by Ahdaf Soueif
The road was bumpy and dotted with potholes. Some of the potholes were full of stagnant water. Aisha looked around her. She remembered a bright winter day, a motor scooter wobbling under her as she tried to ride it down a smooth road. Finally it had collapsed on its side and she had fallen, one leg caught under the little Vespa. Everyone had run to her, but she had picked herself up and tried again. She looked around. You’d be mad to try to learn to ride a motor scooter down this road now.
She arrived at the top of the square. Six years ago their house had been the only one along the north side. Pretty, in five stories of reddish brown and beige, it had looked over the garden. Now it was flanked by tall apartment blocks and so stood diminished, looking bleakly out over the dusty road and the Pepsi-Cola kiosk that had sprung up on the pavement in front of it.
Aisha looked around for a place to park. There were no trees to cast any shade and one side of the road was much like the other. She pulled the car over to what used to be the curb and stepped out into a sand heap. She shook the sand from her shoes. The curious heads hanging out of windows were still there, but now a number of them were covered in the white Islamic headdress that was spreading so rapidly. Did they belong to the same people as six years ago? Or different? Younger sisters, perhaps, daughters? Out of the corner of her eye she could not tell. Ignoring them, as she had always done, she walked purposefully in.
The tall glass doors were still there. Miraculously they had not yet been broken. The marble-floored lobby was clean, but
there were no plants in the pots and there were cigarette ends on the dry, cracked earth. A strange man in a striped galabiya was sweeping the marble floor. She wished him good day. He answered sullenly, leaning on his broom, waiting for her to pass.
“Are you the doorman here now?” she asked.
“God willing,” he replied briefly.
“Where are Abdu and Amna?” she persevered.
“Abdu? They took him into the army long ago. And Amna has gone to live with her folk in the village.”
“Oh.”
She started climbing the stairs. She wanted to ask more. Had Abdu and Amna finally had their much-desired baby? Or were they still barren? What had Abdu done about learning to read? They had been incorporated into her dream of coming home, these two. She had even gone down to Mothercare and looked for Babygros for Amna’s longed-for child.
Repeatedly she had imagined in detail the scene of her homecoming. It would be the beginning of the academic year, a warm October day. She would drive up to this door with Saif. Abdu would jump up and come running out, wearing his broad grin and his white peasant’s underwear, his eyes and teeth shining in his dark face, crying, “Praise God for your safe return, Sitt Aisha!” He would grab her hand and try to kiss it while she protested and insisted on shaking his hand. “How are you, Abdu? How are you doing? And how is Amna?” And hearing the noise, Amna would look out from the room below the stairs and, seeing her, come out tying her colored kerchief around her hair, her slow, shy smile spreading over her pretty face. And she too would praise God for her safe return and ask, “Have you come to stay with us for good now?” And when Aisha answered yes, Amna would say, “You fill the house with light.” They would carry her cases upstairs. They would all have to make two journeys because there would be a lot of luggage after such a long stay abroad. Later, she would unpack and come down to give Abdu and Amna their presents: for Amna a dress length of brightly patterned synthetic material with the trimmings and buttons to match, and for Abdu a watch. And if there should be a child …
She had arrived at her floor. The passage was dark. The old worn-out key was ready in her hand, but she could not see the keyhole. She reached out blindly and the key immediately fitted into the lock. Is it coincidence? she wondered. Did I just happen to find the lock? Or does my hand remember? She turned the key. It was a little stiff but the door opened. She felt a surge of irritation. Typical. Going away for two weeks and not bothering to double-lock the door. Then she remembered. It’s nothing to do with me.
She pushed the door open and a forgotten but familiar smell met her. She stood still. It couldn’t be. She had always thought it was the smell of fresh paint and that as the flat grew older it would vanish. For the year that they had lived in the flat it had constantly been there and she had thought, With time it will go. Time had come and time had gone and the smell was still there. Maybe he’d had the flat repainted? Her hand, moving along the wall, found the light switch. No, it had not been repainted. The walls were the same: olive green on one side, beige on the other. It must be a ghost smell, she thought. Like a ghost limb. When they cut off your legs you go on feeling the cramps in your toes. Only now they are incurable. I’m smelling fresh paint because I’m used to smelling it. It’s not really here, but I’m smelling it.
Her eyes traveled along the entrance hall and fell on the white marble basin in the middle of the green living room wall. A sheet of cardboard had been laid across it and balanced on it were some telephone directories. What plans they had had for it. It was to be a small fountain, the wall behind it to be inlaid with antique ceramic tiles and its pedestal surrounded by plants in large brass urns. They had had to wait— a question of money. But the basin had been there. It was the very first thing they had bought for the house. Wandering down the old bazaar one day, they had found it thrown carelessly into the dusty corner of a junk shop. The owner had wanted ten pounds, but they had got it for eight. All three pieces: the basin, the back panel, and its pedestal. They had carried the heavy marble carefully to the car and later she had made inquiries about getting it scoured and polished. Someone recommended a shop in Taht el-Rab’ and she had gone with her mother-in-law. When they got there it turned out that the man specialized in cleaning tombstones. Saif ’s mother had been shocked and urged her not to leave the basin with him. But she had laughed. No omen could dim her happiness, no headstone mar their future, and she had left the marble basin to be cleaned among the winged angels and the inscribed plaques. Later it had been fixed—with its beautiful shell-like back panel—into the green wall. And sometimes she had filled it with water and put in it a small machine that made a miniature fountain. It had always delighted their friends, and she had sat on the black rocking chair and watched it for hours.
She craned her neck. The rocking chair was there. In exactly the same position she had left it six years ago: angled by the French windows under the smaller bookshelves. A present from her white-haired professor of poetry, it had arrived three days after the wedding with a huge bouquet and had immediately become her favorite seat.
She stepped inside the flat and closed the door quietly behind her. It needed oiling. The handle was hard to turn. She faced the darkened flat and felt it tilt. She headed quickly left down the long corridor to the bathroom. She did not switch on the light but crouched in front of the toilet, retching. She wondered whether the cistern worked. It did. That had always been a good thing about the flat: they’d never had trouble with the plumbing.
Washing out her mouth she glanced up and saw her reflection dimly in the large mirror hanging beside her. She looked. It had been part of a Victorian hall stand which she had found in a junk shop and he had declared hideous. So they had compromised: the top and bottom of the stand had been cut away and disposed of, and the mirror with the intricately carved frame now hung suspended on the wall. She switched on the light, then went back to the mirror. The reflection staring back at her was not the one she was used to seeing there. The changes moved into focus. A slimmer face framed by shorter, more curly, though still black hair. A string of now-taken-for-granted pearls shone around her neck. She fingered the pearls. She remembered a hotel bedroom in Paris and the wonder and delight when the pearls were thrown into her lap as she sat up in bed. He had created Paris for her. As he had created Rome. Then he had stopped. Brussels, Vienna, Athens. They were all untouched by his magic. Why? They had still been together. She shook her head. Her expression too was different. The
open, expectant look was gone. Instead there was—what? Repose? Something that people took for serenity. But she knew. She knew it was frail as an eggshell. She shook her head again and looked around. The shower curtains and matching bits and pieces had been bought in Beirut. Such a tight budget. And onion soup: her first taste of soupe à l’oignon gratinée eaten with melba toast in the Hotel Martinez at one o’clock in the morning as they’d planned their shopping list for the next day. She had loved it. The thin strands of the gratinée stretching as she pulled the spoon away from the dish, the melba toast crisply cutting through them. Could it all come back again? she wondered. She stroked her pearls.
She put her hand out to the mirror. She lightly traced the outline of her face with her finger. But the mirror was a wall between herself and the warm flesh behind it. She could not feel the contours of her face: the nose marked no rise, the lips no difference in texture. And it was cold. Her finger still on the mirror, it came to her that that was an apt metaphor for her relationship with him. She could see him, sense his contours and his warmth, but whenever she made a move to touch him, there would be a smooth, consistent surface. It was transparent, but it was unbreakable. At times she had felt he put it there on purpose and she had been furiously resentful. At others it had seemed that he was trapped behind it and was looking to her to set him free. She stood very still. Twice in the year she had lived in this flat she had locked herself in here: squeezing herself into the corner behind the door and crying till she could not breathe. Twice he had not come looking for her, and when she had finally crept out, exhausted, she had found him comfortable within his cloud of blue smoke in the living room, reading, with Bob Dylan on the record player. The bad times seemed to have been a succession of bathrooms. Hotel bathrooms all over the world had seen her locked in, head over the bowl, crying, or simply sitting on the tiled floor reading through the night while he slept alone, unknowing, in large double beds that mocked her.
She turned and walked back through the corridor to the living room. The cane-backed sofa and armchairs sat quietly in the dark. She crossed over to the sofa and sat down, feeling again the softness of the down-filled green-velvet-covered cushions. She examined them closely. The feathers were still escaping from the seams. Years ago, she had thought, In a couple of years all the feathers will have gone! But here she was, six years later, and they were still there and still escaping. She looked around. The books were all in place: economics and electronics to the left, art and literature to the right, and in the middle, history. The paperbacks were in the smaller bookcase built into the wall. On its lowest shelf were the records. There were far more albums there now than before. And the music center was new too. The old, battered record player had ended up with her. Together with a few of the old records.
She lifted her eyes to the wall above the music center. Her portrait had gone. Painted when she was twenty-one and given to them both as a wedding present. He had vowed he would always keep it, and when he had a study of his own he would hang it there. Now it hung in her parents’ home, in her father’s study. In its place was an old Syrian tapestry. It showed the Arab knight and poet Antar on horseback, and his beloved cousin Abla in a litter on a camel’s back. Abla had been on a journey and Antar was proudly escorting her back to their settlement. His horse pranced, tail swishing and neck arched high, and Abla peeped coyly out to smile at him from behind the canopies of her litter. On one side were inscribed the verses:
And I remembered you
When battle raged
And as lance and scimitar
Raced for my blood
I longed to kiss
Their glinting edges
Shining like your smiling mouth
and on the other:
I am the lord’s knight
Famed throughout the land
For a sure hand with the lance
And the Indian sword.
They had bought it in Damascus. One day, wandering down the labyrinth of narrow streets that made up the covered market surrounding the Umaynad Mosque, they had come across a tiny shop selling fabrics and tapestries. They had gone in and spent time looking over the materials and she had spotted this one in black and gold. She had laughed as she showed it to him. “This could be your motto. He thought a lot of himself, like you.” For a moment he had been defensive. Then he had trusted in her good faith and laughed and bought it.
Her remark had been true. He lived in heroic proportions and would have been better off as some medieval knight, be it Arab or Frank. He would have gone out and slain dragons and ghouls and rescued damsels in distress. He would have been kind to his squire and his horses and would have believed in the chastity of his wife weaving in her tower. And perhaps, in the Middle Ages, his belief would not have been misplaced.
Another memory sprang to her mind. “The Spartans,” he was fond of saying, “spent the last day before Marathon adorning themselves and combing their hair. They knew they were going to die.” On their last day, he had come up to the living room in the cottage. His car had been packed. He was setting off down the M-I. He was drunk. But he was very well dressed, with a velvet jacket and a silk foulard. “I have combed my hair,” he had said quietly, swaying at the top of the stairs.
She pressed a hand to her head. Not again. Please. Not again. It’s over now. Finished. Her eye caught her desk. It was cluttered with objects. She stood up and went over, looking at them absently. Papers, letters, ashtrays, an old half coconut shell, a silver flask in a leather case, some flying instruments salvaged from a wrecked plane, and a gun. She picked it up. An old Colt.45. “When you shoot yourself in the head,” he had told her, “your brains splatter all over the place. It’s a hell of a mess.”
“What can you do?” she had asked.
“Put your head in a plastic bag first.”
The doorbell rang. She stood very still. It rang again. She walked slowly to the door and opened it. A boy stood holding a carefully folded pile of shirts. He handed them to her. She took them automatically.
“How much?”
“Twelve shirts by five piastres is sixty piastres,” he said.
She went back to the living room, put the shirts on the sofa, and took her purse from her handbag. She took out seventy piastres and went back to the door.
“Take these.”
“Do you have anything else for ironing?”
“No thanks,” she replied, “not today.”
She closed the door and turned again to face the flat. The dining room was now directly opposite her. She walked over. These had been her favorite pieces of furniture. Solid dark oak in a rustic style with carved lions’ heads for handles. The massive table and sideboards stood waiting for her in the gloom. She opened the small upright sideboard they had used as a bar. It was as well stocked as ever and the crystal goblets sparkled quietly inside. She put out her hand. She had treasured these goblets and the formal china with gold and green edging. She looked around. The table would be covered with the beige and gold damask tablecloth and the room lit by candles in silver candlesticks. Where is the silver? she wondered. The trays and candlesticks were not in their places on the sideboards. She started looking for them. She opened the sideboard doors and peered inside, and there were the delicate little blue and white Japanese bowls. Bought in Tokyo. A great tiredness overwhelmed her. She put out a hand behind her, dragged up a chair, and sat down. The whole world. What city was left that she could go to and not find memories? Why not give in? Why not come back? Tokyo. All those pretty little girls in red miniskirts and white cotton gloves operating the elevators and incessantly bowing: “Thank you for shopping at our store, we hope you have a good day, we hope you will come back.” All those gaudy shrines, presided over by sleepy-eyed Buddhas who had sat inscrutable as she clapped her hands and tied a piece of paper with a wish to the sacred tree. She had always wished for one thing. Incoherently. Make it right. Dear God,
Buddha, Allah, make it right. She felt the pricking of tears behind her
eyes, but she would not cry. Two whole years had passed since that day in the living room of the cottage and she was not going to cry anymore.
She resumed her search for the missing silver and in a corner of the larger sideboard she found it. She drew it out. Trays, ashtrays, candlesticks, and a trophy inscribed “Miss Cairo University 1970.” Eight years ago … All were tarnished. Bits of them were quite black. Typical again, she thought. He can’t bear to see them tarnished and can’t be bothered to get them polished, so he tucks them away in a corner and hopes they’ll disappear. Or maybe he even hopes that by some miracle when next he thinks to look, he’ll find them gleaming and bright. She rubbed a corner of the cup with her thumb. I wonder if he has any polish? she thought again. With a surge of energy she made for the kitchen. She stood looking around. His mother had bought them the kitchen fittings and her aunt had made the curtains. So pretty, with their blue flowers and white broderie anglaise trimming. They were still there, the sunlight shining gently through them. And there was the breakfast bar and the little two-eyed cooker where she’d learned to make goulash soup. She looked at the sink. There were two unwashed glasses. She took off her rings and watch and started to wash them. They’d always had friends around. Parties. How had she managed with such a tiny kitchen? Such a tiny fridge? She opened the fridge. Even the containers had been carefully chosen and had blue flowers to match the curtains. In the door were two bottles of beer and a bottle of white wine and seven eggs. She opened a round container. It was full of jam. She dipped a finger in it and licked. Date jam. His mother’s date jam. She had a vivid image of him: a serious little boy of seven, playing in the sea at Alexandria. His nanny wades out from the beach holding up her galabiya with one hand, the other holding out a sandwich. She waves and calls, “Come out now. Come and have a date jam sandwich!” When he was seven she had not yet been born, but the image was vivid in her mind from stories repeated by his mother every time she gave her a present of a large jar of date jam. She made it with her own two hands. The dates were laid neatly one on top of the other and in the center of each one was an almond and a clove. Then they were covered with syrup. “It always brought him out,” she would say. “He loved the sea, but he loved his mother’s date jam more.” And she would laugh.