Virgins of Paradise

by Wood, Barbara

  Yasmina laughed. "He is in love with you, Lili! You have a secret admirer!"

  Camelia already had several admirers, men who made enquiries of Hakim Raouf about his wife's protegee, and who sometimes sent flowers and messages backstage. But twenty-one-year-old Camelia was not going to allow herself to fall in love. She was going to devote herself to becoming the greatest dancer Egypt had ever known, and a husband or a lover did not figure in her plans.

  When Camelia saw the shadow behind her sister's smile, and how Yasmina's hands trembled, she led her into the dressing room, picked up the phone, and asked for tea to be brought, then turned to Yasmina and said, "What's wrong, Mishmish? You look so tired."

  "It's nothing. I just have ... something on my mind."

  "You are trying to do too much," Camelia said as she pinned her long black hair on top of her head and proceeded to remove her stage makeup. "Being a mother to Mohammed, taking classes at the university, working in Father's office as his nurse." But when she saw her sister's stricken look in the mirror, Camelia turned around and said, "Mishmish, I know something is wrong. Please tell me."

  "I don't know how to say it, Lili," Yasmina said quietly. "A terrible thing has happened."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I did something, no, what I mean is, something happened to me, the day after Suleiman Misrahi died. I haven't told anyone, not even Mother. There's no one I can confide in, Lili, except you. And I don't even know how to tell you."

  "Just tell it, like we used to when we were growing up. We never kept secrets then, did we?"

  "Camelia, I'm pregnant."

  Camelia experienced the quick stab of jealousy she always did when a friend or female relative announced a pregnancy—such joyful news was never going to be hers to announce—and then she quickly felt remorseful. "But that's wonderful!"

  "No, Lili, it isn't wonderful. You know that I have been practicing birth control. Omar doesn't know about that, no one knows. Only you."

  "Well, no contraceptive method is foolproof, Yasmina. Mistakes happen. I know you want to go to medical school, but you'll just have to put it off a while longer."

  "You don't understand, Lili. The child is not Omar's."

  The roar of applause came through the thin walls, and heavy footsteps thudded past the dressing-room door. Camelia got up, turned the key in the lock, then sat back down. "If the child is not Omar's, then whose is it?"

  Yasmina told Camelia about Jamal Rasheed's visit to the office, his warnings of danger, and finally that he had found out the name of the man who had put the family on the list for the Visitors of Dawn. "I went to his house. I kept thinking—Uncle Hassan, it couldn't be! But he admitted everything to me, and he said it was because he wanted me, that he and I had been betrothed but that Father had broken the contract."

  "By all the saints," Camelia murmured. "This is impossible, Yasmina. And then what happened?"

  "When I realized what a foolish thing I had done in going there, I started to leave. He grabbed me, I tried to fight him. But he was too strong."

  Camelia closed her eyes and murmured, "May he burn in hell. Oh Yasmina! And you have told no one about this?"

  Yasmina shook her head.

  "Uncle Hassan ..." Camelia said in disbelief. "And to think how I worshiped him when I was little! I even had fantasies about marrying him! And now to discover that he is the son of Satan!"

  "And I am carrying his child."

  "Yasmina, listen to me. You must not tell anyone about this. They will judge you harshly. Remember Auntie Fatima, whose name we could never even speak. We don't know what it was she did, but Grandfather Ali would never forgive her. He threw her out, and even her own brother and sister won't talk about her."

  "And they will do that to me."

  "Allah, Yasmina! What do you think? You went to a man's house on your own, the worst thing a woman can do. Hassan did not force you into his house."

  "I went there just to talk to him, Lili. And he overpowered me."

  "You are the victim, Yasmina, but you will be punished all the same. That's the way it is. Now listen, Omar will believe the child is his. He's so conceited, his vanity will blind him to any lack of resemblance to himself. And everyone else will believe the child is his. What reason would they have for thinking otherwise? We must never tell anyone the truth, Mishmish. You would be ruined, and the family would be destroyed. For everyone's sake, but for yours most of all, you and I shall keep this a secret."

  Yasmina sighed. "You're starting to sound like Umma."

  "Perhaps this is what she would have said to you if you had gone to her. Now then, I am going to dinner after the show with some friends. I want you to come along. Don't shake your head. You don't get out enough, and these are very nice, respectable people. You are going to have a beautiful baby, and I am going to see to it that you forget all about Hassan al-Sabir."

  Later that night, as Camelia lay in her bed, warm autumn moonlight spilling across her satin bedspread, she heard Yasmina's words again: "You're starting to sound like Umma." And it amazed her to realize that, in many ways, Umma had been right. Sometimes it was necessary to keep secrets in order to protect the family honor.

  "California is such a strange place," Maryam had written, "I wonder if I shall ever fit in. But how strange and wonderful to attend a synagogue that is crowded! Suleiman would have been happy to see this. My heart is in Egypt with you, my sister, and with Suleiman."

  Amira took the letter from Zubaida, who had just read it to her, and gazed at the writing. Although she couldn't read the words, she felt Maryam's spirit in the ink and paper, and it brought comfort in this troubled time.

  The Visitors of the Dawn had not yet struck the Rasheed house, but the family was prepared: the salon had been stripped, the women wore no makeup or jewelry or expensive clothes, and the food that came from the kitchen consisted of Sahra's humble village recipes. But everyone was sleeping poorly, and each time someone knocked on the door, nerves snapped.

  Amira carefully folded Maryam's letter into her pocket, and when she looked up, was startled to see Camelia standing in the salon.

  "Umma?" the girl said.

  "Granddaughter of my heart! Praise the Lord!"

  "Oh, Umma! I was afraid you wouldn't see me! I'm so sorry for the things I said to you!"

  Amira smiled through her tears. "You were eighteen and knew everything, like all eighteen-year-olds do! You've grown, you have filled out."

  "I am a dancer now, Umma."

  "Yes," Amira said. "Yasmina has told me."

  "It is a very respectable act, Umma! I wear a beautiful galabeya. It has long sleeves and comes down to my ankles. And when I dance the beledi, oh, Umma, you should see how happy the people are!"

  "Then I am glad, for God has found a place for you. Perhaps, in His infinite compassion, when He took away from you with one hand, He gave to you with the other. Make people happy, make their hearts sing, for that is God's precious gift to you."

  "I want you to meet Dahiba, my teacher."

  "The woman you have been living with?"

  "Dahiba is very respectable, Umma. Have you seen her movies?"

  "When I was young, your grandfather took me to a movie theater. There were special sections in those days, screened balconies where women could sit without being seen. Ali sat in the audience with the men, and I sat in a balcony with his mother and his first wife, who was sickly at the time, and his two sisters. The film was about adultery, I recall, and I was shocked. It was the first movie I had ever seen, and the last. No, I have not seen Dahiba's films."

  "I want you to meet her, Umma. Come with me, let me show you where I live. You'll love her, I know you will!"

  Like the rest of Cairo's rich, Dahiba and her husband Hakim Raouf had scaled down their life-style and stopped displaying their wealth. Although Raouf had friends in the government, and Dahiba was a favorite among members of the president's cabinet, they did not feel safe—no one did. So, along with her ext
ravagant costumes, Dahiba had put away her furs and jewels, Raouf had dismissed their chauffeur. He drove the Chevrolet himself, and Dahiba arrived at the Club Cage d'Or like an ordinary citizen.

  The were sitting in the living room, drinking coffee and eating oranges while they read movie scripts, when Camelia burst in. "I've brought someone to meet you!"

  "Al hamdu lillah!" cried Raouf. "It is President Nasser himself!"

  She laughed. "No, it's my grandmother. And she's waiting in the foyer."

  Raouf's smile fell as he exchanged a glance with his wife.

  "My dear," Dahiba said, rising from the sofa, "I don't think this was a good idea. Your grandmother will not approve of me, you have said so yourself."

  "Yes, but we've had a long talk and she says she wants to meet you! You know how much I've wanted to be friends with Umma again. It was because of Yasmina's—It was something Yasmina said to me the other night at the club that made me decide to make amends with Umma. And she received me with so much joy! Perhaps deep down inside she doesn't approve of dancers, but please give her a chance. It means so much to me."

  Dahiba looked at her husband, who quickly stood up and said, "I'm needed at the studio. I'll go out through the kitchen."

  "I must warn you," Camelia said excitedly. "My grandmother is very old-fashioned. She doesn't go to movies or to nightclubs, so she's never heard of you. I hope you're not offended by that." She went out to the foyer, and came back, holding the door open for Amira. "Dahiba," she said, "I have the honor to introduce you to my grandmother. Umma, this is Dahiba, my teacher."

  A moment of silence hung in the air, disturbed only by faint sounds of Cairo traffic in the street below. Then, with a sad smile, Dahiba said quietly, "Welcome to my house. Peace to you and the compassion of God."

  Amira did not reply but stood there like a statue.

  Dahiba sighed. "Won't you at least offer me a greeting, Mother?"

  Amira turned, looked at Camelia and, without a word, walked out.

  "Wait!" Camelia cried, running after her. "Umma, don't go!"

  "Let her go, child," Dahiba said. "Let her go."

  "I don't understand. Why did she leave? What happened?"

  "Come here and sit down."

  "Why did you call her Mother?"

  "Because Amira is my mother. My real name is Fatima. I am Fatima Rasheed, and I am your aunt."

  November light filtered through the gauze curtains into the living room as steam from the teapot filled the air with the scent of mint tea. Dahiba poured first for Camelia, then for herself, and settled back to talk.

  "Are you angry with me?" Dahiba asked, "for not telling you?"

  "I don't know. I'm confused. You told me your parents died in a boating accident."

  "I made that up. I've never told anyone except Hakim who my real parents were. And I never told you, Camelia, because I had no idea what my mother might have said to you about her outcast daughter. I was afraid you wouldn't want to dance with me, if you knew who I really was."

  "But how is it no one in the family ever found you out? Surely someone would have seen you, in a club or one of your movies!"

  "I was young when my father banished me. By the time I became famous, certainly by the time I appeared on a movie screen, I had changed physically. I had matured, and cosmetics further altered my appearance. Besides, no one was looking for me on the stage or the screen. I did run into Maryam Misrahi once. I was coming out of the ballroom at the Hilton, and she was in the florist's shop in the lobby. I don't know if she recognized me or not, or if she noticed that I was the dancer advertised on the poster outside. I thought she would come up and say something to me, but she didn't."

  "What happened?" Camelia asked, putting her cup down and leaning forward. "Umma never told us anything about why you left the family."

  Dahiba went to the window and looked out at the shadows collecting in the street below. A man in a dirty galabeya was pushing a cart piled high with plastic sandals. "I was just seventeen," she said quietly, "the same age you were when you sneaked onto the stage and danced for me that night."

  She lit a cigarette and blew a plume of smoke into the dusky sunlight. "I was Mother's favorite, and she worked very hard to make the best marriage match for me—a wealthy pasha, distantly related. It was 1939, I was fifteen. On our wedding night there was no blood. Mother asked me if I had been with a boy, but when I told her about a fall I had had, and the stain on my skirt afterward, she realized what had happened. I was still a virgin but, like you, I was no longer marriageable."

  Camelia gasped. "That was why you made me run home and tell Umma about my accident on the stairs!"

  "I knew she would think of the operation to restore the hymen. They performed it even in those days, and she had wanted me to have one. But Father—your Grandfather Ali—said no, that it would be a lie and therefore dishonorable. He did not let a day go by in which he didn't express his disappointment in me. My very presence had cast a shadow over the house. And even though Mother was kind and tried to understand, I grew rebellious. It wasn't a fair society, I decided, that made victims of the innocent.

  "I started going out unveiled. I made friends with a dancer, who took me to dangerous and exciting places—the coffee shops on Mohammed Ali Street. It was there"—Dahiba sighed—"among the dancers and musicians that I met Hosni, a devil of a man who was handsome and smooth and penniless. Hosni was a drummer who, like all musicians on Mohammed Ali Street, hung around the coffee shop waiting for jobs. When he saw me dancing one night, he thought we could be a team. He married me, told me he loved me. And so we got a small apartment and spent our days and nights in the coffee shops with other musicians and dancers, waiting for someone to hire us for weddings or parties. Father was furious, of course. He equated dancers with prostitutes, and so he disowned me. I didn't mind. Hosni and I were at the very bottom of society's ladder and people looked down on us, but we were inexpressibly happy.

  "And then ... we had been married for nearly a year when I ran into a dancer friend in the Khan Khalili, where I was having a costume made. She asked me how I was feeling, was I unhappy, and so on. When I asked her why I should be unhappy, she said that she thought I would be upset about Hosni divorcing me. I was shocked. I hadn't known it, but he had recited the divorce formula three times in front of witnesses. He had legally divorced me, leaving me alone with no money, and he hadn't even sent me notice that I was no longer married to him! I never saw him again."

  "But why did he divorce you if you were so happy together?"

  "Camelia my dear, a man is only interested in a woman if he cannot have her. Once he possesses her, then he loses all interest, and so the only way a woman can hold on to her husband is to have a baby. Everyone knows that a man does not necessarily have to love his wife, but he will always love his children. Hosni divorced me because I didn't get pregnant. I was an affront to his virility."

  "What did you do then?"

  "I couldn't go back to Virgins of Paradise Street, so I tried to earn a living on my own as a dancer. I had a hard life for a while, Camelia. I won't go into it, but I did some things I was ashamed of. And then Hakim Raouf saw me in a wedding zeffa procession. He said he wanted to put me in a film. After a while, he fell in love with me, and despite the fact that I told him I didn't think I could have children, he married me."

  "Uncle Hakim is a wonderful man."

  "More wonderful than you think." Dahiba went to the sideboard where she kept silver and linen, unlocked a special drawer and brought out a battered notebook. "Besides dancing," she said, handing the book to Camelia, "I also write poetry. Most men would be furious to find their wives writing such words, but Hakim encourages me. He even hopes that someday I might publish."

  Camelia opened the book and turned yellow pages. She came to a poem titled, "The Sentence of Woman," and she read:

  "The day I was born I was condemned.

  I did not know my accusers. I did not see the judge.

  The v
erdict came down as

  I drew in my first breath.

  Woman."

  Camelia read on, poems full of bitterness and disillusionment, about the grasping dominance of men, God's unfair laws, society's blind ignorance:

  "God promises virgins in paradise for believers. They are not meant for me when I die. But for my father. My brothers. My uncles. My nephews. My sons. No virgins wait for me in paradise."

  Dahiba said, "When you came out on the stage that first night, I thought you looked familiar. And then when you told me your name, oh! What a strange feeling it gave me! There you were, my brother's daughter, and so like Amira around the eyes and mouth. I had a very hard time containing myself that night. I wanted to hug you and kiss you—my only family. But I was afraid you would run away, because of the terrible stories I was sure the family might have told you."

  Camelia shook her head in wonder. "They never even spoke your name, and all your photos were taken out of the album."

  Dahiba nodded. "That would be why none of the younger family members would recognize me. Even Ibrahim and Nefissa must have only vague memories of what I look like."

  "It must have been awful for you."

  "Until I met my dear Hakim, it was. To be cast out of your family, especially a large family like the Rasheeds, and to be treated as if you were dead ... it is a terrible thing, Camelia. Many times, in those early days before I met Hakim, I truly did wish I were dead."

  Dahiba returned to the sofa and extinguished her cigarette. "So, Umma leaves the house now. I never thought she would."

  "I think the first time was when Papa was in prison. No one knows where she went—"

  "Ibrahim was in prison? How much I have missed! Tell me, were you born in your grandmother's big fourposter bed? So was I, we were all born there, all the way back into the last century. Bismillah, there is history in that house! The stories I could tell you!" She laughed suddenly. "I can picture the Turkish fountain, where Uncle Salah went wading one night. He had smoked too much hashish, took off all his clothes and said he was a fish! Does the big stairway still have that great curving banister? Your father and Nefissa and I used to slide down it in the morning, and Umma would get so angry! And there was that downstairs closet that creaked for no reason. We kids said it was haunted."