The Open Door

by Latifa al-Zayyat

  “And just a few days ago I came upon that friend of ours, right there in the middle of a group of fellows, talking so confidently, his eyes shining, everyone listening to him. So I pulled up a chair. He was talking about the last little adventure

  he’d had.”

  Layla stood in the middle of the room, shaking, helpless, disgusted, in a rage. When Ramzi resumed, there was a tone of sadness in his voice. “There’s no way out. Believe me, Mahmud, there is just no way out.”

  This time, Layla could not keep back her scream, and madly she ran from the room. Ramzi went on, rising above his tone of sadness. “We’re all cogs in a big wheel, and that wheel keeps moving and anyone who tries to stop it is crushed. But the clever guy is the one who recognizes the reality of things and profits from it.”

  Mahmud had the melancholy look of someone watching a sunset. But he was still smiling, and as he got to his feet, he said, “I assure you, Dr. Ramzi, that I will not let myself be defeated as your friend was.”

  Layla attacked her father’s bedroom. At the sound of her hoarse shriek—“Papa!”—her father jumped up from his bed, startled and frightened. “What is it? What?” Worry palsied his limbs; he stood there shaking, looking at her changed demeanor, at her eyes, blazing from her face. He stood waiting for her to speak, to tell him what disaster had struck them now. Layla gestured hysterically to discount this possibility. “Nothing. There’s nothing.”

  For a moment her father looked as if he would faint; then the blood began to circulate again. When his eyesight began to return to normal and things took on their customary appearance, he spoke. “If there’s nothing, then why are you rushing in like this? How can you come in here without asking permission?”

  Layla flung out the sentence that had formed in her mind in one rushed breath, as if she feared it would never come out otherwise.

  “I need to speak to you about my getting married.”

  Layla heard her own words one by one as if someone else were saying them. Fear clutched Muhammad Sulayman’s heart. This was indeed the brink of disaster, one more serious than any he’d faced in the past. He must do his utmost to get past it. His grey eyes narrowed and gleamed terrifically as he stared at his daughter.

  “What do you need?” There was no anger in his voice, not even the suggestion of it. It was an icy voice, the cracked, metallic tone of a tired old radio.

  “I need—” Layla could not go on. He was walking toward her with short, mechanical steps, face hard, body rigid, a weapon trained on her, coming nearer slowly, nearer, ready to fire. “What do you need?” His voice sounded a despair far deeper than anger, that despair of someone who has lost everything and has nothing left to lose, a man who would not hesitate to do anything at all. Layla saw a murderous look in his eyes, murderous but empty of anger; coldly murderous. She spoke in a choked voice, putting her hand to her neck as if she were protecting it from him. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” She wanted to back away, but she could not move. The fear stopped her dead, and she went on murmuring, “Nothing. Nothing at all, Papa. Nothing, Papa.”

  With that pleading call the murderous look was pulled from her face. He shook his head as he turned, as if he were waking from a particularly terror-ridden nightmare. Layla stepped back toward the door, wiping her face with both hands and murmuring, “Nothing, nothing at all.”

  Ramzi filled the doorway, speaking to her father.

  “It’s no use.”

  Layla shivered from the top of her head to her toes. She gripped the back of a chair in time to keep herself from collapsing to the floor. Her father turned to face Ramzi, a weak smile on his lips, and spoke in a shaky voice. “I knew as much. I knew it was no use. May God compensate us.” Shifting his gaze to Layla, her father’s eyes were sharp. “Our Lord is Generous, our Lord has truly compensated us. We lost a child and gained a man.” His gaze settled on Ramzi.

  “We gained you, my son.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THAT NIGHT, LYING IN BED, Layla wished she could die. She longed to close her eyes and sleep; morning would arrive and she would not open them. She would go away, leave, escape whole and in peace—no problems, no roughness, no quarrels. But that is not how people die. They do not simply close their eyes and die. There has to be a cause of death. Illness? How about typhoid, for instance? Yes, typhoid was an easy sickness to have, a pleasant, lovely illness that anesthetized you. She could go to sleep, lose consciousness gradually, day after day, slipping off in calm and quiet. Around her bed would gather the tearful faces, trying to hold fast and hard to her as if they were barriers keeping her from slipping into her dreams. Then the faces would vanish and a cloud would envelop her, would thicken, would make those barriers disappear. Layla slipped off to sleep, to her dreaming. At first, she slept a peaceful sleep full of calm dreams. Here she was, stretched out on the deck of a ship afloat, with no idea of where she was going or whence she had come. She did not know who she was even; she had no past, no future. She understood nothing except that she was lying on her back, a lovely stillness in her heart, blue sea-like eternal space surrounding her, the sun’s rays dancing on the azure water, sparkling like diamonds, dancing across her body as it lay there, teasing it, subjecting it to a lovely numbness.

  Now she was pushing on a door, entering a garden. She had never seen the like. It was a white garden; all the flowers were white and the trees were crowned in whiteness. It was a sea, widening into the distance, a sea of white flowers, strange flowers, tall, as tall as a human being. Tall and white, towering, beautiful, one leaning gently toward the next to pat it tenderly, to almost whisper to it as if it were a human being. Layla pushed her way through the flowers; they bent over her, waving, caressing her cheek, intoxicating her with their scent. She ran, laughing short, breathless laughs. She reached the garden’s end, refreshed, exuberant, filled with a bubbling happiness that she could barely endure. She sat on a bench surrounded by a jasmine tree whose petals fell on her head. She reached out her hand, and there was the jasmine, arranged of its own accord into a crown over her hair. She leaned back softly, the sea of flowers filling her eyes.

  The blooms parted to reveal a child running toward her. Her child. Layla hugged her son eagerly and lifted him onto her lap. The furious joy in her body subsided, transformed into a lovely tranquility. In silent adoration she rubbed her child’s arm gently, his pale arm, translucent as if light shone from it. She yearned to spend the rest of her life sitting there, gazing reverently at her son as he sat in her lap. But the child did not want to sit still. He wanted to play, to run, to take off, to discover the beautiful world around him. She kissed him on his soft little mouth one last time, and let him go.

  The son stood facing her, and an astonishing thing happened. Before her eyes, it happened. Her son was growing, older and taller, and changing into a man. A tall, brown-skinned man from whom light shone as it had from the body of her son. Who was this man? Who was he, this man who looked at her with a smile not to be resisted? She must know him; of course she did. But who was he? She knew them; she knew those black eyes, she knew them when they were full of strength and spine and readiness. She knew them, too, when that bold hardness melted and they became so soft and gentle, so full of sympathy. Whose were they? If only she could recognize them! Who was this man who gazed at her with an irresistible smile?

  Layla strained her mind to figure out his identity, as if her life depended on the knowledge. A rumbling reached her ears, the sound of a storm, and sent a shiver into her hands. Darkness had come over the garden; her son had disappeared, swallowed up by the murkiness. Now a ray of light gleaming on the horizon was all that was visible of him. Layla sat there, tortured by a vague sense that she had done something wrong. The feeling grew, crystallized, floated on the surface. If she had been able to figure out who the man was, her son would not have been lost to her. The storm would not have risen; the darkness would not have descended. The wind grew stronger, stronger, a whip lashing the garden, the beautiful white
flowers. They swayed and bent, clearing the way for the chastising storm but returning to their fullness, as tall as they had been, more beautiful, more defiant, until even the darkness could not drown them. The branches crowned with white cleaved that darkness as if they were the first signs of dawn, scattering the darkness. The storm died, and all was still.

  Then the door swung open and a crowd of men and women came into the garden, led by a man in a black suit. In slow, measured steps they approached, their heads high, bodies taut with readiness as if they had come on a mission. Layla tried to slip away, to flee; she hid behind the jutting branches of the jasmine tree so that she could see them without being seen. From a distance she saw the man in the black suit motioning silently to the group. She saw the crowd break apart, moving with the same measured, firm steps, to form a circle that encased the white flowers. Amidst the flowers stood the man, and he gestured to them to begin. Suddenly there flashed in the gloom shiny new sickles that quivered in those figures’ hands. Where had they gotten them? There had been nothing in their hands a moment ago.

  The men and women began to tear out the flowers one by one, rhythmically, purposively. Blow by blow, row after row, tall stalks fell to the ground, lifeless. Men and women moved forward, row by row, hard faces and sad eyes, as if performing a duty that weighed heavily upon them yet must be done. Every time one of them slowed down, the man in the black suit pointed and smiled, grimacing, an animal stalking prey as he watched each row of stalks fall, as if he could not rest until all of the flowers had fallen beneath his feet, to become cold, pale corpses.

  In the distance a bird keened. A woman straightened up, the scythe gleaming in her right hand. With her other hand she wiped away a tear that had escaped from her eye before she bent to tear out another flower. Layla swallowed her scream. That woman—she knew her. She knew her. It was Safaa’s mother. It was Dawlat Hanim, Safaa’s mother.

  Now Layla saw all the faces clearly. The men’s were close-shaven and the women’s gleamed with makeup. Among those many faces looking so alike, she could now make out some that had features she recognized. There was her father; there was her aunt, Umm Gamila. This man in the black suit, his back to her—it must be him. It must. Ramzi turned his face toward Layla, as if to confirm his identity. Layla compressed her lips so she would not scream; she held tighter to the jasmine tree that hid her. When the sea of white flowers lay like a carpet over the ground, the men and women tossed their sickles aside. The men arranged bricks in the shape of a big circle while the women bent over the flowers, gathering them into bundles. Every woman hugged a bundle to her breast as she would embrace her newborn and walked to the circle the men had constructed. Gently, they all let go of their bundles, putting them on the ground, and stepped back. The black-suited man lit a fire amidst the bundles. The men and women stood in a vast circle watching the flowers burn. In the brightness of the flames their faces appeared convulsed with pain; sweat stood out on their brows. It was as if a part of them burned. But not a single one moved. They muttered prayers, supplications; they seemed fixed to the ground, leaning on each other for support. The branches began to dry and splinter, they began to wail.

  From behind, a woman with flowing hair broke the ranks and pushed forward, trying to throw herself into the fire. An angry murmuring rose from the crowd. Some men returned the woman to the circle and stillness prevailed, as if it was necessary to their peace of mind that no one move, that they stand like that, held to the earth, shoulder to shoulder, one supporting the next.

  The flowers turned to ashes; the fire flared, trilling, and began to die. It could only be seen in scattered spots, a weak glow. But the smoke crouched in thick, horrid masses across the faces of sky and earth, pressing down on the earth’s breast to crush it. And Layla awoke, frightened and unable to breathe.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  TIME PASSED. AND TIME BLUNTS the sharp edges of our experiences, and attenuates the threads that bind us to them, day by day, so that the most wounding of events becomes ordinary, indistinguishable almost, part of what defines daily life, to be embraced rather than pushed away.

  Layla did not do as she wanted; she did not kill herself. Nor did she flee as she had been so determined to do, nor did she blow up in Ramzi’s face as she had feared she might. She no longer even cried in bed every night. She did not run through mental scenarios of fights with her mother, her father, and Ramzi. Her emotions seemed numb, as if she were under the influence of a permanent anesthesia; she no longer reacted to anything. Even Ramzi could no longer spark her loathing—as violent and blazing as it had been—for, with the passing of days the sharpness of her animosity eroded. She began to endure him as she endured the commands of her father and the rebukes of her mother. All that remained was a bitter taste that never left her throat, a bitterness to which she awoke every morning and with which she went to sleep every night, and a vacuum in her chest, a sense of want that she felt at times of particular loneliness. It was the resigned emptiness of discovering a sudden and permanent loss, something cherished that will never be replaced or compensated. These were moments of acute awareness, when she found herself muttering unconsciously, “Strengthen me, Lord, strengthen me.”

  Where was this plea coming from? From what depths did it suddenly spill out like this? It was always the same entreaty. But why did she beg God’s help? So that God would strengthen her to bear her fate? Or to change it? Layla did not stop to ask herself these questions or to contemplate the answers, for it was of the utmost importance right now that she avoid any tendency to stop and think. Without being aware of it, she guarded herself against pain. It was like shrinking from touching a bad wound, for the pus might erupt, bringing a worse pain to which her normal human power of endurance was not equal. Without being aware of it, she organized her life in such a way that she was not able to stop and think. She would go to the college and return with her arms full of books from the library, mostly short story collections, not because she preferred short stories but because they required less concentration than, for instance, novels. Hardly would she finish her memorization homework for classes before she was off, reading and reading. Like any addict, she would go on reading, reading, without necessarily drawing pleasure from it, without reacting one way or another, emotionally or aesthetically. But it did not matter: she read. Page after page, story after story, forgetting each one as she embarked on the next. No matter how hard she exercised her brain she could not recall the plot without going back and skimming the story. Like a robot she read, her eyes exhausted, her head spinning, something indefinable constricting her chest as she read—fast, greedily, breathing unevenly, as if someone stood over her, whip in hand. The book would fall from her hand; she would turn out the light, sleep, wake, like a patient under anesthesia, to face life again.

  And day after day, the apartment filled with furniture—the furnishings of her future home. Day after day she made the rounds of shops, endless rounds, behind Gamila and her mother, interfering only to halt their spendthrift progress. She felt guilty, as if she were stealing every penny that her father paid to furnish the new home.

  Standing dazzled before some piece of merchandise or other, Gamila would say, “What do you think of it, Layla?”

  Layla would shrug. “Whatever.”

  Gamila’s voice would grow sharp with annoyance. “Don’t you have any opinions about anything at all?”

  In the past, she had had her own views on things. She had had a clear idea of the home she would want for herself; she could even envision exactly the way it would look. There would be only a few rooms, but they would be spacious. The sitting room would be carpeted, not strewn with fancy rugs, just carpeted in gray. The chairs and sofas would be comfortable, upholstered ones, with pillows scattered across the sofas in bright and varying shades. The furniture would sit discreetly in the corners, leaving restful spaces where one could draw a good breath. But now it was all the same to her. Everything—whether or not after graduation she worked in jo
urnalism, as she had always wanted, or teaching, as Ramzi wanted. Becoming a journalist no longer seemed to have any great importance. She had always wanted writing to be her profession; she wanted to give rein to her ideas, and to express the thoughts of those around her. She really had begun to write, and she had been told that she could write well. Even when she spoke, people noticed her meticulous powers of expression. One of her classmates had always been very enthusiastic whenever he heard her speak. “You must write,” he would say. “You are a born writer.” And she did write, and dreamed of the day when she would become a real writer.

  But that had all been a long time ago. Now, nothing interested her. Anyway, she was incapable of writing now; she could not even speak clearly. The words would stop on her lips; she would stutter, stumble, completely unable to finish a sentence. Sometimes she would respond to questions put to her with a quirkiness of which she was not aware until she saw the look of astonishment in the eyes of her listeners. Moreover, the teaching profession was an easy one; it would not require deep thought or any special ability, she was sure. A teacher prepared the lesson, delivered it, and then her task was done; it was all the same to her.

  It was all the same to her—whether her wedding took place after she began working as a teacher in September of 1956, as Ramzi preferred, or in July, immediately after graduation, as her father wanted. Her father was urging a speedy wedding. Ever since that day he had been trying to rush it; ever since that day his life had been an anxious one.

  A few days after Mahmud’s wedding, her father intimated to Ramzi that he was ready and anxious for the contract-signing ceremony. But Ramzi did not take the hint. Her father tried again, more openly this time. Ramzi replied that he preferred the contract signing and wedding itself to take place simultaneously. Moreover, to even think about setting the date before Layla had graduated was premature. Reluctantly, the father said no more; from time to time, he gave his daughter searching looks, as if trying to gauge the extent of her strength. If his gaze always moved away satisfied, not for a moment could he forget the day on which she had burst into his room like someone gone mad, screaming. He kept his worry well hidden, yet it came to the surface whenever Mahmud arrived from Port Said to pay them one of his brief, terse visits. Something was gone between these two men; a link had been severed. Gone was that rare and lovely flash of understanding, whereby words on the son’s lips could bring tears to the father’s eyes, whereby the son would understand the thoughts of the father immediately and wordlessly. Now they were strangers to each other: simply two men, civil but distant. The father would inquire about his son’s health and would ask how his work was going; Mahmud would answer politely. Then the father could think of nothing more to say to his son, nor could the son find words to exchange with his father. The flow of conversation would stop as it might between strangers, although each would try to set a trap for the other. What never left the father’s mind was the one subject that conversation never touched, for if it did not come up at all, it must not be real or heartfelt. He had forbidden all of them to mention Mahmud’s marriage to Sanaa, just as if it had never taken place. In the father’s mind and in the son’s, whenever they were together, was the same thought, the same topic, the one that conversation could not address, and that could not be real if silence surrounded it.