by Maha Gargash
“Heels? Makeup remover?” I say. “What talk is this? How do you know about such things?”
Nouf sticks her tongue out at him and attacks him with weak slaps. Instead of holding her at bay, his hands twist and wilt in a fruitless defense. When he spots my glower he coughs and tries to hide his foolish grin.
“Will you send me to London to study photography, Baba?” asks Nouf.
There are sardines in front of me. I pick one up and start peeling the skin off the flesh.
“It’s pointless to ask our father such a question when your grades are so low,” says Ahmad.
She ignores him. “Will you, Baba?”
“Chup! Chup! Shut up!” Saif says. “We don’t send our women away to study.”
“Just like we didn’t send Mariam to Cairo?” Nouf says. “You think she’s clever and I’m stupid, don’t you. Say it, all of you!”
My mother groans with this second mention of Mariam’s name. She raises both hands to the sky and says, “Oh God, bring her back to us safe and sound.” Her voice is as soft as a raindrop. “Keep Satan away from her. Allah, shield her from his evil.” She burps and, with a sudden rush of force, says, “Majed, enough modern ideas—sending girls away from their families to live alone, with strangers around them. You must bring Mariam back to us right away!”
“No,” Shamma exclaims, shaking her head. “That would be so cruel. Masha’Allah, Mariam has so much potential.”
“Girls belong in the home,” Mama Al-Ouda insists.
“It’s not like before,” Shamma says to her, with a sighing irritation at the old woman’s folly. “Women are out there today, working side by side with men. They are proving they can stand on their own two feet.”
Aisha nods, and this makes me wonder what other rubbish her sister feeds her when they are alone. I don’t like Shamma’s influence on my wife, poisoning her thinking, and I make a mental note to speak to her about it later. I won’t forbid her from seeing her sister. But I’ll make my wife understand that her seeing her displeases me.
“We must accept that a woman can be productive in the workplace as well as keep the home in order and bring up the children.”
How like her to be muddling up the role of women. I’m about to berate her, but Saif beats me to it. “With respect, auntie, how would you know? You don’t have any children.” His bluntness shuts her up, and I have to stifle the chuckle at the back of my throat as I reach for a second sardine.
“Well, when will you bring her back?” Mama Al-Ouda says.
I hold my temper and ignore her persistence; she is my mother, after all.
Mona says, “She did two years at the dental college here, at Ajman University. I don’t understand why she couldn’t just finish here.”
“Yes, Baba,” Nouf says, bobbing her head with zeal, her eyes flitting over my face like a fly over a festering wound. “Why did you send her to Cairo?”
I’m not sure why they want Mariam back. It’s not as if they’d paid her any attention those years she’d lived with us after her father died. I shrug. “It’s the only thing she ever asked me.” All that time, she’d been nothing but a brooding presence. How do I tell them I agreed so that I wouldn’t have to look at that stony face and those eyes, always so filled with accusation? “Besides, she has always been top of her class,” I say, glaring at my mother to make sure she understands that that’s the end of this particular discussion. Through the slits of her burka, her eyes narrow as if she is pained by my insensitivity. “She’s doing well there,” I add. “She’ll come back when she finishes.”
Ahmad consoles Mama Al-Ouda with a sober nod. “Our father knows best. You must leave the family matters to him.”
Mama Al-Ouda’s eyes snap open. She picks up the bone on her plate and holds it up like a stick. “Well, I think she should be here,” she grumbles, and scans the faces around her for a response. When no one answers, she sighs and raises her head. Her eyes are lost to view, drapes rolling down a window of scrupulous condemnation. “God keep all that is evil away from her,” she moans, and then, with a tired voice, she recites a prayer for my dead brother, Hareb. I keep my expression blank. Once she finishes, she thrusts the bone to her mouth and slurps what’s left of the marrow with the breath of an athlete.
The noise is a signal, and my grandchildren get jittery as their mothers start discussing their toilet habits, with particular interest as to who has problems with constipation. No one mentions Khaled and the rejected proposal. That is left for another time. Badr whispers something to Nouf. This time she punches him without mercy. I ignore the high-pitched cry that comes out of his throat and try to find comfort in the familiar fuss and bickering, the lunacy and pettiness, the hypocrisy of this family. Everything is as it should be, harmless and under control, in the privacy of my home and out of society’s judging sight.
8
DALAL
Imbaba pounces on you with its undiluted air of exaggeration, its streets thick with a constant stream of babble and protestations. A gold-toothed man complains about the price of gas as he waits for a mechanic to change his car’s oil at an open-fronted auto-repair shop. To the side of the blackened walls a gang of boisterous little boys plays, ramming one another’s shoulders and making loud noises, trying to drum out the squeak in their voices.
Mama glides by them without so much as a glance. She looks clean and neat and out of place in her navy suit: a buttoned jacket hugs her slim waist and a skirt reaches just below her knees. She keeps going, past a half-finished building and a makeshift teahouse at the corner of the road: three low stools are arranged to the side of the brew bubbling in a pot, which sits on a slapdash gas stove planted on a cement cube that juts out of the pavement without logic or sense. For atmosphere, a small transistor radio blasts one of those popular upbeat songs, people music.
I follow her, in a huff at the prospect of waiting for hours for an appointment that won’t take place. A bus rumbles by. It is packed with the usual jumble of squashed limbs and faces pressed to the windows, with an overflow of people hanging out the open doorway at the back and crouched on the roof. The back hood is left open so the engine doesn’t overheat. It farts a black thundercloud of fumes over a man with a cartload of radishes, heaved forward by a sweet-faced donkey. There’s an urgent tinkle and I turn to see an older boy on a bike racing toward me, his head balancing a tray holding piles of fresh Egyptian bread. The front wheel swerves to the right. He bumps me to the side as he shifts his upper body to the left so the tray does not tip over. Before I can react, he curses at me without stopping his bike.
“Shut your mouth, you animal,” I shout back, shaking my fist at him. But he’s gone, threading his way through the shambling pedestrians, hollering vendors, and rolling mule carts. I spot a gangly boy who always wears the same striped shirt. I’ve seen him now on three different occasions: twice in Imbaba and once outside the composer’s building. Who is he, and what does he want? When I mentioned him to my mother, she told me to stop being foolish. I’m about to point him out, but he disappears into the crowds.
The microbus is just to the side of Sudan Street, ready to set off on its route. Five people stand by the front passenger door, but the driver won’t let them board because he’s saving those precious seats for us, just as he has been doing for the past week. I hasten to catch up with Mama.
Hassanain, the driver, is an unnerving presence. To block the door he simply pushes out his wrestler’s chest, leaving the waiting people scared to do anything more than appeal to his better nature, begging to be let on and whining about their urgent need to reach their particular destination. He does not back down. “The seats are reserved,” he barks. Even though it’s supposed to be a first-come, first-board policy, no one argues this point. The rejected passengers shuffle to the side and scan the road for another microbus as we hop gingerly to the front of the line.
My mother seats herself next to the driver and I’m by the window, which I keep pulled down to blow away th
e stench of stale sweat and curdled breath. Hassanain greets us with a timid smile and then, his fingers curled tight around the steering wheel, he drives on in silence, pretending he doesn’t notice the way my mother’s arm bumps into his every time the bus dips into a pothole. It’s a short trip, and another shy smile cracks Hassanain’s lips as he bids us farewell, his eyes shining with the anticipation of seeing us again when he comes to collect us later.
The secretary has faded blond streaks that match her ashen complexion. She looks up at us with an open mouth, as if we’d disturbed the flow of a complicated thought that was forming in her head. On her tongue spreads a puddle of pink bubble gum. She nods at us, indicating that we should take a seat. It’s as if she hasn’t seen us before.
As always, the odor of nervous anticipation lingers in the still air, and I sigh at the dull wait ahead. Maybe I shouldn’t let my mind wander and grow plump with glowing images of on-the-spot recognition, of instant renown. Every now and then, a hopeful candidate is called in with her mother. The minutes gather and drag, and I call on my store of patience. Still, there is some comfort in the fact that this composer spends so much time with each girl. Sometimes there is a grand expression of victory on the faces of the exiting mothers, even though the daughters always look dazed, as if unsure how the interview went. Most times, though, mother and daughter leave distraught, which makes me wonder what the composer told them.
Once more, Zohra puts on her educated airs and tries to convince the secretary of my talent. “My daughter Dalal’s voice really is something special. There is a rare quality in it that a great composer like Sherif bey will immediately recognize.” She chuckles softly. “Of course, first he has to hear it.”
The secretary is unimpressed. She blows a neat balloon. It pops, and she laps it back into her mouth before it can stick to her lips.
“My daughter has that same rare quality, too,” a mother with a peasant’s accent says.
“Not this rare,” Zohra snaps at her, and turns back to the secretary.
“Look,” says the secretary, “I only follow orders here. You may think he does nothing but sit inside, waiting for you. But Sherif bey is an artiste. He has his composing to do, too. It’s his work, and he does it at the same time that he takes appointments. So, in short, he’s a busy man.” She grins. “But you can wait if you like.”
I glare at Sherif Nasr’s secretary, wedged behind her corner desk. She isn’t making it easy, and for the hundredth time I wonder whether she is holding a grudge over a comment I had whispered to my mother on our first day of waiting: I had called her a lazy cow. Her droopy eyes have a blank expression and her lower lip stretches all the way down to her chin and back up as she chews her gum. She didn’t react at the time, but now I’m sure she’d heard me and decided to make our lives difficult. She has been sending us home, rejecting us, for nearly three weeks now. None of Mama’s efforts to win her over has worked.
First my mother tried charming her with light jokes and kind words. Then a gift: two small jars of Kraft cream cheese, part of a supply of edible treats that included Mackintosh chocolates and Danish butter cookies brought especially for this purpose from Dubai. (Many people in Cairo are convinced that anything that comes from abroad is of better quality.) There was a flicker of suspicion in those cow eyes as the secretary held the jar up, but my mother quickly explained that the cheese was fresh, delivered just the day before by a relative visiting from the rich Khaleej. “And look,” Zohra added, picking up the other jar. “Once you finish the cheese, you can use the jar for water, or even tea.” She had tapped the rim. “Good, strong glass.”
I sigh and pull out my magazine, flipping to the glossy center, where Monica Fayyadh poses in a two-page spread. She is hugging her knees, wearing a flowing baby-pink dress, her mouth pouting, full of desire and promise. I stare daggers at her tiny nose, rubbing the slight bump that breaks the straightness of mine. Mariam gasps every time I tell her that it’s the first thing I’ll fix once I’ve made enough money.
“Character!” she’d exclaim. “It gives you character.”
And I’d laugh and say, “Poor-girl character, pretty one. What I want is rich-girl character.”
“But you mustn’t touch what God gave you, which looks fine, even if a little imperfect,” she’d insist.
I’d always answer her, “No flaws for the rich and famous!”
“Lebanon’s Bomb: Monica’s Painful Childhood.” That’s the title of the article. At three, she was plagued by nightmares that made her wake up in a sweat; at seven, she fell off a ladder and broke her arm; and at ten, a terrible incident! Her parents lost her for a full hour somewhere at an open-air restaurant on their way for a weekend in the mountains. The more I read, the more I mock the silliness of these episodes with clicks of my tongue. Where is the pain? Where is the tragedy? Why can’t they write something useful, like what steps she took to get famous?
I slap the magazine shut and slump on the chair, frowning at the other people in the plain, rectangular room. We are seated facing one another on chairs that are arranged along the walls. There’s a fat woman quietly knitting, and a pair who leaf through newspapers. The rest do nothing more than stare ahead, their eyes brimming with dreams, in a state of admirable patience.
I lean close to my mother and whisper, sharp and quick, “Why do we have to sit for the whole time in one place?”
“What do you suggest we do?” Her mouth barely moves. “Go back to Dubai with our heads hanging, a pair of failures?”
“No, I mean, why can’t we try other composers at the same time?”
She shakes her head. “Look how long it took us to finally get here. Sherif bey has more clout than you can imagine, and we will win him over.” Mama has so much faith in him, this composer to the stars who hasn’t produced anything worthwhile in the past fifteen years. She doesn’t seem to care that he has resorted to creating jingles, which have proven to be a lucrative diversion while he waits for inspiration to take hold of him.
I sigh and whisper, “There’s no hope, Mama, really. I can’t sit idly and wait anymore. I should be doing something else.” I don’t mean it, of course, but I wonder if this might get her to think of some better solution.
“There’s nothing of value that you can do,” Mama says. “You didn’t even finish school.”
Not for the first time, I want to burst through that door and demand that he hear my voice. But that is not the way it is done. Like every other expectant soul in this room, I need someone to speak for me. I must keep alive the apparent innocence of my doe eyes and play the role of a dainty gazelle to draw out the composer’s protective instincts, while my mother works her charm to instill in him the desired admiration and interest. It might work, and it might not.
I watch the only young man in the room; an Adam’s apple the size of a plum protrudes from his weasel-like neck. He looks odd in the midst of the throng of mother-and-daughter teams. Every so often he leans forward, rises halfway, and, hovering just over the seat, does a light jiggle, as if he’s fearful that the chair might stick to his bottom. It makes me giggle, but only a little. Then it’s back to the fidgety boredom of waiting.
The door to Sherif bey’s office swings open and a mother pushes her daughter out, obviously enraged by the outcome of their meeting. I straighten up with expectation and look at the secretary, who is scribbling on the paper in front of her. “I think it’s time we went in,” Mama says to her. “You do know how long we’ve been patiently waiting . . .”
The secretary holds her hand up. “You are not the one to make that decision.”
“Yes, but you will agree that this whole situation has reached ridiculous proportions,” says Zohra, with an airy chuckle. “All these weeks—it’s completely unheard of.”
“I don’t count time, madam,” says the secretary.
“Well, maybe you should, madam,” I say, rooting my fists to my waist.
“You, young lady, should learn to hold your temper,” war
ns the secretary, poking her pencil at me.
“She’s right, though,” says one of the mothers sitting at the end of the room. “You must respect our time.”
“It’s easier to get an appointment with the president,” complains another mother, who has only put in six days of waiting.
“Well, maybe you should go see the president and find out if he can help you,” the secretary retorts.
“Ladies, ladies, calm down,” the young man says, and in one synchronized motion the women grunt and cross their arms to their chests.
Closing time is drawing near, and the masticating cow has already started preparing us for the disappointment of another wasted day by shuffling the papers in front of her and arranging her files. It’s a ritual she follows once she’s ready to close the office. Her final act will be to run an index finger along the rim of her desk, quickly inspect the accumulated dust, and dilute it with spit before declaring, “We’re closing now. Sherif bey won’t be able to see anyone else today.”
Despair constricts my chest. I say, “You won’t let us go in there, will you? Even though there’s no one there. You’re going to send us away again.”
She frowns at me. “I’ve already explained the way things work here. You don’t have to come if you don’t like it.”
“We come because we need to,” says the peasant mother.
“A person in need should never complain,” says the secretary, ripping a thick wad of paper for emphasis.
“There’s no call for rudeness,” Mama says. “Obviously this woman has traveled from a distance to see the composer.”
Suddenly the fat woman who was knitting surprises us by jumping off her seat and, with incredible speed, marching to the desk. She waves the whole bundle—wool, needles, and pink-and-blue patch—at the secretary and declares, “I’ve had enough!”
It’s the spark that lights the blaze, and before I can think, I am up and joining the mob of squabbling mothers and groaning daughters, leaving Mama behind. Even the young man is galvanized. Standing at the periphery of the group, he altercates in a voice many notches shriller than the rest.