He didn’t answer. He had turned his back on her. A moment later, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of her standing up. Then he heard the door of the bedroom close. He didn’t remember how many times he made her come back that night—three or maybe four—but each time he would open the door and turn on the light and find her lying next to the child with her eyes closed. He knew she wasn’t sleeping but all the same he would shake her as though he was waking her and now it amazed him that he had woken her gently, extending a finger and pressing gently on her back, as though he were waking her for some ordinary purpose on an ordinary night. It amazed him even more that each time she would open her eyes and turn over as though she were waking, and then get up quietly and follow him out of the room. She could have refused or screamed or quarreled with him, or objected or even woken the child, but she didn’t do so. Each time she followed him, walking behind him like a small tame animal till she reached the couch and then sitting down and bowing her head. She would say nothing but he would bring his hand down on her again and her body would recoil from the pain and soft stifled moans would issue from her. She wasn’t weeping, however. She didn’t shed a single tear. She didn’t try to shield herself from his hands. She would submit to him totally until he had finished and walked away from her, panting, and then she would withdraw again to the bedroom and he would go in to her again and bring her out and beat her. The last time, when she sat down in front of him, he didn’t strike her. He looked at her for a long time and she felt it and raised her head toward him. Her eyes were totally blank, as though she didn’t see him. Bruises covered most of her face, blood had caked under her nose, and the small recent cut beneath her eye had started to bleed. He took a step backward, turned around, and moved until he was opposite the closed window. He bent forward suddenly as though examining something on the floor. Then he put one hand on the window handle, flattened the other against the glass, turned his head away, and pursed his lips in an unsuccessful attempt to stop himself from bursting into tears.
Latin and Greek
WANTED, TEACHER OF FRENCH LANGUAGE, for seven-year-old boy. Salary, LE120 per month. Interview: No. 6, Ghalib St., Mohandessin City, 5–6 p.m.
After half an hour, she had almost given up. One taxi driver after another went by her with hardly a glance, and a mixture of boredom, anxiety, and exhaustion seized her. Why did they refuse to stop? Maybe her white dress looked a bit standoffish to them. She smiled. She remembered an article she had read about how people react to things. She waved once more at an oncoming taxi. This time, she implored the man with her eyes, an action that for a moment seemed comical to her, but seemed to have some effect as the driver stopped right away. “Mohandessin City, driver, please.”
When the car moved off, her wristwatch warned that the hour was approaching six.
After a few minutes, the driver was taking her over University Bridge. She moved her thin body over until she was next to the vehicle’s right window. Throngs of students were crossing the bridge in the opposite direction; no doubt they were returning from an evening lecture, or perhaps they’d spent a long time sitting in the cafeteria, as so often happened. She felt like smiling and a feeling of enjoyable sadness was released within her as she recalled days and faces. It was on Saturday, October 18, five years before that she had made her first trip to the university. She still remembered how he had woken her that morning. Papa had gotten everything ready. “I love the funny little things you do,” she’d told him.
For the first time since she was a child, he’d wanted to do her hair for her. He stuttered in embarrassment when he asked her, and she laughed and yielded her head to him. She could still remember how he took so long making it look nice that in the end she was compelled, laughing, to do it all over again, while he mumbled an apology. “Goodbye, Professor,” he’d said to her in farewell. She turned her back to bring an end to the moment of emotion.
Her father had never gone to university. Poverty had forced him to work from an early age, and he had dreamed for so long of her being awarded her undergraduate degree that it was no surprise when he died a few months before she did so.
A cold gust of air from the outside chilled her. She put out her hand and closed the window tightly. She threw her head back and her dress rustled, reminding her of its owner, a neighbor of hers who loved news and gossip. She started to analyze her feelings at that moment. What did the job mean to her? “One hundred and twenty pounds a month,” came back the vehement answer, which was seconded by a quantity of worn-out underwear, socks with holes in them, and an uncountable number of shoes with patched soles. In the same answer, her mother’s heartfelt dawn prayers mingled with the heartbroken sobs to which her youngest sister yielded after her first encounter with the sort of men found on public buses. All the money meant to her was to be able to satisfy the needs of those two. She was the only emissary they could dispatch to bring it back. For herself, inside, she cared nothing for banknotes.
One day a girlfriend of hers had told her with genuine sorrow, “Reading has spoiled you.” She had laughed then at this odd perspective, even though sometimes it seemed to her that it wasn’t so stupid. It wasn’t that literature had spoiled her but that it had spoiled the taste of other things for her. It would have been a real pleasure to yearn, like all the other girls, for a villa and a luxury car driven by a colossal husband. There could be no doubt that the speed of the food processor and the whirr of air conditioning bestowed a sort of happiness and that literature had deprived her of that. Inside, she was alone. Alone. One day, on seeing a country wedding procession, she’d almost vomited. Sex was everywhere, from the hashish smoked by the men to the nods and winks of the women, the softness of the thighs, and the eight-year-old girl who started writhing voluptuously when her mother lovingly tied a sash around her hips. Joy was a wild beast with vulgar features, an implacable urge lurking within everyone and everything in creation. Sorrow, however, was transparent and noble as the night. She loved it like winter. It elevated her and lifted her toward itself, and when Beethoven’s Ninth surged forward, she would close her eyes and wait for it, and it would come to her as something immortal, like sweet streams purling toward her among the rocks of ignorance and cruelty.
She came to herself to hear the driver saying, “Here’s Number 6.” A three-story residence of recent date, as evidenced by the piles of sand and stacks of red bricks. Her self-confidence was too feeble to support her at a moment like this but a delicious inner prompting assured her she would get the job, and that she was, simply, very good at French.
“Apartment 15,” the doorman told her in a monotone, turning his face away. No doubt there had been lots of girls before her. In the lobby, she found herself face to face with a marble statue of Venus. It was life size. She went up to it. She gazed, her eyes roaming over its noble features, caressing the goddess with the longing of one who had discovered, grown to know, and loved. Even as she was drawn ineluctably toward its splendor, however, she became aware of an uncomfortable feeling that vitiated the beauty. The sacred face seemed strange to her. There was, in the silence of the gods, something with which she was unfamiliar. It seemed to her that there was a certain pinchedness about the goddess’s lips—a deep, mysterious, private expression. It was a pain of which gods of smaller size were incapable.
The apartment number was engraved in Roman numerals and a small plaque had been nailed to the wooden door announcing, with all the humility of confidence, “Muhammad Musilhi, Engineer.” Your Excellency Muhammad Bey, ten years have I sailed literature’s seas and I know French well. My mother, for her part, has been ground down standing in the lines of the poor.
She pressed the musical bell. A few moments later and the door opened and, rather than a Nubian servant, a blonde lady appeared, her beauty hinting at a European origin, which was confirmed by her accent when she spoke.
“You’ve come about the advertisement? Please come this way. I am Madame Musilhi.”
With him sat f
our or five girls, also applicants no doubt. Their features were indistinguishable from one another, the only thing she could make out being the poverty that leered shamelessly from their faces. He, naturally, dominated the gathering, even though he was sitting on the extreme right. He was stout without being excessively so, or, one might say, his body had sufficient fullness to guarantee that he would be addressed by the title “Bey” never had it occurred to anyone to hail Musilhi Bey by his name alone, or even accompanied by any other than this, his preferred, title—as though someone were to say to him, “Mr. Musilhi” or “Engineer Musilhi.” No one would dare to do that, neither colleague nor stranger.
In reality, this phenomenon was not so much related to his stoutness or to the smartness of his clothes, or even to the affection people bore him, as to his being a strong man well versed in the uses of power and an expert in the arts of command with a commanding look and a reassuringly regal way of moving. He even made an effort to reduce the movements of his hands, while adding to them a decisive slowness. As for his tone of voice, any tremor had disappeared from it years ago. Indeed, Musilhi Bey was a strong man in every way. Even his shoes were shiny and radiant. “Work! Work!” he would repeat, and “In this world, weakness and extinction have the same meaning.” Musilhi Bey had quickly removed himself from the lanes of the Sayeda Zeinab quarter, where he had grown up, to Mohandessin, but, despite his sudden wealth, he was neither thief nor conman. Rather, once he had obtained his secondary school certificate, he had refused to go to university. What was the value of study? He preferred to work in the import-export business—a legitimate profession acknowledged by the laws of the state. Musilhi Bey was a realist. He had grasped from the start that changing the existing order had for centuries been the dream of poets and of the heroes of history books, and should, therefore, be left to them. For the sake of change, heroes had been imprisoned and thrown onto the street. He, however, was not a hero and didn’t want to be one. He had no time to be a hero. How long would he live? At the best estimate, another thirty years. He would, therefore, live to enjoy life, and to work. Better, then, to fight the good fight for Musilhi and leave things as they were, or let them change, or let them be as they would; his intelligence would be employed in the service of his own sacred interests.
This was how Musilhi Bey had succeeded and become rich, and then even richer, and each night he was accustomed to lie down next to his beautiful wife of Swiss manufacture and read a little in the biographies of heroes and leaders—of those tortured by impossible ideas, the history of the idiots. Today, Musilhi Bey was announcing in the newspapers that he needed a woman to teach his son French, and there was great competition, and he sat among them, examining and testing, so that he could select the worthiest among them with confidence. A mocking memory returned him to the dark room in one of the private Qur’an schools for small children in Sayeda Zeinab where he had received his first lessons. “It’s all about money, Musilhi,” he thought to himself. Now this girl with the white dress was sitting in front of him, gentle as a breeze and so modest he almost felt pity for her. But Musilhi Bey hated weakness and emotion.
“Name in full.”
“Nadia Abd el-Salam.”
“Degree.”
“Graduate, Humanities, Cairo University.”
The embarrassing words died on her lips. It was that feeling of mortification. She had to look him in the face. She decided to smile. She failed.
“You graduated from the French Department.” He said the words as though stating a fact.
“No. I did Latin and Greek.”
A few silent seconds, which felt like an eternity, followed.
“But in the advertisement I said a French teacher.” He said the words with a friendliness that underscored his command of the situation.
She had to get her voice out somehow.
“I studied French at a private institute for five years.”
“Your identification, if you please.”
She handed him her ID card. His face took on an expression of indifference. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed one of the girls whispering laughingly to her neighbor.
“My dear Miss Nadia, I’d like to make something quite clear. My son is not in need of someone to teach him the elements of French. He speaks it fluently. He needs someone to go over his lessons from the Lycée Français with him.”
“My French is very good.”
“Well, we’ll see. Kareem!” he called out, looking around him. A blond young boy emerged and went up to his father.
“This is Mademoiselle Nadia. She’s your new teacher. Shake hands with her and say something to her in French.”
“Okay. Are you my new teacher?”
Her French really was very good.
“Papa, she doesn’t say anything.”
Musilhi Bey, who had been listening closely, pretended to be busy reading his papers, and when he raised his head, Nadia was getting up to go.
An Old Blue Dress and A Close-fitting Covering for the Head, Brightly Colored
1
An Old Blue Dress
AS SOON AS I GOT TO KNOW HER, I took her to dinner at a small restaurant in Opera Square and the next week I took her to the cinema. Afterward I drove her home and before she got out of the car, I asked her to come and visit me at my flat. She showed no surprise or shock and she didn’t make a show of being angry the way women do. She just gave me a mysterious look, then asked quietly for the address and enquired about the doorkeeper and the neighbors. She was on time for the appointment.
I’d prepared myself with a couple of drinks and sat next to her in the reception room, paving the way with a long bright conversation. I was expecting all the kinds of resistance and coquetry that normally take place on a woman’s first visit but when the critical moment came, she made no objection and surrendered to my kisses. Then, begging my pardon in a whisper, she started removing her clothes one by one and hanging them carefully on the hanger, as though playing a part or fulfilling an agreement. When we’d finished, she moved her naked body away from me and, lying on her back, joined her hands together beneath her head and stared at the ceiling. At that moment she seemed utterly sad and, being an expert in the melancholy moods that follow the spending of passion, I stretched out my hand and toyed with a lock of her dishevelled hair. She patted my hand and said, “You know what? Sometimes a girl can feel really sorry for herself.”
I put my arm around her and whispered, “Never mind,” as I embarked on a new kiss.
She was sweet-natured and poor, and she told me about her father who was a driver and her five brothers and sisters and their room on the roof in el-Mawardi Street, and her Saudi husband who had disappeared after two months. And she laughed as she imitated the accent of the consular official and described to me his luxury flat in Zamalek.
I can see her now.
I see her hair, wet after a shower, after she had put on my patterned silk dressing gown, rolling up the sleeves to accommodate her slight build, and I see her in the evening at the moment before leaving my flat, alone in the dark entryway, where she would stand as though taking off the face of the lover and replacing it with an ordinary face like those of the passersby, then carefully open the door and leave, her footfall reaching my ears and growing louder as it receded. And I see her spending a whole day with me going around the shops to pick me out clothes to her own taste, examining and comparing everything carefully, as though we were really married and she my beloved, thrifty, wife.
Then I see her for the last time that morning. We had arranged to meet at the bus stop next to her house. It was cold, and the people standing at the stop had taken refuge in a solitary spot of sunlight on the pavement, where she too stood, in her old blue winter dress that was a little threadbare at the elbows. Her face seemed to me changed and strange, and when she sat down next to me in the car, I felt as though something oppressive had imposed itself between us.
She was the first to speak. She said, “The hospital�
�s at the end of Salah Salim Road.”
I headed the car in that direction and started in on a new act of the play. Sighing as though my patience was exhausted, I said, “I told you, I can marry you.”
I’d said the same words a hundred times over the past two days but she’d made no comment, not even once. Whenever I offered to marry her, she’d wait until I’d finished and then go on with what she’d been saying about the operation as though I hadn’t spoken. She knew that I’d never marry her and I somewhat over-insisted so that it would be plain to her that I wasn’t serious.
The hospital was a small white building with a large sign that said Adeeb Maternity Home and it seemed to me—as she went up the marble stairs with slow uncertain steps and bowed head—it seemed to me that I was in some film, playing the role of the warder who leads the erring woman to her inescapable doom.
We met Dr. Adeeb, with his flabby body, broad bald patch and soft, full face, in his office, where he welcomed us tersely. Then he asked me, with a show of innocence, “Are you married?”
I nodded, and he said, “Why do you want to have the operation?”
I replied—as she had instructed me—, “The fact is we have two children…and we’re quite happy that way.”
With the formalities thus disposed of, the doctor’s face took on a resolute expression and he told us, in his normal voice this time, “The operation costs five-hundred pounds and the anaesthetic’s a hundred.”
I’d got the money ready in an envelope and gave it to the doctor, with thanks. No sooner had he put it in a drawer than he leaped up and said, “So let’s be getting on with things. This way, madam.”
The doctor led the way and we—she, the nurse, and I—had to go down a long dark corridor to reach the operating theater with its double doors and twin glass portholes. We walked in silence. Then there, right at the door, she suddenly turned toward me and whispered, “I’m very scared, Salah.” But I didn’t say a word. I stayed rooted to the spot until the nurse pulled her inside by the hand, the door swinging violently behind her. I had a headache and as I sat in the hallway I thought that it was a difficult situation but I couldn’t marry her however sweet she was and however much I loved her. She was—when you came right down to it—simply a fallen woman. And also, mightn’t it be that she’d got pregnant deliberately so as to trap me into marriage? Wasn’t that a real possibility?
Friendly Fire Page 14