Virgins of Paradise

by Wood, Barbara

  "But we would have had no proof. On your wedding night there would have been no blood, Jamal Rasheed would have repudiated you, and our family would have been dishonored. But now you are restored, and no one need know about our visit to Dr. al-Malakim. Sleep now, my darling, and think of God's perfect peace. Tomorrow you will have forgotten all about this."

  But Camelia stayed awake for a long time, waiting for the pain to go away. When it grew worse during the night, she didn't say anything, for fear of giving the secret away. And when she woke up with a fever the next day, she still kept her secret to herself. But when she fainted in the kitchen that evening, and Amira felt how alarmingly the girl's forehead burned, Ibrahim was called.

  Now Amira had to tell him what they had done. "She has an infection that has spread to her abdomen," Ibrahim said gravely. "I will have her admitted to the hospital."

  Camelia spent nearly two weeks in Kasr El Aini Hospital, and when she was out of danger, visitors came. The family did not know about the fall she had had, or the illicit operation to restore her virginity; they had simply been told that she had had a fever. The Rasheed aunts and uncles and cousins came with flowers and food and spent the day camped in Camelia's room, spilling into the corridor outside. Dahiba sent flowers and cards, and spoke to her on the phone. "I won't come, because it would embarrass your family to have a dancer there. Get well soon, my dear. Hakim is fretting about your health. And Mr. Sayeed, the government censor, has asked about you."

  On the morning that Camelia was discharged from the hospital, Ibrahim told Amira, "Because of the scarring caused by the infection, she will never be able to bear children." He couldn't bring himself to look at Camelia. Now he thought: Am I to be robbed of grandsons, too?

  When she was brought home from the hospital, the family greeted her with condolences, as if someone had died. They showered her with pity and sympathy because Jamal Rasheed had broken their engagement, a sign that no man would ever want her. The aunts and female cousins cried for their poor sister, who had no place in society because she could not be a wife and a mother, and was now condemned to a life of virginal spinsterhood.

  When Amira was alone with her granddaughter, she said, "Fear not, I will take care of you, granddaughter of my heart. For as long as you live, you will have a home in this house." Camelia thought of the women who had lived there while she was growing up, the unwanted, discarded women, the ones who were past usefulness and those who were stigmatized, all banding together under Amira's roof like frightened birds.

  "Why did it happen, Umma? I did nothing wrong."

  "It is God's will, granddaughter of my heart. We must not question it. Every step we take, every breath we draw was preordained by the Eternal One. Take comfort in the knowledge that your fate is in His beneficent care."

  Umma was right, Umma had always been right; Camelia would surrender to God's will. And she pictured the handsome government censor whom she would never know.

  TWENTY

  I

  T WAS THE MYSTICAL NIGHT OF LAILAT AL-MIRAJ, commemorating the hour when the Prophet Mohammed rode through the skies on a white winged horse from Arabia to Jerusalem, there to be lifted up to heaven to receive the five daily prayers from God. As the khamsin moaned through the dark streets of Cairo, obliterating streetlamps and headlights with veils of sand, the ancient mashrabiya screens of the Rasheed house rattled and squeaked, and antique brass oil lamps, long since converted to electricity, swung and swayed on their elegant chains. The twenty-six family members and servants who currently resided in the house were gathered in the salon, where Ibrahim was leading them in prayers.

  Amira sat with a black veil drawn over her head, listening to the cadenced chanting of the Koran, but having difficulty keeping her thoughts upon prayer. Where, she wondered, were Omar and Yasmina on this special night when families came together in spiritual fellowship?

  Out in the city, where doors banged and shutters rattled as the fierce desert wind raced down the wide avenues and twisted alleys, Yasmina groped her way along walls. Traffic was scant, and few pedestrians were abroad; she felt as if she were all alone in a chaotic universe. But she persevered, her coat wrapped tightly around her swollen body, a scarf across her face to keep the stinging sand out of her nose and eyes. She could hardly walk, she was in so much pain.

  Omar had hit her so hard she had thought he was going to hurt both her and the unborn child, and so she had fled. As she stumbled through the windy night, each step seeming a mile, each breath bringing more pain, she prayed that she would make it to Virgins of Paradise Street, where she knew she would find golden windows, safe and welcoming.

  Inside the warm salon, Ibrahim continued to lead the prayers and as Camelia recited along with the others, her thoughts were settled upon the fact that her eighteenth birthday was less than a month away. But the prospect brought her no joy. In the four months since her accident, she had not danced with Dahiba. She had also quit school and the ballet academy, and hadn't seen any of her friends. She decided that she was going to become like one of the elderly maiden aunts, a woman existing on the periphery of other people's lives. But at least Zou Zou, for example, had had memories to sustain her, of her gypsy lover and adventures duping the slave traders. What memories did Camelia have, besides the brief fantasy of tea with a handsome government censor?

  Even Ibrahim, reading from the Koran, was not listening to the holy words he pronounced. The recitation was mechanical; his mind was distracted by thoughts of progeny and heirs. His hopes for getting Alice pregnant had so far produced no results. But now there was new hope—Yasmina's baby was due in a month. Would Ibrahim be blessed with a grandson?

  The prayers ended and it came time to tell the story of how Mohammed was lifted to heaven on his winged horse, and God decreed that Believers must pray fifty times a day, but the prophet Moussa interceded and talked Mohammed into asking the Lord to reduce the number to five. As Ibrahim told the tale, he glanced at Alice, who sat with a Bible in her lap. Memories of their random nights together over the past months, when he had given her potion-laced brandy, so consumed him with guilt and feelings of shame that he made a personal vow: no more subterfuge to try to get her pregnant. He would leave the matter of a son in God's hands.

  Suddenly, there was a frantic knocking on the door downstairs, and a moment later a servant was helping Yasmina into the salon. She collapsed on a divan as the family rushed to help her.

  Alice pushed through and took her daughter into her arms. "My baby, my baby," she said. "What happened?"

  Yasmina said, "Omar," and wailed in pain.

  Amira turned to Ibrahim and said, "Send for Omar," but Yasmina said, "No! Don't call Omar! Please—"

  Ibrahim sat beside her. "Tell me what happened. Has he hurt you?"

  When Yasmina saw the fury in her father's eyes, she was suddenly afraid for Omar, and, in her pain, she became confused. "No ... it was nothing. It was my fault."

  And now that she was here, and safe, Yasmina was beginning to think that perhaps it was her fault. She had talked back to Omar when she shouldn't have. She had announced her intention to continue her studies; he had denied her permission because of the baby. And Yasmina had said that she would not obey. And so he had struck her.

  "It's all right, Daddy," she said now. "Just let me stay here for a while."

  The police arrived then, saying that they had come to arrest Yasmina Rasheed for deserting her husband.

  The family erupted in a noisy argument, half of them shouting insults at the policemen that they should do such a thing on a holy night like this, the other half thinking that Yasmina should not have run away, no matter how badly Omar treated her. But she had no choice anyway, she had to go back home. Under the Beit el-Ta'a, the House of Obedience Law, it was Omar's right to have his wife arrested for running away, and if necessary, the law permitted the policemen to literally drag the offending woman back to her husband.

  When Yasmina refused to go with the officers voluntaril
y, her aunts and female cousins wrung their hands and wailed. If the neighbors were to learn of this, they would call Yasmina nashiz, "freak," the term applied to a wife who disobeyed her husband.

  "Then we have no choice," the policemen said apologetically. And one of them reached for Yasmina.

  She screamed and sank to her knees.

  Haneya said, "Pray for us! The girl is in labor!"

  "If it is in God's time," Amira said calmly, helping Yasmina to her feet, "then it is not too soon. Come, we must hurry. Send for Qettah."

  Yasmina's labor was brief, and the baby was brought into the world beneath the canopy of Amira's enormous fourposter, where generations of Rasheeds had been born. It was a boy, born under Antares, Qettah announced, the double star in Scorpio, in the sixteenth lunar mansion. The household celebrated, and Ibrahim smiled for the first time in weeks. As Yasmina gazed at her new baby with intense love, forgetting the beating she had recently received, she said, "I had hoped he would wait and be born on my birthday." When she was going to be seventeen.

  Alice and Ibrahim were at her bedside, smiling with tears in their eyes. "I can't believe I'm a grandmother," Alice said, laughing. "I'm only thirty-eight years old, and I'm a grandmother! I have a secret to tell you, darling, to tell you both." She looked at her husband and said, "I am also going to be a mother. I'm pregnant."

  "Oh, my love," Ibrahim said, taking her into his arms. "Never has a man been more blessed than I." Then he sat on the edge of the bed, took his daughter's hand in his and said, "Truly God smiled upon me the night you were born. And now you have given me a grandson. And, God, willing, I shall have a son as well," he added, reaching for Alice. "You have both made me very happy."

  As Yasmina sat by the open window of her apartment, watching the Nile churn beneath the force of the khamsin, she cradled the baby in her arms, and the feel of his warmth through the blanket, the little knobs and soft places of his body, made her forget her sorrow. Although Omar had allowed her to remain on Virgins of Paradise Street to recover from childbirth, the day she came home with the baby he had punished her. But that was two weeks ago, and since then he hadn't laid a hand on her. Yasmina prayed that it was because of the baby; perhaps having a child reminded Omar that he had responsibilities now, perhaps also he respected Yasmina a little, for having given him a son.

  She looked at the time, thinking that Omar wouldn't be home for hours, and an idea came to her. She would bundle the baby up and find a taxi, and pay a visit to Virgins of Paradise Street. It would be her first official visit home as a mother. As she quickly got ready, suddenly excited, she pictured the welcome at the other end, the embraces and laughter. She would no longer be one of the little girls of the house, but a respected wife and mother.

  When she went to the door she found it was stuck, which was puzzling, because this was a new building and the doors shouldn't be warping yet. She pulled on it harder and discovered that it wasn't stuck at all, but locked. Omar must have locked it behind him when he left for school that morning.

  Going first through her purse for her key, she then searched the other likely places that she might have left it, but the key was nowhere to be found. Annoyed with herself for having misplaced it, she decided to telephone the landlord, who had a master key, but when she picked up the phone, she found that it was dead. She stared at the instrument in her hand. Suddenly she felt cold. Had Omar locked her in on purpose and disconnected the phone? No, it wasn't possible. For all his occasional cruelty, Omar wouldn't go that far. He had simply locked the door without thinking, and telephones in Cairo were unreliable at best. As Yasmina put Mohammed back in his crib and went into the kitchen to prepare dinner, she assured herself that when Omar came home he would apologize and they would laugh about the silliness of it. She decided to fix his favorite dish: stuffed breast of lamb.

  But to her surprise, Omar didn't come home for dinner. She sat up all night waiting for him, and when he didn't come home the next day, Yasmina's alarm turned to terror. He had locked her in and gone away. So she tried to pick the lock, but was so frightened that her hands shook and she succeeded only in dismantling the knob, causing it to fall away into two halves, one inside the apartment, the other into the hall.

  Frantically, she took a hammer and screwdriver to the door, hoping to lift it from its hinges, but the hardware was covered in many thicknesses of paint. She banged on the door and cried for help, with little hope; she and Omar lived on the top floor, and the occupants of the other two apartments were away much of the time. And even then, they wouldn't have helped. No one interfered when a husband disciplined his wife.

  When Omar finally came home at the end of the third day, Yasmina was almost out of her mind with worry and fear. He kicked the door down, and threw the broken knob at her. "What have you done to this door!"

  "You were gone, I was afraid—"

  "You need to be taught a lesson, Yasmina. First you defy me by saying you are going to school when I forbid it. Then you dishonor me by running away. All of our neighbors know about it. They laugh at me behind my back. I'm going to turn you into an obedient wife."

  When he went through the apartment, unscrewing light bulbs and breaking them, she followed him, praying that the baby wouldn't wake up. "What are you doing, Omar?"

  "Teaching you a lesson you won't forget."

  He pushed her away, dragged the TV set from the wall and yanked out the cord. He did the same to the radio, broke the rest of the bulbs so that the apartment was plunged into darkness, and then went to the door and put the knob back together.

  "Wait," Yasmina said when he started to leave, "Don't go. Please don't leave me. We don't have much food. The baby needs—"

  But he slammed the door behind him and she heard the key turn in the lock.

  When she awoke to a pounding at her door, Yasmina didn't at first know where she was. It was dark; she was hungry and her head ached. And then she realized she had somehow fallen asleep on the living-room floor. Finally it came back: Omar had locked her in ... how many days ago?

  Why was he doing this to her? Why would he go for days being nice to her, and then suddenly turn, like this? What had she done to deserve such treatment?

  She made her way in the darkness to the bedroom and when she lifted Mohammed out of his crib, his mouth immediately sought her breast. She wondered how much longer she would have milk for him; she hadn't eaten since the day before. When she heard the pounding again, she groped her way to the front door. "It's locked," she said. "Who's there?"

  "Stand back," she heard Zachariah say, and in the next instant he kicked the door open.

  Camelia and Tahia rushed in. "Bismillah!" they cried when they saw Yasmina. "What is going on here?"

  "He locked me in!" Yasmina said, and Tahia put her arms around her.

  "We've been trying to telephone you," Camelia said, looking around the dark apartment. "Omar came to the house, and when we asked about you he said you were too busy with the baby to come and visit. I knew there was something wrong."

  "You're coming with us," Zachariah said. "Get the baby ready."

  They moved quickly, grabbing a blanket and Yasmina's coat, but when they turned to leave, Omar was in the doorway, a thunderous look on his face. "What do you think you're doing?"

  "We're taking our sister home," Camelia said. "Don't you dare stop us!"

  "Get out of my house, all of you. My wife stays here!" When he grabbed Yasmina's arm, Camelia whipped off her shoe and pounded him over the head with it. Omar howled and tried to protect himself, and the others ran out, taking Yasmina and the baby with them.

  Their arrival caused an uproar in the household of Virgins of Paradise Street. The family was shocked at Yasmina's appearance, and enraged when they heard what Omar had done. The women brought Yasmina and the baby into the salon, all talking at once, shouting that Omar should be thrashed, demanding to know where Nefissa, his mother, was.

  "The fires of hell for that boy!" Hanida cried.

  "W
here is Uncle Ibrahim?" shouted a hot-tempered nephew. "It is his duty to deal with this!"

  "There is no power save God's," wailed elderly Auntie Fahima.

  It took Amira a few minutes to restore order, and when she did she said, "Judgment is the Lord's. All of you be quiet now. Rayya, send everyone away. See that the children are put to bed. You boys also get ready for bed. Tewfik, make sure that Uncle Kareem's cane is by his bed. All of you, go to your rooms now and allow God's peace to enter our house."

  When everyone was gone and the house was quiet, Amira said gently, "You must return to your house and make amends with your husband, Yasmina. You are a wife now, you have a responsibility to your husband."

  "He does terrible things to me, Umma. Why? How can he be like this?"

  Amira brushed Yasmina's hair from her face and said, "Omar has always been a naughty boy. He's like his father, who died before you were born. Perhaps it is passed on in the blood, I do not know. But always remember that a good wife acts as a veil around family secrets."

  Omar arrived, demanding to see Yasmina. Ibrahim took him into the small reception room, closed the door, faced him squarely, and quietly ordered him not to lock his wife up again.

  He laughed. "It is my right, Uncle. Under the law, a husband may lock up his wife if he chooses, to keep her from running away again. And you cannot interfere."

  But Ibrahim said in a deadly tone, "The law may not be able to protect Yasmina, but I can. If you harm her again, if you lock her up, or threaten her, or cause her unhappiness, I will curse you, Omar. I will cast you out of the family and you will no longer be my nephew, you will no longer be a Rasheed."

  Omar's blood ran cold. He knew Ibrahim had the power to do it, to render him nonexistent, just as Grandfather Ali had done to Auntie Fatima, whose name was forbidden, and whose pictures had been destroyed. Upon Ali's word, she had simply ceased to be. And so would he.