3

“The world of opportunity is like a wave: if you don’t ride it, all you get is mouthful of sea salt.”—Zeinab Mahalawi

Ever since I can remember, I’ve felt closer to my brother, Abbas, than to either of my sisters. He was the only one who’d stand up for me against the whacks from my father’s heavy hand and my mother’s tongue-lashings before she grabbed the thing closest to hand and hurled it at me. She hated my desire to learn to read and write. She hated it more when I stood for hours before our splintered mirror, singing and dancing like Aziza Amir in the first movie I saw with Abbas after his return from Alexandria. It was a silent film, but easy to follow. I could replay most of the scenes to myself. I can still feel the sting from the smack my father gave me when he caught me imitating Aziza’s belly-dance moves!

Abbas wasn’t spared my father’s temper either. He called my brother a pansy when he found out that he’d had taken me to the movies with two of his friends. One of them had felt up my thigh in the dark, but I held my tongue for fear of Abbas and the scandal. My father spat other insults at him until, at one point, Abbas had enough. He curled his lips, muttered some angry remark, then threw up his hands and turned to leave. My father must have thought Abbas had sworn at him because he charged at my brother from behind. My father was a big man, and strong as an ox. He had no difficulty in pinning my brother’s arms behind his back, hauling him outside, and tying him up to a pole in the pen. Then he snatched up an old piece of hose and whipped Abbas until his whole body was covered with welts and his face swelled up like a pumpkin. Abbas never uttered one word of apology.

My father left him tied up and without food for three days. He just set a pot of water at his feet large enough to fit his face into if he wanted to drink. My sisters were too cowardly to do anything, but I snuck out to the pen that night and fed Abbas some food. Then I used a moistened cloth to clean his face and ease the swelling. I spent the rest of the night by his side. I didn’t untie him for fear I’d be tied up in his place if my father found out. Even so, my face wasn’t spared the flat of my mother’s hand the following morning after she got up for dawn prayers and didn’t see me on my bedding. She didn’t want to confront me outside, in front of Abbas, so she waited for me inside the back door, which leads out to the pen. I didn’t have the slightest doubt that she watched me refill the pot for my brother and give him some more water to drink. She had such a soft spot for her only son. But she was too afraid of my father’s tyranny to do it herself. As soon as I crossed the threshold, my mother pounced, thrashing me with her hands, spurred on by my father from behind, as though he was the one who’d unleashed her on me.

It was like bellows fanning the hellfire that had been burning in our house for years on end. I wrenched myself loose from my mother’s grasp, dodged the long wooden cane with a pointed tip that my father was waving around like a crazy man, and started bolting here and there like a beheaded chicken until I stumbled over some earthenware bowls and bricks. I landed with my full weight on my foot, violently twisting my ankle. By dusk, my leg had puffed up like bread dough on its second proofing. The ointments applied by the village doctor didn’t take the swelling down. The pain grew so agonizing that I couldn’t visit Abbas for two days in a row. Afterward, I developed a limp that became as much a part of me as breathing because the doctor had set the bones wrong.

I took revenge against my mother by throttling two of her hens and a male duck. That would stop her beating me and making my life miserable, I thought. But her hatred for me only grew worse. I told her to her face that I was the one who’d slaughtered her birds. I screamed it while shielding myself behind Abbas. Having Abbas beside me made me feel stronger and helped me pluck up my courage, but there would come times when I felt that he was the weaker one.

The other village women called my mother “the mayoress.” “Mayoress Hamida,” they’d say, pulling their black head coverings over their mouths to smother their giggles. She sold fowls in front of our house. She’d set up some reed cages in which she displayed a few chickens, a couple of ducks, and maybe a goose squeezed in between, after binding their legs together to set them clucking and squawking loudly to attract customers. She never tired of haggling. “It’s a wrangle on the outside, a happy medium the inside,” she’d always say. She’d sell off the items on her makeshift stand in less than hour. Afterward, the neighbor women came over to chat, sometimes joined by a few customers who hung around to hear her advice. She had an amazing ability to solve most of the village women’s problems. She taught them how to manage household expenses; how to save time, which fluctuates like sea waves; and how to stay seductive for their husbands to the oldest age possible. She’d perch herself on a reed bench, legs folded beneath her, while the other women gathered around her in a circle, fixing her with wide-eyed stares and craning their necks to catch her every word. Their narrow minds struggled to stretch around the mysteries she’d reveal and their hearts thrilled at the clever way she put things, even though she was illiterate. I’d inch closer, keeping my back to the oven wall in order to keep out of sight. The heat whipped against my cheeks but I paid it no mind as I cocked my ears to catch every word, especially when the conversation turned to the marital problems the village women came to her about. My mother always gave me what for when she caught me eavesdropping, which I thought was unfair, because she’d allow my sister Kawthar to stay.

We had this sweet young neighbor who kept coming to my mother to complain about her husband who’d lost interest in her despite her firm, plump body. I had to clasp my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud as my mother spelled out instructions and secret recipes in vivid detail. Then one day, my mother grew fed up with having to repeat the same advice over and over, and snapped, “Put more salt in his food, dummy!” The woman looked at my mother with surprise. My mother, flashing a secret wink to the other women, explained, “If there’s a lot of salt in his food, he’ll get heartburn and he’ll have to get up in the middle of the night to drink some water. That’s when you turn over on your tummy and lift your nightie. Afterward, you’ll sing my praises to the Lord!”

The other women hooted with laughter, but my mother kept a straight face. Still fixing her glare on our young neighbor, she picked up a half a length of sugarcane and used it to poke the woman’s side as she began to dole out advice to the other women. I couldn’t understand most of it. She’d smell their breath. Forbid them from eating onions after sundown. Inspect their legs and advise them to add rosewater when making the halawa wax, plus a squeeze of lemon. She’d tell them to remove their long undies at night and to keep a safe distance from their Coptic and Jewish neighbors, who were jinxes and brought the evil eye. She’d go on and on, hopping from this subject to that. But I’d have to sneak away before too long to avoid the cussing and smacks I’d get if she caught me.

I’d always wanted to marry a man who looked like Abbas, with his height, his broad chest, and his dress sense. He was always so dapper, like a gentleman: white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the middle of his muscular arms, dark trousers with pleats. The more I used Abbas as the model for the husband of my dreams, the more attached to him I grew and the more I wondered whether it would be better to remain single. I cried when my father agreed to send him off to Alexandria with my elder uncle, but Abbas was adamant about going. He studied carpentry at a school called Don Bosco—it took me months to get my tongue around that funny name. After graduating three years later, he came home and started work with one of my uncle’s business partners who ran a workshop in Tanta. Abbas said the job was a breeze. He told us that he’d picked up a lot of Italian and a smattering of French at school. He’d prattle away in Italian in a way that made us double over with laughter even though we couldn’t understand a word. My mother called him “the khawaga” because of his ability to speak that foreign tongue and because his complexion was so light he could have been European. But he was so impatient to get ahead that he grew rebellious. My mother begged him to remain patient and prayed he would own his own workshop one day. Then one day, he had a falling out with his boss. Not long afterward, the workshop burned to the ground with the boss inside.

My mother was devastated, mostly for Abbas, who’d lost his job. She offered to help him open a new workshop of his own, but he refused. He said he belonged in Cairo, far away from Mahalla Marhoum. He dreamed of being the richest man in Egypt. Sometimes he’d tell me about that dream: he’d build huge palaces on the seashore, he’d own a vast plantation with fields that stretched beyond the horizon, he’d own at least a hundred horses, and he’d have three carriages at his service day and night. I’d smile and tell him I hoped it all came true. But I knew it was all castles in the air.

Then one morning we awoke to find him gone. It turned out that my mother knew beforehand, but that didn’t lighten my sorrow at losing my knight and champion. Some months later, he returned just as suddenly as he’d vanished, and that was in order to sweep me off on his steed and take me with him to Cairo, the “Mother of the World!”

I’d been dying to get out of that village. I was sick and tired of mother’s prison bars and my father’s whip. There was also the memory of an excruciating experience I wanted to put behind me as quickly as I could. It had to do with this friend of my brother who I’d let feel my body all over and to whom I nearly sacrificed my virginity. It was just that one time. We snuck off together into a field. I lay on the ground and let him lie on top of me. I’d heard my mother speak so often about what married people do, and the way she lowered her voice and filled it with innuendos gave me such a thrill that I just had to discover that mystery for myself. Of course, I didn’t let the boy go all the way. I insisted he had to marry me first. I thought he loved me, but he disappeared afterward. There’s this saying that goes, “If you want peace of mind, close the door that lets in the wind.” But I was stupid. I left my door ajar, like my mother advised the married women in the village, and the wind nearly blew it off its hinges.

I was so overwhelmed as Abbas took me through the streets of Cairo that I just couldn’t walk in a straight line. I kept stopping and spinning around. I was like one of those drunks in the bars that Abbas showed me. I had never imagined that the world had all these different kinds of people in it. And what strange clothes they wore! Then there were the cars, the buildings, and all those places people went just to relax and amuse themselves. Abbas took me to many of them, but I’ll never forget the Café Égyptien in the heart of downtown Cairo. It was so elegant. It served wine to its clientele in broad daylight and nobody showed the slightest embarrassment. Later, after dinner, Sitt Badia Masabni came on the stage to present her dancing girls. I’d watch my brother’s reactions with a mixture of concern and awe. He had an amazing ability to bolt down one drink after another. The veins in his forehead popped out, his face reddened, and sometimes his breathing grew heavier. He’d light one cigarette after another and inhale the smoke greedily. Usually after his second drink, he’d settle into a good mood and enjoy himself. The Café Égyptien was unique in that all its staff were beautiful slender women. Naturally, I tried to imitate them as soon as we got home: the way they walked, the way they set food and drink down on the table. Abbas smiled approvingly and encouraged me to go on. There was this foreign singer who Abbas admired. I couldn’t understand a word of the lyrics, but Abbas loved her songs and the way she performed them. When the show was over, he’d toss a whole shilling into her black hat, which was big enough to hide a rabbit.

The greatest attraction, and what customers always waited for, was the arrival of the royal arms bearer in his wide wooden carriage. It was small and looked like the workmen had forgotten to add the final parts at the rear. It was driven by a single horse and the royal arms bearer stood holding its reins “like a British army commander,” as Abbas put it.

“It’s a cabriolet, Zeinab. Cab-ri-o-let,” my brother told me, repeating it twice and splitting it up into syllables like he did whenever he wanted to teach me a new word and help me commit it to memory.

The arms bearer—a huge Circassian—always drove that wooden chariot himself. He’d come crashing into the room, roaring with laughter, a train of brawny attendants sprinting in his wake. Some were Italians who knew Abbas, and they’d stop to shake hands with him in a friendly way. But most were Moroccan or Sudanese slaves. Suddenly, the arms bearer would open his eyes wide, feigning total shock as though somehow he’d lost control of his horse. If the manager or any of the staff complained, his attendants lit into them until he told them to stop. The whole room would fall silent as he paid for the damages, turned to a large painting of King Fuad, and bowed as though apologizing to His Royal Highness. Then he’d leave with as much commotion as when he entered.

*

Abbas was like a train. He never stopped at stations long. He was far too methodical for me. Everything had to come at its own prearranged time. But he never felt he had to tell me what he had planned in his head. You’d think that if I were going to board a train I should know which way it was headed and where my next station was. But not with Abbas. He pushed me aboard, settled me into a seat reserved in advance, which was always next to the window, so I could see only one side of the road. Then he pulled down the blinds if he thought the light was too bright and might reveal something he didn’t want me to see. He was the one who set our course, and my role was but to obey.

One day, Abbas introduced me to a Cairo I hadn’t seen before: the terrace of the Shepheard’s Hotel for tea every afternoon at five. Despite the pomp that gave the place an elegant veneer, I wasn’t very taken by it. I preferred the casinos of Ezbekiya and the downtown cafés. The customers here were different. Even Abbas was different when he came here. He took on the airs of one of those upper-class beys and pashas you come across at Les Grands Magasins Cicurel. He chatted with the waitresses in French and smiled and nodded to other customers and exchanged pleasantries in French. This was not the same person I’d just been with in Ezbekiya, let alone in Mahalla Marhoum before that.

“Zeinab! Sit properly and don’t slurp your tea.”

I quickly brought my feet down to the floor. I had folded my legs beneath me in my plush leather chair as I stared into space picturing my mother back home in the village and wondering how she was making do. What a shock she must have had that day when she found both me and Abbas gone, and with no news from us since. Despite the way she treated me, I missed her.

I winced as I set my cup aside and shrank into my seat, feeling my face grow redder under his scowl. Then he scolded me for eavesdropping on the people at the next table. I couldn’t help it. I burst into a loud laugh that turned everyone’s heads in our direction. “If only! You think I can understand a word they say? While they’re all blabbering away, I’ve been worrying about our mother back home in the village!”

Abbas was like a chameleon, changing to suit the place we went. And wherever we went, he tried to make me see the place through his eyes as much as possible so that it would stay embedded in my memory for as long as possible. One day he got it in mind to take me to the opera. This would be a new station for me on the Abbas train. It would be the first and last time I would visit that stop on this journey, which still seemed a long way from its destination. I felt I could barely breathe in that place that night. There were some fat women on the stage bawling ohs and ahs as they bowed in a slow and funny way in front of the men who wore embroidered women’s gowns and did nothing but bellow back. After about a quarter of an hour of that, Abbas leaned toward my ear and whispered, “So, what do you think?”

I said exactly what I thought: “That fat lady’s howling and squirming like she’s got a bad case of colic!” I burst into a loud laugh.

Abbas didn’t even crack a smile, though we were in a little balcony box by ourselves. His face had turned beet red and he clenched his jaw as though to steel himself against those glares that shot arrows at us from some seats below. A dignified and grave-looking man wearing white gloves approached from behind. He leaned politely toward Abbas’s ear and whispered a few brief words. We left immediately, escorted by the same angry glares. I still couldn’t control my laughter.

The whole way home I couldn’t manage to pry a word out of Abbas. But the moment we entered the apartment, he pointed to a large suitcase and snarled, “Pack your things. You’re going back to Mahalla Marhoum in the morning.”