That Other Me

by Maha Gargash

  There he is, Mama’s absurd choice of a husband. The smile on my face stays fixed in place as I disdainfully watch him lurking by the buffet. He shifts the steel covers one by one and sniffs at the food. Is he to be my new father? The woman clicks her tongue. “Really,” she says. “He’s such an old pickle, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is,” I reply without further thought. “And he’ll be my stepfather soon.”

  “Hmm,” she says. “I don’t know whether that’s a good thing, Dalal. For your career, I mean.”

  “My career?” I turn to look at her for the first time, and I can’t help but stare, because there is so much to take in. She is a heap of a woman, with a bust like a pair of soldiers standing at attention. Her eyes are the size of buttons, but unlike plain buttons they are a yellow green and they glow. Her brocade hijab—a bronze color a few shades darker than her complexion—can hardly be considered religious; her full neck is showing! She’s swathed in a turban that rises into a tilted mountain peak; a fancy knot at the top is held in place by a tear-shaped turquoise brooch that matches her dangling earrings. I shake my head and ask her how she knows me.

  “I know more important things than your name, habibchi.” She squeezes her teeth together so that the t of habibti—“my darling, my beloved”—turns to a ch, an enchanting twist to a word so versatile it can be used to express intimacy, friendship, sarcasm, or scorn just by changing the tone. “I know, for example, that you have a voice and flair. And your background, half-Emirati, half-Egyptian—ah! Dazzling!” She flings her arms to her sides as if opening the curtains of a stage. “Let’s just say that you could become quite the shooting star.”

  “Have we met before?” Her flamboyant gestures inspire in me a mixture of irritation and unease.

  “Ah, ha, ha,” she muses, grabbing my face in her palms like it’s a melon. “Habibchi, ya habibchi, you don’t need to know me. The important thing is that I know you, and your potential.” With that she lets go of my face and makes a dramatic retreat back into her seat.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She shakes her head. Her face scrunches up, as if she’s just taken a swig of cold, too-strong coffee. “What they are making you do—well, all I can say is beware.”

  By this time, I have lost tolerance for this guessing game. In a fit of pique, I snap, “Who are you?”

  She sighs and looks at me as if I am the dullest person on earth, then digs into her purse and pulls out a business card with her name on it. “Nivine Labeeb,” she says, handing it to me, “but you can call me Madame Nivine. That’s how I am known in the bee-zee-ness.” She uses the English word, stretching each syllable equally. I scan the card for her occupation; it isn’t printed.

  “Which business?”

  “The fame business, of course. I make stars.”

  My eyes widen at this revelation. I make sure not to miss a word as she raps on about her expertise in the field of managing rising talents. By the time she has finished, I’m mesmerized by this woman.

  “You see, hayachi, my life, you may have people around you who tell you they know what they are doing, that they’re following the perfect path to get you to the top. But I bet that deep in your heart you know that something’s not quite right. Hmm? I mean, with your talent, shouldn’t you be famous by now?”

  “You’re right. I should be famous already.” I’m not smiling anymore. A need for sympathy grips me, and I look to Madame Nivine. She is quite the opposite of my mother. With a face as broad and bright as a sunflower and that prominent bosom, she looks like a formidable source of protection. I want to nuzzle up to her. “It has been so difficult, all the waiting, all the hoping. I’m like a yo-yo. One day I’m up, next day I’m down. Sometimes I feel I might lose my mind.”

  “Yes, habibchi, yes. I understand that you have put in so much energy already, and the only thing you are getting is disappointment.”

  “So much disappointment,” I moan.

  “Yes,” she drawls, and pauses as if satisfied with the success of a hypnosis session. “My point, hayachi, is that I have experience and that all-important business sense—both qualities I can proudly say I’ve had since birth, in the genes, you might say—and when I see something that might destroy potential, I have to speak out. And here it is, my bit of free advice: do not appear in that film in a swimsuit. The people, the public, will hate you. You’ll kill whatever chance you have of a singing career.”

  20

  MAJED

  Saeed doesn’t hear me as I let myself into the Neely an hour earlier than our usual meeting time of nine p.m. Bent over, with the sleeves of his kandora rolled up, he is emptying one of eight cartons of Heineken, part of our monthly supply of alcohol. He shoves the first load of cans into the fridge and then lets out a raspy laugh as he becomes aware of my presence.

  “Welcome! Welcome!” he says, and rises to greet me with a nose press and a pat on the back. He is overjoyed; it’s our first night together since my return from Cairo. It feels like a celebration that’s long overdue, and Saeed launches into an account of what to expect tonight.

  On Wednesdays we normally order from one of two restaurants: Yamal Al-Sham or Automatic. Mustafa places the order and delivers it around midnight, by which time we are badly in need of sustenance. We usually get a main dish of kebab or tikka (always with extra grilled onions), and all the accompanying essentials of a Lebanese spread: stuffed grape leaves, hummus, mutabal eggplant dip, tabbouleh and fattoush salads, and bitter black olives and bright-pink turnip pickles. But tonight our friend Mattar has insisted on cooking.

  “You know how Mattar loves to cook,” Saeed says. “He’ll arrive smelling of Old Spice and leave stinking of kitchen. Right here!” Saeed bangs the table. “He’ll take his drink with him and sit right here with a knife and a cutting board. And once he starts chopping those onions, he’ll cry like a woman.” It’s a sight that never fails to improve our mood, and we burst out laughing just thinking about it.

  “But never mind all that,” Saeed adds with a conspiratorial wink. “I’ve arranged a surprise for later.” He taps his temple and sways his head slightly with dreamy eyes to indicate high satisfaction. “Yes, you’ll be happy as a camel lazing by a well.”

  I have a fair idea of what he’s talking about, so I nod, still chuckling, while Saeed begins to brief me on the problem he’s having with the cousins from Goa, a hotelier and a senior accountant. They provide us with a regular supply of alcohol; liquor licenses are issued only to non-Muslims, with a limit set according to salary bracket.

  “Thomas is fine—and generous, maybe because he’s surrounded by drinks all day—but Diego, well, he’s all jittery that the police will find out he’s supplying alcohol to Muslims. When I saw him he writhed like a worm, as if to say, It’s okay to get upset at me, but don’t beat me up. I said to him, ‘Don’t worry, man’—those Christians from Goa, they all pretend they have European blood, and they think man makes them sound white. Never mind that you can’t see it in their skin color: soot!” He snickers. “Anyway, I tell him, ‘The police have more important things to do. Don’t you know that accountants are the most boring people in the world?’ ” Saeed lets out a hearty guffaw. “His face curdled, as if I had insulted his mother. And then he got sulky and refused, simply refused.”

  “So what did you do?”

  He pulls a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it. “I insulted his mother, of course. After that, his sister, and then I slapped him with this.” He kicks his sandal off his foot, and I grunt, shaking my head at the thought of a grown man cowering under blows from a sandal. “Not too hard, of course,” he hurries to add, with a smirk. “Just enough for him to understand that I do not take kindly to people breaking an agreement.”

  “Did he hit back?” I ask, even though I know the near impossibility of a shy accountant—a foreigner at that, one who is an Indian even if he does believe that his heart is pumping liters of European blood—hitting the brash local bully.
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br />   Saeed’s mouth warps as if there were dirt lodged between his teeth. “Ykhassi, sibal, he wouldn’t dare, the monkey! The bastard was trembling with shock. He shrank and curled to the size of a football, and I had to hold back the urge to shoot him.” He lifts his head and directs three hoops of smoke to the ceiling.

  It’s not his action that repels me. It’s his lack of control. These modern times—when girls can defy men—make me fume, but I rein in my anger and use it constructively. I’m filled with a quiet glee when I think about the way I handled both Dalal and Mariam. I flung stone-hard words and gestures at them, stirred their fear, and broke their resolve, without resorting to barbarity.

  Dalal and her mother will pack up and come back to Dubai, no doubt. Mariam, well, I’m now convinced that Cairo has brought out nothing but the worst in her. I’m still confounded by the way she tested me. What was she thinking? I suddenly decide to bring her back and marry her off before year’s end.

  I shake my head, emptying it of all thought to make space for gaiety. My gaze settles on the heavier spirits, the twelve bottles of Black Label whiskey that crowd in a group on the counter. “Well, you managed to find someone else to get our supplies, didn’t you,” I say. In addition, there are a couple of bottles of vodka and another two of gin—the preferred drink of the women who occasionally join us.

  He chuckles and pours me a drink. I take it, and leave him to finish whatever he still needs to do in the kitchen. Settling on the couch in the sitting room, I inhale deeply. There’s the familiar powdery scent of carpet cleaner and flowery air freshener. I feel youthful and robust. All settled with that lot in Cairo, I think as the ice cubes clink in my glass.

  I pull a cigarette out of the box of Marlboros on the table. Unlike Saeed, who finishes a full pack every day, I only smoke at the Neely. Kicking off my sandals, I light it and take a long drag, rubbing my bare feet into the carpet, which is a deep navy color (the better to hide spills). The walls are a few shades lighter; we’re surrounded by blue. More than once—when I’m particularly light-headed with drink and stumbling over the furniture—I’ve quipped, “I’m seasick.” Every time, without fail, the fellows let out a boisterous laugh. Good times tonight, I think.

  “All fine out there?” Saeed calls. “I’ll be right with you.”

  “No hurry,” I call back, and rub the glass’s cool rim along my lips.

  Their eyes are half-closed, their mouths frozen into pouts of seduction. Arms stretch toward the ceiling, and hands twist. Chests jiggle and hips gyrate. But then they start bouncing on their feet with the same lack of grace as a camel’s awkward trot on asphalt. We hoot with laughter at the girls’ hopeless attempts to follow the rhythm of one of Mehad Hamad’s older songs.

  Saeed twirls his fingers at me to find out how I’m doing, and I answer with a cocky tilt of my head and a raised thumb: “Number one!” It’s early still, and already this is turning out to be a wonderful evening, filled with snatches of touching and groping and nuzzling and fondling. Mattar is in the kitchen preparing foga, an Emirati dish of meat and rice cooked all together, not strained—or so he never tires of telling us—and mixed with tomato, onion, garlic, dried limes, and a special Khaleeji mix of Indian spices. Our friend Thani sits next to me; he’s not a Neely regular, and only joins us once in a while.

  Mustafa was here earlier, but he only stayed long enough to brighten the mood with a bit of clowning around. He left once the girls arrived. We have shed our ghitras, keeping our balding skulls covered with only the head caps. We slip off the couch to huddle in a semicircle around the coffee table, where we joke with the pair of dancing girls and cheer them on.

  “What’s so funny?” Mattar calls.

  “Come join us and see for yourself,” Saeed yells back.

  One sniff and my stomach growls like tires on gravel. “What is that wonderful smell?”

  “Only the best: cumin, turmeric, cardamom, cilantro, black pepper, red chiles!” Mattar calls out each herb and spice as if declaring the winners of some competition.

  “Who cares?” says Saeed. “Come out here.”

  “Nearly done,” Mattar says.

  “Is same!” Zoya whines, stifling a giggle so that she can pretend to be upset. “Pukka-puk-puk! Pukka-puk-puk!” She has white-yellow hair, parted in the middle and so fine that her pink scalp shines every time she shakes her head. “No change in this music, habibi. You no get bored?” Her words are thick and slurred, a consequence of her Ukrainian roots and three glasses of vodka.

  The other girl is called Galina. Emboldened by Zoya’s complaining, she begs us to put on some Western music. Her mouth is as red as a ripe strawberry and her eyes are as blue as a sapphire. With such an appealing combination, men should find it impossible to refuse her requests. But there’s a hardness in her voice that no woman should have—a hardness that I think must be linked to years facing blustering winter winds in her native Russia—and it makes me wince.

  Recently we’ve had an influx of girls from the cold climes of the north. Before that, the girls Abu-George sent—he’s Saeed’s Syrian friend who works in a lingerie boutique—were from neighboring India or Iran, or farther afield, from the Levant or even the Philippines. Whoever they are, they come by taxi and we welcome them at the Neely.

  They wear jeans and tight T-shirts that creep up their bellies every time they raise their arms, revealing skin so soft, so white it’s as if they’d been rolled in baby powder. It’s a refreshing change to eye the pair’s luminous complexions and uninhibited Western ways, even if they are still rough around the edges and lack the kittenish grace of their Eastern counterparts. Long-limbed and lovely, they do what is expected to amuse us, to make us feel special—and they make no effort to mask their hunger for a quick profit. After all, they want the money that makes a better life.

  Mattar emerges from the kitchen and topples next to us on the floor in a fit of joy. Thani hugs his folded knee to his chest with one arm and uses the other to whack the rhythm in the air, trying his best to instruct the girls, to somehow make the tune lose its foreignness to them. “Dum-baka-baka-baka! Dum-baka-baka-baka!”

  “Pukka-puk-puk?” the girls insist, and we burst out laughing again. With tears in my eyes, I wave a finger and declare their request granted. Zoya hops like a happy schoolgirl. “Da, da, English music!”

  Thani changes the cassette. But to Zoya’s dismay, it’s another Arabic singer, this time Abu Bakr Salem with his warbling voice. The girls let out a dramatic groan but are dancing again in no time, trying to swivel their hips like belly dancers.

  “Hopeless!” shouts Mattar, rising off the floor on shaky legs and holding a glass at a precarious angle. I wonder whether we should let him back into the kitchen, with all those knives around. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a couple of ten-dirham notes, and puts one on Zoya’s head and the other on Galina’s. I grin at his bravado; Mattar is the shiest of our lot. They retrieve the money as it slides down, and stare at it. “This means I like your dancing,” he explains to the bemused girls. He has a silly grin on his face. “This is how we show appreciation to traditional dancers at weddings.”

  Galina holds the paper note from the corner as if someone had pissed on it. She wags it and says, “So little appreciation.” A cruel smile deflates the plumpness of her strawberry mouth. “You big, you old, you rich. Why so miserly?”

  He lunges away from her, spilling some of his drink on the carpet. He is embarrassed at her slight—and in front of us, too! He mumbles something about its being nothing more than a gesture of fun before hurrying off to the safety and solitude of the kitchen.

  “What do you think you are doing?” Saeed springs to his feet and raises a fist. Galina recoils. But Saeed does not strike her; he knows that hitting a woman is cowardly.

  “I no do nothing. I make joke,” says Galina.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” says Thani, eager to keep the peace.

  “No respect!” Saeed grabs her arm and drags her into the
kitchen so she can apologize to Mattar. We steal glances through the open doorway; she does so willingly, and even sits on his lap. Our mild-mannered friend pats her on the back to indicate that all is well. Once they return, the group does its best to recover the revelry of earlier by playing some upbeat Bedouin music by Samira Toufiq. Thani leaps into the air with renewed gusto. He grabs one of the bamboo canes stacked in a bin next to the cassette player and twirls it between his fingers while dancing to the beat. Saeed joins him, reaching for another cane, which he holds between his thumb and index finger. Together they perform the traditional Ayala dance, swinging their canes to the right and then to the left in a gentle sway while bobbing their heads as if in a trance.

  This should be enough to lighten my mood, but I look back at Mattar. His droopy eyes hold the expression of an abandoned dog. Slumped in a chair, he looks around the kitchen, seeming confused as to what he should do next. Obviously he is still shaken. This makes my blood boil, and I think of all the women who find pleasure in playing with my emotions: Zohra, Dalal, and now Mariam.

  I had my eye on Zoya, but I decide to conquer Galina instead. I will not be gentle. I’ll take her to the bedroom and ride her until she can’t walk. I’ll pin her down and take pleasure in hearing her gasp. When she struggles, I’ll pull her hair. When she squeals, I’ll press her head down with my open hand until she’s choking on the pillow, until she learns her place, until she begs me to let her go.

  The music blares on, but Saeed and Thani freeze, puzzled at my swift and sudden launch into their midst. Galina’s wrist is bony in my grip, and I jerk her toward the bedroom. Saeed breaks out into a raucous cackle that I can hear even after I’ve slammed the bedroom door shut.

  The heat that builds in my loins is volcanic. I fling Galina onto the bed; I expect to hear her cry out in protest. Instead she closes her eyes and mews, stretching every limb, every muscle, like a cat sprawled on fresh grass under the sun. No matter!