by Maha Gargash
A sudden fatigue washes over me and I yawn. The girls decide it’s time they were off to class and leave me to fall into a dreamless slumber.
It’s early evening, and dusk’s light is no more than a gray glow at the edges of the curtained window. It is quiet, and, stretching the sleep out of my limbs, I gaze ahead. A broad yawn finishes in a smile as I think of Adel.
I scratch the back of my head and finger my thick amber hair, letting it spill in a fan onto the pillow. I get goose bumps as I reflect on all the different expressions that played on his face last night. My palm slides over my nightgown to cup the suppleness of my chest. The other hand joins and I squeeze, feeling the pleasure warming me, lighting me from inside out. My tummy dips into a tight hollow and my ribs rise up, as if some hurdle for my roaming hands. They have snuck under my nightgown, and for a while my fingers run up and down my ribcage, letting my imagination change the feel of them to something stronger, sturdier, rougher, even: a man’s hand, his hand.
My skin heats with every stroke. My wandering fingers grow bolder and travel lower, as though searching for hidden treasure. There is noise coming from somewhere in the building. I close my eyes against it as my breathing turns impassioned. He cannot resist the feel of me. I am a writhing piece of dough, to be shaped and played with. The thought lights a powerful flame. Desire seizes my breath in rolling waves as I twist and jerk under a spell of sweet and agonizing quakes.
Spent and splayed like a starfish, with the covers in disarray, I grin at the ceiling before realizing that there are voices just outside my door. It is an argument, animated whispers between Tammy and someone else. There’s an abla out there. I can’t tell which one, but she is insisting that she needs to see me, and for a moment it puzzles me. The ablas don’t come to our apartments unless there is a man around—doctor, electrician, plumber—and then they make sure to warn us to cover up or get dressed, since we often traipse around the rooms in our robes, pajamas, or nightgowns.
I hear Tammy snap at her, telling her that she can’t go in because I am resting. Like all of us in the sakan, Tammy considers the apartment her private domain and shields it with zeal. One case of easy access, and the ablas will gladly form a habit of nosing into our affairs.
To fortify their position, or out of sheer frustration, the ablas are forever bossing around the rest of the staff: their assistants, the dadas who run their errands and clean the building’s communal areas, the security men, the drivers, the doormen. Their demands are never-ending, and they insist on knowing every detail of the sakan’s goings-on: who said what, who came by, who went where.
The girls’ squabbles with the ablas are mostly over car bookings. Whenever a student wants to go out, whether to classes at the university, shopping, errands, or recreational visits, she has to fill in a request form the night before with departure and return times, which is then handed to an abla for coordination. The ablas map the drivers’ routes for the next day and group students in cars according to their timings and destinations. And that’s when, without fail, the bickering begins. These are like territorial catfights, quick screaming bursts and threats that are settled quickly so that peace can return—until the next night. Arguments with the ablas are a daily occurrence, a part of life at the sakan.
Some of the ablas are more lenient or deal with problems by brushing them to the side, but not the one outside my door. Now that she is speaking louder, I recognize the voice as that of Abla Taghrid. She wears a skirt that stops three fingers under her knee to show her modernity and takes solid steps in a pair of closed black shoes with a slight heel to indicate refined practicality. Abla Taghrid is shrewd, with enough spite to create mountains of problems. In the five years she has been working at the sakan, she has gotten three students evicted.
“The well-being of every girl in this sakan is my responsibility,” she says. She is right outside my door. Any moment now, she’ll burst through and flick on the light switch so she can catch me looking the image of health. I pull the blanket up to my neck and kick my legs to generate heat.
“Okay, I will tell her to come down once she wakes up,” says Tammy.
“I have to make sure she is fine,” insists Abla Taghrid.
“I told you, she is sleeping!”
“She has to wake up now. I have a message for her from her uncle.”
This piece of news sets jitters rushing through the length of me, and it takes every bit of restraint I have not to toss off the blanket and jump out of bed. I usually call the family about once a week just to let them know I am okay. Ammi Majed has never called me before. Could word of last night have gotten to him already? What could it be?
The door opens a crack and a pencil of light spills in just as I burrow under the blanket, pretending to be asleep. “Are you awake, habibti, my darling?” I thought she might linger for a while by the door, but she’s right by my side, her voice sounding as sweet as if it were dipped in honey. The ablas would like us to accept them as second mothers, the protectors and guiding voices of experience. It’s another way of cementing their position and setting themselves higher than the rest of the staff. Some, like Abla Taghrid, would like to get more involved in the girls’ personal lives, always on the lookout for opportunities when one of us might be vulnerable enough to reveal a secret or two. That’s nearly impossible, because we’ve labeled her captain of the moral police. Even new students are warned off as soon as they set foot in the sakan. “How are you feeling?” she asks.
I groan as if just waking and slither out from under the blanket. I avert my gaze (better she not see what’s in my eyes) as she touches my head. It’s hot, and she pulls back her hand in surprise. “Your uncle called,” she says to me. “I told him that you were a little ill and asleep in your room. So he said he’d call you later.”
I wait for her to tell me more. But Abla Taghrid just stares at me, stretching her thin mouth so that it runs parallel to her square jaw. In the faint light, her round eyes shine like wet pebbles. High above them are tattooed eyebrows, two thick dashes, giving her an expression of perpetual astonishment. “Did he say what he wants?”
“No.”
This makes the hot and the cold rush through me at the same time, and once again I wonder whether a real fever is coming on.
“Right!” She slaps her thighs. “I’ll let you know if he calls again. Otherwise, come down yourself and telephone him.”
She’d like that, I’m sure. The communal phone on the ground floor is close enough to her quarters that she can hear every squeak and breath. If that were not enough of an intrusion, there is another curious ear: the operator who places all the international calls. Every few minutes there is a click as she checks whether the call is still running. Sometimes she even interrupts the conversation and, with her flute-pitched voice, warns us of the cost so far—as if the expense were coming out of her pocket! Not for the first time, I long for the convenience of my Dubai mobile phone. But it doesn’t work here.
“And just to let you know, he did mention that he was coming,” says Abla Taghrid as she makes her way to the door.
“H-h-here? W-w-when?” I stutter.
“I don’t know,” says the abla, and she closes the door behind her.
I claw at the blanket. I am transported back to the hospital room where my father, having two months earlier suffered from a stroke that affected his right side, lay recovering from a fall in which he’d broken his good leg.
He had turned unpredictable in his misery. I couldn’t figure out which I hated more, the savage emotions that suddenly seeped out of him or the bouts of cloudy-eyed listlessness that lasted for hours on end. And then there was his vulnerability on that particularly sticky November day in 1987. He was blubbering, his body convulsing under the force of choke-filled sobs, when Ammi Majed walked in and calmed him down with talk of sending him to Germany for a faster, more efficient recovery. And then they began talking about problems at the company.
The sakan room feels hot. I hur
l the blanket to one side and sit up. Not for the first time, I tell myself there was nothing I could have done. I didn’t understand what was going on, and even if I did, what could I have done to prevent the grievous outcome? Spoken up? Who would have listened to the objections of a babbling eleven-year old? But no matter how many excuses I make, the fact remains that I failed him. The shame of it sits like a noose around my neck. It suffocates me.
“Cash flow, that’s what worries me,” Ammi Majed had told my father. “We might need to sell a building because of this Iraq–Iran War that’s dragging on. All those attacks on tankers in the Gulf—well, let me just say it’s affecting all the businesses, and the banks have grown more careful. They are not giving loans.”
My father groaned. “How serious is it?”
“Well, import and export is affected, too. But if we act quickly, we can control the situation, or at least minimize the damage.”
It was at this point that I got bored. My thoughts drifted toward my schoolbag and the diversions it held. I reached for it and pulled out two large-headed miniature gnomes from the side pocket, along with a half-consumed tube of Smarties chocolates.
“You must understand, brother,” Ammi Majed said, “I’m here for you. I just want you to concentrate on getting better. With your permission, I will do what is best for the company.”
“You have my permission.”
“Signatures.”
“What?”
Ammi Majed cleared his throat and shifted his gaze to the ground. “Well, you see, I would need the authority to sign,” he mumbled. Then, with a breath filled with resolution, he added, “I am talking about full authority, so that I can inject some life into the business.”
“Of course, of course,” said my father. “You have it. We are brothers, and I know that all you do is for the good of the family.”
“The permission would need to come from the courts. There are papers you have to sign.”
“Yes, yes. God bless you. Get it arranged.”
Ammi Majed shifted on his feet, looking a little unsure as to what he should do next. “He is right outside.”
My gnomes were violently quarrelling, but I paused my playing and gaped at the door. It surprised and embarrassed me that there had been a person waiting in the corridor all this time. Did he hear my father’s outburst, the wailing sobs from earlier?
“Who?” my father asked.
“The court notary.”
There were five men. I knew Mustafa from the office and I’d seen Ammi Majed’s lawyer a few times, but the notary and the other two men, who were presented as witnesses, were strangers. I thought the notary was being funny when he asked my father, “Are you Hareb Al-Naseemy?”
“Who else could he be?” I said, bursting into a giggle that was cut short by the nasty look Ammi Majed directed at me.
The notary didn’t seem to mind, though. He was a young man with steel-rimmed glasses. His eyes twinkled at me as he curbed his smile. Then he repeated the question, to which my father said exactly what I did: “Who else would I be?” Thinking my father agreed with me that it was a silly question, I was about to laugh again when I noticed that he was staring at the man with impatient eyes. This was grown-up talk, with all its riddles and mysteries, and I returned to the gnomes. “You want a Smartie, do you? I’ll show you,” I muttered into my chest. The second gnome picked up a Smartie and squished it over the first gnome’s head. The red shell cracked, and I smudged the chocolate filling over its face.
“As per procedure, I need you to answer me,” the notary said.
“Yes, yes, you can see that I am,” said my father.
“Do you, in your full mental capacity, give power of attorney to your brother, Majed Al-Naseemy?”
“You know, I’ve broken my leg. All I want from this world is health.”
“You understand that he’ll be the person who will solely make all decisions related to the company—buying, selling, and the like—as he sees fit?”
“I have to go away to get better. I ask you, ibn al-youm, who is going to take care of the company?”
“I need a yes or a no, sir.”
“What have I been telling you all this time, young man? Don’t you know to respect your elders?”
The gnomes were finished arguing. Both faces were smeared with chocolate, which I started licking off while sneaking glimpses of my father’s reddened face.
“I’m sorry, ammi,” said the notary. “It’s just that we have to do things according to the rules. And that means you have to actually say the word in front of me, in front of these witnesses.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” yelled my father. “That’s three times I’m saying it. Is that enough?”
Ammi Majed had to placate him again before they could proceed. In addition to the signature granting power of attorney, other signatures were needed on documents from customs and bank authority papers, all of which were contained in a file that Mustafa had brought along. Ammi Majed spread them in front of my father. And my father signed them with his good hand.
15
DALAL
I sit cross-legged in front of the mirrored closet door with half my hair in rollers. My mouth rounds into an alluring pout and I try out several facial expressions, mixing surprise with different degrees of innocence. “I don’t understand. Could you explain it to me again?” My lips broaden a little. “So kind of you; I would be quite lost without you.” It’s the perfect pitch, and, graced with that hint of a smile, it is enough to produce the illusion of warmth and compassion.
I take a deep breath, and even though my routine practice of matching vocal tones to facial expressions is over, the glow on my face remains. “How well things are going!” That’s what my mother keeps saying. Sherif bey now takes us to private parties, which he says are filled with all the right people. He calls them career makers, so I had expected them to hunger for a talent such as myself, or at least show a little more interest. He’s introducing us to his sisters this afternoon. Mama calls to me to hurry up just as I begin to tackle the other side of my head. I’ve barely zapped three strands of hair with heat and wrapped them into rollers when someone starts banging at the door.
“We want to speak to the sitt, the one they call Zohra!” It’s an order, not a request.
“Open up!” That’s another voice.
“Mama, can you get that?”
The raps grow louder.
I shove the rollers to the side and barge into her room. My mother looks like a shy bride. She is wearing an ivory-colored suit with a matching chiffon carnation pinned over one ear. There’s an unspoken command for a moment of privacy, for silence, as she sits on the edge of her bed, slowly twisting open a tin of Nivea cream.
“Didn’t you hear me call?” When she doesn’t reply, I wave at the door. “There’s someone there.”
“Well, go see who it is,” she says.
“How?” I exclaim, waving both hands at the unfinished shape of my head. “Besides, it’s you they’re calling.”
She takes her time rubbing the Nivea into her hands despite the ruckus at the door, which sounds like hundreds of pounding fists. “There’s nowhere you can go, Sitt Zohra,” someone calls. “We know you’re in there, and we won’t go away. You have to face us.”
“What have you done?” I say, suddenly alarmed by the realization that it’s the neighborhood women out there. They have made snide remarks at my mother before, obviously feeling threatened by their husbands’ attentions toward my mother. But that was on the street, and Mama had brushed their animosity to the side and marched ahead. Now they are here with clear and dangerous intentions, it seems.
She waves her creamed hand in front of her face. “What are those stupid women thinking? That we’ll be in this stinky neighborhood forever, that we’re interested in stealing their good-for-nothing husbands? I want you to go out there and handle the situation.”
“What do you mean by . . .” I can’t finish the thought. “No, no, no, no.”
I imagine opening the door to women spraying spit through their gnashing teeth, their thick hands and fingers ready to rip. “Do you hear them? They are ready to draw blood, and it’s you they want.” Then a thought occurs to me. “Is this a test?”
“Test?” In her gray eyes, there’s a flare like a mirror caught in light. “This is life!” I shrink back when she chides me. “If you can’t tackle a bunch of loudmouthed vultures, what hope do you have in the world of music?”
I nod with resolve. There must be no hesitation when I deal with them. After all, this is life. With a brusque swing of the arm, I yank the door open and snarl at the women, “What? You’ve woken up the dead!” I must be a frightful sight with half my hair puffed up and frizzed, tangled like a fisherman’s net. With the element of surprise to my advantage, I act before they have a chance to overpower me. “Don’t you have any shame, banging on people’s doors like this?”
The woman at the front is the glaring constable of the group. I recognize her as the wife of Abdo, the butcher. She steps back, nudging the group into retreat. I’m about to end the confrontation when someone pushes through. And then my father is in the room, a concrete force towering over me. My first reaction is to run away. I scurry past him, but there’s a man blocking the door. He kicks it shut.
“Enough stupidity!” says my father, his voice barely audible, and he gets a grip on the untamed side of my hair, tugging at it as I cower and make mousy sounds. “I’ve had just about enough of your antics.” He forces me onto the sofa just as my mother comes out of her bedroom.
“Oh,” she says, tapping at the carnation in her hair. Out of nervousness or disbelief, she speaks to him as if he were some regal guest who has graced us with a visit. But she can’t quite finish her sentences. “How did you . . . ? When did you . . . ? What are you . . . ?”
“Sit!”