Summary of the novel entitled
"The Pulse of Things Gone"
(Nabd Al Ashya'a Al Dae'a)

by Sherif Hetata

"The pulse of things gone" is the three women in the life a man called "Ibrahim Mostapha Salem". They are a source of light, in the growing darkness and corruption which gradually surrounds his existence.

The story is divided into three parts. In the first part "Ibrahim Mostapha Salem" grows up as a child in a poor peasant family living in the rural town of "Badrasheen". His father disappears during the 1948 war against Israel. His mother a strict and rather harsh woman cultivates a plot of land to bring him up, and educate him. Her severity is the source of his loneliness, of a fear to express himself. He learns to say and to do what pleases those around him.

His aunt "Fatima" is the first woman in his life. She lives in the same house. Slowly a tense and secret love relationship develops between them. Each of them seeks warmth and tenderness to escape the loneliness in the arms of the other. They give themselves spontaneously, innocently to this love relationship. But one night "Fatima" disappears and is nowhere to be found.

When his mother dies he sells the house in which they had been living to his uncle, and in the process discovers the necklace which "Fatima" used to wear in the wooden chest where she kept her belongings. It is the only thing he takes away with him after selling the house.

"Ibrahim Mostapha Salem" decides to become rich, to escape the poverty he lived in as a child. From his earliest years he had learnt to hide his feelings and thoughts and he continues to develop his double personality. He works his way up, graduate at the top of his class in the School of Literature, Department of Communications, but decides to give up a scholastic career and go to journalism, in his search for money and power.

At the beginning of his career in journalism the six days war of 1967 breaks out and he is sent by his boss to the Canal Zone. On his return he writes a series of articles analyzing the reasons for the Egyptian debacle, is interrogated by the Army Intelligence Services and his career as a journalist comes to an abrupt end.
He then takes up various odd jobs, as a bricklayer, a cashier in a popular eating place and as an assistant to a man who makes frames for paintings in the Cairo district of "Marouf". Then in response to vague dreams or fantasies related to "Fatima" he decides to travel to Alexandria. There he settles down in the district of "Ibrahimeya", and with the help of a recommendation from his former employer becomes the assistant to an Armenian maker of frames for paintings. Meanwhile he also becomes a fanatic billiard player.

The Armenian who is a wheelchair invalid dies and leaves hi the workshop. During this period he meets a woman named "Fatima Mahfouz". He saves her from falling out of a moving bus, they become intimate, fall in love, marry and "Fatima" gives birth to a female child named "Azza". "Fatima" is a journalist, and a political activist with left wing leanings, "Ibrahim" fears the consequences which could result from articles which she writes in a magazine printed and published in cooperation with a small group of friends. Driven by fear, and not quite aware of the trap into which he falls, in a bit of jealousy he proffers information about the group to a secret service agent. "Fatima Mahfouz" is arrested and intent on throwing all responsibility to the winds, on feuding for himself he leaves his infant daughter "Azza" in a basket cot at the doorstep of his neighbours with a bottle of milk and instructions when to feed her together with the necklace he had given to "Fatima'.
The second part of the novel begins with a street child holding out a box of matches to a man sitting behind the driving wheel of a car through the half open window. She is thin and wasted with large hungry black eyes and small grey cracks on her lips. Moved by an obscure impulse the man, a one time Coptic officer in the army named Yusri Al Guindi overcomes his feelings of disgust and takes her home with him. In the lift going up to his flat he notices a small metal plaque tied around her wrist with the number 356 written on it.

Established in a small room which he allocates to her she lives with him like a stray cat. Whenever he leaves the flat he locks the doors but escapes only to return sometime later. When he ceases to lock her up she no longer tries to escape. He names her "Azza Yusri Al Guindi", looks after her, buy her clothes, feeds her and tries to teach her how to read and write. Met with repeated failure he engages a teacher. "Azza" is intelligent and eager to learn. She absorbs knowledge at a rapid rate, rises through the various levels of education and enters the "Conservatoire" where she studies dancing and becomes a choreographer.
"Usri Al Guindi" the officer is impotent as a result of an injury to his spinal column incurred during the 1973 war. A love relationship develops between them and he is able to overcome his impotence with her. They marry but still suffers from terrible pains for which she injects him with sedatives. He begs her to give him an overdose to end his life but she refuses, upon which he decides to disappear.

"Azza" goes on with her life, becomes a famous choreographer and travels. One day seated at the club busy designing a dance she meets a grey haired rather handsome man. They engage in conversation, and later begin to meet at more or less regular intervals. The man is "Ibrahim Mostapha Salem" who is now head of a very big publishing house, and a rich man after marrying the wife of the former owner and subordinating her to his ambitions. During one of their meetings he notices the necklace she wears and realize who she is. One evening he confesses to her that he is her father and at dawn descends from her flat to his car, and drives all the way to Alexandria. A few days later the neighbours alerted by a putrid small break through a door on to the roof of a building n "Ibrahimeieh" and find the dead body of a man lying on the floor, fully dressed, holding a withered rose in his hand.

At the end of the novel we discover that the story is told by the obstetrician who takes care of "Azza" Yasin Al Guindi" on the night when she gives birth to her daughter "Fatima Azza Al Guindi"

This summary has left out "Azza's" life in the orphanage, "Ibrahim's" career in the publishing house, …etc. There is an atmosphere of mystery surrounding parts of the story. For example who is the real mother of "Ibrahim's" aunt "Fatima" ? Was she his aunt or his sister ? Is the woman who brought him up really his mother ? Who is the woman he saw one afternoon with his father and who later on turned up at his mother's funeral ? These are questions which remain unanswered.
The novel was published in Arabic by Dar Al Adab Beirut 2003.