A Pure Heart

by Rajia Hassib

  He clearly kept his childhood room, forsaking the master bedroom, which was apparently unchanged since his mother’s death, down to the doilies on the nightstands, the toiletries on the dresser, and the crocheted cream bedspread. Gameela walked over to the bed, placed the teacup on the nightstand, sat down amid the unmade, crumpled bed linens. Resting her back against the headboard, she looked at Fouad’s things scattered around the room. Here, as well as in the kitchen and bathroom, were his possessions, all patiently awaiting his return. She decided there was ample proof that he would, in fact, return, that this trip to his farm in Rasheed was going to last a few days only, as he’d promised, that he was not gone for good, as Marwa and her mother had both implied. “He does that all the time—comes to Cairo, makes us all believe he will settle down here, then disappears without notice,” Aunt Ameera had said. “He has already stayed here longer than usual—three years now, since the revolution—so his return to Rasheed is long overdue. He can never remain in the city. He always runs back to his farm. It may be years before we see him again.” But he would not have left his cologne in the bathroom, his jeans on the armchair in the bedroom, his sneakers under the bed, milk in the fridge. She hoped that even Fouad was not that disorganized.

  Gameela picked up the cup, took a sip of hot tea, let it swirl in her mouth. The room—messy, dusty, in desperate need of a good airing—felt like a warm hug. She leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath in. In the layers between the musty smell of unwashed sheets and stale air she could clearly distinguish it: Fouad’s scent. This was his room, his bed, and she was here. She smiled.

  * * *

  —

  AN HOUR LATER, Gameela was back in the Tawfiks’ apartment below, sitting on Marwa’s bed.

  “My mom is worried about you,” Marwa said.

  Gameela shifted in place. She knew what was coming.

  “She says that Fouad is way too old for you. She gave him a lecture the other day, the night before he left. She thinks that was perhaps why he went back to Rasheed.” Marwa was whispering, though they were behind closed doors.

  “There is nothing for her to worry about.”

  “That’s what Fouad kept saying.”

  Gameela looked out the French doors leading to the balcony. Amazing how much light those shutters kept out, when closed.

  “You know you can trust me, don’t you? I’m always here for you.”

  Gameela nodded.

  “She is only concerned because he is so much older than you are.”

  “I really don’t know what the fuss is about. It’s not like we’re dating or anything.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No!” Gameela’s reply came out louder than she intended, tinged with frustration both at being wrongly accused of something and at being denied the guilt she wished were true. If only Fouad did say something. If only he did speak out, confess—what? His love? Infatuation? Aimless flirtation? Whatever it was, she wished he would speak up and spell it out. “There is nothing going on.” She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

  Marwa tilted her head to the side.

  “Seriously!” Gameela insisted. “Nothing going on.”

  “It’s not that I wouldn’t love for you to officially be part of the family. But I just don’t get it. He’s old enough to be your dad.”

  Gameela focused on the building across the street, started counting the balusters decorating its balconies, then tried to sync her breath to the counting: one—breathe in; two—breathe out; three—breathe in. Her efforts failed. Before she knew it, her eyes watered. She jumped up and walked out on the balcony, grateful to Marwa for not following her. Across the street, a young boy walked out on one of the balconies of the opposing building, one story higher than where Gameela stood. Gameela watched him wrap one arm around each of the thick balusters and look down at her. She waved at him, but he did not wave back.

  * * *

  —

  BEFORE LEAVING, Gameela sneaked into the kitchen and slipped the key to Fouad’s apartment back where she had stolen it from: in the second drawer from the left, where Aunt Ameera kept it, where she often saw her pull it out and give it to the maid who walked up to clean the apartment from time to time. No one saw Gameela return the key, just as no one had seen her take it or use it to get in and out of the apartment above. On the walk back home, Gameela marveled at this new piece of information: how easy it was to do things behind people’s backs. How exciting.

  Was that how it felt to keep secrets?

  It had been so effortless. All she had to do was walk into that kitchen, open the drawer, and take the key. Then she told Marwa that she had to run to the post office to drop off a letter her mom had asked her to mail—a simple excuse, nothing too elaborate or suspicious. She walked out of the apartment and, instead of leaving, walked up one floor, let herself into Fouad’s apartment, spent an hour there, then walked back down to Marwa’s. For the first few minutes, she had sat in silence, expecting to be discovered, anticipating a comment revealing that everyone knew exactly where she had been and what she had been doing. None of that happened. Her minor adventure had gone unnoticed, leaving no trace except for a lingering adrenaline rush. And, now that she was halfway home, a creeping guilt.

  No, this had not been a break-in. She had taken nothing, disturbed nothing, and had been very careful to leave everything just as she had found it, down to the angle of the washed cup resting on the dish rack. Morally speaking, she had done nothing wrong, because her intentions were not reprimandable. All she had wanted was to satisfy her curiosity, to ease her crippling anxiety, to find out if Fouad truly was coming back, as he’d promised, or if she should train herself to live, again, without the expectation of seeing him.

  He had done this before—disappeared without saying goodbye. One year after they first met, Gameela found out during her usual visit to Marwa’s that Fouad had gone back to his farm in Rasheed on Egypt’s northern coast, and had not left word on when (or if) he was coming back. That day, she had sunk into the sofa in Marwa’s living room, trying her best to hide her disappointment. She had refrained from contacting him for an entire twenty-four hours, then she had sent a simple text: Coming back to Cairo soon?

  His response, hours later: Not sure.

  He did come back, but not until a full month had passed. His arrival, just like his disappearance, came unannounced—she had walked into Marwa’s apartment and found him sitting in his usual armchair, as if he had never left. The surprise had rooted her in place long enough for Marwa to pull her into the apartment and start on a tirade about her workday, doubtless to cover up for her friend’s revealing reaction. Everyone knew Gameela and Fouad were attracted to each other. No one approved of it. Every time Gameela visited her friend, she wondered whether that would be the day Aunt Ameera finally took her aside and addressed her relationship with Fouad directly, or worse, phoned her mother and warned her of her daughter’s inadvisable romantic misadventure. But Aunt Ameera never did, resorting instead to a steady stream of passive-aggressiveness directed at her nephew: sideways glances, muttered, generalized insults whenever he changed his seat to get closer to Gameela (some people have all the nerve!) and the occasional plate of food shoved in front of him with such force that the sauce splattered like a minuscule erupting volcano. All Fouad did in response was smile at his aunt, wink at her, one time even pulling her into his lap and giving her a hug, to which Ameera reacted with a shove that almost sent him tumbling down from his seat. Gameela watched all of this with feigned indifference, laughing at Fouad’s reactions as if all she were witnessing was the loving bickering between family members. As if the assumption that she would fall in love with a man twice her age was so absurd that it never crossed her mind.

  Gameela herself would not have thought it possible, that first day when she met him, back when he arrived in Cairo three days after the star
t of the 2011 revolution. Her memories of him were now forever tinged with the excitement of the Arab Spring, with the promise of positive change, of miracles materializing for the asking. In the span of a handful of days, he had gone from a stranger sitting in the living room of her best friend to a man who marched beside her, who chanted the slogans demanding Bread, liberty, and social justice with a fervor that matched hers.

  Then he became the man who gave her things.

  She had accepted the first items out of sheer bewilderment: What was she supposed to do when offered a pencil stub? An apple? A box of bubble gum? Three paper clips strung together? A paper airplane made out of a magazine cutting that, when unfolded, revealed a yellowed 1979 feature about Umm Kulthum, the famous Egyptian singer? Had the gifts been expensive or suggestive of anything inappropriate or romantic (the categories being, because of their age difference, interchangeable), Gameela would have firmly refused the first one, just as she had refused the beautiful Qur’an housed in a small silver box that a college friend had offered her with terrifying reverence. But that first pencil stub—he had simply held it in front of her, and she, reflexively, had accepted it, only to watch him turn around and go back to his seat, never offering an explanation. The whole thing had seemed so natural that, for a moment, she suspected she had been asked to do something that needed a pencil to be accomplished—to jot down a phone number or an address—and that she had been too absentminded to notice the request. But the moment had passed and no one seemed to have noticed—the entire Tawfik family had been in the room with them—and she was left holding a short, yellow-and-black pencil in her hand. She had stared at it. Then, for reasons she could never explain, she had tucked it in her purse. She could have put it down on the coffee table, among the pile of books, magazines, art supplies, and half-filled teacups that inevitably covered all of the Tawfiks’ living-room surfaces. She could have given it back to Fouad, treating it as the jest it probably was. She could have inquired why exactly he thought she needed a pencil. But she had done no such thing. She had accepted his gift, had held on to it, and had tucked it in her purse in a manner both conspiratorial and promising. In short, she had accepted whatever he was offering her without even understanding what the offer was. Which, once he disappeared, seemed like an apt analogy for their relationship.

  She had kept those items, tucked them reverently into a box that she hid in her armoire for months, until he left for Rasheed with no promise of return. Even then, she had waited a good three weeks before getting up in the middle of the night, pulling the box out, and spreading the items on her bed. She placed the smaller ones in the center, looping them in concentric circles: the clips and pins, the wooden clothespin, the guitar pick, four different buttons given to her on four different occasions, the tube of paint, the twig. She formed three circles before she started placing the larger items around them: a stapler, a small clay planter (empty but previously used, its inside tinted a suspicious greenish brown), a folded table runner (crocheted, currently a faded ecru but probably a deep rose in its earlier life). By the time she was done, her entire bed was covered.

  Gameela stood looking at Fouad’s offerings. At some point—perhaps after the tenth or twentieth item—she had started trying to decipher a pattern to his gifts, a connection among them that would, perhaps, imply that what he was really giving her was not just the individual items but rather the sum of all their small pieces, an encoded message. Every time he handed her something, she would accept it with the excitement of a child getting one more clue in a scavenger hunt. She had spent nights sorting the items in groups, had even started keeping a log of when he gave her each piece, trying to discern a pattern of repetition or a connection that would finally spell out the secret that she knew he was hiding and that she believed he was trying to relay to her, bit by bit. Now, looking at those items, it occurred to her that they revealed the simplest of messages: she was at the center of a juvenile infatuation with an older man still trapped in teenage land, a man who would not open up to her, a man who offered her nothing but a bedload of junk. Slowly, deliberately, she had picked all the items up, stuffed them into a shopping bag, walked to the kitchen, and tucked the bag deep into the trash can.

  When he reappeared a week later, she was still too angry with him to regret having thrown his gifts away. She would have stayed angry, would certainly have fulfilled her vow never to let him manipulate her again, had the man who returned after that month’s absence not been so utterly different from the one who had left.

  On the day of his return, he had stood up when she was ready to leave, announcing that he was going to walk her home.

  “I don’t need a chaperone, thank you,” she had said, loud enough for Marwa and her parents to hear.

  “I know. I would still like to walk you home. Please. I need to talk to you.”

  She had not known how to respond. Never had he so clearly singled her out, and the bewildered, alarmed look in Aunt Ameera’s eyes confirmed that. Gameela should have refused. She should have demanded that he leave her alone.

  She did not.

  That day, they walked around the city for hours. He spoke to her of his family, of his British mother and doctor father—Aunt Ameera’s older brother—of his life on the farm, of his resistance to living in Cairo, of how his last trip to Rasheed had not provided the refuge he usually found there. Instead, it had shown him that he needed to come back to the city. He told her he was here to stay.

  That had been two years ago. Since then, the walk back home had turned into a routine; the late-night texting and midday phone calls discussing nothing had become the norm. Gradually, their conversations gained intimacy, their mutual need becoming unquestionable. Yet he never spelled out any plans for the future. Gameela had savored the bits and pieces of himself that he revealed to her at an excruciatingly slow pace, but after two years of this, she was becoming restless. What were they anyway? Friends? Lovers? Soul mates destined to stay apart because society deemed their match inappropriate? For months, Gameela had mulled the options as she waited for signs that he was finally ready to spell his feelings out, to commit to her and disregard their age difference, challenge anyone who was going to oppose them, including her family. Instead, he had scurried away to Rasheed unannounced. That was not the sign she was hoping for. Of course she feared that he was not coming back.

  She vowed not to contact him, even if she had to wait for weeks or months. But she had not had to. He had called her the evening of his departure, apologizing for leaving without a warning, saying that urgent business had called him back to his farm (what kind of excuse was that?) and promising to come back soon.

  She waited three days before deciding she still did not trust his promise. His trips to the farm were usually planned days in advance, and most urgent decisions were easily discussed on the phone with his estate manager. The idea of an emergency that needed him to hurry back without prior notice was hardly believable. To add to her suspicions, Fouad had been in a solemn mood for days before he left. The last time she met him, a week after Mark had returned to the U.S. with four finished profiles tucked contentedly on his hard drive, Fouad had been uneasy with worry. His excitement in the days leading to Saaber’s interview had been replaced by a handful of what-ifs: What if the boy got in trouble because of that interview? What if they had both helped an American journalist portray an Islamist in a good light? Fouad had brought Mark to Saaber because he believed in championing the poor and downtrodden, but what if Mark focused on Saaber’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that Fouad believed took advantage of the poor, one that he detested for being opportunistic and hypocritical? Fouad had wanted to help Mark depict a true picture of Egypt, but what if Mark’s truth ended up being different from Fouad’s?

  Despite her own apprehensions—she shared some of his fears—Gameela had assuaged Fouad as much as she could, but his uneasiness made his subsequent disappearance seem suspicious. Ma
ybe he did have to go to the farm on urgent business, and maybe he was running away again, just as he had done before. Running away from her. Was his withdrawal a sign that their relationship was ending? She had to find out. His apartment, she told herself, might provide her with an answer.

  Now, walking home, she assured herself that his apartment had indicated his imminent return, even though she was not sure how much of what she saw was wishful thinking. His clothes still strewn all around his bedroom? He may not need them. The food in the fridge? Easy enough to ask Aunt Ameera to have her maid clean that out. His laptop lying on the sofa in his living room? He may have bought a new one. He may still be gone for good.

  Arriving at her parents’ apartment building, Gameela paused, stepping up to the parapet overlooking the Nile, looking out on the running water. She would go up to her parents and tell them nothing of her minor adventure. She no longer felt guilt or excitement, merely disappointment. Ever since she could remember, Gameela had taken pride in her morality, in her honesty, in her ability to distinguish right from wrong and then tread the right path with utter certainty, regardless of how difficult that path was. Now she felt as if her morality so far was not the result of her excellent character and religious observation, but rather a coincidental by-product of never having been tested. All she had to do was fall in love—yes, she was in love with Fouad, had been for three years now, was going to stay in love with him forever, even if he never reciprocated her feelings. All she had to do was fall in love, and there went her moral aptitude. Now she was as good as a common criminal, breaking into apartments, justifying her transgression. Sipping Fouad’s tea while he was away. Eating his cookies. She sighed, then laughed. On the scale of transgressions, this was not too bad. On the scale of morality, the size of the transgression did not matter; what mattered was that something was done that contradicted the moral code she had always preached. Something that could be hard to explain to God. She blushed. Then again, God would certainly understand.