by Leila Rafei
“Hello,” said Jamila as she entered the room, eyes on the floor. She never talked much, but that evening she was particularly curt, afraid that any word uttered would expose what she’d just found. Rose, as usual, wouldn’t let her be.
“How’s the baby?”
“The what?”
“The baby.” Rose pointed to her belly.
Oh, thought Jamila, mine. For once Rose’s habit of drawing shapes with her hands while speaking to her, loud and slow, had proven useful. Little did they know, Jamila understood much more than detergent and Dettol, and any slowness on her part was on account of knowing too much—knowing that she needed to be careful with her words. But tonight she would play along. She placed a hand on her belly and said, “almost ready,” as if she were an oven carrying a loaf of baking bread. Oh, how she wished there was nothing but bread between them.
Sami gave her a look with his big, dark eyes, as if he had something to say. Please don’t, she thought, eyes flitting down to the crisscrossing planks of wood on the floor. If he kept looking at her like that, she might confess to everything—that she knew he slept with Rose and that they were not married, that she found the proof in the trash, and perhaps worst of all, that she’d answered his phone when his mother called last night. She knew she wasn’t supposed to answer it, but what could she do? The woman had called and called, her name lighting up its screen every hour from its lone spot on the bedside table. A flash of worry—what if it’s an emergency—had made her pick up. Jamila wanted to assure her that all was well and that Sami was safe, but all she heard on the other line was a gasp, and then the woman hung up. Did she know too? Surely she didn’t if Sami was sitting right there tonight, alive and shameless, without a shoeprint on his face.
“The internet is down again,” he said finally.
Jamila exhaled. With a dishrag, she wiped a day’s worth of dust off the windowsill.
“It’s so weird,” said Rose. “I know I didn’t miss a bill.”
As she fiddled with the router, Jamila tidied the table, hoping she wouldn’t extend this conversation because she really didn’t need to hear it. She believed Rose. Despite the boyfriend and the haram thing in the trash, Rose was always true to her word, especially when it came to money. She never paid her late and sometimes even paid early just in case she forgot. But she never forgot. Jamila was sure it was the same with the internet bill. She wanted to tell Rose that it wasn’t the bill—that whatever was wrong with their internet had also struck Zamalek, where her other employer, Miss Fifi Shafik, had been so idle and aimless without her usual social media gadgets that Jamila feared she might start tearing down the wallpaper again, like she did during the power cuts last summer, doling out hours of extra, unpaid work. Just the memory was exhausting. At least Rose would never do that—there wasn’t even any wallpaper to begin with. What she might do instead was use the time to pester Jamila with conversations she didn’t want to have. And that she did.
“Jamila,” Rose said, a singsong lilt to her voice. “Will you come have a cup of coffee with us?”
She would have declined but the coffee was already in front of her, giving off rich steam in Rose’s hand. It was the good kind, thick and tinged with cardamom. She knew the coffee was just excuse to talk to her. There was a desperate brightness in Rose’s eyes, as if she were doing her best to make this night a good one, if only to please Sami with his wide, worried eyes, and Jamila with her own downcast, a particular soberness hanging about her like nicotine in Dolores’ hair.
Out of something like pity, Jamila relented and took the cup. She followed the couple to the balcony. It was one of those narrow ones, more decorative than made for actual use, but they tried their best, squeezing a trio of tin chairs onto it and sitting facing the street as if there were a pleasant view before them, perhaps of the Nile instead of soot and concrete. As she sipped from the cup she looked out at the endless city, all its bricks and satellites and minarets, wondering if it was mere coincidence that the two houses she cleaned had the same internet problem, on the same day and on opposite sides of the river. Something about the odd quiet of the street told her it was no coincidence. Not at all.
“See those guys,” said Sami, pointing to two police trucks beneath the overpass. “They’re hiding.”
She had to squint to see them. Hiding indeed. Their headlights glinted like the eyes of jackals in the dark.
“At least they aren’t blocking the intersection like they did the other night.”
“I still don’t believe that,” said Rose.
“Well, you were asleep.” Sami’s face flushed as the words left his mouth, as if he’d just confessed to sharing a bed with Rose, as if Jamila didn’t know. Of course she knew.
The balcony fell silent. The three of them darted eyes across the balcony, unsure of when and whether to break it. Both Sami and Rose ended up looking at Jamila, as if it were her responsibility to save them from this uncomfortable moment—the moment they themselves had created. She exhaled, preparing to talk about herself once more. By now they knew that her husband was missing and that she lived in Kilo 4.5, a place they hadn’t heard of before because it didn’t exist or rather, wasn’t supposed to exist beyond a measure of length. And they knew she came from a city nestled on the crystalline Nile, the same river that ran gray in Cairo. What else could they possibly want to know?
Rose leaned toward Jamila with her cup again, this time empty, but with the same desperate glow in her eyes. “Read my fortune?”
How could she forget. They knew she could read coffee cup fortunes too. Apparently it was noted in employment forms from St. Fatima’s, which listed under job history a former gig reading coffee cups for tourists in Khan El Khalili. Rose had probably hired her for that reason alone—she’d asked Jamila about it on her very first day of work. Jamila, though put off, had obliged. Tonight was no different.
She reached for the cup, looping her finger through its tiny handle, and remembered how she’d learned the art from her mother, who’d learned from her mother, and so on. It was a main attraction of any gathering of Abdesalam women, from birthdays to weddings to regular Friday afternoons when they baked corn flour bread to dip in milk and honey. Most wanted to know where they would travel, what they would do for a living, whether they would live well into old age or should watch out for the evil eye from this or that side of the family, or from some stranger they hadn’t yet met. But all were interested in one thing in particular—love. Kids wanted to know about it. Mothers, widows, eternal spinsters. Even little boys, whose fortunes they would read for fun, came with questions about what kind of girl they would marry—whether a voluptuous beauty like the late singer Aisha Musa Ahmad, or a scraggly runt like such-and-such classmate—and they’d stick out their tongues at their fate for the latter. But it was no joke. The search for love was universal and constant. Perhaps it was the part of life one could least control. You could choose to buy a ticket somewhere, pick one profession over another. Even death could be avoided, somewhat—or brought upon oneself with a single jump off a bridge. But love? There was no controlling who, if anyone, would find you, or when they would.
It was no surprise, then, to find love written in Rose’s eyes when she held out her cup, emptied after the requisite three or four sips but for a thick coating of sludge stuck to the bottom. Jamila flipped it over, letting the remaining grains seep down its porcelain insides, then turned the cup by its handle, once, twice, three times around, as a crack on its lip made a light, hypnotic squeak on the saucer. As she peered inside she could think of nothing but Yusuf, who’d long ago appeared in her own coffee cups, foretold with a horse and a bushel of wheat.
Sami and Rose must have thought she was just taking her time. Perhaps there was simply a lot to decipher inside. There was. Jamila strained to focus on the task at hand. Finally, a pigeon’s coo broke the silence, followed by Sami.
“Yalla, let’s se
e what you’ve got.” Sami leaned back on the leg of his stool and blew smoke over the balcony railing, keeping his eyes on the all-knowing cup. Funny, how nonchalant he tried to come off, when she could see very well the fear in his eyes. Fear of the fortune. Fear of that thing in the trash. Fear of his mother, whose calls he couldn’t ignore forever. Sami was in such a mess of a situation that the fortune should be the least of his concerns, though it might at least determine his mood going to bed that night. The same bed he shared with Rose and didn’t think Jamila knew.
She sat for a while, concentrating with a hard face, thinking of what to say. One shape in particular stood out: a rounded depression in the grains, almost circular, but with two interior spots like eye sockets. Together they formed the rough shape of a skull, the symbol of death, but of course she couldn’t tell them that. Though it was universally dreaded, the death fortune wasn’t always literal, and often meant simply the end of a job, a marriage, a lease. Nothing final, by any means. One could always find another job or home, after all, and even dead relationships lived on in those late-night, early-morning, half-woke dreams bound to be forgotten by dawn. But it was because of that ambiguity, as her mother always said, that it was as important to see the person as it was the grains. The shapes would emerge in the cups, yes, but it was in the subject’s eyes that they were defined—whether skulls for death, rings for marriage, mountains for great successes or great struggles ahead. She never really understood it until right then, as she looked at Rose. She was chewing on the inside of her lip as she waited, growing anxious as Sami puffed smoke to fill the silence. Yes, there was death. But she would have to put it differently.
“I see a circle, the circle of life. You’ll be reborn again.” This was her diplomatic way of translating death. Birth was death’s flipside, after all.
“Hmmm, circles,” said Rose, looking deflated. “Sounds about right.”
Though Rose was far from home, Jamila was reluctant to tell her she’d one day return. She sensed, somehow, that she didn’t want to. She looked straight at the woman, from her verdant eyes and down to her ink-stained hands. They must be around the same age. She couldn’t understand why this foreign woman who should be married by now had moved to Cairo with nothing but a rolling suitcase. And when she opened her mouth, she ended up asking what she’d been thinking all along.
“Why did you come here?”
A smile crept up the corners of Rose’s mouth. It seemed she’d answered this question many times, but judging by what followed, she had yet to find a satisfactory answer.
“It’s hard to explain. Life is so much better here.”
“Better?” Jamila thought of her resettlement case, the entirety of which was built on the argument that there was no place worse. If Cairo was better than a place like Rose’s home, then what was she fighting for?
“Well, let’s start with the weather. It’s what, January? Right now, it’s raining all the time, the sky’s permanently gray. And don’t even get me started on the people. Everyone is sad, mad, pissed off. Sure, there’s a short period of time in the summer when people will air out their toes in flip flops and sit on their porches and talk to strangers. But it’s like that all the time here. In Cairo, it’s always summer.”
There was a dreamy, pleased look on Rose’s face as she looked off in the distance, as if a glittering city lay before her rather than a ghostlike, run-down Ramses. How unfathomable she was. Jamila tried to mask her confusion. Eternal summer sounded like hell, and the things Rose loathed about her home were hard to envision—the angry people, the stingy sun. Jamila thought of Rose’s eyes when she invited her for coffee—love written in every tine of her iris—and decided to change the subject. Cairo wasn’t the only love she was thinking of.
“Well you’re in the right place, and with the right . . . one.”
Sami held his cigarette in this right, light hand as he exhaled over the balcony railing, out of respect for the pregnant women before him—well, at least one—as if each singular breath made a difference against the smog. Jamila couldn’t help but pity him despite what he’d done. There were countless others who’d done far worse and went on without a word about it—she’d heard it herself in the corridors of St. Fatima’s. And Jamila, as if she had the power to dictate fate, put the cup down, leaned in, and repaid them for their relative kindness, or at least, that cup of good coffee.
“Love is a rare bird. Like a black-footed ibis.”
Sami coughed, choking on smoke. Perhaps he didn’t get it. She should rephrase it.
“Or rather, like a diamond in the sea. The only thing harder than finding it is keeping it. So be careful.”
“That’s beautiful,” said Rose. “A diamond?”
“A diamond in the sea.”
4
Something about the buzz of the fan made Sami remember, as he awoke Friday morning, that he’d forgotten the anniversary of Giddo’s death.
He grabbed his phone off the floor to find it oddly devoid of any missed calls. Suad must be furious, too angry to even talk. He began dialing, then stopped. Should he? Yes, he should. But when he punched in the numbers, his fingers moving in autopilot, he heard not the sound of her fury but that of the line cutting.
Had she hung up on him?
No, that was impossible.
He realized what had happened as he reached for his jeans and watched coins slip out of its pockets. He was simply out of phone credit. What a relief it was only a matter of money—and better yet, that he could use it as an excuse to put off calling her even longer. See, I didn’t forget. I was just out of credit. For now, he added credit to his list of errands for the day—on top of picking up some textbooks from the dorms, calling Nilofone over the router, and buying a birthday gift for Rose. The latter was just days away and yet he no idea what to get her. Last year had been easy. He bought her a silver necklace with an evil eye—the sort of thing one would get for his sweetheart, not knowing what a mess she’d cause later.
He grabbed a black T-shirt, as if in Giddo’s honor, then paused before putting it on. Sami never wore black. It reminded him of his mother on the day of the funeral, the first of forty straight days in which she wore nothing but the color. Odd that he’d forgotten the anniversary, when he could forget nothing else about Giddo’s death. When Sami closed his eyes, he saw Giddo the way he’d left him—skinny and semilucid in bed, skin the color of ash, mouth hanging agape as if shock had rendered him speechless. Sami could still smell the phlegm and cold sweat of the dark room where Giddo died. Any brush of skin reminded Sami of the papery touch of his hand, and his fear of grasping too hard, as if he were holding together a pile of ashes. In his textbooks he saw cataract-clouded eyes in the spaces between each word, each ugly equation; and could think of nothing else each time he took the train home and watched the bricks of Cairo turn to shoulder-high grass—the grass that had grown over his grave.
Most of all, Sami would never forget what he did that night. It was a stupid decision, made in a split second. He hadn’t seen his friends in years—they’d lost touch since he moved to Cairo—so when they called, having heard he was home in Mahalla, he didn’t hesitate to meet up just to smoke and stand in the street like the old days. It seemed far more preferable than returning to Giddo’s death chamber, where his mother and sister were spending the night. Besides, he was sure Giddo would soon recover, eat a full bowl of stew in no time, get back into his pressed suits and sharpen his moustache to a waxy point like an Ottoman pasha. It seemed safe to leave his side. Sami realized he was wrong when he woke up the next morning, the house empty, not a sound but the deafening whirr of the neighbor’s cotton wheel. Giddo was dead.
Sami looked at Rose lying in bed. He was somewhat resentful of her ability to sleep through his distress. She didn’t even know what happened two years ago. He hadn’t told her—partly because he hated talking about it, but also out of fear she’d judge him, as she t
ended to do, or even worse use it to draw a conclusion about every Egyptian. Not just Sami but each taxi driver, kiosk vendor, and self-immolator—hell, even the president himself. They were all the same. He could hear her already, Egyptian men are shit at taking responsibility, the thesis of some anthropological study. Sami never acted on his own—he bore the whole country on his back—so he was careful around foreigners like Rose, who could never understand the faint distinction between culture (expectation) and his own failings (what actually happened). It was one of the many things he hadn’t thought about when he first met her, more than one year ago, when all he could see was the blazing light in her eyes, the thrust of her pale hand reaching for his, shameless. How could he have known? She was the first girlfriend he ever had, his first everything. A single step that brought the whole floor down. Before her, life was so simple. Pray. Study. Call his mother. Follow the rules until it was time to come home and find a wife. A wife that could not be Rose.
They were never meant to be, despite Jamila’s fortune. It would never work out, even if they got married and she moved to Mahalla and started covering her hair and reading from the Quran. They’d found each other by accident, the way one might stumble upon a fresh pack of cigarettes in a pile of trash—just a coincidence as good as it was bad for you. Certainly not a diamond in the sea. He could have laughed it was so tragic. Kind of like Giddo’s death. Ha-ha-ha.
He patted his pockets in search of a brick of hash to make it go away. Sami always preferred breakfasts of THC to Vitamin C, but today it was justified, even though the hash didn’t do much lately. Maybe his tolerance had increased like it had with alcohol. Just one beer used to turn him to a smiling buffoon with limbs of jelly. Now it took a whole case, and then some. Or maybe it was the . . . situation. He looked back at Rose, still lying face down on her pillow, mouth agape like Giddo on his deathbed. Yes, that’s why his mind was mired in iron that not even hallucinogenic drugs could permeate.