Cry in a Long Night: And Four Stories

By Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

Jabra’s debut novel, first published in 1955 and called by Edward Said “one of the principal successes of Arabic artistic prose and drama,” introduced stream of consciousness, flashback and interior monologue to the Arabic novel and set the stage for the outpouring of excellent modern Arabic prose in the decades that followed. In the first novel by the Palestinian author Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Amin Samaa walks the length of his native city on a portentous night. Amin is headed to the house of Inayat Yasser, an aristocratic heiress who has hired him to help her write a book on the history of her Ottoman family, now fallen on hard times. On his way there, Amin recalls his childhood in a nearby village and the city slum his family had to flee to after his father died. Old friends, thieves and madames attempt to waylay him. And the haunting atmosphere of the city gives rise to memories of Amin’s wife Sumaya, whose sudden disappearance two years before has left him at a loss. Sumaya’s sudden reappearance forces Amin into a decision that will change his life forever. In a novel written just two years before the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, the events and characters lead to a momentous conclusion. Jabra brought modernist techniques into modern Arabic literature: the reminiscences of D. H. Lawrence, the introspective wanderer of James Joyce, and the acerbic wit and country-house feel of early Aldous Huxley. This classic of Arabic literature is not to be missed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darf Publishers
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781850773443

Book preview

Chapter One

The young woman raised her foot and said, ‘Look!’ So I looked. But nothing about her foot interested me, except maybe her big toe, its nail painted red and protruding from the end of her elegant shoe. ‘I’ll proceed to something more fit for a man,’ I told myself. And I headed towards the city.

On the way, I came across a rifle-toting policeman who stopped me to check my identity card. He turned out to be an old friend I’d once vacationed with on the mountain! His face looked exhausted, and his voice had lost its familiar vitality. ‘I really am fed up with this work,’ he said, as he patted me on the shoulder, leaving me perplexed, almost disappointed. I turned back towards him and called out, inviting him for a cup of coffee in the cafe nearby. But without looking back, he answered that he couldn’t because he was still on the damned beat.

In the cafe, I came across the owner, Abu Hamed, whose head drooped drowsily upon his chest among the chairs and tables. He awoke suddenly at the chair’s screech as I dragged it from a table. He came towards me, smiling and cheerful; he recognized me. He said that a lady from the Yasser family, whose name he couldn’t exactly remember, had left me a telephone message, saying she wanted to see me that night – if that wasn’t inconvenient for me – to discuss something, something Abu Hamed had forgotten.

I said to myself, ‘God bless you and keep you, Inayat Hanem, but why don’t you leave me alone?’ I thanked the old man – Abu Hamed was around seventy – for his message. Then he brought me the coffee, and I savored it in that deserted place. How could I summon the energy at that hour to go to Inayat Yasser’s palace, seeing as I’d just returned from a short vacation on the mountain, where I’d forgotten everything about her? I wasn’t in a mental state fit for working, and I felt nothing but hate towards the city whose length I’d have to cross before arriving at her house. But I hoped to find her sister Roxane there. Seeing her was all ease and joy.

I set out.

To collect my scattered resolution, I lit a cigarette and took two deep drags. Then I cast it from me and watched the sparks fly from it. Suddenly a man – a beggar, no doubt – jumped out of the folds of the darkness, picked it up, and presently stuck it between his lips. I grinned and thought about giving him an entire cigarette, but chided myself for such softness and continued walking. On the road there were cars from which you could sometimes hear the sound of laughter, reminding you that there still were people in this world who took pleasure in life. That reminded me of Inayat Hanem, when she said she knew how to enjoy life, and of her hoarse, restrained laugh that would ring in my ears like a wincing moan or the cry of a jackal. (A few months before, we had spent a night in the village, which lies twenty kilometers from the city, in an ancient house overlooking a valley where the sad cries of jackals persisted throughout the night. I was astonished that Inayat Hanem not only found them annoying but was so afraid that she couldn’t sleep.) She’s probably waiting for me right now, and God only knows what family papers she’s uncovered of late. Papers, papers, nothing but papers since I began working with her. Even though she paid me a good salary, I’d begun to tire of that kind of work. But work was work. I might also find Roxane there, and I liked talking to her. I found her affectionate towards me, too, and sometimes I suspected that she sought to catch me in her snares. But it would have been difficult for any woman to do so. When it came to women, I had put on the attitude of one who scorns them until I had actually come to scorn them. I’d failed in my marriage, and I was certain that the fate of any other relationship with any other woman could only end in