by Maha Gargash
I push to the front and bang on the secretary’s table. “How about you knock on that door and tell him we will not be turned away again!”
“And if you don’t, we will.” The fat woman pokes her needles in the air.
“All this will get you nowhere,” the secretary says, and shields her face as she retreats toward Sherif bey’s office.
“I say we all push into that room and demand that he grant us an interview. Now!”
And that’s when the door bursts open, and Sherif Nasr steps out.
It is my mother’s legs that get us into Sherif bey’s office. Even though I’m not able to make out his eyes, half-hidden behind the umber tint of his thick-rimmed glasses, I can tell he has trouble looking away from them: one crossed over the other, pale and shining through the light glitter of her stockings. He simply waves the secretary’s complaints to the side and decides he will see us right away. I stick my tongue out at her as I follow Mama into his office.
Shafts of light peppered with tiny floating dust particles spill through the glass of two lofty doors that open onto balconies. The room smells slept in. I disregard the lingering stench of cigarettes and old kebabs and gawk at the high ceilings and fancy curlicues. Sherif Nasr is somewhere in his midfifties, with a pencil-thin mustache, hair molded into soft hills with Brylcreem, and a triangle of white handkerchief in the top pocket of his toffee-colored tweed jacket; it’s as if we’d taken a big hop back to a bygone era.
Yes, his office brings to mind the homes of the romantic rich in all those black-and-white Egyptian films. But that’s where the similarity ends, for crowding this room is the largest batch of mismatched furniture I have ever seen. An old-fashioned table with gold corners that curve like commas stands on four fragile legs between two flesh-colored sofas. Lampshades frilly with lace are propped on modern smoked-glass side tables. It’s as if each piece had been collected from a different house.
He drifts to the other side of an oversize wooden desk. He’s not a heavy man, but the swivel chair hisses when he slumps into it. Rooting his elbows firmly on the desk, he says, “I don’t like to interview anyone if my sisters aren’t with me. We make decisions together, you see, because they have a knack for these things. It’s easier for them to spot what I am looking for. But today they had to leave early.”
Mama and I look at each other with the same questions in mind. How is that possible? How could they have left without our seeing them? He sniffs and motions to us to take a seat, as if irritated that we haven’t done so already. We are swallowed into the doughy sofa. My head tips back and pulls the rest of me with the surprise of it, but Mama is quick to shift to the edge. By the time I pull up, she has already leaned forward and safely bonded one well-shaped leg to the other. There’s a dainty smile on her face. She’s set to start.
Sherif Nasr’s thin eyebrows lift up over his glasses. “Yes, where was I? In fact, I was about to leave. But then, well . . .” He squints at his watch and coughs. “I have a little time, and . . .” His gaze drifts to one of the balconies. While Mama remains focused on him with the delicate smile she reserves for such people, I turn around as discreetly as possible to find out what caught his attention. The only thing of interest is a male pigeon trying to impress a female, with much fluttering and acrobatics. There can’t be any novelty to it, what with all the other pigeons out there. I hear a scratching sound and look back to find him jotting something down with his pencil. Ah! Inspiration.
We watch him. We don’t say a word. Instinctively, we know we must stay quiet and wait. It takes a long time for that inspiration to be translated into musical notes. Every now and then, there’s that faraway look again, aimed at the light dimming outside. Soon I get bored and fix my eyes on the large glass cabinet behind him that displays his various accolades. On the shelves are medals, plaques, certificates, and even a crystal trophy in the shape of Nefertiti’s profile. There are photographs, too, showing a much younger, quite handsome Sherif Nasr posing with some of the Arab world’s music legends.
He is caught in half profile looking at the ground in a picture with Abdel Halim Hafez, as if the camera might blind him with its flash. With Umm Kulthum, the symbol of Arab music, unity, and identity, he manages a timid smile, but he holds his shoulders too high, as if worried she might bite him. In many photographs, it looks like he wasn’t ready when the camera clicked. He stands next to many singers—all great, all dead.
He pauses to rap the desk with the nail of his index finger, kept long for strumming the oud. When I look back at him he is staring at us, but I know he doesn’t register our presence. We smile at him anyway, just in case. He grins and makes a noise that is half hiss, half grunt, and focuses on his notes once more. “This is how the musical mind works,” Mama whispers to me, her eyes watery with admiration. “This is what they mean when they say genius.”
“Freakish!” I whisper back.
“Shh.”
He scribbles furiously, making clicking sounds with his mouth, which I’m sure is the beat he’s composing. Suddenly the phone rings, and he stiffens and glowers at it. “What?” he barks into the mouthpiece. The woman’s voice is nasal, slightly broody. Since everyone knows he’s single, I immediately guess it’s one of his sisters. Sherif Nasr breathes deeply and says, “No, I didn’t mean to shout. It’s just that I’m busy right now.” Pause. “Yes, I know you’re waiting for me. I’ll come as soon as I can.” Pause. “Fine.” Pause. “Yes, fine.” Pause. “Fine, fine, I’ll eat my dinner cold.” He hangs up and brushes the papers in front of him to the side. “So,” he says, pulling out a cigarette and sticking it into a plastic filter, “what do you want?”
“Well, we can start by giving you our background,” Mama says.
He looks at his watch and seems about to dismiss her suggestion when she begins to praise his talent and legendary status. Then Mama follows with the account I have come to know by heart: my talent, my perseverance, and the star quality of my performances all those weeks on Nights of Dubai. I could join her in a duet. I know where her speech speeds up and where it slows down. I could even put in the pauses, strategically located to leave room for contemplation. But I have my own part to play: nodding or shaking my head at key moments. There is a shy smile on my face that I mastered in front of a mirror; it accompanies a slightly lowered glance to the side as my mother ends her presentation with praise for my good fortune at having not just beauty but also a voice that would make a bulbul jealous.
There’s a lot of information, but her account is quick—an exact seven minutes, practiced and timed—to ensure that his attention does not drift. She holds him captive through her storytelling skill and her legs, which he peeps at every now and then between puffs of his cigarette.
“Well, this is all good, Madam . . . er . . .”
“Zohra,” says my mother.
“Sitt Zohra.” He nods. “As I said, it’s all good, this, this life of yours, and the talent you bring with you.” He leans back in his chair. “But I hear this kind of thing every day.”
“Of course, you are right. What was I thinking, telling you so much at this first meeting?” Naturally, this part is rehearsed, too.
“And anyway, I can’t say anything until I’ve heard the young lady’s voice.” He waves at me with the long fingernail.
“Dalal.”
“Yes, Dalal. Beautiful name. Beautiful meaning, too: to be doted on. And I can tell that you are a mother who thinks the world of her daughter.”
“You’re too kind.”
“Hmm.” He stares at the balcony doors again, and I wonder if his inspiration is coming back when, with a sudden thrust, he leans forward and puts out his cigarette. With finality he says, “Really, Sitt Zohra, I’d rather you come again when my sisters are here. Then we’ll give you the most thorough appraisal.” He narrows his eyes at his watch. He is ending the interview—without having heard my voice.
Mama unexpectedly claps her hands; it has the effect of a thunderbolt on a sunny day.
I flinch and Sherif Nasr jerks. “Up, up!” she orders. She is already standing as I rise. Poised behind me, she grabs the tops of both my arms in a rather painful squeeze. This is not part of our drill, I think as she jostles me to the side of his desk. Sherif bey is struck mute, his lips tightened into a line that runs parallel to his mustache.
“Now, Dalal,” Mama says. “Sing!”
9
MARIAM
The clinic is on the fourth floor of the dental building. I thread my way through the throng of patients in the dank waiting hall. The students work on volunteers; they get dental work done for free and we get rewarded with experience. The men sweating in their shirts might be taxi drivers, civil servants, or construction workers. Those wearing Egyptian galabias could be doormen or farmers who might have traveled on three or four buses to get here. There are three bawling infants and other restless children, hopping around or fidgeting alongside their parents. The lucky ones have occupied the benches; the others stand where they can.
A man shakes a plastic bag in front of my face. It’s the tooth seller. He says, “Forty pounds for three.” He sells teeth to students so they can practice root canals; because my shayla is smoothed around my face and bunched neatly into my dental jacket, he recognizes that I am a Khaleejia and has automatically quadrupled the price he would have quoted to an Egyptian student. But root canals will come in my last year. For now, it’s fillings and extractions.
There is an informal first-come, first-served policy, even though some of the patients have appointments. Whenever there are bullies, the shy patients end up waiting longer than they should. Today the provocation comes from a burly, turbaned farmer who insists I treat him right away. “Let me go in first and see what’s happening,” I tell him when he blocks my path and jabs a finger into the back of his mouth to show me the decay. It is only once the security guard yells at him that he steps to the side.
The familiar clean-and-dirty odor of the clinic, a mixture of Dettol and nervous sweat, hits me as soon as I enter. It’s a bright room with fluorescent lights and mustard-colored walls. A jungle of pipes dips into the various dental units with their waist-high aluminum partitions. With more than fifty third-, fourth- and fifth-year students drilling, filling, and extracting, the clinic is clamorous with the slurps of suction, hisses of the compressor, clanging of instruments, chattering of students, and clomping of heels. Every now and then a patient screams; the students never fail to stop what they’re doing and look up to see who it is.
I ask the clinic manager for my patient’s file. Seated behind a wooden desk by the entrance, the manager leans back against a wall with a framed picture of Hosni Mubarak. He indicates that my partner, Ghada, has already picked up the file. I spot her straight ahead and make my way toward her, past dental chairs occupied by openmouthed patients, each attended to by a pair of students. Under the lights, one probes, drills, or fills while the other assists.
“My turn to practice today. Your turn to support, but since you were late I went ahead and got everything ready.” Ghada’s frizzy hair is tamed into a pair of tight plaits. Sucking the end of one, she points at the gleaming dental equipment—handpiece, mouth mirror, explorer, tweezers, drill—that she has sterilized and arranged on the desk. I turn to the sink and as I start scrubbing my hands under the tap, she continues, “The problem is, I can’t do anything because he refuses to open his mouth.”
He is a wiry young man with a thin face. His arms are crossed high on his chest, as if daring us to pry them loose. He looks like an enraged child, his lips sealed in a line so severe that his cheeks are hollowed into craters. “He says he has pain in the back.” Ghada directs her comments to the man. “He probably needs a filling, but I won’t be able to tell him anything until he loosens that mouth of his!” Her tone sharpens in a burst of testiness.
“I told you, I won’t let you work on my teeth until there’s a proper doctor here,” he mumbles, opening his mouth a crack so the words can come out. “You two are students, for God’s sake. What do you know?”
There is a burst of sharp yelps. “Eyah, eyah, eyah!”
“Hear that? I don’t want to be in that situation.”
“We won’t do anything until the professor checks first,” I say, and look around the clinic to locate him. Instead I spot Adel. His gait has the light hop of an untroubled person as he strolls into the clinic. He pauses to chat with the manager before joining his partner in a booth just to the side of the entrance. There’s the easy grin that makes his eyes crinkle. It softens his face and hardens mine as I try to figure out how I’ll be able to sneak out of the room without his noticing me.
It’s hot. I loosen my shayla and raise my head toward the ceiling fan. It groans and creaks. It ruffles my bangs but does little to take the edge off the heat. If our unit were at the far end, I would have been able to catch a breeze through the open window. I pull off the shayla and fluff my hair before pinning it into a bun and covering it with a surgical cap—cooler, and easier to blend in with the other students. Adel’s gaze travels in my direction and continues. He doesn’t notice me.
I have managed to avoid him these past couple of weeks simply by changing my routine so that it didn’t intersect with his whereabouts. I had stalked him for so long that I had memorized his wanderings on the university campus. I knew his schedule and, before that strange and ridiculous evening at Farghaly, the knowledge had served me well: I’d casually appear wherever he would be.
There were late Thursday afternoons when I used to settle under the jacaranda tree that rose a comfortable distance away from the pitch where he played football. In the lecture halls, I’d slide into the long wooden benches a row or two behind him: a subtle nearness that got me a view of the back of his head. Whenever the room grew stuffy with heat, he would doze off. His hair would grow damp and stick to the back of his neck. But that did not disturb him while he slept, a well-rehearsed habit in which he kept his back straight and his head only slightly askew.
It was never hard to find him; and then how easy it was to avoid him, to turn invisible in a university of sixteen thousand. Between classes I would blend into the swarm of rushing students, let them bump me along through the smoke-smelling corridors to wherever they were going. If I knew he would be going to a lecture I had to attend, I’d wait until he entered before settling into the last row.
But a couple of days back he’d found me just as I was leaving the library, the only place where I’d drop my guard because of the near-zero chance of his appearing there. He looked relieved to have located me, as if he’d been searching all over Cairo. After the usual niceties, he asked why I had stopped the lessons. “Perhaps you should get a private tutor like everyone else,” I suggested. I was proud of how my face remained blank as I said that. He scrunched his mouth in a half smile, looking puzzled and amused at the same time. He waited for me to elaborate, but I turned and walked away.
“Wait, there’s more,” says Ghada, her head swaying with scorn. “Why don’t you tell my partner here your other requirement?” She glowers at our patient, and her bulging eyes look ready to pop out of their sockets. “He won’t open his mouth until we guarantee that there will be no pain.”
“That, too.” He snorts.
“I’ve had enough of you,” Ghada says, and waves to the professor, who, after hearing her account, solves the problem by grabbing the patient by the collar and yanking him out of the chair.
Our next patient is a brave lad, no older than sixteen, who stretches his mouth as wide as he can. His eyes are stained yellow and he keeps them focused on the ceiling as the professor warns us in English, “Take every precaution. I think this boy is jaundiced—hepatitis C, maybe.”
Ghada steps back. She insists that I examine the boy.
“But it’s your turn,” I say to her, looking at the professor for his backing.
“I’ve had more hours as the main than you have,” says Ghada.
The professor makes the decision. He claps his ha
nds. “Mariam, check his teeth.”
Turning away from the patient so as not to hurt his feelings, I double my protection with a second pair of gloves. With goggles secured to my forehead and surgical mask pulled over my face, I peer into the boy’s mouth, with the dental mirror in one hand and the explorer in the other. I poke, and the boy grimaces. “Patient has a lower-right second-molar decay,” I announce with authority. The professor keeps his eyes fixed to some point over my shoulder and hums his agreement. After more probing, I decide he needs three fillings and maybe an extraction of that molar because it’s so decayed. Examining the X-ray, the professor confirms my prognosis and gives me permission to proceed, then moves on to check on another team.
Ghada chats with the students in the unit behind us about the dress she wore to her cousin’s wedding as I inject anesthesia into the patient’s gum. While I wait for his mouth to numb, my gaze drifts over to Adel. He is assisting, and carrying on conversations with three other students in three different units. When will he ever learn to concentrate on one thing? Will he grab my arm as I rush out through the clinic door? How should I react in front of all these people? Suddenly he stops talking and looks around, stretching his neck over the partitions. He’s looking for me, I’m sure of it. And this sends a shiver of delight through me. I save the image for later, to be cuddled along with my pillow.
“I feel like there are ants crawling in my mouth,” my patient says.
I tear the sterilized pouch and remove the high-speed drill, attaching it to the adapter. My hand is steady as I guide the drill in a controlled rotation over his tooth. Spit and water sprinkle my goggles. The rot is soft and starts disintegrating too quickly, so I relieve the pressure. With the drill’s sustained drone, I remember my father, when he was as self-assured as I feel right now. He watches me, and from behind my mask I smile with the image. What would he have thought, seeing me like this: so poised, so sure, on the way to becoming a real dentist. He would have cocked his head to one side and opened his palms to the sky, whispered a masha’Allah to show appreciation for my accomplishment. Then he’d make a joke about how he won’t be able to open his mouth anymore because his daughter would spot the bad teeth and miss the smile—or something like that.