by Chaitali Sen
Vic appeared suddenly, like a bear in the woods. Without any warning he took her into his arms and squeezed her. He muttered into her ear something about his cock being bigger than John’s. “That must be why you couldn’t get it in,” she said, and he pulled away, laughing. Mariam was relieved to have it past them; it never again needed mentioning. John was staring at them, his mouth a little bud, and Mariam went back to him in a hurry. “You bastard, you’ve done it now,” Vic said to him, giving his arm a punch.
“I need a drink,” John said. He pulled Mariam to a tabletop collection of glasses, rounded wine glasses and conical martini glasses, tumblers for whiskey and flutes for champagne. An adjacent table held bottles of clear and amber liquor arranged neatly in rows, punctuated with bowls of lemon wedges, olives, and shockingly red cherries. Mariam didn’t know what to do with any of it, but before John could make her a drink Nehemia came and took him away to meet a new doctoral student.
Mariam knew not to follow him. She walked over to a triptych of French windows and looked out. It was too dark to see anything but an old wall and a park behind it, more darkness and the shadowy limbs of some hulking, ancient tree.
She felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. It was Mrs. Nehemia, trying to hand her a martini. Mariam took the glass and stirred the martini with the skewer of three olives. She took a sip.
“It’s my specialty,” Mrs. Nehemia said. “Is it too strong?”
“No,” Mariam said emphatically. She picked up the skewer of olives and put it indelicately into her mouth. While Mrs. Nehemia stepped away to retrieve her own drink, something pinkish with a cherry floating in it, Mariam popped the first olive into her mouth and let the juices burst on her tongue. Amusedly Mrs. Nehemia watched her savor the olive. What a stylish woman she was. Her earrings were opal.
“You’re the reason my husband’s been in such a terrible mood,” she said at last. “He thought Malick was stealing him. We were so relieved when we found out he’d only gone off to get married. How do you like Alexandria?”
“I think it’s beautiful.”
“It must be difficult, experiencing a new marriage and new city all at once.” She asked Mariam about her home, which Mariam described with a warm feeling that surprised her.
“It sounds quite modern,” Mrs. Nehemia said. “In Alexandria, people tend to think the rest of the country is so backward.”
“Backward?” Mariam balked. “No, we have everything. It’s not as developed but that’s because of politics, not the people.”
“That’s very true,” Mrs. Nehemia said. “I like the way you think. You should talk to some of John’s colleagues and correct their attitude.”
“You should visit English Canal,” Mariam said. “Even John liked it.”
“The way you describe it is quite different from what I expected. If you ever pass through the neighborhood by Victoria Park where the Sulatis live, most of the women are veiled.” Mariam nodded. She had not known such a neighborhood existed. “Is that common where you live?”
“Not where I lived,” Mariam said. She didn’t want to say more. She was ignorant of too many things to get into a reasonable conversation, such as what Mrs. Nehemia meant by veiled, and where in Sulat it might have been more common, or who had migrated to Alexandria from Sulat and for what reasons. She tried to remember the women on the streets in Belarive, but she was only six and had not taken careful note of the passing women. She knew for a fact her mother walked outside without even a headscarf, but most of the women probably wore some kind of covering. Mariam did happen to know why it wasn’t common in English Canal. She had found out from reading about her grandfather’s cases that English Canal had been one of the municipalities banning “garments that obscured the face,” as far back as the 1920s. It had surprised her to find out the college had taken an active role in supporting the ban. “These things are so complicated,” Mariam said, sounding like she was too feeble minded to think about them, and Mrs. Nehemia said she was fascinated by the differences in people. Mariam smiled. She thought Mrs. Nehemia was endearing and kind, and the drink she had given her was relaxing.
“Your home is lovely,” Mariam said. “And this neighborhood, there’s so much history here!”
Mrs. Nehemia boasted that her family had lived on this street for five generations.
“Do you ever feel like an outsider in Alexandria?” Mariam asked. “I mean, being Jewish?”
Mariam hoped she hadn’t overstepped. Mrs. Nehemia looked surprised, but not offended. “You know, I used to, every time I left the neighborhood. But I suppose when you get older, you learn what to expect and you adjust yourself accordingly.”
“I see.”
Mrs. Nehemia studied Mariam, looking amused. “No one’s ever thought to ask me that before.”
“I hope it wasn’t rude,” Mariam said.
“Not at all. You’re very charming.”
Mariam felt she might be monopolizing Mrs. Nehemia’s hospitality and looked around the room for John. In the center of the room there was a long sofa and a stylish wooden coffee table, and matching wingback armchairs at either end. Every seat was occupied. Throughout the room there were more intimate arrangements, and in one corner a cluster of women, seated in a huddle, were talking and sputtering with laughter. John, Vic, Nehemia, in fact all of the men were gone from the main room.
“Who are the women over there?” Mariam asked.
“Wives,” Mrs. Nehemia answered. “Like you. Do you want to meet them?”
“Do you think I should?”
Mrs. Nehemia looked back at them. “They’re gossiping at the moment. I don’t think you will enjoy them.”
Mariam finished her drink and looked woefully into her glass, and immediately Mrs. Nehemia replaced it with a fresh drink. Mariam took a sip, but the effects of the first martini suddenly overwhelmed her. If she drank a second one, she’d be falling down. How mortifying if she got sick in front of John’s department.
Mrs. Nehemia took the drink away. “You must eat something now,” she said, and led her across the room to a table of exquisite hors d’oeuvres, figs stuffed with soft cheese, four varieties of olive including a home-cured green olive that tasted less briny, more fruity, and darling little chicken croquettes, fried herbed almonds, and grapes to cleanse the palate. Her hostess went off to tend to new guests, and Mariam ate more olives. She couldn’t get enough of them.
When she was full she wandered away from the table. She followed the sound of men’s voices and found her way to the terrace. John was there, drinking whisky and talking to his colleagues. He put his arm around her and went on talking about something she couldn’t understand. Mariam rested her head on his shoulder. The men teased her, offering their own shoulders instead. They made some crude jokes about foreign women and John, calling them terrible names, told them to shut up. Mariam, feeling truly drunk now, didn’t know which foreign women they were talking about.
They were among the last to leave. When they were departing, Mrs. Nehemia held Mariam’s hand and said, “Take care of her. I like her very much.” Now flush with affection, Mariam leaned forward and kissed her cheek, and everyone seemed to be laughing. “I like her too,” John said. In the taxi going home, he slipped his hand between her legs. He was also drunk. “I’m the envy of the whole department. Now they all want to go to English Canal and come back with a wife.”
Once the new term began, Mariam had more time to herself. She set her mind to finding a job, putting in an application at the Presidency College Library. John was sure they’d have a position for her but there was nothing open in the Reference department, and Mariam did not want to go back to Circulation. It didn’t matter; there were so many interesting libraries in Alexandria. The one that caught her attention was the Library of the Antiquities in the neighborhood called Old Alexandria. Mariam looked on the metro map. It was a little far, requiring a transfer at P
arliament Square, but she could do it. She would have to learn, anyway. What was the point of leaving her home if she was going to remain trapped inside another one? Surely John would want her to be independent. He hadn’t put any restrictions on her job search.
She called and had a lengthy conversation with the director. Mariam was excited to talk about her experience and her work on the War Archives and the director sounded very interested. She said their specialty was preserving older documents, but if Mariam was interested, they had a one-year internship and training course in document collection and preservation. She thought Mariam would be an excellent candidate. It didn’t pay any money, but the training was free. Mariam said she would think about it. She didn’t know how John would feel about an unpaid job, though they didn’t need the money. He claimed she saved him money, which was probably true considering his apparent inability to open bills or use a stove.
She was excited when John got home. Before he could get his shoes off she’d told him all about her conversation. He misunderstood. “You went there by yourself?”
“No, I called. I spoke to her on the phone. But what do you think? It doesn’t pay. Did you hear that part?”
He didn’t know where it was. She showed him on the map. “That’s far,” he said. “I don’t want you to go through Parliament Square. There are bombings there all the time.”
“Bombings?”
“Well, bomb threats. Evacuations. But once a bomb did go off in a trash can. There are no trash cans there.”
Mariam laughed. “What do you mean there are no trash cans? You don’t want me to go because there are no trash cans?” She knew what he meant but she still thought he was being ridiculous.
“Parliament Square is dangerous. Read the newspaper.”
“All right. Maybe there’s a different way I could go.”
He thought about it. “I guess we could go this weekend and see how it is.”
“She asked me to come in tomorrow. John, I have to do this on my own. I can’t depend on you for everything. It’s a good opportunity. The only problem is the money, but it’s only twenty hours. I can still get a part-time job.”
“Then I’ll never see you.”
“You’ll see me, don’t be silly.”
He didn’t argue any more. He said he would take the train with her to Parliament Square in the morning and she could continue on from there. If she still wanted it, he wouldn’t stop her.
Mariam thought that was a very reasonable solution. She was pleased with the way they had talked things out.
“Listen,” he said. “I wasn’t going to tell you this until it’s final, but there’s a good chance we’re going to Copenhagen in March.” He told her they had submitted a paper for the World Geomorphology Conference and Nehemia got unofficial word that it had been accepted. They were waiting for the invitation letter. Depending on the department funds, they would only have to pay for Mariam’s plane ticket.
Mariam couldn’t believe it. They had talked about traveling the next summer, when things were more settled. Copenhagen in March sounded so wonderful she could hardly believe it. She had to tell herself this was her new life and she should get used to announcements like this.
“But you’ll be working. I won’t be in your way?” she asked.
He raised one eyebrow. “I hope you’ll be in my way.”
She could barely contain her excitement. “I don’t have a passport. Does it take long to get one? Should I apply for one now, just in case?”
John nodded. “Everything here takes a long time.”
Mariam had so many more questions. How much would the plane ticket cost? Would it be snowing in Copenhagen in March? Would Mrs. Nehemia or any of the other wives be going? He didn’t know the answers to any of her questions.
She said, “I’ll take the job in Circulation, then. We’re going to need travel money.”
“Traveling can be expensive. What about the Library of Antiquities?”
She pretended to think about it. “Maybe I’ll still go, just to see it.” She was aware of how masterfully he had steered her away from something she thought she wanted. She didn’t know how she felt about that part, but in this case, she felt she could accept defeat.
The next day she went to the passport office to fill out her application. She showed the clerk her marriage license and her residency card. He said it was better to have a birth certificate but Mariam explained that she never had one. It wasn’t unusual to not have a birth certificate, especially in Sulat, and the clerk didn’t seem concerned. He said birth certificates weren’t standard until 1965 and Mariam said, “Really? How interesting.” As she filled out her application, her fingers were unsteady. She had to put the pen down repeatedly to wipe her hand on her skirt. She realized she had been waiting for this all her life. She had been waiting for the world to open up.
“Do I need to have my picture taken?” she asked.
“Not yet. You’ll get an approval letter and then you bring the photographs.”
“How long will it take?”
“Three months.”
“No longer than three months?”
The clerk hesitated. “Not usually.”
“We’re traveling in March,” she said.
“You’ll have it by March, no problem.”
That same week, Mariam took a job in the Circulation department at the Presidency College Library. It was dull but easy, and within a month she was able to send more money home to her parents.
She told her mother about the trip to Copenhagen once it was official. Mama said, “That’s wonderful, darling. You’ll have to send me a postcard.”
“There’s no reason why you can’t come to Alexandria for a little while. We can pay for a nurse. Or you can bring Daddy with you.” She’d had this conversation with her mother before.
“It’s such a hassle, Mariam.”
“Don’t you want to see where I live?”
“I have such a lovely picture of it in my mind.”
“But I miss you.”
“Oh, stop, you don’t miss me at all. Don’t tell lies.”
She swore her mother was getting more impossible by the day.
By the end of the fall term, four days past the three month mark, Mariam still hadn’t received her passport letter. John had already purchased their plane tickets. Their hotel room was booked. Everything was set but the passport.
“Stop worrying,” John said. “When they say three months it means four.”
At last, the letter from the Passport Office came at the end of December. It was a short letter, three sentences. Mariam held it in her hands for a long time. Her name was printed clearly, Mariam Merchant (née Azim). Everything about it seemed to be correct, written in bureaucratic language, on official letterhead, except for the most important thing, the promise of a passport. The letter said her request had been denied.
John came out of the bedroom, asking Mariam where she’d hidden his blue tie. He stopped when he saw her. “What is it?”
She handed him the letter. She watched him as he read it, hoping he would say there was no problem, that there only a little missing information that they needed in order to finish processing the request, and she would know that she had misunderstood the letter completely, but she could tell from his expression of vague panic that he had not been expecting anything like this.
“Let’s go to the passport office now,” John said. “I’m sure this is a bureaucratic mix-up. They do this kind of thing all the time.”
“They do?”
He looked at his watch. “Hurry up and get ready. My class is in three hours.”
She didn’t believe it was a bureaucratic mix-up, and since there had been no reason given for the denial, the reasons were left to Mariam’s imagination. In the taxi, she made a mental list and narrowed it down to three possibilities:
her grandfather’s political activities, her letters that were intercepted during John’s military service, probably still in some government file somewhere, and her work on the war archives. She thought that had to be it. She had intricate knowledge of war crimes, and lately there had been a string of visits from European foreign ministers who were always talking about democracy. If this turned out to be the reason, she didn’t know what she could do about it. What happened in the past couldn’t be changed.
They sat in the passport office for two hours. John prepared notes for his class, though still he compulsively checked his watch, while Mariam had nothing to do but think. Thinking never made her optimistic. Finally, they were called into a tiny windowless office barely big enough for a desk and three chairs, and there they waited for a death-faced bureaucrat to finish looking over her file. According to the nameplate on the desk, this was Zafar Hussain, though he didn’t introduce himself by name. Mariam wondered if he was from Sulat, but he had a more Eastern look to him. He examined official papers in her file. Mariam tried to see what they were but she couldn’t recognize any of them. She gripped the cold metal arms of her chair. She wasn’t aware of how tightly her fingers wrapped around them until John put his hand over hers.
“You don’t have a birth certificate?” the man asked.
“A birth certificate?” Mariam couldn’t believe it. “I was told birth certificates weren’t standard until 1965. I have a residency card. I’ve never had a birth certificate.”
“But we have no record of your citizenship.”
“Why would she need that?” John asked. “She was born here. Her parents were born here.”
“It doesn’t matter. They left the country.”
“During the war,” Mariam said. “They had to leave. Then they came back.”
This man, Mr. Hussain, looked at her as if she had no right to speak. He could not have come from Sulat, Mariam thought. Surely someone from her province would have shown more sympathy. He talked to her slowly as if she were a small child.