Light of the Desert

by Lucette Walters

  The taxi pulled up in front of a dilapidated stone building on the Rue Naucratis—one of the few streets, Noora noticed, that kept its French name after Gamal Abdel Nasser became president. Noora pressed paper bills in Yasmina’s hand.

  “Oh no, no. I cannot accept,” Yasmina said, blushing.

  “For the children. Please.”

  Yasmina looked at the money in shock and burst into tears. “I didn’t know how I was going to survive without food. I knew I would be too weak to walk all the way to my mother’s house, so far from the train station. My breasts were dry. I was scared to beg on the street. They beat me before with a stick because I wasn’t covered enough for them, there in the village … and … I was afraid someone would take away my children. I prayed so hard. Allah must have heard me,” she cried. “You came to our rescue.” She looked up at Noora and stared deeply into her eyes. “You brought us light. Allah sent you to us. You must be an angel. ”

  “No, God gave me the opportunity to help you. For this, I am grateful,” Noora said, remembering Um Faheema’s words when she herself had been destitute.

  The children rolled down the taxi’s window and peered out in awe at their grandmother’s apartment building, so huge to their little eyes. An old woman appeared at the front door, slapped her cheeks with both hands, giving the traditional cry of joy. Her cries echoed throughout the overpopulated neighborhood, announcing that her daughter had returned.

  Noora could no longer hold back her tears. Soon she would also be reunited with a loved one, her uncle Khayat.

  As the taxi sped along the Corniche, Alexandria’s seacoast road, Noora inhaled the tarrawah, Alexandria’s incomparable aromatic salt air that came singing from the Mediterranean, caressing her face.

  She closed her eyes and inhaled the savory smell of dora, grilled fresh corn, sold by vendors on the sidewalks facing the beach. She hesitated, but the aroma from her childhood made her weak with hunger. She asked the taxi driver to stop. The meter had already reached double the pounds she had expected to pay for taxi fare, and she was not even halfway to Uncle Khayat’s villa. She paid the driver and added a bakshish, but was ready to apologize for not giving him a healthier tip, when he jumped out of his car and ran to open her door.

  “Shokran, shokran,” the driver nodded a few times gratefully, as if he did not expect a tip.

  Waiting at the bus station on the seacoast road, Noora took that time to enjoy an ear of grilled sweet corn. She spotted a public phone booth across the street, but hesitated because she might miss the bus. Perhaps she could find her uncle’s name in the phone book, she thought, when out in the distance, she spotted the bus heading her way.

  When she climbed in the bus and inserted the required coins, she barely made it to a nearby empty banquette before the bus took off. Young students, not more than twelve or thirteen years old, in black-and-white uniforms, were clutching heavy school attaché cases. They sat giggling and telling each other secrets. They seemed happy and carefree. When they got off, Noora moved to a vacated seat by the window and watched the girls as they skipped down the street. They were probably going home, where parents were waiting for them, welcoming them with a warm meal. Soon, she would also be welcomed by a loving relative. We are almost there, Noora. There is no need to envy anyone or worry anymore. But her heart was beating hard and she felt anxious.

  CHAPTER 26

  PARIS

  On the Rue De Castiglione, in a fashionable upper floor apartment of the Intercontinental Hotel, Michel woke to the annoying drumming of rain that echoed through his fireplace. Another rainy Parisian morning, he thought, staring morosely at the hundred-year-old ornate marble-and-porcelain mantelpiece.

  Everybody loved Paris. Hundreds of books and poems and songs were written about the most romantic city in the world!

  Michel loathed Paris.

  Once, when he believed life was beautiful and he was immortal, he had wanted to know everything about Paris.

  His romance with the city was now over. The weather was cold and damp during the fall and winter, when he attended L’Ecole Des Beaux Arts. Spring was too short, and summers were too hot. Paris was dirty, and some parts of it even stank like a sewer. Everyone around him smoked, polluting the air even more. Some of the waiters were rude, and people on the street rarely smiled. He preferred to stay in the darkness of his apartment.

  He reached for a bottle of tranquilizers on the nightstand. Only six five-milligram pills left? The doctors never seemed to prescribe enough. He remembered the unopened bottle of wine on the mantle. If he washed ten milligrams down with wine, it would perhaps make his morning bearable. But his mind would be like gelatin during one of his most challenging classes.

  “Il ne faut pas se laisser aller, Monsieur Amir, la vie continue,” his professor had preached just the week before, when Michel was called in to the private office. One must not let oneself go? What did the professor know?

  His teachers showed their disapproval, making it clear they had sympathized with him long enough. “Life goes on,” they all said. Does it?

  Missing Noora was a pain so deep, at times his chest felt as if it might cave in. Noora died before her life began. How could he explain that to anyone?

  To comfort himself, he toyed with the idea of a suicide plan. He would go to several doctors and have them prescribe tranquilizers. He would swallow them all with a tall glass of whiskey. He didn’t have to go through this pain. He would join Noora. If it weren’t for his father, who had also lost the love of his life, his beautiful wife, Michel would not hesitate. But he could not hurt his father, whose only reason for existence was his son, his heir, and his hope for a brighter future.

  He closed his eyes and imagined a villa by the sea, and Noora by his side. The tarrawah, the incomparable fragrant sea breeze of Alexandria beckoned. He remembered how they had danced on the terrace by the beach. He even remembered the music …

  He had planned to surprise Noora and take her to Alexandria, for the first part of their month-long honeymoon. He had inquired about a summer cottage, not far from where she used to vacation when she was younger. He crunched his pillow.

  What date was it? May 15 or 16? You’d think it was still the middle of winter. April in Paris had come and gone, but the dreary winter refused to make way for spring. Everything was still dead. No sign of rebirth. Like his future. He put the new goose-down pillow over his eyes.

  “MERDE!” he said aloud. He never used to swear—it was against his principles. But he could not bear his life, gloomy-gray Paris, and the miserable rain.

  The only one who understood was Zaffeera. She had lost her sister and her brother.

  In a recent telephone conversation, Michel had mentioned to Zaffeera that he had a stiff neck and a sore back. She responded by sending him a contoured neck pillow and a European featherbed to match. On a monogrammed note card, Zaffeera had written that she hoped the bedding would help. Her penmanship was graceful, even similar to Noora’s. He had not yet responded or taken the time to write back. He noticed the two sisters were in some ways alike, though they didn’t resemble one another at all. Like Noora, she was thoughtful and kind. But she was not Noora.

  He tossed in his lonely bed, grabbed the goose-down pillow, punched it, and threw it across the room. He had to be strong. He would get no sympathy from his professors, and graduation was around the corner. He had to concentrate on his finals, strictly because he did not want to disappoint his father. But one thing was for sure: There was no point in trying to get his average up to where it had been. No point working so hard when death was inevitably there, always waiting in the end.

  CHAPTER 27

  UNCLE KHAYAT’S VILLA

  The seaside villa was freshly painted in white, with peach-colored trimmings around the windows and forest-green wooden shutters. Except for the large window upstairs—the one in Uncle Khayat’s study leading to his verandah—all the shutters were closed.

  Noora pushed open the four-foot wrought iron
gate—the same one she remembered running through when she was a child, with her brothers and sisters, when they first arrived for summer vacations at their uncle’s villa. She rushed through the brick pathway bordered by rose bushes. The same purple roses! She never forgot the pots of overflowing purple, yellow, and white pansies surrounding the front porch, and the bright red bougainvillea climbed so much higher than before, they reached around the two white pillars that separated the front door. Finally, finally! she sang in her heart. She felt as if she were ten years old again, anxiously running up the steps to greet her uncle, then change into a bathing suit and run to the beach with her siblings. She did not see the raised brick in front of her and she tripped. As she got to her feet, she noticed blood pouring out of her scraped knee. Never mind. She looked up. The front door opened and she recognized Mohammed, Uncle Khayat’s houseman, who ran down the steps. Except for gray temples and more lines on his face, Mohammed had not changed. He was holding a baby, about eight or nine months old.

  “Ezayak! How are you, Mohammed? I am Noora Fendil …” she managed to say, out of breath from excitement. “Remember me?”

  “Noora! Daughter of Mr. Farid Fendil. Ezayek! What a wonderful surprise!” he said, happy to see her. “How are you? It’s been so long. How is the Fendil family?”

  “Fine. Hamdallah. Fine. I’m here alone … I mean I’m not right now with my family,” she blurted out quickly.

  “Are you with … a husband?” He looked out to the street to see if there was a car or someone waiting.

  “No! I’m … still in … school.”

  “Ahlan wasahlan, welcome! Please forgive me, how rude of me; let me find a bandage for that knee. I am so sorry you fell”

  “I’m fine, really.”

  “Hamdallah, it does not look bad,” he said, looking at her wound.

  “It’s nothing, nothing at all,” Noora said, eyes welling, and unable to hold back her joy at finally being there.

  He guided Noora inside, and still holding the baby, who squealed and gurgled, he rushed down a long corridor.

  The interior of the house was dark. Noora wondered why the green shutters weren’t open. Inside, the atmosphere seemed different.

  “How is everyone?” Mohammed asked again when he returned. He handed her a wet hand cloth. “Sit down, please. I’ll get you the first aid kit. It’s in the drawer in the kitchen.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, patting her wound. “Please, no need for that. You see? The blood stopped,” she laughed. “Silly me. I wasn’t looking where I was going, I was so happy to finally be here!”

  “Are you on vacation?”

  “Yes. No, well, on an expedition, with … school. ” Maybe she would tell him the truth after she saw her uncle.

  “That’s wonderful. Are you staying far from here? I didn’t see a car,” he said, turning to open one of the closed windows.

  While Noora tried to think of another lie, the houseman made his way back to the vestibule and closed the front door.

  When he returned, the baby in Mohammed’s arm gurgled happily and made saliva bubbles.

  “I took a cab to surprise my uncle. We’re staying in town … at the … Cecile. The hotel.”

  “Ah … beautiful hotel. Far away.”

  “I hired a taxi driver. Is the baby … a boy?” Noora asked to change the subject. Whose baby was it? Where was her uncle?

  “Yes. Hamdallah, a blessing. Miss Fendil, it has been many years since we had the pleasure of a visit from your family,” he said, staring at the right side of her eye.

  Noora felt self-conscious. She forgot to remove the elastic band that tied her hair back in a ponytail, and revealed the scar that ran from her right temple down to her cheek.

  “May I offer you a glass of lemonade?” he said, guiding her to the drawing room.

  Noora did not recognize the gaudy furniture, and the room looked more cluttered than she remembered. There were few toys in the corner of the floor.

  “Oh, no thank you. I’m sorry, I should have called first. I … didn’t think he would mind my visit. Where is my uncle?”

  When Mohammed told her, Noora had to hold on to the sturdy wing chair next to her.

  “Your uncle sold the villa and moved to France about two months ago, to be close to his doctor. I am very sorry, Miss Fendil; I thought maybe he had corresponded with your father. I was never more sad than when Mr. Khayat left. I am still here because hamdallah, your uncle gave the family that bought the villa good recommendations and they invited me to continue to work here, for them. They are from Cairo. They’re all at the beach right now. I’m sure they would love to meet you. I expect them back soon …”

  Noora could no longer hear what the houseman was telling her, except for the words that echoed like an alarm: Your uncle sold the villa and moved to France.

  Tears inundated her face as she ran through streets of Aboukir—streets, alleys, boulevards she no longer recognized. Pollution had taken over. What did it matter anymore?

  Uncle Khayat had left Alexandria.

  She hopped on a moving tram and found a seat by an open window. The strong wind slapped her face, and she wished she were someone else in a faraway place.

  In less than a dozen or so years, the elegant villas all over the outskirts of Alexandria were now overpopulated apartments. Manicured lawns became dried-out weeds on cracked sidewalks filled with trash.

  Noora stepped down from the tram at the last station that took her downtown. Feeling numb, she walked along the crescent-shaped Corniche. The once-famous seacoast road, with its turquoise shores, had lost its glow, and everything appeared dusty and dim.

  Miles away from Aboukir, Noora found herself at Ras El Tin, the Alexandria pier. She gazed at the cargo ships that bobbed on the horizon.

  “God is punishing me,” she said to a pigeon that had landed nearby. The pigeon jerked its head and flew off.

  She sat on an old stone bench and watched as waves crashed against the square cement rocks that protected the sea wall below.

  Um Faheema would not like it if she lost courage and faith. Maybe things would be better in France. She remembered Dweezoul’s words: “Things always happen for good reason.”

  As she stood at the pier where she had once fished with her uncle, she imagined Uncle Khayat fishing in the South of France. Perhaps he was sipping his favorite tea and smoking his cherry tobacco pipe on a verandah, in a lovely villa, like the one at Aboukir.

  “Lazzem El Bahr.” Uncle Khayat’s words rang in her ears. We must have the sea.

  Holding her bag, she rocked herself. After a while, she set it down next to her feet and smoothed out her piece of paper on which the houseman had written the address.

  Again, she read the address Mohammed gave her.

  46 Rue Charlemagne, Antibes

  He had also scribbled the phone number. She looked up. She had to change her paper bills to coins. She needed to find a public phone. How much would she need to call Antibes?

  She was exhausted. Perhaps she could lie down, but the bench was covered with dried pigeon droppings. A soft bed with a pillow would feel wonderful right now.

  Her eyes wandered tiredly and rested on a fishing boat docked nearby. Aboard was a fisherman weaving his fishing net. She realized that while he worked, he was also watching her under the visor of his navy blue cap.

  She looked away and wondered if she had enough money to stay at a hotel for one night, or maybe two. But the hotel would ask for her passport and a credit card. A woman alone in this part of the world probably looked suspicious. She thought of her new friend, Yasmina, from the train. She wondered if she could stay with her and her mother for one night. But she could not impose. She sighed and closed her eyes, thinking of the Hotel Cecile, where she could luxuriate in a bubble bath.

  Mohammed seemed concerned about Uncle Khayat, who Noora learned had cancer. She regretted not asking Mohammed how serious the cancer was. Uncle Khayat had no wife or children. She could take care of hi
m.

  But why did he sell his villa? Did he not plan to return to Alexandria? Perhaps he needed the money.

  Noora looked up, startled by the voice of the fisherman, who was now standing a few feet away.

  “Good day. You need assistance?” he asked in broken Arabic.

  “No, thank you. I was just leaving,” she said, but her tired body could not budge.

  A pigeon landed on the man’s left shoulder, then another on his right. He pulled out some seeds from his pocket and tossed them as the pigeons launched after their meal. He sat on the opposite end of the bench. More pigeons gathered around the two of them. He extended an index finger and a pigeon rested on it. Slowly he turned his hand, opening his palm full of seeds. The pigeon ate out of the man’s hand. Noora could not help but smile.

  “Where do you need to go, Miss?” he asked in Arabic.

  “Nowhere. I am just … enjoying the sights.”

  “Do you speak Greek?”

  “No.”

  “Fanransawee?” he asked in Arabic.

  “Oui, je parle un peu Francais,” she answered.

  “I can speak English better zan French,” he said in English with a strong Greek accent.

  “I can also speak English better than French,” she replied with a smile.

  “I like to practice English,” he said. “See over dere? All the boats?”

  “Yes.”

  “Men digging big statues of Cleopatra.”

  “Really? Divers?” Noora asked, staring out to sea.

  “Divers. Yes. Lots of people out dere. They are gone for now. They be back tomorrow, early.”

  “That’s good.”

  “No. Eez terribileh. Catastrophique. Too many people. Photographers. Movie cameras. Too much agitation. Bad luck. Bad for fishing. That’s why we leave sooner.”

  A white dove landed on the Greek’s lap, and he caressed its back nonchalantly. The dove did not appear the least bit frightened. The man stuck his finger out and the dove balanced on it for a moment before flying off serenely into the sunlight.