by Rajia Hassib
But things smuggled out of Egypt often find their way back home, Rose knows.
She gets up and walks to the temple. Passing through the columns, she turns left and looks at the graffiti, at the names of various European visitors who came to the temple in the nineteenth century and, perhaps inspired by the structure’s ability to survive those who built it, carved their names on its walls, leaving their own marks that outlasted their short lives: Leonardo, 1820; D. Gallone, 1821; L. Politi, 1819; someone from 1891 with enough national pride to mark the name of his home city: NY, US. Rose marvels at the time it must have taken to carve those names, the care some of the vandals took in making the letters uniform, deep, large. The inescapable allure of immortality.
The boy who thought that blowing himself up would grant him an eternal life.
Beside Rose, a young girl stands looking up, not at the graffiti but at the tall ceiling above.
“Look how high it is, Mommy!” She pulls at her mother’s hand. “But it’s cracked!”
Rose, too, looks up. The ceiling looks as if it’s cracked, the seams between the stones visible, but Rose knows these are merely the effects of time, eroding the ancient structure’s cosmetic surface, leaving the secrets of its inner workings bare.
“Don’t worry,” she tells the young girl. “It’s not going to fall.”
◆ 23 ◆
Fouad peels oranges using a Swiss Army knife that he pulled out of the pocket of his cargo pants. Rose watches him. Her first impression stands: he looks older than she had expected, closer to the midsixties than to fifty-seven. Then again, the man seems to have never known sunscreen. His skin is blackened with exposure, his original skin tone peeking from under his chambray shirt’s neck opening and rolled-up sleeves, which reveal arms quite toned for his age. Maybe he isn’t in his sixties. She can’t decide. He hands her a peeled orange and she takes it, starts separating the segments.
He watches her eat. He has a probing, attentive look, and she thinks she understands why her sister would have found this older man attractive just based on the way he handed her that orange, on the intensity in his look as he watches her eat.
“Did you tell your parents? About Gameela and me?” he asks.
She shakes her head.
He nods. “Better leave it this way.”
“Yes.”
Rose bites at the last segment of the orange. Already he is peeling another one for her.
“These are good oranges,” she says.
“Yes.”
“I wish she had told me about you.”
He does not respond.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“We didn’t tell anyone.”
“I’m her sister. She should have told me.”
He places another peeled orange on a plate in front of her and starts peeling one for himself. With every peeled orange, he produces one long spiral strip of orange skin, uniform in width, which he then gently places on a plate. The orange peel holds its shape, a hollow globe. The plate is cream colored with butterflies on the edge, a piece of fine china that certainly did not belong on a kilim spread on the dirt in the shade of a guava tree. Yet, the plate did not seem out of place.
“I think she regretted the way she reacted to your marriage. It must have made it difficult to confess to a match that was arguably even more inappropriate,” he smiled.
“You’re not a foreigner.”
“I’m twenty-nine years her senior. And I have an arrest record. Political charges. But still. Anyway, your parents certainly thought it wasn’t a good match for her. I can’t say I blame them.”
Rose separates another segment of orange, bites it, and lets the juice fill her mouth.
“These are good oranges,” she says again.
“Yes. I grow guavas as well. And dates, and mangoes. The mangoes are the best. Do you like mangoes?”
“I love mangoes.”
He nods. Gameela loved mangoes, too. She knows that he knows that, that he is thinking of it. But he says nothing.
“I can’t talk about her to anyone,” she says. “Not really.”
“I know. I can’t either.”
“Mark blames himself.” She stops short of saying that for a long time, she blamed him, too.
“Tell him to join the club.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she tells him.
“I introduced her to the boy. I’m the one who suggested his name. He worked for an electrician who replaced some of the wiring in my apartment in Cairo a few years ago, and the electrician told me his story, how his brother was killed in the protests. I thought he would be a good one for Mark to interview. I never imagined . . .” He trails off.
“You couldn’t have known what he was capable of.” She takes the segments of the second orange apart, arranges them like a flower on the plate. “Do you know anything about how she ended up there? With him?”
He shakes his head. “I couldn’t figure it out. He had been trying to get me to go meet him in Cairo, but I wouldn’t do it. I imagine he must have found a way to reach her.” He pauses before adding, faintly, “She was very eager to help him. If I had listened to her and met with him, then maybe none of this would have happened.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she tells him again, thinking of Mark. “She was a grown woman. She was responsible for her own actions.”
He smiles. “She certainly knew how to make things go her way.”
“Did she like it here?”
“She did. Sometimes I felt she was playing housewife, enjoying the novelty of life on the farm a bit too much. Would she have liked it in a year or two? I’m not so sure. But I was taking my blessings as they came to me. I didn’t care if she eventually got tired of me.”
“I don’t think she would have.”
He looks up at her, still smiling. “How do you know?”
“She is my sister. I know.”
He nods, his eyes watering, then looks back down at the orange in his hands.
“I have something for you,” she says.
* * *
—
FROM THE TRUNK of the rental car she pulls out the plastic bin she has carried all the way back from the U.S., her sister’s things neatly stacked in it. She puts it down on the floor, takes out the floral scarf, wraps it around her neck, and then carries the box back to the porch of the farmhouse, where Fouad is now sitting, waiting for her.
“I took some of her things from her room, the last time I was in Egypt. I want you to have them.”
She places the box on the floor in front of him. He sits straight up in his chair, leans forward, then opens the lid, peers inside, not touching anything. She can see his hands are trembling, but then he laces his fingers, his elbows dug firmly in his thighs, and, still looking down, stays perfectly still. She looks away, peering into the house through the window that opens to the porch. It’s an old house, built like all farmers’ houses are, its white-plastered clay walls reflecting the afternoon sun. Inside, she sees a wooden staircase leading to the upper floor, and she imagines Gameela walking down the stairs, greeting her.
“I’m keeping the scarf, if that’s okay.” She touches the scarf around her neck, looking away from the staircase.
He looks up, his eyes moist. He nods.
“Is there anything else you would like me to get you? Any of her things?”
He shakes his head.
“May I walk around the farm for a little while?”
“Of course,” he says, standing up. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll join you.” Carefully, he places the lid back on the box, picks it up, and walks into the house, disappearing inside.
* * *
—
PASSING BY THE GUAVA TREE, Rose stops and grabs a few red dates and one long strip of orange peel. She munches on the dates on her way to the s
tream in the distance, the fresh fruits bloodred outside but cream inside, crunchy and sweet. Never in the years she has spent in the U.S. so far has she found these fresh dates for sale, not the red ones, nor could she find the exact same kind of guavas that now dangle off every tree she passes: the white-fleshed fruit with yellow skin, not the ones that are green outside and pink inside she has sometimes found in Asian grocery stores in New York. The dates are relatively small, and whenever she bites one side off and reaches the elongated, brown pit, easily separated from the flesh, she shakes it off into the globe of orange peel resting in her cupped left hand. By the time she reaches the stream, she has gone through all the dates and is left with the pit-filled orange shell, which produces a muffled rattle whenever she shakes it.
The stream is not too wide, about six feet, she estimates, and is overgrown on both sides with bamboo shoots. One strip has been cleared of the shoots and provides easy access to the water. Standing there, she watches the shallow stream, spots a couple of fish swimming close by.
“They don’t bite when they are swimming near the surface this way,” Fouad says, joining her. “They just tease you.”
She smiles. “I’m sure that’s not their intention.”
“Who knows about intentions? Maybe it is. Maybe they do it on purpose.”
She removes the circular top of the orange peel, picks one date pit from within, and tosses it at the fish, which scatter with impressive speed.
“There. Now they won’t tease you anymore.”
They stand in place, watching, until the fish appear again.
“Evil fish,” he says.
“You know, ancient Egyptians used to think that the heart was the source of intellect and passion, housing the good and evil within us. They believed that, when one died, the heart was weighed against the feather of Maat, the goddess of truth and justice, and one would be allowed to pass into the afterlife only if the heart weighed the same as the feather. If the heart was contaminated with even a trace of evil, it would weigh more.”
“And if it did?”
“It would be devoured by a god with the head of a crocodile and the person would lose his chance at a second, eternal life.”
“Ouch.”
“At least that’s better than an eternity in hell. You were merely deprived of that second chance at living.” From the orange peel in her palm, she picks out another one of the seeds, throws it in the water but far from the fish.
“I’d like a chance at a second life.”
“Wouldn’t we all.”
“A totally pure heart seems unattainable, though.”
“I think it was meant as something to aspire to, like an upcoming test of purity people would be motivated to prepare for.”
“I wouldn’t pass that test.”
“Neither would I.” She tosses a few more seeds into the water. “But it’s only a myth anyway.”
“Gameela probably would have passed it,” Fouad says.
Rose hopes he did not see her grimace. For weeks now, she has marveled at the different versions of Gameela that existed: the highly efficient, organized one her work colleagues saw; the religious, pious, obedient one that her parents knew; the judgmental, harsh one that Rose had been angry with for years, the one who declared Mark a hypocrite and Rose a transgressor. And then that other one, the one Rose had tried to build a shrine to when she collected those things a few months earlier, the one who died young and thereby erased all her sins from the memories of those who loved her, the one Fouad was probably thinking of now. Various incarnations of Gameela, like a Lego set that promised the ability to construct three different contraptions using the same pieces.
Across the stream, a pair of ducks appear, one leading, the other following. The first, adventurous one finds a way down the steep bank and onto the water, and shortly afterward, the other one follows. Rose watches them swim by.
“Can you believe I’ve been inside the tombs of Pharaohs and on three different continents but never once on a farm before?”
He laughs. “Gameela hadn’t either.”
“It’s so peaceful here.”
“She loved it.”
Rose nods. “I imagine she would have, yes. I’m glad she did.”
The orange peel in her hand is now empty. She holds it by the topmost part and lets it unfurl, a curl of orange and white, bouncy, light.
* * *
—
AT HER PARENTS’ APARTMENT, Rose sits cross-legged in the corner of the sofa, notepad in lap, and sketches an idea for the exhibit: an interactive game for kids, perhaps on a touchscreen, where they empty a model of a heart of tiny cubes representing malice until the heart become as light as the feather it is being weighed against. It’s the kind of game she hopes her own kids will enjoy one day. She has been drawing models of it for close to an hour now, even though she is not sure the museum is interested in a kids’ section.
Her mother, sitting next to her, watches her draw.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit too dark a theme for kids?” She points at the small cubes Rose has labeled with words like “hate,” “malice,” and “revenge.” “Judgment.” “Why don’t you get them to do something more fun? Dress up like Cleopatra, for example?”
“What is it with the Cleopatra obsession? She was Ptolemaic, not truly Egyptian. Why not dress up like Nefertiti instead? Or Hatshepsut? She was a strong, fearless woman who ruled Egypt as an actual Pharaoh at the height of the empire’s power, centuries before Cleopatra.”
Her father, sitting in the armchair on her other side, chimes in. “Cleopatra was of Ptolemaic origin; that doesn’t make her less Egyptian. She ruled the country and obviously loved it. You, of all people, should not be such a purist when it comes to ethnic origin.”
Rose looks up, contemplating this. She wonders why she never thought of it before—Cleopatra, the immigrant, the descendant of immigrants.
“I think people are obsessed with Cleopatra because she used a poisonous snake to kill herself,” Nora says.
“And don’t forget the milk-and-honey baths,” Ahmed adds.
“And the affairs with both Caesar and Mark Antony,” Nora responds.
Rose’s phone vibrates in her pocket, and she gets up, heads to her room, and, closing the door behind her, calls Mark back.
“How was your visit?” he asks.
“Good. Cathartic. And sad. And exhausting. I can’t believe she made the drive there as often as she did.”
“Did you find out anything new? About how she ended up at the site of the attack?”
“No. He didn’t know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
She looks around the room she once shared with her sister. For the previous two days, she has been sorting through things, giving piles of old possessions away, both hers and her sister’s, and now the room looks bare and feels cold, more so since the temperature has dropped to the low sixties, as it often does in the evening in the winter. She rubs her arms, warming herself up.
“Have you told your parents anything?”
“No. I told them I had to go do some fieldwork for the museum for the day. They don’t need to know about her marriage. It would only make them feel guilty, and we have enough guilt floating around for a lifetime. No need to add them to the club.”
Mark is silent. She wants to tell him about Fouad, how he, too, blames himself, and how she has decided no longer to blame anyone, but she is not sure this is quite true or feasible. Instead, she asks, “Do you remember that conversation we had when we first met about Nefertiti being more Egyptian than Cleopatra? Well, I just realized that as a naturalized American citizen, I’d be a hypocrite to claim that Cleopatra was not truly Egyptian, even if none of her ancestors were Egyptian. So there. You win.”
“Does that mean you get to dress up as Cleopatra next
Halloween?”
“Not on your life.”
He chuckles.
Rose thinks of the different versions of her that her pieces would build: Rose the Egyptian and the American; the one who cared so little about tradition that she married a foreigner but cared so much that she made him wear a silver wedding band; the one who could not believe her sister had a secret life yet found it easy to keep secrets of her own. She looks at her wedding band, examining the tiny scratches that it has incurred over the years, its original, dazzling sheen swapped for a calm, subtle luster.
On the phone, Mark is silent again, but she thinks she can hear his breathing. She closes her eyes, tunes out the noise of the honking cars rising from the street, the faint sound of the TV her parents just turned on in the living room, and tries to focus only on Mark’s breathing, imagining his chest rising softly with each breath, his heart, pure or not, beating with the same soft rhythm that she loves to listen to whenever she tries to fall asleep.
“Are you still coming home this Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“Can I wait for you at the airport this time?”
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “Yes.”
Author’s Note
Over the years of working on this novel, I’ve collected many publications on Egyptology, all of them so passionately written that I’ve often wished I could go back to school to study the rich history of my country of birth. These books and scholarly magazines now sit on my shelves, bursting with sticky notes, marked with stars in the margins next to fascinating tidbits of information and loopy ovals penciled around all the excerpts of ancient Egyptian literature that I thought I could use as I was writing the novel. Most prominent of these books and scholarly articles are Jan Assmann’s Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt; the revised edition of The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day, edited by Ogden Goelet, Jr., et al.; Benjamin Hinson’s article on the tale of Sinuhe in the 2013 volume of Current Research in Egyptology; Gene Kritsky’s The Tears of Re: Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt; Miriam Lichtheim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature: The New Kingdom (Volume II); R. B. Parkinson’s The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems, 1940–1640 B.C.; David P. Silverman’s Ancient Egypt; John H. Taylor’s Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt; and Emily Teeter’s Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt.