That Other Me

by Maha Gargash

  “End of the week,” says the driver. “No one stays home on a Thursday.”

  I lash out at him. “It’s good and proper for a star to arrive late: it shows she’s in demand. But I want that delay to be of my making. I’m the one who has to be in control. You hear me?”

  The driver and the bodyguard sitting next to him reply together, “Yes, Sitt Dalal.”

  “Fools!” I mutter, and hold the compact mirror at arm’s length to inspect my canary-yellow dress. It’s an extravagant one-shoulder Zuhair Murad creation. The fitted top is studded with rhinestones and hugs me in all the right places. The bottom part is a gush of chiffon, fresh, alive with strips of yellow and lime green. Gino Ghazal squints at me with tiny green eyes that look like dried-up peas. My dazzle blinds him. For the third time this evening he says, “Spectacular!”

  I indicate my agreement with a grunt and, wisely, he says no more—unlike Madame Nivine, who never knew when to shut her mouth. It’s been a year since I replaced her—just as she’d predicted—with the Lebanese manager. The greedy, turbaned glutton uttered her final habibchi when I found out she’d been skimming money, cheating me out of my profits.

  How is it possible that I actually looked up to her? I considered Madame Nivine a mentor, a protector, and even a replacement mother at one point. That other one is still trying her best to win me back. After my career took off, Mother waited to make sure that my fame was not a passing thing. Once she felt assured that her daughter was a star who would not fizzle out, she went ahead and divorced Sherif bey. (Why keep him?) I support her financially because that’s what is expected of a good daughter, but there it ends. I have a new family now.

  A new family: it’s an attractive thought. I scrutinize my manager, who has one long leg crossed over the other and is dabbing his clean-shaven face. He wears a gray suit and a pale-pink shirt without a tie. His thinning hair is gelled back in distinct rows of chestnut-colored strips that gather at the back of his business-minded head—no space in it for anything other than success and profit. Gino Ghazal is not someone I can embrace as family, I decide, and neither are all those other people—never less than seven or eight, all of them mirrors of Azza and Hannah—who surround me for no other reason than their own selfish desires. I take a fatigued breath and blow it out through lips colored a screaming fuchsia.

  Gino Ghazal cocks his head to indicate his concern. Even though he has seen me distressed before, it’s never been before a concert. Like all the others, my entourage and attendants, he knows something is seriously wrong. From the moment they filed into my apartment a few hours ago to get me ready, I’ve been in a sour mood. I accused the hairdresser of grazing my scalp with his pins and complained about the selection of colors the makeup artist had chosen, insisting they did nothing to brighten my features—anything to vent steam. They were apologetic, obviously used to the whims of a star. They were so accommodating it made me feel frivolous. So I turned my attention to Azza and Hannah. That good-for-nothing duo received the brunt of my cranky mood, and that still didn’t satisfy me.

  Mariam had kept pushing to find out his real identity. She said, “How did you come up with it, anyway—Ustad, this name you’ve contrived?”

  To me, that’s what he has been—an ustad, a professor, who has taught me so much: to dress well and eat well, to pose and speak like a lady. He cares that I look my best, and even arranged the appointments for the surgical improvement of my nose and sleepy eye. He’s done so much for me. When a nasty reporter wrote in a review that my voice sounded strained and went so far as to call me “tone-deaf” (the ultimate insult!), Ustad arranged for the most famous music teacher in Egypt, an old, retired Greek-Egyptian woman with blue-gray hair and a mustache, to give me voice lessons.

  Mariam persisted. “Well?”

  I almost told her that it came from my ignorance. There is heat in Ustad’s eyes and strength in his face—and a nose that, early in our relationship, he described as Roman. He was amused when I told him that I’d never met any Romans, and he vowed right then to educate me, beginning with a series of lectures on that ancient empire that went on for way too long. The lessons on Rome were thorough; he even cited dates. The information floated into my head and stayed there for seconds before turning to vapor. But he couldn’t tell. He didn’t know me well enough to understand that I’ve mastered the art of looking interested when I’m not. At the end of it all I decided to call him Ustad, a code name he approved of. Yes, I was ready to tell her this little story. But Mariam scoffed at the name, and that made me feel protective of him. I snapped, “It suits him, and he likes it.”

  “So,” Mariam said, after a short pause. “Will you cancel the concert?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Think how unprofessional it would be to let a fight with him affect my work. People have flown in to see me from all over the world. They’ve bought tickets!”

  “No, I mean in light of our grandmother’s passing away.”

  “Hmm.” I’d forgotten about that. “Allah yarhamha, may God bestow his mercy upon her.”

  “Right.”

  For Mariam’s sake, I closed my eyes tightly and tried to shape some thought of Mama Al-Ouda that might help me mourn her. The only image that popped into my head glowed in colors so bright I felt the onset of a headache: Mama Al-Ouda on the bridal stage, telling me to get off and sing. The old woman couldn’t tell I was her granddaughter. “Anyway,” I said, “you know as well as I do that no one wants us there.”

  She grew silent and I told her not to be like that, to understand that I had made a commitment to perform, signed a contract. She smiled then, or I like to think she did, because Mariam always could see the good in me.

  I’m smiling. Gino Ghazal notices and tells me that it suits me. The driver and the bodyguard turn around briefly to nod their approval. I touch my mouth, a little shy, somewhat bewildered to find that I am indeed smiling. As the car halts at the back entrance of the hotel, I realize that something else has snuck up on me: a quickening of the pulse, vitality—yes, the familiar enthusiasm that always precedes a performance.

  The doors of all three cars open at once and we shuffle through the back entrance, where the concert organizer, a short, round man with no neck, greets us as if we are long-lost family members. He looks set to cry, so great is his relief at our arrival.

  He leads the way, raining compliments on me while half walking, half hopping to the service elevator. The elevator bell dings, and we step out on the top floor. As we walk down the corridor toward the suite, the concert organizer tells me that I have barely ten minutes for last-minute touch-ups, that he’d like to keep the evening going smoothly, with everything running on time. “When has that ever happened in Cairo?” I joke, and the whole group laughs heartily.

  A C star would have commenced the evening’s entertainment at 10:30 p.m., and a B star would have followed an hour later. Then a break, during which dinner would have been served for the two thousand guests before my dazzling performance, the A star, at 1:30 a.m. I’ll sing for a couple of hours, plus another half hour for the encore.

  Once we reach the suite, Gino Ghazal asks him, “Do you have the balance payment for Sitt Dalal?”

  “Of course, of course,” says the concert organizer, nodding too eagerly. “Right after the show.”

  “No, now,” Gino Ghazal says, and this starts an argument, which I act as though I don’t hear. Sitting at the vanity table, I steal glances at their reflections while the hairdresser puts a spring into some of the ringlets on my head and the makeup artist sharpens her black pencil, having been given permission to see whether a beauty mark might add to my glamour. She makes a mark in the center of my right cheek.

  “I told you to make sure that money was with you when we came: the full balance, cash, in crisp dollars. Didn’t you hear me?” says Gino Ghazal.

  “I thought you were joking.”

  “I said it a thousand times. Would I make the same joke that many times?”

 
The concert organizer is flustered. He looks at his watch. “Listen, we’re late already. I have a ballroom filled with distinguished people who have bought tickets, mostly Khaleejis who have traveled all the way here to see her.” He stomps his foot. “They want her now! What am I supposed to tell them?” When my manager remains unimpressed by the performance, the concert organizer closes his eyes and cracks his neck—once, twice—and utters his next words calmly. “Look, I understand what you’re saying. But for now let’s get her on the stage, and, wallahi, I promise you I’ll have your money before she finishes her first song.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “What guarantee do I have? You could keep stalling and then disappear after she finishes singing.”

  “You insult me!”

  “That’s not my intention. But I have to put my client’s interests first.”

  “We have a contract!”

  “Yes, we do. But I still say she won’t go on until she is paid fully.”

  “Please.” The word hangs in the air, and when Gino Ghazal hardens his demeanor the concert organizer scurries toward me and begs. “Sitt Dalal, please talk sense into him. The audience is impatient for you: Dalal, the Gazelle of the Desert!”

  He stands behind me, the suffering of a hungry beggar in his eyes, while I take my time trying to decide about the beauty spot, which has already been tested and failed in two different locations on my face. In this third trial it sits just below my lips, on the left side. Should I keep it or not?

  “A thirty-member band is waiting for you onstage. They’re playing Umm Kulthum to pass the time. How long can they keep doing that? The audience is already fed up.”

  Having decided that the beauty spot stays, I turn around and shrug. “What can I do? I know nothing about such matters.” I smile at him sweetly. “I’m the artist here.”

  He opens his mouth, but before he is able to utter a word Gino Ghazal squeezes his arm and leads him away, scolding him for causing undue stress to the star. The concert organizer starts yelling and threatens to call his lawyer and the police, too, to make sure we get thrown in jail for breaking the contract. Coolly, my manager tells him, “We haven’t gone anywhere. We’re here, waiting.”

  The situation seems to be getting out of control. I’m gripped by fear when I realize I might not step on that stage after all. Azza mouths the time: ten minutes late. I turn around. I’m about to tell my manager to back down when I see him reaching into his jacket and pulling out what he calls his “cigar of success.” He will light it once I get onstage and will follow a ritual of finishing it only with the concert’s end, nearly three hours later. He sniffs it, rolling it under his nose. He’s ready to celebrate another success. And there’s the concert organizer, snapping his fingers and whispering something to an assistant who has suddenly materialized and who then flies out the door. Ten minutes later the assistant is back, breathless and clutching a fat envelope, which the concert manager snatches and hands over to Gino Ghazal.

  There is light chatter while my manager counts the money; every person in the room feigns uninterest. How to sit still? Everything dims as the excitement rushes through me like a crazy river. I can see them, all those adoring eyes focused on me. Under the lights, I’ll be a golden glow. I won’t just stay on the stage, like so many other performers. Once or twice I will step down and weave my way between the men and women, all those distinguished Khaleejis, seated around the tables. I shall sing from my heart because that’s the only way I can, and at the end the stage will turn into a garden of single red roses flung at my feet by the adoring audience.

  I’ll start with my first hit song: “Only Me, Lonely Me.” The musicians will play an extended introduction to key up the audience before I come into view, mike in one hand, the other posed in a floating salute. It will not sound the same. There’s a twist in the melody, with layer upon layer of newly added harmony. It’s enriched, not so simple anymore, just like the girl who first sang it three years ago. She’s not the same, either.

  It’s 1:55 a.m., and Gino Ghazal’s cigar is wedged at the edge of his mouth. He pulls it out and calls, “Everybody.”

  We’re looking up already.

  “Five minutes.”

  48

  MAJED

  She takes me straight from my doctor’s appointment to the palm grove in Al-Khawaneej. I’m in a foul mood. Strapped in the front passenger seat of my Mercedes, I glare fiercely at the blur of dunes running along the road. Once we get there, I watch out the side mirror as Ophelia jumps out from the back seat of the car. She delivers the wheelchair, and I have a ridiculous notion that I’ll be able to get into it on my own. I heave and twist around, succeeding in getting my legs to dangle out of the car. But as I try to shift onto my feet I run into trouble; the car’s seat is too low.

  Aisha surveys my reddening face with the most awful expression of indulgence and worn-out pity, as if to say, “Let the old man have his moment.” It makes my blood boil and I shove Ophelia, who is standing in her assisting mode—arms stretched out, hands swimming like a pair of fidgeting fish at the sides of my ribcage—at the ready to scoop me up.

  I swear at her: “Daughter of a whore!” From my warped mouth it sounds like a crow’s caw. She beams at me, humoring me as if I were a baby practicing his first word. I pause, the pressure building in my head as I use every shred of concentration to shape the next insult: “Ya bgara! You cow!” It comes out as a stutter, sounding like “ha ha ha”—slurred, too. Ophelia claps her hands good-humoredly before latching them under my armpits.

  Nothing comes out the way it should. Thoughts clamber over one another in my head, like those tiny red ants that scurry around, looking to build something out of chaos. Only I never succeed. My mind is in perpetual tumult. Sometimes I have trouble remembering things: names, places, people. Other times the memories are as clear as the winter sky over my head. My brain busies itself by sending signals, futile commands I have trouble following. It looms like an overblown balloon, a dubious far-reaching world pressing against my skull. That’s how it is, how it has become, now that this stroke has rendered my whole being senseless.

  I am up. Ophelia hands me the cane. I had rejected the medical crutch—an embarrassment!—raising such a fuss that they had no choice but to get me a wooden cane with a rubber cap at the bottom, which I’m tempted to use on her immediately. But I wait until I’ve taken the two steps to the wheelchair and settled into it safely. As she positions my feet onto the footplates I jab her back with rough pokes, pushing her away. When she secures the worry beads, weaving them between my fingers so the string doesn’t slip out of my contorted right hand, I strike at her ankles.

  “Leave her alone,” Aisha says. “Let her do her job.” But I am trembling, working up a fit that has me lashing out as best I can. Horrible noises are coming out of me. My limbs jerk in every direction and I’m deaf to Aisha’s pleas to “look at your palm trees, how lush they are!” as the women wheel me over to the end of the patio. It has yet to be completed; they park me in front of a sharp dip of dug-up earth, near a stack of bricks, and walk right past me, roaming off toward the palm trees to give me a chance to calm down. Time to punish the wild old man!

  I object aloud, “How can you leave me like this in my state?” Of course no one understands a thing, but Aisha assures me that she’ll be right back. She mocks me! How dare she treat me this way? Even though her constant presence irritates me more often than not, I’m outraged that she would walk away like that—my own wife!

  It was a bad stroke that affected the left side of my brain. The doctor kept saying I was lucky it didn’t finish me off. After the surgery to remove the hematoma, I remained in the hospital for more than a month before being sent home. But the recovery, the grueling physical-therapy sessions to retrieve my lost strength and mobility, was so quick that I was sure I’d soon be as I once was. The doctor was impressed with my progress, and this drove me to continue—until my visit to his office this morning
.

  I can’t see Aisha, who, although close by, is concealed behind the layers of palm fronds. She says something to Ophelia in a voice too soft to hear. I hate her. I hate them both. I hate myself. I contemplate what would happen if I just got up and plunged over the edge and into that dirt hole. I’d probably break my neck. And that would be that. But at least I’d succeed in making them feel sorry for having neglected me—my whole family, the despicable lot of them.

  My eyes moisten and I close them against the humiliating threat of spilling. God knows, it’s hard to control! There doesn’t have to be any particular reason or emotion to set it off. It just happens, leakage from a warped garden pipe. And then I’ll start bawling for what feels like an eternity, unable to control that braying noise and the sticky dribbling of spit. Eventually I’ll sink into a heavy dispirited sulk.

  I try to make as little noise as possible as I weep. They don’t know anything. They don’t know what the doctor said to me, the cruel truth that this, this me, is as good as I’ll get. Eight months on and this is the full recovery: the nerves damaged beyond repair, my face melted on one side, my life flushed to nothing.

  I look for a diversion, something that might steady my whimpering, my sniveling, which will only get worse. There’s the string of worry beads Hareb gave me all those years back, which I’ve taken to carrying with me all the time, wrapped around my benumbed fingers. I snatch it out of the useless hand and start twirling it to recover some sense of control, of dignity. I focus on one bead at a time, rubbing it between thumb and index finger before flicking it down along the string.

  It works. It plugs up the torment, and I make my calculations. How many steps to the edge? I’ll just have to get up and walk—if one can call it that—to find out. The longer I stare at the drop, the fiercer grows my determination to take action, to make a statement. I can’t punch or kick or rage effectively, but I can alarm them. I want to give them all a piece of my mind: the so-called friends—Saeed, Mattar, and even Mustafa—who don’t visit anymore because they got sick of my tantrums; my sons and daughters who all this time were looking forward to the day when I’d be suffering like this, just so they could get their hands on my money; and Mariam and Dalal and Aisha, too. I want them all to know that the force that kept them in order is still . . . still . . . I don’t waste any more time probing for the word, the exact meaning, because I’ve slid to the edge of the wheelchair.