Egyptian short-story writer and critic Yahya Haqqi won a scholarship to the Cairo School of Law, graduating in 1926. Soon after, he began a long and distinguished career in the diplomatic service, representing his country in several Middle Eastern and European capitals. Other than his own language, he was proficient in English, French, Italian, and Turkish. On the literary level, Haqqi is regarded as a pioneer of the short story in Egypt, which he began writing in 1923, but it was not until 1944 that he published his famous work, The Lamp of Um Hashim. The Divining Stones by Yahya Haqqi:
"I don’t believe in fortune-telling. I refuse even to consider it. I don’t understand how anyone can believe in those people who read the sands—people who, most of the time, simply draw the lines as they want to, as many as they want, and could just as easily make them foretell evil as the good fortune they claim to see. Then there are the cards. Just who laid down that the ace means a letter, the three a trip and the four a house? Who on earth decided all that? And what’s to stop their meaning changing just like that, so that, if the fortune-teller says you’re going to get a letter, it means you’ll be going on a trip; or, if she congratulates you on some money coming your way, she’s actually predicting your bankruptcy? I don’t see how the life of a human being can be linked up with the numbers on playing cards.
And worse still is the coffee cup. How can someone’s fortune, his very future even, be bound to a particular kind of coffee and how thick it is? A fortuneteller once told this man how she’d seen great turmoil in his cup. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “That coffee I’ve just drunk came from the Congo.” All this was going through my head as I sat on a low straw chair in front of the old Sudanese woman who spreads her stones near the enchanted fountain. I’d been visiting her every Saturday for a year—she didn’t spread them on Fridays. I’d learned from experience that the stones were lively and truthful in the early part of the week, not talking evasively or holding anything back. Later, though, and towards the end of the week especially, they’d get monotonous and irritable. You had the impression they were bored with words and tired out by people’s trivial concerns: all they’d see in front of them was a greedy man eager to get his hands on something he hadn’t earned, or a coward fearful of some imagined danger, or scheming women whose hearts are opened up, and—lo and behold—all their declared friendship to neighbors and acquaintances is actually bitter enmity and lasting hatred. Here’s what the old woman told me this time:
“A man and a woman,” she said, “are living happily together. But there’s a tall, dark woman coming to destroy their peace. In two somethings’ time you’ll receive a formal paper from the government. I see you in your home now. You’ll be getting some new furniture.”
I knew who the tall, dark woman was—Umm Mahmoud, the stupid, coarsegrained peddler woman who, not content with plunging my wife in debt, had developed a hold over her and started dragging her off on trips I knew nothing about. I’d warned my wife never to let the woman set foot in the house again, then pawned my watch and chain to pay back the debts. What about the paper, though—the one I was supposed to be getting from the government? Would it be a letter appointing me to the job I’d worn my shoes out trying to land? I hoped the two “somethings” would be two days, not two months or two years, God forbid!
As for the new furniture, the stones had certainly unearthed one of my fondest wishes, one I’d been hiding deep down inside me: I’d decided some time back that, within a month of getting a job, I’d buy a new mat and a new bed. The stones filled me with a sense of security, and I started believing in them more than before. If only, I thought, all those people who believed in coffee cups and cards and sand could give up their stupid beliefs and trust in divining stones!
Could there, after all, be a more graphic symbol of bustling, endlessly clashing humanity than the stones you could hear rattling in this woman’s hand? There, in front of you, were a man and a woman together; then they were separated by, say, a man who tempted the woman, and a dark woman who tempted the man. Wasn’t the whole problem of life summed up in that? As for this emerald green stone, didn’t it obviously denote wealth beyond one’s wildest dreams? The divining stones didn’t lie, and consulting them cost a mere twenty khurdas. If you picked up that sum in the street, you wouldn’t (as the fortune-teller pointed out) be ecstatic at what you’d found; but you had to consider what it bought you from the stones themselves.
When I got home, my wife came to help me take off my jacket.
“Didn’t I tell you,” I said, speaking slowly and calmly, “that Umm Mahmoud wasn’t to come in here?” To my astonishment she went pale with shock. Then she rushed out, opened the door onto the stairs, and started screaming down at our neighbor on the first floor.
“Hey, Sitt Asma,” she yelled. “Can’t you ever keep your mouth shut? Eh? Do you stand guard outside our door, or what?”
Then she poured out a stream of insults so bitter and venomous even I was surprised. And so the first part of the stones’ prophecy had been fulfilled. Now, I thought, let the second part come true, and quickly. Let the government send me the papers I’d been waiting for.
On the Monday a little boy came up.
“There’s a man downstairs,” he said. “Well-dressed. He wants to see you.” I went down, and there was a stranger with a bundle of papers under his arm and, in his hand, an ebony writing instrument fitter to write hieroglyphics than Arabic. My heart started pounding.
“What can I do for you?” I asked “I’m delivering a summons,” he said. “Will you put your signature or seal on this?”
“What is it?”
“A lawsuit filed by Sitt Asma, against you and your wife, for publicly insulting her. The case comes up next Thursday.”
As I climbed the stairs, the full force of the disaster struck me. I went in through my door ready for a blazing row.
“Well,” I said, “are you happy now? The two days have passed. The quarrel was the day before yesterday, two days ago exactly! By God, the stones were telling the truth, but it wasn’t the truth I’d been looking for!”
Next morning there was another quarrel between my wife and the neighbor. My blood boiled.
“Do you want to bring me a new lawsuit every two days?” I demanded.
“Don’t get so worked up, my darling,” she snapped back. “You’ll soon be seeing the back of me.”
She rushed out in a fury, and there I was. I’d wanted to prevent a suit that would have cost me fifty piasters, and instead I’d saddled myself with alimony, confiscation, and imprisonment; for, while I was out, two policemen burst into the house, along with some of my wife’s relatives and four porters, and carried off all the furniture. When I got back, I found totally bare walls—they hadn’t even left the pitcher. I stood there dumbstruck.
“Is that what the stones meant by new furniture?” I thought."
Translation by May Jayyusi and Christopher Ting
"I don’t believe in fortune-telling. I refuse even to consider it. I don’t understand how anyone can believe in those people who read the sands—people who, most of the time, simply draw the lines as they want to, as many as they want, and could just as easily make them foretell evil as the good fortune they claim to see. Then there are the cards. Just who laid down that the ace means a letter, the three a trip and the four a house? Who on earth decided all that? And what’s to stop their meaning changing just like that, so that, if the fortune-teller says you’re going to get a letter, it means you’ll be going on a trip; or, if she congratulates you on some money coming your way, she’s actually predicting your bankruptcy? I don’t see how the life of a human being can be linked up with the numbers on playing cards.
And worse still is the coffee cup. How can someone’s fortune, his very future even, be bound to a particular kind of coffee and how thick it is? A fortuneteller once told this man how she’d seen great turmoil in his cup. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “That coffee I’ve just drunk came from the Congo.” All this was going through my head as I sat on a low straw chair in front of the old Sudanese woman who spreads her stones near the enchanted fountain. I’d been visiting her every Saturday for a year—she didn’t spread them on Fridays. I’d learned from experience that the stones were lively and truthful in the early part of the week, not talking evasively or holding anything back. Later, though, and towards the end of the week especially, they’d get monotonous and irritable. You had the impression they were bored with words and tired out by people’s trivial concerns: all they’d see in front of them was a greedy man eager to get his hands on something he hadn’t earned, or a coward fearful of some imagined danger, or scheming women whose hearts are opened up, and—lo and behold—all their declared friendship to neighbors and acquaintances is actually bitter enmity and lasting hatred. Here’s what the old woman told me this time:
“A man and a woman,” she said, “are living happily together. But there’s a tall, dark woman coming to destroy their peace. In two somethings’ time you’ll receive a formal paper from the government. I see you in your home now. You’ll be getting some new furniture.”
I knew who the tall, dark woman was—Umm Mahmoud, the stupid, coarsegrained peddler woman who, not content with plunging my wife in debt, had developed a hold over her and started dragging her off on trips I knew nothing about. I’d warned my wife never to let the woman set foot in the house again, then pawned my watch and chain to pay back the debts. What about the paper, though—the one I was supposed to be getting from the government? Would it be a letter appointing me to the job I’d worn my shoes out trying to land? I hoped the two “somethings” would be two days, not two months or two years, God forbid!
As for the new furniture, the stones had certainly unearthed one of my fondest wishes, one I’d been hiding deep down inside me: I’d decided some time back that, within a month of getting a job, I’d buy a new mat and a new bed. The stones filled me with a sense of security, and I started believing in them more than before. If only, I thought, all those people who believed in coffee cups and cards and sand could give up their stupid beliefs and trust in divining stones!
Could there, after all, be a more graphic symbol of bustling, endlessly clashing humanity than the stones you could hear rattling in this woman’s hand? There, in front of you, were a man and a woman together; then they were separated by, say, a man who tempted the woman, and a dark woman who tempted the man. Wasn’t the whole problem of life summed up in that? As for this emerald green stone, didn’t it obviously denote wealth beyond one’s wildest dreams? The divining stones didn’t lie, and consulting them cost a mere twenty khurdas. If you picked up that sum in the street, you wouldn’t (as the fortune-teller pointed out) be ecstatic at what you’d found; but you had to consider what it bought you from the stones themselves.
When I got home, my wife came to help me take off my jacket.
“Didn’t I tell you,” I said, speaking slowly and calmly, “that Umm Mahmoud wasn’t to come in here?” To my astonishment she went pale with shock. Then she rushed out, opened the door onto the stairs, and started screaming down at our neighbor on the first floor.
“Hey, Sitt Asma,” she yelled. “Can’t you ever keep your mouth shut? Eh? Do you stand guard outside our door, or what?”
Then she poured out a stream of insults so bitter and venomous even I was surprised. And so the first part of the stones’ prophecy had been fulfilled. Now, I thought, let the second part come true, and quickly. Let the government send me the papers I’d been waiting for.
On the Monday a little boy came up.
“There’s a man downstairs,” he said. “Well-dressed. He wants to see you.” I went down, and there was a stranger with a bundle of papers under his arm and, in his hand, an ebony writing instrument fitter to write hieroglyphics than Arabic. My heart started pounding.
“What can I do for you?” I asked “I’m delivering a summons,” he said. “Will you put your signature or seal on this?”
“What is it?”
“A lawsuit filed by Sitt Asma, against you and your wife, for publicly insulting her. The case comes up next Thursday.”
As I climbed the stairs, the full force of the disaster struck me. I went in through my door ready for a blazing row.
“Well,” I said, “are you happy now? The two days have passed. The quarrel was the day before yesterday, two days ago exactly! By God, the stones were telling the truth, but it wasn’t the truth I’d been looking for!”
Next morning there was another quarrel between my wife and the neighbor. My blood boiled.
“Do you want to bring me a new lawsuit every two days?” I demanded.
“Don’t get so worked up, my darling,” she snapped back. “You’ll soon be seeing the back of me.”
She rushed out in a fury, and there I was. I’d wanted to prevent a suit that would have cost me fifty piasters, and instead I’d saddled myself with alimony, confiscation, and imprisonment; for, while I was out, two policemen burst into the house, along with some of my wife’s relatives and four porters, and carried off all the furniture. When I got back, I found totally bare walls—they hadn’t even left the pitcher. I stood there dumbstruck.
“Is that what the stones meant by new furniture?” I thought."
Translation by May Jayyusi and Christopher Ting
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