by Fadia Faqir
While this long, protracted relationship with her mother’s husband continued, Aziza was able to avoid the dangers which might arise from an illicit love of this kind and instinctively armed herself against all the arrows of love which were directed at her heart from outside. From the time of the taroplant incident these frequently came to take her by surprise. She was blossoming into a mature woman and was the object of desire in a city whose arms had always been outstretched for love, a city in the lap of a sea whose eternal blue doors opened to welcome her into life. From that time on, like a mermaid rising from the sea, she became one of the most eligible girls of the city. She fought off demands from adolescent young men who dreamed of love, as well as those of men capable of paying the marriage price and honouring the commitment of the contract in the normal way and according to the laws of heaven as well as earth. It was rare for Aziza to accompany her mother on visits to relations or friends in the city without there being a prospective fiancé waiting whose mother or sister would urge her mother to discuss the question of marriage. And should they chance to walk along the seashore on a hot, summer’s evening she would invariably be followed by footsteps desperate to catch up with her – young men who threw her dreamy, love-crazed glances. But Aziza resisted by bolting the door of her heart. It was as if her lover, her stepfather, had tied her heart to his with a secret invisible thread so that she returned to him despite the temptations of her admirers. It was as if she were under the effects of some dark, magical drug which had made her immune to all the desires which the sultry summer nights aroused and even to the seduction of the crashing waves whose voices, sometimes raging and sometimes gentle, spread the seeds of inflamed love between lovers.
Only once did Aziza nearly fall into the net of love with another man. She went one day to accompany her mother to the gold souk to buy a gold chain with a jewelled pendant. They wandered around the stalls and shops for a while without anything catching her eye until they stopped at a shop which displayed beautiful gold pieces, magnificently worked with jewels and pearls. As Aziza began to examine the displays and described every piece to her blind mother in turn so that she could help her choose something, she caught sight of a young man through the jewellery shop window. He was standing behind the special scales used for the sensitive weighing of gold and was deep in discussion with an old woman sitting opposite about a gold bracelet which had been placed on the scales. Aziza gazed at the young man for a moment, long enough for a bird of crazed love to alight on her soul and steal her heart which began to beat furiously. She followed him, leading her mother into the shop, unable to resist the pull of passion towards this tall man with the captivating face who stood in front of her. He was the kind of man who was irresistible to any woman without any effort on his part. After she had enquired whether she could try on some gold pieces and necklaces she looked at each piece with calculated leisure, describing each one in turn to her mother. She hesitated for so long that her mother, after waiting for more than half an hour without her daughter settling on anything became baffled and finally lost patience. She complained with some irritation that nothing ever pleased her – not even fasting in Ramadan. But the young girl, who hadn’t turned sixteen, and who was ignorant of how love begins, was filled with confusion and oblivious to the fact that she was exhausting her mother’s patience as a consequence. She finally found something she liked when the jeweller, that “magnet of love” standing in front of her, proposed a truly magnificent gold necklace, made with the conspicuous precision and beauty of skill handed down through generations. In the form of a snake, its little head was studded with tiny, real rubies. He approached her to place it around her long silken neck and fixed the little golden clasp deftly, as an expert merchant should. Aziza’s eyes met his, for a long moment, through the large mirror fixed to the wall in front of them. The mirror caught the broken rays of the glistening snake’s head resting just at the opening of the bodice of her light blue summer dress. She tilted her head back a little until she brushed his shoulder. When she sensed the rush of blood to his face, tanned from the Alexandrian sun, she felt her heart sink into her shoes.
Her mother sighed heavily at this oppressive silence and announced once more that she was bored of waiting and that her daughter must decide to buy something otherwise they would have to leave the shop. The infatuated young girl announced in a voice, faltering with emotion, that she loved this snake and that the shopkeeper had told her the catch on it needed attention; she would return to collect it in two days time.
Aziza’s passionate love for the owner of the golden snake drove her to return to his shop in the jewellery souk two days later. Her heart rate reached a peak when he appeared before her, suddenly, like a bolt of lightning – an incident which would become part of her memory with the same surprising speed. He told her that they were alone in the shop at this early time of the morning because his usual customers – pampered middle class women, reared like hens – were still turning their fat flaccid bodies in their comfortable beds. He then told her of his boundless admiration for her which he had felt ever since he first set eyes on her standing in front of his shop and that his admiration for her had grown after she had come in and talked with him. He then asked about her family and said he was familiar with her background and good reputation. He had decided to marry her because, given that he was a gold merchant whose business had been handed down through the generations from grandfather to father to son, he was worthy of her. His family were extremely prosperous and he would present himself to her, if she wished, that very evening accompanied by his father, his eldest brother and particularly his uncle, without whom no agreement was possible because of his position as head of the family.
Each time Aziza was alone in the large solitary cell, in which the prison authorities had placed her because she was unpredictable and aggressive towards any prisoner who crossed her in the communal wing, she would recall the saga of her extraordinary life, (as if she were watching a long reel of film), and conjure up the people she knew, whom fate had placed in her way. Aziza felt annoyed and ashamed of herself – she was even overcome by her sense of embarrassment – whenever she recalled those moments in which she had stood listening to the one offer of marriage she had considered accepting – something she would regret for the rest of her life.
As she remembered this incident she was filled with shame, and bit her lips again and again until they nearly bled. She felt this because she had allowed herself to be disloyal and had gone beyond the permitted boundaries of her secret world and her unique love. Falling in love with another man to the point of contemplating his offer of marriage – her only one – and the preoccupation with this passion for two days which supplanted her more exceptional love represented the height of self-betrayal and the betrayal of the exquisite world they had shared.
When she returned home after her hasty meeting with the object of this fleeting passion, she thought of her other lover, who at that time was sitting in the government office where he worked as an important official in the council, skilfully handling his papers with the same hands he used to fondle her. She wasn’t concerned about her mother’s anxiety when she returned empty-handed without the golden snake with the ruby red head, even though her mother was convinced that she had a problem – namely a chronic lack of resolve. Aziza was thinking about one thing only: for two days she had been weaving a mythical love story with the gold merchant, a love touched with pain and suffering because she had resolved to confess the secret of the passion between her and her stepfather. She remained for many hours sitting under her bedroom window, overlooking the garden. She contemplated the white narcissi with their wonderful scent while she imagined the state of the lover, who had fallen head over heels in love, when he learned the details of this illicit relationship. In one image she pictured him having a nervous breakdown, determined to commit suicide and in another he threatened to kill her stepfather – the wolfman. The climax of her fantasy was the moment he undertook to kill
her and to kill himself immediately after so that they might fall, side by side, their blood mingled forever as proof of the union of their souls which would continue after death.
In her cell, Aziza recalled that distant past when she often conjured up numerous pretexts before her mother to deter those who came asking for her hand, in the same way that she used the excuse that she was engaged to a relation of hers when the gold merchant proposed. Aziza would tell her mother that the suitor was ugly and old or that he wasn’t suitable socially. On one occasion a young man approached her who was difficult to refuse because he was a model suitor, at least as far as looks are concerned, the likes of whom she would probably never find again. When her mother beseeched her to accept him she used the pretext that a neighbour had told her he preferred the company of men, and his relationships with women were not straightforward. Her mother was later astonished to learn that another young girl, her daughter’s friend and neighbour, had married him in a huge wedding ceremony which was the talk of the town for many days after.
Often the lover-husband took part in convincing the mother to reject the men who came forward to her only daughter. Each time she opened the matter he would say, in annoyance, that it was unneccesary and futile to rush her into marriage since she was still a little girl, who had by no means missed the boat. Moreover she possessed the sort of beauty which grew with time, like a precious jewel, and would, with a little patience, enable her to make an excellent match. There was no need to hasten her departure from home since she was the joy of their life and its source of warmth and happiness. Aziza took the same view and complained that her mother wanted her to marry in order to get rid of her and to be done with the matter once and for all. Her mother swore that she only wanted her to get married to secure her future and that if she had the choice, she would have been happy to have Aziza, the joy of her heart, by her side for ever.
For many years after she entered prison, Aziza’s amazingly vivid memory preserved the smallest details of her strange life – a memory unrivalled except by that of the Nile eel which remembers the precise details of its journey to the Mediterranean sea where it lays its eggs and breeds. However, as time passed many details fell from the web of her memory. She was no longer completely sure of the kind of knife she used to kill her stepfather nor even of the colour of its handle; was it brown, made of wood from the camphor tree, or black made from fibreglass? Above all she no longer remembered what she drank with her lover on that stormy winter’s night during the time of the high nuwwa winds when the sky heaped its rain on the city, which withdrew into itself, and the sea crashed against its shores with its huge, mad waves. Was it one of her favourite vintage wines made by Costa, the old Greek, who matured it himself and only sold it to a few of his favoured customers who were connoisseurs? Or was it that strong rum which sent warm currents through the body on cold nights like that night in the distant past? Even though Aziza could not recall such details and kept many others buried in the depths of her memory, she never forgot the conversation they had that night and how, as soon as she had heard his words, she calmly decided to kill him immediately – a decision which led to the murder a few days later.
One day Aziza’s mother suddenly contracted meningitis which instead of leaving her with a lasting condition malady like deafness or dumbness – in addition to her blindness – proved to be fatal, leaving her only three more days to live. This was after the doctor had confused her symptoms believing that she had mild influenza from which people often suffered at the end of the summer season and the beginning of autumn. Several years after her mother had departed from this world and as they sat drinking and chatting together, as they did from time to time, Aziza’s lover explained to her, after a lengthy preamble, that he couldn’t continue to live alone with her under the scrutiny of other people. He wanted to marry again in order to avoid them becoming the subject of rumours. But Aziza knew he was lying and that the threat of gossip was no more than a concealed pretext, like one of the many she had so often used in the past with her mother when she used to pester her about getting married. She knew the truth about his new lover, that he had fallen in love and was no longer able to conceal it despite all his efforts. The compass concealed inside her, able to locate the direction of love, pointed to Nadira, the daughter of his favourite friend, Affat Shahin, one of the best perfume makers in the city. Aziza’s jealousy of Nadira knew no bounds and was not surprising since many other women were jealous of her. She was the type of woman who took life as a big game, where everything was open to experience, discovery and risk. She was one of the few women who dared to wear tight helanca leggings when they first came out, exposing her charms in the city streets for all to see; she was also the first girl to dance the hula-hoop in a public place in the city – in the sporting club where she attracted a large circle of young men round her who took pictures of her and whose fascination was fuelled by grateful admiration mixed with scandalized disapproval. Last but not least, she entered into many relationships with boys and men, the youngest of whom was nine years younger than her and the oldest of whom was the husband of Aziza’s mother who was twice her age when he fell for her. Nadira spent hours listening to the songs of Abdel Halim Hafez and Faiza Ahmed who were not really well-known at that time but provided a substitute for her unsatiated passion. Their crooning voices sang of the tender love and longing felt by every lover obsessed by his or her latest passion.
One day Aziza had a dream about Nadira which convinced her that her secret passionate love was about to end. Aziza saw Nadira coming towards her in her dream, dissolving into laughter, while Aziza lay stretched out on her bed, still as a corpse. Then Nadira wrapped her in a shroud with a beautiful piece of rosy silk cloth and placed a garland of thorns on her head. She instructed four tall men in long black cloaks to carry Aziza from her bed and throw her into the sea, at which point Aziza screamed with terror. After this nightmare she stayed in bed until dawn thinking about what it meant and about Nadira. She tried to retrieve the details of how, when her mother died, a relationship developed between them which started the day Affat Shahin arrived with his wife and daughter to pay their respects at the mourning ceremony. Nadira soon became very friendly towards her, surrounding her with tenderness and care as if she were her elder sister, while Aziza became attracted to Nadira because of the ease with which she treated her, avoiding any hint of disharmony – the kind of disharmony women are quick to provoke amongst themselves to cover up their inability to sustain their friendships. This is natural and the result of long years of being unable to exist in their own right in a world where they depend on men. However, Nadira never stopped sniping about Aziza’s beauty and her refined manners, during the tedious family evenings when they played cards. These became a regular occasion which Affat Shahin’s family would attend with the sad family bereaved of their mother. But in the end, Nadira managed to wreck the close ties and the beautiful friendship which had grown between her and Aziza; she entered the most sacred of all forbidden areas, penetrating the very core of that revered love which lodged in the old secluded house where each corner contained some little detail of their love and under the shelter of which Aziza grew and blossomed. Aziza had known no other love in the world and she had long guarded its secret, carefully and cautiously – a secret which no one, not even her closest relations, ever guessed. On the contrary everyone from the neighbourhood, as well as her relations and friends, perceived their relationship as the model bond based on peace and human serenity which showed that it was possible for a father to feel affection for a child which hadn’t sprung from his loins. Aziza grew accustomed to acting two roles with skill as if she had been born to play them. The first role was that of the daughter, grateful to the surrogate father and to her kind and loving blind mother; the second was that of the charming lover immersed to the last atom of her cells in the wide sea of love. Moreover throughout her life, and even after she entered prison and sat in her cell just as she was doing now, she never felt that
her two roles were strange or incompatible. Neither did she have any objection to sharing the same man with her mother since she loved her mother very much and felt great fondness for her, helping her to dress and arrange her hair. She chose the most beautiful dresses for her which suited the colour of her skin and her figure, which tended towards plumpness. She continued, to the very end of her mother’s life, to choose modern hairdos for her, even advising her to have a page-boy style. She was never reluctant to go with her mother on the occasional visits she paid to the most famous hairdresser in the city, having convinced her that she should dispense with her plaits and that the beautiful new styles brought out the stunning beauty in her face.
By reconciling the two roles in her own mind, Aziza never felt alienated from the person who violated her during that long distant time; in fact as time passed she only grew closer to him. From the time she was a little girl she had regarded him as someone who took care of her. He would bathe her using Nablus soap made from olive oil because it didn’t lather too much and so did not hurt her eyes; he would brush her hair and tie it with beautiful ribbons to match the colour of the pretty clothes which he bought from the most splendid children’s clothes shops in the city. Before he had sex with her on that unforgettable day she had been used to sleeping in his lap for long periods while he told her stories during which she would take her little worm-shaped fingers and touch his rough, unshaven chin.