Doaa shook her head. “Bassem knows nothing about me, and in any case I’m not interested. Please let him know politely,” she said, thinking that would be the end of it. But deep down, Doaa was annoyed with Maisam, thinking that he was the one encouraging Bassem to propose so quickly. She felt put off by what seemed to her like a scheme that her cousin had concocted. She didn’t speak to Maisam for a week after their discussion.
Maisam went home and told his friend what had happened, gently suggesting that maybe he should look for someone else. Doaa was set in her ways, and she had made it clear that she wasn’t interested. Bassem took the rejection hard. According to everyone who knew him, his actions came straight from his heart. He was deeply passionate, whether fighting for his country or falling in love, but he was also fiercely protective of the people he cared about, and from the moment he first saw Doaa, he wanted to take care of her. He had arrived in Egypt alone and in grief, and Doaa was the first glimmer of light in the dark of his refugee life. In her he saw a hope for the future. He was immediately convinced that she was the one person who could make him happy. He’d never felt that way about a girl before. He was also confounded by her refusal. Doaa was also the first girl to ever turn him down. In the past girls had always approached him. He left Maisam’s apartment that day upset.
Over the next few days, Bassem did nothing but sit around the apartment feeling depressed. Maisam and Shifaa did their best to console him, urging him to be patient. He couldn’t expect a girl he’d just met to accept him right away. However, Maisam genuinely believed that Doaa and Bassem would make a good match, so he offered to speak to Hanaa on Bassem’s behalf. She could surely talk some sense into her daughter.
Hanaa was taken aback by the news at first, but then reconfirmed for Maisam that her daughter was not interested in being engaged to anyone. However, she did promise to talk to Doaa about Bassem. But when she brought up the subject, Doaa was annoyed. “I already told Maisam that I have no interest in his friend, Mama, and on top of that, no interest in marriage either!” Doaa had other things on her mind. She was working long hours to support the family, and the rest of her time was occupied with contacting her friends back home for updates on the situation in Syria. And she had her own dreams for the future that she hoped to get back on track.
“How can I get engaged to him, Mama? I didn’t leave our country just to get married without finishing my studies.”
“Of course, my dear.” Hanaa offered Doaa a hug. “I understand and support you.”
Relieved to have her mother on her side, Doaa considered the matter closed. Bassem was not the first man to propose to her, and besides, she didn’t think that he was serious about her anyway. The other men who had proposed had not been serious either; they had all given up right away once she had said no, and she’d gone right back to her work at the sewing factory.
Bassem, however, did not give up; instead he began to form a plan. He convinced Maisam to give him Hanaa’s phone number so he could speak to her directly. The first time Bassem phoned, he explained to Hanaa that he just wanted her to have his number in case she ever needed anything. But then, he started calling her daily, sometimes asking about Doaa, other times merely inquiring about the family. Hanaa liked Bassem, and the more she got to know him, the more her sympathy for him grew. He was smart, strong, devoted, and good-hearted—just like Doaa. Hanaa began to think that he was the perfect match for her headstrong daughter. She knew Doaa was stubborn and that it was hard for her to trust people. When Doaa was a little girl, that obstinacy and fear had kept her from making new friends, and now Hanaa feared that it would keep her from opening up to the possibility of love.
Three months after Bassem and Doaa first met, he approached Hanaa. “I saw Doaa coming home from work, and she looked so exhausted. Please get her to stop working,” he pleaded. “I will give you whatever she was earning to make up for it.”
Hanaa had heard about how generous Bassem was with other Syrians, paying their expenses and buying them things that they needed. In the refugee community, people took care of one another, and Hanaa was touched by Bassem’s offer to help the family and Doaa, but when Doaa found out, she was furious. She hated that someone thought she was weak; it was crucial to her that people knew that she could take care of herself and her family and that she didn’t need anyone’s help to do so. When Hanaa told her of Bassem’s offer, Doaa was angry even though she knew that she was more than exhausted. She was having dizzy spells almost daily and fainted regularly. She often found it difficult to eat after a long day of work, but despite all this, she had no intention of accepting handouts. Bassem’s offer made her all the more determined to carry on with her job.
“I feel fine,” she insisted, trying to ignore the fainting episodes, constant dizziness, and the depression that was beginning to creep up on her.
It seemed that everyone in Gamasa knew that Bassem was in love with Doaa, and that she had rejected his proposal. He soon became known around town as Romeo Bassem. Doaa’s sisters liked Bassem and ended up taking his side. They tried to persuade Doaa to change her mind and accept his proposal. Even the owner of the factory where Doaa worked interrupted her ironing one day and asked, “Why don’t you want to marry Bassem?” All this just made Doaa more entrenched in refusing him. She hated being told what to do.
“I cannot love him,” she told her family. “And, anyway, I don’t want to get married outside of Syria.”
Doaa’s outright refusal of Bassem worried Hanaa. She feared that Doaa’s fatigue and depression were making her shut out any possibility of love or happiness. Hanaa’s once ebullient daughter was now always grim and serious. Hanaa knew that she could never force Doaa into anything, but felt a responsibility as Doaa’s mother to push past her stubborn daughter’s barriers on this. Hanaa had gotten to know Bassem well by now from all his phone calls and walks in the neighborhood, and she trusted his sincerity. She began to get annoyed with Doaa’s obstinacy.
“He is Syrian!” Hanaa countered. “And he is a kind person who wants to help you, Doaa. Please open your heart to him.”
Doaa felt that everyone was ganging up on her. She didn’t see why she should accept Bassem’s proposal just because people thought she should. When she found out that he had found a nice ground-floor apartment in his building for her family to consider moving into, she felt as if this were all part of some big plot to make her accept him. She continued to refuse him and to make the best life that she could in Egypt on her own. But that life was about to get much harder.
Doaa and her family hadn’t been paying close attention to the Egyptian news since they were too busy watching the daily horror show that was the destruction of their own country. But on June 30, 2013, the first anniversary of the inauguration of President Morsi, mass demonstrations in Cairo and Alexandria against his rule had reached a level that they couldn’t ignore. Growing frustration and disenchantment with the government brought millions of people to the streets, complaining that the revolution that had brought down President Mubarak two years before had now been hijacked. Living standards were deteriorating, secular politicians were being alienated from their own government, and Morsi’s draft constitution had an Islamist slant that troubled much of the population. Egyptians began to worry their country could unravel violently the same way that Syria had. The protests in Egypt continued for four days. Then, on July 3, 2013, eight months after the Al Zamels had arrived in Damietta, Mohamed Morsi was ousted by the army. General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi orchestrated the coup that swept Morsi out of power, and overnight, attitudes toward Syrian refugees in the country changed, swept up in the same wave that overthrew Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. Since Morsi had been welcoming to Syrian refugees, people believed they were part of his movement and were his supporters.
Doaa’s family could do nothing but watch as Egyptian news anchors began to label Syrians as potential terrorists who were allied with the extremists that were emerging in Syria. And if they weren’t terror
ists, then they were considered Morsi supporters. Allegations arose that the Muslim Brotherhood had paid Syrian refugees to join demonstrations in support of Morsi. Youssef el-Husseini, a well-known state TV talk show host, delivered an ominous message to Syrians: “If you are a man, you should return to your country and solve your problem there. If you interfere in Egypt, you will be beaten by thirty shoes.” In Middle Eastern culture, hitting someone with a shoe is considered to be belittling, and to Syrians, hearing this threat was both frightening and insulting. Egypt’s open-door policy came to an end with an announcement that a visa would be required for any Syrian to enter the country, and any Syrians already in Egypt who didn’t have the proper residency paperwork would be arrested and possibly deported.
The atmosphere in Egypt for Syrians changed dramatically during this time. They got no more friendly greetings in the streets, just cold stares. The aid they used to receive from the local Muslim Brotherhood community dried up, and instead locals in the street told them that they were ruining the country.
The girls began to get harassed whenever they left the house. One day, Doaa was walking to the supermarket with her mother when a man on a motorbike slowed down and rode close to them. He leaned over, almost touching Doaa, and taunted, “Hey, girl, would you marry me?” Then to Hanaa, he called, “Would you let me marry her? She is very beautiful.” He leered at Doaa, ogling her body up and down and making kissing sounds. Doaa could smell his sour breath and recoiled from him, disgusted and afraid. The man circled them twice on his motorbike, then drove away, laughing at their fear. Doaa and her family had been aware that sexual harassment was pervasive in Egypt but had never experienced it themselves, and now it seemed that it was predominantly directed at Syrian women. Doaa and her sisters no longer felt safe in their neighborhood. What had once been a country of refuge was now just one more place of menace for Doaa and her family.
Bassem, meanwhile, had grown desperate in his love for Doaa. One day, one of his flatmates came to the Al Zamel apartment to tell Hanaa that he thought Bassem was going to kill himself if he couldn’t marry Doaa and that he’d seen a bottle of poison in Bassem’s room. When Hanaa went to check on him, at the door he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Bassem had become pale and thin, and Hanaa pushed her way past him and into his room and found the bottle of rat poison.
Furious, she scolded him, “You can’t do this to yourself.” She waved the bottle in his face. “Men can’t be like this.”
He looked down at the ground, ashamed. He told her he didn’t want to live if he couldn’t be with Doaa. “I’m going back to Syria to fight if she does not accept my proposal. There’s nothing else here for me.”
From the quiet certainty about him when he told her this, Hanaa believed that he would actually do it. Bassem already felt like a son to her, and she couldn’t bear the thought of his dying in the war. She tried to encourage him to have faith: “Be patient! Maybe she’ll change her mind, but in the meantime you must be strong.”
Hanaa took the bottle of rat poison with her when she left, promising to check back in on him, then promptly threw the bottle away.
When Hanaa returned home that evening, she sat Doaa down in the common room and described to Doaa the lengths Bassem was prepared to go to convince her of his love, including taking his own life. She took Doaa’s cold hands in hers. Doaa’s hands were always icy when she felt exhausted or worked too hard. “When a man humiliates himself for a woman, it means he truly loves her,” Hanaa said. “Will you at least think about accepting his engagement?”
Hearing about Bassem’s desperation made Doaa feel guilty. She didn’t want him to be miserable, but she also didn’t like the pressure his actions put her under. “I don’t deserve this,” she told her mother, “and I don’t want his love.” Saja, overhearing, interjected, “I wish someone would do that for me. He must really love you.” But Doaa ignored her sister. She refused to be pressured or cajoled into accepting any man.
The following day, when Doaa left the apartment, she was surprised to see Bassem dressed in a new suit with his hair freshly groomed, smelling of aftershave. “Doaa,” he said, “I know what I did was wrong. You don’t deserve that kind of pressure. Please forgive me.”
At that moment Doaa finally began to soften toward Bassem, wondering if it was only her own stubbornness that kept her from liking him. As she accepted his apology, she found herself tongue-tied and as shy as she had been as a little girl. All she could bring herself to say was “Thank you for coming.”
A few days later, one sweltering July evening, Doaa suddenly felt faint. The next thing she knew her feet had left the ground and her head knocked against the floor. She didn’t know at first that when Hanaa found her unconscious at home alone, the first person she thought to call was Bassem. He instructed her to go to a private hospital. “Avoid a public hospital at all costs,” he warned. “I’ll cover any expenses.” The public hospitals were notorious for providing terrible care, and sometimes no care at all; patients could wait for hours without being seen. So Hanaa and her sister, Feryal, who was visiting at the time, carefully led a half-conscious Doaa to a taxi and gave the address for a private clinic. Bassem arrived shortly after. He bluffed his way inside, telling the hospital staff that he was family, and found his way into her room. He immediately took charge. He found a pharmacy and bought the medication that Doaa needed. The doctor told the family that Doaa’s health was precarious. She was too thin and frail, and in such a weakened state, she was vulnerable to any number of dangerous illnesses. When he told the family she would need to rest and be cared for, and that her health would need to be monitored carefully, Bassem insisted that he would do whatever was needed to take care of Doaa.
“I will pay for Doaa to see the best doctors in Alexandria, or even Cairo. I’ll use all my savings to make sure she’s well,” he told her mother.
Something inside Doaa shifted when she awoke and heard from her mother what Bassem had done for her. She heard from her sisters that he had been pacing nervously in the waiting room, asking a lot of concerned questions, while they waited for her diagnosis. Doaa lay in her hospital bed thinking about the young man who was willing to go to such lengths for her. His dedication convinced Doaa that his affection was genuine. She was used to being the one who took care of people, not the one being taken care of. A new feeling began to stir inside her, something she’d never felt before. For the first time since she’d been forced to flee her homeland, she felt her heart begin to open. What she was feeling though was more than compassion. Fondness, perhaps? Gratitude? It couldn’t be love. She was certain of that.
The day Doaa was released from the hospital, about an hour after she arrived home, Hanaa’s phone rang. It was Bassem. He asked to speak to Doaa. Doaa surprised herself by how eagerly she pulled the phone from her mother’s hand to her own ear. “I just want to say thank you,” she said shyly, then handed the phone back to her mother.
Not long afterward, Doaa returned to work, in spite of the doctor’s warning. She still felt responsible for taking care of her family and wanted to contribute. While she felt safe with her Syrian employer, the new anti-Syrian attitude in Egypt deeply affected her. Her father was losing clients at the barbershop he had begun working in, and with the added stress, she started feeling lethargic, sleeping a lot and, when awake, staring into space thinking of how their suffering had doubled: They had endured the war in Syria and now the Egyptian people were rejecting them. One night when she couldn’t sleep, she watched her sleeping family, all the while feeling crushed by anxiety and despair. There is no future for us, she thought. No matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t give her family a future. She felt the weight of the world on her thin shoulders and it kept her up all night.
One day, she fainted at work, and when she awoke in the public hospital, the doctor informed her that she had severe anemia and told her that she had to stay home for at least one month, eat well, and relax.
Doaa reluctantly took time off work to fol
low the doctor’s orders, but during that time she had no appetite. She didn’t care about getting healthy again. From her balcony, she could see Bassem leave for work at the hair salon in the morning and return in the evening. Her sisters told her stories about how when he saw them in the street, he would buy them small gifts and always ask about Doaa.
While all the women in the house and many neighbors knew about Bassem’s feelings for Doaa, Shokri somehow remained oblivious. Hanaa and the girls had kept the drama from him—but he knew Bassem and often mentioned how much he liked him. Hanaa was becoming increasingly impatient with Doaa—and concerned. She didn’t tell Doaa about Bassem’s plan to return to Syria to fight, but she fretted about it and increased the pressure on Doaa to accept him. She told Doaa that her poor health was probably caused by her stubbornness, and that Bassem could bring her happiness and take care of her. Hanaa implored her to think about the engagement again, to open her heart, and to pray if it helped her, then to make a decision once and for all.
Doaa did pray for help. She knew her mother only wanted what was best for her, and she didn’t fully understand why the thought of accepting Bassem upset her so much. She asked Allah what course she should take. Night after night, she prayed, but no answer came.
One night, Hanaa called Doaa over to sit beside her. Looking uncharacteristically unstable and weary, Hanaa asked point-blank, “Why don’t you like Bassem? He’s a great guy and he supports us.” Doaa knew that her mother was right and couldn’t give her a good answer; instead she looked away embarrassed. Hanaa took Doaa’s chin in her hand and forced her to meet her eyes. “Enough is enough,” she stated urgently. Doaa didn’t quite understand what, but she could tell something was unnerving her mother.
A few hours later, when Doaa got ready for bed, she knelt for her prayers, then called out to her mother in the next bedroom to say her usual good-night. When she was met with silence, she called out again. Her mother always answered her, but not this time. A sense of panic and dread washed over her as Doaa quickly got to her feet and hurried to her parents’ room, pounding her cold bare feet on the hard floor. She found her mother sitting in a trancelike state with her hand over her eyes, trembling uncontrollably and breathing harshly. Doaa shook her father awake, and together they carried Hanaa out the apartment door and into the street to hail a cab, while Hanaa moaned softly and could barely stand.
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea Page 10