by Maha Gargash
“Stop it,” Mariam says, giggling and scolding me while she hugs me. “You are terrible.” I relish her scent, the incense on her clothes blending with the clean smell of her skin and that dot behind the ears of oudh essence. “So?” she says, pulling back. There’s a spark of curiosity in her eyes. To drag her out of the sakan after-hours: of course she knows I have important news to share.
I let out a half hum, half sigh. “Well, nothing. I just thought I would pull you out of your prison for a bit. And when you did not respond to my signal at the window, I had to get you out another way.”
“That was you?” Mariam’s stunned squeal delights me. So easy to shock, always so proper, that Mariam! She has to be; it’s the way she was molded in that household, obligated to follow the stifling rules my father—her uncle—has drawn up to preserve our family’s reputation in Dubai’s conservative society. I thought she would have loosened up by now, with exposure to Cairo. Always so reserved, so Emirati, so unlike myself: the rebel flame of that same prosperous family, Al-Naseemy. “You know you hit the wrong window, don’t you? I’m above, on the third floor.”
I reach out for a plush jasmine bush nearby and loosen the blossoms into my palm. After I take a deep breath of their sweet smell, I look back at Mariam’s flushed face and declare, “It’s happening.”
“What is happening?”
“I’m finally going to be a star!” I exclaim.
“What? When?”
She knows how much I’ve struggled these past ten months to find a composer who would create a winning song for me, but she doesn’t know the details. I consider starting from the beginning: all the facilitators and mediators my mother and I kept relying on, all the promises that led to nothing, all the futile appointments. But none of that matters anymore. So I skip it all and fling the jasmine flowers high, bending back my neck so they fall on my upturned face. “Today!” I say, blowing away a bloom that sticks between my lips, “I got an appointment to see Sherif Nasr.”
Her lips round to pronounce a soft “Ahh.”
“He’s famous and distinguished, and when he meets me I know he will recognize my talent straightaway.” I grab Mariam’s wrists, and together we laugh and hop in a circle.
“You did it! You did it!”
“We did it,” I correct her. “All those years, you and I, imagining something like this, planning how we could make it happen, plotting our revenge on my father.” I let her go and hug my chest. “It won’t be long now before I start making my own money, so much money that I won’t need anyone anymore. I won’t have to rely on my father to take pity on me.” A breeze embraces my hot face and fills my nose with the sweet scent of jasmine. I twirl my arms up into the air and let my waist follow. I don’t need music; it’s already in my head.
Mariam’s soft face grows sharp as her grin lifts those cheekbones, which shine like sword blades caught in light. She looks over her shoulder to make sure the street is empty before joining me in my silent dance. I click a rhythm with my tongue and follow it, my belly turning and twisting like a lazy river, the current traveling from my shoulders to my arms and fingers, which twirl like vines, climbing high above my head.
Mariam tries to do the same, and I encourage her with a lift of my eyebrow, thinking all the time how hopeless she looks. I can make out her hip bones jerking back and forth as she struggles to bring some fluidity into her dance. What a waste it is that she can’t put to use that slender build and enviable height, made less through her tendency to cave in her shoulders. There is no femininity in her movements. Poor thing, she is as stiff as a wooden doll. Still, it is brave of my sweet cousin to share my mood, my joy.
A honk startles us out of our night dance. As Mariam shies away from the headlights, I tell her, “It’s all right. It’s for us.”
“Who’s driving the car?”
“It’s just my friend Azza.”
She groans, and I can tell she wants it to be just us. “It’s just that I haven’t seen you,” she says, “and there’s something I want to talk to you about . . . It’s a sensitive . . .”
She’s growing moody, while all I’m interested in is celebrating my good news. “Look,” I say. “She’s not staying. So let’s enjoy ourselves, okay? Just don’t be difficult.”
3
MARIAM
Difficult? What did Dalal mean by that?
She wanted me with her tonight and here I am, fully aware of the consequences of sneaking out of the sakan. I could have refused, but I didn’t.
Difficult? Hardly!
All I want is for us to be together, alone, so I can build up the courage to tell her about Adel. Where would I begin? What would she say if I told her about all these months that I have spent observing him from a distance, memorizing his every gesture and expression?
Sometimes he’d smile at me in passing and say, “Good morning.” It should have been easy to do the same, but it felt impossible to issue this simple greeting. Always, my courage drained like water down a bathtub. I could almost hear the gurgle and slurp of it as my mouth turned dry. The best I could manage was to frown and walk away quickly, silently cursing whatever it was that made me so self-conscious.
But last week, we spoke for longer—or, I should say, he spoke to me. My cheeks grow hot whenever I think of it. Like me, Adel Al-Shimouli is an Emirati dentistry student, but he’s a year ahead. Naturally, I was surprised when he approached me on campus and asked for help going over some lectures he had missed. I still don’t quite know how I agreed so quickly. I’d nodded with the serious face of a disciplinarian to mask my attraction toward him. I regret that I didn’t smile. I should have smiled, made it look casual by adding a shrug, perhaps. That would have been best.
Adel had suggested we meet over the weekend at the Emirati Students’ Club. I had arrived early to make sure I occupied one of the two private rooms on the first floor of the three-story villa. He was late. Twenty minutes was expected; thirty minutes marked heavy traffic and was forgivable. Forty minutes: well, that’s when I began to wonder whether I’d misunderstood the time of our appointment.
As I waited, my fretfulness grew until I chewed the eraser off the end of my pencil. I was giving up my weekend. I was giving up valuable study time. I wanted to move, but I didn’t dare walk out of the room. The club was filling up with grim-faced students looking for a quiet space to study. I took a deep breath and put on a serious face, too, staring hard at the notes I’d spread on the desk in front of me and the three textbooks filled with diagrams of teeth, gums, and bridges.
Strangely, by the time he arrived, nearly an hour late, I wasn’t ill-tempered, just relieved that he’d come at all. Wearing a red-checkered shirt pushed into dark-blue jeans, he burst into the room with the freshness of a summer’s shower. He kept apologizing, and although I wanted to pretend I was so busy studying that I hadn’t noticed the time, I mumbled that it was all right, with a smile that came out exaggerated.
The pink that tinged Adel’s eyes and the plump crescents beneath them were proof of the late night he’d had. It made me wonder where he had been, and with whom. All silly, of course, but my mind was flitting about. It was an awkward study session, too formal, too quiet. I kept my eyes diverted from his. There was no trusting them, so easy to read, often revealing too much in their clarity.
“Come on, get in,” says Dalal, pulling me back into the present. “We can’t wait all night.”
I mumble a halfhearted hello to Azza, which she returns through a gum-filled grin. I am about to slide in behind her when I spot a browned apple core on the seat. What a pig! I pull a tissue out of my handbag, pick up the core, and throw it out of the car, then wipe down the dusty seat. Dalal snickers at my fastidious behavior. The sleepy right eye she was born with narrows when she laughs.
I say nothing and sit down, curling my arms tight around my waist. The car groans, and we are off. I stare out at the street as if waiting for something really important to happen, while Dalal and Azza chat away like
a couple of parrots about to be rewarded with handfuls of pumpkin seeds. Every now and then, Azza lets out a vulgar laugh that convinces me she’s nothing but a girl of lowly upbringing who was never taught good manners. The thought makes me feel superior, and my temper cools as the car turns onto a broad, traffic-choked road.
Azza drops us off at the entrance to the Marriott Hotel in Zamalek. Since the half-term vacation has ended, I was convinced that the Khaleejis would have packed up and flown home by now. But here they are, visitors from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the Emirates, filling the hotel’s café, an oblong arrangement with a broad walkway that runs from one end of the garden’s patio to the other.
Waiters in green aprons flit between the round tables, carrying shisha or balancing trays crowded with cups of tea and coffee, and long glasses filled to the brim with ruby-red hibiscus punch or saffron-colored qamar el-din, a thick juice made of apricot paste. The light is atmospheric, casting pockets of shadows over the sections of the café bordered by hedges, making them look like little rooms with four to six tables. That’s where I want to be, but I follow Dalal. There’s a natural sultry swing to her gait that comes with being shaped like that: the perfect symmetry of the crescents of her waist, the dip just above her tailbone that slides out just so, giving the impression of an invisible string holding up her plum-shaped buttocks. What man would not look at her? She struts down the amply lit walkway and I tag along behind her, awkward and too aware of all the eyes following us: a lazy gaze here, a sharp stare a little farther down, furtive glances to take note of what is there and what is not there.
I’d felt a sense of security, but it evaporates as panic builds up in me. What if someone sees me and word gets back to Ammi Majed? He would not approve of my being out at night, and certainly not with Dalal. But I keep my thoughts to myself because there’s no point nagging.
I am suspicious of every gaze that lingers too long on us. A middle-aged man, hawkeyed, ambles up and down the walkway. He seems to be a regular, because the waiters keep greeting him by name. He holds a string of emerald-colored worry beads and is doing exactly what I am: scrutinizing faces in the Marriott garden.
I turn my head as we pass two young, smooth-haired Khaleejis sitting on the right. They wear jeans and tight T-shirts, so it’s hard to tell which Gulf country they come from. Farther down, three middle-aged men look up at us (at Dalal, really). There is a silent and special recognition—deep, intense, welcoming: that I-know-you’re-a-Khaleeji look. I toss a sharp glance back at them. No fear of word getting back to my uncle from this lot. Although they wear the same white kandoras as Emiratis would wear—loose white ankle-length robes—their headdresses are bound with ropes too thick to belong to Emiratis. I decide they must be Saudis.
Dalal makes a popping sound with her lips, smooth as rose petals, as she looks around. She has deer eyes, beautiful and empty of complicated thought. Just like her mother’s, her skin has the evenness of porcelain, with an attractive luminosity that makes it look as though it shines, even in dim light. “So,” she says, fixing her palms to her hips. “Where should we sit?”
I don’t give her a chance to choose. She yips as I grip her waist; I maneuver her into one of the more shadowy hedged-in areas and settle to the left of one of the many large marble statues on plinths.
“What’s this place?” Dalal objects as soon as I sink into the bamboo chair, hunched low, with my back to the statue. “No one will see us here.”
“Yes,” I say, looking at the menu so we can order something and get out as soon as possible. “It’s better that way. You can afford to be risky, but I can’t. You don’t have anything to lose, but I do. So, just . . .”
“All right, all right,” she says. “Stop getting all paranoid.”
“Did you know this is a historical royal palace?” I say, pushing back in my chair, trying to blend into the hedge to my right. “It was built by Khedive Ismail for the Suez Canal inauguration celebrations in 1869.” I pretend I don’t notice the disgruntled expression on her face and indicate a nearby statue. “And apparently, these are all antiques.” I slide the menu toward her so she can read the information printed on it.
Dalal snaps her fingers in front of my nose. “We’re here to have fun, and all you can do is give me a history lesson. Look at you, stuck to the bush like that. People will think you’re mad. What are you pretending to be, some sort of spy, or a caterpillar?”
I straighten up and giggle. I do look ridiculous. With a vow to loosen up (after all, we are here together to celebrate her breaking into the world of music, her passion), I take a deep breath. The air is filled with the scent of the honey- and apple-flavored tobacco wafting out of the shishas. My gaze drifts over the lavish garden with its high palms and stout bushes, the foliage neatly trimmed and shaped into pyramids and squares, some with strips of tiny lights. I spot a hibiscus (also known as the “Rose of China,” because of where it originates) and a cassia tree (fast-growing; from tropical America, yet thriving in Egypt’s rich soil). How is it that I can still remember such details? My father gave me a plant encyclopedia a long time ago, and I treasured it, making sure it stayed next to my bed (where is it now?). What started as a little girl’s attempt to please her father turned into genuine interest, a passion even, that for some reason was abandoned with his death.
“So, here we are,” says Dalal in a dreamy voice, “having a good time, you know, joking . . .” She flings her head back and rakes her fingers through her curls, a satiny chocolate-brown mass, before turning to survey the walkway. “Flirting . . .” Someone has caught her eye, and I frown to discourage her just as she drags her gaze back to me and says, “All right, say something, quick.”
I’ve seen enough flirting to know where this is leading. She is setting a trap for the boy. She will probably giggle, and he will take it as an invitation. If he approaches us and she decides she’s not interested, she can deny having flirted with him because she was doing nothing more than chatting with her friend. I say, “The waiter’s here.”
She gasps, as if I had just made the funniest comment. Her shoulders quiver as she pretends to stifle a laugh. “Ah, you are too much!”
The games—Dalal is playing her games. “The waiter is behind you,” I repeat.
Instead of getting embarrassed (the waiter has been standing behind us, watching), Dalal aims a hard stare at him. He is grinning. “Spied enough?” she says.
He is young, with eyes set close together and a rocket-shaped nose. “Madam? I wasn’t . . .”
I give my order quickly. “Pineapple juice.”
“I can’t bring you that,” he says, “but I can bring you a delicious orange juice, as fresh as if I plucked the oranges out of the tree myself.”
“If she wanted orange juice,” Dalal retorts, “she would have asked for orange juice. If you don’t have pineapple juice, just say you don’t have it.”
“But it’s all sweet, it’s all fruit. I promise you it’s just as good.”
“Is this what they pay you for, to snoop and argue with clients? Do you want me to call your manager?”
“I’m just here to take your order, madam.”
“Then take it!”
“Forget the juice, get me a Turkish coffee,” I say. “Medium sweetness.”
The waiter tells me, “Maybe you can explain to your friend that I wasn’t being rude, just waiting to take your order.”
“She’s my cousin,” says Dalal.
“It’s okay, no harm done,” I say, hurrying to defuse a situation that could call unwanted attention to us. “Give him your order, Dalal.”
“The problem with the help is that they think that just because they work in a five-star hotel filled with tourists, they can yak-yak-yak away with the clients.”
I frown at her. “Tell him what you want!”
“A beer!”
“Right away,” he stammers, and escapes to fetch our order.
“A beer? Since when do you drink?”
&nb
sp; “Sometimes I do,” says Dalal.
“But it’s haram.”
“Lots of things are forbidden,” she says, fixing her eyes to my face, suddenly seeming eager for a quarrel. It is pointless to talk to her when she is like this. So I shrug and ask her about her meeting with the composer. “Haven’t you been listening? I haven’t met Sherif Nasr yet. But when I do, I know he will be so taken with my voice that he won’t be able to resist signing me on.” She looks up at the sky as if she owns it. “A perfect voice, yes, and a body to match.”
I wince when she traces the exaggerated curves of that perfect body in the air. “Yes, yes,” I hurry her on, “so what happens next, once you meet him, I mean?”
“Well, he arranges for a performance, I think.”
“Where?”
She doesn’t answer, just lifts an eyebrow to mock my sheltered upbringing.
“A nightclub!” The thought fills me with trepidation. I use all my power to imagine her rising to stardom in a respectable way, but the images that flash in my head are grotesque: smoke-filled rooms with big-bellied men, dimmed red lights, and groping drunks.
“I know exactly what you’re thinking,” Dalal says, “but there’s nothing to be worried about. Nightclubs only look seedy in films. In real life they are stages for talent, that’s all. You know, so many of the great singers began that way.”
The waiter returns, and once he places the coffee and beer on the table Dalal looks up at him and nods a cordial thank-you. It is as if she had not scolded him earlier. The waiter withdraws as noiselessly as an apparition and she continues, “Of course, it will be a while before I have songs written specially for me. In the beginning I’ll have to sing the popular songs of other artists. I won’t even need to practice that much. I know them all by heart.”