by Leila Rafei
“This isn’t like him,” said Suad. On a cutting board marred with crisscrossing scars, she chopped another lemon into paper-thin slices and threw them into two cups of tea, along with sprigs of fresh mint. She handed a cup to Ayah just in time to catch her rolling her eyes.
“Not answering the phone is like him, mama. This is how he is now.” She picked out three sugar cubes from the crystal bowl on the counter—a wedding gift from a cousin more generous than Mahmoud—and stirred them into her tea, watching them turn to sludge before disappearing completely. Ayah looked like she was concentrating on the process, but Suad could tell she was thinking of something else. When she spoke, she divulged what Suad suspected.
“Look,” said Ayah, pulling up the news from Cairo on her phone.
Suad didn’t want to look, but how could she not? She slipped her Quran-reading glasses from where they hung on the collar of her dress and held the phone close as she took in unimaginable scenes. Deranged photos of men and beasts. Crowds so massive they looked like the sea. Flashes of flags alternating with the blades of machetes. “What is this, a serial?”
“Watch, there’s more,” said Ayah, tapping the tiled countertop. Her fingernails had been chewed to stubs, dulling the sound to a soft drumbeat.
Suad brought the phone right up to her lenses, as if each millimeter would help her make sense of it all. But it seemed that the more she learned, the less she understood. Apparently there had been another day of mass demonstrations in Cairo, led by a gang of troublemakers calling themselves “the Jan 25 Youth.” They’d filled Tahrir with so many people that not one square inch of asphalt, not one blade of grass, not one cobblestone could be seen between them. And now—chaos. Bandits were tearing through crowds on camels and horses, slashing and trampling any bodies in the way. Suad’s hands shook as the camera zoomed in on a man waving a machete from atop his camel, shouting something so awful it contorted his face. It was a face which, if Suad was being honest, looked like the work of a demon or perhaps drugs.
She wanted to tell Ayah to shut it off at once, but didn’t. She couldn’t look away, either, and invoked God’s name because of it. Each time she thought that was it, enough was enough, heel readied to spin and walk away—there was one more rearing horse, one more cracking whip, one more punch from bleeding knuckles, one more sword swinging low, down to the crowds, as if human heads were sheaths of wheat to be culled by the blade of a scythe. She was tired of this, whatever it was, and it must end at once.
Her only comfort was that the president was trying everything he could. The other night he had calmed the nation with a televised address, in which he’d wisely cautioned the people against this banditry. “There is a thin line between freedom and chaos,” said Suad, quoting him. She caught Ayah rolling her eyes again. That girl would never learn. How could she think it was a good thing, this chaos?
Suad was about to spin around and leave when she again noticed the poor shape of Ayah’s fingernails. “See,” she said, grabbing the girl’s hand. “This is from all that typing. Tac-tac-tac on your phone, tac-tac-tac on the computer. Go to your room, Ayah, and fix your nails. Now.” She snatched the phone as she turned to go. That girl.
*****
In the afternoon Hagg Ali sent one of his men to buy the surplus of lemons off Suad. There was much he could do with the spare lemons—the rinds could be preserved or ground into powder, and the pulp could be squeezed into juice to mix with mint or garlic. And so Hagg Ali’s man arrived near afternoon prayer with a tuk-tuk and a burlap sack the size of a hot air balloon. When he stepped into the yard and called upon her, she rolled down her skirt to cover her muddy ankles and rushed to greet him.
“My apologies,” she said, out of breath from her dash. “I couldn’t hear through the trees.” As she wiped the dirt off her hands, she realized that he was a new face. He wasn’t Hagg Ali’s usual helper, the wiry old Saidi. This was a young man, lanky and gilded, and when he turned to face her she felt as if she were a girl again, standing before Gamal in her parents’ home in Abu Radhi.
“It’s no problem,” he said, averting his eyes with a slight smile.
The man called her lady and followed her to the pile of lemons she’d prepared for his arrival. Silently, she watched him scoop the good fruit into his parcel. All the while she scrutinized the way his cheekbones cut his face like the barbs of a feather, the way his muscles moved under his skin as if the latter was made of diaphanous silk. Like the boy in the alley the day prior, this man had the same lone dimple in his chin and the same head of hair that was so lush it looked like a toupee. Like the boy in the alley, he wore a serious look that just barely hid a smirk—an expression that begged her to keep looking. It occurred to her that he could be the boy’s father. No—he wore no ring on his finger. Perhaps his brother.
“Does your family live nearby?”
“No, they live in Munifiya,” he said, sweat forming under his crown of hair.
The stiff fists at her side loosened as he uttered the word Munifiya, lovely Munifiya which had nothing to do with Mahalla, and Suad found herself leaning closer as if she were trying to embrace the soft resonance of his voice—and him, it seemed. When she’d drifted to about a finger’s width from the collar of his shirt, she stepped back and patted herself down as if she were hot, and then realized that her hand had made it to the top of her chest and had remained there, resting. She whipped it back at once. She must compose herself. This was not Gamal, nor was it the son he’d created with that bitch cousin that was half his age. He was a stranger, and to celebrate she offered him a drink.
“You must try my lemon-mint juice. It’s famous.”
As he followed her into the house, she didn’t stop him or tell him to wait outside. He simply walked in and left his sandals at the door. Ayah was in her room and the house was quiet except for the television which played state news, a clip of the Qasr El Nil bridge in Cairo lying empty over a calm river.
“Is that from today?”
“Hmmm, yes,” said Suad, “Or maybe not. Actually, I don’t know.” The truth was that despite all her efforts, she couldn’t keep track of what was happening down there in the capital city, what was truth and what was fabrication. She thought of that hellish, demonic scream she saw from that man atop a camel in Tahrir and wondered how it was possible that he’d coexist in the same city shown on MisrTV right now, still and placid.
“Mashallah,” he said, “the army must have cleared Tahrir quickly. Praise God.”
“The TV is lying!” Shouted a disembodied voice from behind the wall.
“Pardon me, that’s my silly daughter.” Suad gave the wall a firm rap to tell the girl to shut up. That Ayah. For a moment she tensed, imagining Ayah sauntering out to argue with this fine man who was not so much older than her. Maybe he had a thing for dirty glasses, for chipped nail-polish and chewed-off nails. For insolence. The same sort that had entangled Suad with Gamal so many years ago. She felt her body temperature reach dewpoint as beads of sweat prepared to burst forth form her temples. But Ayah never came out of her cave.
The Gamal lookalike sat down on the couch as Suad went to the kitchen to fetch him a drink. There was a pitcher of ready-made juice on the counter, but it wouldn’t do. So she handpicked her finest lemons, squeezed them dry, and stirred in a handful of minced mint leaves, saving a sprig to stick in the glass like an Alexandrian cocktail. Drink in hand, she returned to the living room to find the young man still sitting alone. His leg was crossed at the knee to show off its length, and a sliver of strong, bronze ankle showed under the hem of his jeans.
“Sahtein,” she said, bon appétit. She watched him drink until there was nothing but a stream of pulp left behind. Up close and under the white indoor lights, he looked even more like Gamal, with gleaming teeth and faint lines at the edges of his eyes that lent him a rough-hewn wisdom. She had already seen his ringless finger but asked if he had a wife to confi
rm it.
He shook his head. “No, but I hope to get married within the year.”
She noticed a speck of pulp stuck to the corner of his mouth. If only she could wipe it off with her finger. But he was not Gamal, and Suad was not fifteen, and there were dishes to wash, lemons to peel, a phone to watch. And with an inshallah, she took his glass and sent him on his way. Through the window she watched him load the tuk-tuk with her lemons and drive off, back down the road that led into the city.
*****
Before bed, Suad unlocked the bottom drawer at her bedside. She dug through a sea of papers to reach it—that thing, the peculiar contraption that had sat there in a wadded-up ball gathering dust for years. It unraveled in her hands. There it was, the underwear. It was a strange pair, bright red and made of lace, and the backside was composed of nothing but a string.
They were three years into their marriage when she found the underwear in Mahmoud’s suitcase. She remembered it well—the way she ticked off explanations in her head as if to defend him. Not once did she ever consider saying a word to him, even though it certainly didn’t belong to herself or, for that matter, her mother-in-law (though the image of Abla in the red underwear gave her a giggle in that tense moment). She convinced herself—while wincing at the distaste—that it must have belonged to an old girlfriend from before they married. That’s what men do, she’d told herself. They’re weak. So she stowed the red underwear away and did nothing but take it out from time to time to marvel at the peculiar design.
Tonight was one of those nights. She laid the underwear out on the bed before her and imagined putting them on. Should she? No, she should not. But why not? Her eyes fell on the Quran by her bed. That was why. She took it off the nightstand and hid it in a drawer, covering it with clothes for good measure. And then, with slow, measured breaths, she slipped on the underwear for the first time.
In the mirror, the red lace dug into her hips, making her flesh look like a rump of veal wrapped in twine. The string in the back felt vulgar, like it was a sin just to wear it—let alone what was meant to be done while wearing it. She was so alarmed with her own reflection that the underwear was only on her body for a matter of seconds before she ripped them off, and back into the drawer they went. She turned off the lights and sank into bed, thinking about how fast time passed and how little things changed. It wasn’t so long ago that she was a little girl in Abu Radhi, worrying endlessly that she would never get married—a thought that now amused her, thinking back on that tireless child who never failed to find something to fret. She was so ignorant of the fate that had awaited her all along, like a wall of concrete standing unseen at the end of every road she could possibly take.
In the dark, Suad slipped off her wedding ring and felt the cool dampness of her skin beneath it, free to breathe at last. She always took the ring off at night in order to sleep easier, but tonight, she held it between her fingers before setting it aside. It was a simple gold band with a rectangular faux ruby in the center. Now that she was older the ring finally fit, after the skin of her finger had swelled and deflated for two pregnancies. When she first got married, the band was too big and would slip off constantly. She never had it fixed because she found the cost unjustifiable. Instead she focused on how lucky she was to just have it, this most valuable possession, the most expensive thing she’d ever had, that symbol of the most important event in her life. Material possessions didn’t matter, anyway. Marriage mattered. Even if it was to a man who’d been chosen for her by accident of birth, a man who’d broken her heart as if he’d ever had it in the first place.
It helped that she was never one for ornaments anyway.
The ring made a light clink against the nightstand as she set it down. It hadn’t changed much in physicality, other than losing a bit of its luster, but its spirit had become something wholly different from the first time it was slipped onto her finger. It was the day of her engagement. She remembered it clearly. It happened in her parents’ living room in Abu Radhi. She wore a cream-colored dress, almost a bride. Mahmoud sat before her with a flake of phyllo stuck to his tooth. She wanted badly to reach for his mouth and scrape it off, but she barely knew him and nobody else seemed to notice or care. She supposed it didn’t matter—marriage mattered. There was an unexpected comfort in looking down at that too-big trinket. She was done, done being a daughter, done being a girl, done being the subject of every pubescent daydream in Abu Radhi. Sometimes she imagined it had come from Gamal, and her heart would go rat-a-tat to match the jangling of his keys. But that was wrong. She would commit to the man with phyllo in his teeth, just as he had committed to her with that ruby-red ring.
Ironically, it was when she found the red underwear in Mahmoud’s suitcase that the ring became even more precious in her eyes. The development was unexpected—absurd, even—but she liked to think about it from time to time as proof that God was on her side, despite everything.
It was spring, almost three years to the day of their anniversary. She was pregnant with Ayah and Sami was only a toddler, still clutching her knees with a thumb in his mouth and crying with every bowel movement. Mahmoud still lived with them back then and wouldn’t leave for the Gulf until years later, when Sami started primary school. It didn’t make much difference though—Mahmoud had grown more remote every day since Sami’s birth, and by then he only came around for lunch and a dreaded bout of sex every now and then. Suad didn’t really mind until the phone calls started.
One day the telephone started to ring more often than usual. Whenever she would answer, the person on the other line would hang up without anything more than a quick breath. It wasn’t unlike that phone call, days ago, when she’d tried to reach Sami. At first, she thought it was some local boy looking for excitement by talking to a woman. It was common back then for boys to dial random numbers until they heard a woman’s voice, and then call back again and again just to bother her. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand why those boys found it so amusing, but she was content with the explanation. Then one night she awoke to find the bed empty. The sound of Abla’s snoring boomed from the other side of the ceiling. Beneath it—in the troughs of quiet between each monstrous breath—she heard Mahmoud’s hushed voice down the hall. She got out of bed and followed it to find him sitting cross-legged on the living room rug, talking on the phone. She heard enough to know he was talking to a woman. He called her his darling, habibti. He told her to stop calling at such odd hours, when their only cover was Abla’s snoring, because Suad was bound to find out. Suad perked up at the sound of her name and found it satisfying, somehow, that the woman knew it.
Then the real atrocity. I love you.
The last time he said that to Suad must have been their wedding day. What a joke. She’d never really noticed the absence of those words until she heard them directed at another woman. He said it was because of this so-called love that he wanted her to be safe, safe from Suad, whose undue intensity in small matters like the lemon grove suggested that she was not a woman to be crossed. And true to form, Suad’s insides burned with anger on the other side of the wall. She sneaked back into bed, where she lay awake in the dark with her eyes wide open in horror, awaiting his return.
When Mahmoud came back in the room, she pretended to be asleep. She could feel her eyelids pucker from the force it took to hold them closed. Under the blanket his hungry hands reached for her waist, but she shook them away. Why did he want to touch her, all of a sudden? Did he think she was the one from the phone, the one with the red underwear, the one he loved? She told him she was sick, just sick and that he should let her sleep. Khalas, she said, enough.The next day, Abla found Suad in tears as she made tea over the kitchen stove. Out of the corner of her eye, Suad could see the stout woman wearing her favorite blue velveteen housedress, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She had the same angry look Mahmoud had whenever she said something he found ridiculous. Really? Really, ya Suad? She
had his eyebrows too, thick and straight, furrowed when annoyed. When she asked what was the matter, Suad didn’t respond. She feared that any word that escaped from her mouth would unleash an unstoppable fit of tears. Instead she wiped her eyes as she poured boiling water into a pot of black tea leaves. But she didn’t need to say anything. Abla understood completely—in fact, it seemed she had been waiting for this moment all along. A chance to call Suad a silly girl for perhaps thinking she was a grand madam like Faten Hamama or Queen Nazli, entitled to a man who’d go against his own nature. Abla shook her head, as if the real crime were Suad’s tears, and waddled away with her backside swaying under the velveteen housedress. Later Abla retired to her room for afternoon soaps. Suad thanked God for the chance to slip away unnoticed. She walked to her favorite part of the river, a dock on a quiet stretch at the far end of a neighbor’s plot of sugarcane crops. The river was narrow there, barely the width of a bus, but the water was as flat and black as onyx, suggesting depths like the night sky. The Nile tended to be much deeper than it appeared, even in its many little fingers.
She cried for a while sitting on the riverbank, dreading having to face her husband that night, or tomorrow, or ever again. It seemed impossible. And thus, the only thing to do was to make sure she would never again have to stir three cubes of sugar into his tea, to iron his favorite brown suit, to feel his clammy fingers brush her skin from under the blanket. She would have preferred to run away, but then what? Where would she go? Certainly not back to Abu Radhi, where Mahmoud would find her easily. And if she went anywhere else, then she would become nothing more than a lone woman selling tissues on the street. There was nothing to do in that moment—nothing to do but die.
She stood up and walked to the dock. Its wooden boards shifted and groaned under her feet, and she could see the water underneath the gaps. At the edge of the dock she stopped and faced the Nile, black and still, deep enough to submerge her. She dipped a toe into the cold water and then paused to look around, but there were only sheep bleating in the distance. As she gazed back down at the water, she imagined that it would be difficult to drown. It would be dark down there. She would only be able to hold her breath comfortably for a half minute or so, thanks to years of inhaling the smoke from Mahmoud’s waterpipe. There would be squirming and flailing, a massive battle between a body trying to survive against a mind’s resolution to die. She figured she was lucky she wouldn’t have a choice once she hit the water, because she couldn’t swim.