by Maha Gargash
He clears his throat and says, “This is our proposal for taking this company higher, to the next level.”
“Oh? Closer to heaven, you mean?” I chortle at my pun. Ahmad smiles, but Saif just blinks, as always ambivalent toward that thing called humor.
“There’s an analysis of the market,” Ahmad says, looking deep and thoughtful with his hands clasped loosely, the index fingers tapping each other. “You’ll find some good ideas in there.”
“Really?” I put on my reading glasses.
Ahmad is about to continue—his buttery voice might have been able to hold my attention—but Saif, with his rampageous disposition, spoils it all. “Yes, Father, really,” he says, his voice gruff with impatience. “There are suggestions of what we should do to expand the business when the market is up and broaden our scope when it is down.” I don’t appreciate his tone; it borders on impertinence. It sours my mood right away.
“That’s easy. When it’s up, we make money; when it’s down, we hold firm.” I scoff as I flip through the pages. “Is this what they taught you in those business courses you took? You should have asked me instead of wasting time—the company’s as well as mine—by making up this nonsense.”
“But this is all scientific. It’s based on sound business principles. In it you’ll find the market trends, and predictions, too.”
I laugh. “So now you can tell me what will happen a year from now?”
“Please, just read it!” It’s a demand, not a request.
I settle on a random page filled with multicolored graphs showing the market analysis that Ahmad had mentioned. I flip two more pages before slapping the proposal shut. “I can’t look at this now,” I tell them, pulling off my reading glasses. “I have too much work. I have to review our transactions, for one thing: what we spend dirhams on and how much we save and what goes toward your salary, so that you can live well. That’s what I am prepared to tire my eyes over: the money coming in and going out. Not this encyclopedia you’ve brought me.”
Saif’s face darkens. He looks at his brother, who shakes his head in a you-failed-horribly sort of way. Some might say that I should give my sons more say in the company, but there’s too much hunger in their eyes, two pairs of torchlights always shifting, always restless with greed. There is a knock, barely audible. I guess it’s Mustafa, and when he peers through the doorway I wave him in. “Mustafa! The boys have ideas—again!” I slide the proposal to the edge of the desk and lean back in my chair. “Give it to Mustafa to look through,” I tell Saif. “He can tell me whether it’s worth considering.” I glower at his baffled face. “Anything else?”
“No,” he mumbles.
Once my sons have left the room, Mustafa dawdles at my desk and says, “He’s not happy with that joke you just made, bey.” With an edgy grin, he caresses his scalp in an east-to-west direction.
“It wasn’t a joke. You will read what’s in that file and tell me about it.”
“Yes, bey.” He plops down and is swallowed by the sofa, his legs and back folding into an awkward bend, and starts relating the latest goings-on in Cairo, as reported by the four young men he has assigned (working in shifts) to follow Zohra and Dalal. Mustafa opens a small notebook and reads the detailed notes he has jotted down. He tells me that the spies have confirmed that for the past nineteen days Zohra and Dalal have been seeing the same composer. “It’s nights now,” he says with bulging eyes, “late nights.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know, bey.” He leans back, looking defeated.
Lots of descriptions and no conclusion, I decide, considering whether it might be best if I traveled there to see for myself. I’m curious to find out what their living conditions are like. Zohra appreciates comfort. How is she managing in the middle of Imbaba’s muck? I picture her dainty feet skirting piles of rubbish on the streets, her fine nose twisting every time a cloud of exhaust blows in her face. The images fill me with a cool glee. Yes, she probably regrets the day she left Dubai and the shaabia house in Al-Mankhool.
My shaabia was in the middle of a maze of narrow sandy paths, well trodden and hardened to a dirty gray, with an opening every so often—an empty plot of land where boys played football. The house was built too big for the plot, the courtyard no more than a tight square with a ghaf tree squeezed in the middle of its cement floor.
For many years my shaabia was rented to an old woman, a widow who couldn’t afford to maintain it. It had peeling walls and leaking pipes, ant-strewn cracks in the floors and threadbare carpets, old air-conditioning units that roared but did not cool when the heat shot up in the summer. The widow passed away at a most convenient time: just as I decided to send Zohra to live there as punishment for what she’d done.
The best years with Zohra were the first few. After that she lost her sweet demeanor, replacing it with a haughty sarcasm that made me want to break her, the thankless creature she’d become with her unrelenting demands. It wasn’t just that she wanted me to make our marriage public, which I’d always assured her that I would do at the appropriate time. She’d also started insisting that I leave Aisha and move in with her. The nerve! Then one day she announced that she was fed up of waiting and would announce our marriage herself. It was a threat I did not believe, but it was a threat all the same, and it had the effect of pushing me away. I turned cold. I stopped visiting her. And then she came.
It was the eve of Eid Al-Adha, the celebration of the Big Feast. I was watching Aisha as she arranged the sweets and nuts, pouring them into bowls as part of her preparations for the stream of visitors that would fill the house for the next four days. The doorbell rang, and the maid went to open the door. I didn’t recognize Zohra as she entered; she was wearing a burka and abaya. She must have thought that would add credibility to what she had to say. It was Dalal—around eight at the time, with her big head and wrists so skinny it looked as though one might snap in her mother’s tight grip—who shook me into an awareness of the catastrophe that was about to take place.
Zohra hollered, “He’s a coward! He’s a drunk!”
Aisha had turned to me and asked, “Who is this woman?”
“This woman?” Zohra said, jerking Dalal forth. “You should ask him who this little girl is!”
And then something strange happened. Zohra’s voice started to shake, the words falling out in a jumble. Perhaps she suddenly felt intimidated by the grandness of my house, or even by Aisha, who was staring at her in a disconcerted panic. “What’s that?” she kept asking. “Who are you? What is it you’re trying to say?”
There was no time to lose. I made a big noise; I waved my arms to intimidate her. I raised my voice so high that Aisha, in her distress and confusion, plugged her ears. I dragged Zohra and Dalal out of the house by force and ordered my staff to send them off in a taxi. I still can’t comprehend how I was able to compose my features so quickly. I’d put the fury in me on hold and marched back into the house to face Aisha. “Madwoman,” I said to her. It was hard to judge how much she had absorbed, whether she believed what she’d heard, but I wasn’t about to investigate. “Where do they come from, these beggars? Who lets them into this country?” I might have gotten away with that argument if fate had allowed it.
A week later, my daughter Nouf stormed into the house with the news that there was another girl at her private school going by the same family name. “She came right up to me and said we were sisters! Ask Mariam, she was with me. We’d never seen this girl before; she’s two classes below us.” Nouf was overwrought, choking on her words. “Sisters? How is that possible? She looks nothing like us and talks with an Egyptian accent.”
I hadn’t realized they all went to the same all-girls school, and this time there was no escaping the connection. Aisha understood. I remember that her sister showed up at the house more often during that time, no doubt begging her to walk out on me. I kept expecting to come home and not find my wife. But Aisha stayed, quietly withdrawn, unapproachab
le with that blank face. It was hard to guess what was going on in her head.
Not so with my sons and daughters—four of them were older and married and therefore presumed that they had the right to make demands. Saif and Ahmad hardened their expressions and kept asking, “What now?” Mona and Amal, on the other hand, made a racket with their protestations and declarations of the hurt and anguish I’d caused. They dragged the other girls, Nadia and Nouf, into tears and hysterics, which I knew I could have ended if I confessed, admitted my mistake, shown some remorse, even lied to make up for the betrayal: “It happened in a moment of weakness. She was a seductress who lured me into a marriage I did not want. She must have used magic, blinded me with it. Then the child came—and that must have been planned, too, so that she could shackle me. And no, no one else knows about it. And yes, of course I’ll divorce her.” That’s what they were waiting for. That’s what the whole family expected, but they should have known that I would never have allowed them to bully me and force a confession, real or made up.
At first, I really meant to divorce Zohra right away, but their reactions chased that resolution away. What business did they have judging me? I kept the whole lot of them guessing my intentions. And that included Zohra, who had to endure a long drawn-out torture until I finally severed our relationship. I think back on that time with cool satisfaction. After moving Zohra into the shaabia, I cut back her finances slowly, a monthly reminder of how lucky she had been to have had me in her life. Ultimately, she couldn’t afford to keep Dalal at the private school and had no choice but to move her to a government school. I prolonged my family’s mental anguish simply to reinforce the fact that the decision was mine alone.
At the time, in the heat of the moment, I had thrown the blame back at them, accusing them of driving me away, and in the end they did the only thing they could: let it go. Normality returned a few weeks later. And nothing was ever mentioned again about that other wife and child.
There is a knock, and Saeed enters. I expect he’ll tell me that Khaled was deemed too old for the girl, or perhaps that the girl’s father had decided that his daughter must marry a cousin, make sure the money stays in the family—all expected, all reasonable, really. It would have been better if Khaled had let his family choose the girl for him—just as we did for his siblings, just as my marriage to Aisha had been arranged—instead of searching for a love match. That would have been best: easy on the mind, gentle on the heart.
I rise to greet Saeed with a kiss on the nose and a warm handshake as Mustafa slinks out of the room. Once we’re settled on the couch, Saeed taps his head and says, “I saw the old man, and he’s quite mad.” He snickers. “So you shouldn’t take anything seriously, because his mind is not sound and he has started imagining things.”
I clear my throat and tell him to start at the beginning.
“I made four visits, and even then, even after using every skill to approach the matter without arousing suspicion—I mean, who am I, after all? Neither the groom’s father nor his brother—I walked out with nothing.”
“Then what?”
“I went again yesterday, and this time I got him talking about all the various businessmen in Dubai—you know how these old men love to talk about how these people made their money—and that got him in the right mood. Finally!” He works up quite a laugh, sounding like a rusty machine. “What an imagination! Such a wild story! Barely worth repeating.”
“What did he say?”
“Yes, well.” He rubs his face. “We chatted, all friendly, just harmless talk, which I made sure led to the various distinguished families here in Dubai, and I mentioned you to see if I could provoke some sort of comment.”
“And?”
“First he sniffed.”
“Sniffed?”
Saeed nods. Through his teeth, he frees a hiss of apprehension. “You know, he has this medical stick that replaced the cane he carried when his legs got weaker from the diabetes. Well, he clutched that stick and started pounding it on the ground.”
“Why?”
“He told me that your son wanted to marry his daughter and he swore he would never allow it.”
“Why? What has the boy done?”
“That’s what I asked him. ‘It’s not the boy,’ he said, with that rudeness you’re obliged to forgive just because he’s an old man. ‘It’s the father. I cannot give my daughter to the son of a man who is responsible for his brother’s death.’ ”
For a second I’m not sure I heard him right. “Why would he say something like that? Everyone knows Hareb died of a stroke.” I shift on the couch to quiet the outrage that has gripped me. “The crippled shit! Why does he spread such malicious talk?”
Saeed dismisses the whole episode with a swoop of his arm. “What does it matter, anyway? Who is going to pay attention to the blasted tongue-lashings of that grizzled fool? His brain is shriveled like a bad nut.”
There is heat, a slow fire in me that settles in the stiffening veins of my neck. I want to be alone, and as if he’s read my mind Saeed glances at his watch and gets up to leave, with the made-up excuse that he is late for an appointment. The door closes behind him with a soft thump.
People talked when I took ownership of Green Acacia. With Dubai’s small, close-knit community, it would have been naïve to presume that the episode would go unnoticed, especially since Hareb voiced his outrage to anyone willing to listen. I wasn’t one to ask for details, but I knew many debated whether I was right to do what I did.
Still, after any seismic shift, things cool off and settle. I was sure this was what happened, convinced that my well-guarded reputation and good standing were not seriously affected—until now, when that crusty old Diab Al-Mutawa blamed me for my brother’s death.
My gaze drifts to the cabinet in the corner, and suddenly I remember that that’s where I’d put the photograph. I’m up and pulling open the drawer at the bottom. Slouching on folded knees, I sift through old bills, receipts, and other scraps of paper thrown in and forgotten among the paper clips, blunt pencils, and dried-up fountain pens.
The photograph is lodged between the pages of an old copybook. I satisfy my curiosity first, nodding at the date on the back. It was 1963, right after Hareb made that first sale. The likeness was striking in our youth: we both had broad shoulders and strong, straight backs. Later we’d grow the same belly, too, a firm padding that spread to the sides of our waists. David took the photograph and I recall him suggesting that we stand with the palm grove behind us, but Hareb was so proud of the repaired water pump that he insisted we stand near it. Behind us is the metal pipe, curving up at an awkward angle, its mouth emptying a surge of water into the reservoir.
I wipe the surface of the photograph. Although Hareb was nine years older than I, we look close in age: able-bodied men with pride-filled chests pushed so far out that the bottoms of our kandoras hang just above our ankles. David told us to smile, but not knowing how we’d look with our teeth showing, we had decided on manly frowns.
He was the popular brother, friendlier, more talkative, and it was only because of his good relationships with people that he’d managed to secure those big contracts in Abu Dhabi and Al-Ain. With the country’s boom in greening projects, the timing was right, and the contracts fell right into his hands. Yes, he started this company, and he was lucky enough to secure its assets, but I’m the one who launched it to the highest level. It would be fine if it is only Diab Al-Mutawa who thinks that I caused Hareb’s death. But what if there are others, all those businessmen and acquaintances who have never once shown anything less than the highest regard for me?
I examine my brother’s face, looking for the anguish I had dreamed was in his eyes. It’s hard to tell. His ghitra is slanted too low on his forehead, casting a shadow over most of his face. And with that I conclude that the bad dream was the result of nothing more than indigestion, to be expected after last night’s heavy supper of kebab and onions.
13
DALAL
At the start of every meeting, I sing a few lines from one of Umm Kulthum’s songs to get Sherif bey’s creativity flowing. He clicks his tongue as an accompanying beat. Squeezed between two fingers, his cigarette leaves behind a wavy line of smoke as his hand glides in the air from side to side. My voice fills the room. His head sways with rapture.
It’s a ritual he insists on. He is a “true artiste,” Mama insists every time I complain about the futility of what has begun to feel like a sacred tradition. His glasses are on the desk, and without them his lids look unprotected, as if they might lose their definition and melt into the rest of his face. They slacken and conceal his eyes, dark as watermelon seeds and slushy as the juice. His lashes flutter like moth wings as he takes careful glimpses of my mother.
Tonight she does not lean forward, her chin resting on her knuckles, to watch me. There is no giddy appreciation in her face, only a forced smile of stretched patience. Her legs are crossed and she jiggles her foot. Every now and then she exhales with a force that indicates that some deep annoyance will soon explode. My voice strengthens with anticipation and I hurry my performance along.
“Bravo! Bravo! Excellent start to the evening,” Sherif bey says, slowly swiveling toward the wall to reach for his leaning oud. Hugging the instrument to his tummy, he plucks a few strings and embellishes them with a chord.
“Yes, my Dalal is consistent in her performances,” says Mama, “but you . . . well. It seems it is not in your power to facilitate our way.” After weeks of gentle prodding and encouraging hints, all aimed to hurry him along, she has decided to take the straight path to the source of our frustration.
Sherif bey flinches. It’s the first time she has spoken to him that way. He sets aside his oud and rubs his eyes before shielding them with his glasses. “Are you upset with me?” he asks.