Amira moved swiftly.
In the dark bedroom, Yasmina was dreaming. As she lay curled up in bed, her arms around the English teddy bear her Uncle Edward had had sent to her from England, she was comforted in her sleep by a pleasant dream of Daddy coming back from his long holiday, and the house being happy again. There was a party, and Mummy was wearing her white satin evening gown and diamond earrings, and Umma was bringing big bowls of ice cream from the kitchen, and apricots and brown sugar.
And then she saw Camelia dancing and laughing and calling to her. "Mishmish! Mishmish!"
Yasmina opened her eyes. The bedroom was dark, thin ribbons of moonlight spilling through the shutters. She listened. Had she dreamed her sister was calling her? Or had it really—
A scream tore the air.
Yasmina jumped out of bed and ran to her sister's bed, but she found it empty, the covers rolled back. "Lili?" she called. "Where are you?"
Then she saw a light under the bathroom door.
She ran to it, and just as she got there, the door opened and Umma came out, carrying a sobbing Camelia. "What happened?" Yasmina asked.
"It's all right," Amira said as she laid the seven-year-old in her bed, tucking her in and wiping away her tears. "Camelia will be all right."
"But what—"
"Come along now, Yasmina," Nefissa said gently. "Back to bed."
The bedroom door suddenly opened and Alice stood there in her dressing gown, blond hair disarrayed, eyes still puffy with sleep. "What happened? I heard a scream. It sounded like Camelia."
"She will be all right," Amira said, stroking Camelia's hair.
"But what happened?" Alice noticed that the other women were fully dressed, even though it was the middle of the night.
"Everything is fine. Camelia will be healed in a few days."
Alice looked at the others, who smiled and assured her everything was going to be all right. "Healed? But what happened to her?"
"It was her circumcision," Nefissa said. "In a few days she will have forgotten all about it. Come and have tea with with us."
"Her what?" Alice said. And then she heard one of the women murmur to another, "The English don't do this."
Amira laid a hand on Alice's arm and said, "Come, my dear, and I'll explain. Nefissa, will you stay with Camelia, please?"
After the women had left the room, and Auntie Nefissa had gone into the bathroom, Yasmina crept out of bed and went to her sister, who was sobbing softly into her pillow. "What is it, Lili?" she asked. "What happened? Are you sick?"
Camelia wiped her eyes. "I hurt, Mishmish," she said.
Drawing the blanket back, Yasmina climbed in and put her arms around Camelia. "Don't cry. You heard Umma. You'll be all right."
"Please don't leave me," Camelia said, and Yasmina pulled the blanket up over them both.
A silver tea service was set up in Amira's bedroom, and as she poured two cups, she said, "Is it true that circumcision is not practiced among the English?"
Alice gave her a perplexed look. "Boys sometimes, I think. But Mother Amira, how can a girl be circumcised? What do you do?" As Amira explained, Alice stared at her in shock. "But that's not the same as a boy's circumcision. Isn't this harmful?"
"Not at all. When Camelia grows up, she will just have a small scar. I removed only the tiniest part. Otherwise, she is the same as before."
"But why do you do this?"
"It is done to preserve a girl's honor when she grows up. The impurity has been removed, she will be a chaste and obedient wife."
Alice frowned. "But doesn't that mean she won't be able to enjoy sex?"
"Of course she will," Amira said with a smile. "No man wants an unsatisfied woman in his bed."
Alice looked at the clock on Amira's nightstand; it was nearly two. The house, the garden, and Virgins of Paradise Street were dark and silent. "But why did you do the circumcision at this hour, and so secretly?" she asked. "When Zachariah was circumcised there was a big party, a celebration."
"A boy's circumcision has different meaning than a girl's. For a boy, it means he has been brought into the family of Islam. But a girl's involves her shame, and so it must be done quietly." Seeing Alice's baffled look, she added, "This is a ritual that every Muslim girl undergoes. Camelia is now assured of finding a good husband, because he will know she is not easily aroused and therefore can be trusted. It is for this reason that no decent man will marry an uncircumcised woman."
Alice's perplexity deepened. "But your son married me, didn't he?"
Amira sat down and took Alice's hand. "Yes, he did. And because you married the son of my heart, you are the daughter of my heart. I am truly sorry you are upset. I should have prepared you for it, explained, and then invited you to take part, so that next year, when it is Yasmina's turn—"
"Yasmina! But surely you're not planning on doing this to my daughter!"
"We shall see what Ibrahim says."
Alice looked at the tea in her cup and suddenly she could not drink. Rising unsteadily, she said, "I want to check on the girls."
Nefissa was sitting beside the bed, embroidering. "They are both asleep," she said to Alice with a smile, gesturing to the two little girls curled together beneath one blanket.
Alice looked first at Camelia, whose black hair lay damp on her pillow, and then at her daughter, whose blond curls mingled with her sister's darker ones. And as she laid a hand on Yasmina's forehead, she recalled the girls dressing up in the melayas, and saw again a frightening future—one in which Egypt had returned to the old ways, a world of veiled women and female circumcision.
I will not let that happen to you, sweetheart, she vowed silently to Yasmina. I promise you that you will always be free to be yourself.
Suddenly, she wanted to talk to her brother. Kissing each of the girls, she said good-night to her sister-in-law, then made her way through the large, silent house, across the main salon, and up the massive stairway into the men's wing. Eddie will understand, Alice told herself. He can help me find an apartment. I will take Yasmina—the three of us will live there until Ibrahim comes home.
She started to knock on her brother's door and then, remembering that he was a heavy sleeper, she walked in. His sitting room was blazing with light, and two men were there. It took Alice a moment to realize what they were doing: Edward was bent over, and Hassan al-Sabir was behind him; their trousers were around their ankles.
They looked up, startled. Then Alice gave a cry, turned, and ran.
She stumbled down the stairway; running across the polished floor of the entry hall, she slipped and fell. Through tears, she tried to find a handhold, but as she struggled to her feet, she felt a hand grasp her arm. It was Hassan. She tried to run, but he spun her around in the pool of moonlight that came through the window. "So you didn't know," he said with a smile. "By your look I would say you never even suspected."
"You're a monster," she gasped.
"Me? Come now, my dear. It is your brother who is the monster—he played the female role, he is the shamed one."
"You have corrupted him!"
"I have corrupted him?" Hassan laughed. "My dear Alice, whose idea do you think it was? Edward has wanted me since he first arrived here. You thought it was Nefissa he wanted, didn't you?"
She tried to pull away, but he drew her closer and said with a hard smile, "You seem jealous, Alice. But of which of us are you jealous, I wonder?"
"You disgust me!"
"Yes, you've already told me that. So I decided that since I couldn't have the sister, then the brother would do just as well. I imagine you're both rather much the same, from that angle."
She broke free and ran.
FOURTEEN
I
BRAHIM WAS COMING HOME! ON THIS BLUSTERY DAY IN January of 1953, there was so much activity in the kitchen that the cook and her assistants kept bumping into one another. Many guests and family members had arrived to welcome Ibrahim home, and the ovens had been going night and day, turning
out casseroles, roasts, breads, and pies.
Sahra had been set the chore of grinding lamb into a paste for meatballs, a skill she had learned for village festivals and which she now performed cheerfully. Her master was coming home! The man who had saved her and her baby from a life of beggary and starvation, and who had called her son his own and had given Zachariah the life of a prince. Sahra herself had even been a doctor's wife for one minute, much finer than being the wife of a shopkeeper for a lifetime. And she had been allowed to breast-feed her son for three years, to hold him and rock him, even if she could never acknowledge him as her own. And now the two had celebrated another birthday under this roof: Sahra was twenty-one, Zakki, seven.
She knew it must all have been part of God's plan—conceiving Abdu's son beside the canal, leaving the village, and finally coming into this wonderful house that was like a palace. Hadn't her mother told her the night she fled the wrath of her father and uncles that she was in God's hands? Abdu, wherever he was, would be pleased if he knew. And now the master was back and the house was going to be a happy place again!
The guests were all crowded into the grand reception room—Rasheeds, other residents of Virgins of Paradise Street, Ibrahim's friends from the nightclubs and casinos—all in their finest clothes, all anxious to bring him back into their fold. He had been away for six months. When they heard a car backfiring, the children ran to a window and screamed when they looked down and saw Uncle Mohssein's car pull into the drive.
"Daddy's here!" they cried, jumping up and down. "Daddy's here!"
The noise in the reception room rose as they listened to the progress of the two men up the stairway. No one had seen Ibrahim since August; he had not been allowed any visitors, not even after a letter had arrived saying that he would be released within the next few weeks. And so the image that stood in everyone's mind, as Mohssein led his cousin into the room, did not match the apparition that now stood in the doorway. Everyone fell silent and stared in shock at the stranger with the gray hair and gray beard. Ibrahim Rasheed looked like a skeleton; there were enormous black hollows under his eyes, and his suit hung on his emaciated frame.
Amira came forward and put her arms around him. "Blessed be the Eternal One who has brought my son home."
The others came up, tears in their eyes, trying to smile, reaching out to touch him. Nefissa was openly weeping, while Alice slowly made her way to him, her face as pale as the silk dress she wore. When she embraced him, Ibrahim broke down and wept.
The children approached shyly, not certain who this man was. But when he held out his arms and called them by their nicknames—Mishmish, Lili, Zakki—they recognized his voice. Ibrahim embraced his two daughters, Camelia and Yasmina, sobbing into their sweet-smelling hair, but when it was Zachariah's turn, Ibrahim stepped away before the boy could touch him, and reached for Amira's arm. "I don't know how it is that I am home, Mother," he said in a faint voice. "Yesterday I thought I was going to be in prison forever. This morning I woke up and they told me I was to go home. I don't know why I was there, or why they released me."
"It is God's will that you are free," she said with tears in her eyes. Not even Ibrahim would ever know of her secret pact with the wife of the Free Officer. "You are home now, and that is all that matters."
"Mother," he said quietly. "King Farouk is never coming back. Egypt is a different place now."
"That, too, is in God's hands. Your fate is already written. Come now, sit down and eat." As she led him to the divan of honor, upholstered in gold brocade and red velvet, Amira hid her fright at feeling the thin arm beneath his sleeve, and at the haunted look she had seen in his eyes. She knew he had been tortured in that terrible place; it was the one piece of information Safeya Rageb had been able to give her. But Amira would never ask him about it, and she knew her son would never speak of it. Her task now was to restore him to health and happiness, and to help him find his place in this new Egypt.
When Alice looked around and said, "Where's Eddie?" the children jumped up and said, "We'll go get him, the sleepy head!" And they ran out of the room, a squealing mob.
They returned a moment later. "We can't wake up Uncle Eddie," Zachariah said. "We shook him and shook him, but he won't wake up!"
"He's hurt his forehead," Yasmina said. "Right here," and she pointed between her eyes.
Amira left the room, Alice and Nefissa following.
They found Edward in a chair, impeccably dressed in a blue blazer and white trousers, his face freshly shaven, his hair slicked down with pomade. When they saw the neat bullet hole between his eyes, and the .38 in his hand, they realized that the noise they had heard just as Ibrahim had arrived had not been a car backfiring. At the moment one life had returned to the house on Virgins of Paradise Street, another had departed.
Alice was the first to see the note. She read phrases that would haunt her for the rest of her life: "Not Hassan's fault. I loved him and I thought he loved me. Now I know I was the instrument of his revenge against you, dear sister. To hurt you, Alice, he destroyed me. But don't mourn for me. I was doomed the day I arrived here. I left England because of my vice. I knew that if Father found out it would ruin the family. I can no longer live with my shame." And he had added one line addressed to Nefissa: "Forgive me if I misled you."
Alice hadn't realized she was reading aloud until she heard the sudden silence in the room when she stopped. Amira took the note and, using Edward's lighter, set fire to it. When it was reduced to black ash in the waste basket, she told Nefissa to find the box of bullets, to spread them on the desk, along with whatever cleaning materials Edward might have used for his gun.
Then she turned to Alice and said, "No one is to know about this, do you understand? You must tell no one—not Ibrahim, not Hassan, no one. Alice? Nefissa? Do you understand?"
Alice looked at her brother. "But what about—"
"We will make it look like an accident," Amira said, as Nefissa placed a chamois and oil with the bullets. "He was cleaning his gun, it accidentally went off. This is what we will tell everyone. Now, both of you, promise me this is what you will say."
Nefissa nodded dumbly, and Alice whispered, "Yes, Mother Amira."
"Now we will call the police." But before they left the room, Amira paused and laid a gentle hand on Edward's neatly combed hair, closed her eyes and murmured, "I declare that there is no god but God, and Mohammed is His messenger."
PART THREE
1962
FIFTEEN
T
HERE WAS ONLY ONE THING ON OMAR RASHEED'S MIND AS he watched the seductive dancer on the screen: getting into bed with his cousin.
The dancer's name was Dahiba, and the way she moved across the screen in those high heels and that Rita Hayworth evening gown, her hips and breasts and long legs turning his blood to liquid fire, made twenty-year-old Omar think he was going to burst. Dahiba herself wasn't the object of his youthful lust; it was seventeen-year-old Camelia who aroused him to such frenzy, sitting next to him in the dark movie theater, her arm brushing his, the pungency of her musk perfume filling his head. Omar had desired his cousin since the night the family had attended a recital at her ballet academy and Camelia had danced in a leotard, a frilly skirt, and white tights. She had been fifteen, and it was the first time Omar had noticed that she was no longer a little girl.
"Isn't Dahiba beautiful?" Camelia said, her eyes riveted on the screen.
Omar couldn't reply. He had no idea what it was like to make love to a woman, since sex outside marriage was forbidden in Islam. A boy had to wait until he had a wife before enjoying intimate relations, and usually, as in Omar's case, that sublime event didn't take place until the young man had finished school and gotten a job, so that he could take on the responsibilities of a family. Like many of his friends, Omar could not expect his wedding to take place before he was twenty-five. And since society forbade young unmarried people from even holding hands, Omar was occasionally driven to seek relief with the similarly sexu
ally frustrated young men he met at the public baths; but this was only a temporary satisfaction. What he wanted was a female.
"Bismillah! Dahiba is a goddess," Camelia said with a sigh. The movie was typical Egyptian fare: a musical comedy involving mistaken identities, star-crossed love, and a peasant girl winding up with a millionaire husband. The theater was packed and noisy, the audience singing along with the music and clapping the beat to Dahiba's dance, while hawkers walked up and down the aisles selling sandwiches, fried meatballs, and soda pop. When the villain appeared on the screen—his thin mustache and fez marking him instantly as the recognizable bad guy—the audience shouted insults. And when Dahiba, in her role as the virginal Fatima, spurned his advances, the audience cheered so loudly it seemed the roof of Cairo's Roxy Cinema might cave in.
It was Thursday, the night for going out since there was no work or school the next day; as Egypt was the second-largest producer of films in the world, making it possible to go to a different movie every day of the year and not see the same movie twice, nearly everyone went to the cinema on Thursday evenings. Especially the Rasheed cousins: Omar and his sister Tahia, Camelia and her brother Zachariah. Yasmina was not with them tonight. They wore their best clothes, Omar and Zachariah in tailored shirts and slacks, and smelling of cologne, Tahia and Camelia, also perfumed, wearing long-sleeved blouses, their skirts below their knees. Although hemlines were rising in Europe, the Rasheed girls were dressed conservatively.
The film ended, and the two thousand people crammed into the seats and aisles of the movie house stood for the Egyptian national anthem, while the face of President Nasser smiled down at them from the screen. As the four young Rasheeds went out into the fragrant spring night, laughing and chatting about the movie, they each entertained secret thoughts: sixteen-year-old Zachariah was trying to recall the beautiful lyrics of the songs he had just heard; Tahia, seventeen, was thinking that romance was the loveliest thing in the world; Camelia was deciding that she was going to be a famous dancer like Dahiba someday; and Omar was wondering where he was going to find a girl who would let him have sex with her.
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