Classic Short Fiction: Shehata Ebeid’s ‘Fidelity’

This short story is taken from Shehata Ebeid’s collection A Painful Lesson, published in 1922.

Fidelity

By Shehata Ebeid

Translated by Amr El-Zawawy

From Mrs. Loulou to Albir Saadeh:

I’m very displeased by what’s happened between us, that you dared speak to me so openly and so shamelessly, that you called me a woman of easy virtue, claiming that you’d seen what I’d done by accident. Once, you saw me walking with a stranger in a distant road. On another occasion, you saw me leaving a certain hotel. I don’t say any of this to excuse myself. I only bring it up to show that I have never been a liar or a hypocrite.

Yes, I admit it… I’ll say it all frankly. The man you saw in the car with me was the assistant to the lawyer I employed in the case that is pending between me and my husband. Also, when you saw me coming out of the hotel at 11 p.m., I was visiting an Upper Egyptian family I had known since my childhood in Alexandria, when I’d spent summers up there. I could have told everyone—I’m no liar! I was simply saddened, because you spread the word everywhere and, knowing you as a respectable man, I could not imagine that you would venture into a showdown with a woman to tarnish her reputation! I could not imagine that your love for me would make you think so wrong-headedly. However, I still claim you are not so very mean-spirited, since you failed to understand me, and you feared I would tell all, spreading the news that I had turned you down as a suitor. When you felt that I loved another man, and believed your pride to have been wounded, you began to think that I was not a chaste woman.

To tell the truth, I liked you from the first. I let you flirt with me, and my attitude encouraged you. But why did you want me to be yours when others might easily be in a relationship with me? I told you this, but you refused to listen.

I had to follow a sleep-around method to earn my living. What else could have become of a woman whose husband had run out on her and refused to give her money, knowing she was selling her furniture for food? He had known her as a prostitute and married her, in order to get her off that shameful path. Three years without marriage, and then we thought we would be forever united. Yet he was a womanizer and kept after women of every hue until he fell for Leonie—and left me. His actions forced me to return to my old ways. Meanwhile, he wanted to find a way to sue me for adultery and thus stop paying alimony.

Two ways stood before me: to plunge into the swamp of immorality, which I loathed and would never think of drowning in again, where sordid kisses should have been traded for slaps across the face. Or to love another man of my social status—one who would pay me to be his mistress. But the mysterious question you can’t answer is: Why choose you while there was another man? You knew full well how much I cared for you, even though I didn’t say a word. I gave in many times, letting you touch and caress, and I would have loved your kisses rather than your nuzzles. I would have taken you to my chest to show you how my love burned! But that was never possible. I could not betray your chaste mother, who took me into her care. She defended me against all malicious talk. Your faithful mother, who fought against all vile acts, didn’t blame me for the vices I had practiced. She knew the rumors had a basis in truth, but she turned a blind eye in order not to damage my pride. How could you ever imagine I would betray such a woman by having a relationship with her son? How could I look her in the eye again? Never…

Your mother forgave me, because she knew I had taken that course of action out of poverty. Why should I take you for a lover and imagine the piercing looks your mother might give me and how she would despise me? Should I take a twenty-two-year-old as a vending machine? Your mother spent years bringing you up, sacrificing everything for you. You might tell me she would never know, but I beg your pardon, that would be hogwash! She would see everything in our eyes. A mother’s heart is always her best guide. Then she would scorn you, and your relationship would be soured. What’s more, our affair would boil down to nothing more than two or three meetings. Albir! I don’t want to be a love toy to you. I’d rather prefer to keep to our courtly love.

I write you this letter as a clear and bold declaration, with no shame and no fear, to admit to what my husband would accuse me of. I trust you, and I won’t ask you to reply after reading this. I won’t even offer myself up as bait to lure you. Let it remain our secret, buried between our chests, a hidden pleasure in our pains…

A thousand kisses that life could never give us, and goodbye!

Shehata Ebaid (d. 1961) was an Egyptian writer of Levantine origin and a lesser-known yet distinctive voice in the early development of the Arabic short story. He was the brother of Issa Ebaid, a more prominent figure in the same field.  Unlike popular writers of his time who often leaned toward melodramatic or commercially driven narratives, Shehata Ebaid focused on realistic depictions of everyday life, psychological depth and social observation. His stories reflect a deep engagement with human character and the subtleties of emotional and social struggle. The present short story is taken from his collection A Painful Lesson, published in 1922.

Amr El-Zawawy is Professor of Linguistics and Translation, Faculty of Education, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt. He has also practiced written and simultaneous translation for more than 20 years now. He contributed important articles to different international scholarly journals, including but not limited to Babel (John Benjamins), Journal of Psycholinguistics, California Linguistic Notes and Advances in Language and Literary Studies. He published a number of books and translations, including Studies in Contrastive Linguistics and Stylistics (Novika, USA), Exploring the Cognitive Processes of Simultaneous Interpreting (Lexington Books, USA), Seminal Studies in Linguistics and Translation (Cambridge Scholars, UK), and Selections from Arabic Poetry (Kindle, Amazon).

Other stories in the Classic Short Fiction series, curated by Amr El-Zawawy:

Ibrahim Al-Mazni’s ‘Eve and the Viper’

Muhammed Taymour’s ‘The Eid Whistle’

Muhammad Taymour’s ‘A Boy Who Became a Man’

Marouan Abboud’s ‘Among the Problems of the Village’

Mahmud Taymour’s ‘The Grand Funeral’

Ibrahim Abdelkader Al-Mazni’s ‘Mimi’