A Pure Heart

by Rajia Hassib

  Rose shrugged. “Women have taken part in excavations for decades. Even this very team has two Egyptian women other than me; both just happen to be out of the country this week. That’s why I’m the only woman working here now.”

  “It’s still a profession that many people here would argue women can’t do, isn’t it?”

  “I wasn’t brought up to think of what I can or cannot do, just what I should or shouldn’t do.”

  He looked at her, a bit puzzled, a bit surprised. She smiled, reassuring him, holding back one piece of information: how a German teacher at her elementary school, in an ongoing attempt to teach his students German grammar, had stressed the difference between should and must: Man muss nur sterben. The only thing one must do is die. The implication: everything else is a choice. And never use must when you mean should. Now, sitting in the blazing sun with an American journalist interested in Egyptian women and their relationship to freedom, Rose didn’t want to credit a European with her most poignant revelation regarding what one must do versus what one can do. She hoped that, in her silence, he would assume that her parents had taught her that. To their credit, they had not objected when she had adopted this as her mantra. The only thing one must do is die.

  “Did you face any opposition to your choice of studying Egyptology? From family or friends?”

  He was sweating profusely now, and Rose, seeing one of the field-workers pass close by, signaled to him for two bottles of cold water, which he promptly pulled out of a cooler and brought over. She allowed Mark a minute to drink before she answered his question.

  “My parents’ only concern was financial profitability, which has nothing to do with sexism. In fact, it would have been sexist if they hadn’t minded the income problem—it would have implied that they assumed I was bound for marriage and didn’t need to provide for myself. But they did not; they hoped I’d be able to support myself. They would much rather have seen me become an engineer or a doctor.”

  He smiled. “Did they ever get over the disappointment?”

  She stretched her lips in a dry smile. “My younger sister is studying to become an engineer. I let her handle the parent-pleasing department. She’s better at it than I am.”

  She took a sip from her water bottle, looking away from him. She hoped he didn’t think her last remark sounded bitter.

  “How did you come to be on this excavation team?”

  Evening at her parents’. Rose sitting in the corner of the sofa, shrinking into the fabric. Ahead of her, one of her mother’s many acquaintances: Aunt Somayyah, sister-in-law to the minister of antiquities.

  “Rose graduated top of her class at the American University in Cairo,” Nora said as she handed her guest a cup of tea, placed three petits fours on a plate. “She can get a wonderful teaching position at the university, if she wants to. But she has her heart set on doing fieldwork. Cannot fathom why days in the burning sun would be preferable to a nice, secure, comfortable university position—but what can I do? The girl is stubborn. I keep telling her the sun will ruin her complexion and she will shrivel by the time she is forty, but there is no dissuading her. So I gave in and told her I’ll talk to you, Soma habibti. Maybe there is somehow you can intervene on her behalf. I know I’m asking too much, but if you do me this favor, I will owe you for eternity.”

  Aunt Somayyah, plump, her hair coiffed in a large mass around her face, dyed a reddish blond, her hands weighed down by seven golden rings (Rose counted), smiled at Rose and then bit at a petit four. Rose smiled back, her face (which would age prematurely, according to her mother) painfully stretched. She glanced at the version of her mother sitting across from her, the one who cared about shriveling skin and who surfaced only in the company of women like Aunt Somayyah, the version so different from the Nora who refused to dye her hair and who was happiest sitting down with a book or magazine. Her mother made eye contact with her, gave her a stern look, and Rose looked down at the coffee table, concentrated on examining the motifs on her mother’s fine china, golden droplets decorating the edge of the teacup, droplets that, soon enough, Aunt Somayyah partially covered with her lips as she sipped at the tea, its hot steam rising between Rose and her.

  Rose brushed away the memory, focusing on the American. “I applied directly to the Office of the Minister of Antiquities for any opening on his various field endeavors, precisely the ones concerning the Middle Kingdom, since the literature of that particular era interests me tremendously. I think, at the end of the day, I haunted his staff so much that they offered me an unpaid internship.” She laughed nervously; Mark smiled at her. “Old Kingdom, not Middle Kingdom, but I took whatever I was offered. I clung to this internship like my life depended on it, worked twelve-hour days, did everything I was asked to do and then some. At the end of eight months, one of his junior assistants quit—he was offered a position in Germany—and I got his job.”

  She paused. Mark looked down at his notepad, flipped the page. The small recorder he had placed between them was still running, but Mark continued to take notes anyway. Rose peered at his penmanship—large, rounded letters, open, confident. Honest. The penmanship of someone who doesn’t have a lot to hide.

  “Also: my mom knew someone who put in a good word for me to get that internship in the first place,” Rose added, her voice softer than she had intended. Mark lifted his eyes from his notebook and nodded. When his article came out, it did not mention her mom’s friend.

  “How about your superiors here? What kind of responsibilities do they charge you with? Do you think you are treated differently than your male colleagues?”

  Does she tell him that she is careful not to bend down in front of them? Because, if they were behind her, she would expose her rear, and if they were in front, they might glance down her top? So she squats whenever she wishes to pick something up, keeping her knees close together, a picture of modesty.

  Does she tell him about the male colleague who, just the previous week, had tried to explain her own field to her? The running jokes about how she, at twenty-five, is already a spinster? Rose glanced behind her, saw her immediate supervisor standing a few feet away.

  “No. I don’t think I’m treated differently. I’m not asked to carry heavy stuff around, but other than that, no.”

  She took a big gulp of water to wash down the lie, telling herself it’s a matter of national pride. As the saying goes, we do not air our dirty laundry in front of strangers. If the American was preparing to depict the treatment of women in Egypt in a negative light, she, for one, was not going to help him.

  “How come you’re writing about sexism in Egypt? Why this subject matter?”

  “It’s very interesting, I think.” He placed the cap back on his ballpoint pen, clipped it to his notepad. Rose wasn’t sure if he was done asking questions, or if he was only taking a break to answer hers. “I’ve been living in Egypt for two years now, and I’ve come across many women who are strong willed, independent, and active. And yet . . .” He paused, the familiar, I’m-not-sure-if-I’m-going-to-offend-you pause that Rose knew from her dealings with so many Westerners. “They seem willing to take more than you’d expect of such strong women. Many of them seem okay with the subordinate position society has given them, regardless of their professional posts. I’m talking of powerful women, lawyers, for instance, whom I’ve interviewed and who had to glance at their watches nervously because they had to make it home in time to prepare dinner before their husbands arrived from work. Or doctors who laughed when I asked how come their husbands didn’t help with the housework. It seems that Egyptian ideas of what women should and shouldn’t do differ from Western ideas, even when it comes to those women who are considered liberated here.” He ticked quotation marks with his fingers when he said the word “liberated.” The gesture irritated Rose, rubbed a sore spot that a lifetime of dealing with condescending Westerners had created, a spot that, despite its old age, had not call
oused yet. Rose remembered Herr Spaet, the German teacher who drove around Cairo taking photos of piles of trash and donkey-pulled carts and then brought the album to class, sharing it with the students. She was thirteen then.

  “Did you consider that, perhaps, cultural norms are much harder to fight here than they are in the U.S.? That those women deserve more credit than you give them precisely because they manage to ‘liberate’ themselves”—she copied his air-ticked quotation marks—“while still performing the roles society forced on them and on those around them?”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean to imply the women were to blame. But don’t you think a truly liberated woman should not be put under such pressures? Should not have to compromise so?”

  “Everyone has to compromise. Women and men do. You’re imagining an ideal situation, but reality is not always ideal.”

  “But it can be nudged toward being a bit more ideal, don’t you think?”

  “Through writing?”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged. She refrained from revealing to him that his article, regardless of where it will be published, will most likely not result in a gender revolution in Egypt. She thought of her father, how he would pick up her mother’s empty teacup and carry it to the kitchen, and how she, Rose, would view that as so kind of him, so considerate, how, if she saw him do it, she would rush to take it from him, carry it to the kitchen herself because it seemed like the right thing to do, because she, after all, was a woman.

  She did not do the same with her mother. For some reason, the sight of Nora carrying cups to the kitchen did not offend Rose. Rose looked back at the American journalist, felt angry with him for making her notice things she would rather not.

  “Do you still have questions? Because I have to get back to work.” She kept her eyes on him, careful not to look away.

  He flipped through his notebook again. Rose tapped one finger on the side of her water bottle.

  “I have enough background information on the discovery here, so I don’t need to keep you for that. But I would like to ask a couple of personal questions, if you don’t mind.” He looked at her, waiting for permission to proceed.

  She nodded. “Sure.”

  “When I was researching you, I found out your given name was Fayrouz, not Rose. Is this correct? And why the change?”

  “It’s quite common for people to have nicknames and to go by them. Every second Mohammed you will meet actually goes by Hamada, for instance.”

  “Like John and Jack.”

  “Exactly. But my name change had to do with something I discovered as a child, when I first got interested in Egyptology. I read somewhere that every newborn in ancient Egypt had two names: a common name that everyone called him or her by, and then the real name, which only the mother knew and which was kept secret. They believed that casting a magic spell intended to harm anyone required the pronunciation of the person’s real name, and if the name was kept secret, the person was protected against black magic. After reading that, I walked up to my parents and asked them to call me by my nickname, Rose, and not my given name, Fayrouz. I guess I hoped that, if they did it long enough, my future enemies would never be able to find out what my real name is.”

  Mark laughed. “And you would remain protected.”

  “Exactly,” she nodded, smiling.

  “But of course, if I publish your real name, everyone will know it.”

  Rose shrugged. “I stopped believing in magic after I turned fourteen.”

  “But you still go by Rose?”

  “This part of my original plan worked: the name stuck.”

  Mark put the pen down again. “So the power is tied to the voicing of the name? To saying it out loud?”

  “As part of a spell, yes.”

  “The power of words.”

  “The power of words, yes.”

  “Is that where your interest in ancient Egyptian writing and literature started?”

  “Partly.” Rose glanced away. In the distance, she could see the stepped Pyramid of Saqqara, built by King Djoser, the first Pharaoh to succeed in building a pyramid. To get there, he had failed two times, building structures that crumbled down on themselves or that sank into the ground. “Many of the funereal texts have an element of that: they would describe the dead man’s afterlife, for example, giving details about his resurrection and favors with the gods and even his hunting and fishing trips, everything he hoped he would have in the afterlife. The implication is that if one said something out loud, it was bound to happen.”

  “Has that ever happened to you? Did you ever say something out loud and see it come true?”

  She smiled. “I said I would become an archaeologist. I walked up to my parents and declared that at age twelve. How about you?”

  He laughed. “Not yet. I did tell everyone back home that I was traveling to Egypt to dig for treasures and find an exotic, oriental wife who would dress up as Cleopatra on Halloween and have the genes to justify that.”

  “Was that part of your research for this article? An experiment in sexism and racism?”

  The smile that had curled his lips vanished. “I was joking, of course. Sexism and racism not intended. And my friends understood that. It’s just that some people find it strange that I choose to live in the Middle East. It’s hard for them to understand the fascination. Usually I try to clarify how things really are, but sometimes, if I’m too tired, I just fall back on stereotypes to make it easier for them.”

  He cleared his throat, took a sip out of his water bottle, squinted at the pyramid in the distance. His face was already so flushed from the heat that she couldn’t tell if he was blushing.

  “So have you found her yet? Your Egyptian queen?” She looked him straight in the eyes.

  “No. Not yet. Still single.” He paused. “How about you? A husband or boyfriend?”

  She watched him flip through his notepad.

  “Cleopatra was Greek,” she said.

  He looked up, puzzled.

  “Cleopatra was not of Egyptian origin. She was Greek, the last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty. A foreigner ruling Egypt, just like so many others. Nefertiti would probably be a better option for a Halloween costume, if you’re interested in authenticity.”

  He nodded, wrote something down in his large, loopy penmanship.

  “So—are you? In a relationship? You don’t have to answer, of course, if you’d rather not. But it would help my interview.” He spoke without looking up.

  “What does this have to do with the interview?”

  Mark counted the reasons on his fingers: “One: it’s to complete the biographical info. Two: I’m writing about sexism, and it is therefore important to know if the man in your life is giving you a hard time regarding your career, especially considering how much travel must be involved. If you have his support or if you have to struggle at home to fulfill your ambitions.”

  “There is no man in my life. And if there were one and he harbored any illusions about controlling what I do with my career, he wouldn’t last long anyway.” The words rang true, even though she had not thought of them before. But they were true. She had broken up with two men in the previous three years, both times because they restricted her freedom, wanted to control how she dressed, whom she spoke to, where she traveled to. Her romantic experiences had taught her that she needed her freedom above all else.

  “So you’re free,” Mark said, as if he had read her mind.

  “Always, regardless of whether I’m single or not.” She paused as he wrote her answer down. “Speaking of freedom, are you free for dinner, by any chance?”

  Her question surprised her more than it did him. Later, she would wonder if she had simply wanted to impress him, to prove to him that Egyptian women were not as oppressed and helpless as he thought they were. She would never have asked him out if he was Egyptia
n, but that didn’t seem to matter. An Egyptian man would have seen her forward move as a slutty approach with hidden intentions, a bait leading straight to an imaginary altar. An American, she hoped, would see just what she meant: a friendly meal out with one of the locals. A local who was female, who was not oppressed, and who was free to ask a man out to dinner without fearing the wrath of society. Perhaps this small gesture would influence his attitude once he’d sat down to write his article. She would be doing her country a service. Her motives, she assured herself, were firmly rooted in national pride.

  He took his time finishing what he was writing before looking up. “Sure. If you’re paying, that is.”

  “Of course I am. I asked you, didn’t I?”

  * * *

  —

  SHE DID NOT fall in love with him suddenly, like a dive in a pool, but gradually, like the way she used to waddle into the sea in Mersa Matruh as a child, taking one step at a time and pausing to marvel at the clarity of the water, to wiggle her toes and watch the sand around them cloud up, to contemplate a seashell, half buried by her feet. She may have taken her first step during that dinner, when she took him, somewhat defiantly, mean-spiritedly, she would later admit, to a sidewalk restaurant selling koshari. Rather than see him squirm at the grimy tables or shy away from the Egyptian carbohydrate bomb of a dish with its layers of pasta, rice, lentils, and fried onions, she watched with a considerable degree of awe as he dowsed his dish in fiery hot sauce and gulped it all up, all the while talking nonstop, seemingly more at home in these surroundings than she was. She paid for her misadventure with a night of stomach cramps and hourly bathroom runs, her intestines protesting her stubbornness in matching him fork by fork, as if they were in a competition to prove which one could embrace Egyptian food with greater enthusiasm. She had worried about him, that night. Imagined him lying in bed, sweating, twisting in pain, with no one to help him. She should have taken him to the Marriott next door to her parents’ apartment, shelled out the five-hundred-pound charge to feed him USDA organic steak, imported all the way from America.