8

“I nurtured a stray seed alone until it sprouted, only for its fruit to be plucked behind my back.”—Zeinab Mahalawi

After weeks of experiencing what it was like to be a desirable woman, I was plunged into a black pit from which I could see no escape but suicide. What could I tell Abbas? How could I look people in the face after what had happened to me and because of me? Would this make my brother lose everything just when it was nearly in his grasp? Question after question pounded the walls of my head, robbing me of sleep, keeping me dazed, dismal, and lost. My life was unraveling before my eyes because of a moment of weakness born in a space between reality and desire, a moment in which instinct won over reason. It was the faintest blip in the arch of time, but it threw me off balance. Now I was left with a remorse that gnawed at me during all my waking hours and sank its claws so deeply into my brain that it became the living flesh of my nightmares.

When my brother told me that Abdel-Naim’s younger son wanted to marry me, I leapt at the offer. Abbas took my eagerness as a sign that I’d fallen for Asran when I first met him. I put on a shy smile. It was weak, I’m sure, but it served the purpose and Abbas bought it.

What would have happened if Asran hadn’t asked to marry me? I’d been worried out of my mind for two months over my predicament, which would soon be my death sentence. My belly was beginning to round. In a couple of months it would swell, announcing to all and sundry that I got pregnant in sin. God must have sent me that young, bashful Azhar student to cover up that looming scandal, and just in time. Though I have to admit, a part of me was a little proud of myself. I had not seduced a married man in order to get him to leave his wife and marry me. I had not been driven solely by lust. I had given rein to my femininity and experienced genuine love for the first time. That was my right.

I hadn’t lived until I met Sandro, a man who showed me my value with his eyes, his feelings, the attention he devoted to me. I saw my beauty in the way he lusted after me. I felt the heat of his affection when I placed my hands in his and let him devour them with lingering kisses. He began with my palms and moved to my fingers, kissing each one of them slowly, sucking some of them hungrily. I loved the way he made love. It intoxicated me and made me want more. My heart throbbed again, but this time it was real. At last there was a man in this wide world who desired me and was ready to marry me.

Me! Not some short, lame, ugly witch with a temper, which was how people back in the village saw me and talked about me behind my back. Here was a man who saw the beauty of his woman with his heart. He didn’t care about her pedigree or kin, or her money and estates, as the women in Paula’s circles imagined. He was an important, dignified, educated, and wealthy man, twenty years older than me, who came from some distant land to fall in love with me and kneel at my feet.

It was about three months ago that Sandro, Paula’s Italian physician, started to visit the villa regularly to treat a weak cardiac muscle. He’d been recommended by Cicurel’s brothers. I could tell he was interested in me from the outset by the way his eyes shone and the way they kept turning to me when I was in the room. He destroyed my weak defenses in no time. I’d had no experience to draw on to resist him. He played me like a magician, touching feelings I’d forgotten or that I never knew I had. Before long, he’d awakened my femininity from a long slumber. When he sensed the quick success of his raid on my heart, he escalated to outright seduction.

To my surprise, Sandro spoke Arabic as though he were born and raised in Cairo, even though he was from Naples. He’d been commissioned to serve at the royal court for a set period of time and to tend to the patients at some charity hospitals free of charge. He told me that he’d studied medicine in Cairo many years ago. He lived in the Munira district at the time. I loved the way he spoke the Egyptian dialect. How he made me laugh! He knew the crudest swear words and could spout a stream of them as fluently as the street kids in Imbaba. I kept a safe distance between us at first, though I didn’t want to put him off. That distance shrank with every passing day as he continued his advance. It shrank even more when I took a step or two in his direction. At night, in my room, I’d stand before the mirror and replay his words of admiration for the curves of my body. I’d touch the places he’d described, close my eyes, and imagine him holding me tightly, and I’d feel a delicious tremor course through every inch of my body. I knew I still had the power to stop him, even if I felt I was on a spit turning slowly over the coals of a desire more intense than his. But one night I surrendered of my own free will, and I savored my refusal to resist. Other nights followed and I looked forward to each more than the last. He’d quench my thirst and I’d quench his. He’d hold me in his arms and embrace me, sheltering me from narrowed eyes, watching me stealthily from afar.

I’ll never forget that first night. With the excited eyes and thrill-filled whisper of an adolescent discovering new territory, he told me he’d given Paula a strong sedative that would ease her pain and help her to sleep soundly to the morning. I needn’t worry about her waking up and calling for me in the middle of the night. That put paid to my last feeble excuse. I led him slowly and silently to the west wing and took him into a room with a window that overlooked the Nile at a sharp angle. This was the very room where Cicurel was murdered. Maybe my intent was to erase a gruesome evil with precious eternal memories from my love story. We climbed into Cicurel’s bed and I melted into his arms. I liked the way he described sex: feelings lovers share when they make love. What a far cry it was from the “mounting” my mother described to the women back in the village. Sandro transported me to a magical world that held me spellbound as he kissed my feet, sucked my fingers, and drove me to a frenzy each time as though it were my first. I’d claw his back with my fingernails as he consumed me and brought me to ecstasy time and again. Afterward, when we were both spent, he’d hold me in his arms and we’d talk and laugh and roll around in the bed naked, making me desire him even more. Those few months were the most beautiful times of my life. Then he vanished. He just evaporated into thin air, like a mirage.

The last time I saw him, I told him I was worried because my period was late. He hugged me, said something to reassure me, and performed a quick checkup. He never made love to me again, and I fell. I tumbled from the skies of certainty to the jagged rocks of doubt. Something inside me broke at that point, but I stifled my pain. Sandro was shaken and confused. Even the half smile he tried to keep on his face was too heavy for him. I spent the night in his arms, but it was a cold embrace, like leaning on a rickety fence that could collapse any minute. When I awoke the next morning, he’d gone.

Why did he tell me I was like Cleopatra? Why did he ask me what the procedures were at al-Azhar in order to convert to Islam? Surely that was no state secret. What made him say “No woman turns me on like you do” if he didn’t love me and plan to marry me?

One day, I suddenly felt queasy. Everything around me started to dance before my eyes, the ground began to spin, a blackness descended, and the contents of my stomach spewed out. That happened three days in a row. On the fourth I fainted in the middle of the reception room. Paula insisted I take a holiday. I went by myself to a doctor downtown who I knew of because I’d accompanied Helga there once. He said, “Congratulations. Our new arrival is due in about seven months.”

So, when Abbas told me Asran had proposed, I pretended to be excited and asked him to make the marriage as soon as possible. But I was so nervous and confused, I was barely able to keep the tears out of my eyes. Abbas’s eyes flashed and he started to circle around me, pinning his piercing gaze on my face without saying a word. I began to tremble. I knew the glint beneath those narrowed eyelids. I knew he smelled my fear. I’d already begun to whimper before he slapped me so hard my lips bled and I howled in pain. He didn’t ask me the cause of my fear. He didn’t have to.

“Who’s the son of a bitch, Zeinab?”

Tears streamed down my cheeks. “Sandro. The doctor who’s been treating Madame Paula. He left for Alexandria a week ago!”

He sat brooding without saying a word for half an hour while I trembled. When he broke his silence, it was to ask, “What do you know about the permit he applied for to start up a pharmaceutical company in Cairo?”

“Nothing!”

I was so surprised by the question I couldn’t manage to say more. Ignoring the question in my eyes, he left for a meeting with Asran and his father in Imbaba. He returned very late that evening. I’d been waiting up for him, desperate for some reassurance, but he left me to spend the night alone with my fears howling at me. As soon as I saw him the following morning, he picked up the phone and dialed a number slowly and deliberately, while keeping his cold eyes fixed on me. Then his mouth widened into a broad, hollow smile, though I could see his eyes twitch as he spoke in a loud and jovial voice. “Asran? Congratulations! Yes, she’s agreed to be your bride. Look forward to a week from now!”

After replacing the receiver, he closed his eyes for a moment. Then he turned to me with a stony expression and told me that he’d had to make big concessions on the dowry, apartment, and other conditions. He also said that I’d been married before back in the village and that I was now a widow, but we’d had to keep that a secret.

“Got that? Or do I have to repeat it?”

I looked down and nodded, silently thanking God for protecting me so far. I was too afraid to ask him about this late first husband of mine, but he volunteered the answer as he prepared to leave: “Tell them he was your cousin, so our stories match.”

Seven months and one week later, I gave birth to a beautiful, plump, fair-skinned baby girl. Asran wasn’t happy because he’d wanted a son. That was when he started to lose interest in me and grow distant. Two days later his family dropped in and treated me the same way. You’d think I had something contagious.

Some days after that, while cooing at the baby, he suddenly said, “You know, she doesn’t look like us at all.”

My heart skipped a beat, even though he’d said this in an ordinary, matter-of-fact voice. Fortunately, Abbas was quick on his feet.

“Well my goodness! How the Lord works wonders. She’s the spitting image of my mother, may God rest her soul.”

Asran gave him an ingratiating smile and said, “Kin speaks through seven generations. So let’s name her Hamida, after your mother, sir, and get her blessing. Hamida Asran Abdel-Naim.”

“No!” I cried, although my voice came out weak. “I want to call my daughter Lady. That way when she’s grown up, people will have to address her as Lady despite themselves.”

Asran smiled. He liked the idea. He looked at Abbas as though to ask permission. Abbas gave a smile and a nod that meant, “It’s up to you.” Then he asked after Abdel-Naim’s health.

“Old age is setting in. But tomorrow he’s going up to Alexandria with Fahim. We got him an appointment with this doctor Sandro. He’s a famous Italian doctor at the Muwasat Hospital.”

I gasped. I quickly bent over my baby, pretending a sudden concern. Abbas’s eyes flashed and his body tensed. He asked Asran why they had chosen that doctor in particular.

“He was the royal physician, and as you know Abdel-Naim has his connections—surely you know him. He was Madame Paula’s doctor. He was practically living at the villa. Right, Zeinab?”

Was Asran hinting at something? I doubted he had suspicions about me. But there was a needling tone in his voice that worried me. I didn’t answer. Abbas also remained silent. I felt that he was even more nervous than I. Only after Asran left to register my baby did he speak: “Forget about Madame Paula. Your home and your daughter are more important as of today. Another scandal and I’ll kill you.”

“Do you forgive me, Abbas?”

He ignored the question. Instead he grumbled, “Why do we make things so hard on ourselves, when the Lord tries to make things easy and shows us a shortcut? To hell with the villa and everything in it!”

Barely a week after Lady was born, Abbas disappeared for over a month. At first I thought he’d returned to the village, as he said he would in a moment of frustration. But why would he leave me in Cairo by myself?

Abbas had grown more and more distant in recent months. He’d become a stranger on the opposite bank of the Nile, strutting in front of the Zamalek villas in his trademark white fedora while I sat here on the balcony of my small cramped apartment in Imbaba waiting for a signal from him.

Then I learned that he had not returned to the village at all. According to Asran, my brother had gone up to Alexandria with Fahim and a couple of other people in order to take care of some business or other. While there, Abbas and Fahim took Abdel-Naim to an appointment with Dr. Sandro.

“But why did your father pick Dr. Sandro out of all the hundreds of doctors to choose from?” I asked, hoping to pry out more information.

“He’s your brother’s partner in that pharmaceutical factory,” he answered coldly. “Do you think my eyes are screwed shut?”

“Pharmaceutical factory?”

“Yes. Your brother went up to finalize the deal. The factory’s going to begin operations soon. Now quit playing dumb.”

What kind of game was Abbas up to? He’d taken advantage of my condition, but how? What made Sandro agree to his terms? Abbas must have threatened him. It wasn’t difficult to imagine how.

One day, Abbas called me up from Alexandria to ask after my health. When I asked him how his business was going, he hung up. When he returned to Cairo some weeks later, his face was as hard to read as stone. The more I tried to pry information about Sandro out of him, the more evasive he got. Finally, I decided to confront him directly. I told him I was disturbed by his partnership with the Italian doctor.

He let a silence hang in the air before answering, “Your secret’s buried and Sandro isn’t my partner. The factory belongs to me and the land it’s on belongs to me. You might say he’s just an employee. An ex-employee, because we fired him.”

“Fired? Who’s ‘we’?”

“Me and my friend Pouli Pasha, my partner in the pharmaceutical company.”

“And what do you mean by my secret’s buried?”

He dismissed the question with a flick of his hand and warned me never to bring up the subject again.

He’d killed Sandro. I was absolutely certain of it.

Abbas destroyed what affection he had for me and burned the bridge between us. He was looking out for no one but himself now. For the first time since I came to Cairo I felt torn. I was a tangle of shredded fabrics from different women with no connection between them. I’d become a “monstrosity,” as Mme Maysa described anything she didn’t like.

Once when I was still a child, I watched my mother uproot some grass in the middle of the fields. When I asked her why, she said, “This here’s devil grass. It looks innocent, but it’s hungry, thirsty, and harmful. The clever farmer knows it for what it is and pulls it out before it can run riot.”

Abbas had become “devil grass.”

I was on my way back to Imbaba from Zamalek again. My mind was blank. I was crouched so far back in the seat beneath the bonnet of the carriage that I saw nothing as I crossed the iron bridge. The cracks of the driver’s crop pierced my ears as if he were whipping me with every thrash. The horse’s hoofbeats picked up pace as though it were about to trample me any moment. I squeezed my eyes shut as I cradled Lady, who kept me busy twenty-four hours a day. Asran had so little time for her. He wasn’t nearly as attached to her as I was.

I’d had to stop seeing Paula for a long time. I’d lost count of the number of times she sent for me through Bashir, whose attitude toward me had mellowed since I’d left the villa. My brother’s refusals grew more adamant each time. The villa had become the forbidden fruit for me, even though Abbas was the one who’d tempted me to take the first bite. Then, shortly before the end of my first year after my exile from the Zamalek paradise, I learned that Paula had had a relapse and desperately wanted me to return. After obtaining permission from my husband, in keeping with religious strictures, I did. But I kept it a secret from Abbas. To be precise, I didn’t feel a need to tell him. At the same time, while I was a hundred percent sure he was aware of my visits, I sensed he chose not to confront me. That was when I began to feel my power, and when he started to feel it too. Still, I kept my visits down to once a week at first and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible about them so as not to provoke him. He could still unnerve me when I looked up to find him studying my face without saying a word.

I’d keep Paula company, entertain her, and cheer her up as I used to do in her healthier days. But now we were confined to the villa. Whenever I was there, my guilty secret seemed to taunt me from that room in the west wing that bore witness to the sowing of the seed whose fruit was now growing daily before my eyes. I’d also begun to see strange shadows and hear footsteps slowly approach then fade away. I recited Quranic verses to ward off evil, lit incense, and even sacrificed a rabbit. The mysterious hidden visitor never disappeared, though he never made himself visible either.

At one point, I had to add a second day per week because of Paula’s many visits from her friends and neighbors. There were times when she was too feeble to come out to greet them, even in her wheelchair. Her incapacitation completely changed my position. I could now sit and speak with her friends up close, and if I got bored with their chitter-chatter, I could terminate the meeting. My pretext was right there before their eyes and there was no way they could object.

“I’m afraid Madame Paula needs to go upstairs and rest now,” I’d say. “Please excuse us.”

It worked like a charm whenever I felt I couldn’t bear any more of the guests’ snootiness. I used it a lot with Mme Maysa, Paula’s most frequent visitor, being her best friend and neighbor. Now I really was lady of the manor.

As the years passed and Lady grew, I began to take her with me to the villa. Paula doted on my daughter, and what a thrill it was to hear her call her “Lady.”

It also pleased me no end to see how my child refused to respond to Mme Maysa’s attempt to be nice to her. “What’s her name?” she asked.

“Lady. Call her Lady and she’ll like you and come to you.”

Maysa did not accept the name as easily as Paula.

“That’s a heavy and inappropriate name for a child,” she said in that frigid way of hers. “It will cause her problems when she grows up and begins to understand. Pardon me, Zeinab, but that’s my opinion.”

Fate also had an opinion of its own. After my love for Lady had taken root in every corner of my heart and soul, it snatched her away from me in the cruelest way imaginable. But not without arranging a feast for me first.

I hadn’t brought Lady with me to Paula’s that day because we were preparing for a dinner banquet that night. Asran left her alone at home when he went off to work. Lady was outside, playing with the neighborhood kids in front of our building, when one of them, some thirteen- or fourteen-year-old, suggested they all go for a felucca ride. The children were thrilled at the idea and set off toward the Nile, laughing, skipping, and cavorting as they pictured the fun they were about to have on their Nile adventure. They weren’t watching where they were going. A tram rammed into her as they crossed the main street. It crushed her slowly beneath its wheels. It pulverized her bones, smashed into her beautiful face, ripped open her belly.

I didn’t have the strength to wash her—what was left of her, the face marred beyond recognition. Abbas barely managed to lead me out of the room. I had to cling to his arm to keep from falling. The image of her murdered father, Sandro, hovered before my eyes. Fate must have decided to erase my sin before reclaiming the deposit.

I fainted during the burial. I howled and clawed at my face, and then my head began to spin and darkness descended. I locked myself up at home for a year. My eyes started to bulge for no reason and I gained weight even though I could barely stand the sight of food. Whenever I caught sight of myself in a mirror, I pursed my lips at what I’d become. A few months after my child died, Asran, whom I’d taken for such a shy type, took a second wife, who bore him his first child. I didn’t ask for a divorce. In fact, I didn’t give a damn about that marriage, even though he’d kept it secret from me until his new wife got pregnant. He wished for a son and she gave him one. Afterward, the distance between us grew greater than before.

Abbas helped me through those dreadful months. He made sure I was never alone. When he learned that Asran had taken a second wife, he insisted I leave my husband’s house. It was as though he were atoning for a grave sin. But before I agreed to move in with him, I asked him how he’d heard about my daughter’s accident. Neither Asran nor I were at home at the time. Abbas was the one who notified us. This was the third time I’d asked him that question, and once again he told a different story. Suspicion burned inside me like a furnace and consumed the last shreds of trust in him.

The images of Lady, Sandro, and Hamdan, the guy Abbas had drowned in a canal for having harassed my elder sister, danced in front of my eyes like slaughtered chickens and awoke me every night with a jolt. I’d lie awake and wonder, “Whose turn will come first, Abbas, yours or mine?”

I moved into the small apartment my brother had taken in Zamalek, next door to Hassanein al-Masri. It was a ground-floor apartment in an old building that made me feel trapped, especially because of the fire raging inside me. It was Paula, whom I visited every evening, who helped me start to turn my life around. She bought me some nice readymade outfits at the Sednaouis department store and suggested I take a morning job to keep myself busy and take my mind off my sorrows. She even found me work as a telephone operator at the Gezira Club. All I had to do was jot down the phone number I was given and point the caller to the right booth. It was easy and took up only four hours a day. The pay wasn’t great, but it kept me occupied and I got to know the majority of the club’s members. They tipped generously, especially around the holidays, but more importantly, Paula was right: the job did take my mind off my troubles a bit. After work, I’d go to Paula’s and stay with her until nine every night. The only person I couldn’t bear to see again was that old witch, Maysa. I couldn’t help feeling she’d cast an evil eye on my child because of her “heavy name.” I ignored her whenever I saw her. Even when she came to pay her condolences, I turned away and left without shaking her hand.

Mme Paula’s health steadily worsened. She grew thinner, sallower, frailer. Her memory deteriorated and she wasn’t always fully aware of what was happening around her. Maybe that was why she’d kept sending Bashir around to Imbaba to ask me to come back to the villa on a permanent basis. She wanted me at her side until she left our world. That was the feeling I got from the look in her eyes and even the final signals she seemed to make with her fingers whenever she succumbed to a brief coma.

The servants got used to my permanent presence in the villa again. I made sure they disturbed Paula as little as possible and kept visitors to a bare minimum. I made no allowances for Hassanein. I had him report to work and leave at set times, and restricted his presence to the office in the basement. I told him it was for the sake of Mme Paula’s health, but I’d noticed he’d started sniffing into various nooks and crannies around the villa again, like he used to do many years ago. Also, he’d lock the doors to the basement whenever he was down there. He’d concoct phony excuses when I caught him in the basement after hours or, sometimes, behind the villa near the dock, holding a strange gadget that looked like a cane that buzzed. He always had this puzzled look on his face when I came across him. When I told Abbas about Hassanein’s strange behavior, his eyes took on a strange glow. He told me to leave my job at the club so that I could stay at the villa with Paula longer. He urged me to steal that gadget. He even told me to ease up on my restrictions so Hassanein would feel free to nose around the house. “But don’t let him out of your sight if he finds anything!” he warned.

“Finds anything like what? You know, you’d make things a lot easier for me if you told me what you two have been searching for all these years.”

“A box, a safe, documents, money . . . anything hidden. The important thing, Zeinab, is to keep your eyes on him.”

He fell silent for a moment as he searched my astonished face, then added, “And while we’re at it, why don’t you root around inside Paula’s wardrobe and knock on the walls behind it.”

Since I was there to keep Paula company and since she was always semi-comatose, I had plenty of time to do that. I searched through every item in the closet, to no avail, and my only reward from thumping the walls was a sore hand. I continued my search until one day, after making sure she was asleep, I took a peek into her jewelry chest. In one compartment, I found a soft velvet bag with some carefully folded papers inside. I gently opened them and felt a bolt of electricity run through me as soon as I scanned the first lines. Despite the late hour, I rushed to the phone to call Abbas. This couldn’t wait. It was what he’d been looking for for years and it had fallen right into my hands.

Finally, Abbas came sauntering into the house as though he had all the time in the world. He stopped abruptly and looked around, surprised at finding no stretcher or wailing or anything out of the ordinary. In answer to his questioning look, I handed him the documents and watched his face change as he read them. After he’d finished, he frowned and stared into space for so long that I began to think he’d forgotten I was even there.

I even had to repeat my question a couple of times before he heard it: “Abbas . . . Abbas . . . what are we going to do about Nadia?”

Still deep in thought, he muttered some words to reassure me. Suddenly he exclaimed, “You did it, Zeinab!” and sped back out the door. I hastened after him, but by the time I reached the foot of the front stairs, he had been swallowed up by the night. I shook my head and turned to go back inside, only to find someone blocking my way and pointing a huge gun at my face. Our talk didn’t last long, the gun having loosened my tongue. After I told him what he wanted to hear, he bound my hands and feet, covered my mouth with a wide strip of duct tape, and dragged me to the little shed near the dock. When he locked the door behind him, I was plunged into darkness as black as a grave.