12

“I derive my strength from his existence. Though at times I feel that he’s weaker than me, I always seek his protection.”
—Nadia

We met at noon on Friday, as was our custom. We were six teenage girls on their bikes, racing down the street that ran alongside the Nile in Zamalek on our way to the Fish Garden, or “The Grotto” as my father called it. We’d take two turns around the park then have lunch inside. My aunt, predictably, was adamantly opposed to these winter outings at first. Contrary to the sedate and sophisticated image she liked to project to others, she was insular, closed-minded, and anxious, especially when it came to me. She still treated me like a child. She was as excessive in her worrying over me as she was in her scoldings. But when my father surprised me with a beautiful white Belgian bicycle for my birthday two years ago, Aunt Zeinab had no choice but to bow, however grudgingly, to a fait accompli. I loved that bike. I decorated the handlebars with different-colored flowers that I’d change every three days. But it steered me down a path I could never have imagined, a path that I pursued to its very end, to my great regret.

I was in the lead as we barreled down the street, staying close to the curb. Suddenly a car screeched to a halt in front of us. It was a large black Fiat, like the government car my father drove, so I thought my aunt must be using it that day. My father never left the house before midnight on Fridays, his day off. He even avoided speaking to us during the daytime on Fridays.

My handlebars wobbled, but my feet began pedaling quicker, as if instructing my mind to escape forward into danger. I swerved to avoid the car. Just as I began to pass it, its door opened and the driver emerged. Did I fall on top of him, or did he catch me as I fell? It all happened in a blur. The next thing I knew, I was looking up at a ragged circle of alarmed friends fretting over us. The man leapt to his feet with a bright smile and apologized politely. There was something contrived in that apology, but I was struck by his deep, resonant voice and the officer’s uniform. I caught sight of one of my friends gawking in admiration at this man in his khaki suit with the stars gleaming on the epaulets. Another, smiling from ear to ear, reached out to shake his hand and thank him. Thank him for what? For knocking me over?

I refused to let him off so easily. I scolded him for driving so recklessly, and for not thinking of the consequences before screeching to a halt on the right side of the road and getting out of the car on the left. He apologized sincerely. I huffed, and slapped the dust and dirt off my clothes. I noticed a large scrape on my knee. The officer—very politely, again—said it had to be cleaned as soon as possible, and invited us to his home so that it could be done right away. He pointed to the stately Lebon building, which overlooks the Nile on one side and the Fish Garden on the other. I refused firmly and he didn’t press the matter further. He extracted a calling card from his pocket and presented it to me.

“Captain Murad Kashef, Ministry of Defense.”

I hesitated before taking it. Then, before I could, one of my friends snatched it out of his hand and volunteered to introduce us all. When my turn came—and I suspected she deliberately left me to last—she introduced me by my full name and volunteered my address as well. “And this is Nadia Abbas Mahalawi. She lives in the Heart of Palm villa, right here in Zamalek . . . very close to you!”

Murad’s eyes shone as he nodded to me with a smile. He bent down and lifted my bike with one hand; with the other, he picked up the front wheel, which had somehow separated from the frame during my crash. After putting these in the trunk of his car, he drove off, leaving us staring after him with silent admiration. We must have looked like statues of pretty damsels whose knight had just galloped into the sunset on his steed without casting a backward glance.

“I can’t possibly approve, Zeinab. There’s too big an age difference between them. Twenty years, at least.”

My father was adamantly opposed to marrying me to Murad Kashef, the awesome, solemn army officer with a perpetually brooding brow. He had proposed about two weeks after the incident with the bicycle, which he’d returned the following day, along with another that I have never ridden. He had probably devoted that two-week interim to his inquiries into me and my family.

“He’s got nothing to show for himself but his rank, Zeinab. Even his apartment belongs to the sequestrations authority, and he won’t be there much longer. He’s trying to claim squatters’ rights under the new rent-control laws. I know his type.”

“But he’s on his way up. He’s got a future ahead of him and he’s practically our neighbor here in Zamalek. Look around you, Abbas. Their times have come. Can’t you see? The whole country belongs to them now. Look to the future. Anyway, I approve the marriage!”

My father’s arguments barely managed to withstand my aunt’s onslaught. She persevered as doggedly as she breathed. She swept aside his arguments with her imperious disdain and insisted on setting a date for my engagement as soon as possible. But my father, despite his outward calm, remained unyielding. I was amazed at how tenaciously he supported me for a change. It took over a month to get me to capitulate as the battle for my hand raged around me, with Murad pushing from his front, my father digging in his heels behind his trenches, and my aunt battling relentlessly on all fronts. She tried every tactic: to get at me through my girlfriends, to soften me with kindness, to lure me with Murad’s status and influence. “Tomorrow he’ll be an ambassador like Amr Pasha next door, and you’ll tour the world with him,” she said as though she were the foreign minister.

She even tried approaching Mme Maysa, because she knew we were close. Normally, my aunt would rather be struck blind than ask a favor from Maysa. But in this case, she asked her to use her influence to persuade me. Maysa would hear nothing of it. She was dead set against me marrying an officer at least twenty years my senior. She held me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes a long time before the corners of her lips turned down and she said, “He could marry your aunt, dear. But you? Marry Murad? Impossible!”

“But my aunt—”

She shook her head emphatically and exclaimed, “C’est fou ça!”

Murad showered us with gifts. He offered to use his influence to cut corners for us, eliminate red tape, facilitate whatever we might need. Some inexplicable undercurrent of animosity between my father and him kept my father from accepting his offers. My aunt, on the other hand, took full advantage. It would be impossible to count the favors she asked for her friends, her acquaintances, and, first and foremost, herself. Murad, of course, was astute and observant. From day one, he turned his sails in my aunt’s direction and ignored my father. But there came a point when he shifted tack and began to take advantage of his important and sensitive position to gain leverage over my father. Evidently, he’d learned the limits of my father’s influence and connections. So, from courteous and friendly, he turned to cold and aloof, and then to outright impudent, causing my father to nearly have him escorted out of the villa by force one day.

I felt such a heavy weight lift from my shoulders. I cried from relief, hugged my father, and buried my face in his chest to hide from the sparks flying from my aunt’s eyes. Sadly, that relief lasted only one night. The following day, dozens of men stormed the house saying they were police, though they were in civilian dress—in short sleeves even, it being summer. They searched the house from top to bottom, apart from my bedroom. They spent a long time on the upper floor and forbade us from watching their search. They took a lot of papers from my father’s safe and desk, then held him under guard near the dock. Aunt Zeinab rushed to the phone to call Murad, who’d been in his office expecting that call, as I would learn many years later. Then the minutes ticked by slowly until at last, moved by Murad’s invisible strings from afar, the men released my father and sped off in their cars.

Just three days later, Murad called on us again. He asked to see my father alone in his office and strode off in that direction before my father could utter a word. My father followed with heavy steps. Two hours later, my father reemerged, head bowed and physically drained. From that day forward, Murad spoke confidently with my aunt about engagement plans, while my father remained a shadow in the background.

Oddly, I was impressed by Murad’s force of personality and his influence over my family that day. His persistence in trying to win my hand encouraged me to see another side of him. More curiously yet, something about him enticed me. But, as I drew closer, I found him like the moon—a waning moon, dark and lifeless. With little enthusiasm and much helplessness, I gave my assent, albeit an equivocal one. This was probably to leave myself a backdoor exit in case Murad failed to impress me again during the engagement period, which I planned to make as long as possible.

Shortly before my fourth year at the university, I chose my gown from Madame Vasso’s against my aunt’s wishes. She wanted her personal seamstress to make it, even though her own wardrobe was filled with dresses from that atelier. My friends and I agreed that my engagement party should be held at the Heliopolis Hotel. That’s where we went, as university students, to see the matinee concerts with the Black Coats and Bob Azzam and dance to “Ana bahibbak ya Mustafa.” We loved the place. So we made a collective vow that it was where we would all have our engagement parties. To demonstrate the seriousness of our pact, each of us signed our name in full to a pledge written on a small piece of paper, which I kept. We’d burst out laughing whenever one of us mentioned it. Then one of us would inevitably break out into the refrain, “Chérie je t’aime, chérie je t’adore, como la salsa de pomodore!” and we’d laugh harder. I was relieved and delighted that my father didn’t object when I told him of this plan. I could tell he wasn’t thrilled at it, though, because of the way he nodded with a slight tilt to the left, as though he wanted to pour my words from his ears.

My aunt hit the ceiling before I could finish half a sentence. “Decent people don’t hold engagement parties in hotels!”

I told her that our guests knew who we were, and where and how we lived, and that no one would think it a disgrace. She brushed my argument aside, along with the pledge my friends and I had written, which I’d thought eternal. She took that piece of paper and tore it into tiny pieces, most of which missed the wastepaper basket when she flung them in that direction.

“Stop being so silly! Do you want to set people’s tongues flapping about how our home’s so rundown we had to hold your reception in a hotel?”

I almost made up my mind to use that “backdoor exit” that day. But first I would give Murad a chance to prove the force of his personality and influence on my aunt, just as he’d proven it on my father, with such a debilitating blow. Why couldn’t I simply leave Murad? I’m still as puzzled about that as about why I dropped Tarek. I wasn’t ready for marriage, and I certainly couldn’t picture Murad as my husband. Yet, oddly, something inside me was in favor of this marriage. Was it the desire to be free from Zeinab’s law and prison?

Two days later, I had a nightmare. I was in a speeding train with only two carriages. I arrived at my destination ahead of schedule. When I got off, I found myself in a long, dark tunnel. I saw a dim light at the end and started to walk toward it. When I emerged, I saw what I seemed to be a printing press. I couldn’t make it out clearly, but it rumbled loudly, the rollers spun rapidly, and it spewed dozens of pieces of paper into the air. People reached up to snatch the papers out of the air and read them eagerly. They began to whisper to each other, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

I woke up with a start. I had such an ominous feeling. I went over to Maysa’s to tell her about the dream. After giving it some thought, she said, “You have to get away from things, dear. Travel, read more, go out with your friends to the movies or theater, listen to music. Why don’t you come with us tomorrow for a round of golf at the club? Now that will pick up your spirits.”

Aunt Zeinab must have had antennae. Not only did she rule out all thought of travel with my friends, she restricted their visits and forbade me from going out with them to the movies or theater. Naturally, she rejected golf with Maysa out of hand without offering a single logical reason. Mme Maysa phoned soon afterward to ask how I was doing. A word or two told her all she needed to know. Adopting a chirpy voice, she said she would give me a puppy as a present. That was just what the doctor ordered to get me out of my depression. “Surely your aunt has grown up by now and isn’t scared of dogs like she used to be,” she added before hanging up.

I hung up with a smile on my face as I tried to imagine what kind of puppy Maysa would give me. Just as I replaced the receiver, I felt my aunt’s hand clamp down on my shoulder.

“That nutty old biddy will be the end of you if you keep listening to her. So she wants to sneak another vile and filthy dog into our home? That’s because you snagged yourself a groom, you dummy! It brings out the envy in everyone.”

The realization that she’d been listening in on my phone calls aggravated my frustration. I decided to tell her about my nightmare. She nibbled at her lips and said nothing apart from “uh-huh” and “aha,” as she would always mutter when absorbed in thought. When I’d finished, she said, “There you have it! The evil eye. It’s struck already.”

After I had the same dream three more times, my aunt introduced me to a scrawny ancient woman with a very dark complexion, jutting cheekbones, a harelip, and a gold ring in her long, pointed nose. “This here’s Fatika. She reads dreams, palms, and coffee grounds,” my aunt said. Just looking at Fatika made me more depressed and I was reluctant to take a seat next her. But when she spoke, after I told her my nightmare, she put me at ease. In contrast to her appearance, her voice was sweet and soothing. “Your life’s journey will be comfortable and easy,” she said. “You’ll always get what you want even before you wish it. You’ll never lack anything for long.” As for the printing press, the pieces of paper, and the people: “God will bless you with abundance and you’ll never lose anyone, dear. But a large crow will appear, spread its wings across your skies, and hide the face of the sun from you.” She fell silent and frowned. Only when I pressed her did she add, “God is great. Greater than all His creation.”

With that, my aunt slaughtered two of the rabbits she raised down by the dock. Then, as per Fatika’s instructions, she dipped her hand in the blood and applied her palm prints to the inside and outside of the walls around our villa’s grounds. From then on there was no turning back. I resigned myself to the marriage and followed my aunt’s directives. “I might as well see what being engaged is like. God works in mysterious ways,” I thought.

The date was set for July 15, 1966. That evening I descended the granite stairs of the villa with hesitant steps, as though I might turn and run back inside at any moment. When I reached the bottom, my father took hold of my hand, linked it into his elbow, and escorted me toward Murad, who was seated at the far end of the garden, where they’d built the wedding throne. That was where I used to meet Tarek when we were growing up. Next to Murad was seated a ma’zoun, the religious marriage official. He was unmistakable in his brushed cotton caftan, jibba, and red fez wrapped in a white turban. Aunt Zeinab stood next to him, dressed as always in basic black, with a large hat of the same color to cover her thinning and graying hair. A sudden chill ran through me. What was that sheikh doing here? This was supposed to be the engagement celebration, not a marriage. That was the agreement—to postpone the marriage until after I finished university.

I turned to my father, hoping for a sign of reassurance, but his face was immobile and conveyed no hint of joy or any emotion. The stiff smile was there solely for the photos being taken by the famous Phillipe, who’d been flown in especially for the occasion. My father relished the attention. I felt his arm urge me forward while his smiling face remained fixed straight ahead. My feet began to falter, then stopped. I drooped to the side like a wilted flower that had been trampled one too many times.

My aunt surged toward us, livid, the feathers in her hat flapping like a peahen torn away from her courtship dance. She shot me a look that made me quiver like I used to when I was a child because it always preceded a slap. If anything, that look had grown crueler over the years, etched into her face as deeply as the furrows that made her look years beyond her age. She addressed my father barely above a whisper, but I heard it, which she probably intended.

“Murad Bey wants to sign the marriage contract tonight, though he’ll postpone the consummation celebration. The safest shore is the closest shore. So I agreed and we arranged everything. Talk some sense into the girl. I don’t want a scandal. Get to it! You know what I’m capable of!”

In fact, no one actually knew what my aunt was “capable of,” because she never had to carry out her threats. She always got her way, mostly after getting my father’s approval and sometimes without, but this time I lost my ability to even submit. My head spun, my legs gave way, and a veil of blackness muffled the guests’ gasps and screams. After I came to, my friends told me that Zeinab had told everyone that I’d been on a strict diet lately, which made my blood pressure plunge. I’d never been fat and never had to diet. After half an hour or so, I began to relent. But when my aunt insisted I go out there again, I pretended to have another fainting spell. Then the sleeping pill my father had slipped into my hand earlier kicked in.

I didn’t get the white dress and veil, the escort of little girls carrying candles, the belly dancers with candelabras on their heads. I wore a black, close-fitting sheath. My aunt had had it altered to bring up the neckline—a lot. Was this a portent? None of the women present ululated, apart from two. One was called Kawthar and the other Afaf. At first, because of the way they were dressed, I thought they were maids my aunt had hired. It turned out that they were relatives of her late husband who lived in some faraway village, and she’d insisted on inviting them. But the only people they spoke with were my father and aunt, which I found strange because Fahim, my aunt’s brother-in-law, was there.

After the disastrous night of my fainting spell, I was at the mercy of my aunt’s fury, my father’s passiveness, and Murad, a bull in a china shop, charging mercilessly toward his goal in field of china and glass. Within a week, I faced the same ma’zoun, who’d arranged himself and his registry book in the middle of the reception room. I looked at him once while he conducted the official ceremony: when he recited the previous week’s date. As I would soon learn, even before the first go at this ceremony, they’d already recorded all the required information in the registrar next to “15 July, 1966.” They were only waiting for me to sign. The same applied now. So, as one pair of eyes glared at me, ready to pounce, another pair looked on in resigned dismay, a third streamed tears, and a fourth pair—Murad’s—watched me coldly and smugly above a greasy smile, I took up the pen and slowly signed. A tear trickled down and smeared the ink, blurring my name.

Once we’d performed all the rites and rituals, as arranged by my aunt, the pitiful event ended as quickly as a poorly attended funeral procession. The guests left as soon as they could. There was nothing festive to watch. There was no fussing over the newlyweds. People’s tongues began to wag about my ill-fated marriage before they were out the front gate. I caught sight of one of our servants putting a large suitcase of mine in the trunk of Murad’s car. I turned to my aunt in disbelief. She bent toward my ear and whispered, “Last week, he’d agreed to the contract alone. But because of your muleheadedness and the scene you made, I had to agree to the consummation as well. Put your faith in God. I’ve packed everything you’ll need in your suitcases. Don’t you worry. I still care about you, despite the devilry you get up to.”

When I was a child, my aunt used to tell me a story of a little girl in a nightgown, walking barefoot in her sleep, a happy smile on her face, unaware that a monster was lurking in the woods not far away. I was so scared to hear the end that I’d fall asleep before finding out what the little girl did when the monster pounced. Now I was the girl in that story. My smile was bitter because heroines can’t change the plot.

Murad stood by the open door to his car with that smug smile still on his face, holding his hand toward me. With a reflex impossible to explain, I took it and let him help me into the car. We drove down the corniche in Zamalek toward the Fish Garden. We would spend the night at his place before setting off the following day for our honeymoon at the Cecil Hotel in Ras al-Bar.

The first time I’d actually been inside the Lebon building was when he proposed. The second time was with my aunt two months ago. I’d seen similarly sprawling and well-appointed apartments in the nearby Labib Gabr and Union buildings, but I was still impressed: the plush antique French furniture, the delicate objets d’arts, the paintings covering the walls—family heirlooms, he told me. Then I caught sight of a small sitting-room suite from Pontremoli’s, a recently nationalized department store that now catered to army officers and their wives. That could only have been picked out by my aunt. She had to add her touches, and probably her rabbit-blood palm prints as well.

Murad seemed at least twenty years younger that night. His cheeks were rosy, the veins in his temples bulged, his hair was a remarkable jet black. He left me standing in the middle of the room with my suitcase next to me like a lost traveler as he fetched a large bottle of champagne from the small bar. Then he lifted a cover off a large tray with enough dishes of oysters, clams, and shrimp to feed at least ten people.

He came back to me and embraced me gently from behind, which reassured me a bit. I removed my shoes and my outer garments, and let him lead me to the table. I noticed that most of the plates had the letter “F” engraved on them in gold leaf. I asked him whether that was the initial of someone in his family. He smiled, shook his head in a way that meant that this was not the time for such things, and picked up a piece of food and held it toward my mouth. I parted my lips nervously. But he popped the food into his own mouth and laughed. As he spoke, crumbs of bread flew from his lips. He repeated the silly prank and laughed again. When I refused to play along with it a third time, he frowned. Then he began to attack the food. It was as though he were slowly removing a mask. I barely ate, and any bite I took was merely to swallow my anxiety.

He gulped down the rest of the champagne before I’d touched my second glass, then stood up and whisked the belt from his silk robe with the flair of a magician, exposing himself, totally naked. With a confident smile, he took my hand and pulled me from the chair. He wasn’t violent, but he wasn’t gentle like before. He led me to the bedroom. I stiffened, gripped with fears of what would happen next. I’d had no experience with men. The little I knew I’d learned from my friend Sophie, who was married, and from another friend who was having an affair with an Italian architect. Apart from that, it was just the disconnected fragments of sensations from stolen kisses with Tarek beneath the tall tree behind our villa.

All of that recoiled in the face of my aunt’s blunt and explicit instructions, issued at the last moment like a stern commander sending his troops off to war. In that war, I was to surrender immediately, and lie prostrate and submissive so my adversary, the officer, could take me captive and enjoy my body. That was almost exactly what happened, as though Zeinab had coached Murad instead of me.

In the hallway to the bedroom, my steps slowed as my anxieties fought with my embarrassment and won. At the crack of light at the door, my dread became so real I could touch it, but I didn’t have the strength to push it away. I was on a train driven by the force of lust—his lust. It had reached its destination too early, just as in my nightmare. If only I hadn’t boarded it.

I lay on the bed half naked, Murad on top of me after shoving my slip up and tearing off my panties. The rest of my clothes were piled up next to the bed like something stillborn. I felt Murad’s hot breaths as he licked my ear and neck. He didn’t look at my face or utter a word. I closed my eyes. The echoes of my aunt’s voice faded, leaving me only with the image of her stern face. Tarek’s face as he kissed me also flitted before me at that moment for some strange reason. I felt tears well up and my head seemed about to explode. Before I could answer that question or conjure up more images, Murad pushed my legs apart and thrust himself into me with all his force. His chest muffled my cry of pain, which made his hairy body quiver and his head rise slightly. His hot panting breaths whipped my face. The smell of alcohol mixed with tobacco made me nauseous. A thin red thread trickled down the inside of my thigh. I didn’t see it, but I felt its warmth as it emerged from inside me to announce that I’d become a woman.

A triumphant smile appeared on the officer’s face. He continued to hold me, almost cling to me, as he caught his breath. Then he rolled off me, jumped out of bed, and trampled on the inert pile of my clothes on his way to the bathroom. I lay in bed shivering from cold and fear, staring at my nightmare fully awake. The next seconds passed slowly, as though to defy time. I heard the water rush from the tap. The volume seemed to swell as the water hit his body, racing to outpace the cascade of tears pouring out my agony on that first of my thousand and one nights with Murad Kashef.