by Leila Rafei
“God has spoken and said: Fifi Shafik will not perform tonight. Not even for our friends, the bride and groom in Tahrir.”
Fifi’s eyes followed her as she waited for a response, a reaction, a nod, a shoulder shrug, anything. But Jamila had nothing to say tonight, just as Fifi had nothing to wear.
“Can you just scoot over so I can reach underneath—”
“What a shit wedding, poor things.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Sweetie, I’ve done a lot of weddings in my day—from the streets of Imbaba to the Four Seasons Hotel. I’ll dance on the Titanic just as well as Abu Himar’s dinghy down the river. But I’ve never seen a wedding that . . . that awful. Tahrir? What, will they catch the El-Wahab bus on the way home?”
Jamila tried to cover her amusement with a sneeze. It was the glitter. Yes, that was it. She shouldn’t encourage Fifi. But it was too late.
“Imagine, a wedding smelling of trash and gasoline. No music except for car horns, beep beep. You want Nancy Ajram? More like Mohammed Badie with a bullhorn. Seriously, Jamila, as a woman, as a young lady, as a jewel, imagine getting married like that. Standing in a crowd of hoodlums. Why, there must have been a hand on the bride’s ass the whole time!”
There was a ripping sound as Fifi burst into hoarse laughter. Jamila leapt toward her—a vain effort to save one more inch of seam—as she continued.
“Trust me, Jamila. I know an ass-grabber when I see one. And that crowd? Was full of them. No wonder the bride looked so sad. If it were me, if my in-laws threw me a wedding like that . . . Oh, you don’t want to know.” She shook her head, left and right, for seconds after her last word until finally the dam broke, and she started to cry.
Not again. Jamila wanted to console Fifi, to get her out of that dress and tuck her into bed to wake up anew the next morning. But in that moment, out of fear of saying something to make it worse, she just handed her a box of tissues.
As Jamila went on with her chores, she heard the tears subside. Eventually Fifi’s whimpers gave way to the sound of crunching wrappers. When she returned to the room, she found Fifi chomping chips two at a time. It seemed the food had lifted her spirits for now. As she bent down to pick up a wrapper, a stinging pain struck her belly. It had grown so heavy it threatened to topple her over—one wobble and she would be on the floor, bent and bruised as the wrappers at the madame’s feet.
Fifi didn’t notice. Her eyes were now engulfed in a tub of halva, which she ate with a spoon like a carton of Chinese food. The sound of her lips smacking with sesame paste grew louder, deafening almost, as Jamila stared back in disgust. Fifi wasn’t hungry, and she didn’t even like halva. She was racing to empty her kitchen cabinets as if it would soothe the old wound dug up in the tufts of that wedding dress.
“Miss Fifi, I need to go home before it gets too late.”
“Very well,” she said, not looking up from her halva. “You go back to your husband, I’ll go back to my cake.”
Jamila bit the inside of her lip as if to temper her tongue. She’d kept Yusuf’s disappearance from Fifi but now wanted to throw it in her face. It was what she deserved for being so wrapped in her own chaos that she couldn’t tell the difference between halva and cake. She should hurry up and ask for her pay before the night descended into even more disarray.
“Oh,” Fifi yelped, as if she’d just remembered. “I’ve gone to the Crédit Agricole a thousand times now. It’s still closed. I’m so sorry, but I’ll have to pay you when it reopens, God willing.”
Jamila could feel her face getting hot as she restrained herself from turning and shutting the door in her face. But as if she were dealing with someone right thinking, someone sane, she took a breath and explained.
“I don’t have enough money to get home.”
Fifi looked up, confused, spoon still stuck in the brick of halva.
“How much does the bus cost?”
“One guinea.”
“One guinea! You don’t even have that?”
Jamila shook her head, not knowing what to say. All she knew, already, was that she’d made a mistake telling her—not expecting the mix of alarm and ridicule she received in turn. Didn’t Fifi know the price of water or a loaf of bread, the cost to rent a single room in a slum like Kilo 4.5? No she did not, it seemed. Fifi reached for her wallet and pulled out a single coin with a smile, as if it would take her to Dubai and back on a private jet.
“Alright, here’s your guinea. I’ll deduct it from your pay. Oh and Jamila—you really should be more careful with your money. Don’t throw it around, dear. Be wise.”
Jamila took the coin and fled the villa, so livid she forgot to grab her veil by the door. To think—just hours before, she’d thought this woman might help her. Now it was clear that she would have to find Yusuf by herself. Somehow.
*****
Jamila’s cheeks were still taut with anger when she reached Ramses. She had never tried so hard to hold back tears—in the street, on the bus, up the stairs to apartment 702—but when she finally had the chance, she couldn’t.
The hall was so dark she had to feel her way to the door, running her hands along walls coated with filth. She wasn’t used to being there without a streak of light beaming beneath the door, the sound of the TV coming from the living room where Sami and Rose sat in a perpetual love daze. When she left for Tora that morning, she hadn’t bothered leaving a light on to pretend they were home, thinking it might invite troublemakers. She wanted the door to blend into the cavernous hall, just another abandoned unit like all the rest inside the building. Now the place was even more frightening—the ceilings high and looming, the spiral staircase a hellish, endless length, each floor full of doors sealed shut by decades of grime. What an odd place for two living youths to call home. Even the cramped, dilapidated apartments of Kilo 4.5 seemed more welcoming. Rose was no movie star like Fifi Shafik but Jamila was sure she could afford a place in a nicer part of town, because she paid her more, and always on time.
As Jamila opened the door, she reminded herself that she was doing Rose a favor, just like she did her a favor when she discarded that pregnancy test and said nothing about it. She bolted the door shut and went to the kitchen to warm up rice in silence—that was all she could tolerate right now, silence—but she couldn’t even have that. A wailing drew her to the kitchen window, where she saw the silhouettes of tussling cats through the frosted glass. She cursed under her breath as she tried to shut out the horrible sound. Normally she would have more sympathy but tonight was not the night. At once she threw down her spoon, grabbed the broom, and struck the window. The cats dispersed with one final, ear-shredding screech.
Jamila scraped burnt rice into a bowl and took it to the living room. It was strange to sit on their couch. Even stranger to turn on the TV, as if it were hers. She kept the volume low, lest some ghost overhear, and flicked through all three-and-a-half channels only to find nothing but kittens flocking through fields of dandelion on each. The cats had followed her even there. She switched to the half channel, preferring its scrambled nonsense, only to hear a cheery ringtone cut through the mind-numbing fuzz.
It was Sami’s phone.
As it continued to ring, Jamila followed the sound to the bedroom, where she found the phone in a pile of dirty laundry. On the screen flashed his mother’s name. Not again. The ring seemed to grow louder as she wondered what to do. She could answer it like she did before—maybe this time she would get the chance to say something. But what would she say? Nothing—that’s what she had to say. Nothing.
She wrapped the phone in a dirty T-shirt to muffle the sound as it rang and rang. It felt like she was burying the thing alive. How could she do this to a woman who was worried sick over her son? Her ringing deserved to be heard, whether or not anybody answered. She unwrapped the phone, set it on the table, and went back to her bowl of rice. Hungry as she was, Jamil
a couldn’t eat. Her hands shook so hard that singed grains dribbled off the spoon and onto her belly.
The baby kicked as she dusted the rice off. She held her hand to her belly and the shaking subsided. In a few months’ time, the baby would be in her arms—a moment she’d looked forward to until Yusuf disappeared. Now she dreaded it. The child would not only face a fatherless, wandering life, but would surely inherit the strife she’d endured throughout her pregnancy. It would seep into the blood through the womb. And there would be blood. She imagined giving birth in the corridor with seeds beneath her back and between her toes, neighbors hovering, the sunflower man shouting obscenities as the baby’s first words. She hated the thought of raising a girl in a world full of men like that.
What was it that people said? Watch out for your daughters, or . . . Or what? It seemed to her that people should watch out for their sons. Boys were so fragile—a threadbare line between victim and perpetrator. Many grown men would fall apart if they went through just a sliver of what she’d seen—and her story wasn’t even exceptional. Far worse testimonies were ringing through the halls of St. Fatima’s at that very moment. Women’s were different. Men suffered traumas with a timeframe. Prison sentences. Bouts of torture. War. But women fought a losing fight until the day they died—in the streets, in the home, at work. On buses, even. In elevators and bathroom stalls. Everywhere.
Jamila guessed from the low-slung shape of her belly that she was carrying a boy. A son like Sami. Sighing, she envisioned this boy-to-be, born to a lone woman and a disappeared man, named Idris or Ibrahim after her brothers, or maybe even Yusuf if it didn’t seem so hopeless—a confirmation of death more solid than a mutilated body. He would be handsome, no doubt. Tall like his mother, eyes fringed in heavy lashes like Yusuf. If he was anything like his father then he’d have girls chasing him from an early age. God only knew the kind of trouble he’d get into when he was old enough to live on his own, like Sami, to find a girlfriend or twenty, to do . . . that.
She stopped with a spoonful of rice in the air midway between her mouth and the bowl, thinking of that pregnancy test and how it had laid, positive result face up on the dirty hallway floor. Just the thought was enough to give her a flutter of panic. Sami was a good man but what he’d done was inexcusable. She couldn’t imagine having a son who did that—and on top of everything, being unable to reach him.
When the phone rang again, Jamila dove off the couch so fast she nearly slipped and fell on the freshly waxed floors. Something compelled her back to the phone—as if it were some involuntary, instinctual response to the ringing—and she went to the bedroom and closed the door. It was still Sami’s mother, of course. Her hand jittered as she watched the phone vibrate in her palm. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t stop. She could have slaughtered and defeathered a whole chicken in the time she’d been standing there, deciding what to do. And still, it rang.
Through the window she heard voices down on Ramses Street. She peered out to see a group of young men carrying rocks in their T-shirts as they walked south toward Tahrir Square. Boys causing trouble. Even then, in the middle of the night. Imagine the terror Sami’s mother must be feeling, no word from her son in the middle of this unrest. Sami could easily be one of those boys on the street, rocks in his hands, rocks in his head. And on the last ring, her finger found its way to the right button and clicked.
“Who’s this?”
Jamila hadn’t even gotten a hello out when the woman interrupted, barking quickly as if it were her fault that Sami had kept her waiting, ignoring her through all six thousand rings.
“This is . . . Jamila.”
“And who are you, Jamila?”
“I—I’m a maid, madam. I just wanted to tell you that your son is fine. He’s traveling and left his phone behind, but he’ll be back soon, inshallah.”
“A maid? Sami has a maid? Is that boy living in a dormitory or the Royal Semiramis?”
“No, no,” she said in his defense. Now his mother thought he was throwing guineas out the window like Fifi Shafik downing a whole bag of chips. “I’m not Sami’s maid.”
“Then who’s maid are you, young lady?”
She didn’t know why this woman made her so nervous, like a child slapped in front of the whole classroom—a stuttering, stammering mess, incapable of giving the right answer. She was only trying to help. She had nothing to hide. So, when she opened her mouth to speak, at last, she said the truth.
“I work for Miss Rose.”
The woman began coughing, like something was stuck in her throat. Jamila thought of hanging up but couldn’t. Before she knew it, her throat had cleared, and she was onto the next, obvious question, the words peppering out like punches.
“Miss Rose? Who is Miss Rose?”
Jamila realized she’d made a terrible mistake. She realized it before they got to this point—perhaps when she picked up the phone. Now she had to explain, somehow, this woman with whom her son was living, sharing a bed, making a baby, and now, traveling the Sinai desert. She was a foreigner—should she start there? Maybe that would make it better. It’s understandable, she could say. It’s how foreigners live. She might be shocked out there in Mahalla, but that’s only because they come from different planets—this woman breathing fire into the receiver, and the woman in question. Who. Is. Rose.
“She’s from America, you see, and she’s his . . . uh, friend. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that he’s safe and sound and you shouldn’t worry and actually, I should get going.”
A gust of breath crackled through the receiver, but the woman said nothing. Jamila checked to see if the line had been disconnected, but it hadn’t. She wished to evaporate completely, to not exhist and to never have existed in the first place.
“Hello? Hello?”
When there was still no answer, she hung up.
As Jamila set the phone down, she realized that not only had she made a mistake but what was coming would be far worse. Eventually Sami would come home to that phone of his and find out she had blown his secret. Quiet, dumb Jamila. Who never said anything unless it was the worst thing possible to say. How could she have done this? And Rose was pregnant. Look at this trauma she had caused them before even the birth of their baby.
Jamila still couldn’t bring herself to turn off Sami’s phone—knowing it would make his mother lose whatever shred of sanity she had left—so, she buried it at the bottom of the laundry basket, dragged it into the closet, and shut the door. She gathered all her things—slippers, paperwork, pins from her hijab. Back in the kitchen, she washed all the dishes and wiped down the counter. She set a sheet on the couch and climbed into its pillowy tufts, exhausted from the years’ worth of troubles she’d encountered today. But the phone wouldn’t let her sleep. Somehow she could still hear it ringing for hours as she lay in the dark, and it seemed to get louder as the night trudged forth. Was she imagining things? Surely, the sound of the phone hadn’t penetrated layer after layer of cloth, through the closet door and all the way down the hall. Surely this was all in her head—a literal ringing in her ears. An effect of what Dolores had explained to be PTSD. All the refugees had trouble sleeping, she’d told her. Yes, PTSD. That must be it.
Jamila didn’t sleep a wink. Tomorrow, she would have to go. PTSD.
12
In the last hour of darkness before dawn broke, Sami awoke to the sound of an engine. He turned to face the road, where a car approached, puttering. Its headlights illuminated the mountain until a snakelike, reptilian beast took form in the shadows of crags. In his half asleep stupor he almost laughed. He and Ayah used to cast shadow puppets with their fingers against the walls as kids. Camels, crocodiles. Now a snake. But this was no puppet—its silhouette was exact, like stencil. As the car rounded the bend, the beast contorted out of shape, shadows shifting like the revolving insides of a kaleidoscope.
The image remained firm in his mind as he sank back i
nto the sand. Mouth open and snarling, claws curled over the rocks. In the moment he’d been certain of what he saw, but the longer he stared at the blank, dark mountain, the less could believe even his own minute-old memory. He thought of the phytoplankton that looked like glitter in the sea. Likewise, this was not magic but only an effect of headlights hitting the rocks. But if that were the case, then wouldn’t that shadow appear any other time a pair of headlights hit the mountain at the same angle and time of night? This spot was remote, but even Bedouins had trucks. Thousands of others—well, hundreds or rather dozens at least—must have driven past to create the same shape. Surely he wasn’t the first person in the million-year history of the mountain to witness that shadow. It seemed strange he hadn’t heard anything of it. That semi-natural phenomenon should be a world-class attraction, planting billboards every kilometer on this strip of coast. The great midnight mountain demon. Maybe then there would be more than grass huts to stay in.
But the absence of all of that seemed to mean one thing—that only Sami could see it. He asked himself why. There had to be a reason. He cracked his knuckles like boulders colliding against the quiet night. He knew why. This was because he’d done a very bad thing, many bad things, and here was a divine warning. Like the snakeskin on the mountain trail, splayed across the ground as if to trip him. There was no neatly scientific explanation like that of glowing phytoplankton. No reason except for the fact that this demon was what he’d become, for not only doing what he did but for contemplating ways to get out.
Until now, he’d been in denial over the constant nagging in the back of his mind. Get rid of it. They could find a doctor in some far-flung hospital who’d take care of it for a few hundred guineas passed under the table. Then there would be no evidence and nothing to confess. He’d find a way to scrape up money. Would Rose help pay for it? He thought of Nadim scribbled onto notebook paper. No, she would never agree to it. And yet she had to. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Then he would have to dope her up and take her by hand to the operating table, give her some kind of elixir to go to sleep and wake up no longer pregnant. He didn’t like thinking about it. It was awful to even entertain the thought. But somehow it seemed more humane than letting her go through with the birth. Rose had no idea what hell awaited them when a secret like this came out. That terrible whisper of a thought that had lay dormant at the back of his tongue was teetering at the tip now, and at any moment, he’d scream through the canyons. Get rid of it!