by Rajia Hassib
“What does Mark think of your archive?” Ingrid asks.
Rose takes a long sip of her coffee. A gulp. Empties her cup, and looks at its bottom in disappointment. “You think a third extra-large coffee would be too much?”
“Go ahead. The shakes suit you.”
Rose raises an eyebrow at Ingrid, who smiles. “So what does he think? Of your quest to catalog your sister’s life?”
“I wouldn’t quite put it this way. Cataloging her life. I like to think of it more as a memorial. Something to honor her by.”
Ingrid’s face is blank now. Then inquisitive. A mixture of surprise and doubt. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
Rose glances at the couple next to them, then looks away. “No. I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“First, I was afraid he’d lecture me if he found out I took her stuff without asking my parents’ permission. Then I thought he wouldn’t understand, that he’d treat it all as part of my grieving process. Then I told myself it’s none of his business anyway, what goes on between my sister and me.” Rose pauses, contemplates this last sentence, ignores how perplexing it sounds. “He just doesn’t need to know.”
“But don’t you need him to know? He’s your husband, Rose. He’ll help you out. Grieving is hard enough. Don’t make it harder by shutting out your loved ones.”
Rose looks out the window. The man who was smoking earlier is gone. She searches for someone else to focus on and ends up contemplating a fire hydrant.
“You know what I think?” Ingrid starts again. “You’re still angry with Mark. That’s what all of this boils down to.”
Rose considers the possibility. “Yes,” she says, slowly. “I’m still angry.”
For the first time in five weeks, thinking of Mark’s involvement in Gameela’s death evokes more sorrow than rage. During the dinner party in West Virginia, Rose had watched April wrap an arm around Mark as he sat next to her and pull him closer, giving him a hug. Nothing had happened to lead to this—no warm comment between siblings, no burst of nostalgia following a childhood story—and yet there it was, a single, fleeting moment of tenderness that left Rose breathless. For minutes afterward, she busied herself with her food, unable to look up. She could not put her finger on the source of the swell of emotion overcoming her. Was it the sight of sibling love reminding her of her loss? Was it Mark’s smile, directed at April and filled with such gratitude that Rose wanted to jump and hug him, too, to reassure him that she, too, loved him, that she always will, that she, too, was his family? She still could not tell. All she knew was that now, when thinking of being angry with Mark, her anger was subdued, smothered under a layer of guilt and longing.
“It wasn’t his fault, Rose.”
Rose nods, still looking away. “I know.”
“You need to tell him about Gameela’s things. It will be good for both of you to have a way to talk about this.”
Rose pretends to look out the window again. In her peripheral vision, she can see the young couple. The woman is talking, gesticulating as she speaks, laughing, while her companion watches her in silence, arms crossed, eyes fixed on her, smiling, listening.
* * *
—
BACK IN THE OFFICE, Rose combs through the ever-increasing mountain of books on her desk, looking for one text that she remembered seeing the day before. Dr. Winkenstein is due back in three weeks, and Rose wants to present a compelling case to him in hopes of persuading him to include ancient Egyptian attitudes toward communication with the dead as part of the upcoming exhibit. She knows she should be working on other aspects of ancient Egyptian daily life. Exploring the influence of the annual inundation of the Nile alone would take her weeks to prepare for—how they used it to set their calendar; how they believed the river’s flooding waters were the tears of Isis, mourning the death of Osiris. Rose sits back in her chair, looks at the stack of books ahead of her. She remembers her dissertation, how skeptical she was of Dr. Assmann’s theory that all culture in general and ancient Egyptian culture in particular revolved around attitudes toward death. Now she is not so skeptical anymore.
Again she thinks of Isis, the sister who avenged the death of Osiris, her beloved brother. She likes to think of herself as Isis, though she knows the comparison is flawed—Osiris was also Isis’s husband, which makes her love for him more complicated than simple sibling loyalty. Still, the ancient Egyptian trinity has been haunting Rose’s dreams—Isis, Osiris, and their son, Horus, all working together to restore order, to reinstate balance in the wake of the chaos that is death.
Rose picks up two photocopies that she made the previous day. The first is from the Great Hymn to Osiris:
His sister was his guard,
She who drives off the foes,
Who stops the deeds of the disturber
By the power of her utterance.
The clever-tongued whose speech fails not,
Effective in the word of command,
Mighty Isis who protected her brother,
Who sought him without wearying.
Who roamed the land lamenting,
Not resting till she found him,
Who made a shade with her plumage,
Created breath with her wings.
The second is from the Coffin Texts, spoken by Horus, who is addressing his father, Osiris—the son in the land of the living, the father in the land of the dead:
I am here in this land to assume your throne,
To hold together your despondent ones, to raise your orphans,
To secure your gate, to keep your name alive
On earth in the mouth of the living.
Have patience, have patience,
O you who are divine in that illustrious land where you are!
I am here in this land of the living,
To construct your altars, to establish your mortuary offerings
In your house of eternity on the Isle of Flame!
You are content in that land
as my supporter in the tribunal of the god!
I, however, am here as an advocate in the tribunal of men,
Setting up your boundary stone, holding together your despondent ones,
And serving as your image on earth,
While your gateway is secured by means of that which I do.
Rose puts both hymns in front of her. When she sought them out yesterday, she told herself she was advancing her ongoing research into material for the exhibit. Now she wonders if she had known even then that her work was simply a pretext. The first excerpt is from a stela that is currently housed in the Louvre—impossible to procure for the exhibit—and she wasn’t even sure which coffin the second one was inscribed on, but was certain that this one, too, was out of reach. Furthermore, neither pertained directly to ordinary ancient Egyptians.
Both, however, pertained to her. She read both texts once more.
The power of Isis’s utterance—her words, designed to avenge her dead brother. Horus, keeping his father’s name alive, being his advocate, explaining why he, the son, must remain among the living and not join the dead father in the afterworld. When she chose the works, she had thought only of underscoring the mutually dependent relationship between the living and the dead, an attitude prominent in the lives of ancient Egyptians. Now, however, she thinks of the power of spoken words, of keeping the name of the deceased alive, of being his advocate on earth.
She glances over at Ingrid, her face buried under the halo of hair that flopped down whenever she stood, as she does now, peering down at something. Maybe Ingrid was right. Maybe Rose does need to speak to people, to keep Gameela’s name alive.
On her phone, Rose scrolls through the text messages she has exchanged with Marwa over the last month. Their ongoing conversation is a series of mundane How are you’s an
d Thinking of you’s splattered with heart and hug emojis. They never mention Gameela, and yet there she is, behind every click between Rose and her sister’s best friend, each needing to share her pain with the other but neither willing to increase the other’s suffering, a dance of subdued, mutual grieving. Rose would call Marwa, but not now. It’s still too soon. She needs someone more detached. Someone who will not burst out crying the moment she hears Rose’s voice over the phone.
Rose fumbles through the pockets of her jacket, finds the severance letter still there, reads the name above the signature line: Maha Elattar. Spreading the letter on top of the copies of the ancient Egyptian poems, Rose folds the three sheets, pushing down on the creases with her fingernail, then puts them back in her pocket.
* * *
—
THE NEXT MORNING, Rose waits until Mark leaves before she calls the number she found on the letterhead in Gameela’s correspondence. It takes her three separate phone calls to find the person she is looking for, each phone call answered by a disgruntled employee who refers her to another number. By the time she reaches Maha Elattar, it’s after 8:00 A.M. Rose knows she will be late for work, but she can’t postpone the phone call. It’s 2:00 P.M. in Egypt now, and if she waits any longer, all employees will have left the offices of the National Contractors. Rose would rather be late to work than wait another twenty-four hours before speaking to the woman who signed her sister’s severance letter.
“I am very sorry about your sister, Madam Fayrouz,” Maha Elattar’s voice says from across the ocean. Rose imagines her as an older woman, plump, covered up, sitting at a desk shoved against the wall somewhere. “I couldn’t sleep for days after hearing what happened.” Rose imagines kind eyes watering.
“I was wondering if Gameela ever picked up her last check? I’m helping my parents sort through her stuff, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t misplace that last check before we settle all her accounts,” Rose lies.
“Oh yes, she picked it up. Came and did it in person just two weeks after she stopped working here. It does take some time for these checks to clear, and I did tell her I could mail it to her, but she said she would rather stop by and take it in person. I don’t know if she ever deposited it, but I would be happy to find out for you, if you wish.”
“No need, thank you. I’ll just have to go through her papers one more time. I probably misplaced it.”
“I would think she would have deposited it, though. She was very organized.” Rose lifts both eyebrows. “Everyone was very sorry to see her quit. We were all happy for her, of course, but we still wished it weren’t so.”
“You were happy to see her quit?”
“No, of course not,” the woman blurts out. “Happy to know she was getting married. It’s a shame her husband didn’t want her to work, though, don’t you think? He seemed like such a nice guy. A bit too old for her, I thought, but I guess older men often make better husbands.”
Rose takes two steps back and lets herself fall on the sofa.
“We were all a bit disappointed she didn’t have a big wedding. We would have loved to attend. But it is foolish to spend so much money on one night, I agree. My sister spent thirty thousand pounds on her daughter’s wedding this past summer, and I told her she could have had a small affair at home and given that money to her daughter instead, but you know how people are sometimes.” The voice coming across the ocean pauses. “Hello? Are you still there?”
“Yes. Thank you very much. You’ve been very helpful,” Rose hears herself say.
“I’m very happy to help. And please call me if you can’t find—”
Rose hangs up.
From her bedroom, she pulls out the bin with her sister’s stuff, walks over to the living room, pushes the coffee table to the side, then stands in the middle of the clear space, dumps the stuff out of the bin all around her as she twirls, forming a circle of debris with her at the center. She tosses the bin out of her way, drops to her knees, and starts searching.
A Traditional Marriage Certificate
It is on the day of Thursday, 7 April 2016, that this contract was written between:
First: Mr. Fouad Salem Sedky, of the Muslim faith, born on 5 January 1959 (the husband)
Second: Ms. Gameela Gubran, of the Muslim faith, born on 12 May 1988 (the wife)
After both parties have declared their eligibility to marry and denied the existence of any religious prohibitions against this marriage, they agreed, in presence of the two witnesses signing below, on the following:
The first party declares that he has offered and accepted the marriage with the second party, a religiously sound marriage as proclaimed by God’s book and the tradition of His prophet, peace be upon his soul.
The second party declares that she has accepted the marriage with the first party, of her free will, and in accordance to the traditions of Islamic law.
Issued in two copies, to be kept by both parties until a legal contract can be obtained.
Signed by:
The first party
The second party
The first witness
The second witness
◆ 16 ◆
Mark is sitting at his desk, staring at his computer screen, which glares with the blinding white of a half-empty document, but he cannot think of a single word to write. All he has done for the previous hour is stare at his monitor and turn his wedding band around and around on his finger until the silver is polished to a sparkling sheen.
He pulls the ring out to the first knuckle, examines it for scratches, but does not take it completely off. He has not taken it off once since he put it on his right ring finger, seven years earlier, when he and Rose got engaged, and then had Rose move it to his left ring finger as part of their wedding ceremony, as Egyptian custom dictated, sliding the ring from one finger to the other as Mark kept the tops of his fingers touching, so that the ring literally never left his hands. He keeps it on even when polishing it, using a soft cloth to wipe away the dark stains that tarnish the silver.
He lifts his hand, looks at the wide band. He would have preferred a gold one, but Muslim men are not supposed to wear gold, and the silver ring was the first signifier to Rose’s family that he had truly converted and was eager to practice the religion. That he had not, as Gameela insisted, converted on paper only just so he could marry Rose. The silver ring was Rose’s idea. He was certain she had asked for it only to placate her sister, but at the time, he had not minded.
He slouches forward, lets his head fall between his knees, laces his fingers behind his neck, and takes ten deep breaths, and then ten more. Every time he thinks of Gameela he comes close to getting an anxiety attack, his heart racing uncontrollably, the room swaying around him. He is unsure how to deal with these attacks, which he never used to experience, not even after he found himself in the middle of that street riot in Lebanon years earlier. Considering that it’s been only five weeks since Gameela died, he hopes that the attacks are temporary and will eventually go away on their own. He tries not to think of Gameela to stave them off. Still, her image pops into his head uninvited, at least several times each day: the way he saw her last, sitting across from him in her parents’ apartment, walking around Cairo with him on that last visit to Egypt two years ago, finally accepting him, it seemed, as the brother he had longed to be.
They had not stayed in touch once he returned from Egypt, but still he had felt a newfound connection between them, a sense of acceptance that had lingered, infusing his days with a surprising degree of peace. The repercussions of his marriage had been unsettling. For a long time, he felt cut off from his family and not fully embraced by Rose’s. Finding peace with Gameela had been a promise of hope, an indication that he would soon feel at ease again with both families.
He had dreaded that visit to West Virginia but is now glad he went. His mom seemed more like herself again—friendlier and more sociabl
e than she’d ever been around Rose. He tells himself that Laura may have finally forgiven him his conversion, that Rose’s loss may have touched a nerve, driving Laura to see past her disappointment, though he is not sure that is true. His conversion had crushed her.
On his mother’s deck one evening soon after he was married and had returned to the States, sitting on a pair of patio chairs with the tree-covered mountains extending beyond them, he had tried to explain his attitude toward religion.
“Muslims still believe in Jesus Christ, Ma. There is an entire chapter in the Qur’an about the Virgin Mary. It’s not like I’ve abandoned Christianity; I’m just open to trying a different approach to worshipping the same god.”
His mother, sitting still in her chair, had watched as he spoke, silently weeping, which was the most unnerving thing he had ever seen—Laura never, ever wept. As his lengthy explanation of the similarities between Islam and Christianity wound down, she had had only one response: “Obviously, I have failed in the one thing that mattered.”
Now, sitting with his head between his knees, he wished he had found a way to explain to her how the path he had taken in life was not whimsy or coincidental. He had been on a mission to carve a different kind of existence for himself since that day in high school when he sat in the bleachers, listening to the school counselor address the entire student body and try to explain the death of one of their schoolmates. The boy was Mark’s age, had shared some of Mark’s classes and had been on his bus route, but he and Mark rarely spoke. He had died of alcohol poisoning, found facedown in a stream behind his parents’ trailer the night before. Mark had hardly listened to a word the counselor said, instead remembering all the minor interactions he’d had with the boy, the first person he had known who was now so irrevocably gone. He was still mulling this over on his way out of the gym, when he stepped aside to get a water bottle from the vending machine and heard one teacher addressing another. All that mumbo jumbo about healing and loss. You know what I would have told them, if I was talking to those kids? I would have said this is exactly what you get when you raid your parents’ cheap booze. The boy had it coming, is what I would have said. You could see it on his face—no interest in learning, no ambition. No chance he would have ended up any way other than facedown in a ditch.