Amira regarded the offered hand, then she held out her arms and said in English, "Welcome to our house, my new daughter. God be praised, for He has blessed us with you."
After they embraced, Amira saw what the other women in the room had already seen: the unmistakable swell of pregnancy.
"Alice is twenty, just like you," Ibrahim said excitedly to his sister Nefissa. "I just know you two will be great friends." The sisters-in-law embraced, and then the other women clustered around Ibrahim's wife, fussing over her, touching her hair, exclaiming how beautiful she was. "You didn't give us any warning, Ibrahim!" Nefissa said, as she laughed and linked her arm through Alice's. "We would have prepared a big welcome!"
Amira embraced her son again; they held each other for a moment, then she regarded him through tears of joy and said, "Are you happy, son of my heart?"
When he said, "I have never been happier, Mother," Amira held out her arms and said, "Come, daughter. Welcome to your new home." And she thought: Praise the Eternal One for His blessings upon us, and for bringing my son back to me.
Finally, she thought of Andreas Skouras, and marveled at God's mercy, that, while He had taken away the man she might have married, He had restored her son to her.
SIX
S
AHRA HAD COME TO BEG FROM THE RICH TOURISTS IN FRONT of the elegant Continental-Savoy Hotel when her labor pains began. She was thinking that she had yet to make her quota for the day and that Madame Najiba was going to be furious with her, when the first pain struck—a sharp band circling her waist. Her first thought was that it had been caused by the falafel she had bought from a street vendor, spending money she shouldn't have—Madame Najiba counted every piastre—but she had been ravenously hungry. That had been hours ago, though—would it give her a stomachache now?
When the second pain struck, stronger than the first and radiating down her legs, she realized in alarm that her baby must be coming. But it was too soon!
"When was the child conceived?" Madame Najiba had asked, after Sahra had joined the gang of beggars. She had been unable to reply, having lost complete track of time as she searched Cairo for Abdu. But she recalled that when she and Abdu had made love, the cotton fields had been filled with yellow flowers and the corn had just been harvested. Madame Najiba had counted on her dirty fingers and said, "It'll be born at the end of February, maybe March, with the khamsin wind. Good. All right, you can stay with us. Listen, you might think being pregnant will get you more alms, but it won't. It's an old trick, people will think it's a melon under your dress. But a girl with a baby brings in good money, especially when it belongs to a skinny little thing like you."
Sahra hadn't minded that Madame Najiba purposely kept her underfed in order to maintain the half-starved look, because at least she had a place to stay, a mat to sleep on, and the company of people she could call friends. Some of the other beggars were far worse off, such as the men who had once been perfectly healthy but who had gone to the "beggar-maker" and had their bodies mutilated and deformed because they could make more money that way. And the girls who allowed men to use their bodies. Even though prostitution was legal, it was a shameful profession. After those first terrifying weeks in the city, when Sahra had thought she was going to die of starvation, the protection of even one as cold-hearted as Madame Najiba was welcome.
When a third pain cut through her body, Sahra dropped back from the crowd and looked for the position of the sun. In the village it had been easy to tell the time of day, but with all these tall buildings and domes and minarets, the sun was not so easily found. But there was the sky, turning red behind the roof of the Turf Club. Evening was coming; her baby was going to be born on this cold January night.
Suddenly excited—it seemed as if she had waited forever for the arrival of Abdu's child—Sahra ducked down a side street to avoid drawing attention to herself, and made her way as quickly as possible in the direction of the Nile. The alley where Madame Najiba and her gang of pickpockets and beggars lived was in the other direction, in the old part of Cairo, but Sahra wouldn't go there just yet. There was something she must do first, and it involved crossing the newest section of the city, where shiny automobiles sped down wide avenues, and women in short dresses and high-heeled shoes walked briskly. A section where grimy fellaheen girls were not welcome.
By the time she was close to the river, the sun had dropped behind the horizon and Egypt's brief twilight stood between night and day. Sahra realized she must hurry. The pains were coming closer together; she would do what she had to do, and then get back to Madame Najiba's. She had to be careful. She was near the barracks of the English soldiers; and just beyond was the big museum, closing for the day. Sahra shivered; the temperature was dropping rapidly. If she were back in the village now, she would be securing the old buffalo in its little stable for the night, and then she would hurry inside her father's mud house, which would be filled with warmth from the oven.
She wondered what had happened after she left. Had Sheikh Hamid been angry over losing his bride? Had her father and uncles gone looking for her, to kill her? Had they beaten her mother to find out the truth? Or had life just gone on and the disappearance of Sahra Bint Tewfik become another village story?
Sahra didn't like to recall those first terrible days in Cairo, when she had been so certain she would find Abdu. She had not expected the city to be so big, so crowded, so full of strangers, who ignored her, or the cars that honked their horns at her—the doormen, who had shouted at her when they found her sleeping on their steps; the street vendors, who had chased her for stealing food; the policeman, who had said he was arresting her, but had kept her in his apartment for three nights before she had managed to escape. And then she had come to that curious bridge lined with cripples and beggars, where Sahra had tried to beg for alms from passersby until a woman with Bedouin tattoos on her chin had run her off, shouting that this was their bridge and that if she wanted to work on it, she had to come to some agreement with Madame Najiba.
And so Sahra had gone to work for the formidable Najiba, whose name meant "clever one," turning over to her half of what she brought in each day, which sometimes wasn't even enough to let her buy an onion for her supper. Sahra wasn't good at begging, and once she had almost been thrown out of the gang, but then the beautiful woman in a big pink house to whom she had carried a message had given her a wool blanket, and some food and money, and Najiba had decided that, since the baby was due soon, and it would bring in more money, Sahra could stay.
Somewhere in all those days and weeks, her fourteenth birthday had passed, uncelebrated. The closest she had come to finding Abdu was when she had been standing by the gate of the big pink house where the generous lady lived. A car had pulled up and out had stepped the stranger Sahra had helped by the canal the night after her sister's wedding, the man whose silk scarf she had finally had to turn over to Madam Najiba. Sahra had been stunned again to see how strongly he resembled her beloved Abdu, and so she had gone back to the house when she could, hoping to glimpse the rich man again.
The next contraction was so severe that her knees buckled. She was huddled in a doorway, watching cars and buses swing around the big traffic circle in front of the British military compound. She had to find a way to get to the Nile.
Twilight faded and streetlights came on. Skirting the traffic circle and moving through the shadows of big buildings with many glass windows, Sahra finally came to the bridge that began the road out to the Pyramids. It was also the road to her village, but she would never go back there. She hurried down to the riverbank, stopping when the pain became too severe; when her bare feet struck moist earth, she slid the rest of the way down, coming to rest among reeds, litter, and rotting fish. To her left, she could see feluccas moored at a landing and fishermen cooking suppers over braziers in the bows of their boats. To her right, beyond the museum, rich people's houseboats rode the gentle tide, their decks strung with lanterns, while music and laughter poured through open porth
oles. Across the water was the large island where there were sporting clubs and nightclubs and fancy villas, all starting to light up for the night.
Sahra was not afraid as she struggled down to the water's edge. God would take care of her, and soon she would hold Abdu's baby in her arms, as she had once, briefly, held Abdu. And when she was strong, she would continue her search for him, because she had not even for an hour given up the hope that she would find her beloved again.
In going down to the river to give birth, Sahra was following the custom of fellaheen women who believed it would help them to eat mud from the bank, because the Nile possessed powerful properties of health and virility and protected the unborn child from the evil eye. But Sahra's pains were so severe that she collapsed and could barely breathe. Too late she realized that she should have gone straight to Najiba's. The baby was starting its push into the world.
She lay on her back and looked up at the sky and wondered when night had fallen. So many stars! Abdu had told her they were the eyes of God's angels. She tried not to cry out and thus bring dishonor to herself. She thought of Hagar in the wilderness, trying to find water for her baby. I will name him Ismail, she thought, if it is a boy.
Sahra concentrated on the lights on the opposite bank, gold and glittering; she could see people dressed in white, like angels, and as the stars spun overhead and she was engulfed in pain, she stared across the water and thought that was what paradise must be like.
Paradise! Lady Alice thought as she stepped out onto the terrace of the Club Cage d'Or. Cairo, so brightly lit, and the stars so brilliant, their reflections dancing on the Nile—surely this was paradise! She was so happy that she thought she could dance right out there on the river. Her new life had far surpassed her dreams and expectations. She had heard that Cairo was called "Paris on the Nile," but she had not been prepared for it to look so French! And her new home was like a small palace, on a street of embassies and the handsome residences of foreign diplomats. She could well believe Virgins of Paradise Street was in the fashionable Neuilly district of Paris.
She was glad the war was over. Not that she had really been touched by it—she had lived in the country, on the family's ancestral estate. Her father, the Earl of Pemberton, had offered to take in children from the cities and towns that were being bombed, but it had never come to that, thank goodness. Alice wouldn't have known what to do with them.
She didn't like to think about unhappy things such as war and orphans; she even refused to think of all this talk about the British pulling out of Egypt. An impossible thought. What would happen if they did? Hadn't the British made Egypt the marvelous place that it was? One of the things she had first liked about Ibrahim, when she had met him last year in Monte Carlo, was the fact that he, too, didn't distress himself with unpleasant subjects; when everyone else got involved in heated political or social debates, he didn't participate. But this was only one of the many qualities that endeared her new husband to her. He was also kind and generous, soft-spoken, and certainly modest about himself. She had thought that to be a king's personal physician was terribly exciting, but Ibrahim had confessed that it was easy work, not requiring him to do much real doctoring. In fact, he had confessed that he had only become a doctor because his father had been one; and although he had done fairly well at medical school, and had had an above-average internship, he was pleased he had been spared the bother of setting up a private practice: through his father, he had been introduced into the king's circle, and Farouk had taken an instant liking to him. What Ibrahim enjoyed most about his position was that it required him to do very little, just to take the royal blood pressure twice a day, and occasionally to prescribe medicine for stomach upsets.
Alice didn't mind that Ibrahim truly "didn't go very deep," as he himself laughingly put it. He had gone on to describe himself as even tempered, with no particular hates or passions, no crusades, no driving ambitions, his proudest boast being that he made a comfortable life for himself and his family. Alice loved him for these things, and for the fact that he understood the need to enjoy life, the need for pleasures and amusements. And he was a good lover, although she had no other men to compare him to, since she had been a virgin when they met.
How she wished her mother were still alive! Lady Frances would approve of Alice's choice of husband, as she herself had had a passion for the exotic, and for all things oriental. Hadn't she boasted about seeing The Sheik sixteen times, and The Son of the Sheik an impressive twenty-two? But Alice's mother had suffered from a depression of unknown origin—"melancholia," the doctor had written on her death certificate. One winter morning, Lady Frances had put her head into a gas oven, and neither the earl, his daughter, Alice, nor his son, Edward, had spoken of it since.
Hearing laughter inside the nightclub, Alice turned and looked through the glass door. Farouk was at his usual gaming table, with his usual entourage cheering him on. He must have just had a win, Alice thought. She liked Egypt's king, whom she thought of as an overgrown boy, with his funny stories and practical jokes. Poor Queen Farida, unable to give him a son. There were rumors that he might divorce her because of it. A man could do that in Egypt; all he had to do was say, "I divorce thee," three times and it was done.
Alice found this national obsession for boy babies quite peculiar. Of course, all men wanted sons; hadn't her own father, the Earl of Pemberton, been disappointed that his firstborn was a girl? But Egyptians seemed obsessed with the issue. Alice had discovered that there wasn't even a word in Arabic for "children." If a man was asked how many children he had, the word used was awlad, which meant "sons." Daughters weren't counted, and the poor man who had fathered only girls was often labeled with the humiliating epithet abu banat, "father of daughters."
Alice recalled how, back in Monte Carlo, Ibrahim's interest in her had increased when, telling him about her family, she had mentioned her brother and uncles and male cousins, adding with a laugh that the Westfalls' specialty seemed to be producing boys. Of course she knew that wasn't his main interest in her; Ibrahim wouldn't have made love to her, married her, and brought her back to his home just for her boy-producing capabilities. He had told her countless times that he adored her, worshiped her, how beautiful she was, blessing the tree from whose wood her cradle had been carved, lifting her feet and kissing her toes!
If only her father could understand! If only she could make him see that Ibrahim really loved her and that he would be a good husband. She hated the word "wog," and wished her father hadn't said it. The two weeks she and Ibrahim had spent honeymooning in England had been a disaster. The earl had refused to meet her new husband, and had insinuated that he would disinherit his daughter for marrying him. She would lose her title, he warned. She had been Lady Alice Westfall because her father was an earl. But she had said that she didn't care, because having married a pasha, her title was still "lady." But she knew the earl would change his tone when the baby was born. He would want to see his first grandson!
But Alice missed him. There were moments when she felt homesick, especially during her first days at the Rasheed house, when she had discovered she had moved to altogether another world. Just her first meal there, breakfast the morning after they had arrived, had stunned her. So used to the silent, polite meals she had shared with her gentlemanly father and brothers, Alice had been amazed at the noisy affair that breakfast on Virgins of Paradise Street had been. The entire family had sat on the floor, supported by cushions, and helped themselves to trays of food. There was incredible noise and confusion—talking and grabbing and eating as if it were their last meal, each morsel being commented upon, spices and the amount of oil used discussed, with persistent urgings to "taste this, taste that." And the food itself. Fried beans, eggs, hot loaves of flat bread, cheese, pickled lemons and peppers. When Alice had reached for something, Ibrahim's sister Nefissa had quietly murmured, "We eat with the right hand." Alice had said, "But I'm left-handed," and Nefissa had smiled sympathetically and said, "To eat with the le
ft hand gives offense, because we use that hand for—" and she whispered in Alice's ear.
There was so much to learn, so much intricate etiquette to work out in order to avoid offending. But the Rasheed women were kind and patient; they even seemed to delight in teaching her, and they laughed a lot, Alice noticed, and frequently told jokes. Nefissa was her favorite. The very day after Ibrahim and Alice had arrived at the house, her new sister-in-law had taken her to meet Princess Faiza, and all the sophisticated ladies at court who, although Egyptian, were very European in their manner and dress. That was when Alice had received one of her biggest shocks. After getting all dressed up to go out, Nefissa had wrapped herself entirely in a long black veil, which she called a melaya, until no part of her body was exposed except her eyes. "Amira's rule!" she had said, laughing. "My mother thinks the streets of Cairo are filled with lusts and temptations and men lurking at every turn to rob a girl of her honor. But don't look so horrified, Alice! The rules are different for you, you are not Muslim."
There were other adjustments as well. She missed her morning bacon; there were to be no more pork chops or ham, and as alcohol was also prohibited by Islamic law, there was no wine with dinner, no brandy afterward. And Ibrahim's female relatives spoke Arabic all the time, occasionally remembering to translate for her. But Alice's most difficult adjustment had been with the curious male-female division of the house. Ibrahim could enter any room he liked, whenever he liked, but the women, even his mother, had to ask permission to visit him on the other side of the house.
Finally, there was the issue of religion. Amira had very kindly pointed out to Alice that Cairo had many Christian churches and that she was welcome to attend any she liked. Not having been raised in a very religious atmosphere, Alice had never attended church except on special occasions. When Amira had politely asked her why there were so many different Christian churches, Alice had replied, "We have different shades of belief. Aren't there different Muslim sects?" Amira had said that there were, but even so all Muslims, regardless of sect, attended the same mosque. When she expressed further curiosity about the Christian Bible, wondering why there was more than one version when there was only one Koran, Alice had had to admit that she didn't know.
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