by Rasha Adly
Yasmine pushed back her chair with a clatter and started to stack the empty plates. “It was Mom’s fault they got that close.” She carried the dishes over to the sink. “She was the one who let her into her home and let her get close to her family. She shared all her secrets with her, everything she did, everyone she met, what happened, what was going to happen—all the details of her relationship with Dad, and the rough time she was having with him.” Clattering, she stacked the plates, then started on the glasses. “She let her spend time alone with Dad whenever she came to visit—sitting and talking to him while Mom was in the kitchen cooking. And she even insisted that Dad drive her home! She practically put out a welcome mat for them to have an affair.”
“Whatever the temptation,” her grandmother insisted, “if you’re loyal by nature, you don’t give in.”
Yasmine’s hands stilled on the dishes, lost in a faraway corner of memory. She could still remember that Jezebel—skimpy clothes, bright red lipstick, overpowering perfume, and throaty, silky voice. Mom was just the opposite—she dressed modestly and everything about her was soft—her prettiness, her voice. How hard would it have been for Mom to recognize that that woman was doing her best to get close to Dad and entrap him? They tried to hide what was going on, never suspecting that a ten-year-old could recognize the gestures and glances that went between them, the whispers that gave it all away.
Poor Mom, making dinner for them in the kitchen while they flirted. God, could they have let her down any worse? What kind of pain must she have felt? What a dagger through the heart. No wonder she couldn’t stand to go on living.
As usual, talking about it brought nothing but pain. The whole thing was like a wound covered in ointments and bandages to stop the bleeding until such time as it might heal—only it never did. Every time she recalled it, the bleeding would start again. Yasmine went into her room, slamming the door.
“There are faithful men! You must know it!” Her grandmother’s yell came through the door. “Don’t let it turn your heart against them all!”
“Don’t worry,” Yasmine muttered with a sad smile, not caring whether or not her grandmother heard. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
6
The next morning, she headed for the office of her former art history professor, Mahmoud Anwar. A good-looking man in his fifties, he had a smattering of white hairs at his temples and unparalleled expertise in the history of art. He was forever researching and seeking out new knowledge. She told him about the painting, and he promised to help. “I’ll come by the lab after classes,” he promised, “and take a look at it.”
Afterward, she went to the lecture hall to teach a class. “Art history,” she began as she had many times before, “is not only a matter of taking an interest in the piece of art itself or its provenance, its date of creation or the life history of the artist who made it. It is everything that surrounds a work of art: the political, economic, and social factors that eventually led to its production. You can be sure that your research into the history of a painting will lead you down many exciting avenues you had no idea even existed.”
After class, hard at work in the lab, she startled to find Professor Anwar standing right behind her. “Let’s take a look at this priceless treasure of yours,” he said.
With a smile, she rose to show him. He was always like that, with his own way of speaking that sometimes drew the mockery of his students. Carefully, she placed it on the easel.
He slid on his spectacles and crouched close, scrutinizing it first with, then without his glasses. He seemed to be looking for something. Finally, he shrugged. “To tell the truth, I don’t see anything inspiring or absorbing about this painting,” he admitted. “It’s the same as a hundred other paintings of Egyptian female subjects painted in the nineteenth century, the ‘golden age’ of Orientalism. They were mad about drawing women with ‘Oriental’ features and clothing they saw as exotic.”
“Yes,” Yasmine shook her head, “but there’s something different about this one. Look at the girl’s clothes. They’re a mix of Oriental and Western. She’s wearing a gallabiya with vertical stripes, but that thing on her shoulder is a lace scarf. Egyptian women weren’t wearing those kind of fabrics in that era—they were unavailable in Egypt. And there’s no signature or date on it.”
“What’s so odd about that? Maybe the artist wanted to do something unconventional, so he made her clothing a cross between East and West. He could have just imagined the lace scarf.” The professor straightened. “As far as the signature goes, he may have forgotten to sign it. Or perhaps he was unknown and saw no point in signing his work, as it would have gone unrecognized one way or the other.”
Yasmine gestured to the background of the painting of the girl, which depicted several houses with wood-carved meshrabiyeh windows. “You can’t tell what neighborhood this was painted in. Islamic architecture was everywhere in that era, and they used meshrabiyehs as a motif. It could
be anywhere.”
Anwar leaned in again, peering at the image of the girl. “Was she that lovely in real life?” he sighed. “In any case, you can do an infrared examination, it might help.”
It was the same thing Professor Simon had said. Changing the subject, Yasmine began to speak of work and study, after which they made an appointment for the infrared examination.
After Professor Anwar left, Yasmine sat at the painting alone, working, wondering why she was so preoccupied with the girl in the picture. Anwar was right: she was no different from a hundred portraits of Eastern women painted in that era, the product of Orientalists’ boundless fascination with Eastern women and a world they saw as exotic. A dark-skinned girl with kohl-rimmed eyes and long, black braids lying gently across her shoulders: what was so special about her?
She went back to work on the painting, scraping off a fleck of the black of the braids that had faded from damage. Gently, she scraped off the faded area. It was odd: this part was thicker than the others, as though the artist had mixed it with another medium. Suddenly, something strange appeared beneath the color.
She touched it with her fingertips. It felt like human hair.
Yasmine drew in her breath sharply. “What the . . . am I going crazy?” she said aloud. She fumbled for her magnifying glass and peered through it at the exposed fleck. It was indeed real hair.
With exceeding gentleness, she scraped the color off the braid. Then she touched it again. It was human hair, hidden by the artist under a hard layer of something carefully mixed with his black pigment. A smile of renewed confidence formed on her lips as she thought, I knew my feeling was right. From the first glance, she had known there was something unusual about this painting and this girl.
Cairo: July 1798
A girl, slender like a stalk of rattan, her skin an unusual color, not white and not dark, but the color of saffron dust. Lips red as cherries, hair black and thick like a waterfall, a spring in her step like a leaping deer. Her gestures, smooth as a butterfly’s. She wore a gallabiya of vertically striped silk, her hoop earrings echoing the curves of her body, which indicated she was just coming into adulthood. She was in that awkward stage between a child and a woman: too old to run and play with the children, but as yet unwelcome among grown women; she was lost between two worlds, the world of childhood she had not yet left behind, and the world of womanhood she was yet to enter.
Her mother bent with a straw broom to sweep the dust off the tiles of her floor, dusting the couch with the wooden arms and replacing the bolsters stuffed with good Egyptian cotton. She wiped the round wooden table and polished the brass tray on top. Finally, she lit incense to perfume the room, then, satisfied that she had prepared the seating area adequately for her husband Sheikh al-Bakri and his friends and fellow Azharite clerics, she went out and closed the door.
Still absorbed in housework, she noticed Zeinab standing in the center of the house, a small mirror in hand, plucking her eyebrows. “What are you doing, girl?” she snapped, s
tartled. “Do you want tongues to wag about you? Would you have people say that the daughter of Sheikh Hassan al-Bakri plucks her brows like a harlot or a belly dancer?”
Zeinab smiled, her small mouth revealing rows of pearly white teeth, her cheeks dimpling charmingly. The smile did little to calm her mother. She grabbed the girl by one of her black braids that were long enough to sit on. “Stop doing that and come and help me with the housework! Girls your age are already married with husbands and children to care for!”
“All you do is sweeping and mopping!” Zeinab huffed. “You could spend the whole day cleaning house, like the only thing you were made for in this life is cleaning!”
“Well, whoever marries you is going to have his hands full, I can tell you that, girl. Quickly, put the firewood in the oven. Your father’s almost home and we haven’t even started the baking yet.”
Zeinab walked away with soft, indolent steps. She watched her mother clean and polish, with every ounce of strength she possessed, the Constantinople mules that her father wore on his feet, laying them carefully on the floor by the couch where he sat. “As if we were only brought into this world to sweep and clean,” she muttered rebelliously.
Around the spacious central courtyard of the house, the rooms were set in rows. There were stalls for cattle and donkeys and others for birds, and a large storehouse for grain and coal: ever since they had first heard of Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, most households had prepared themselves to be self-sufficient. Wells had been dug; chickens were raised; gardens were planted in every home to provide what vegetables were needed, and carpenters had been employed to fit bolts to every wooden door. Zeinab ordered Halima, their black slave, to fill a pot with clean water from their cistern, which the water carrier had filled this morning. Zeinab took up the censer and walked around the space, perfuming the air with incense. “That’s all you’re good for,” her mother snapped.
After the sunset call to prayer, Zeinab heard the sound of horses’ hooves pounding the gravel entrance way, and stopping outside their gate. Finally, her father was permitted to ride a horse, after many years of being forbidden from riding: horseback had been reserved for the upper echelons of Mamluk rulers, while the rest of the populace were restricted to donkeys and mules. Her father had picked out a noble Arabian stallion, and decorated its bridle with gold and silver.
Her father’s horse neighed when Rostom, the groom, put him in the stable, letting everyone know he was home. The regular consternation reigned whenever he arrived at the house: slave women rushing to the kitchen, girls scurrying to their rooms, boys adjusting their turbans on their forcibly clean-shaven heads, thanks to the scorching August heat.
A slave girl placed the dishes on the round brass table: mutton soup with jute-leaf mulukhiya, aseedah creamed wheat, rice, fried duck and stuffed pigeon, and baked oxtail. Murmurs and whispers filled the courtyard as the men walked through it. Zeinab caught a glimpse of them from behind the meshrabiyeh of her room, and realized that something important had happened: the group included several men of great importance, including Sheikh Sharkawi, Suleiman al-Fayumi, al-Sawi, and al-Sirsawi. These men coming together in a single meeting at her father’s house meant something was afoot, and it must be urgent: but what concern was it of hers? The Damascene fabrics that the Levantine saleswoman had brought her today were all she could think about, especially the length of Damascene brocade embroidered with glass beads and pearls. She took to thinking of a new design, something good enough for the fabric, and for her. She was tired of the same old cut that her seamstress always made for her, the same one all the women wore. The meshrabiyeh of one of her friends’ houses overlooked Beit al-Alfi, the house of a nobleman named al-Alfi Bey. Al-Alfi had fled the country as soon as the French Campaign had entered Egypt, and Napoleon Bonaparte had taken over the mansion as his quarters. She had stood at the window one day and watched a ball held in the garden of Beit al-Alfi: the foreign women, with their ravishing ball gowns, puffed up and embroidered with beads that glittered when the light played upon them. How she wished for a dress like one of those.
She was consumed with curiosity about those women and their appearance: how did they endure such garments in such cruel heat? What need was there for such big hats, adorned with fur, under which the head and neck surely groaned? Could the fans made of feathers they held in their hands cool the heat? Perhaps the glasses carried around on trays by the servants could, or rather, the drink that glittered inside the crystal glasses in their delicate hands. It couldn’t possibly be like the crude liquor her father drank in secret, some mix of burgundy and brandy. She could still taste it in her mouth from the time she was emboldened, and driven by curiosity, to sample the bottle her father hid in his closet. She had found it by accident one day as she was putting his clean clothes inside; opening it, she had smelled a pungent odor, and taken a sip which she quickly spat out. It was bitter as gall.
No, the wine those women drank must surely be different. They drank it down in one gulp, and enjoyed it. She and her friend watched for hours through the tiny openings in the meshrabiyeh, looking out onto a wider world. It was all new to them: different faces, a strange language, bizarre clothes, lights and music and banqueting tables, glasses making the rounds, beautiful women, and handsome gentlemen. One look at that world was enough to realize the misery of their own dismal lot, not even allowed to take off the veils that covered their faces.
“It’s her!” cried one of the girls. “Look! Look!”
The girls pushed up the meshrabiyeh and clustered around it, watching the foreign woman with her puffy dress. She had taken off her hat and removed the pin that held her hair back, and was running her fingers through it to let it flow loose around her shoulders.
“Heavens, what a beauty she is!”
“Her dress is breathtaking!”
“Look at the color of her skin!”
“Her hair is blond!”
“Be quiet!” Zeinab yelled at them. “I don’t see anything pretty about her! She’s pale as the dead and her face is like a loaf of dry bread. She’s built like a boy!” And she furiously undid her braids and pulled her gallabiya taut around her waist. “Look! I’m prettier and more woman than she is!”
The girls exchanged glances, then burst into giggles. “If she was as plain as you say, Bonaparte would not have taken her as his mistress!”
“Bonaparte’s mistress?” Zeinab retorted. “How do you know?”
“Everyone in Egypt is talking about it.”
“I don’t think,” Zeinab tossed her head, “that Bonaparte likes that type of woman.”
The other girls stared at her. “Maybe he likes your type!” one girl said.
“Wake up and take a look at yourself in the mirror,” another jeered, “and look at your color.”
“You’re just jealous,” Zeinab shot back at her, “because you know I’m prettier than you.”
That insult could not go unpunished: soon there was a fight, with much screaming and exchanging of blows. Once the other girls pulled them apart, Zeinab wrapped her scarf around her head haughtily. Covering her face, she turned to leave. “You’ll soon see!” she growled as she stormed off. As she left, the echo of the others’ laughter rang in her ears.
Outside, a cool breeze greeted her, laden with the soft scent of night-blooming jasmine. Several French officers in uniform were walking in the streets, tanned from the relentless sun. They looked at her with lascivious eyes: it was rare to see a girl or woman walking alone in the streets, for they were accustomed to seeing them either on donkey-back or riding by in a cart in a flash of black-clad, a blur from head to toe, like passing ghosts. But now they saw a girl walking slowly, with a sway in her step, bronze anklets jingling and gold bracelets jangling with her every step. They could see her face through the thin chiffon veil: she let it slip, and fixed them with big, black, bold eyes. Delicately, she picked up the edge of her garment from the mud of the path, revealing her slippers, embroidered with gold thread
and beads, curved up at the toe in the Moroccan style. One of them approached her and said in French, “What is your name, beautiful girl?”
She stepped back. Another man came up beside him, clearly not a military man although he wore French clothing, and pulled him away. “Leave her alone! You’re frightening her.” With a smile, he gestured to her to continue on her way. “Please accept my apologies for his behavior.”
They were still speaking French, so she had no idea what was being said; but she guessed his meaning and thanked the man who had cleared her path with a smile, which he returned. As she walked on, the men’s raised voices echoed after her, and she realized that she was the reason for their altercation.
In a language Zeinab could not understand, the first man was saying, “Have you lost your mind? Stepping in the path of women in a public street and scaring them? Haven’t we injured them enough?”
“How do you know she’s not a prostitute who would have been happy to talk?”
“Prostitutes wear revealing clothing and stand in the street without shame, and they’re the ones who make the first move. Didn’t you see how you scared the girl when you walked up to her? Was that the behavior of a prostitute?”
That evening, in a house on the other side of Cairo, Zeinab’s mother, Fatima, was sitting in the central courtyard of the house. It was a beautiful evening, the moon hiding behind wispy clouds only to come out again and light up the night, then hide, then come out again, and so on and so forth. In her hand was an amber rosary, the beads of which she was shoving nervously through her forefinger, middle finger, and thumb, whispering, “Praise the Lord, praise the Lord.” All around was calm and still except for gentle snores from the upper floor, where her boys slept next to one another on a reed mat. The tallow candles cast a soft light.