Classic Short Fiction: ‘The Crown of Disgrace’
The Crown of Disgrace
By Ameen Rihani
Translated by Amr El-Zawawy
He did not say goodbye when he rose to leave. Neither did any of his companions seated around the square table—the one covered in green felt—lift their eyes toward him or utter a word, whether of blessing or of hostility.
One of them tapped the table with his fingertips; his face was yellowed with sleeplessness and strain. Another followed the first man’s example. A third flung the cards from his hand and added to the heap in the center the ivory marbles and the black, red, and white dice. The cards were gathered, shuffled, and dealt again. The game resumed. The dice began once more to move from the edges of the table toward its middle.
The second player was “burned with defeat,” yet he remained seated, watching the final round between his two companions.
Silence reigned as though the gambling room were a sanctuary—or an abandoned house that had been entered by thieves. Each of the players gripped his cards with rigid, hollow eyes and trembling hands. Each cast upon the other stolen, hostile glances—glances in which scrutiny mingled with predation. Each doubled the other’s stakes until scarcely any markers remained between them.
They sifted their fortunes in the cards they held. The first cast down a single card; the second cast down two. As the latter did so, he glanced sideways. Suspicion seized him at once. His fury flared, and he sprang to his feet, intent upon leaving.
“What’s the matter?” his companion asked.
“You’ve conspired against me,” he said, throwing down his cards.
“You’re mad.”
“And you have no honor.”
“Mind your language! By God, I wouldn’t sell my honor for all the wealth in the world.”
“You sold it tonight for twenty dollars. Shame on you.”
“A man like you doesn’t deserve to play with decent people.”
“And a man like you—”
He bent over the table to complete the insult with his hand, but the host intervened, reproaching and admonishing them.
“Shame on us, gentlemen. We ought to follow the example of Tawfiq Zaydoun, the gambler of noble spirit. When he loses, he’s silent; when he wins, he does not boast. Shame on you both.”
While he was rebuking them, and while each—having come to his senses—was counting his tokens, Tawfiq Zaydoun walked down the stairs. His head was bowed; his brow clouded. One hand was thrust into his empty pocket, and his burning soul seemed clenched within his fist.
What was his soul worth when he did not possess a single coin? What was he to do now, having exhausted every stratagem and, even then, found himself defeated? Where was he to carry his sinful, humiliated, blackened soul?
Such were the questions he muttered to himself as he left the house, cursing gambling and gamblers alike.
He wandered aimlessly through the city markets like a vessel without sail, tossed about by contrary winds. He stopped at a street corner and watched the processions pass before him like phantoms, their clamor sounding in his ears like the voices of demons. He lifted his head: the clock in the church tower was striking half past two after midnight.
Should he return to his room? Should he seek refuge in loneliness and darkness? Should he soothe himself with the balm of sleep?
No—no. A bullet that would hurry him to hell was better than this.
In truth, he preferred death. The thought of suicide crossed over his heart like a passing cloud. For a moment, he remained captive to dreadful fantasies, torn between sinful impulses that were not altogether devoid of a noble aim. Yet that noble aim was like a lamb among ravening wolves—or like an angel among the devils of his thoughts.
He stamped the ground with his foot, a curse escaping his lips. His demons beckoned to him: Follow us.
Humbled, he followed.
He descended into the underground railway and boarded the express train that cleaves the heart of the city—gliding like a serpent beneath its ribs. Tawfiq Zaydoun’s soul resembled that train, its tenebrific waves racing between faint yellow lights of honorable intention, which appeared and vanished like lightning—just as the blue and red tunnel lights flickered past while the train thundered and roared, its echo repeated by the thousands of iron pillars that stood beneath the city’s palaces.
He disembarked at the central station, crossed several streets, and halted before a door in one of them. He rang the bell.
After a moment, a young woman leaned out of the window and asked, “Who’s there?”
He whispered his name. With an impatient sigh, she pressed a button that released the door. She was wearing nothing but her nightgown when she received her friend.
Tawfiq did not greet her. He went straight into a room that was carpeted and furnished in a style that combined simplicity and luxury. He threw himself into a chair beside the piano, not knowing what to say.
The girl looked at him, astonished.
“Why have you come at this hour?”
“Because I…”
He stopped to light a cigarette.
“What has happened, my dear? Are you ill?”
“No. I am tired of life.”
“Tell me something new.”
“The stocks fell today. I lost all my money.”
Lucille smiled, still standing before him in her translucent robe.
“So you’ve come to joke?”
“This is no time for joking.”
“But how was I to know, my dear Tawfiq, that you were a man with a fortune?”
“Fortune? Fortune? A hundred dollars is a great fortune for a man like me. A hundred dollars may bring thousands.”
“Or may bring—”
He interrupted her.
“There are things I have not told you.”
“You’ve told me many things when you were in a state like this. Would you like a glass of whisky?”
“May God curse whisky! How are you today?”
“As you see. I slept early—and you’ve woken me early. That’s one of the rules of health.”
“And what concern is that to me? How are your finances?”
“Worse than yours, my dear.”
“You lie. Come—kiss me.”
“I’ll kiss you if you don’t insult me.”
“Then show me your purse. Has anyone visited you tonight?”
“I told you—I went to bed early. I swear by God—”
“Your oath means nothing to me. Show me your purse.”
The gambling house was thick with smoke and feverish tension. Cards slapped against the table like blows, coins clinked in nervous rhythms, and men leaned forward with burning eyes, as though fate itself were trapped between their fingers.
Among them sat Mansour.
His face, pale yet strained with stubborn resolve, betrayed neither triumph nor despair. Before him lay the last of his money — the final remnant of what had once been comfort, security, even dignity. His fingers trembled slightly, though he forced them still. He had told himself, again and again, that this would be the final round.
Fortune had mocked him all evening.
Each loss had not merely emptied his pockets but stripped something deeper—a layer of pride, a measure of restraint. Yet he remained seated, driven by that dangerous whisper that seduces every ruined gambler: one more hand, and all will be restored.
Across the table, his opponent smiled. It was a thin, knowing smile.
“Are you certain?” the man asked, almost kindly.
Mansour did not answer. He placed the remaining money forward.
The cards were dealt.
Silence swelled like a held breath. Outside, the night pressed heavily against the shuttered windows. Inside, the lamps flickered, casting wavering shadows across faces drawn by greed and desperation.
Mansour revealed his hand.
A murmur rippled across the table.
Then the opponent laid down his cards. Calmly, deliberately.
Stronger.
It was over.
The coins were gathered away from Mansour’s reach with quiet efficiency. No one spoke to him. The game resumed, indifferent, as though a man’s undoing were no more than an ordinary turn of play.
Mansour sat motionless.
Something within him had snapped—not loudly, not dramatically—but with the cold finality of a thread cut clean through. He rose slowly, the chair scraping against the floor with a harsh cry that seemed, for a fleeting second, to accuse the room.
No one looked at him.
He walked into the night.
*
Outside, the air was sharp and merciless. The streets stretched before him, dimly lit and nearly deserted. His footsteps echoed in hollow cadence, as if the city itself were repeating his failure.
He had nothing left.
Nothing—except the small pistol he carried concealed beneath his coat.
He had once purchased it for protection, in those early, uncertain days when he’d first arrived in this foreign land, believing the world to be hostile yet conquerable. Now it seemed to weigh against his side with new meaning.
His thoughts churned.
What awaited him at home? His wife’s patient eyes? The fragile trust she still clung to? The quiet sacrifices she had made so he might succeed?
He felt a tightening in his chest.
Shame rose within him, hot and suffocating. Not merely the shame of poverty, but the deeper humiliation of betrayal. He had gambled away not only money, but hope. Her hope.
A bitter laugh escaped him.
“Hope,” he muttered to the empty street. “What a fragile currency.”
He walked on, aimlessly at first, then with growing agitation. The pistol’s presence became insistent. An answer. A swift conclusion. An end to debt, to accusation, to the slow erosion of dignity.
But another voice—quieter, yet stubborn—resisted.
He quickened his pace.
Ahead, the railway tracks cut across the outskirts of the city like dark scars. The signal lamps glowed red in the distance. Somewhere far off, a train’s whistle pierced the night: long, mournful, approaching.
Mansour stopped.
The sound vibrated through him.
The train would be quick. Indifferent. Decisive.
He stepped closer to the tracks.
The earth trembled faintly beneath his shoes.
For a moment, he closed his eyes.
And in that darkness, a vision arose. Not of death, but of her face.
Not accusing.
Not angry.
Only wounded.
The whistle grew louder.
Mansour’s breath faltered.
He stood on the edge between movement and stillness, between despair and something he had not yet named.
The train’s light appeared in the distance.
Blinding.
The train thundered past.
Wind and dust lashed at Mansour’s face, tearing at his coat, roaring in his ears like a judgment pronounced by a rod of iron and fire. The ground shook violently beneath him. For one suspended instant, it would have taken no effort at all, only a step.
But he did not move.
The cars rushed by in a blur of light and shadow, then dwindled into darkness, leaving behind a silence heavier than the noise that had preceded it.
Mansour opened his eyes.
He was still alive.
His knees weakened, and he stepped back from the tracks as though withdrawing from a precipice he had only now understood. The pistol beneath his coat felt suddenly absurd—a childish instrument against the vast weight of what he carried.
He turned away.
*
The walk home felt longer than any journey he had ever made. Each step was deliberate now, no longer feverish but burdened. The night seemed less hostile than before—merely indifferent.
When he reached the narrow building where he lived, a faint light glowed from the small window upstairs.
She was awake.
For a moment, he remained at the door, unable to lift his hand. The disgrace he had tried to escape at the railway returned, not as fire this time, but as a cold and steady ache.
He entered quietly.
His wife rose at once from the table where she had been sitting. A sewing basket lay open before her; unfinished work rested in her lap. Her face, pale from waiting, brightened when she saw him. Not with joy exactly, but with relief.
“You’re late,” she said softly. “I was worried.”
He could not meet her eyes.
“I was…detained.”
She stepped closer, studying him. There was something in his expression, something altered.
“Mansour,” she said gently. “Is everything well?”
The question struck him like a blow. Everything well? What a simple arrangement of words for such ruin.
He removed his coat slowly and set it aside. The room was modest: a narrow bed, a small stove, two chairs, a table worn smooth by use. It was not poverty that shamed him, but what he had made of it.
“We have no money left,” he said at last.
She did not react immediately. The words settled between them.
“None?” she asked quietly.
“None.”
He waited for reproach, for tears, for accusation. Instead, she lowered her eyes, absorbing the truth in silence. When she spoke again, her voice was steady.
“Then we shall manage without.”
He stared at her.
“You don’t understand,” he insisted, almost harshly. “It is gone. All of it. The savings. What we set aside for rent. For food. I thought…I thought I could double, triple it.”
Her gaze lifted now, and in it he saw not anger, but pain. And it wasn’t for herself, but for him.
“You gambled,” she said.
He nodded.
The confession seemed to drain him of the last of his defenses. He expected condemnation; instead, she drew in a slow breath and sat down.
For a long moment neither spoke.
At last she said, “We came here to build a life. Not to chase fortune.”
Her words were not sharp, yet they cut more deeply than any possible accusation.
“I know,” he murmured.
Silence returned, but it was different now. This was not the silence of concealment, but of a shared burden.
Then she did something unexpected.
She rose, went to a small wooden box near the bed, and opened it. From within she removed a velvet pouch. She brought it to the table and untied it carefully.
Gold glimmered in the lamplight.
Her jewelry.
The modest pieces she had brought with her when they married: bracelets, earrings, a thin necklace. Tokens of her past, of her family, of the dignity she had carried into this uncertain future.
He felt his throat tighten.
“No,” he said immediately. “You will not—”
“We will sell these,” she said calmly. “It will cover what we owe. And it’ll be enough to begin again.”
He stared at the small heap of gold as though it were a verdict.
“I have already taken too much from you.”
She met his gaze steadily.
“You are my husband,” she replied. “Your failure is not separate from me. Nor is your redemption.”
The word lingered in the air.
Redemption.
Something stirred within him—not pride, not defiance—but the faint and fragile outline of responsibility.
He reached out, not for the gold, but for her hand.
She allowed him to take it.
Outside, the city remained restless and vast. Within the narrow room, beneath the trembling lamplight, a different struggle had begun. This was quieter than the roar of the train, yet far more decisive.
Mansour lowered his head.
For the first time that night, he felt the full weight of what he had nearly done—and of what he might still.
*
Morning came without the usual ceremony.
A thin gray light filtered through the window, revealing the modest room in all its honesty. The lamplight that had softened the night’s confession was gone; nothing now concealed the cracked furniture, the narrowness of their means, the stark reality of what lay ahead.
Mansour had not slept.
He sat upright on the edge of the bed, listening to the steady rhythm of his wife’s breathing. She had fallen asleep near dawn, exhaustion overtaking her quiet strength. Even in sleep, her face bore traces of strain.
On the table, the velvet pouch remained where she had left it.
He rose slowly and approached it.
The gold danced in the morning light with an almost mocking brightness. Each piece held memory: a wedding day, a mother’s embrace, a farewell at the port before departure to this foreign land. They were not merely ornaments; they were fragments of identity.
And he had driven her to surrender them.
His hand hovered above the pouch but did not touch it.
A sudden, violent revulsion toward himself surged within him. Not the theatrical despair of the railway tracks, not the fever of gambling loss. but a sober, enduring disgrace. It was heavier, because it was clear.
He crossed the room and opened the small drawer where he kept the pistol.
For a moment he regarded it.
The metal gleamed dully in the morning light. How close he had come to choosing its language—a single, irreversible statement.
He picked it up.
Its weight no longer tempted him. Instead, it accused.
“This,” he murmured, “is cowardice.”
He wrapped the pistol carefully in cloth and placed it at the bottom of the drawer, beneath old papers and documents. Then he shut the drawer firmly, as though sealing away more than an object.
When his wife stirred awake, she found him standing by the window.
“You’re up early,” she said gently.
“I won’t sell them,” he replied without turning.
She understood at once.
There was no protest in her voice, only concern. “Mansour—”
“No.” He faced her now. “I have taken enough. I will not take your past to pay for my weakness.”
She studied him in silence.
“What will you do?” she asked.
“I will find work. Any work. Honest work.” His voice did not rise, but it steadied. “If we must begin from nothing, then we begin from nothing. But not from disgrace.”
The word hung between them.
Disgrace.
He felt it still, like a crown pressed upon his brow, invisible yet heavy. The disgrace of the gambling house. The humiliation of loss. The nearly fatal step at the railway.
A crown of disgrace.
But perhaps, he thought, even a crown could be removed.
His wife rose and joined him at the window. The street below was stirring to life—shopkeepers lifting shutters, laborers walking briskly, carts rattling across uneven stones. The city did not pause for individual ruin.
“Very well,” she said quietly. “We begin again.”
There was no heroism in her tone, only resolve.
By midday, Mansour stood outside a warehouse near the docks. The air smelled of salt, tar, and sweat. Men moved in and out carrying crates, shouting instructions in accents from many lands.
He hesitated only a moment before approaching the foreman.
“I’m looking for work.”
The foreman glanced at him—at his hands, uncalloused compared to the laborers’, and at his clothes, respectable but worn.
“Can you carry?” the man asked bluntly.
“Yes.”
It was a simple answer, yet it marked a threshold more decisive than that of the railway tracks.
The work was grueling.
Crates bit into his shoulders; ropes burned his palms. By afternoon his muscles trembled with unfamiliar strain. Sweat soaked his shirt, and dust clung to his skin.
But with each load he carried, something shifted within him.
The humiliation remained, yet it was changing shape. It was no longer the corrosive disgrace of deceit and cowardice. It was the humbling weight of consequence honestly borne.
When the foreman handed him a small payment at the end of the day, the coins felt heavier than any he had lost at the gambling table.
These had not been won by chance.
They had been earned.
He closed his hand around them.
As he walked home beneath the fading light, exhaustion tugged at every limb — yet beneath it stirred something unfamiliar that had been there since the previous night.
Not triumph.
Not pride.
It was dignity—fragile, newly forming, and infinitely more valuable than the fortune he had chased.
Ahead, the narrow window of his home glowed once more.
This time, he did not hesitate at the door.
Evening fell with mute serenity. The city, having exhausted itself through the day, now breathed in soft shades of amber and gray. From his modest room, Mansour watched the street as lamps flickered to life, casting long, hesitant shadows across the uneven stones.
Inside, the small apartment was quiet. His wife sat at the table, cleaning the few dishes left from their meager meal. Mansour approached, setting down the day’s wages. The coins glinted dully in the lamplight, unassuming yet significant.
“They are honest,” he said softly. “Every one of them.”
She smiled, a trace of relief and pride in her eyes. “Then they are worth more than all the gold in the world.”
He shook his head. “Not more. But…they are ours. Ours without compromise, without surrendering who we are.”
The velvet pouch remained untouched, still containing the gold she had tried to protect. It sat like a relic, a memory of disgrace transformed into lesson. Mansour realized that the crown of disgrace, though once heavy, had not broken him. It had forced him to confront himself, to distinguish between weakness and moral failure.
Night deepened. Outside, the city murmured, a lullaby of distant voices, carts, and the occasional shout. Mansour and his wife sat together, silent, yet not burdened by words. There was a calm born of acceptance, of facing one’s faults and choosing integrity despite the cost.
In the days that followed, work continued at the docks. Mansour’s hands grew calloused; his body ached in ways that were unfamiliar yet honest. Each crate carried and each coin earned reinforced a simple truth: dignity is forged, not inherited; respect is earned, not taken.
And in this humble labor, Mansour discovered a freedom that fortune had never granted him. The fear of exposure, the panic of loss, the despair of near-suicide—all had diminished. He had confronted the crown of disgrace, and it had receded. Not removed entirely, for the past does not vanish. But reshaped, its weight now a reminder, not a burden.
One evening, as he closed the warehouse doors and walked home, he glanced at his reflection in the puddles along the street. The man staring back was tired, worn, yet unbroken. His eyes carried the quiet satisfaction of survival and the courage of moral renewal.
Entering the apartment, he found his wife waiting. She reached for his hand, and they sat together, listening to the night.
“No more shortcuts,” Mansour said, his voice steady. “No more borrowed courage. Only what we earn, only what we can face together.”
She nodded, her fingers interlaced with his. Outside, the city slumbered, indifferent and eternal. Inside, a small household had reclaimed its peace.
The crown of disgrace remained a memory, a lesson engraved into conscience, shaping but not crushing. And Mansour, for the first time in many nights, felt the quiet glow of redemption.
Ameen Rihani (1876–1940) was a Lebanese writer born in Freike who emigrated to New York City as a child. Working in his father’s business, he educated himself through Western literature, including William Shakespeare and Walt Whitman. After studying law and recovering from illness in Lebanon, he deepened his knowledge of Arabic literature. Writing in both Arabic and English, he helped bridge Eastern and Western cultures and introduced prose poetry to modern Arabic literature. Rihani produced influential works in both Arabic and English that explored philosophy, politics, and cultural dialogue. His English writings include The Book of Khalid, one of the earliest Arab-American novels, and The Kings of Arabia. In Arabic, he wrote works such as الريحانيات and هتاف الأودية. Through essays, travel writing, and prose poetry, Rihani promoted reform and helped shape modern Arabic literature.
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), Selections from Arabic Poetry (Kindle, Amazon), and The Arab Translator’s Manual of Semantic Difficulties (Cambridge Scholars, UK).
Other stories in the Classic Short Fiction series, curated by Amr El-Zawawy:
Mohammed Hussein Heikal’s The Atonement of Love
Mohammed Hussein Heikal’s ‘The Second Family’
Ibrahim Abdelkader Al-Mazni’s ‘On New Year’s Eve’
Mahmoud Saif al-Din al-Irani‘s ‘The Last Bullet’
Mahmoud Saif al-Din al-Irani’s ‘My Secret Picture’
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’