Virgins of Paradise

by Wood, Barbara

  There was a gentle knock at the door, she said, "Enter," and when Zachariah came in, Amira received a shock. He was dressed in an army uniform. "But how?" she said. "They rejected you before!"

  "I tried again," he said simply, "and this time they took me." He wouldn't tell her the truth, that it had occurred to him that just as a man could bribe his way out of military service, so could he bribe his way into it.

  "I did it for Father," he said. "So that he would be proud of me. If you had seen the look on his face when I told him the army had rejected me as physically unfit for service! Why do I always seem to disappoint him, Grandmother? I have memories of when I was little, and Father held me on his knee and told me stories the way he does now with Mohammed. But he stopped."

  "Prison changes a man, Zakki."

  "Does it make him stop loving his son?"

  "In many ways, that is how your father was treated by his own father. Ali believed in being stern and distant with children. I know at times it hurt Ibrahim. I was his mother, but I could not interfere. But now, God forgive me, I look back and believe my husband was wrong. For now I sometimes glimpse Ali in my son, especially when I hear him speak so coldly to you. Forgive him, Zakki. He knows no other way."

  "Here is Omar!" they heard Zubaida cry in the salon. "Al hamdu HUM. Praise God, He has brought Omar home to us!"

  "Your father will be proud of you, Zakki," she said quietly, as they left the bedroom. "If perhaps he does not show it, remember that he is proud of you all the same."

  The family smothered Omar with hugs and kisses, and when they saw Zachariah come into the salon in his uniform, they cried out and declared what a blessed day this was, that God had chosen two Rasheed sons to be heroes of Egypt.

  While everyone was fussing over the two cousins, Nefissa took her brother aside and said, "Ibrahim, we must talk. Now. It is important."

  As Yasmina was embracing Omar, she saw her father and aunt leave the room. And when she caught a glimpse of Nefissa's rigid profile, she became alarmed. But she chided herself for being foolish. She had been jumpy lately, certain that everyone knew her secret. But it was only her imagination. Surely her father and Nefissa had any number of important things to discuss. How could they know about Hassan and the baby? But when her father returned a moment later, to stand in the doorway of the salon with a strange look on his face, her pulse began to race. He gestured to her, and then he called to Amira and Omar.

  When they were in the small parlor off the grand stairway, a room designed for private audiences with visitors, Ibrahim quietly closed the door, turned to Yasmina, and said, "Is there something you wish to tell me?"

  In this proximity, her father just steps away from her, Yasmina saw something in his eyes that frightened her. "What do you mean?" she said. "By God, Yasmina," he said softly. "Tell me the truth." Amira said, "Ibrahim, what is this about? Why have you brought us in here?"

  But he kept his eyes on Yasmina, and she saw that he was struggling for control. "Tell me about the child," he said.

  She looked at Nefissa and whispered, "How did you know?"

  Ibrahim closed his eyes. "God deliver me from this hour."

  Now Omar said, "What is going on? Mother? Uncle?"

  Yasmina reached for her father. "I can explain. Please—"

  He drew back. "How could you!" he boomed, startling everyone. "My God, daughter, do you know what you have done?"

  "I went to Hassan," she said, "hoping to persuade him to take our name off the list—"

  "You went to him?" Ibrahim boomed. "On your own? Good God, girl, couldn't you have left it to me to take care of? Have you no faith in me? And then—to let him—"

  She held out her hands pleadingly. "No! He forced me! I tried to fight him, I tried to get away!"

  "It doesn't matter, Yasmina! You went there. No one forced you to go to Hassan's house."

  "Ibrahim!" cried Amira. "What is going on here?"

  "My God," said Omar, suddenly understanding.

  "Oh, child," Ibrahim said, with tears in his eyes. "What have you done to me? It would be better if you had plunged a knife into my heart. He's won, don't you see? You have given Hassan al-Sabir a victory. And you have caused me to lose face!"

  "I was trying to save the family," Yasmina sobbed. She turned to Omar. "I didn't want to deceive you."

  "The child is not mine?" he said.

  "I am so sorry, Omar." Yasmina began to shake. She turned to Nefissa. "How did you know?" she whispered. And then she thought: Camelia was the only one who knew, Camelia who had promised not to tell.

  Tears rose in Omar's eyes as he said, "That I should have come home to this. Oh God, Yasmina." He pressed a handkerchief to his eyes and sobbed, "I divorce you ..."

  Nefissa started to weep.

  Ibrahim turned his back on them and said in a voice not his own, "Hassan said he was going to humiliate me, and he has succeeded. I have lost all honor. Our name has been degraded."

  "But, Father," cried Yasmina, "how can that be? Hassan hasn't told you about my visit. He hasn't bragged to you, or to anyone about it."

  "He didn't need to! My God, girl, that is his power, don't you see? By remaining silent, he is proving how powerful he is. Hassan knew my humiliation would be far worse if I were to learn this from someone other than him. All this time he has been sitting smugly back, waiting for the final victory."

  Yasmina reached for Ibrahim. "No one need know, Father. It need not go beyond these walls."

  But he drew away from her. "I know it, daughter. I know. It is enough." Ibrahim looked up at the ceiling, his face pale and drawn. "What do you think of me now, Father?" he murmured. Then he leveled his gaze at Yasmina and said, "A curse came upon this house the night you were born. A curse from God that I alone am to blame for. I regret the hour you were born."

  "No, Father!"

  "You are no longer my daughter."

  Amira stared at him, seeing not her son but her husband, Ali. And then she saw another vision, her nightmare, in all its power and terror: the child being taken from its mother. As if tonight were a prophecy being fulfilled ... "My son," she said, taking Ibrahim by the arm, "please do not do this."

  But Ibrahim said to Yasmina, "From this moment on you are haram, forbidden. You are not of our family, your name will never be spoken in this house again. It will be as if you were dead."

  TWENTY-SIX

  Y

  ASMINA AND ALICE WERE JOSTLED BY THE AIRPORT CROWD AS people fought to get aboard the last scheduled flights out of Egypt. Fear was in the air; the noise was almost deafening as foreigners clutching hastily packed bags waved tickets and passports in a frantic push to get past harried attendants and through the boarding gates. Yasmina and her mother hurried toward the plane, the final BOAC flight to London.

  No one from the family was there to see her off; Yasmina had had no contact with any of them in the three weeks since the night her father had declared her dead. The labor pains had started then, and Alice and Zachariah had rushed her to the hospital where, eight hours later, she had awakened from the anesthetic to find her mother at her bedside, telling her that the baby had been stillborn. Which was God's blessing, Alice had said tearfully—it had been deformed.

  The following days remained a blur in Yasmina's memory. Because Omar's unit had been called up, she had had the apartment to herself, where her body had healed while her mind had retreated into a state of numbness. But now, as she neared the boarding gate, elbowed and shoved by panicked people running from impending war, Yasmina felt the protective numbness fade away, and her pain emerge. Mohammed was going to stay with his father on Virgins of Paradise Street, so that both babies—her little boy and the new child—were lost to her. She thought she would die of grief.

  It was Alice who had got the passport and tickets. "War is coming, my darling," she had said. "And then you will be trapped here. You have been cast out of the family, you have been made dead. You have no name, no identity, no place to go. You must leave, Yasmin
a. Find another life and save yourself. In England you have the house and the trust fund left to you by my father. And Aunt Penelope will help you."

  "How can I leave my son?" Yasmina had asked, already knowing the answer. Omar would never let her see the boy again.

  As they neared the ticket attendant, who was arguing with a passenger about inadequate papers, Yasmina turned to her mother and said, "It's best that you can't come with me. If we were both to go, then Mohammed would be lost to me forever. Now that you must stay, you can tell him about me, show him my picture every day, and never let him forget me."

  Yes, Alice thought, Mohammed, her grandson. And the granddaughter Yasmina knew nothing about, the child just born, who was not dead, but sleeping in a crib on Virgins of Paradise Street.

  "Mother," Yasmina said, "I don't know which pain is worse—the pain of losing the baby, the pain of Father casting me out, or the pain of knowing that Camelia betrayed me. But at least, with you here, the pain of losing my son will be eased a little, knowing that you are here to keep me in his heart."

  "I wish I could go with you," Alice said. "But your father would not give me permission. He is a proud man, Yasmina, and to lose his wife would be another humiliation. I wish I had taken you away when I had my first fears, back when you were a little girl, and Egypt frightened me. I never really belonged here, and neither do you. I want you to save yourself, Yasmina."

  Alice suddenly embraced her daughter, holding her tightly, herself a storm of pain and emotions. It was for you, my darling, that I lied about the baby. I did it so that you could escape from this place as I never could. If you knew about her, if you had held her even once, you would have stayed, and been doomed. May God forgive me ...

  As she felt Yasmina tremble in her arms, Alice was filled once again with a cold hatred for Hassan al-Sabir—the monster who had seduced and corrupted first her brother Edward, and then her daughter.

  "I will write to you and tell you about Mohammed," she said, drawing away from Yasmina. "And I will tell him about you every day. I won't let them erase you from his memory."

  Yasmina regarded her mother through tear-filled eyes as people pushed around them. "I don't know when we will see each other again, Mother. I will never come back to Egypt. I have been pronounced dead; I am a ghost. So I must create a new life for myself somewhere else. But I promise you this, Mother, that I will never again be a victim. I shall become strong, I shall be the one with power. And when you and I are together again, you will be proud of me. I love you."

  Yasmina finally boarded the plane and sank wearily into her seat. Her breasts were still sore, waiting for the baby that would never nurse there; her arms ached to hold a poor little deformed thing that she believed hadn't survived its traumatic birth. Thinking she could sleep forever, Yasmina rested her head back and closed her eyes.

  And so she did not see the newspaper sticking out of the coat pocket of the passenger getting settled across the aisle. Yasmina didn't see the headline on the front page, which read: united Arab republic mobilizes 100,000 reserve troops. Nor the smaller headline that ran beneath the photograph of a handsome, smiling face: Hassan al-Sabir, under secretary of defense, found murdered.

  PART FIVE

  1973

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  T

  HE HOUSE OF QETTAH THE ASTROLOGER WAS TUCKED behind the shrine of the blessed Saint Sayyida Zeinab, in a shab by little alley called Pink Fountain Street. But there was no fountain there, and the color was not pink but the dun of the sandy bricks from which the Old City had been constructed centuries ago. There had once been sidewalks and cobble-stones, but filth on the sidewalks had gradually piled up so that the level of the street was several feet higher, with only a narrow rut down the center. The inhabitants wore faded galabeyas and dusty melayas, their children played in the dirt, and the women gossiped from rickety balconies that leaned so far into the street that daylight was nearly blocked out.

  It was in this ancient alley that Amira had urgent business, and as she hurried under a stone arch that was one of the gateways to the Old City, no one paid any attention to her. In this quarter, which had flourished before the Crusades, she was just another female form wrapped head to foot in black, only her eyes and hands showing. As she neared Sayyida Zeinab Mosque, she prayed that Qettah could help her.

  Amira's past had spoken to her again in a strange, new dream. And she prayed that it was a good sign, in these uncertain times. Supernatural happenings were being reported all over Cairo—ghostly sightings and un-explainable phenomena: falling stars streaked the sky nearly every night, rain had fallen at the Sudan border where rain had never fallen before, and over the course of several weeks, a vision of the Virgin Mary had floated above the oldest and most venerated Coptic church in Cairo. Thousands had flocked to see Her, and church patriarchs had declared that the Holy Mother was telling Her followers that, since the Israelis had captured Jerusalem and Coptic Christians could no longer go there to see Her, She had come to Cairo to see them. All were ill omens and signs of the quiet hysteria that had infected Egypt because of Egypt's shameful defeat in the Six-Day War, in which fifteen thousand Egyptian soldiers had perished, and thousands more had been horribly wounded. The six years since had been an uneasy time of no declared war, no declared peace, with skirmishes continuing to break out in the Canal Zone.

  Even now, the Israelis were bombing targets in Upper Egypt, as far south as Aswan, threatening the High Dam, which, if hit, would send a twelve-foot wall of water rushing through the Nile Valley, flattening all villages and flooding Cairo itself. The people were afraid, they had lost their heart and their pride, morale had been reduced to dust. It was a sign, everyone said, that God had turned His back upon Egypt.

  As Amira joined the press of humanity outside Sayyida Zeinab Mosque, she thought of her own prophetic sign—a new dream, which had been coming to her in her sleep over the past weeks, in which she saw a beautiful boy, about fourteen years old, beckoning to her. The dream always filled her with peace and joy; it never frightened her. Surely, she prayed, this is a good sign.

  The crowd outside the mosque was so thick that donkey carts could not get through. Although the shrine had for centuries been a gathering place for crowds of beggars, the blind, orphans, and widows, hoping to receive the saint's grace, the numbers outside the ancient stone walls had swelled since the Six-Day War; in fact, mosque attendance all over Egypt had gone up 600 percent. Worse even than Egypt's defeat was the fact that Israelis now occupied one of Islam's most sacred places, the Dome of the Rock, from where Mohammed had ascended to heaven. To reverse this ignominy, imams in their pulpits were calling for the people to return to God. They pointed to the American TV sets and Japanese radios in shop windows in this modern and progressive Cairo, a hotbed of loose morals, where women now had careers and chose their own husbands or, even worse, were living alone. These were the signs of godlessness, the imams declared. The Israelis, they said, had won the war because they were a pious people. What then of Egyptians?

  Amira, swallowed up in her black melaya, moved through the crowd as one of them, looking like just another bint al-balad, "daughter of the country," which was what the lower-class women called themselves. As she passed between a young woman in a black cotton melaya sitting behind a pyramid of onions, and a seller of jasmine garlands, squatting on the ground and picking his teeth, Amira thought of how the world had been turned upside down. In her younger days, the veil had been a status symbol of the rich, indicating that the wearer's husband was wealthy, his wife protected, waited on by servants, free from even the smallest task, while women of the poor class didn't wear a veil, as it hindered their work and daily toil. But now rich women went about unveiled, as a symbol of their modern status, while the lower class had taken up the melaya in imitation of their wealthy predecessors.

  Holding the edge of the black silk over her mouth, she squinted up at the deep blue sky above Cairo, and as a hot, sandy wind pricked her cheeks, she remembered tha
t tomorrow, the first day of spring, the khamsin was due to start. Odors filled her head—cookfires, sweat, animal dung, and jasmine—and she felt the invisible presence of God hovering over the city, watching and waiting.

  She finally got through the crowd and after passing by small dark shops like brigands' caves, she found the alley and the doorway recessed beneath a crumbling arch. She knocked, and the familiar face of old Qettah peered out. She was not the same Qettah of nearly thirty years ago, who had been present at Camelia's birth, but the astrologer's daughter, herself now quite old, who had taken over when her mother had died. Their secret art, the elder Qettah had once explained to Amira, had been passed down through the generations, since the days before Islam. Each astrologer in her turn was called Qettah, and when she gave birth to a daughter, the woman would be taught the secrets of the stars in preparation for the day she would take her mother's place. Since the days of the pharaohs, all had been called Qettah.

  As Amira slipped into the dim interior, she murmured, "God's peace and blessings upon this house." To which the astrologer replied, "And upon you, His blessings and mercy. You honor my house, Sayyida. Make it your home, and may you find solace within."

  Amira had never before visited the astrologer, but the apartment of the elderly seeress was as she had imagined it would be, cluttered with star charts, astrological instruments, pens and inks, and ancient amulets. But Amira had expected to see cats, for "Qettah" means "cat" in Arabic. The astrologer even claimed that her line had descended from a cat, which Amira believed. Yet there were no signs that any animals lived here.

  While tea brewed in a tarnished pot, they sat at a table and Qettah took Amira's hands in hers. The fortune teller studied the smooth palms, then said, "What star were you born under, mistress?"