States of Passion

by Nihad Sirees

  “Khojah Bahira was a clever and experienced woman. She had learnt how to handle her sweetheart in a situation like this. She welcomed Suad and Widad as if everything were normal when they returned from the cinema. She even enjoyed Widad’s dancing, her laughter and coquettishness. She praised her more than any previous night. The next day she went over to Hamideh Khanum’s house and told her what was going on between Widad and me. She convinced my aunt that I was smitten by Widad’s dancing, that Widad knew my soft spots and was taking advantage of me so I would marry her. Bahira left our place before I got home, having sown fears for her daughter’s future and that of the soap workshop in Hamideh Khanum’s heart.

  “Hamideh Khanum told my uncle everything. I was in my room trying to write some poetry to my beloved when my uncle called me into the living room. When I got there, he asked me to close the door. As I did so, I spotted Hamideh Khanum and Jalila staring at me and scowling. I didn’t understand what was happening until my uncle Ibrahim Pasha opened his yellowish mouth, which was quivering with anger. He cursed me and then hit me with an ashtray. He hurled every possible insult at me. He told me I was worthless, lost, a blind adolescent who didn’t know what was best for him. He said everyone would speak ill of the family. Then he said something about cheap dancers and I understood at once. I was frozen in place, in shock. How had he found out? Then he made up his mind. There was no going back. He had to protect the inheritance from my thoughtless behaviour. I was grounded from that point forward. I was not to leave the house unless accompanied by him. I wasn’t to go to the soap workshop ever again. I would remain like that until his daughter was one year older, at which point I would have to marry her.

  “‘Now get out of my face, you miserable piece of shit,’ my uncle roared at me. ‘You’re to stay in your room until the wedding. It’s the end of the al-Aghyurli family when a boy comes along and falls in love with a dancer. Hah!’

  “I kept my mouth shut and walked out of the living room in a daze. The world had gone black. For a few moments I considered killing myself. My uncle’s wife was gloating and Jalila was crying, but I couldn’t figure out what she was crying about. Was it out of sadness for me, or fear of losing me? Khadija marched me up to my room. She was the one crying, not me. She knew all about Widad and our meetings at the Roxy Cinema. Before I could ask her, she wept and swore she hadn’t said a word, and that Khojah Bahira had visited Hamideh Khanum that day. I knew the gig was up.

  “Yes, it was over. I was stuck in my uncle’s house. I had to stay in my room. I was forbidden from leaving the house under any circumstance. Khadija attended to me in my room. She fed me there. If I wandered around the house at all, only when my uncle Ibrahim was at the soap workshop, I was met with spiteful stares from Hamideh Khanum and her pudgy daughter. So I preferred to stay in my room anyway. I would lie in bed thinking, despairing of the world. I cried a lot, especially at night, after Khadija had gone to bed. How could I be so unlucky in love? I was despondent. As I mentioned, I even thought about killing myself.

  “I began to hate life itself. What kind of an existence was one without Widad? And what had happened to her? What was Khojah Bahira doing to her?

  “I imagined that she was forbidden from leaving her house, too. Was she crying about it? She had been so happy when we first fell in love. She so looked forward to our meetings at the Roxy Cinema, she told me, so she could place her sweaty hand in mine. She once told me that she had begun see life as easy, as beautiful. But now she had to perform for wealthy women in their salons, at weddings, put up with the attentions of vile Khojah Bahira. The very idea filled me with bile and a hatred of life. The image of them in bed together drove me mad. I believed Widad would no longer accept the advances of her ablaya, but how could I know for sure? The Khojah was trying to make her forget about me. Meanwhile, I was devastated, and my crisis was only getting worse.

  “The truth is that Khojah Bahira concealed what she was up to. She let the two women go to the movies every week as usual. The boy from the bakery would take the ticket, the message and the baksheesh from Suad but he stopped coming to see me to deliver the goods and instead went straight to the Khojah and gave her whatever Suad had asked him to give me. The first time I didn’t show up, Widad found it strange. But in the weeks that followed the whole thing became even more disturbing. She grew very sad. At first she thought I might be sick. Once they tried wandering around my neighbourhood and in front of my house on the off chance that I might appear. But at the time I was in bed, despairing of the world. I couldn’t even get up to go out onto the veranda looking over the street. Suad went to the soap workshop. My uncle didn’t know who she was. She told him she wanted to buy some soap. Suad left the soap workshop even more confused by not finding me there either. They two of them were wondering what could have happened to me, just as I wondered about Widad.

  “At home Widad was becoming increasingly irritable. The Khojah was monitoring her, and knew the reason for her irritation. She wanted to keep control of her. I was a man. All men steal away women from her, so she had to stand up to them, to get in their face. Even if this irritated Widad temporarily, she would eventually get over it. The Khojah didn’t want to relive the story of Widad’s mother Badia, whom the Yuzbashi Cevdet had desired so madly and whom she’d lost for all eternity.

  “The Khojah watched Widad while she sighed. She was burning up. She didn’t know what could have made me stay away from her. She lay down in bed next to her ablaya. She let her do whatever she wanted, and when the Khojah was finished she would turn her back and stay awake until morning. The Khojah could hear her sighs. Her heart ached for Widad, but she was looking out for number one. Widad no longer asked the women to play so that she could dance when she and Suad got home from the cinema. At home her pain only grew worse. Bahira could read it all over her face. As soon as they got home she would disappear into her room, take off her clothes and immediately get into bed. She might cry for a bit as well. Bahira would try to cheer her up with gifts or with new plans for a party, but to no avail. Whenever she danced at a wedding or a women’s salon, she did so with a mask of sadness on her face. Maybe that was why she had an even greater effect on the women than before. This layer of sadness made her ever more attractive and enchanting. That’s women for you, always so romantic. Widad began to hate going to the cinema. Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Kashkash Bey, Naguib el-Rihani and Umm Kulthum, George Abyad and Bishara Wakim no longer meant anything to her.

  “Khojah Bahira informed Suad that there was going to be a wedding party at Hamideh Khanum’s house soon and that they were going to work it. This started Suad’s mind churning. Could it be the wedding of the man who seemed to be on the verge of passing out from the intensity of his infatuation with Widad when they sat there together in the darkness of the cinema? Had he forgotten all about his love for her and decided to marry his pudgy cousin all because of the inheritance? But then why would he have sworn that he was ready to give up his share of the soap workshop if that was the price he had to pay to be rid of Jalila? Suad couldn’t bear to advise Widad to just forget about me.

  “So I was imprisoned in my own bedroom. On my uncle Ibrahim Pasha’s orders I had to wait there for Jalila to reach the age of female maturity so I could marry her. She was twelve years old. Every morning they would check her dress for splotches of blood so they could announce her wedding. My uncle was mapping out my future in his mind. As soon as his daughter came of age, he would marry her off to me and send us to study in Paris. I didn’t know the entirety of his plan. I presumed I was going to marry her and then go back to the soap workshop. Because I hated it there so much, I despaired of my life and despised living. I loved one person and one person only, and she was the one I wanted to marry. But once they had prevented me from seeing her, perhaps she had started to hate me, and so I preferred to bury myself in my room.

  “My beard was getting long. I neglected the hair on my head and started to hate bathing altogether. My body had atrophied. I
cried and moaned all the time. I no longer had any appetite for food or drink or reading. All I did was take out the things that reminded me of her. I reread her letters and her brief handwritten notes. I’d stare at the ticket stubs, smell again the handkerchiefs scented with her sweat. Khadija had begun to fear for me and my mental health. I wasn’t well. If I’d carried on that way I might have died, or at least wound up going insane. She would come in to check on me, sit down on the edge of the bed, and drown in a wave of silent weeping. Where was Nafeh? What had become of him? She started begging my uncle and his wife to do something to save me. But they were unmoved by her warnings. All she heard my uncle say in return was that nothing was going to happen to his brother’s son; she didn’t need to be afraid and should just worry about keeping me fed. But I refused to eat. In tears, she would beg me to eat, and when I saw her beseeching me like that I’d force down a few small morsels.

  “Khadija started to despise them. She started to hate my uncle Ibrahim Pasha and his wife and daughter. In everything that was happening to me, she saw injustice against the son she never had. Since becoming an orphan I had been like a son to her. It seemed to her that my death wouldn’t come down like a lightning bolt on my uncle’s head because he didn’t seem to care whether I lived or died. In fact, if I died, he would get his hands on my inheritance. That would solve the problem of the soap workshop once and for all. Khadija started encouraging me to run away. She even went back to the house where she had once lived with her husband before he died, pulled out all the nails boarding it up and went inside. She cleaned it and got it organised. If my condition got any worse, Khadija planned to take me from my uncle’s house to save me.

  “My uncle had called Dr Behar several times. He prescribed some sedatives and growth hormones for me, and told my uncle how important it was for me to change my lifestyle. He recommended taking me to a mountain resort for some fresh air. But did my uncle have any interest in taking me up there? After a while he started to forget about me altogether. He grew bored of thinking about my condition. But Khadija never stopped thinking about ways to help me. She knew what was ailing me and how it could be treated. One day she suggested to my aunt that she bring in a healing lady to pray for me and to exorcise any demons that had possessed me. Hamideh Khanum yawned and then agreed. She told Khadija to go and fetch one for me. She too had grown bored of me, my sickness and demons. Khadija asked for directions to Khojah Bahira’s house. This all happened without my knowledge. I was laid up in bed, dead to the world, totally despondent. When Khadija went to the Khojah’s house and knocked, Suad came to the door. Khadija introduced herself as my servant and said she wanted to speak with Suad or with Miss Widad about a very important matter. An hour later they were all at Khadija’s house.

  “Khadija told Suad and Widad the whole story. She told them that ever since I had been imprisoned by my uncle and his wife, I was slowly dying in my room because of the separation and from the intensity of my love for her. She told them everything, about the inheritance and the requirement that I marry Jalila, who had not yet reached the age of maturity, and about the depth of my hatred for her. Widad broke down in tears. She never dreamt that I might die because of my love for her. She still loved me despite everything the Khojah had done to turn her away from me. But how were the two of us ever going to be able to meet? Khadija told them that she had everything figured out. All Widad had to do was put on some of Khadija’s old clothes and make herself look like a pious old woman who went around praying for the sick and exorcising their demons, especially the female demons men fall in love with and who possess them. The only way they can be cured is through special rituals. Widad agreed to this plan. She was burning to see me and to heal me. The two of them helped her get dressed. Despite those old clothes, her beauty and her body still gave her away. My beloved was a consummate angel.

  “Khadija and Widad left. Suad stayed behind at Khadija’s house to wait for them. Twenty minutes later my servant was guiding Widad, I mean, some poor ascetic old woman with a hunchback, into my uncle’s house. After informing Hamideh Khanum that the old woman had arrived, she immediately led her upstairs without anyone seeing her. She brought her into my room. She pointed at one of the doors, told her to wait in that room, and then shut the door behind her.

  “Widad stood by the door. I wasn’t conscious at the time so I didn’t see her. I was out of it because of the tranquillisers Dr Behar had prescribed for me. But she was right there in my room, and Khadija had closed the door behind her. Widad took off her yellow shawl and approached the bed. She placed her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t cry out from horror at what she was seeing. I was in a pitiful state. My hair was unkempt. It had been a long time since I’d last bathed. She had only ever seen me with my hair combed and shiny. Now she was seeing me in my worst state. My facial hair had grown long and I reeked of sickness and sweat and a filthy bed. I had become very skinny, my face had yellowed, and my lips were cracked. To put it bluntly, I looked half dead.

  “She knelt beside the bed, crying. She held my hand and started to kiss it, running it along her face, wetting it with her tears. She kept repeating, ‘Baby, baby.’

  “I was in a very small boat. Dr Behar was steering with two little oars. I had my back to him as I leant over the water, searching for my mother and father. My mother appeared beneath the water, calling out to me. She wanted me to dive in after her. She was smiling with the kind of tenderness I had been looking for on the faces of every woman on earth. I hadn’t seen it anywhere except with Khadija. Whenever I tried to get out of Dr Behar’s boat in order to dive in after her, she would disappear. One time I saw her approaching from underwater. She wasn’t waving at me to follow her but swimming right up to the surface of the water. She took my hand and started to kiss it. She moistened it with the water and her tears. I could hear her calling me ‘baby’. She always used to call me that. I wanted to jump out of the boat and sink down to be with her, but she started crying and begging me not to. I started wailing. She reached out her hand and began to stroke my forehead. The strange thing was that my forehead was wetter than my hand. I opened my eyes and found that it was all a dream. I had been dreaming I was in Dr Behar’s boat but I was actually in my own bed. There was no ocean. Only the normal atmosphere of my bedroom. And it wasn’t my mother who was holding my hand, crying, but Widad, dressed like a servant, kneeling beside the bed, crying in anguish as she repeated the word, habibi, baby.

  I surrendered to the dream. I believed it was real. I had been looking everywhere for Widad, both in the dream and in life. It didn’t matter anymore. The important thing was for me to see and touch her. I didn’t examine the reality of what I was seeing too closely. I hoped that what I was seeing was real. But it didn’t matter. Let it be a dream. There was no longer any difference for me between dreams and reality. She watched me gazing back at her and she froze for a moment before sitting on the bed, holding me. She began to kiss me, unconcerned by my sweat and my many odours. I held her. I caressed her body, my head pressing against her chest. She was crying as she kissed my hair and said, ‘Why do you love me? I mistreated you. I thought you would have forgotten about me when they asked you to. I love you, believe me. You have to get on with your life. You have to live.’

  “I didn’t stop stroking her. I started to doubt that what I was seeing was a dream. When I opened my eyes it turned into reality, and not the reverse. But I still wasn’t convinced. How could Widad be sitting on my bed, holding me and kissing me and crying over me? How could she be so close to me? Had she been reduced to a poor woman, dressed like that? But no, it was her. I could tell by her distinctive smell, which I recognised from our trysts in the box at the Roxy Cinema. I knew the feel of her skin from when I’d held her hand and wiped away the sweat. The whole time I was trying to understand what I was actually seeing and feeling. Was it reality or a dream world? While I was still in that state she suddenly stopped crying. She seemed to be considering something very carefully and fu
rrowed her brow quite seriously. It was the first time I had ever seen her like that.

  “‘I’ll show them all,’ she said out loud. ‘I’m yours, Nafeh. I’ll show them all that I’m yours, your uncle and his pudgy wife and wrinkly Khojah Bahira, whose bad breath I despise. I’ll show them all. We’ll stick our tongues out at all of them.’

  “‘Hold on a minute, baby,’ she told me, getting up. I followed every move she made, enchanted. She walked over to the door and unlatched the lock, made sure the door was closed and came back. She stood in front of the bed, her back to me, and began to take off her clothes. The bottom part of her shawl fell down as she took off her yellow robe, and then she took off the shawl even though it looked really good on her. She had nothing on underneath but silk red stockings adorned with lace along her thighs. When she turned her torso to release her hair from the shawl I saw the vague elliptical line between her legs. She turned towards me. I just about died from that sweet lump that swelled in my throat. She was smiling at me despite the tears in her eyes and those running down her cheeks. She was naked. An ivory-white body. Everything about her was gorgeous. Everything about her was extraordinary. One moment I believed I was dreaming, the next I thought it was real. She came and lay down next to me, pulled me close to her, clung to me. She reached out to undress me from below, and then took off her lace stockings.