That Other Me

by Maha Gargash

  Planting my right foot to the ground, I push up on my left foot using the stick. I stand unassisted for the first time since the stroke. I don’t move. I wait for a signal to go ahead, quivering slightly with apprehension in case it does not come. But then it does: I’m able to shift on my good leg and sling the other forward in a wide arc. I can barely contain my groan. Two more steps; I know I look awkward, my body shifted to the side, my right arm twisted into my chest, the fingers crowding my tucked thumb. I don’t care, because here comes the plunge.

  It’s a pathetic tumble. Instead of crashing into the earth headfirst, I stagger to my knees and then proceed to half slide, half swim down on my belly: no more trauma than a mouthful of mud. I would jump back up and climb into my wheelchair quietly if only I could. Instead I stay motionless, waiting to be rescued.

  What happens next I have to imagine, because I keep my eyes closed. There’s the wheelchair being shifted down to my side. There’s the grip under my armpits. There are my feet dredging clumsy lines in the earth without the sandals, which have slipped off. I tighten my eyelids against Aisha’s rebukes, high-pitched with distress, against her swatting palms as she brushes the clinging soil off my face and kandora. I don’t dare open my eyes. I am too ashamed.

  49

  MARIAM

  “Ah, you should have seen him, all shaky, all muddy.”

  She fusses over him to chase away the anxiety of being somewhere she shouldn’t be. “There’s no one here in the middle of the week,” she says, and pats his head as if she suspects a fever. She covers his shoulders with a shawl, then joins me on the wicker chairs. They are newly unpacked, their tags still on, as is the matching low table in front of us. “You should have seen him,” she says again, still quite baffled at the way he fell off the wheelchair just before I arrived. “I don’t know what he was trying to do, but he must have tripped.”

  It’s January, and a mild sun shines. The trees swish and break its rays, casting splotchy patterns on my uncle’s face. I catch him in profile, his jowls saggy under a head that hangs heavy in sleep over his chest. His arm is twisted and pressed to his ribs, the fingers frozen into claws. A string of amber worry beads winds tightly around his hand; he clutches them as if they were valuable gemstones.

  The maid arrives with a tray, and Ammiti Aisha lifts the flask, pours the tea into a couple of tulip glasses, and adds a teaspoonful of sugar to each. “I bring him here because it usually relaxes him, but not today,” she says, frowning. Her fingers quiver slightly when she hands me my tea. “They won’t like it if they find out I’m here. So I don’t tell anyone, and I don’t stay too long.”

  We are in the shade of a palm-frond awning held up on wooden beams. A cool breeze blows and we lean back and inhale deeply at the same time. We sip the tea quietly. She doesn’t need to explain anything. I already know that whatever worth she had in her household disappeared the moment she smuggled me out of the house.

  I often wonder whether she considered what she was giving up, and every time I come to the conclusion that Khaled’s death must have snapped something in her. Her children were sickened by her action. They considered it a betrayal. More than three years later, she still has not been forgiven.

  I remember that stormy night as if it were yesterday. How strange that she launched her plan just as I’d jumped out of the room! She’d acted quickly after discovering my daredevil escape, dragging me under the pelting rain toward a waiting car.

  The doorman caught sight of us through the window of his little room by the gate. The flickering blue light of his television set highlighted the alarm and confusion on his face. He scampered out of his hut, getting drenched within seconds, and waved his arms in panic, trying to block our escape. Ammiti Aisha shoved him aside and pushed me into the backseat of her sister’s car. Slamming the door shut, she waved us off—her figure a watery blur as I looked back through the car’s window—and stayed behind to face the consequences. Ten days later she walked out and joined me at Shamma’s house, and soon after, she asked for a divorce, which she never got.

  My uncle is a little distance away, still turned toward the spread of palm trees but wheeled a safe distance from the edge of the broad patio. The patio has been newly built just in front of the small rest house at his farm in Al-Khawaneej. Saif and Ahmad had decided to make it a play area for their children. They run the company now, and from what I understand, this has caused a catastrophic rift between them and the rest of the siblings. The girls accuse the two older brothers of being greedy tyrants.

  Ammiti Aisha reads my thoughts, it seems. “They argue all the time,” she says. “The girls want to see the money, and Saif and Ahmad won’t allow it. ‘It’s not ours,’ they tell their sisters, even though they spend it as if it were.” She fixes her sight on the six bicycles. New and gleaming, they stand in a neat row, arranged according to size, at one side of the house. “Saif says that it’s a responsibility entrusted to them. Ahmad always makes sure to add the word temporarily, meaning until their father is capable again.” She scoffs. “Of course, the girls don’t believe that. And who can blame them? I mean, all these months and he’s worked so hard just so that he can . . .” She shakes her head and waves her hand at him. “Just look at him.”

  My uncle is still asleep. A trickle of drool slides down one side of his lips. The maid, who sits on her heels in front of him, massaging his right foot and looking as bored as can be, reaches out for a tissue and dabs at it.

  “I asked them to employ a nurse, but they said he doesn’t need one, that the maid is strong enough to deal with him and clever enough to administer his medication. Isn’t that right, Ophelia? Clever, nah?”

  Ophelia snickers and beams a sunny grin at us before moving on to rub his left foot. I hadn’t recognized her with the weight gain; she now has a wrestler’s body. “The girls are preparing a case against their brothers,” Ammiti Aisha continues. “Mona and Amal are the engines, insisting it’s the only way. Nouf, of course, is always spoiling for a fight, without a thought spared for the damage that will certainly follow. As for Badr, well, he was hesitant, but in the end they bullied him into joining.”

  “And Nadia?”

  “Ah, that one. As you know, she’s slightly softer, doesn’t like making too many waves.” Ammiti Aisha lets out a heavy sigh. “But she’s left in want of money since that husband of hers finally made good on his threats to divorce her. He left her and their five children after he decided that it was a scandal to be married to one of the Naseemys. He said it tainted his name in the eyes of society and opened him to ridicule, because everyone knows that no respectable family can stay that way with a singer in it. What excuses he came up with! We all knew he’d taken another wife long before Dalal appeared on the scene.” Her shayla doesn’t need adjusting, but she fiddles with it anyway. She pulls it down to just above her eyebrows and then slides it back up to her hairline. “The fights, the bickering, the ugliness all around me. And you know what, I don’t even bother trying to repair the situation. I watched the way they fought over Mama Al-Ouda’s gold when she died and thought, What’s the point? Which of them pays attention to what I have to say, anyway?”

  Sunlight falls in strips across her face. I listen and keep very still. It’s the first time Ammiti Aisha has opened up to me like this. But then again, there hasn’t been an opportunity before. I’ve stayed away these past three years, carving a life that I can call my own. Every so often I call her, but they’re typical phone conversations, filled with nothing more than pleasantries.

  After Mama Al-Ouda died last August, I’d packed and was heading to the airport to be with my family for the mourning period when Ammiti Aisha telephoned me. She told me not to come, to stay in Cairo and mourn privately, because she knew her children would not have allowed me into the house.

  She is shaking her head. She continues where she left off. “The married ones hardly come to visit now that their father is in this condition and their fortunes don’t depend on him any
more, and the twins, still living at home, hardly have a word to say to me. My grandchildren are no better.” She leans forward and starts rocking. “All the plots, all the nastiness,” she mutters, her face frozen in a heavyhearted expression of pain. “No sooner did the doctors get your uncle stable and send him home than they appeared like vultures, ready to peck and rip. Then, during one of his emotional bouts, Saif and Ahmad were there to take full charge of the business and make sure the transfer of power was legal.”

  They are their father’s seeds. It’s a morbid thought, and I look away. The sky is a vivid blue with scratches of cloud. Glossy-feathered mynahs call to one another and white-cheeked bulbuls chirp and chatter. Wishing for some of their lighthearted cheer, I follow them with my eyes as they flit about from tree to tree. I watch them and count my blessings.

  After the escape, Shamma used all her resources to retrieve my government scholarship, and within a month I was on a plane back to Cairo. I have started afresh with my studies, this time following my passion in botany. I share an apartment in the Emirati girls’ sakan with none other than Buthaina (now studying for her doctorate), who has proven to be the guiding sister I’d longed for. And there’s Dalal, elevated into a world so different from mine—one day up, one day down—rushing about, always busy, so that it’s hard to catch up with her news. On the outside she looks different, more refined and self-assured. On the inside I don’t know, because she only tells me what she imagines I want to hear. I don’t scold anymore. I don’t push. I stand back and wait—for a time when she might really need me.

  And love—I think I might be finding that, too, in a fellow Emirati student who has shown an interest in me. It’s not there in the sense of that overwhelming longing I used to feel for Adel, which made me forget everything just as long as I was near him. (I heard he dropped out of college and went back home soon after my return.) No, this is taking its time: a sprouting of little moments, a dawdling smile, a slow gathering of feelings that leaves behind a sense of serenity and security.

  “They did to their father what their father did to yours.” There’s a tremor at the back of Ammiti Aisha’s throat. “You were cheated, Mariam. We all knew it, and we kept quiet about it.” Her lips quiver; she looks ready to cry. I shake my head to indicate that she mustn’t.

  “It’s fine,” I say, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m fine.”

  I think about that and realize that it’s true—I am fine. I find myself rising and walking toward Ammi Majed. With every step I anticipate that familiar wringing resentment, the cramping fretfulness, that I used to stifle whenever he was close. It doesn’t come, and I wonder if that’s because of what he has become—old, powerless, friendless, and dependent, a picture of wretchedness and defeat.

  Standing to the side of the wheelchair, my hand moves as if following a will of its own. It floats up and hovers just above his shoulder. Ophelia keeps ahold of his foot, but her fingers have stopped moving. I stand there for a moment with a mind gone blank, and then I ask, “Why did you go back to him?”

  Ammiti Aisha is unfaltering in her response. “Because it’s my duty.”

  My hand drops to my side and I nod. My gaze drifts over the grove, its lush palm fronds rustling with a hasty breeze, and settles on the late-afternoon sun, a grand ball, bright as a tangerine, poised and ready to descend into the distant dunes. My breathing is even. There is peace.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost, I am deeply indebted to my family for their boundless love and support: my father and mother, my three brothers, Samir, Anwar, and Shehab, and their wives, Souad, Cyma, and Lamees, who are the sisters I never had.

  Special thanks to my good friend Ali Khalifa Al-Rumaithi, for his nuggets of insight of all things Emirati, for his limitless imagination when it comes to plot twists and narrative possibilities.

  Tons of gratitude goes to Mimi Raad and Lina Matta for their energy as they pored over the various chapters of the book as they were being written, for their enthusiasm at each of our regular meetings to discuss what they’d read. Every writer needs such a dynamic pair.

  A salute goes to my vivacious editor, Jillian Verrillo, for her acute observations and grasp of the big picture, both of which have made this a stronger novel. And not forgetting my copyeditor, Julie Hersh, for her exacting expertise.

  My sincere gratitude goes to my agent, Emile Khoury, who always delivers when it counts, and the HarperCollins’ team for embracing the novel wholeheartedly.

  A big applause to the spirited Dr. Hala Sarhan, Arabic talk-show host extraordinaire, for the valuable information she provided and a bow to all the film, music, and media celebrities of the Arab world whom I met for getting excited about the book to the point that they felt they had to divulge a behind-the-scenes secret or two. Much appreciation goes to Mahra Al-Shamsi and Badriya Al-Marri for the vivid accounts of their days living in the sakan as Emirati students in Cairo, and to physiotherapist Semir Bakija for information on recuperating stroke victims.

  Thanks to my team of first-draft readers: Cyma, Pia, Samer, and my cousin Sana’, who also created the lyrics to “Only Me, Lonely Me.”

  And finally, now and always, hats off to everyone I meet who says, “I can’t wait for the next book.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MAHA GARGASH has a degree in radio and television from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a master’s from Goldsmiths College, University of London. In 1985 she joined Dubai Television to pursue her interest in documentaries. Through directing television programs that deal with traditional Arab societies, she became involved in research and scriptwriting. Her first novel, The Sand Fish, was an international bestseller. She lives in Dubai.

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  ALSO BY MAHA GARGASH

  The Sand Fish

  CREDITS

  Cover design by Janet Hansen

  Cover photograph © visualspace / Getty Images

  COPYRIGHT

  THAT OTHER ME. Copyright © 2016 by Maha Gargash. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gargash, Maha.

  That other me : a novel / Maha Gargash. — First edition.

  pages ; cm

  ISBN 978-0-06-239138-4 (softcover) — ISBN 978-0-06-239139-1 (ebook) 1. Women—United Arab Emirates—Social conditions—Fiction. 2. Young women—Social life and customs—Fiction. 3. United Arab Emirates—History—20th century—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PR9570.U543G378 2016

  823’.92—dc23

  2015011785

  ISBN 978-0-06-239138-4

  EPub Edition January 2016 ISBN 9780062391391

  16 17 18 19 20 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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