4

IT WAS A MORNING LIKE every morning that came after it.

A morning in which light dawned on the whole house except for my heart.

My father woke up like the rising sun, joyful and happy, almost kissing the furniture, walls, and servants with his smile. He went into the bathroom and sang in the shower so loudly that I could hear him from my bedroom, as if he were totally drunk. As soon as he saw me, he lifted me in his arms as if he were proud of a new strength pulsating in his body. He sprinkled loud kisses on my face, kisses crackling in the air as if they were the trills of joy the morning after a marriage ceremony.

My father’s wife woke up as if her youth were renewed every day, as if the flower hidden under her brown cheeks would never wilt. She filled the entire house with activity from the first moment she opened her eyes on it. She wandered through the rooms to oversee the servants, then disappeared with my father until he got dressed. She sat with him at the breakfast table and said goodbye to him at the garden door, embracing him with her eyes like she was guarding him from envy. After my father left, she went upstairs, where Uncle Aziz lived, to oversee arranging his rooms.

I was the only one who woke up groggy, with puffy and withered eyes, absentminded, irritable. I stayed in bed for a long time, trying to collect myself and get control of my will so I could find a smile to hang on my lips when I encountered my father and his wife.

I was annoyed at this new happiness filling the house: the happiness of my father with his wife and her happiness with him. A happiness in which I played no part and for which I got no credit.

The fumes of evil began filling my chest and rising to my head. Fumes climbing from the crucible of a sorcerer preparing black poison.

Dozens of plans filled my head, all of them destroying this happy house, but I knew I’d destroy my father if I destroyed his house. I knew that if I tore his wife from him, I wouldn’t be able to compensate him for her.

I loved my father. I loved him so much that I’d kill myself before I dared harm him. A violent battle rose up inside me between this love—my love for my father—and my hatred for his wife.

My love was victorious over my hatred. I throttled the black plans filling my head before I moved to carry them out. I alone was the victim. I was the one who was eaten alive by it and I was the one who didn’t sleep, my eyelids coming down over my eyes only when I was completely exhausted.

Nonetheless, I could hide all of that behind my beautiful, innocent face, behind the smile on my lips. No one noticed how thin I got except for my father’s wife. She suggested calling a doctor to give me a revitalizing shot.

My father’s wife tried everything to make me a part of the happiness that she showered on the house.

She took me to Rita, the seamstress, and to Babaziane, the shoemaker. It was the first time I had clothes or shoes made for me. She spent hours with me flipping through fashion magazines. Then she’d spend hours with me in the kitchen without her making me feel like I was being given a lesson. Instead, it seemed as if we were playing a game, that we were children entertaining ourselves.

“Let’s play a trick on Daddy,” she said suddenly. “We’ll make him lunch ourselves!”

Joyfully, she took me by the hand and we went into the kitchen, driving the cook away from the stove. She ordered the kitchen boy to peel the onions, Nanny Halima to crush the tomatoes, and the cook to prepare the chicken, and then she had me melt the butter over the fire.

I lost myself in this entertaining “trick.” I looked at her as she was immersed in cooking, wisps of her black hair hanging down over her face.

I envied her. I envied her for her strong personality, the goodness of her heart, the sweet joy that she spread around her, and the love that surrounded her—the love of my father, of my uncle, of all the servants. Envy would oppress me sometimes and it would turn into hatred. I almost lost control, but I pretended that I was tired and ran out of the kitchen to hide in my room, locking the door behind me.

Despite that, I learned a lot of things in the kitchen from her. I learned how to take the cook to task, how to prepare the house budget, how to cook the moussaka I loved, and rice with curry, Circassian chicken, and baba ghanouj. Before Auntie Safi, I didn’t know how to fry an egg and I got flustered if I tried to make a cup of coffee.

Every week, she put on a big dinner, inviting members of both families. I started noticing that she was very interested in my appearance and my clothes at those dinners, and that she’d purposely invite young men from the two families, and some of them invited their friends, who were young men too. I was sure she was doing all that to find a husband for me.

It would have been natural for me to be grateful for this kind, well-meaning effort that she was making on my behalf, but I wasn’t. All I imagined was that she wanted to marry me off to get rid of me, to empty out the house for herself and my father.

I began to be stubborn.

I started resisting her efforts to marry me off.

I’d claim that I was sick just before the guests would arrive, and I’d lock myself in my room. If I went out and had dinner with them, I’d scowl in their faces and fill them with distaste for me. I wouldn’t encourage a single one of them or open a door of hope for them. I’d sit among them with my eyes fixed on my father as if he were my only man. I didn’t want anyone to take me from him or anyone to take him from me.

Maybe Auntie Safi noticed my scowling, and maybe she understood that I was only feigning illness, but she never tried to stop what I was doing or show me her displeasure.

I got used to her being more of a friend, not a mother or stepmother. A reserved friend with boundaries that she didn’t cross. It wasn’t her right to restrict my freedom or boss me around or criticize me.

But did I accept her friendship?

Never.

The happiness that she brought with her into the house almost reached me. I knew that I could have participated in it if my heart or mind had been different or if my psyche wasn’t so shredded and complicated. But my heart and mind forbade me from accepting her friendship.

I blocked her from me as if a devil from my thoughts were standing between us.

I was fleeing from her love and kindness.

I was wishing evil on her. I was still setting the plans that would bring the whole house down on top of her, my father, and myself. I’d then resist those plans with all my will so that I didn’t move forward to carry them out.

Until the day my will finally weakened.

The three of us were sitting in the parlor after we’d finished dinner. The telephone rang. I was closest to it, so I picked up the receiver. I heard the voice of one of my stepmother’s friends.

I don’t know what devil possessed me at that moment or filled me with evil, but I didn’t respond to the friend who was talking. Instead, I started repeating, “Hello? Hello? Hello?” I repeated it a number of times, as if the person on the other end didn’t want to respond to me. I hung up and turned to my father and his wife.

“There was no one there!” I said, appearing awkward and embarrassed.

I knew that the friend would call back.

And she did. Not a minute passed before the phone rang again.

I picked it up and brought it over to my father’s wife.

“You answer, Auntie,” I said, with the same naiveté mixed with embarrassment.

Auntie Safi took the receiver with total innocence and started talking to her friend.

I looked at my father, but I didn’t see anything on his face indicating that he understood something was wrong or that he was even paying attention to what was happening.

He was smoking his cigarette and sipping his coffee as if he were the calmest and happiest husband in the world.

Auntie Safi finished talking on the phone.

My father didn’t ask her anything. He didn’t even ask the name of the friend she was talking to.

The conversation resumed among us.

“You know, Daddy,” I said suddenly, “I decided that I’m not going to talk to my friend Aliya anymore.”

“Why?” he asked calmly. “She’s good-natured and cheerful.”

“No she’s not,” I said innocently. “Imagine—I was at her house and she left me alone while she sat and talked with one of her boyfriends on the phone. She was talking with him while her mother was home with us!”

“Don’t say that,” my father said disapprovingly.

“She was talking with him like he was one of her girlfriends,” I said, raising my voice and enunciating my words. “The strange thing is that she didn’t miss a beat. She didn’t make a single mistake!”

He gave me a wide-eyed stare.

I searched his eyes for something to please the devil that had taken me over. I wanted him to understand that his wife was talking with a man, not one of her friends. But he didn’t understand a thing.

“What does that have to do with us?” he asked, taking a drag on his cigarette.

“Believe it, Ahmed,” his wife said, her eyes on the piece of cloth she was sewing. “Girls these days get away with all sorts of things!”

What she said came as a shock to me.

She hadn’t noticed anything either. She hadn’t caught on to the game I was playing.

My father changed the subject.

Everything became calm again, as if there were no attempted crime, as if the devil weren’t there sitting with them, hiding behind a beautiful face with green eyes and blond hair.

I found myself silent.

I imagined this entire house demolished, and that I was the one who’d obliterated it with the seeds of doubt that I was trying to sow in my father’s mind, just like mine workers when they dig holes to stuff sticks of dynamite into and then destroy the mountain.

I imagined my father under the debris of this house after I destroyed it. I imagined him as a corpse torn apart. I imagined myself trying to collect his limbs, to bring my father back to life, happiness, love, and tenderness. But I couldn’t.

I imagined all that, and then I let out a cry hidden inside me that tore up my chest. I felt every drop of my blood howl like stray dogs running forward and barking as if I’d announced the revolution.

The revolution against the devil of evil.

The revolution against myself.

Maybe the trace of all those images appeared on my face. Maybe my cheeks turned red from my rushing blood, or maybe the pupils of my eyes widened or my hands trembled. I woke up from my sick fantasy at the sound of Auntie Safi speaking to me tenderly.

“What’s wrong, Nadia my dear? I feel like something’s wrong.”

“No, nothing,” I said, getting up from my chair. “I think I didn’t eat enough.”

“Okay,” she said with a worried look. “Take a pepsin before you go to sleep.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said in a barely audible voice.

I hurried to my room, almost tripping over my feet, and threw myself on the bed without taking off my clothes. My breath roiled, my eyes fixed on the ceiling. A long time passed as I was lost in the vortex of my black thoughts, until I heard myself whisper, “Oh Lord!”

And as if God came and wiped His hand over my eyes, I cried.

I kept crying until I heard my father and his wife head to their room. I heard his quiet laugh. I heard her laugh melt in his like a lump of sugar in a cup of hot tea.

Then I heard the door of the room close behind them. I got up from my bed barefoot, my tears still on my cheeks. I stood at the balcony door to listen to their whispers—the whispers of a man and his wife in their bedroom.

This had become my habit every evening.

Six months had passed since my father’s marriage, and every evening of those six months, I snuck to the balcony door to listen to those whispers. I heard moans, agony, intoxication, delighted rebuke, and unrestrained supplication

It was as if I had an appointment with them every night. I would even start grumbling whenever they were late going to their room. I started almost urging them to go.

“Aren’t you going to bed?” I’d ask them sometimes without thinking.

I’d say it innocently and honestly, not showing any of the deviant feeling pulsating in my veins. They’d often respond to my invitation. They’d exchange looks of love mixed with desire and bashfulness. Then they’d go to their room, but not before I beat them to mine.

Sometimes I’d stand on the balcony and listen in to catch some words. But then I couldn’t hear anything except for the rhythmic breaths of two people drowning in calm, deep sleep. I’d be disappointed, as if my love had missed his appointment, as if I were going to sleep hungry and thirsty.

Was this deviant?

Something even more perverse happened. My imagination, stirred up by the whispering in my father’s bedroom, evolved and began to overwhelm my pure, chaste body. I started imagining myself every evening in the arms of a man: my father. Yes, I was imagining myself in my father’s arms, his arms around my body, his breath heating my face, hearing from him the same words that he whispered to his wife. I whispered in his ears the same words that she whispered to him, the words popping in the air like soap bubbles.

I was in agony, intoxicated, rebuking him in delight, repulsed yet pleading for more.

I was being tortured.

I knew how deviant my mind was.

Torture pushed me to look for an escape route from my imagination.

Thinking with a new logic, I knew that I couldn’t give my father what his wife gave him.

But there had to be a man who could give me what my father was giving his wife.

This line of thought, began directing my life.

I started looking for a man.

A man who could give me what my father gave his wife, to whisper in my ears the same words he whispered to her.

I began looking at men in a new way. I began looking at them like I was shopping for clothes or buying a slave. With my eyes, I was taking the measurements of every one of them, examining the shape of their smile and the way they talked. I’d then compare each one to the image imprinted in my mind—the image of my father.

I examined a lot of men until I found him.

I found the man.

The first man in my life.