by Leila Rafei
Suad was staring so hard at the river that it seemed to draw her body downward, as if the weight of her eyes were sinking her—or perhaps the weight of her pregnant belly hanging over the dock’s edge. She rationalized that suicide would be best for the baby too. It would be spared a lifetime of misfortune with Mahmoud for a father, and go straight to paradise. Meanwhile Suad would likely go to hell. But she didn’t care—hell was well worth the prospect of getting back at Mahmoud. He would hear the news of her death and feel shame for the rest of his life, forever known as the man who made his wife so miserable that she leapt into the Nile. She smiled at the thought. And as she looked down, the river pulled her in.
It happened in slow motion.
In the split second and half meter between the dock and the water, she reconsidered. In that same moment, she lost her footing, she decided that she had made a mistake—that she wanted to live, that she was a monster for doing this to her unborn baby and to her little Sami, that she would never again see her dear father and mother, that she would never again pick ripe lemons from her trees. Oh, how she would give anything to be in her grove right then, with mud between her toes, scent of citron in the air, blue sky above a canopy of branches.
But she sank. The sound of the water was deafening as it flooded her ears.
There was a noise from up above. No! She heard splashing, but it couldn’t be her own, because her limbs thrashed in silence underwater. Something grabbed her arm and she thought it was death itself, but instead of dragging her down into the river floor, it pulled her up to the surface, where there was light, and air, and breath.
She opened her eyes to see a man lugging her to the riverbank like a sheep too tired to cross. Gulping for air, she collapsed when her feet touched the earth, making desperate and drastic sounds not unlike the animal she felt like. As she coughed out all the water stuck in her throat, she somehow noticed that she’d lost her sandals. The man seemed to judge her as he watched, leaning on a stick. He was past middle age, with gray hair and a stern expression. Behind him, a gaggle of confused sheep waited. And then at once, he dove back into the river.
By the time the man swam back to her, Suad had caught her breath. He held out his palm, and through the mud she could see the glint of faux ruby lying in a bed of deep wrinkles. He asked if it was hers. It was. Stunned, she took the ring and slipped it back onto her too-small finger. She had been in such a fury that she hadn’t even realized that the ring was still on her hand when she left for the river with plans to die. She would have preferred to leave it on his pillow, a gift bitterly returned to its owner. But by some divine accident, the ring had slipped off in the water, and now it was back. Now she was back, too.
The man asked if she needed anything, and she told him no. He asked if he could take her home, and she said no again. Not even some tea, a blanket? No. He picked up his shepherd’s stick and left with his sheep, leaving her on the riverbank, soaking wet.
Suad was enchanted, dazzled like the breathless women of Abla’s soap operas. In her hand the ring became heavier, as if it was turning to real gold and ruby. It was a miracle, that this shepherd had spotted the little fleck of gold in the black river and that he was able to catch it in the palm of his hand. The shepherd had heard her flailing, her stifled breaths. He found her just like he found the ring. And even though at one point, only minutes ago, Suad hadn’t wanted to survive, now she was glad she did. It all must be fate, her maktub. Surely this was a message from God—that she wasn’t meant to die and she wasn’t meant to lose her ring. And if that was so, then she wasn’t meant to leave Mahmoud. Suad wasn’t one to look at plain facts and not attach any meaning to them. It didn’t occur to her that perhaps, out of sheer lack of river breadth and current, that finding the ring wasn’t so miraculous after all. Or that, on this stretch of farmland, a shepherd was bound to walk by at some point in the afternoon. To her there was clear meaning in the incident—a meaning that God had spoken to her and had told her to have faith in her marriage and in her life. It meant that not only would she go home and continue being a dutiful wife, but that she would pay thanks as best as she could. She’d never been one to question the existence of God to begin with, but that episode on the river left her so moved, it was as if he had appeared in human form before her eyes.
She was sure of what to do now. She went home and cooked Mahmoud molokhiya for dinner, his favorite, and prayed before going to bed. From that point on, her prayers became more punctual until she never missed one. Fajr, zohr, asr, maghrib, isha. She had never before felt she was communicating directly to God, like she knew God personally. She had never before felt so sure of herself.
When the baby was born, Suad named her Ayah, for miracle.
*****
In the dead of night, a firm knock awoke Suad. She looked up at the ceiling where she used to hear Abla’s thumping and hollering so many years ago, but tonight there was nothing but the occasional skitter of goat hooves from the roof.
When Suad heard knocking again, she sat up in bed. It took a second or two to realize that it came from the front door. Swallowing her fear, she slipped on her housedress and veil and walked through the dark toward the sound. She pressed her ear to the door and the knock came again; this time it was hard enough to rattle the wood. Her hand froze over the doorknob as she debated whether she should answer, and in the fog of interrupted sleep, she almost thought she should.
“What’s that noise,” said Ayah, walking toward her in the dark.
Suad held her finger to her lips to tell the damned girl to be quiet, but it was too late. A man’s voice came from the other side of the door.
“Open up, it’s the army.”
The army? Suad crouched to see two pairs of feet through the gap under the door. There was nothing in the rubber soles of their shoes to prove their claim, but there wasn’t anything to prove otherwise, either. Surely a thief would not announce himself the way they did. One of the feet took a big step toward her and there was another knock.
“Madame.”
It was probably foolish to go ahead and open the door, but it seemed Suad had no other choice. She looked up at the calligraphic mashallah hanging over the door, and with a quick prayer, she opened it a crack. The white beam of a flashlight shot through, blinding her. When her eyes adjusted she saw two middle-aged men in plainclothes, holding out badges to show they were indeed from the army. Squinting, Suad read their names. Ahmed and Nabil. With their bald heads, they looked nothing like their ID cards but she supposed it was the darkness. She let them in, nodding helplessly, and told Ayah to go back to her room.
“Stay,” said the taller one, who she believed to be Ahmed.
Ayah stood still. Behind her smudged lenses, there was fear in her bloodshot eyes.
“Please, sit down,” said Suad, though she wasn’t yet convinced that these men should even be in her home. She switched on the lights and saw that they looked rougher than she’d thought, like the men who worked in gas stations with skin withered from exhaust. They both had thick hands with calluses at the fingertips, nails hacked off to nothing more than paper-thin nubs.
Nabil opened his briefcase and took out a stack of papers. On top was a document bearing Mahmoud’s government ID photo surrounded by text so illegible Suad wasn’t even sure of the language. “Does Mr. Sukkary live here?”
“No. He lives in the Gulf.”
The men looked at each other with glee, as if they had uncovered some secret. “And he’s your husband?”
“Yes.”
“When was the last time he was here?”
“I don’t know, months ago, at least. Maybe last year.”
They both raised their eyebrows. Suad noticed that they moved in unison, and they likely thought that way too, because she could tell that neither one believed her.
“Madame,” began Nabil. She was glad he at least had the decency to address her correctl
y while she sat before him in her house clothes in the middle of the night, her legs and arms clenched together in preparation for whatever was to come, because surely, it wasn’t good, despite the madam. “As you know, there are current security concerns in this country, and it’s important that we all, as Egyptians, do our best to protect ourselves and our families.” As he spoke, Suad realized she was nodding her head fast and hard, a little too fast and hard, so she stopped herself and held still. “We have been informed that there may be items of concern here.”
“No, that’s impossible. There’s nobody here but my daughter, and she’s only a little girl.”
They looked at Ayah, who sat with arms crossed to hide that damned, godforsaken rack she had inherited from her mother, clearly not a little girl but a young woman with a towel wrapped around her head as a makeshift hijab. She may not be a child, but she was still harmless, despite the chest pangs she gave her mother from time to time.
As Ahmed ran his finger down the paper, his calluses making a scraping sound. He stopped right under Sami’s name. “Where’s your son?”
“He’s in Cairo. Studying.”
“Studying what?”
“Engineering.”
“Mashallah,” said Ahmed, praise God. Suad could tell he wasn’t being sincere and this bothered her quite deeply, enough to chew on the inside of her cheek, wishing it were a rind. Whatever fear she already felt rose to a fast-beating terror as she imagined what sort of men these were, to use God’s name and not mean it.
“So it’s just you and your daughter in this big house?”
Suad clenched her fists at her side. It was true, she was alone there, her husband and son had left her, and now she had to deal with this nonsense in the middle of the night. It should have been Mahmoud or Sami talking to these strange men while she remained in her bedroom, a respectable woman. But they were not there, and she had to explain that yes, the house was empty, that her husband and son were gone, and that soon she wouldn’t even have Ayah once she got married and left her too. She glanced back at Ayah with that ridiculous towel on her head. It was to her benefit that nowadays, girls were waiting until after they finished school to marry. At least that bought Suad a little more time.
Together the men exhaled, emitting a gust of hot breath that smelled of tahini and whipped garlic. Their eyes darted down the corridor and up the stairwell. “We need to check the house.”
It wasn’t a question, but Suad nodded as if to give her consent. She joined Ayah at the edge of the room as the men went through the contents of each cupboard and shelf. “There are just plates in there,” she called out. “That’s for silverware.” But they didn’t care. They opened anything that would open, lifting each plate and utensil individually as if whatever they were searching for could be hidden between the tines of a fork. “I told you, there’s nothing there.”
“Yes, Madame, but we need to check anyway.”
They looked everywhere—even the bathroom. Nabil flushed the toilet as if to confirm that it was, indeed, a toilet. Ayah snorted at this and Suad nudged her to shut up.
The girl straightened up quickly when they moved on to the bedrooms, headed for hers first. Suad tried giving her a look, but couldn’t reach her through those cloudy lenses. Frustrated, she grabbed the glasses off her face and threw them to the ground. The men called out behind them. “Is everything OK over there?”
“Yes, everything’s just fine,” said Suad, as Ayah felt around on the floor for her glasses.
One wouldn’t think the room of a young girl would be of any use to the men’s investigation, but it seemed they’d found a treasure trove in Ayah’s vanity. It was full of suspicious compartments that somehow warranted scrutiny. Every bottle, every brush, every substance was opened and tested on the palms of their hands, sprayed into the air, shaken and stirred. When Ayah whimpered, Suad grabbed her and dug her nails into her arm. She had no idea the girl had so much makeup—what for? She held her own tongue as the men moved onto the bookshelf, where they found college textbooks interspersed with dolls of her childhood and souvenirs from her father, who should have been there in place of bejeweled camel figurines. Again, the men inspected everything, checking under each plastic hoof. Of course there was nothing. They rifled through her textbooks and found nothing there, either. Suad thanked God for that stupid major her daughter had picked—nothing important, not a single word to give them pause.
Ayah composed herself as they finished with her room and made way upstairs to Abla’s. Suad never went up there—she got flashbacks just looking at the old bed atop its regal, curling frame, the old television set in the corner, the window from which she would pester her daughter-in-law in the grove all day. She could hear the brooding bad-news music from Face of the Moon playing in her head as she watched the two brutes pace across the floor.
“And how’s this? Nobody lives in the best room in the house?”
“It belonged to my mother-in-law,” said Suad, pointing to storage crates stacked at the entrance, marking that she wasn’t there anymore. “She’s dead.” Abla never minded hot summers on the second floor if it meant she could be above everyone, the true lady of the house. It was the heat that ended up killing her, giving her a stroke at age sixty-six. The men seemed to understand.
In the end there was only one room left to check, and that was Suad’s. She hoped they would forget, but of course they did not and in fact, it seemed they had saved the best for last. Thankfully, Suad had returned the Quran to the top of her bedside table. Perhaps that would deter the men from being indecent. Had she learned anything at all?
They began with the Quran, handling it with relative delicacy. Suad had to stop herself from reaching out to protect it as they turned each frayed page. That would look suspicious. She held her breath until they started on the drawers, and then she really had to contain herself, because any politeness with which they handled the holy book melted away as they took time to fondle each pair of underwear, stifling laughter. Suad was mortified but told herself that it could be worse. It could be Ayah, an unmarried girl with quite a bit of dignity to lose. Mahmoud had already destroyed all of Suad’s dignity, that was for sure.
When the men reached the bottom drawer, they demanded the key. Suad seriously considered jumping from the window rather than handing it over, but she did—hoping foolishly that the men would quickly see that it contained items too personal not to guard with a lock. Maybe they’d have a change of heart and respect a lady’s privacy. Of course, they did no such thing. She almost fainted when they found the red underwear, shaking out its strings and lace from the tip of a grubby finger.
“That’s enough, gentlemen.”
When they looked back, she could feel their eyes unpeeling her clothes like the rinds of fruit. She thought it couldn’t get any worse than that, but she was mistaken. Next they pulled out hundreds of folded papers—all the letters to Gamal that she had written without sending over the years. The men were not so pressed for time that they refrained from going through every one.
“Dear Gamal,” said Ahmed, unfolding the first. “Gamal? I thought your husband’s name was Mahmoud.”
“Those are private. Letters to my . . . brother.” Suad reached for the paper but he pulled it away. She wondered what Ayah was thinking on the other side of the room, staring at the floor, knowing full well that Suad had no brother and hearing for the first time the name of the man her mother had been thinking of her whole life. How would she ever keep Ayah in line knowing something like that, her future doomed, her chastity unenforceable. Those men had ruined everything.
“I swear there’s nothing there,” she said, but it was in vain—they proceeded to pull the whole drawer off its hinges, digging down to the wood bottoms as sickening smiles crept up their lips.
*****
After the men finished with her room, Suad opened the front door to hurry them along. But there was one
last thing.
“Wait,” said the shorter of the two. Was he Ahmed or Nabil? Not that it mattered.
He led them to Ayah’s desk, where at last, they found items worth taking. The notebook. The computer. As they unplugged the latter and scooped out its hardware, Ayah yelped, and Suad covered her mouth with her hand to keep her from making a scene. She was fine with them taking the computer. Anything to get them out of the house.
By the time they left, dawn was breaking. The night sky had turned to a pale gray. If those men had any decency they would have come by daylight—but they hadn’t any, and to make matters worse, it was time for prayer and now Suad would be late, needing extra time to wash off her embarrassment. She wondered if they even prayed and figured it was better if they didn’t, for all their hypocrisy. In her head she repeated the sarcastic mashallah Ahmed had delivered to her ears, defaming the word. She noticed that the calligraphy framed above the door was now hanging crooked off the nail, as with the framed portrait of the president. She fixed both and turned to Ayah. The seriousness of what just happened seemed to evade her—but then again, they hadn’t gone through her unmentionables, had they?
Suad sat down with her head in her hands. Ayah seemed more upset about the computer than her mother being defiled before her own eyes. In fact, her attachment to that contraption was suspicious in itself. What was inside it—why had the men hauled it away? At first she thought it was a mere matter of theft, to pawn off in some underground cellar where men of their ilk lurked. But for some reason, they’d left the monitor—which to Suad seemed like the most important part. Wasn’t that what made a computer, well, a computer? Instead they’d taken only its innards, as if there were something important inside. Perhaps something like the garbage in Ayah’s notebook. In-soor-jens. She gasped. They had taken that too, hadn’t they?