A Pure Heart

by Rajia Hassib

  Did you give the journalist the envelope? Saaber asked.

  She glanced at the envelope sitting on her nightstand.

  Yes, she lied.

  Good.

  She waited. Minutes passed before he texted her again.

  If you still want to help, meet me today at the same place at noon.

  That was it. In a moment, her hesitation of the previous days vanished. She texted Saaber back.

  Of course I still want to help. I’ll see you today inshaa Allah.

  Then she sent a message to Fouad.

  Going to be a bit late coming home today.

  He did not respond. He had been giving her the silent treatment since she left the farm, and she was sick of his childish behavior. She was tempted to send him some words of reprimand, but decided against it. She would take care of that face-to-face. For now, she had more important matters to attend to. The boy needed her, and she was going to help him. She imagined him overcoming his pride and asking her for her assistance in some specific, useful way that could set his life straight after that awful period of imprisonment. Perhaps he had trouble finding a job—who would hire a recently released Islamist?—and needed connections to get one. In Egypt, everyone needed connections, and Gameela had them, both on her family’s side and on Fouad’s. Already she was making a mental list of acquaintances who would not deny her such a simple request. She had two hours before she was to meet Saaber, and she needed to get ready. She ran into the bathroom, dried her hair, ran back into her room and changed, put her head cover on. She was about to walk out of the room when she stopped and considered the envelope on her nightstand. Perhaps she could show it to Fouad. It would be a peace offering, a way to include him in her efforts to help the boy. She was certain Fouad would be eager to assist him in any way he could, once he read through these pages and understood how wronged Saaber had felt. Maybe that would lead Fouad to work with her as a team again, to actively try to right the wrongs of society, just as they had done during the revolution, just as Fouad had done during the Bread Riots. She walked back to her nightstand, picked the envelope up, stuffed it in her backpack, then walked out of the bedroom. On her way out, she passed by her parents’ room—the door still closed, both probably still asleep. She considered knocking but didn’t want to wake them up. Softly, she passed by the door, picked her duffel bag up, and walked out of the apartment.

  * * *

  —

  SAABER SAT AT a table in the corner of the coffee shop, his backpack on his lap, staring at the entrance.

  “You’re late,” he told her.

  “You only gave me a two-hour notice, and I had to drive here all the way from Zamalek. I got stuck in traffic.”

  She had just sat down when she saw him get up.

  “I just got here!”

  “We’re not staying. You said you wanted to help, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Are you absolutely sure?” His words were slow, his lips curled in a smile that, again, Gameela could not decipher.

  “Of course I am!”

  He nodded. “Let’s go.”

  He walked out of the café and kept to the sidewalk, his step brisk. She followed him, sprinting to keep up. At times, she felt as if he had forgotten she was there with him, walking ahead of her, gaining distance that threatened to separate them in Cairo’s busy streets. He stopped at a traffic light, and she stopped, too, catching her breath.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Walking the Cairo streets in the suffocating August midday heat was never a good idea. She pulled a tissue out of her backpack, used it to wipe the sweat already pooling on her forehead.

  “Are we almost there?” she asked, stepping up until she was walking by Saaber’s side.

  “Ten more minutes.”

  “Can you slow down a bit? I’m getting out of breath.”

  He slowed down. For a couple of minutes, they walked on in silence, Gameela struggling to remain by his side amid the pedestrian traffic. She could not imagine why he would need to bring her somewhere. Was he taking her to a prospective place of employment? Using her as a character reference? Certainly there were ways to do so without dragging her with him, but still, she was too curious to learn their destination to object to tagging along. Besides, walking together provided a good chance for talking.

  “I wanted to apologize to you, Saaber,” she started, going through the words she had rehearsed many times in the past few days. “I feel I was partly responsible for getting you in the trouble you ended up in.”

  He did not look her way, but she did not care. Already she was feeling part of the load she had carried for two years lifting, her words picking tiny weights off her conscience.

  “I had no way of knowing all of this would happen, of course. I thought that I was helping Mark out when I got him in touch with you, and I told myself I’d be helping you out, too. Getting your story out there. Neither one of us could have known this simple story would get you in trouble. I know Fouad and Mark both felt really bad about it.”

  He stopped, turning to look at her. “They felt bad? Then why didn’t the journalist get me out of jail? Why did Fouad stop responding to my texts?”

  “Mark couldn’t have gotten you out. How could he?”

  “He’s an American. They can do all they want.”

  “Not when it comes to the law!”

  He snorted, started walking again.

  Gameela followed him. “And Fouad did help. He got you the lawyer who got you out of jail.”

  “I would have gotten out of jail anyway. They had no case against me.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “He didn’t help when I needed him. He wouldn’t meet with me.”

  “But he sent me in his place.” She was glad to be able to maintain that lie, if only to defend Fouad.

  “Yes, he sent you to me.” For the second time since they met, she saw that same smile curl his lips. “He sent me his wife, the journalist’s sister-in-law. I’ve been thinking about this for the past two days. It’s amazing the signs God will send his true believers to show them they are on the right path, to give His blessings, to assure them that all who wronged them will be punished, that all will be avenged.”

  “What path?”

  “I wasn’t planning on this, you know. Having anyone with me. I thought everyone had a role that God assigned them and that my role was different. But then you showed up and I didn’t know you were related to both Fouad and the journalist and I thought about it and I thought God was sending me another sign.” He turned to face her, his eyes gleaming. “I have to follow God’s signs. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “I’m sorry, Saaber, but I have no clue what you’re trying to tell me.”

  “It’s okay.” He walked on. “We’re almost there.”

  He fell silent again, his steps getting faster. Gameela scurried to keep up, fighting a sudden urge to stop right here, turn around, and abandon him altogether. But she still wanted to see where they were going. Besides, she felt that leaving now would get him off the hook too easily. He owed her an explanation. Or, at least, he owed her a chance to do something worthwhile to justify all the trouble she had gone to, all those lies that she had permitted herself only because her intentions were good.

  She stayed close, walking next to him, her shoulder to his. Whether he liked it or not, she was going to make things go her way.

  * * *

  —

  THE ROAD LEADING to the police headquarters was blockaded on both ends, with no traffic allowed except for a trickle of pedestrians who had to go through the metal detectors installed in the middle of the road. Saaber stepped up to the line leading to the gate, and Gameela stood behind him. Over a dozen people separated them from the metal detectors. Gameela stepped aside, trying to see ahead
, but all she could discern were two female officers chatting off to the side, their navy head covers matching their uniforms, and the officer sitting in the shade of an umbrella next to the gate.

  Gameela could not fathom why Saaber had brought her here, of all places. Surely, he was not seeking employment at the police headquarters. Was he in trouble with the police again? Did he need her to testify on his behalf? To tell them that she was the one who brought Mark to him? That he had not sought out the American journalist?

  “What are we doing here?” she whispered to his back.

  He did not answer.

  The early afternoon had turned suffocatingly hot, and she was sweating profusely under her head cover, her hair sticky and itchy. To her utter embarrassment, she was also getting nervous about going through the security checkpoint with the boy’s envelope in her backpack. She remembered the stories flooding her social media feed in the previous three years since the Muslim Brotherhood president got thrown out and the state tightened its grip on all forms of dissent: the fifteen-year-old kid arrested for wearing a T-shirt with “NO TO TORTURE” printed on it, thrown in jail for years under terrorism charges; the young man who got detained for a sticker on his laptop denouncing the military rule. She had only read through the first few pages, had not even glanced through the rest. What if the rest contained similar material? What if the officers at the security checkpoint read through the boy’s scribbles?

  Still a good five or six people away from the metal gate, Gameela tore the envelope open, pulling out the dozen sheets inside. Ahead of her, Saaber looked straight in front of him, never turning around. Gameela folded the envelope, stuffed it in her purse, then looked at the sheets.

  Pages and pages covered with notes lay in her hands, fanned out, the white of the sheets blinding in the bright daylight. Gameela squinted, held the sheets up to her face. The boy’s handwriting was a tightly wound scrawl, the words written in black ink often too close to each other to decipher. She removed the first three pages, the ones she already read, and flipped through the rest. No way she could read all of this before arriving at the gate. She stepped aside, let one woman pass in front of her, still keeping an eye on Saaber, afraid he would make it through and she would lose him. She got back in line and frantically scanned the pages.

  At first, all she found were stock prayers: declarations that God will always be on the side of those defending His laws; that this life was for the vain; that eternity was the true life. She skimmed through the next paragraph, then the next.

  Then she got to the paragraph about the police.

  Reading through the first two sentences, Gameela immediately got out of the line and stepped to the side. The boy had gone on a two—no, three-page rant against the police, accusing them of murdering his brother and his father, of killing his pigeons (his pigeons!), of holding him unjustly. He went on to blame them for every protester who died during the revolution, for helping the army throw out the legitimately elected Muslim Brotherhood president.

  Gameela took another step away from the line, glanced at the two female officers, making sure they couldn’t read the pages over her shoulder, and then at Saaber, who was just two people away from the metal gates.

  This stuff was enough to get her arrested. To get him arrested again.

  She wondered what he had in his backpack, hoped he didn’t carry more copies of this to distribute, imagined him walking around the police building handing out flyers. She wondered if he realized he would be searched.

  Ahead of her, one of the two policewomen was looking through a lady’s purse.

  Chances are, they wouldn’t really look through all the papers in his backpack.

  But what if they did?

  She took another frantic glance through the pages, skipped a few paragraphs ahead.

  What on earth did Saaber think Mark would do with this, a watered-down, not very eloquent version of those angry posts the supporters of the ousted Muslim Brotherhood president had flooded Facebook with for the previous three years?

  She kept skimming through the pages.

  What finally caught her eyes was a pronoun. “It.”

  Because God has sent me signals that I was called upon to do it.

  Do what?

  She skimmed back up, looking for an explanation she may have missed, a reference, or an elaboration.

  This deed that I have committed is a testimony to my faith in God, my responsibility to do His bidding, my determination to set things right.

  Was he going to the police to confess a crime he had committed? If so, why did he need to drag her with him?

  Frantically she scanned the paragraphs, reading them backward one by one, skipping some then going back to them, glancing at Saaber to see if he had made it to the front of the line yet. Nothing. She went back to the spot where she had originally left off reading and continued from there. Muddling through Saaber’s inconsistent, poor prose, she struggled to find a clue she had previously missed, anything that would explain what that deed was that he referred to, what it was that he felt needed twelve pages of justification.

  Did he refer to pushing the orderly off the roof? Was this an admission of guilt?

  Was he, perhaps, feeling responsible for his brother’s death?

  Did he feel a need to apologize for his interview with Mark? But why would he? After all, he had explicitly asked her to get the pages to Mark. Doubtless seeking more exposure.

  What was it, then?

  Because God rewards those who embrace jihad in His name.

  Gameela looked up, her heart racing.

  After years of studying Islam, she knew what jihad meant: striving to be pious, to spread goodness on earth, to act every day in the knowledge that God was watching all one’s deeds, to live in the hope of attaining grace.

  She knew perfectly well that this was not what Saaber meant when he used the word jihad.

  For a moment, she felt the clarity of vision that she had always longed for but never grasped, the pieces falling into place: Saaber’s senseless manifesto, his anger with the police, with Mark, and with Fouad.

  Her presence here. The cherry on top of his revenge cake.

  In her burst of revelation, she felt utterly, completely stupid.

  “Saaber!” she yelled.

  He did not respond.

  Gameela’s heart raced. She considered running to him and pulling him away—he was right there; she could reach him in a few skips. But she should not run toward a security checkpoint. All three police officers were armed. She took one slow, hesitant step toward him. One of the policewomen turned and gave her an inquisitive look.

  “Get back in line,” the policewoman ordered her.

  Gameela retreated.

  “Saaber!’ she called one more time.

  But he had already made it to the front of the line.

  She watched him try to walk around the metal detector, between it and the barricade set up close by. The police officer shouted at him to get back.

  He got back, paused in front of the metal detector, then stepped through it, and it beeped, a shrill, loud noise.

  Gameela took one step backward and, mirroring her, Saaber took a step back, too.

  Then he turned his head to look her way.

  For a split second, she thought she saw a youthful look flash in his eyes, a look of fear, of hesitation, of indecisiveness, just like that look she always saw in the eyes of the young peasants’ kids at the farm when they had to pick between two fruits she offered them, wanting both, wanting everything, but believing there could only be one choice.

  She clung to that look, her eyes wide, hoping it would last.

  But a second later it vanished.

  Part Five

  ◆ 22 ◆

  For two months, the box containing Gameela’s things sits in the corner of Rose’s living room, u
ntouched. She passes by it each morning on her way to the kitchen, sits next to it in the evenings when she and Mark watch the news, even occasionally places a book or magazine on its closed lid. The box shares the room with Rose and Mark, but Rose is determined never to look through it again. On the lid, she has tacked an orange sticky note with the words “Pandora’s box” written on it in black Sharpie, followed by three exclamation marks—reminders of the perils of asking too many questions.

  Weeks earlier, she had allowed herself one last question, posed to her parents on the phone a few days after she found out about Gameela’s marriage:

  “Did Gameela have any suitors? In the last year or so?”

  On the other side: silence. Then her father’s slowly uttered words.

  “There was a man, yes. Some older guy she was infatuated with. One of those hopeless cases she always fell for.”

  “You know how your sister always thought she could save the miserable and depressed,” her mother added.

  Rose remembered two of Gameela’s former relationships: a college friend, a recovering addict whom she believed she could keep sober until he relapsed and his parents shipped him off to rehab, and the older son of one of her mother’s friends, a widower who could not get over his wife’s death, a young father with a child Gameela knew she would become the perfect mother to. Neither relationship had lasted.

  “We found out she had been prancing all over Cairo with him for some time, so we confronted her about it. She told us he wanted to ask for her hand in marriage,” her father continued. “We refused, of course.”

  “She got over it, with time,” her mother assured her.

  Rose closed her eyes, started counting till ten, arming herself against the surge of anger she expected would assault her, but surprisingly, the anger didn’t come. She opened her eyes. Perhaps she was not capable of being angry with her old, bereaved parents, who, after all, thought they were looking out for their child’s best interest. Or perhaps anger was a finite emotion, and Rose had overdrawn her credit limit. Either way, she felt only numbness and asked no more questions, neither of her parents nor of her sister’s belongings, which, she was convinced, punished her inquisitiveness with increasingly painful revelations.