“Do you like what you see?”
Aisha turned, startled. It was the Madam, who stood in the shadowy corridor. Aisha had not seen her since that first day, when she entered the house. The woman moved toward her, with her ponderous frame, and stared searchingly at her. “You’re still pale,” she told Aisha, “and not very strong. Your body needs to fill out a bit. Then we’ll be able to train you, and you’ll be ready to begin working.”
Aisha felt her throat go dry. She tried to speak without betraying the tremor in her voice. “I can’t do that,” she said. “I want to thank you for all you’ve done to help me . . . but I can’t . . .”
“Nonsense. I know you’re an educated girl, that you speak the language of the English, and that you used to work for the Leader. Nabawiyya has told me a great deal about you. But in your present circumstances, you’re better off with this kind of work. And who knows? Perhaps one day you’ll be a madam, like me.”
A stabbing pain flooded Aisha through and through. “Impossible,” she said, “I could never touch a man or let a man come near me. It would kill me.”
The Madam came closer to her and put her hand on her shoulder in an attempt to still the tremors that rocked her. Aisha could smell the fragrance of her heavy perfume and hear the whisper of her trinkets. “The first time,” said the Madam, “you were the weaker party. It’s different here—you’ll always be the stronger one: a benefit that a woman can enjoy only in our profession. Men come to us submissively. They leave their arrogance and pride at the door, pay us their money, and then disport themselves before us like buffoons. They do what we tell them to do, and at the end of the night they weep upon our shoulders and beg us to keep their secrets and conceal their failures. You are not the first to fall prey to their treachery—all these girls have shed their blood in that little spare room, but that was their redemption: never again would they be controlled by members of that sex, with its filthy ways. Perhaps you will not be able to avenge yourself upon the man who wronged you, but you will exact your revenge upon every sort of man.”
She paused, breathing hard with the effort of so much talking. Aisha bit her lip. She did not want to seem rude or ungrateful; she had not yet given thought to where else she might go but, be that as it might, she knew there was something waiting for her other than simply to become one of the working girls of this house, a pale point of light at the end of this dim corridor. With a shudder, she exclaimed once more, “I can’t—I can’t!”
The woman drew Aisha into her arms; all at once she seemed to her to be an artless little girl—the girl she herself had failed to raise and protect. “I won’t force you,” she said. “In order to take any pleasure in this exhausting profession, you must choose it for yourself.”
Releasing her, she took Aisha’s hand and led her to a small couch. She seated her there and sat down opposite her. She reached up and brushed away the tears that had sprung from her eyes.
“Listen to me,” she said. “You won’t be like these girls. You’re different from other girls. All of them are of peasant stock, or were ignorant servant girls. They can’t read or write. But you—you can help me. You can intercede in the conflicts that arise between the girls and the soldiers at arms who frequent this house—the English, the Australians, even the Indians. You won’t have to lay hands on a man, and no man will touch you unless you want him to.”
Aisha could not speak. She threw her arms around the Madam and embraced her once more. “You’ve been so kind to me!” she said.
“It’s nothing. It’s just that you remind me of the daughter I lost. Her father took her, and brought her somewhere far away from me. You’ll be free. I won’t press you, after all you’ve been through.”
Slowly, and without pressure from anyone, Aisha entered the world of the red-light district. Her days passed one upon the other within the walls of the house until her memories of the outside world paled. She did not become one of the girls, but she became part of the web of their life. She knew that moments of joy were few, and days of grief were long. From behind the barrier of the latticed windows she followed the women’s nightly revels, their temporary intoxication with the men’s lust for them. But once the colors adorning their faces had run together, their individual features would vanish, and they would take on a kind of uniformity. During the few daylight hours, they seemed like individuals, poor and rootless, each with her own misery, her own wound that refused to heal.
The Madam inducted her into the system of primitive interdependencies that she had devised. She knew men from the police station near the house, who would pick no quarrel with the customers, and would disregard complaints and charges brought against those customers; she knew how much she must give them each week, what was the price of a high-ranking officer and that of a patrolman who loitered about the walls each night. She also knew the protection fees exacted by the neighborhood strong men; she knew who was admitted to the house at no charge and for whom the prettiest girls were reserved. She dealt with wagon drivers, food and drink vendors, drug dealers, and sellers of medical supplies, perfumes, cosmetics, and antidotes for syphilis and gonorrhea. It was astounding that the Madam could manage on her own to keep all these things in order, relying only on her memory, without the aid of written records. She could not read or write well, but her inborn talent enabled her to deal effectively with Pashas and cabmen alike. With practice she had come to realize that her customers were of different types and classes; they might share the same woman or pass through the same bed, but it was impossible that they should sit together to socialize or exchange pleasantries. For this reason she set up a schedule for every type of customer.
There was a night for the strong men, who came to the house in their finespun clothes made of cotton and silk, carrying sticks and cudgels and were accustomed to smoking sweet tobacco and hashish, and to drinking barley beer; their designated night was always a raucous one, a meeting of all the strong men who were constantly kicking up rows in the narrow lanes, but came to agreements within the house about dividing up shares and levying protection fees; the girls sealed these deals with their bodies.
There was a night for soldiers at arms. They would arrive thirsty, and drink great quantities of whiskey and cognac; they would be ravenous to bed any woman, and would wander the house naked all night long.
There was a night for effendis and dignitaries, during which there would be little sex, little wine, and much lassitude—a dull night, on which the Madam took care to engage a singer from the entertainment centers of the Rod-el-Farag marketplace. The singer would moan away, repeating the same words over and over, until everyone grew dizzy with the monotony of her voice and the effects of cheap wine.
Out of all the days of the week, only on Friday did the house open its doors at noon, to receive students from the upper-division schools. It was a pleasant day, on which the only drink to be had was mild beer, and the girls were offered at a discount. But the clientele inspired a great deal of merriment and frivolity, as well as disputes, for they all thought they had fallen in love on their first sexual encounter. The girls liked this day. They wandered among the students, strutting like queens, enjoying the dazzled expressions in the eyes of those young men. Even Aisha herself would come down to the main hall and sit with the girls. It was all a bit childish and silly; the students would climax before even attaining the edge of the bed, and return to sit with the crowd, hiding their embarrassment amid the girls’ reassurances that what had happened was quite normal, and they would do better the next time.
One strange day—noon on a Friday—she saw Mukhtar sitting among them. It was not the Mukhtar who had come to hate her and his country and resolved to go away after he came out of prison, but the Mukhtar she had first met on the steps of al-Liwa: quiet, dreamy, and confident, as if he grasped in his fist the mud of first creation. He was a slender youth and tall, like the real Mukhtar, of a rather dark complexion. His hair was thick and a bit coarse, and he had the same thin little beard and
long, supple fingers—and he was a student at the School of Fine Arts. His name, though, was not Mukhtar, and he showed no sign of recognition on seeing her face. All the same, she kept staring at him in fascination and longing. Why had time not stopped at that long-ago moment? Why had her infatuation not been consummated with the first kiss he gave her?
The youth was talking to her, while she gazed at him with her eyes misted over. She let him hold her hand and entwine his fingers with hers—his grip was gentle and warm. The girls watched her from a distance, and whispered under their breath. They grew still, so as not to rouse her from her trance. The young man’s touch had sent her to some other, distant world, bygone days never to be retrieved. She came to herself when she felt his lips upon her face. He had pulled her to him in a bold move, so that she was fully in his embrace, but when she smelled his breath she realized that this was not Mukhtar. Her whole body convulsed, and was overtaken by stabbing pain. She pushed him away so forcefully that he fell to the floor. She stood up in a panic and fled across the hall, not regaining her composure until she was back in her room and had shut the door behind her.
The house itself was no longer a secure place to hide. It could not keep at a distance the tumultuous events of the outside world. The dream disappeared, the one that had been inspired by the glow of the candles and the exhalations of desire. It was the night designated for the neighborhood strong men, and the house was preparing for it with mounds of hashish and bottles of barley beer mixed with orange-flower water, while the girls readied themselves for the candelabrum dance. The men came, with their vanity and their curled moustaches, leaving their clubs and cudgels at the door. They removed slippers and shoes, and sat like sultans at their ease. Aisha, as usual, was in her room off to the side, updating the account books and sorting out which girls would go with which men, so as to forestall any sort of dispute. She had become familiar with each girl’s stamina; there were some who could manage only one round a night, and others who pressed for extra appointments. The sound of drumbeats and cymbals rose, and it seemed as though no one realized that the Great War, which had engulfed all of creation for long years, had come to an end, and that there were thousands of soldiers who had been awaiting this moment.
The war had begun with an abundance of sentiment. Poets and young men dreamed of a war that would last only a few weeks, and lead everyone to better days, a finer world. But the war had devolved into a grisly bloodbath, savagery such as the soldiers had never seen. Not since the Stone Age had humankind known anything like it. The slaughter continued, without achieving anything, for some fourteen hundred days, during which millions of men huddled in trenches filled with mud and snow and rats; they ate pig meat and smelled like pigs. Poison gas was used for the first time; hundreds of bodies were left to rot, strung on barbed wire, and no one dared to risk getting near them so as to bury them. The great guns fired thousands of shells, reducing cultivated land and small villages to immense pits resembling the craters of volcanoes, destroying bridges and dams, and turning vast areas into mires flooded with putrid water. Every side killed its hostages and imposed blockades on entire cities, until their inhabitants starved to death. The war went on until no one was dreaming of victory any longer. Whispers of a call to retreat and a concession of defeat turned to shouts of anger, and in the end millions fell and died, while all the vultures that had run the world also fell—those who had arrogated to themselves the divine right to rule. Shamed, these instruments of war withdrew, leaving all the rest to their own devices.
The soldiers had been waiting for the moment in which the bells would ring, signaling an end to the butchery, so that they could plunge into that ultimate refuge, that house situated in the red-light district—they craved release; they wanted to make certain that traces of the will to live still resided within them. They poured into the network of corridors and arrived at the main hall, and the strong men stationed at the door could not stop them. They entered the hall, panting, desert sand still clinging to their garments. They had not seen active duty, because the real war had not reached them, but the long days of waiting and of sleeping in foul trenches amid the desert rats had stirred up the water of life in their veins. The strong men had smoked all the hashish, drunk all the bottles of barley beer and orange-blossom water, only to find themselves suddenly surrounded by all these dusty faces—and there were not enough girls to go around. One of the solders stepped forward and picked out the first girl he happened upon, taking her arm and pulling her to himself. In protest, the girl screamed more loudly than she needed to; she was the spark that inflamed the crowd. The British soldiers’ insults and their crushing of the demonstrations awoke in the strong men’s minds, and they felt the bitterness of occupation, of oppression, of the wait for an independence that never came.
The soldiers advanced with the swagger of victory in all those battles in which they had taken no part. All the men lost their heads and set upon one another in a battle as dreadful as if it were a still-unresolved conflict from the war itself. No one heeded the shouts of the Madam begging for calm and promising them that she would satisfy everyone, that she would request reinforcements in the form of girls from neighboring houses. Aisha ran to one of the men to ask him to make haste in summoning the police; meanwhile, the battle intensified. Besides sticks and clubs, tables, chairs, musical instruments, and trays of food were pressed into service, as well as slippers and shoes. The great mirrors that hung upon the walls shattered, the candelabra were smashed, and food and drink were scattered about, as were the candles. The only light remaining was the faint illumination of the hanging lanterns.
At last came the sound of police whistles, but even then they didn’t stop fighting until an officer fired a volley of shots in the air and struck one of the lanterns. Then, breathing hard, they all stopped what they were doing. Their features, bathed in blood, had become indistinguishable, and the police rounded them all up, but once they were in the middle of the road an officer discerned the presence of English soldiery. They were exhausted and compliant, but the officer, quaking, released them at once, before what had happened should become known. He took all the strong men to the police station.
Work at the house had come to a standstill and the girls seemed lost and melancholy, having no other refuge. Not one of them was in a position to return to the poverty of the family she had left years before. Workers came to make repairs, and the Madam left to spend a few days in Alexandria, without giving a reason for the journey. Aisha sequestered herself in her room.
She did not open the door to her room until late in the night. Nabawiyya kept knocking insistently, until Aisha got out of bed, dizzy and sad. Nabawiyya came in and they sat together in the light of the little nighttime oil-burning lamp. Nabawiyya studied Aisha for a little while. Of all the girls in the house, she was the only one who knew the secret of what had happened to Aisha. She kept silent for a moment, then said, “He’s here, and he asked about you.” Aisha knew at once whom she meant, and was shaken to the core, understanding now why her friend had come at such a late hour. “It’s Thursday,” Nabawiyya continued. “I went to Sayyida’s shrine and visited Umm Abbas. It was she who told me that Mukhtar had come for a brief visit to Cairo, once the roads opened up. He was exhausted. Things didn’t go so well for him in Europe, especially during the war years. But he went to the basement room to have a look at his sculptures, and then he went to your village.”
Aisha drew a sharp breath. “He went to Beni Khalaf?” she exclaimed.
“Umm Abbas told me he returned without any real news of you. He knew your mother had died, that the wolves had torn your uncle limb from limb, and that the house had been abandoned and taken over by some Gypsies, who are living there now. He came back, despairing and downcast. Now he’s preparing to return to Europe once more.”
Struggling to hold back her tears, Aisha said, “Oh, God—why do you torment me by telling me these things?”
“He still thinks of you, and he misses you, Aish
a.”
“I miss him, too, but what’s the use of any of this? How can I see him, with my ruined body and my shame? The look of contempt in his eyes would kill me!”
“Men, as a rule, are stupid, it’s true. But perhaps he would understand . . .”
Mukhtar was part of another life—a distant dream there was no longer any possibility of fulfilling. To think of consigning it to oblivion was painful, but to recall it was even more so.
“He’ll take the train to Alexandria tomorrow, and from there he’ll go by boat to Europe. He could be away for many years. You may never see him again.”
With that, Nabawiyya went off to bed, leaving Aisha sleepless, roused by her longing to see Mukhtar. What had become of him, in all this time? Were his wounds as deep as hers? Perhaps she could find a way to see him from a distance—she would be able to bear that, in spite of the sorrow it would invoke. She watched as day broke outside her window. There was no movement. The girls were all asleep, and the repairmen had not come yet. Aisha dressed and went out into the corridors. As she passed Nabawiyya’s room she thought of waking her, but it seemed to her that this was her own private moment, which she needed to experience in solitude. She went out into the empty streets, where the winter wind assailed her, catching up refuse and fallen leaves in its gusts. The city was slowly awakening, with vendors pulling their wooden carts, street cleaners preparing to commence the day’s work, and the military policemen casting sleepy glances at the passersby. The streetlights in Station Square were still lit, although it was daytime now. Aisha looked warily about, not wishing to find herself suddenly face-to-face with Mukhtar when she was not ready for him. She hid her face carefully, and made her way into the station, hiding behind light poles as she went. She found the platform for the Alexandria train, which was still empty, but for a few travelers who wandered about silently. Mukhtar was not among them. She kept watch, concealing herself behind a column, while the annihilating cold overtook her. She wished the train would never come, that Mukhtar would never come, but that he would stay in Egypt—perhaps there was some hope. This savage world would not be so bad with him in it. He would provide her with an incentive to come out from behind the walls of the house in the red-light district, even if there were no means of attaching herself to him. She would live as a servant at his feet, if he wished it. Would she ever be able to overcome her profound sense of defilement? The train pulled smoothly into the station in a puff of smoke, emitting a whistle that gradually faded out. The people waiting on the platform bustled around, boarding the train, but Mukhtar did not appear. She hoped the train would pull out and be gone before he should come, but then she saw the driver emerge from the engine and go into the little café beside the platform.
A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore Page 32