by Anita Desai
‘Hamid!’ cried Alma, her voice rising in pitch with her terror, quite uncharacteristically. ‘You must go! To Cairo! Bring her home.’
‘Bring her home! Before she has received her diploma?’
‘Yes, now, at once,’ wept Alma. ‘What diploma will she receive if she is sent to prison?’
‘Ech, prison,’ he scoffed, but rubbed his head thoughtfully.
‘We must stop her, her foolishness. Hamid, you must bring her to her senses –’
‘How can I?’ he groaned.
Alma made the mistake of not instructing him: she saw him off on the train, handing him a parcel of cakes she had made for Laila, and warned him to be stern and frighten his daughter into mending her ways and abandoning all connections with dangerous revolutionary elements whether political or religious. Nodding miserably, Hamid accepted the parcel, got onto the train and opened up his notebook and fell to scribbling while the train travelled across the clay-coloured landscape to Cairo. At the hostel he requested a meeting with his daughter which was granted by the female supervisor but, after the first start of joy at seeing each other, he and his daughter were only able to redefine their old failures at communication. Laila sat primly in the official drawing room, her eyes cast down and her head neatly covered with a grey kerchief while Hamid, scratching his head in embarrassment, tried to convey all Alma’s messages, managed not to, and broke down. ‘Laila, if I may, I must go now to the library at Al Azhar to look up some manuscripts they have,’ he pleaded, and Laila rose at once, in relief.
‘She is studying hard. She looks a little pale, perhaps, but that may be because of her studies. Believe me, Alma, I saw this with my own eyes. She is preparing for the exams. Be calm, Alma, have faith,’ he tried to assure his wife on his return, but she only accused him of running away from his duties and hurrying off to the library to indulge himself instead of seeking out Laila’s friends and teachers and learning what he could about her.
‘Sometimes I think Alexander and the Serapeum have gone too far,’ she warned and, picking up Clio in her arms, retreated to the kitchen where she gave vent to her feelings by chopping up a mass of vegetables for soup.
Nevertheless Laila did remain in Cairo and gave no one any cause for complaint by carrying an armful of books with her everywhere and studying with all appearance of diligence. If Alma’s friends observed that she still covered her head with a scarf, they could express their disapproval but not prohibit it. Because of her serious and studious demeanour they never suspected that Laila might have a secret life, a night life, any more than Fatimah knew of any existence other than what they shared at the college, the hostel, and the meetings they went to. It was true that the month before the examination was also the month of Ramadan and Muslim students could ask for special considerations for their hours of fasting and their prayers; few asked for them but Fatimah was one who did, and Laila imitated her. No one, not even Fatimah, was aware of the true attraction that Ramadan had for her, and her nightly escapes into the maze of lanes in the Khan-el-Khalili, as silent as those made by Clio across the rooftops of Alexandria. If she had earlier been drawn by the intensity of commitment at the Koran classes in the mosque’s courtyard, and the students’ meetings in the coffee shop, now it was by the celebrations that exploded on the streets when the cannon at the Citadel boomed to announce the end of the day’s fast. What drew her would have been hard for anyone to tell at that stage – parents and friends would be equally uncertain and equally mistaken – for the truth was that she was drawn first in one direction, then another, wherever she saw passion taken to its extreme, whether celebratory or ascetic.
Her eyes took in the coloured, revolving lights with which the shops and restaurants were decorated, the red and yellow lanterns hanging on strings across the streets, the tables and benches set out where anyone could stop and eat the food heaped in generous basins, the mirrors and arrangements of grapes and sweets and butchered meats. She pushed past families strolling through the bazaars with their children, stopping to buy the baby new shoes or ribbons for the little girl’s hair, paused to watch the street dancers swing and sway to the music of zither and flute, and made her way to the Café Fishawy with its cloudy mirrors and silvery lights where one could take one’s seat upon one of the spindly bentwood chairs and observe the crowds by the hour amongst others who found that activity sufficient. Waiters hurried up and down with enamel pots of tea or glasses filled with coffee, and Laila too sat at a table, waiting to be served, a small smile on her lips.
She was not alone in doing so. Another woman sat there, night after night, established there with almost as much fixity as the fluted stucco pillars. She had been there much longer than Laila, perhaps longer even than the Café Fishawy. She was aged, ancient. She sat on a bench with her legs drawn up under her, her head swathed in a veil, showing only the pale triangle of her face in which her eyes were sunk deeply into their sockets, blackened with kohl. Sometimes she took a puff from a shisha that was being passed up and down, but mostly she sat immobile; her eyes alone could be said to move because they bored into the people who swarmed around her.
Laila noticed that the woman hardly spoke to anyone. Only when someone dared to push across the table to her a drained coffee cup did she glance down into it, then go into a kind of brooding trance so that the one who had dared began to squirm, wipe the back of his neck, murmur apologies and even rise to leave when she would suddenly push aside the cup and part her tightened lips to utter a few curt words. The person would listen, nod gravely, flee and she resume her silence and her staring.
Slowly Laila moved up to her, closer. From across the café to the same wall against which the hagdah sat. Four tables away, three tables away, then two and one day she was sitting on the bench beside her. There they sat, side by side, staring ahead. The men who also sat against the wall glanced at her – some seemed curious, others not, at the sight of the ancient crone in her swaddling of rusty cloaks and the young girl in her demure grey dress and kerchief: they made a striking pair, there was no doubt about that. Laila smiled if anyone spoke to her but said nothing; she fingered her small coffee cup: she had taken to drinking coffee.
Then there was the evening, towards the end of Ramadan, when it was rising to the crescendo that would be the festival of Eid, and the whole café was filled with a throbbing music, almost unbearable in its mounting excitement, the waiters were running wild, trays of tea and shishas and even chairs held aloft as they wove through the crowds, and a young girl danced and clapped to the music at the back and peddlers circulated with watches, wallets and trinkets.
Under cover of the noise and confusion Laila suddenly put out her hand and pushed her cup across the table top so that it came to stand under the hagdah’s nose. For a long time the hagdah pretended not to see it but stared ahead, her hands folded into her sleeves, staring into the crowds as if they were what held her interest. Laila did not squirm or wipe her face or murmur apologies. She just sat calmly, staring not at the crowds but at the small white cup she had proffered. Finally she reached out and touched it with a fingertip, rattling it lightly on its saucer, and said under her breath, ‘Read it, please.’
The hagdah threw her a fierce look. Another would have wilted under that look, withered in its blaze. It was meant to wither but Laila stared back into her face. So the hagdah seized the cup between her hands and, without looking at it – perhaps she had already had a glance – parted her narrow, pale lips to say, ‘In the north, a city stands in water. There god and goddess meet.’
Laila was only seventeen years old. The fact suddenly revealed itself as her face abandoned its well-made-up mask of sophisticated calm, and her eyes became troubled, her mouth opened, she wanted to blurt out questions: did the hagdah mean the city of Alexandria on the Mediterranean, and her parents, those good grey well-meaning elders? Could that be what the hagdah foretold – an ignominous return to her origins, to a future ordained by her parents? There was something still childish enou
gh in Laila to be relieved at the thought – but she discarded that, throwing back her shoulders and raising her face to demand, ‘And then? And then?’
‘And then,’ snapped the hagdah, jabbing one long finger, ‘then eastwards to find a temple –’ did she say find or found? – ‘the temple of the Mother Goddess of the World.’ Briefly she stared into Laila’s face with her fantastically painted and enlarged eyes. Then her lids lowered over them, she tucked her hands back into her sleeves, and resumed her silent and unapproachable brooding.
Laila’s mouth and eyes remained open. She sat still till the waiter came and snatched up her coffee cup and a group of young people pushed against the table urgently, eager for a chance to sit down in the rich ambience of the Café Fishawy on a night in Ramadan. Laila rose to leave. She stumbled as she went, her high heels wobbling under her feet, and if someone had come to take her hand and lead her away, she would have allowed herself to be led.
The examinations followed soon after. The results were unexpectedly good. The parents had now to keep to the next part of their promise: Hamid wrote to his friends at the Sorbonne (‘She is my only daughter but it is not for that reason I detect in her an intelligence that might be channelled and trained . . .’) and Alma to her sister in Paris (‘It might persuade the child to give up the veil she has taken to wearing . . .’). Letters of acceptance arrived which they showed proudly to their daughter – was this not what they had hoped for and worked towards? But Laila, staring at the sheets of paper in their hands, frowned: Paris was not a city that stood in water nor was it the abode of gods and goddesses. This dampened and muted the mood of triumph her parents tried to create. Dissatisfied, Laila waited and watched for the signs to fall into place, and left it to her mother to pack a trunk for her with the clothes she had brought from France twenty years ago – ‘good clothes always remain in fashion,’ she said with pride, showing Laila the pleated tweed skirts, the blouses, the gloves. Laila gave a small shudder.
The parents accompanied her to the docks where the boat waited. It was a moment of triumph but also the onset of unease. This they ascribed to the fact that the War was only recently over in Europe; who knew how much it had changed the Europe they had known? In fact they realised they knew nothing of what was happening there now, what risks and dangers there might be for a young foreign woman alone and separated from home by the seas. They stood there, clutching hands like children smitten with terror of what they had themselves brought about, in the shadow of the white liner, and craned their necks to look at Laila who stood at the railing. She had worn her gloves for the occasion and waved a gloved hand. With a mighty blaring of its horn the boat was moving away from the shore, people were shouting and calling their farewells. The parents strained to catch a last glimpse of Laila and the flutter of her hand. Then, before their amazed eyes, they saw her unpin her kerchief, pull it off her head so that all her curls were revealed in a sunlit mass about her shoulders – they had not seen this sight since she had gone away to Cairo – and now she held it in her hands and fluttered it at them as if it were a handkerchief. She let it go – or the wind tugged it out of her hand – and it floated through the air that flooded in between the boat and the land, and descended lightly, tremulously upon the waves which dashed up, green and glassy, to receive it. Before a gull could swoop down and snatch at it, it sank and was gone.
*
The door has shut behind the little girl. Sophie goes up the steps and rings the bell. The door swings open and a man stands there; he is dark, he must be a Nubian, she thinks. Will he understand her? She asks after the el Messiri family – at least the name should be comprehensible. To her disappointment, it is not: the young man shakes his head and seems prepared to shut the door. She pleads in whatever French she can summon up: the family lived here once, have they moved? Is there someone who might know? The young man shakes his head again and begins to shut the door more purposefully.
Sophie glances up the spiral staircase to see if she can glimpse the little girl in the bright yellow dress in the gloom. Hanging over the banister, at the very top, she sees the face gazing at her, its pretty mouth pouting and long hair falling forwards. They stare at each other a moment before the mother’s voice rings out again: ‘Ferial!’ Then the door closes on her. She walks down the steps onto the pavement. It is dark now and the date and nut vendor’s acetylene lamp flares garishly on his barrow. Out at sea, the lights of the ships dip and rock with the waves.
Sophie sinks onto a bench under the plane trees, stretches out her legs to ease her feet, and half closes her eyes against the sunlight that pours onto the stretch of cobblestones, the stone basin of the fountain in the square, the blinding white sail of the boat a small boy in white knickers is pushing across the pool with a long cane, the gluttonous pigeons that hobble about amongst the crumbs, the façade of a tall house across the square with its blinds lowered against the sun, the stretch of the stone stairs up to the Saint-Sulpice that stands at the other end with its doors closed, containing its darkness. She thinks of getting up and climbing up those stairs to go and sit in the darkness, knowing it will be cooler there; her head is throbbing from the light and her own tension.
She does not get up. Her eye is caught by the swing of silk pleats and feet in narrow shoes going past her. She follows their passage across the square, for a few moments lit by the sun as by fire, the bright buckles threatening to ignite, then passing into the shade of the plane trees where the girl stands hesitating before she chooses a seat on a bench and sinks onto it. She sits there, not in Sophie’s ungainly sprawl, but with her legs crossed, her skirt falling in graceful folds about her, her face lifted alertly to the scene. Sophie cannot make out her features, she is too far away and the glare is strong, but she feels the girl is smiling at her, or at the small boy sailing his boat, or at the pigeons that come waddling towards this new visitor to the square. Then her hands unfold a paper napkin on her lap, and she lifts a sandwich to her mouth. Sophie is forced to look away; it would not do to watch anyone in the act of eating. She tries to concentrate on the pigeons, on the trickle of water falling from the fountain to the pool. She feels a twitch in the corner of her eye that she tries to suppress, that compels her to look again in the direction of the girl, but now the pigeons are swarming around her, forming a shifting screen, a feathery curtain in their grey and tinted frenzy.
*
In the house on the rue des Bernardins all the rooms were curtained against the street and the light. At all hours the glass was screened with lace curtains and these were never drawn aside – the street and the light were considered too harsh to be borne. In addition there were heavier drapes of velvet, or satin, and these were drawn carefully before any lamp was lit indoors. The velvet had both width and girth – its folds were so capacious – the windows were truly blanketed. Above them hung tassels, or fringes, of green and bronze, or blue and gold, or rose and silver, drooping and pendant with their own weight.
Laila had not known before that windows were objects to be dressed as opulently and lavishly as rich women might be dressed. She eyed them with hostility and loathing. When no one else was in the room, her hands flickered forwards and she grasped and drew aside some of that concealing lace and velvet. But either her Aunt Françoise would become aware of the light flooding in and scream, ‘What are you doing? The carpets will fade!’ or one of the cousins would call out in warning, ‘Oh look, she is at the window again!’
Of course opening a window was totally out of the question; they remained shut, sealed even.
Shelves and tables, too, Laila learnt, had to be dressed. They wore skirts, long or short, often with gilt borders, or else ruffles, and the clothes were of rich damask that fell in heavy folds. Moreover, they were weighed down with a great quantity of objects – boxes of embossed silver or rosewood inlaid with ivory or enamel painted with bright birds or dark foliage, vases of porcelain and silver and crystal, photographs of whiskered men, roseate children and pallid women, all
framed in silver or in gilded wood. In addition, there were bowls that held potpourri, candlesticks either tall and straight or twisting and branching, boxes of cigars and boxes of matches – all objects of value that might have had price labels or museum notes attached to them, they appeared so self-conscious. They seemed to dare Laila to touch them or shift them. Her fingers fidgeted and flew out to do just that but instantly the children took up the warning, ‘Look, Laila is touching the china figurines!’ and then Aunt Françoise screamed, ‘You’ll break them!’
How could such objects break? They could only fall upon the thick deep piled carpets in which forests of vine and foliage grew horizontally in spreading pools of blue, green and grey; or they might slip into the crevices of the sofas and couches and come to rest between cushions of rose and mustard-yellow damask. But they could not lose themselves – they were so established, so prominent, like rings that had been placed on fingers with ancient, binding vows.
Laila despaired of dislodging a single one. But she could not stop herself from disturbing them; that happened almost without her willing it.
She retreated to the bedroom that she shared with her two older cousins – Yvette and Claudette. Although here too the windows were swathed in white muslin and pink silk, the dressing table with lace and the beds with a profusion of thick and downy layers, there was more scope for disturbance. It was not permitted to open windows or draw aside curtains or alter the position of the silver powder box or the china soap dish or the hair brushes arranged on the embroidered runners, but Laila could always contrive to have her blue silk coverlet slip off her bed and drag on the floor, to leave her shoes flung across the sheepskin rug, to throw her dresses into the cupboards instead of hanging them on the quilted satin hangers, and bring in a damp bath towel and drop it onto a velvet seat.