“Oh, I couldn’t. Never.”
Laila smiled and hugged her. “Why not? Do it, sparrow. You’ll be married, too, before you know it, and then it’ll be too late.”
O
Malik came home early that year. Israel and Syria had been trading artillery shells and bombs for months, and the universal belief was that the Israelis would attack Egypt next—or that Egypt would strike first, in self-defense.
In mid-May, President Nasser mobilized his nation’s armed forces. Malik got out on one of the last flights from Cairo and barely had time to unpack his bags before the Six Day War was over.
Sabers rattled mightily during those few days, but there was never the possibility that al-Remal would join the fight. The Remal king fulminated bitterly against the Israeli aggressors yet made it clear that their great allies, the Americans, were welcome and honored guests in the country and should be treated accordingly. At the same time, he canceled all official appointments with Americans—and, of course, anyone who had invited an American to a private party followed suit.
It was a difficult time for everyone. The precipitous defeat of the nation that all the Arab world looked to for leadership was depressing. Even Malik was moody and irritable, a state in which Amira had rarely seen him. She thought, at first, that it was only part of the general gloom; then, too, he was at an age when boys seemed to become moody. At last, it came to her that his discontent might have to do with Laila’s upcoming marriage.
O
“My friend, Abdullah Sibai, has chosen wisely for his daughter,’’ said Amira’s father, as the Badir family sipped their coffee after the evening meal. “General Mahmoud Sadek is renowned for his piety. And he is a formidable horseman and hunter.”
“He has a good appearance,” said Jihan agreeably. “And I’m told the king regards him as a good friend. But I wonder if he might not be a bit old for Laila. She is so high-spirited, and he is, after all, in his fifties.”
An old man, Amira thought. Her friend was going to marry an old man!
What must she be feeling?
O
But when Amira questioned her friend, Laila’s enthusiasm for her upcoming marriage was unbounded. “He’s very rich. And very generous. You should see the gifts he’s been sending to the house. A jeweled belt from Beirut. A gold mesh handbag from Tiffany in New York! A magnificent silver tea set from London. Something new every day!”
“That’s wonderful, Laila, but—”
“And he’s had the most tragic life,” Laila continued. “He’s lost two wives in childbirth, can you imagine? My mother assures me that if I give Mahmoud a son—or even a daughter—he’ll treasure me until the day he dies. Isn’t that romantic?”
Amira nodded, still not certain in her own mind that this marriage could be described as romantic. “I had a letter from Malik today. He’ll be home on Thurs- day, for a week. Will you come to visit?”
Laila was silent for a long moment. “I don’t think so,” she said softly, a hint of sadness in her voice. “I don’t think that would be proper … now that I’m betrothed to Mahmoud.”
“Oh.”
“Never mind, little sparrow. There’s so much to be happy about. Tomorrow, I’ll begin choosing clothes. Mahmoud has sent sketches from Paris. And we’re going to Istanbul—for at least four weeks, isn’t that glorious? And after that, I’ll be redecorating Mahmoud’s house. He says I can have carte blanche, no matter what it costs. There’s so much to do, Amira, I don’t know how I’ll find the time …”
O
Malik was as spiritless as Laila was bubbly. One morning, he sat in on Amira’s lessons with Miss Vanderbeek. He complimented them both on Ami- ra’s English and French, but soon grew restless and excused himself. Amira asked to be excused, as well. She found him in the garden, tossing pebbles into the fountain.
“What’s the matter, Brother?” She gathered her courage. “Is it Laila?”
“Laila? What gives you that idea? It’s life, Little Sister. It’s passing me by. I have no control over anything. A war has come and gone while I blinked. I spend most of the year in a different world, then come home to the same old one. It goes on endlessly and nothing changes—not for the good, anyway.”
“It’s all in God’s control, my brother,” she said, feeling the words’ ineffectualness as she spoke them. Malik merely grunted.
“Will you teach me to drive, Brother?”
His eyes snapped angrily towards hers. Then, just as suddenly, his old smile replaced the glare.
“She told you about that, did she? Trust a woman with a secret. Well, why not? Will this afternoon be soon enough?”
“Well, there’s no rush. God willing, I—”
“None of that, Little Sister. She who hesitates is lost. It’s now or never.”
That was how Amira found herself behind the wheel of a Mercedes sedan in the wasteland beyond the new airport, where the road was little more than a track in the desert. She was wearing an old thobe of Malik’s and had covered her hair with a boy’s white ghutra that he hadn’t worn in years.
There were no driver’s licenses in al-Remal, partly because there were so few cars, partly because the few that existed tended to be regarded in the same light as horses. Any boy who had an adult male’s permission could drive, even if he could barely see over the dashboard.
“All right, put it in first gear. Now let out the clutch and press the accelerator … easy, I said!”
The car jerked and stalled. Amira’s legs were just long enough to reach the pedals.
“Try it again. And don’t worry about going off the road; it’s hardpan here.” She tried again and stalled again. And again. Then she managed first gear but stalled when she shifted to second. Each time, Amira remembered Laila’s fear of a breakdown.
Then, suddenly, she got it. She took the Mercedes through first to second— with only a little grinding noise—and then to third. The landscape was rushing by faster than it ever seemed to do when Malik was driving, and she was grateful for his steadying hand on the wheel. Then she pushed it away. She had been oversteering, she realized. All that was needed was an easy turn of the wheel, a light touch on the pedal.
The feeling of having the powerful machine in her power was magical. She drove in circles and figure eights. She learned to use the brakes and, at Malik’s instruction, switched on the headlights, blinked the turn signals, even ran the windshield wipers; the fact that German engineers had provided for such an unlikely event as rain impressed her.
“All right, Little Sister, we’ll run out of gas at this rate. Slow it down. Now, stop.”
She braked to a halt that was only slightly too abrupt. “Can’t I drive back to town?”
“No. That’s enough.” Malik shut off the ignition, got out, and came around to take the driver’s seat. “You liked that, did you?”
“I loved it!”
“Well, now you know how to drive. It’s something you never forget.” Was that what Laila had meant? Or was it all of this, the whole experience, the feeling of power, all the while dressed like a male, doing something only males were permitted?
Malik started the engine and turned toward home. “Thank you, Brother. Can we do it again sometime?”
“Who knows? But there’s the airport. Maybe you’d better put your girls clothes on and hide the ghutra before we get any closer in.”
“Oh, all right.”
She reached under the seat for her dress.
“No!” Malik said suddenly. “Don’t do it now. There’s an army Jeep com- ing up behind us.” He glanced worriedly at the rearview mirror. “Damn it! I think he wants us to stop. All right, don’t worry. Just remember you’re a boy, and don’t say anything unless you’re asked.”
He pulled over. The Jeep swung around the Mercedes and stopped in a cloud of dust. A small, wiry man wearing a pistol and a larger man with an automatic weapon got out and approached the car. In the heat of the desert, Amira felt as if she were freezing.
&nb
sp; The man with the pistol peered in the window and smiled. “It’s you, Malik son of Omar. Just when I was sure I’d caught an Israeli spy. The peace of God be with you.”
“The peace of God and his compassion with you, Salim son of Hamid. I started to say ‘Lieutenant,’ but I see that you’re a captain now.”
“The spoils of war, young sir. Not that we got within a thousand miles of the shooting—which was over soon enough, God knows. But the airport, which is my duty to guard, is still in Remali hands, by God’s will.” Despite his friendly words, the man had an intense expression, which he now focused on Amira.
“But who’s this?”
“The offspring of an acquaintance,” said Malik casually. “In a moment of weakness, I agreed to be a driving instructor.”
The man was staring so hard at Amira that she instinctively lowered her eyes and turned her face away. Caught. She was sure of it.
“Modest,” the captain said. “As modest as a girl. A good thing to be modest, with such an ill-featured face as that.”
Amira’s cheeks burned. How dare this stranger stare at her and insult her? Then she realized that he was only being polite, substituting an insult for a compliment to avoid bringing her bad luck.
“It’s good to see you, Salim. May we meet again soon. But unless you’d like to interrogate us, I hope to join my family for prayers, God willing.” The wiry man laughed. “Even if I liked it, Malik son of Omar, you and your young friend might not. Go in peace. Your father is well?” “Alive and cantankerous as ever, thank God. And yours?”
“Hanging on, praise God.”
“The peace of God go with you.” “And with you.”
Half a mile down the road, Malik finally let out a long breath. “You can change now, Little Sister. You did well. Were you afraid?”
“A little. He stared at me so.” Malik laughed. “Yes, he did.”
“Do you think he knew I was a girl?”
Malik laughed harder. “Salim ibn Hamid is a good enough man, I sup- pose, if a little dense. I know him only slightly. But it’s said that he’s one of those who finds pleasure in boys—boys too young to shave.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Yes, it appears you’ve made a conquest, Little Sister. I can hear the poet now: ‘The Star-Crossed Love of Salim and Amira.’ The Egyptians will make a movie of it.”
“Malik!”
“By God, I want to thank you for asking me to do this, Little Sister. It’s reminded me that God, in all his greatness, also has a sense of humor. The Arabs fight the Israelis, who are nothing but their cousins. Laila is betrothed to a man older than her father. And tonight, Salim ibn Hamid will bay the moon for my sister, dreaming that she is a boy.”
Malik could not seem to stop laughing, and then Amira was laughing, too— with relief, with joy, with youth, with her taste of forbidden freedom. All the way home, every little thing they said or saw set off another round of laughter.
Black Dream
The desert was bright all around, the wide sky flawlessly blue. Jihan was standing in a shallow pit in the sand. It only came up to her waist, but when she tried to step out, she couldn't. The sand slid beneath her feet, and somehow the pit grew deeper. The harder she climbed, the deeper she sank. Soon, the rim was over her head. She used her hands, but the hot sand crumbled as she clawed at it. The hole deepened, and the sand choked her. She screamed for help. People appeared above her against the shrinking sky. Shouting something she could not understand, sand cascading down under his feet, Malik leaned in, smiled encouragement, and turned away. Amira knelt on the rim in tears before fading like a mirage; Jihan’s parents shook their heads sadly before walking on. The pit was black, the hissing sand as suffocating as smoke. Now, only a small, faceless figure perched on the rim, high against the last of the light, calling her name.
Jihan woke up, heart pounding, shivering in sweat.
Like most Remalis, she took great stock in dreams, and she knew exactly when she had first had this one. It was noted in a small diary she kept. Black Dream, the entry said. She did not bother to elaborate or—as she sometimes did when a dream was portentous but mystifying—to hire an interpreter. She needed no professional to tell her that this was a dream of her own death.
Black Dream, and then, a few weeks later, the same notation, followed after another two weeks by dream again. Soon, the dream took on a presence almost as real as the people around her, and Jihan knew with a certainty that what terrified her would never go away.
She looked through the pages of her diary to confirm the timing of the first dream. Yes, it had come exactly three days after the entry: Omar tells me he is taking another wife.
The End of Childhood
Laila was married in early fall. Malik had already left for Cairo. The wedding was the most elegant Amira had ever seen or could imagine.
Laila, decked in silk and dripping with gold, everything about her done to perfection, looked as beautiful as one of the virgins promised to the faithful in paradise.
Her groom was far from the elderly gentleman Amira had made him in her mind. Mahmoud Sadek was as handsome as everyone said, and though not a large man, had something about him that made him seem so. Even Omar Badir and Abdullah Sibai had the aspect of younger brothers in his presence. Then it was over, and Laila was gone. The couple would honeymoon in Istanbul. For a few days, Amira lived on the remembered glory of the wedding.
Then a gray despondency descended on her. She was lonely.
She tried to spend time with her mother, but Jihan seemed to be in her own world these days. Even Miss Vanderbeek was gone, taking her annual vacation somewhere in the south of France. On top of it all, Amira’s body was changing; she had not bled yet, but things were happening within her that sometimes seemed like torment.
It helped when Laila’s letters began to arrive, a new one every day. She raved about the luxuriousness of her honeymoon hotel, the beauty of the Bosporus, the treasures of the Topkapi museum.
You should see the jewels, Amira, the fabulous diamonds and rubies and sapphires that the sultans gave to their wives. They must have loved them very much indeed. I miss you very much and wish you were here to share all these wonders with me. But I don’t think Mahmoud would like that. Never mind, I will soon be home—and I will be your friend always and forever.
Amira read and reread these sentiments, silently affirming her friendship “always and forever.”
In the third week of Laila’s honeymoon came a note in her exuberant hand warning, “State secret! Hide this away! Aren’t they cute?” and a postcard-sized photograph of The Beatles. Amira was vaguely disappointed. The musicians looked rather like oil-company foreigners wearing strange wigs. But, in tribute to the shared memories the picture represented, she slipped it between the pages of one of the textbooks Malik had left her. Every night, she took it out and wondered what Istanbul was like, and Cairo, and London, and all the other places she might never see.
One midmorning, at an hour when Omar was always in town on business, Amira’s loneliness and the urgings of her body made her do a crazy thing. She went into her father’s study and turned on the radio. It took her a while to find the Cairo station, but at last there it was, a Western song playing, rock and roll; it wasn’t The Beatles, but the music was similar. She lifted her skirt and danced, watching her own long legs as she twirled, trying to regain that feeling almost forgotten, that brief sunburst of freedom.
It wouldn’t come. The music wasn’t the same, there was no Laila, nothing was right. She should work on the lessons Miss Vanderbeek had left her, or maybe experiment with makeup. Or do something else. But she was still dancing, mechanically and aimlessly, when her father’s voice thundered from the door.
“What are you doing! By God, that I should see this! Are you my daughter?” His face bloodless with anger, Omar reached her in one stride and dragged her from the room by her hair.
In the women’s country, there were gasps when he burst in. “Where is my
wife?! Where?!”
Jihan materialized as the other women vanished in a whisper of cloth and a clatter of sandals.
“What is it? What’s wrong, my husband?”
“I told you. I warned you. It’s time and past time. It will be done now!” Jihan shook her head. “But, Husband, she’s not yet reached her time. She’s still a child.”
“A child I’ve just seen flaunting herself like a Cairo whore, in my study, to my radio. Go! It’s still on. Go hear the godless music for yourself.”
“I believe you, Omar. Punish her as you wish. It’s just that she hasn’t started yet and—”
“Silence!” Omar spotted Bahia hovering in a corner. “You! You know what’s to be done. Go fetch what’s needed.”
Amira had never known such terror. She had sinned greatly. Not just the sin of her shameless dancing, but the far worse sin of arousing ghadab, rage, in a parent. Children who did that endangered their very souls. She cried helplessly while Jihan made feeble protests that Omar, now stonily silent, ignored. Bahia reappeared carrying the abeyya.
“This is not her punishment,” Omar told Jihan. “I will decide that later. This is what God ordains. See that you do it.” He turned and left. They took her to Jihan’s room. Amira still wept. Veiling was supposed to be a happy and proud occasion, a passage into womanhood, but she had ruined it beyond hope. “It’s too soon,” she murmured. It was all she could think of to say in her defense.
But now it was her mother who was stern: “It’s soon enough. Do you dare dispute your father?”
The long black veiling robe came down, covering her face, dulling the colors of the room, the colors of her childhood, shrouding her face from all who might take joy in seeing it—but also, thank God, hiding her tears.
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