26

“I was in the background of a blurry picture, unnoticed by all.”—Nadia

I concentrated on the sound as closely as possible. Those heavy footsteps and that rapping cane were gradually receding. Or so it seemed from where I stood in the cellar. Tarek was now sitting on the edge of the large gilt-framed bed, his eyes beckoning to me while the expanse of the mattress behind him spoke of what would happen if I approached. A diabolic gleam in his eyes told me he was ready to pounce. I didn’t wait to make sure. Nimbly as a ballerina, I took several long, light strides toward the basement door. My knees almost gave out me when I discovered I’d left it ajar. I peeked around it. Suddenly I heard the cane thumping again. My heart leapt to my throat even though the sound was remote. I stole upstairs to my bedroom and struggled to collect my wits. The phantom with the cane couldn’t have been my father. I also ruled out my aunt, because she couldn’t have gotten out of bed and made her way downstairs on her own, even using her cane. All the household staff were asleep, I was sure, and our neighbors in the old Cicurel villa never got up this early. The whole of Zamalek was probably asleep right now. As for Fahim, he never arrived before noon, if he came at all.

Despite the logic of my deductions, I tiptoed to my aunt’s room just to make sure. I stealthily opened the door and peeked in. Her half-open eyes gave me a jolt, but I relaxed immediately because that was how she always slept: like the sleep of the dead. Her cane was propped on the edge of her bed, leaning toward her slightly as though to keep vigil over her and to intimidate others at the same time.

I returned to my room and locked the door, even though the sound had faded. Had the ghost returned after all these years? It had been so long since the last of his weekly appearances that I’d nearly forgotten about it. The stories my father used to tell me about it when I was a child scared me so much I’d be afraid to close my eyes and go to sleep. I glanced at my watch. It was six in the morning. I had snuck enough food and drink down to Tarek to last him till the following day. I also cleaned his wound and changed the bandages for what must have been the fourth time. Why did he clutch that briefcase so tightly to his chest that you would think it was part of his body?

I still had the whole day ahead of me before the New Year’s Eve gala. Murad would be coming over before that. That visit frightened me—it reeked of impending blackmail—but I was dying of curiosity. What more could he have to tell me than what he’d revealed a few days ago?

I took out my red diary, added a new entry, and recorded the date: December 31, 1989. I used my pen to comb some strands of hair from my forehead and scratch my scalp, then I set the tip on my lower lip as I contemplated what I’d just written. Maybe I’d over-philosophized a bit, but it still seemed a powerful ending to the story of my life, even though my life wasn’t over yet. I’d decided to write this diary some time ago so that Yasmine could read it one day and avoid repeating my mistakes. It was also a way to release the emotional pressures that had gnawed at me during the past year. Tarek’s sudden reappearance turned my life topsy-turvy. There was a wall between us, lined with pride. He was as introverted as ever and probably needed a hand to pull him out of his abyss. When I started to reach out, I drew back. That glint in his eyes and that strange tone in his voice frightened me. It was as though fate wanted me to relive some opening scenes in my life, but from a new perspective. A nightmarish one. Now that disaster called Murad had resurfaced too. Apparently, both of them still saw me as their bridge to safe shores, but forgot that I was not the same person I’d been twenty or more years ago. Had fate also forgotten that people change?

The whir of the wheelchair shook me out of my thoughts. I could hear it approaching in the corridor. I sat up in bed and smiled despite myself. He never could give up that horrid habit of spying on us—all of us: me, Yasmine, the household staff, even my aunt. I set my diary down on its open pages, and slipped out of bed as lithely as a cat on the scent of food, and stealthily opened the door. He was directly in front of me. A flash in his good eye betrayed a momentary alarm, followed by annoyance at being caught in the act. He returned my smile with a stiff smile of his own, but there was no hiding that mixture of cunning and embarrassment in his face. He turned his chair in the opposite direction and headed to his room. I hastened to catch up, took hold of the handles of the wheelchair, and pushed it gently. Bowing his head, he surrendered to my care and rested his hands on his lap. I bent forward and planted a kiss on his cheek. He reached up with a slender hand, the veins visible beneath the aging skin, and patted me on the cheek. When we reached his bedside, I helped him up. There was a meekness in the eyes of this elderly man awaiting the final world from a fate that had so far granted him eighty years minus a few months. Still, there was no serious sign of the end to his long journey. His mind was as alert as ever to everything around him. His arms still moved freely and smoothly. He had such a powerful will to live, although some months ago he seemed to deflate and close in on himself for no apparent reason.

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me something, Papa?”

His grip tightened on my arm. I leaned my head closer to him while tightening my embrace to keep him from falling. My long hair slid over his face, hiding his eyes. When I flicked it back, I found him staring at me in a strange way, almost as though bidding me farewell. I also thought I detected a glimmer of remorse in his eyes, as though he wanted to apologize for something. His recent stroke made him difficult to understand. He took hold of the tires of his wheelchair, and tapped them several times with his forefingers, giving me a meaningful look. He pointed to his chest, then spread his hands wide apart and signaled with one hand to indicate someplace far away. He took hold of my hand and set it on the wheelchair tire. I couldn’t make out what he was trying to say. I fetched a piece of paper and a pencil from his desk and handed them to him. Shoving my hand away, he tapped his head several times. He stared at me for a moment, then bowed his head in frustration and exhaustion. I didn’t press him further.

Once again I was overcome by the suspicion that had been haunting me for a while and that Murad had confirmed. Abbas was hiding something from us. Many things, in fact. He couldn’t get up by himself. That much I knew for certain, but how could the strong, tense grip of that large hand I had just felt on my arm possibly belong to this half-paralyzed man who now stared blankly at his feet? And what of that voice that sounded so much like his and that I sometimes heard in the distance in the middle of the night or shortly before dawn? Surely all those sounds and feelings couldn’t be figments of my imagination. He must be able to speak and move. Could he be that phantom night visitor who haunted us so many years ago?

I shook my head to clear it. I may not have lost my mind yet, but I was on the way.

“General Murad is waiting in the small reception room, Madame Nadia.”

I brusquely signaled the maid to leave and glanced down at my watch again. There were still ten hours to go until the New Year’s Eve gala. I couldn’t think of an excuse not to go without upsetting Yasmine. After I helped my father lie down in bed, I stood next to the bed, arms folded, contemplating the whites of his eyes as his gaze seemed to latch onto the ceiling. Then he snapped his eyes closed as though to hide from my anxious scrutiny. Maybe he was afraid I’d read the truth in his one good eye, which had sunk deeply into its bony socket. The other had long since surrendered to the drooping lid. I left the room to let him sleep and headed downstairs, with the image of Murad Kashef, the source of my current nightmare, fixed in my mind. I’d recorded every scene in my red diary since he began to plague our house again, threatening to expose me if I didn’t give him what he wanted. Murad would never have dared to confront me like this before my father fell ill and lost his position and most of his influence. Now, he acted like he’d been given a green light to torment us.

He’d unveiled parts of the truth in his last visits. He did it in a dramatic way that was meant to stun me and make me cry, which I did. Copiously. I had to reach for the nearest chair for support, and then I sank into it. My blood seethed like molten lava as I listened.

When I recall that evening, I see myself in a small, darkened theater. The curtain opens. No one bows or greets the audience. I am the audience. Murad steps onto the stage, a grim, confident, inscrutable, grim mask. The light focuses on him and him alone. I sit in the darkness on my own, girding myself. Murad removes his beret, which ruffles his graying hair. His eyeballs are nestled deeply in the sockets of his thin, haggard face, but they give off a frightful gleam. His gestures hold me at the edge of my seat in the back row, curious but dreading the revelations that are about to pass through those lips. I have no intention of applauding. My hands tremble. He embarks on a long soliloquy about my family. He speaks in a taut, high-pitched voice with a sneer in it, but his delivery is smooth and eloquent, as though he is reading from cue cards containing excerpts from my life’s story. He pauses dramatically, then resumes. “It is now time that you learn the truth about yourself. Then think about my offer, don’t reject it out of hand.”

I shift in my seat, trying to appear relaxed. I try to return that smug smile with a smugger smile, but my lips tremble too much and I fail. I can’t even control my stammer when I make a last attempt at denial: “You’re lying, as usual. I was—”

He puts a finger to his lips to silence me. I obey, almost automatically.

The real performance was grimmer. He fixed his steely gaze on me and advanced slowly toward me as he spoke. The words lacerated my flesh and opened wounds I thought had healed since I’d seen him the previous week, sapping more of the pride I had managed to cling to over the years. I fought as hard as I could not to believe him. The rest of my life, which had lasted forty years so far, was still uncharted, but I wanted it to be as normal and balanced as possible. Despite this, I felt myself weakening. Perhaps it was my curiosity to hear the end that undermined my attempt to dent his confidence. Then suddenly I tumbled from the superior height I’d assumed and lay stunned and broken at his feet. I looked up at him towering over me, huge and powerful, and I felt small and insignificant, which was how he had always made me feel.

“Should I go on calling you Nadia or do you want to know your real name?”

That was how he opened his “presentation.” He stood, feet planted apart, arms folded across his chest, eyeing me with a mixture of censure and contempt.

“What do you mean, my real name?”

He didn’t answer. Obviously, his intent was to provoke me by suggesting I had a different origin. Or was this his way of introducing an element of intrigue so I’d pay closer attention? I feigned indifference, and for nearly two hours I took pleasure in my ability to conceal my interest. During much of that time, he spoke about my father. A web of fabrications, I was sure. The hatred he felt for Abbas gave him sufficient motive to invent a lot of fictions about the humble beginnings of the Mahalawis and the shady deals my father had made on his way up the ladder. For some weeks now, Murad had been trying to get a rise out of me this way, but failed.

“I refuse to agree to anything you—”

“You’ll agree once you hear me out.”

Even if there was an element of truth in what he said, we were not as evil as he made out in his sick imagination. I said nothing and preserved my composed facade because I knew that infuriated him.

“You’ve always been so naive. They’re all a bunch of greedy bastards who’ve conned you your whole life long.”

I reared up like a snake and struck.

“Shut up! You know very well whose daughter I am. Don’t you ever speak like that about my mother or my father, or even my Aunt Zeinab!”

Murad laughed. “May God rest their souls,” he said sarcastically and laughed again.

“Now you’ve begun to go senile. Do you think me and my family have already died?”

He took a seat, crossed his legs and lit a cigarette, assuming that air of inscrutability that he’d cultivated during his years in Intelligence. He always liked to boast that from that position he could “see our underwear” for the past thirty years. I continued to feign indifference, but I was shaken, and as he continued to speak I finished half a pack of cigarettes. Then he said something that shook me to the core.

“Abbas has a Jewish son called Abraham Edersheim. He uses his mother’s maiden name. He lives in London.”

I felt my head spin. My father bore a son in London? When? How old was he? Who’s the mother? Edersheim? What kind of a name was that? The questions rushed at me like a stinging khamsin wind that obscures your vision and muddles your mind. I withered in my seat, barely able to feel my limbs. Murad disappeared for a moment. When he reappeared and resumed strutting back and forth, he gestured at me with our nutcracker, which he must have fetched from the nearby study. He spoke without pause, as though being fed lines from a prompt box and as if bent on driving me mad.

He had seen my father in London four years after our divorce. The 1973 October War had ended about nine months earlier. It being summer, there were so many Arabs in London you might have thought it an Arab capital or a seasonal pilgrimage destination. Murad droned on, interrupted only by the crunch of the nutcracker as he consumed one walnut after another, relishing in flesh he extracted from the inner folds and crevices of the shell.

He dwelt on numerous details about what Abbas “got up to” in London, from gambling at the Playboy Club to arms trafficking in league with our former neighbor, an ex-brigadier who left the service and emigrated to Britain not long after I married Murad. Murad said that he had tried to strike up a friendship with them over there, but my father rebuffed him and the brigadier treated him with contempt. The ex-officer hadn’t forgotten how Murad had turned against him when he hitched his wagon to the defense minister and stranded him on the shores of compulsory retirement. Unable to return to Cairo, Murad remained in London, but he kept his distance from my father and the brigadier. His voice was thick with rancor as he accused them of fighting him at every turn and getting him fired from every job he got, no matter how menial. Every once in a while, he’d bump into Abbas or hear some news about him, until one day the brigadier met a sudden death. He fell from the balcony of his apartment. It was chalked up to suicide. His stash of cash and jewels had vanished. Abbas, too, had disappeared for many months until he resurfaced one day in the company of his little son and British wife.”

“Would you please get to the point?”

He paused and stared down at me coldly, his greasy smile slowly broadening. He cut the story short, saying, “The kid’s grown up now. The last I heard he left London to go study in the States and his mother left with him.” Murad took a deep puff on his cigarette. “I’m still not sure where in the States, but I’ll find out.”

“Please, Murad, tell me more.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you, Abbas bought a house in Brighton twenty years ago. That’s where he spent his summers every year. He lavished money on his wife and son, Abraham. As I said, the kid uses his mother’s family name. He also converted to his mother’s faith. He’s a Jew now, like her. Oh, and did I tell you that the brigadier who committed suicide was an arms dealer and Abbas made a fortune through him? Afterward, he—”

“Tell me about my Jewish brother. How old is he?” A slight croak had crept into my voice. That was what I was eager to learn more about.

“He’ll turn twenty-one next year, but here’s the strange thing. Your father had drawn up a will naming him as his heir. Then, about a year ago, he revoked the will completely. He’d engaged a British law firm. They have that old will on file, with his signature on it and the stamps of the notary public. I managed to get a copy of that and some other documents. I lived a long time in London and I still have connections, you know. But time is running out, Nadia. You’ve got to pressure Abbas and Zeinab—threaten them if you have to—so that we can get our rightful due. Or would you rather I dealt with them in my way?”

He paused to let the threat hover in the air. Then he continued: “What you have to do is to tell them that you want to protect your family’s name from scandal. Only the threat of scandal will frighten Abbas into hearing you out and even giving you all his money. His record of fraud and swindling in collusion with Fahim, a son in England and a Jew no less, not to mention the arms trafficking and the possibility he gave the brigadier a shove off—”

I held up my hand to silence him. I was no longer interested in how my father spent his time in London. By cutting to the end, Murad had spoiled the earlier chapters. I was completely drained, but mustered the strength to say, “I don’t believe a word you said. You’ve always been a spiteful liar. Nothing you’ve told me can hold an ounce of water.”

“You’ll believe me soon enough. In a week at the outside you’ll have photocopies of all the documents. I’ll fax them to you. But forget about all that because it’s not important. There’s something more important than Abbas’s shenanigans in London. It’s the main reason I’m here. It’s about you, personally, and you need to know it before making any decision.”

I lit a cigarette with a trembling hand, inhaled deeply, and exhaled a long stream of smoke. Then, in a sad and weary voice, I asked, “What on earth could be more important than all these calamities you just told me about?”

“Abbas Mahalawi is not your father, Nadia. And Paula Cirucel is not your mother.”