by Maha Gargash
“So, he’s their pimp in Russia. And you’re their pimp here. But what hold does this man have over these girls?”
“He doesn’t say, and I don’t ask.”
“And why didn’t you call him right away instead of letting all this . . . this . . . inconvenience drag on?”
“I did. I’ve been calling him since the . . . inconvenience began. I just got through to him now.”
“Well, you tell him it’s not enough for him to reprimand her. Explain to him that I am ready to pay whatever amount to get her out of my life. I want her back in Russia—along with that other bitch with the white-yellow hair. You hear me?”
“Absolutely.”
I suck in a lungful of air and let the relief spread. Here is the end of this agonizing ordeal. “So, what will he do to her once she gets there?” It’s an afterthought, curiosity. “Break her legs? Kill her?”
“Of course not!” Abu-George is taken aback. “Even though these Russians have their own codes of conduct—none of our morals, I must admit—I know Sergei, and he’s certainly not a killer.” Abu-George pauses and seems to be struck by a wave of panic. “And what would that make me, sending her back to Russia if he were a killer? Well, he’s not!” He shoves his fingers into his shirt pocket and pulls out a tiny cross, which he holds to his mouth. He looks up and mutters something to the heavens: a pimp in prayer. “No, he’ll just scold her. That’s all. Maybe he’ll slap her around a bit, but she’s used to that. Nothing more.”
I don’t need to hear any more. We’d kept the door ajar, and now we step back in to find Galina crawling on her knees, picking up the money. She looks up and shifts onto her feet, but she still cowers. She hangs her head and mumbles, “I sorry. I no mean disrespect.”
Carefully, as if her neck might break, I lift her chin. “What was that?”
“I say, I very much sorry.”
I pause to prolong the moment and look deep into her starless eyes. She may not be repentant deep down, but that doesn’t matter. What I see is enough: dread in the face of a dark fate. I picture her and that other girl pissing in their stringy panties once they come face-to-face with Sergei. He will deal with them: a scolding and a few slaps, Abu-George wants me to believe. I don’t think so.
“Please tell Sergei you forgive me?”
“Fine,” I say, and release her jaw. When she slumps to the ground to pick up a banknote lying next to my foot, I step on her hand. She cries out. “You’re not keeping any of the money,” I say. “You will collect it and give it back to me.”
She stifles a sob and nods.
23
MARIAM
The invitation was extended to every girl at the sakan, but, along with a couple of other serious-minded students, I decided not to go to the party. It was arranged by Buthaina, who lives on the seventh floor, to mark the end of the school year. With June around the corner, this is a critical time of year. Even though I’ve just finished my written exams, I still have to prepare for the orals, the first of which is in a week.
I hear a clattering of utensils in the kitchen. Tammy and Alunood are probably arranging ingredients for the maid, Naeema, who will cook a dish for them to take upstairs. For the past few days it has been mayhem in our apartment as they rattled about trying to decide what clothes, shoes, and accessories to wear. It’s as if their summer vacation has already begun.
I sit at my desk, back straight, with a textbook in front of me, and commend myself on my strength of will: not everyone can resist the fun of a party. I flip the pages to the chapter on corrective jaw surgery. Minutes later I’m imagining Adel and me together.
He will marry me; everything points in that direction. He is respectful and caring whenever I am with him, and that can only mean that he is preparing for a life shared with me. I envision the children I will bear him, tumbling on grass or splashing in the sea with his sporty limbs. They will have his long lashes and my full mouth, and their hair will be healthy and thick, glossy under the sun.
I run my finger along the textbook’s lines in a renewed effort at concentration. Closing the book, I address the wall, trying to recall what I’ve just read. I raise my voice, exaggerating every syllable of the medical terms. In the middle of a sentence, I draw a blank. My gaze travels toward the large window, where a male bulbul noisily courts a female on a balcony railing. The feathers on his black head are spiked and his white cheeks expand, making his red spots in the center swell. He is an adorable little thing. He pecks at the aluminum railing and shuffles back and forth. The female is drab and unimpressed. With a shake of her wings, she takes off.
The chair creaks as I get up to block out such small distractions. I draw the curtain, thinking it’s just a matter of creating the right environment. But now there’s more noise from the kitchen, a slamming of drawers and banging of utensils. “What’s going on?” I call, leaning out the doorway. When the girls screech, I march over to tell them off, but the sight in the kitchen stops me in place.
“What a mess.” I gape. They giggle. The cupboard doors have been wrenched open and the counter is crowded with every pot and pan we own, along with six plucked chickens and stalks of molokhia heaped in bales. I slam the cupboard doors shut. “What are you trying to do?”
“Here, catch,” says Tammy, flinging a chicken at me.
Slack flesh lands in my open palms, a jolting reminder of that wretched ibis. Dalal and I had clutched it as if it were a lifeline. I’m not sure why I held on, but at the time it seemed important that I did.
Chicken blood drips through my fingers.
“Eeee!” the girls screech, and when I don’t react, Tammy whacks it out of my hands. It lands on the floor with a plop.
“What did you do that for?” cries Alunood. “That’s blasphemous, disrespecting a soul like that.”
“It’s dead,” says Tammy.
“It wasn’t dead before. And now it’s food. And food must be respected.”
Having had enough of their twaddle, I raise my hand. “Look, just do what you want, but keep your voices down, because I have to study.”
“But we can’t,” wails Tammy. “There’s a crisis.”
“Naeema called to say she can’t come,” explains Alunood. “Her little boy is sick, and now we’re sick, because we don’t know how we’re going to get this dish cooked and ready for tonight.” She speaks in a monotone. Her thick-rimmed glasses sit just under the broad bridge of her nose so that she must lift her chin to see me properly. “You know what our cooking is like.” She shrugs, and I grimace at the memory of the one meal they tested on me. Tammy’s rice had more water in it than grain, and the hard balls of meat and lumps of salt in Alunood’s accompanying curry were equally unpalatable.
“Well, just chop some fruit and make a fruit salad.”
Alunood is appalled. “Impossible,” she says. “Everyone else will have made something delicious. It is an Emirati custom, after all.”
I nod. Certainly it’s a tradition to be taken seriously, and I say, “The problem is, I’ve never made molokhia.”
“It’s easy,” pleads Alunood. “Just cut everything up and put it in the . . . saucepan, or . . . pot, or something like that.” She pushes her glasses up and points to the cookbook leaning against the wall, the pages held open by a tub of yogurt and a kettle. “It’s all written down, there in Chef Ramzi’s cookbook.”
“You must help us, please, please, please.” Tammy drops to her knees and hugs my legs tightly. Her theatrical tomfoolery makes me chuckle. This is what Cairo does: it brings out the playful and the cheeky in you. Far from her father and brothers, Tammy bursts with exuberance. Far from my uncle and his household of stifling rules and proper conduct, I let her merriment infect me.
With a mischievous grin, I pick up a bale of molokhia leaves and mouth the scientific name to myself: corchorus. I’m not a perfect cook, but for some reason, looking at the ingredients in front of me—onions, garlic, cilantro—I am eager to try something new. Besides, considering my
ebbing concentration, perhaps it would be better to take my mind off my studies for a bit.
The girls jump up and down in relief. “We’ll help you,” says Tammy, prancing between the fridge and the counter. “We’ll do all the chopping.” She pulls a fruit knife out of the drawer.
“Look, just put away all those chickens. I don’t need more than two.”
Tammy claps her hands and hops up and down. “And you will come to the party, won’t you?”
I shove them out of the kitchen and start skimming through the recipe.
Tammy sniffs. “They’re burning the expensive stuff.”
I press the elevator button with my elbow and look up the staircase. A trail of smoke unfurls, floating down from the seventh floor. On our level it breaks into feathery clouds and disperses. I catch a trace of the beguiling aroma of oudh incense before it is eclipsed by the smell of the boiled leaves and fried garlic in the molokhia I am holding.
“You shouldn’t have troubled yourselves,” Buthaina exclaims when we arrive. She’s neatly clad in a handsome Palestinian caftan, black with tiny arabesque motifs crocheted in brightly colored thread. She takes the pot out of my hands and passes it to her roommate, Nawal, who hands it to the maid. Unlike us, our hostesses chose their heels pragmatically. I feel clumsy bending so low to receive Buthaina’s greeting, delivered in the Emirati way: a slack handshake and a series of air kisses that make clicking sounds like a toy machine gun.
“So much food!” cries Nawal, obviously panicked by the arrival of yet another dish. She has opted for a sky-blue Emirati thoub, a translucent chiffon overgarment. Even though it is a generous cut, she looks like a fish struggling in too little water as she waves her arms back and forth, swishing the fabric. She cranes her neck to welcome us with the same popping pecks.
Alunood raises her chin and declares, “It’s molokhia, that’s what it is.”
Even though Buthaina and Nawal grin, they are not able to camouflage their apprehension. It seems that my roommates’ cooking abilities are infamous. “Mariam made it,” Tammy adds quickly, swishing her abaya as if introducing the hero in a play.
Nawal’s features settle back into place, and Buthaina releases her breath and nods. Their approval strikes me with a flush of pride that spreads the length of my cheekbones. And I’m glad I decided to come to this party. Buthaina and Nawal are the sakan’s only grown-up students; they’re in their early thirties. We refer to them as the kubar, the older ones.
Buthaina and Nawal are teachers at the Emirates University in Al-Ain; they are on study leave to gain master’s degrees in Arabic literature and history, respectively. Both are unmarried, seeming to prefer putting their energy into what they call “the honorable aim of bettering the human mind.” And that’s why, I suppose, they have been taking their time finishing their degrees. Their extra years in Cairo have given them not just knowledge but also the ability to shift accents. They can go from Emirati to Egyptian and back again, depending on whom they are talking to, with as little effort as flicking a light switch.
“So, Fatima,” says Buthaina, “how are we doing with our studies?”
“Tammy.”
“Of course, Tammy,” she says. “But I have to say that Fatima is such a noble name.”
“It’s the prophet’s daughter’s name, after all,” Nawal says, rolling her eyes to indicate her boredom with the first-year girls and their immaturity. “And you don’t want it. Is Tammy your official name now? Are you going to change it on your passport, too?”
“I haven’t given up anything. Tammy is my nickname and I love it!” A fierce glint grazes her tiny eyes, but it disappears as soon as her glance shifts beyond the entrance toward the sitting room. “Yah!” She clasps her palms with delight. “Balloons!”
Little hearts trail down from the balloons’ ribbons; it’s an oddly whimsical decoration, considering that this is the apartment of the academically minded kubar. Tammy and Alunood waste no more time at the door. They dash into the sitting room and start tugging at the ribbons. The kubar grin politely, and, feeling responsible for my roommates’ boisterous behavior, I make a halfhearted plea to them to stop. But there are others emboldened by my roommates. The girls who’d arrived before us slide off the couches to join in. Every one of them is in heels (no matter the girl’s height, always the heels), some thin and pointy, others thick as bricks. The girls tug down a balloon; once it’s close enough, they leap as high as safety permits in their leaden platforms and volley it a couple of times before it floats back up to the ceiling. I clap my hands for attention, but the stomping feet and balloon slaps, the yelps and the laughter continue. I turn back to the kubar with open palms and a shrug. “It’s a party, after all.”
“A zoo, you mean,” says Nawal.
“What I want to know, Mariam,” says Buthaina, “is how you, a sensitive and sensible young lady from a distinguished family, manage to keep your sanity with those two around all the time.” She pauses to look at Tammy, who is making a display of letting her abaya slide off her shoulders. Her legs are wrapped in tight jeans, and as the abaya slithers down, she hooks it around her foot. With a nifty twirl, she shapes it into a ball and kicks it into the air. The girls clap and Tammy raises her arms, a champion in a body-hugging blouse that shimmers with gold sequins and creeps above her belly button.
I chuckle. “I suppose they’re entertaining. And young.”
“Not that young,” says the crusty Nawal. She sucks air through her teeth as if in pain. “Look at her; she’s thinks she’s in a nightclub.”
“As Mariam said, it is a party.” Buthaina’s tone silences her roommate. “And a party must have a little noise and laughter.” Nawal scowls, but Buthaina pays her no heed. “Come on,” she says to me. “I have to check on the food.” She folds an arm around my waist and leads me toward the kitchen. She pulls the lids off each of four pots, still warming on the stove, and steps back to evade the cloud of steam that escapes. Her maid wipes down what she can of the counters, which are crowded with food brought by the other girls. On one counter, sitting near my pot of molokhia, are a couple of other Egyptian favorites: a casserole of macaroni with béchamel sauce and a dish of layered meat, potatoes, and tomatoes. On the other counter sit desserts: a shallow bowl of crème caramel; another of cool, milky rice pudding; and a closed pot of what I guess to be luqaimat, Emirati crispy dumplings sitting in a puddle of thick date syrup.
“I’m sure you’re just being polite and loyal,” continues Buthaina, “which is understandable, given your superior upbringing.” She winks at me, and this makes me unsure whether she is serious. “But it doesn’t take a genius to notice that they must drive you crazy with their silliness day in and day out.”
I grin. “That they do.”
She chuckles and scoops up a spoonful of hearty soup, raising it to her lips. The maid hurries to her side with a sponge in her hand, and I marvel at the way she has been coached. Unlike our Naeema, this maid has been trained to anticipate spills.
I admire Buthaina for the way she has organized her life, having long followed the path of order and independence. After finishing her studies, she will return to teaching at the university. I imagine her teaching not just what is in the textbooks but also a multitude of valuable life lessons.
“Mmm.” Buthaina’s moan sounds as though it’s filled with appreciation for every blessing in life. When she turns and smiles at me, I think that if I had a mother, I would like her to be just as organized and capable as Buthaina is. She pauses at the second pot and, after tasting its contents, is so exacting in her description of what is missing that I start to worry about the taste of my molokhia. What if it doesn’t meet with her approval? I chide my carelessness; I forgot to check that the color was the rich, deep green it should be, or that the water had separated from the finely chopped leaves. There’s an essential test that marks a good molokhia, and in my hurry to get everything ready on time I forgot to perform it.
As if reading my mind, Buthaina step
s toward my pot. She scoops a spoonful and raises it for evaluation. She nods when the slimy mixture falls in a straight, unbroken line—a sign that my molokhia has passed the test—and glides back to the stove.
“Did you know, Mariam, that from our first gasp of breath, we, as members of the female sex, are at a disadvantage,” she says, sampling the curry in the third pot and clicking her tongue. “Lemon, I think, and . . .” She pauses, considering what else it might need. “Yes!” A pinch of cumin and three squirts of lemon later and she’s moved on to the fourth pot. “That is the tragedy all across the Arab world. From the moment we start grasping what life is about, we are told that we are the weaker sex, that we cannot do anything on our own, that we must depend on men—whether our fathers, brothers, or husbands—to lead us like sheep. But there is a way to avoid this: by using what’s in here.” She taps her temple with her free hand. “In the end, it is the mind that is the treasure of our being, the part of us that has to be stimulated and developed every single day of our existence.”
It’s hardly the subject to lighten a party’s mood, and it’s a sharp contrast to the noise in the sitting room. Someone has switched on the cassette player, and the Kuwaiti singer Nabil Shuail’s willowy voice croons pure and clear, as smooth as butter. It’s enough to silence the chattering. When his voice ebbs, the girls squeal.
“Listen to them,” says Buthaina, laughing. “You’d think he was in the room with them.”
She returns to my molokhia and stirs it while asking after my family, to which I give general answers. “You know, people say your father had a special kindness, a rare quality that made him loved by all.” She doesn’t wait for me to confirm this. I can tell she detects it in my eyes, which blink now as if flushing out a stubborn lash. “They say he was progressive in his views, too. What a pity that he was taken away from you so early in your years.”