“Who are you talking about?” she asked as her eyes blazed with consternation. It took Graham some time to get up. She followed him and stood in front of him. He said in a louder voice, “Who did you sleep with?”
“John, are you crazy?”
He looked strange. He lit his pipe while still naked, then said with a resigned smile, “You and I are too intelligent to waste our time on accusations and denials. You’ve slept with someone. Who is he?”
“John!”
“I want to know his name.”
She fell silent until she got over the surprise then said in a pitifully fragile tone of voice, “You’ve got no right to accuse me.”
With lightning speed he slapped her on the face. She let out a loud cry. He moved away and said, “I may be old; I may be hanging on to old, worn-out ideas, but I’m not a fool. I have enough human experience not to be deceived by anyone. You’ve cheated on me, Carol. My feeling about your body doesn’t lie. I don’t understand why you’d do it. We’re not married. We don’t have to act stupidly. Why didn’t you leave me when you fell in love with somebody else?”
He was speaking in disconnected sentences while putting on his clothes and buckling his belt and placing his feet in his shoes. Once again he stood in front of her. She was still naked, her hand on her cheek. He said in a calmer voice, “I am sorry I slapped you. I’m leaving. I’ll stay in a hotel until you find another place. You’re rich now, you’ll easily find a place.”
“John!”
He ignored her and took two steps toward the door. She jumped behind him. “I didn’t cheat on you.”
“Lying won’t do you any good.”
“John,” she cried one last time and tried to embrace him, but he removed her arms forcibly. She cried, “I didn’t cheat on you. The head of the company used my body. That’s the truth. That was his condition: one time in return for the new contract. I couldn’t say no. I just couldn’t. I needed to think of my son. I assure you I haven’t betrayed you. All my feelings are with you. What I did with the man was disgusting and I almost throw up whenever I remember it. Our bodies hit each other, that was all. I didn’t betray you, John. I love you. Please stay with me.”
He had placed his hand on the doorknob. He kept looking at her as she confessed, then bowed his head forward, looking at that moment like an old, wretched man, helpless and weighed down with sorrow. As he closed the door he said, “When Mark wakes up in the morning, tell him I had to travel and that I love him very much.”
Chapter 40
The clock in the dorm lobby said it was 5:30 a.m. Ever since Shaymaa first arrived in Chicago, she had never left the building so early, but her errand this time was far away. She pushed the glass door with her hand and was immediately assailed by cold wind, laden with flakes of snow. She backed off and tightened the heavy woolen scarf around her face and put her hands, already protected with fur-lined gloves, in her coat pockets to preserve as much heat as she could. She moved fast, as if to prevent herself from hesitating. The street was dark and totally empty and snow covered everything. She dashed at top speed toward the train station, deliberately not looking around. She felt her heart pounding hard, and terrifying apprehension assailed her: What if someone attacked me now or abducted me under the threat of armed violence? She began to recite the last two Chapters of the Qur’an as she increased her speed until she finally made it to the train station. She had to go ten stations, then change trains and go another ten stations to get to the address she had memorized by heart.
The train passengers at that hour were a mix of black, Latino, and Asian cleaning crews who cleaned offices before employees arrived, and vagrants who had spent the night drinking. Shaymaa sat in a faraway seat next to the window, deliberately not looking around. She was frightened of the drunks, who didn’t stop shouting and laughing while they filled the whole car with the smell of stale alcohol. Her mind was foggy, like the surface of a mirror covered with steam, as if what she saw were unreal, as if she were dreaming. She opened her handbag and took out the small Qur’an and began to read in a soft voice, “ ‘I take refuge in God from Satan who deserves to be stoned. In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Ya Sin. By the Wise Koran, thou art truly among the Envoys on a straight path; the sending down of the All-mighty, the All-wise, that thou mayest warn a people whose fathers were never warned, so they are heedless. The Word has never been realized against most of them, yet they do not believe. Surely We have put on their necks fetters up to the chin, so their heads are raised; and We have put before them a barrier and behind them a barrier; and We have covered them, so they do not see.’”
The effect of the Qur’anic verses on her was so strong she cried and her tears flowed, wetting the Qur’an. She turned her face away, got close to the window until she could feel the cold glass and began to whisper, “Please, God. There is no God but You, may You be exalted. I have been among the sinners, so please forgive me. I seek Your mercy, so please do not leave me to my own devices for the blink of an eye. Alive! Eternal!”
She changed trains and finished the second leg of her journey. When she left the station she had to walk a short distance to reach the center. It was daylight already. She hurried up until she saw the large sign still lit from last night: chicago aid center. She noticed on the opposite sidewalk a group of blacks and whites of various ages and some clergymen. They were demonstrating, carrying signs saying STOP THE MASSACRE AND SHAME ON THE MURDERERS.
They began to wave the signs and shout more enthusiastically, as if performing a religious ritual. Shaymaa got more worried and hastened her steps toward the door of the center, but her appearance and the veil and Islamic garb apparently heightened the enthusiasm of the demonstrators. They got more noisy, then began shouting from the opposite sidewalk, “Ruthless murderer!”
“Are you Muslim?”
“Does your God allow the killing of children?”
Shaymaa avoided looking toward them, but she was trembling with fright and raced to cover the few steps remaining before the entrance. They began to throw tomatoes and raw eggs at her. An egg passed right next to her head then exploded on the wall. Several policemen standing in front of the center hurried toward the crowd to contain the situation. Shaymaa crossed the entryway quickly and was met by a black receptionist with an encouraging smile. “Don’t pay any attention to those crazies.”
Shaymaa looked at her and asked, panting, “What do they want?”
“They are antiabortion groups. They know we operate in the early morning, so they come to make trouble.”
“Why don’t the police arrest them?”
“The law permits abortion, but it also permits peaceful demonstration. Don’t worry about it. They are a bunch of fascist fanatics, no more and no less. I think you have an appointment with Dr. Karen?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me.”
Dr. Karen was a slim young woman in her late twenties. She had long chestnut-colored hair coming down on her elegant white coat. She received Shaymaa very warmly; she shook her hand, embraced and kissed her, then smiled at her and whispered, like a mother coddling her little daughter, “How are you? Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”
This sudden display of kindness was too much for Shaymaa, who started crying as Dr. Karen kept calming her down. She asked her to wash her face. Shaymaa went to the bathroom and came back, and sat before the doctor, who gave her some papers, saying, “This is some necessary paperwork. This is some information about you that we need you to fill out; this is a statement that you agree to the operation that we need you to sign. This is a cost list. Do you have a credit card?”
Shaymaa shook her head. The doctor asked in a matter-of-fact voice, “Can you pay cash?”
The paperwork took about half an hour. She spent the following half hour undergoing medical tests: a urine test, a blood pressure test, and a sonogram. In the end, Shaymaa took off her clothes with the help of the nurses, and put the blue hospital gown
on her naked body.
When Dr. Karen held her hand, she noticed that she was shaking. “Don’t be afraid. It’s not a dangerous operation.”
“I’m not afraid of death.”
“What’re you afraid of then?”
Shaymaa fell silent then said in a shaking voice, “Of God’s punishment. What I’ve done is a big sin in our religion.”
“I don’t know much about Islam but I believe that God must be fair. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Is it fair for a woman to be deprived of the right to respond to her feelings with the one she loves? Is it fair for the woman, alone, to bear the responsibility of an unwanted pregnancy? Is it fair to bring into this world a baby that nobody wants? To doom it to a miserable life before it even begins?”
Shaymaa looked at her in silence. She could no longer speak. She had nothing to say. The moment was much bigger than anything that could be said about it. She was now in an abortion clinic because she’d become pregnant out of wedlock. Shaymaa Muhammadi was bearing a baby in sin and was going to have an abortion. She didn’t really have a way to describe all that. Was she anxious to find out what fate was hiding from her? If she was going to die during the operation, if these were the last moments in her life, she would accept the punishment as just. All she cared about was not to create a scandal for her family that would haunt them forever. The woman in charge at the clinic had reassured her that the operation was confidential. Even if she died, the official papers would not mention that she was having an abortion. Shaymaa stood in her hospital gown, looking blankly at Dr. Karen, who put her arms around her and said, “We’ll have time later on to talk about many things. We’ve become friends, right?”
Shaymaa nodded and walked with her across the short corridor leading to the operating room. They went through the double doors, and then Dr. Karen left her with a nurse who helped her get onto a gurney. A gray-haired white man appeared. He smiled and said, “Good morning. My name is Adam. I’m the anesthesiologist.”
He held her arm and asked her what her name was. Then he stung her lightly in the arm and soon she felt her body loosen up. Little by little her mind changed, as if it were a large screen to which transmission had stopped, so it remained dark for a while, then colored pictures fraught with strange and wild feelings came onto it. She saw everything: her father, mother, sisters, their house in Tanta, Tariq Haseeb, and the histology department. Persons and things appeared different from what they ordinarily looked like. She had a hard time making them out and felt unhappy seeing their distorted gray images. She opened her mouth more than once to object to the way they were made to look, but she discovered that she had no voice, as if her larynx had been removed. She was terrified and kept screaming but had no voice. She remained a prisoner of that strange, frightening condition for a while. Then she finally saw a thread of light looming in the distance. It was as if the dark had resulted from heavy black curtains that now began to be opened slowly. As the light increased, new shapes appeared, blended at first; then they soon separated and appeared more clearly, little by little. Finally, with difficulty, she was able to make out Dr. Karen’s face. She saw her smile and heard her say, “Congratulations, Shaymaa. Everything went fine. In a short while you’ll be home.”
She smiled as much as she could. Dr. Karen went on in a voice that was now quite clear, “In addition to the success of the operation, I have another surprise for you.”
Shaymaa looked at her with exhausted and unfocused eyes. Karen winked and laughed, saying, “Of course you can’t wait to know what the surprise is. Well, we have a visitor who cares about you and who has been begging us to see you.”
Shaymaa extended her arm to object, but Karen hurried toward the door. She opened it and made a gesture with her hand. Soon Tariq Haseeb appeared. He was unshaven and looked pale and exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept in a while. He moved forward a few steps until he stood next to the bed. He looked at Shaymaa, staring with his bulging eyes, and a wide smile appeared on his face.
Translator’s Acknowledgments
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK the following friends and colleagues for help with various aspects of the translation: Robert (Bob) Wiley and Kelly Zaug, and from the American University in Cairo Press, Neil Hewison and Nadia Naqib, and from HarperCollins Publishers, Jeanette Perez.
About the Author
Internationally bestselling author ALAA AL ASWANY was born in 1957. A dentist by profession, he is the author of The Yacoubian Building, which has been translated into twenty languages, and the story collection Friendly Fire, which will be published in English in 2009. He lives in Cairo.
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