Nekropolis

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  The older man raises his hand and the younger man stops. “So,” the older man says to me, “have you seen your daughter?”

  “No, no no no,” I say.

  The young man pulls the chair away from Nabil, sets it at the table, helps Nabil up, and sits him in it. Nabil cringes from the help. Nabil looks at me. He has round dark eyes and his mop of hair has a clump of dust stuck in it near his eyebrow. He opens his mouth, maybe to say where Hariba is, maybe to say something to me, but I think it’s to call, “Mama,” and I can’t help him. He closes his mouth without saying anything, but I hear my baby boy calling me in my head.

  “You haven’t seen her or heard from her?” the older man asks me.

  I shake my head.

  The young man grabs Nabil’s hands and wrestles them behind the chair and snaps the bracelets on him.

  “Wait!” I say. “I haven’t seen her! Why are you doing this?”

  “We know you have,” the older man says simply.

  My heart sinks. The ground is gone beneath me.

  The younger man hefts the hose, watching me. The older man is watching me, too. But not carefully.

  The most frightening thing is that they don’t care. If we say something, if we’re silent. If we die, if we live. These men will go home and sit down to dinner and not think of us again. The older man will go home and his wife will ask him how was his day and he will shrug and say, “You know how it goes,” and she will put the platter of couscous down and the family will eat and talk of other things, like whether his daughter will have a boy or a girl, or about the job that the neighbor’s boy has gotten, or even how much cumin is in the couscous. The young man will go home to his young wife with lips like berries and they will have sex when they go to bed, his muscles will ripple in his shoulders when he takes her in his arms and she’ll think of what a handsome, wonderful animal he is, and not once will anyone think of us.

  “No, no no no,” I say, because it doesn’t really matter what I say.

  The younger man raises the black hose and Nabil watches it with his eyes, then turns his face away. The younger man swings it, without rancor. Efficiently, like a soccer player or like the long-legged horses we saw at the track, confident in the play of bone and muscle. He strikes the side of Nabil’s face again and again as Nabil tries to get out of the way, struggling until the chair clatters over.

  The young man reaches down and grabs the back of the chair and hauls it upright again, then hits Nabil some more. The older man raises his hand and the younger man stops. The younger man is breathing a little heavily from exertion. Maybe the older man has stopped him so he can have a little break. The kind of thing that one thinks of for one’s partner. Nabil’s head sags forward and he is bleeding from his forehead and around his eye.

  “So you say you haven’t heard from your daughter?” the older man says.

  I cannot say anything. I cry into the palm of my hand, covering my mouth. I’m rocking back and forth. I can’t speak for crying and I’m afraid because they will kill Nabil and they will kill me because in their eyes we are nothing.

  The older man sighs. “Let them go,” he says, irritated.

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  They dump us out a door and I sit with Nabil’s poor bleeding head in my hands for a while. No one helps us. I don’t blame them. I didn’t even help Nabil and I’m his mother.

  Eventually I can get him to stand up, although he says he is dizzy and everything is blurry. We stand in the dirty alley and he retches and throws up. I hold him standing because if I let him down, I’m afraid I won’t be able to get him back up, so he vomits down his front and down part of my chador. Then I try to steady him and we walk like two drunks, swaying from one side of the alley to the other.

  People stare at us in the street. I’m ashamed. But we can’t stop and there’s nowhere to go except home. Even if my sister Zehra’s house were closer, I wouldn’t go there. It’s time to start making dinner by the time we get home.

  I lay Nabil down on his own pallet and I take his shirt and pants off him as if he were a little boy rather than a grown man, and I wash his face clean.

  “My head aches,” he says.

  I brew him mint tea and he drinks it at my urging, and then I let him doze. I change and clean up and sit in the gathering darkness. I will wake him every hour. Old women don’t need much sleep.

  I don’t know if they know that Hariba is at my sister’s. I don’t think so. If they did, they would just arrest Hariba, wouldn’t they? Maybe they want to catch the harni, too. But Hariba would probably tell them, she’s weak and sick. I can’t go see her, though. What if they’re following Nabil and me? It is impossible to know what to do.

  I wake Nabil and make him drink some more tea. “I feel sick,” he says.

  “Lie still,” I say.

  “I feel as if my head were at the center of something and my body were spinning around like the hands of a clock,” he says.

  I get a wet rag and lay it on his forehead and hold his hand until he falls asleep.

  I nod during the night, and wake up not certain where I am, but each time I wake up, I wake Nabil as well. “Mama,” he says one time, “I keep having bad dreams.”

  I sing to him until he falls asleep.

  * * *

  Zehra, my younger sister, comes the next day, bearing soup for breakfast. It’s harira, full of chickpeas and onions, kusbur and tomatoes and salt butter.

  “I heard,” she says grimly. “The police, they’re like vultures. People are murdered in the streets and what do they do? Beat innocents. Sister, you look exhausted, go to sleep.”

  “I can’t sleep in the day,” I say, irritable. “And you shouldn’t come here. What if they’re watching us?”

  “Then they will see me come to visit my sister and nephew.” She looks past the partition to see Nabil, and I have the bitter pleasure of hearing her gasp when she sees his face. “Poor baby,” she says, whispered like a prayer.

  Maybe now she’ll stop thinking about Hariba as a victim and see what the girl’s done to her family.

  “It’s okay, Aunt Zehra,” Nabil says. “It looks worse than it is.”

  Zehra feeds him soup and then makes me eat some, too. Her harira is very good, but I like it with more cumin than she does. Still, it’s good. It’s good.

  She beckons me to go outside with her, where Nabil can’t hear. There she strokes my cheeks and the tears stand in her eyes. With my sister, all her emotions are there. She’s strong, angry when she wants to be and sad when she wants to be. “Hariba,” she says.

  “What?” I say, and fear clutches at my chest. “Did they come for her?”

  “No, no, no,” she whispers. “But she’s not as well today as she was. She has a bit of a fever. You need to come to her.”

  “Come to her? They might follow me! They might be watching!”

  “Take your wreaths and go to the Moussin,” Zehra says. “Watch everything. If you think you are being followed, come back here, otherwise go to my house.”

  “I can’t leave Nabil,” I say.

  “I’ll stay with Nabil. Go see your daughter.”

  “The doctor-” but I have no money for the doctor and he’s a crook anyway.

  Zehra shrugs. “He said it could be a few days before she improves. Maybe this is nothing.”

  I don’t have very much to sell. I’ve been sitting with Hariba instead of making wreaths. But I pack what I have and trudge off to the Moussin. I spread them out. The police, if they have followed me, would expect me to. The Moussin is a crowded place, I don’t know how I can tell if someone is following me. There are people who are here all the time, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t informers. And there are people who come once or twice.

  I’ve brought paper, so I start making flowers. I’m tired, but my fingers think for me, and the sun isn’t so bad. I can barely hear the drone of prayer being sung from the Moussin, and I lift my face for a moment to feel what bre
eze there is. A beautiful young man looks at my wreaths. He has hair that falls in looser curls than Nabil’s, and he wears it a little long. He looks almost womanly.

  “These are lovely,” he says.

  “Thank you,” I say. “You are mourning someone?”

  He shrugs, which is an odd sort of answer. “I’m looking for someone. I have a friend whose mother makes wreaths.”

  I’m frightened. “Most of us here are mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons,” I say.

  He nods. “My friend is in trouble and I’m worried about her.”

  He’s secret police, of course. I can’t think of what to say. I don’t say anything.

  “Her name is Hariba,” he says.

  What do I say? What do the police expect me to say? “I used to have a daughter named Hariba, but she is dead.”

  “Dead?” he says.

  “Dead to me,” I say.

  “What do you mean?” he asks. “Did she die?”

  He’s not the secret police. He’s someone she knows. But maybe not. I don’t know how clever the police are. “What is it to you?” I ask.

  “It’s nothing,” he says. “It’s nothing.” He sits down in the dust of the plaza and hides his face in his hands. His shoulders don’t move, although he might be crying. But when he takes his hands away, his face is desolate but dry.

  “You’re a friend of hers?” I ask. “How do you know her?”

  “I’m the harni, “ he says.

  No, he isn’t. He’s human. He looks human, he acts human. I study him. I’ve never seen a harni, but I imagined they would have a falseness about them. His humanness, if he is the harni, is the most frightening thing about him.

  “She wanted her mother, so I thought she should go home,” he says.

  “She’s a thief,” I say. “And you are blasphemy.” I collect my things. “I wouldn’t have her in my home.”

  “Is she still alive?” he asks.

  I won’t speak to him. I could call for the police right now, except he would tell them that he contacted her family. “If you have any feelings for Hariba,” I say, “leave this city. Go far away, where no one will ever find you.”

  “So she’s not dead.” He scrambles to his feet, brushing away the dust. “How is she?”

  “Get away from me,” I say. “You’ve brought nothing to me and my family but pain. Get away from me!”

  He bites his lip.

  Very human. Very beautiful. Like the big gray racehorse. I can almost understand Hariba. Such pain in his face. I don’t dare look at him. I walk away.

  * * *

  I take a long way from the Moussin to Zehra’s house. Maybe the young man who claims he’s a harni is sent by the secret police. Maybe he’s really a harni, but not Hariba’s harni . Or maybe the police have caught him and are using him to find Hariba. Wheels within wheels. I don’t know what to think, but I walk forever. My poor old feet hurt and my heels are sore, but I cut through alleys barely wide enough for me, and then I watch to make sure no one comes out.

  I don’t tell Hariba what I saw. She’s dozing, fitful, but it’s enough for me to sit down and let my niece Husniya bring me some mint tea. Husniya whispers, “How is Nabil?”

  I shrug. “I think he’ll be all right.”

  I drink my tea and doze.

  “Mama?” Hariba says after a while.

  “Hmmm?” I say.

  “Is Nabil all right?”

  “Nabil is fine,” I say. Who told her?

  “It’s my fault,” she says.

  I don’t know what to say, so I give her a sip of my tea.

  “Poor Nabil,” she murmers. “Poor Mama. Poor Akhmim.”

  “Hush,” I say.

  While I am sitting there, Ayesha comes in. Her daughter is with her mother and she has brought tamarind drink to tempt Hariba. Ayesha has grown up to be a pretty woman. When she and Hariba were young, Ayesha was the follower, but now that she has a husband and a daughter, she’s somehow left Hariba behind. Hariba, for all her experience in rich people’s homes, is still a girl, artificially preserved in the way spinsters are.

  I get up, ready to go home and see to Nabil, and let Ayesha take my place.

  4

  The Invisible Rule

  My daughter, Tariam, cries when I leave to go to see Hariba. She loves my mother, but she loves to go out with me and she hates it when I leave her behind. Her red furious face is the last thing I see, and I’m really glad to get out of the house.

  Hariba always wanted to be a saint. It’s been her downfall, I think. We were best friends, I suppose we’re still best friends, so I know her better than anyone. I don’t mean that she wanted to be a religious saint, although she was always pretty religious, like her mother. She wanted to be right. She wanted to be with qi’aida, the invisible rule. I just want something other than the Nekropolis. I hate the Nekropolis. Alem, my husband, is looking for a flat in the part of town called Debbaghin. We haven’t found one that we like that we can afford. But my aunt Chama lived there for a while before her husband divorced her and she says we will. It just takes time.

  The Nekropolis is all right, it’s where I grew up, but I want Tariam to grow up in a place that’s safer.

  I’m not particularly thinking about anything when I see the harni standing there, at the end of my street. For a second I assume he’s a beggar, then I realize who it is. He sees me and comes toward me. My blood just freezes, I’m so frightened. I know he’s not going to do anything. The three times I’ve met him before he was nice. Today he has this hangdog way, as if he expects to be kicked.

  “Ayesha?” he says.

  I can’t think of what to say or do, so I say, “What do you want?”

  “Is Hariba all right?” he says.

  “Hariba is fine,” I say.

  “Her mother said she was dead.”

  The harni talked to Hariba’s mother? I love Hariba’s mother dearly, she’s almost a second mother to me, but she’s as old-fashioned as they come. I can’t imagine her with the harni .

  “Hariba’s not dead,” I say. “She’s getting better, I think.”

  His face opens up with relief and I feel sorry for him. “I have to go to work,” he says, “but can I talk to you a little, tomorrow? Here?”

  “No!” I say. He’s the cause of all this. Where we’re standing, no one in the little shop across the street can see us, thank Allah. Old Miss Nessa is a terrible gossip.

  “Please,” he says. “I just want to know if she’s all right.”

  I go around him and walk as fast as I can. I’m afraid to look back. I almost expect him to put his hand on my shoulder, but of course he doesn’t. When I finally can’t stand it anymore and look back, he’s still standing there.

  “I’ll be here tomorrow!” he calls after me. On the street. I’m so embarrassed I pretend he isn’t talking to me and keep walking.

  It’s halfway across the Nekropolis to Hariba’s Aunt Zehra. Hariba’s Aunt Zehra is like my own aunt, we spent so much time there when we were growing up. Everybody watched Hariba and her sister and brothers because their father was dead and her mother had to work. For the first few minutes, my face is burning from meeting the harni . But then the walk helps me calm down, and my new sandals hurt where the strap rubs across my heel, which is a small and petty thing to think about compared to Hariba’s troubles, but it still hurts. My mother’s always comparing hurts that way. If I said I was sad because we were poor, she’d say, “But think how lucky you are that you have a roof over your head, not like the old man under the bridge who doesn’t have any place to go.” I was a married woman when I finally thought of something to say back: “Just because some man’s worse off than me doesn’t mean that I’m not poor, and I’m certainly not going to be happy about it.” I never have the nerve to say it to my mother, though. I just look at my husband, Alem, who knows what I’m thinking, and he tries not to laugh.

  Zehra’s neighbors are an old couple. The old man is sitting outside, watc
hing the world go by. He nods at me. I wonder what he thinks of Hariba.

  Hariba’s mother is sitting with Hariba. She doesn’t look so good, Hariba’s troubles have made her face pull in and down. Even when Fhassin was in trouble, she didn’t change, she was always little and neither young nor old, but now she’s lined and tired. What could the harni have said to her? Did she even know what he was? Well, if she told him that Hariba was dead, then she did know who he was, and I probably shouldn’t have told him it wasn’t true.

  She gets up when I come in. “I have to go and see to Nabil,” Hariba’s mother says. “Now that you’re here, I’ll go on home.” Nabil never left home, and Hariba’s mother takes care of him as if he were still a boy.

  Hariba’s feverish. She opens her eyes and smiles at me. “Hi, sweetie,” I say. I can’t tell her about meeting the harni . “Tariam drew a picture for you.”

  She holds it in her trembling hand. “Give her a kiss for me,” she says.

  I think Hariba regrets giving up children the most. It’s not as if being jessed means she can’t have children, but who would marry her? Unless she could buy back her bond, and Hariba always said she was saving her money to have a little when she was old.

  “Have you seen Akhmim?” she whispers.

  I’m so startled I don’t know what to say. How could she know?

  “Ayesha,” she whispers, looking to make sure Zehra’s niece can’t hear us. “I need to see him.”

  “He got you into trouble,” I say.

  “No, no, no,” she says. “It’s not like that. Can you find him? Have you seen him?”

  I shake my head, lying.

  “Please, please. I need to see him.”

  “Zehra would never let him in here,” I say.

  She sighs and surrenders, closing her eyes. After a moment I realize she’s crying.

  “Oh, honey,” I say.

  “I’m so scared,” she says. “Ayesha,” she says, “you’re the only one I can trust.”

  I’m scared, too.