Virgins of Paradise

by Wood, Barbara

  Hakim Raouf, speaking in his loud and booming director's voice, told a joke. "My friend Farid was bragging the other day that his felucca is so tall, he could not sail it under Tahrir Bridge. And then my friend Salah bragged that his fishing boat is so big that it, too, could not sail under Tahrir Bridge. So I decided to put them both to shame: I told them I had tried to swim under Tahrir Bridge and could not. 'How is that, Raouf?' they asked. And I told them, 'Because I was swimming on my back!'"

  As the men roared with laughter, the women in the kitchen rolled their eyes. "Did you hear that husband of mine?" Dahiba said. "He was bragging about the size of his nose!"

  The women laughed and continued gossiping over the stacks of pita bread and sizzling plump chickens, their cheeks glowing in the heat from the ovens. Children sat on the floor with toys, or nursed at mothers' breasts, or, like little Zeinab, sat at one of the tables, entertaining themselves.

  She had brought Camelia's scrapbook, which she never tired of going through, fascinated by the photographs and newspaper and magazine clippings about her mother which, at six, she was barely able to read. The very first clipping, growing yellow now, had been written back in 1966, and Zeinab could pick out a few words—"grace ... gazelle ... butterfly." And she could read part of the author's name: Yacob Something.

  She tapped the page and said to her cousins who were also at the table, "I am going to be a dancer like Mama someday."

  "No you won't," ten-year-old Mohammed said. "You've got a gimpy leg."

  Tears rose in her eyes and it gave him a good feeling. Mohammed liked making his girl cousins cry, especially Zeinab. He decided that females were silly things, although certain aspects about them fascinated him, such as Auntie Basima's large breasts, and the glimpse of smooth thigh he sometimes caught when the women danced. Unfortunately, he was getting too old now to be with the aunts and female cousins in the kitchen; it would soon be time for him to join the men. No more touching the girls whenever he felt like it, or sitting on wide, voluptuous laps. Female proximity was going to be denied to him until he was grown up, and that seemed like a long time away.

  Camelia came into the kitchen with a platter littered with chicken bones, and when she saw the tears rolling down Zeinab's cheeks, and the triumphant look on Mohammed's face, she knelt beside the little girl and dried her face with a handkerchief. "Really, Mohammed," she said to her nephew, "you're a naughty boy to be so mean to your cousin." She cast a glance at Nefissa, who was usually quick to defend the boy. But Nefissa was preoccupied with arranging candies on a platter.

  Camelia thought the downward curve of her aunt's mouth had deepened; at forty-eight she had the look of a middle-aged woman who resents life's passing. Camelia could not help comparing Nefissa to her sister Dahiba who, although a year older, looked much younger and was dazzlingly glamorous.

  Camelia wondered if the bitterness that had seemed to be part of Nefissa's make-up for so many years had increased when Dahiba was welcomed back into the family. Or had that eternally disapproving look begun long before? Camelia knew that it was Nefissa who had told the family, on the eve of the last war with Israel, about Yasmina and Hassan al-Sabir. She also knew that Amira had made Nefissa swear never to speak of the matter again, especially with regard to Zeinab. The family knew the truth of the girl's parentage, but outsiders, and above all the child herself, must never know. The secret had been let out, and now it was sealed up again; Zeinab and the other children did not know that Yasmina was her real mother. Zeinab believed that Mohammed was her cousin, not her half-brother.

  Camelia gave Zeinab a piece of candy and listened to the happy talk and laughter filling the kitchen. Who would believe that these women harbored so many secrets? Even Dahiba herself: only a few in the family knew about her explosive book, outlawed in Egypt. The older, conservative women, and the younger ones, such as Narjis, who were adopting the new Islamic dress, had not been told. But the educated and more modern cousins had been shown a copy of The Sentence of Woman, and they had quietly applauded Dahiba and Camelia's courage to speak out. Above all, they wanted to be sure Amira was kept from knowing.

  Alice, who had been helping Nefissa with the candy, retreated to her room to draw a quiet breath. Yasmina's latest letter was still by her bed. "How ironic, Mother," she had written, "to learn that it is the man's sperm that determines the sex of a baby. And to think that an Egyptian man can divorce a wife if she does not produce a boy, when it is the husband's fault all along!"

  And Alice had thought: How would things have turned out if you had been a son ...

  Ibrahim suddenly came into her room, surprising her. "Alice, there you are. Have you seen the fireworks?" He took her hand. "Come, up onto the roof! Cairo looks as if it spins among the stars!"

  "Ibrahim!" she said breathlessly. When was the last time he had come to her room?

  He led her up the stairs, telling her about the Abdel Rahman boy who was "going to be careful with firecrackers from now on, by God," and when they reached the roof, their eyes met a spectacular sight as rockets exploded over Cairo, sending gold and silver showers over domes and minarets.

  Nearly shouting, Ibrahim said, "What greater proof do we have that God has come back to us than this victory over our enemy? What greater evidence that He has forgiven his children?" He paused, then, a little more quietly, said, "I should have forgiven Yasmina. Alice, do you hate me for sending her away?"

  She looked into his eyes and was surprised to find tenderness there. "No, Ibrahim, I don't hate you. She's doing fine where she is. And I think she's happy."

  "I regret sending her away. I still love her and want her to come back." He watched an enormous ball of blue and silver stars burst overhead. "Perhaps I will write to her and ask her to come home."

  Alice noticed how he kept his eyes on the fireworks, and the proud way he held his head as the fiery eruptions cast light on his features. She thought how handsome he was, how much he still looked like the young man she had fallen in love with in Monte Carlo.

  But when he finally turned to her, she saw a sudden seriousness in his face that alarmed her. "Alice, I brought you up here so we could talk in private. There is something I have to tell you."

  "What is it, Ibrahim?"

  "There is no other way to break it to you than to just say it. Alice, I am going to take a second wife."

  A military truck went by in the street below and the men crowded onto it chanted, "Ya, Sadat! Ya, Sadat! With our blood and souls we sacrifice ourselves for you!"

  Alice realized that the smoke from the fireworks was starting to fill the night air, as if all Egypt were ablaze. "A second wife? Are you divorcing me?"

  "I would never divorce you, Alice. I love you and respect you. And I want you always to live here and be my wife. But I want a son, and you are past the age to give me one."

  "A son! But you have Zachariah!"

  He reached for her hand and began in halting terms to tell her about the night Yasmina was born. When he was finished, he said, "I loved Yasmina, Alice, but I needed a son. On his deathbed, my father made me promise that I would give him grandsons. I was frightened. And so I adopted the bastard child of a beggar girl. Sahra, who used to be our cook."

  Alice began to tremble. "Zachariah is not yours? But he looks like you, Ibrahim."

  "Sahra told me that I bore some resemblance to the baby's father. Perhaps that was part of my madness. I knew that what I was doing was against God's law, but I had cursed God, and I thought He intended to punish me. And now I deeply regret that act. It is not for us to interfere with God's plan, Alice. Whatever He had destined for Sahra and her son, it was wrong of me to change that course. But I believe that today I am forgiven, as Egypt is forgiven, and tomorrow will be filled with new hope."

  "Who—" she began, but barely found her voice. "Who are you going to marry?"

  "My nurse, Huda. She comes from a family that produces sons, and that is what I want. She knows that I do not love her, I have explained my purpose for
wanting to marry her. And she has agreed to it."

  He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her gently. "Please don't be upset, darling."

  Suddenly Alice wasn't standing on the roof among fireworks, she was back in the garden, staring in amazement at the cyclamen buds that had appeared so miraculously. Ibrahim and Eddie were at a soccer match with Hassan; Alice hadn't been invited because she was a woman. Two little girls were in the garden with her— Camelia and Yasmina, playing dress-up with Nefissa's discarded melayas. They were trying to veil themselves, trying to hide their bodies and faces as Egyptian women hid theirs. They had thought it was a game, but Alice had seen the seriousness of it. The British were leaving Egypt, and there was talk of returning to the old ways.

  The old ways of veils, she thought now, and female circumcision and second wives. And she realized that the future she had feared had arrived. "It's all right, darling," she said to Ibrahim. "I don't mind. You need a son, of course. And I can no longer give you one. You go on down and join the others, I'll be there in a minute."

  Ibrahim disappeared in the darkness, and Alice followed soon after. When they were both gone, Zachariah came out of the shadows, from where he had been watching the fireworks.

  Tahia looked at Zachariah in dismay. They were sitting on the same marble bench they had sat on when they had first declared their love, the night Yasmina was wed to Omar. "What do you mean, you're leaving?" she said. "Why? Where are you going?"

  "Tahia, I found out tonight that my father is not really my father, that my whole life has been based upon a lie." He told her what he had overheard on the roof, and she said, "Allah! Can it be true? Surely you didn't hear correctly!"

  Zachariah wasn't upset; in fact, he felt strangely at peace, as if a long and difficult struggle had suddenly come to an end. "I understand so much now," he said quietly. "Why my father never loved me. Why, at times, I even sensed his resentment toward me. And why I would catch Sahra watching me. I always thought she told those stories about her childhood in the village just to entertain us, but now I realize that in some way she was trying to tell me about my real family. Tahia, I love you with all my heart, but I cannot marry you until I know the truth about myself. I'm going to look for my mother. I'm going to find the village where I was conceived. Perhaps I have brothers and sisters there, a whole other family, waiting for me."

  "But how will you find it? Zakki, there are hundreds of villages along the Nile! Sahra never said where she was from!" Tahia was frightened.

  Only last month, during Ramadan, Zachariah had fasted so zealously that he had had one of his spells, falling down, becoming incoherent. What if a spell were to come over him while he was going from village to village?

  "Please! Ask Tewfik or Ahmed to go with you—"

  "This is a journey I must make on my own." He took her hand between his and said with a smile, "Don't be afraid for my sake, I go with God. Perhaps that was the meaning of my revelation in the desert. Perhaps it was the Almighty's sign to me that I am about to embark upon a quest. And no one can walk the road with me, Tahia. Not even you, whom I love more than the beating of my own heart. Please," he said, "be happy for me. I shall be able to embrace Sahra as my mother. And I shall find my father, and pay homage to him."

  She sobbed, and drew a delicate hand across her cheek. "And then you will come back to me, my darling Zakki?"

  "I will come back, precious Tahia. Before God and the Prophet and all the saints and angels, I swear to you that I will come back."

  In Amira's private suite, Qettah once again consulted tea leaves and oil on water. Finally the astrologer smiled and said, "You have recovered completely from the illness, Sayyida. Fortune favors you, as she favors Egypt. This is an auspicious time for travel. It is time now for you to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and find the boy who beckons to you in your dreams."

  Amira escorted the elderly woman to the front door, paying her for the visit, and then, too excited to wait until the morning, decided to tell Alice at once that they could start preparations for their journey to Saudi Arabia.

  Alice sat at her vanity table, enveloped in a cloud of essence of almonds and roses from her bath. She had put on one of her old gowns from the days of the Cage d'Or, an elegant dress, still white and seductive. How long had it been since she had worn it? She smiled. The depression that had shadowed her for so long was strangely gone, as if someone had turned on a bright light to chase it away. She had never felt so at peace.

  Alice got up and left the room, and as she made her way down the hall, passing the door to the bedroom that had once been her brother's, she recalled with appalling clarity the last two times she had seen him in there: the first, with Hassan al-Sabir, committing an indecent act; the second, with a bullet through his brain. She was not surprised to see Edward there in the hallway now, in his white flannels, and carrying a cricket bat. He hadn't aged a day, even though she had last seen him over twenty years ago. Of course. She was seeing his ghost.

  "It's a warm evening for November," he said to her. "Perfect for a walk."

  "Yes, Eddie," Alice said.

  She went down the stairs and when she paused at the bottom, she heard the river of melancholia roaring again in her ears.

  She passed revelers in the streets, and men crowded around radios and television sets listening to President Sadat. The Corniche was jammed with traffic; pedestrians laughed and cavorted along the sidewalk, paying little attention to the woman in the white evening gown who made her way down to the river, where fishermen were singing over their braziers.

  Alice saw lights across the way, reflected in the water, and realized they were coming from the Cage d'Or. She tried to imagine the dazzled girl she had once been, standing on the terrace, swept away by the excitement and romance of her Arabian Nights fantasy.

  She found herself at a deserted spot, away from the feluccas and houseboats, far from the noisy Hilton and its dock, where the Nile cruise boats were moored. It surprised her that the water was cold, and the mud unpleasant beneath her bare feet. She had somehow always thought the Nile would be warm; hadn't Amira called the Nile the Mother of Rivers? Alice's gown billowed out at the knees, and then around her thighs, floating for a few minutes on the surface, a white jellyfish. When the water reached her breasts, the fabric sank down and swirled around her legs as the river's current caught it. The tide tickled her armpits and then her chin. She thought what a curious optical illusion it was, as she went under, that the Cage d'Or looked as if it were the one drowning, not she.

  As the water closed over her head and she saw her blond hair stream out in tendrils, she heard Ibrahim say, "Do you hate me for declaring our daughter dead and sending her away?" And Alice, in pure honesty, replied: No, because you implemented her release from this prison that has held me captive. Thank you, Ibrahim, for setting my daughter free.

  Alice opened her mouth and brackish water rushed in. She spread wide her arms, lifted her feet and felt the gentle current cradle her. She felt as if she were flying; her body rolled over and over gently, as the water continued to pour down her throat. And then her head struck something hard.

  She felt a sharp pain and saw an explosion of stars, and she thought they were skyrockets, celebrating Egypt's victory.

  PART SIX

  1980

  THIRTY-TWO

  T

  HE COUNTRY WAS ROCKED BY THE WOMAN'S BLASPHEMY. IN the streets and in the coffeehouses, it was all the people talked about: First she murders her brother, they said, and now she puts on a false beard and takes over the duties and privileges of a man. Should such a perversity of nature be allowed to live? Isn't the creature a walking obscenity?

  "The woman is mad," grumbled a tax collector over his beer, "to deny her sex so, to thumb her nose at the role in life nature created her for."

  "Who does she think she is?" said the owner of the coffeehouse. "Trying to be a man, demanding rights that were never intended for a mere female. Where would the world be if all women tho
ught like that?"

  A textile exporter raised his fist and cried, "Next thing you know, they'll be insisting that we have the babies!"

  Dahiba couldn't help it. She laughed.

  Hakim turned, giving her an exasperated look, and she said, "I'm sorry, my dear. But it's just so ... so funny. Men having babies."

  The actors in the outdoor coffeehouse that had been temporarily erected outside the Egyptian Museum relaxed and brought cigarettes out from under loincloths and long pleated robes. The onlookers crowded behind the ropes hooted to see people dressed as Egyptians from a long-gone past light up cigarettes.

  "I am sorry, my darling," Dahiba said, going up to her husband and running her hand over his bald head. "Do the scene again. This time I promise I shall be quiet."

  She knew how important this film was to him—and how dangerous. So far, the government censors were not interfering, but they were watching very closely. Would they be smart enough to see through Hakim's trick? "It is a film about our glorious past!" he had argued. "What can be shameful in a film about our pharaohs? There is nothing political in it, and I promise to keep the dancing scenes moral and decent."

  But what the censors didn't know was the deeper message of the film, which, on the surface, was about a young woman in modern Cairo who falls asleep in the Egyptian Museum and dreams that she is Hatshepsut, Egypt's only woman pharaoh. But the dream is a parable. The young woman is married to a sadist who tortures her and, under the law, she has no recourse against him; in her dream, the roles are reversed, she becomes powerful and finally metes out punishment by castration. What the censors didn't know was that the actor who was playing the husband was also to play the castrated slave.