Throwing Sparks

by Abdo Khal

  ‘Our sister?’ I repeated. ‘And what sister might that be?’ I was being deliberately obtuse; he was referring to our half-sister, the fruit of our father’s last wife.

  ‘Have you even forgotten that you have a sister?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know her. I’ve never seen her.’

  ‘That’s beside the point,’ Ibrahim stated. ‘She’s still your sister and she needs your help.’

  That reminded me of Souad’s plea for her husband, Yasser Muft. ‘Is she in jail?’

  ‘God forbid. No, she’s not in jail – but she’s in trouble.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll come and see you and we’ll talk.’

  That caused Ibrahim to chuckle, which somehow seemed at odds with his dignified bearing. ‘Have I not heard that before?’ he said with a sad shake of the head. ‘You think I’ve forgotten that you promised the same thing seven years ago?’

  ‘Life is busy and I have a lot on my mind, Ibrahim.’

  ‘Listen, Tariq,’ Ibrahim insisted. ‘Our sister has no one but us. At the end of the day, her honour is bound up with ours. I don’t have the means to help her. If you can’t help her either, just tell me and I’ll ask someone else.’

  ‘How am I supposed to help when I know nothing about her?’ I argued. ‘You haven’t even told me what her problem is.’

  ‘Families have their secrets.’ Ibrahim looked around the reception area and the flow of people entering and leaving the Palace. ‘Either you take me somewhere private where we can talk, or you come with me.’

  ‘I can’t right now. Expect me tonight – no, wait, I’ll be there tomorrow.’

  Ibrahim nodded slowly.

  This time, ‘tomorrow’ took another two years.

  I really wanted nothing to do with the quagmire of the past. All I wanted was to run from the hooks that were embedded in my flesh. I certainly had no desire to meet a sister whose birth I had only heard about and who might end up being drawn to me like iron filings to a magnet.

  After that, Ibrahim never came to see me again at the Palace.

  * * *

  The night my mother died, black clouds rolled into the sky above Jeddah. Bolts of lightning sliced through the heavens and unleashed a torrential downpour. Feelings of self-reproach and guilt ripped through me with similar force and I was overcome by a flood of tears.

  It had been years since I had cried – at least for as long as I had been at the Palace. My spirit was as parched as the arid dunes and scrub of the wind-swept desert.

  Everything about the Cemetery of Our Mother Eve was unwelcoming. Eve had gathered her children on their journey to oblivion inside, and the earth had been made earthier with the decay of their bodies. It was our mother who had led us, her children, out of Eden to roam the earth like errant cattle. When we tired of roaming and mooing, we went back to the earth, as she had done before us. We did not go to be held in her embrace but only to follow in her footsteps, for she was the archetype, the one whose actions constituted the blueprint for ours.

  I ended up walking around the cemetery wall because the gate was locked shut. Bolts of lightning crackled before my eyes and accompanied my steps as if chasing a wayward cloud. I surrendered to their power and wept – my tears as futile as a torrent of rain in a swamp. For what is the use of water to unhallowed and barren ground, and what good are tears to the dead?

  On this first night of my mother’s rest in the earth, I thought of jumping the wall and hurling myself inside the cemetery. I wanted to scale the wall and find that freshly dug grave, give vent to my grief and leave. It would be my final apology to her for all my years of absence. Just something to lighten the desolation of her first night.

  But the downpour put paid to that idea. I would now never find her grave. After the torrential rain, all the graves would look equally fresh, as though all the cemetery’s dead had been buried on the same day.

  I had never seen her again after she remarried. I had forgotten what her face looked like. I did not know whether she had gone grey or lost her teeth, whether her back was bent with age or she suffered from any ailments. I wondered if she had given birth to other children whose fate might be the same as mine, especially if Aunt Khayriyyah was right that my mother’s womb could bear nothing but rotten fruit.

  I needed tears to wash away the corrosion at my core. As I walked around the cemetery, I grieved over this ultimate of separations as the drenching rain obliterated her final resting place. My mother had gone to her grave and my delayed grief devastated me, like the bare limb of an old tree that had been shorn of all its leaves.

  I remembered an episode from my childhood, when I had come running home crying my heart out for some forgotten reason. ‘Men don’t cry,’ Aunt Khayriyyah had scolded. ‘And crying is no use anyway, so be a man.’ She had slapped me hard on the cheek for good measure.

  In all my years at the Palace, I had not shed a single tear. Whether I was responsible for them or not, I had swept aside all my dreadful experiences and carried on with day-to-day life mechanically, like the unthinking hand on a clock.

  I stopped at the cemetery gate, wanting to pray for her soul and the souls of all those buried with her. But I could not recall any of the prayers for the dead. So I muttered a few garbled phrases that sounded pathetic in the rain and beside the solemnity of the place. I cut my prayers short and wiped away whatever remained of my meaningless tears.

  Just as the skies above Jeddah were overshadowed by thick clouds, my mother’s death had overshadowed my day. I was not used to being in a state of emotional turmoil.

  Before her death, my mother had made that sole attempt to reunite us by sending me her decrepit old husband. She had never tried again; now I wished she had insisted, like one would with an obstinate child: first voicing a wish, then making a request and finally giving it one last try. I would have liked some determination on her part, a little persistence.

  She died suddenly and deprived me of the chance to blame her for what she had done. I wanted her to know how abandoned I had felt, betrayed by my own mother, when she had taken up with a man she had been in love with as a young woman. He had waited years for her without marrying and I imagined that he had actively wished for my father’s death to get her back.

  But I did not hate her – or him – the way I despised my aunt, who was like an unrelenting buzzer that went off the moment my hatred started to wane.

  * * *

  I drove to the villa and as I travelled north, the rain began to subside and the lightning had already moved on. My tears dried up and my heart returned to stone.

  I turned the key in the rusty lock of the outer gate and the loud squeak punctured the tranquillity of the night. Even the plants seemed startled by this sudden visit, as if they had been caught unawares with their leaves withering.

  Inside, the smell was suffocating. From the moment I set foot in the villa, I was assaulted by a putrid smell. I turned on the lights and went up the stairs, hurrying through the hallways that led to my aunt’s room. I had not brought anything for her and it had been at least a month, possibly two, since my last visit.

  The stench of decay became stronger the closer I got to her room. I wondered whether she, too, might have died.

  If that were the case, I would be visiting the cemetery two days in a row. My mind was already reeling off a series of images: I would place them next to each other, she and my mother, so that they could continue quarrelling and arguing until Judgement Day – both mumbling unintelligibly with their clipped tongues.

  The stink was thick in the hallway leading directly to my aunt’s room. It was a rancid mix of excrement, urine, mould, sweat and putrefaction.

  With the house reeking like that, her death would arouse suspicion. It would be best to delay the announcement. There was no one whose heart would be broken by her passing, in any case. Besides, no embalmer would be willing to carry out the ritual washing in this stench. By postponing the news of her death, I also would have the chance to air the place and
allow the stench to disperse in the fresh air after the rain.

  The only thing I was afraid of was that her body had already decomposed and that her bloated remains had exploded and scattered everywhere.

  I held my nose, closed my mouth and opened the door warily.

  It was a scene from hell: the room, plunged in darkness, reeked to high heaven. With the fingers of one hand still pinching my nose shut, I felt for the light switch with the other. As the light came on, the full horror of what lay before me was revealed. The room was one big mound of rubbish, piled with clothes, cartons, cans, bottles, lids, food scraps, bedding and blankets. The bed was overturned, the wardrobe was broken, and I could see faeces and dried-up blood everywhere.

  As I took in the scene of mayhem, I scanned the room for her corpse but there was no trace of one. I carved a path through the debris, holding my breath against the stench. Every time I pushed something aside, the smell of decomposing food and excrement would rise into the air. I was beginning to wonder whether her body had completely decomposed under the heap of rubbish and all that remained was the smell of putrefaction.

  Dreading that I might step on her corpse or bones, I moved hesitantly, with visions of my feet sinking into her viscera, or crushing her skull or rib cage.

  All of a sudden I felt a blow, and my heart began pounding.

  I had been so convinced that she had died that I did not expect her to leap from under a pile of cartons like a fury. She lunged at me with metal coat hangers she had filed to dart-like points and drove them into whatever part of my body was within reach, moaning and groaning loudly.

  I pushed her away with all my strength and sent her flying into a wall, crying out in agony like a wounded animal.

  She looked monstrous.

  Aunt Khayriyyah was so emaciated her bones protruded from under her clothes, and her skin was so wizened that the criss-cross of wrinkles looked like a scorched river bed. Her front teeth were chipped, her fingernails were black with filth and long as talons, and her white hair stood on end like a mass of carded wool. Only her sunken, hollow eyes retained their fierceness.

  She tried to get up but could not, as if she had exhausted every last drop of energy to pounce on me. Staring at me wild-eyed, still clutching one of her darts, she seemed to be pulling herself together to resume combat. She struggled to her feet and made for the light switch. Darkness descended on the room like a blanket, with only a faint ray of light trickling in from the cracked door.

  She was used to the gloom. I could sense her approaching, making stabbing motions in the dark, hoping to get me in the chest before I could reach for the light switch. I backed away slowly and felt my way to the door. I moved faster than she did and reached the door before she could get to me. I slammed the door shut and ran.

  She, too, had been honing her hatred. She had sat in that ruin of a room and manufactured weapons to sink into my chest and finish off the foul offspring that had sprung from my mother’s womb.

  I made my escape and, getting back into my car, drove away.

  I was beset by the nagging thought that, in my rush to leave that vile place, I might have forgotten to lock the door. I almost turned back, but my dread of seeing her rise from the wreckage like a ghoulish monster was stronger than my desire to find out.

  I also began to worry that the Master’s cameras might have captured that scene from hell.

  16

  Drawing on his army of assistants – his advisers, analysts, speculators, investment fund managers, media specialists and individuals involved in insider trading – the Master became an expert at manipulating the stock market. Acting on his behalf, the assistants dug deep pits into which greedy investors and rivals would jump and, subsequently, drown, bewildered by their sudden loss of fortune.

  The Master’s gambling addiction had taken root early on, when he began frequenting casinos in European capitals. He distinguished himself from his countrymen by his civility whenever he lost at the tables, for he was keen to maintain his good reputation.

  He never recovered from the addiction. His life was one never-ending wager. His own friends placed bets on whether he would continue to pull off the gambles he seemed perpetu­ally enthralled with, as if the thrill alone gave meaning to whatever he did.

  Every aspect of life was worth a wager: horses, hunting expeditions, the card game balut, procuring a celebrity singer, marrying an actress. The winnings were sometimes purely symbolic. It could be something as mundane as getting an opponent’s iqaal – the black headband that secures keffiyehs – or getting them to meow or bark. He got his thrills from one gamble after another.

  The stock market became a substitute for the casinos and turned him into an early riser. The start of trading early in the day lessened his enthusiasm for carousing until the break of dawn.

  I hoped that this infatuation with stocks would last and that punishing his rivals on the floor of the exchange would continue to relieve me of my duties. My only fear was that he would grow bored with this, as with all his other pursuits, and that when he started looking for some other thrill to provide the excitement he craved, it would somehow involve me. For now, the Master was enthralled with causing wild fluctuations in the market, relishing both the anticipation and the actual excitement of trading.

  His advisers had found a novel way to make even more money, and he sent out invitations to a select group of powerful businessmen to meet and discuss how they might expand the financial market by selling individual loans. The idea was to encourage local banks to extend personal loans that were many times greater than the borrowers’ annual salaries. This required a consolidated corporate front and a strategy to convince government policymakers.

  The meeting took place on the cement jetty extending out to sea. The small and select group of businessmen debated a variety of credit schemes that would enable them to manipulate shares. The goal was to buy up a particular stock in its entirety and then unload it when the market was favourable, thereby making a killing.

  Servants were passing around all manner of elegant appetisers and salads to whet the guests’ appetite for the main meal, which would be served later to celebrate their already substantial profits. The discussions held no appeal for the young women present. They grew restless, stretched their legs and shifted in their seats with boredom. One of them got up to lean against the railing, watching distant ships on the horizon while holding up her cell phone to listen to the latest hit by the singer Sherine. Two others joined her and they began to discuss plans for a trip to Paris over the weekend.

  The slowly sinking sun reflecting off the surface of the water lent the setting a romantic aura that contrasted with the dullness of the exchange between the Master and his guests. Their excitement at the prospect of huge profits made them oblivious to the young women, and not a hint of passion stirred in their loins.

  Maram was also there. Standing directly across from her, I was examining the low-cut sleeveless black dress which showed off her cleavage while keeping her unruly breasts in their place. She caught my lingering gaze and held it. My eyes pleaded silently for her breasts to break the hold of the enveloping fabric.

  I had desired her from the start.

  She was unique in that she could weave a sultry web of seduction regardless of the setting, with a deliberation that was well beyond her years. Both Maram and the Master conspired in the air of ambiguity surrounding her. No one knew where she was from or how she had come to be in Paradise.

  There were rumours that her husband had ‘gifted‘ her to the Master as part of a commercial deal and that, having become used to the lap of luxury, she had been unwilling to leave it. According to another rumour, the Master had simply wrested her from her husband with the force of a court order. There was also a story that went around that she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant who had offered her up in exchange for a substantial bailout that he needed to get out of some financial trouble. And lastly, it was said that she was simply another of Osama’s
catches. There were countless stories that followed Maram wherever she went because no one knew for sure.

  All I knew with certainty was that the Master saw her in the Palace one night and fell for her.

  There had been a lottery and Maram was supposed to be the prize of one of the millionaires that evening. The idea of drawing lots for the women who animated the Palace parties was the brainchild of Joseph Essam, and the Master quickly saw its erotic potential. At the end of an evening, a large silver bowl would be filled with alcoholic punch and the contenders would drop their car keys inside the bowl. The bowl was then passed around, and each young woman fished out a set of keys. Their owner got to claim her as his prize for the night.

  The lottery ritual had become quite established but that night, the Master disputed the result and claimed Maram for himself. She was never again entered in such lotteries and soon became the Master’s favourite.

  There were many desirable women who roamed the corridors of the Palace, and they were all off limits to the staff who worked there. Our job was simply to escort them to designated bedrooms and await further instructions from the Master.

  Every day, a chauffeur was assigned to go and fetch the girls. After dropping them off, he would relieve the lust they had aroused in him by seeking out one of the female migrant workers scattered about the Palace. Negotiating with whoever was most responsive, he would bed her, fast and furious, while still aroused.

  While falling asleep, I would often conjure up Maram in my mind’s eye and feast on her. I would go over her inch by inch – her face, her laugh, her cascading hair, her voluptuous curves, her statuesque bearing, her graceful neck – and then whisper longingly as I held her close and drifted off to sleep.

  I would picture her lying there with every cell of her body unfurling before my eyes which were hungry for anything she might reveal of herself. I imagined her beside me singing a few snatches from a favourite song, her beautiful lips in an imperceptible pout.