the competition is fierce; and then their wretched house, with its entrance among narrow, filthy alleys, is enough to drive the customers away.

As for his little sister Asma, she goes to a half-free school, for they refused to teach her free of charge because her sister Farida practices sewing. And his poor mother is sick and feeble in strength; she has grown old before her time, and her health worsens year by year. When they sent Asma to the pharmacy to fetch her medicine, the pharmacist refused to give her anything because of the length of the account of debts against them — and all of it with coldness. Salim's nerves grew taut at these painful memories.

But the pharmacist is in the right; they must pay him — and the butcher too, another bill. Poor Farida spends day and night bent over the sewing machine or over cloth she is stitching, while he has done nothing for more than two years! But he hopes that tomorrow they will take him on at the sewing factory; they made him fair promises last time.

*

Salim came back in the evening from the sewing factory and entered the family room with a scowling face; he pulled off his jacket and flung it onto a broken chair unfit for sitting. His mother noticed his anger and did not speak to him, contenting herself with taking the jacket and hanging it up. His sister Farida was stitching at the machine, and his little sister Asma was arranging her books in her satchel; she said, addressing her mother:

— The teacher said we have to buy a new history book, for three liras.
Salim shouted at her:
— Every day a new book! Every day, "hand over money"!

Asma fell silent and shrank into another corner of the room, as if the fault were hers when the teacher asked them for a new book.
Salim reproached himself for failing to curb his nerves, then said in a gentler tone than before, in which weariness and sorrow showed:
— Put out the supper.

Then he went out to the terrace shared between them and the other tenants of the house and stretched out on a chair whose seat was broken through. Wherever he goes they say to him, "We have no need of workers," or they say, "Give us your address, and if we need you we'll send you word" — and time passes and Salim receives no word. Now his last hope has vanished; where is he to go? He once complained of his situation to the priest, who answered that he must hold fast to patience, and that their condition was better than that of many others, since his sister was a seamstress... But how long is he to be patient? Two years of his life have gone by, spent bewildered and anxious of mind; he sees himself a strong young man with health and brains and zeal for work, yet unable to do anything, condemned to live in scantness and want.

What is to be done, then? His head is about to burst! And here he is thinking of Thurayya — one of the loveliest girls of the quarter, with many suitors... He pictured himself asking for her hand in this state of poverty, and he nearly laughed out loud, mocking himself, while his heart was torn with anguish and grief.

Then there returned to his mind an idea that had been troubling him for many days, one he had always refused and pushed away from him, but it kept coming back insistently: there, not far from their house, lives the merchant Said al-Azraq, who made vast sums in the cloth trade during the war days. Every night he stakes thousands of liras at the gaming table, and he still lives in his old house because of its cheap rent — a ground floor surrounded by a small garden guarded by a low wall; robbing it would therefore be easy — possible without the thief being caught... And what would it matter to Said al-Azraq if he lost a few hundred liras out of his pocket? Salim remembers what he used to hear about incidents of theft: with a stick with a nail in its head they pull the garment through the window and take whatever money is in it.

Before him on the terrace there is a stick with a nail in it, used to hold the clothesline taut. Just then his mother opened the terrace door:
— Come and have your supper.

Supper was a plate of boiled potatoes and a single egg. Salim will not ask his mother why all their food is boiled, because he knows the oil and the samn ran out more than a month ago and the grocer gives nothing on credit. And potatoes are the cheapest thing in the market, so they eat them most days. Salim took a potato, and his mother said to him:
— Take the egg.
— I don't like eggs. You take it.
— No; eggs disagree with me.

*

Salim awoke while the night was pitch dark and put on his clothes without the slightest rustle, as though some hidden force were making him move like a machine, as though he were stripped of all inner feeling, even while his five senses were alert to the utmost.

He went out to the terrace and shut the door. The air was warm and the stars were sparkling. Just then a distant clock struck two. Salim undid the clothesline swiftly, precisely, and without a sound, and took the stick.

The road was deserted. In four minutes he was in Said al-Azraq's garden near the window of his room, which stood open because the hot weather had begun. The white coat was not hanging on a hook as he had imagined, but lay over the back of a chair in the middle of the room. Without hesitation or fear Salim thrust his stick between the bars of the window, drew the coat toward him, and pulled it out. He found several banknotes in it; he took them and left the coat on the ground, then climbed nimbly back over the garden wall and hurried toward his house... But there — he sees the night watchman walking four or five houses away. Then his feeling suddenly returned to him, and his heart began pounding with strong, rapid beats, as if it were about to burst, and fear and panic took complete hold of him. A thief! He is a thief! He took a turning where he vanished from the watchman's eyes.

Salim reached the house and returned to his bed without anyone sensing him, but the beats of his heart were still rapid and strong; he could not calm them, and the banknotes were still in his hand.

Salim shuddered at hearing the word "thief," as though a dagger had stabbed him in the heart! And he began speaking to himself, dazed, his thoughts shattered: "Am I a thief? Have I become a robber?" Then it seemed to him that he was living his dream again, moving from one door to another and finding all the doors locked in his face.

On the morning of the next day their neighbor, who lived in the same house with them, came in to them, saying:
— Umm Salim, did you hear — did you all hear what happened? The thief came last night to Said al-Azraq's house and took two hundred and sixty liras from his pocket and left the coat on the ground.