The Yacoubian Building

“[…] with his celebrated cigar, which, in his glory days, was Cuban deluxe but is now of the foul-smelling, tightly packed, low-quality local kind.” 

The audience’s introduction to Zaki Bey focuses, at first, on his outward appearance. Though he has many lavish affectations, the description of the cigar most accurately describes Zaki Bey’s position in life: He is a man who has seen his wealth (both inherited and earned) slowly slip away. The quality of his cigars has tumbled from the very best to the very worst; those around him have noticed this fall, but Zaki Bey himself insists on retaining the affectations and luxuries to which he has become accustomed, even if he can no longer afford the most expensive of them.

“The third pleasure is sex, in which the people of the roof revel and which they see nothing wrong with discussing frankly so long as it is of a sort sanctioned by religion.”

At this stage of the novel, two distinct worlds have been shown: that of Zaki Bey, who occupies one of the large apartments in the building, and the world of those who live on the roof, occupying its small storage rooms. Though they are materially different, these different walks of life are bound together by a love of sex—not just the physical act of sex, but the pleasure taken in talking about the act in intimate detail. Even across economic lines, the people of the Yacoubian Building have a great deal in common.