6

I COULDN’T SLEEP, WAITING FOR the next day.

There was another person in my chest talking with me, never silent, never having mercy on me.

A deviant, insane person, who terrified me then enticed me, who sometimes made me a coward and sometimes made me reckless, who screamed in my ears, “How could you go to him, crazy girl?” Then this crazy person would shrug indifferently, give me a sarcastic smile, and say calmly, “Look around you. Don’t you loathe this room and its sterile furniture? Don’t you loathe this whole house? Don’t you loathe your father’s wife? Your father? Yourself? What would happen if you didn’t go to him? You’ll end another day in this room, in this house. Nothing in your whole life will ever change. You’ll just keep hating your father’s wife. The evil plans will just keep collecting in your head. Go. Go to him—break out of the horrible chains that have shackled your life.”

I was almost convinced. I almost fell asleep, making up my mind to go, but the voice coming out of my chest, driving sleep away from my eyes, was now saying, “You believed it, crazy girl? You’re going to go to see him? Didn’t you ask yourself what he could do to you? You’ll be alone in a room with him. In an apartment with only the two of you. Anything could happen. He could ruin your entire future and your whole life. Don’t think that you’re stronger than him. Don’t trust your will. Don’t be fooled. He’s a man—a very strong man.”

I opened my eyes as wide as possible and pressed my lips together firmly, deciding not to go.

But before long, the voice came back, calm and melodious, as if it were a bewitching flute.

“Yes, he’s a man, a strong man, but he’s your man. He’s become your man as your stepmother has a man. He’s become the secret you’re graced with, as every girl has a secret she’s been graced with. How can you sacrifice your man and your secret? Why are you afraid of him, and why don’t you trust him? Go to him!”

This back and forth inside me continued until morning.

I got out of bed the next day as if I were a ghost. My eyes were heavy, my thoughts distracted. I walked slowly, as if I were afraid that if I moved I’d have a heart attack.

Our appointment was at five o’clock. But I found myself at eleven in the morning leaving home without telling anyone why I was going out. I took a taxi and went to the address he’d given me.

It was a big building on Qasr al-Nil Street. I walked in front of it and gave the door covert looks as if everyone on the street were watching me, as if they all knew I’d be coming back here at five o’clock to meet Mustafa in his apartment.

I passed by the building and walked to the end of Qasr al-Nil Street. I then returned on the same sidewalk and passed in front of the building’s door again like a criminal carrying out surveillance on the location where she’ll commit her crime.

This time, I read some of the signs hanging on the door: Doctor, Seamstress, Lawyer, Company.

I told myself that if someone saw me leaving or going into the building, I could say I was at the seamstress’s. I memorized the name of the seamstress as if, with that, I’d solved a big problem.

I then went and bought some red lipstick, a little darker than the natural color of my lips. I bought pantyhose with a dark heel that I hadn’t used before because I was too young for them. I also bought an ornate hairclip.

I did all that even though I was still not sure if I’d go to see him.

I was still hesitating.

The discussion between me and myself was still ongoing. I was carrying on this discussion in my head and my chest, pushed forward by an unknown force.

I lost my will.

I became another person, not the strong girl who keeps control of herself and all of her actions.

I went back home.

I couldn’t eat a thing at lunch. Every part of me was trembling so much that I felt I had colic, as if I couldn’t handle a bite of food in my throat.

I couldn’t even drink the glass of tea I usually had after lunch.

I was aching as if there were a vortex in my head, as if there were a feverish tremor in my body.

I stood before the mirror. I didn’t know how to tie my hair, put on lipstick, or pick out my clothes.

I was still pushed forward by an unknown force. The discussion was still going on inside me, but it had become distant, as if between two strangers who didn’t know each other and whose voices I couldn’t make out.

At five o’clock, I stood in front of the door of the building on Qasr al-Nil Street. I hesitated, and then took a long, deep breath.

I went in.

I stood inside the elevator, my sides cold and moist. My eyes alert, I looked at the mirror in the elevator. The sallow color of my face terrified me. I gave my cheeks some quick hard pinches with my trembling fingers to bring the color back.

The elevator stopped on the sixth floor.

I looked around for apartment number twenty-eight. The apartment numbers were all blurry, so I thought at first that they were all twenty-eight.

I reached out to ring the bell.

I pulled my hand back as if I’d decided to go back, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t go back.

I reached out again and pressed the bell. I thought I heard it ring inside the apartment like a trill of joy that angels let out in the glee of paradise.

I was terrified . . . terrified of paradise.

The door opened slowly and without a sound, as if opened by a magical force.

I saw him in front of me—Mustafa!

He was wearing a full suit and he had a calm, relaxed smile on his lips, like a doctor receiving one of his patients.

He didn’t speak.

He didn’t say bonsoir or hello or anything. He made way before me silently as the color of his eyes wrapped me in gentleness and tenderness. He closed the door gently behind me, without a sound. Taking my hand, he turned it over and kissed my palm.

I gave him a hesitant, trembling smile, my heart in my feet. I was still afraid. I lifted my eyes and began looking around the apartment as if expecting to find a devil or a dagger or a bottle of poison behind every chair.

He followed my gaze.

“Would you like a tour?” he asked in his lazy voice.

I didn’t respond. I walked behind him through the apartment.

It had two rooms. One had a wide couch with a small table in front of it and a big fauteuil with open arms, practically imploring you to sit down. There was a desk that ran the length of the wall, half of it for books and the other half for records. Then a radio and a record player of dark almond wood. The couch and the fauteuil were covered with fabric that had wide stripes of dark green and red, with a thin yellow line between them. There were curtains, also dark green, hanging on the door of the balcony overlooking Qasr al-Nil Street. Under them was another curtain of light cotton in ochre or beige. There was nothing on the wall but an oil painting of a peasant by Inji Aflatoun, and on top of the radio was a strange sculpture by Gamal al-Sagini.

There was no door between this room and the other. Only an arched room divider with a red curtain. It was a room with a bar with black marbelite sides and bar stools covered in red leather. There were three small fauteuil chairs, also covered in red leather, a glass table with wonderful oil paintings on it, and a lot of funny caricatures hanging on the walls.

Then there was the bathroom, which was green.

There was a small stylish kitchen with a fridge and a stove.

There was no bedroom in the apartment. I don’t know why I felt better when I didn’t see a bedroom.

“You have great taste,” I said, pulling my voice from the bottom of my throat as if my vocal cords had grown rusty from not speaking.

“You’ll know soon enough that my taste is something else entirely, not that of this apartment,” he said with the calm smile still on his lips.

We were standing at the entrance of the office, as I called it, and he gestured toward the room.

“Do you want to sit here?”

I sat down on the edge of the big chair as if I were sitting on my nerves. All my senses were focused on any movement by him. I thought he might pounce on me and kiss me by force or pull me to him roughly and take me in his arms. I gathered the sides of my dress around me, afraid he’d pull it off me.

But he didn’t do anything of the sort. He turned around, picked up a pretty box of candies, and offered it to me.

I reached out to take a candy. Then I pulled back, afraid . . . afraid that there was a drug in it. Who knew!

That was how afraid I was of him.

That was how much I lost my confidence.

He didn’t insist. He took a piece for himself and then put the box back. He sat on the wide couch and opened a big book that was on it—a volume of works by the painter Toulouse-Lautrec.

“I was looking for a picture that resembles you exactly,” he said flipping through it. “I can’t remember who made it or where I saw it.”

“Do you know how to paint?” I asked, still clinging to my chair, waves of fear crashing in my chest.

“My dear,” he said looking up from the book, his smile wider, “I love art, but I don’t know how to paint. I love music, but I don’t know how to play. I love flowers, but I don’t know how to plant them. I love stories, but I don’t know how to write. I love beauty, but unfortunately I don’t know how to create it.”

He was quiet for a bit as he lit his cigarette.

“Sometimes I feel that I could make sculptures,” he said as if talking to himself. “My fingers move in the air as if there was clay in front of me and I can see myself making a statue. Then I go buy clay and try to make something from it, but I can’t. Sometimes I think I can play the violin. My head fills with songs and tunes. Then I go buy a violin and try to play it, but I can’t. I go crazy, and then I break it.”

He was quiet as if he were in pain, grieving for himself.

“I call myself a critic,” he said in a low voice. “I understand the arts, but I’m not an artist, not a creator.”

I felt for him. I felt that he was complaining about something in himself that I didn’t understand. He wasn’t complaining to me per se, rather he was complaining to himself, complaining about fate.

I liked it. I liked that this was Mustafa. I’d thought he was too strong to complain about anything, too strong to feel deprived of something. I’d thought he was like my father. But now I saw him as more sensitive than my father; he was living in a world that wasn’t the same as my father’s, a world that he couldn’t make out because it was muddled like the waves of the ocean, with no fixed beginning or end.

I began to feel better about him.

I began to regain my calmness and self-confidence.

“Well, as far as I can see, you have great taste,” I said, consoling him.

“Let’s talk about something else. Do you want to listen to some records?”

Without waiting for my answer, he got up, opened the turntable, and put some music on.

“How many girls have come into this apartment before me?” I asked as he had his back to me—a question that had been pestering me before I came here.

“A lot,” he said simply, without turning to me.

I was furious. I was expecting him to lie as a way of flattering me, and expecting that I’d talk with him about his lie. I was expecting him to try to convince me that I was the first to enter his nest, or at any rate that I’d be the last. But he didn’t lie and he didn’t flatter me. As I came to know later, he was simply honest. He confessed truths, no matter how awful they were, and then justified them with a smooth, convincing logic.

“I’m just another in this ‘a lot’ of yours?”

He turned to me, still holding the records. “Ask me in two weeks. Then I’ll know the difference between you and the others. Regardless, there’s already an obvious difference.”

“What?”

“You’re the youngest,” he said as the record started spinning, releasing its music.

“I’m not young!” I said, insulted.

“You’re all of sixteen!”

“Eighteen, please!”

“You’re still the youngest.”

“I never liked young men.”

“You like very old men?” he asked, smiling.

“You’re the first,” I said, looking at him quickly and then lowering my eyes again. “The first one I’ve known.”

He bowed his head as if thinking about a big problem, as if someone had just hung a big responsibility on him.

“I’m afraid of you, Nadia,” he said, tapping the table in front of him nervously.

“Of what?” I whispered.

“Of myself,” he said sadly, matching the somber music coming from the turntable. “You don’t know who I am or what I could do to your life.”

“It’s enough that you’re afraid of me.” I said, hesitating.

“And you? You’re not afraid of me?”

“Not now,” I said as the record ended and another one by Abdel-Wahab came down in its place on the turntable. “When I first came in, I was so terrified that I didn’t want to take any of the chocolates you offered me. I was afraid you put something in them.”

He let out a sweet, broken laugh. “You mean that I’d drugged them?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling.

“And after I drug you,” he said, still laughing, “I’d assail the dearest thing that you have, just like in cheap pocket novels and in the movies!” His smile tightened. “It’s not only chocolate laced with hashish or opium that drugs girls,” he said seriously. “Sometimes the girl is the one who poisons her own mind. She keeps convincing herself of something until she’s drugged, and afterward she wakes up with regret.”

“The day I start convincing myself, you’ll catch me before I drug myself,” I said, blocking all the paths where he could drive me away. “I trust you, Mustafa.”

I looked him right in the eye.

Despite that, I didn’t trust him, not that day or for many days. I was trying to get to know him, and when I did, my confusion about him only increased, as if I were in an ocean, and as I got deeper I became more and more afraid of drowning.

Everything about him seemed contradictory. His narrow eyes revealing a sharp, dangerous intelligence, his lips bearing goodness and simplicity. His light-brown skin and strong jawline suggesting harshness and violence. His long, thin fingers that were refined and weak. He was rich, but all his friends were poor young men. His opinions were so extreme that they were practically communist. He had a degree from Cambridge University, but he didn’t have a job and wasn’t looking for work. He began his nights out at the Semiramis and ended them at Fishawi’s. He’d read a book about philosophy and then put it aside to grab the humor magazine Ba‘kuka, chuckling at the jokes. Even the bunch of records that he put on the turntable clashed with each other. There was Beethoven, then “Oh, Mason!” by Shafiq Galal, Umm Kulthoum, followed by some harsh, rapid jazz.

How could you control this kind of person?

How could you trust him?

Despite that, he left me alone that first day, but his personality occupied my entire being.

I went back home without him touching me.

I went back home with the secret that I bore in my chest having grown so big that it almost lifted me off the ground and flew me away—the secret that I had been to a man, the secret of first love.

I felt this secret was bigger than me, stronger than my chest. I felt that I needed someone else to bear it with me, a person I could talk to about everything, with whom I could share my happiness and fear, my confusion and all my thoughts. A person I could beam in front of, show my pride that I’d grown up, that I now had a man, an adventure, a secret!

At that moment, I looked at Auntie Safi and wished she was my friend so I could tell her everything, but she was looking at me silently and coldly, as if searching for my secret on my face.

I was late. I got back at eight o’clock. I should have apologized, but I didn’t have to since my father hadn’t come back yet. Auntie Safi didn’t ask me anything, but gave me silent, serious looks. Maybe she was waiting for me to talk, to say something. But when I didn’t, she didn’t say anything. That’s what I came to expect from her—not asking me about anything or holding me accountable for anything or giving herself any rights over me.

I don’t know why, but that day I felt the distance between us grew even greater, that the thick curtain separating us had become even thicker. I felt that her presence in the house annoyed me, that she was a fetter on my freedom and my actions, like she was a silent supervisor watching me whenever I came and went. I felt that she understood me well, and understood everything without saying a word.

I pretended to ignore her.

It was easy for me to ignore her as I thought about Mustafa. I thought about Mustafa day and night, with my heart, mind, and body: a confused heart hearing the knocks of love on its door, a lost mind that didn’t know right from wrong, and a body tense like the strings of a new guitar that hadn’t yet softened in the fingers of its owner.

I went to him again in his apartment on Qasr al-Nil Street, once more full of fear. I was thinking that if he’d spared me the first time, he’d seduce me when I went to him the second.

But he was even more reserved than the first time. He didn’t try to touch me except for the kiss that he planted on my palm as he welcomed me and when he said goodbye.

After that, I went to him a lot.

I wasn’t interested in or excited about anything anymore except going to see him. But he always remained reserved and cold.

I enjoyed listening to him talk about his life, books, opinions, and experiences. I was happy to hear his records, which he didn’t stop playing. I liked the paintings he collected and that he would spend hours telling me about, revealing to me the secrets of their beauty. And I was happy talking about myself, about everything in my life: my childhood and youth, my father and his wife, my mother and Uncle Aziz, Nanny Halima, our butler Abdou, our driver Mohamed, and the cook. He was the first to learn any news about the house—what we bought, who visited us. He even knew what was in the fridge and in our kitchen.

He was the only man who could push me to talk about myself so naturally, and talking about myself would calm me and open me up to life. I still hid a lot of things from him, but what I told him, I’d never told another person.

I was happy.

Happy with this wide new world that Mustafa opened up before me. A world I didn’t know and hadn’t dreamed of.

But I wasn’t satisfied. I was waiting for something to happen.

I was waiting for him to kiss me.

Yes, to kiss me!

Why not?

Every love story begins with a kiss. I saw kisses in every picture, every magazine, and every movie. I could almost hear them from the bedroom next to mine—the bedroom of my father and his wife.

So, where was my kiss?

When would my love story begin?

Maybe he didn’t love me. Maybe he considered me like his daughter, as he once described my friend Nagla.

Or maybe there was another woman. A man like him couldn’t live without a woman.

These thoughts tortured me and I started not sleeping.

As soon as I left his apartment, I began imagining that there was another woman going in after me. As soon as I got into bed, I imagined another woman getting into his.

I almost went crazy. Whenever I had the chance, I’d leave my house and go by his building, looking for his car parked out front to make sure he wasn’t in his apartment with another woman. Whenever I went with my father and his wife to the movies, I’d find a way to make them go by Qasr al-Nil Street so I could look with crazed eyes for his car parked out front.

But it didn’t prove anything.

I wasn’t certain he was with another woman and I wasn’t certain he wasn’t.

I asked him, “Who are you with besides me, Mustafa?”

He looked at me as if he understood what I meant.

“These days, nobody,” he said simply and honestly.

“Impossible,” I said, agitated. “A man like you, a bachelor, all alone without anyone?”

“A man my age can spend his whole life without anyone,” he said, smiling.

“Why? You’re thirty-six. Daddy got married when he was thirty-nine.”

“He had to find someone worth marrying.”

“And you? You still haven’t found anyone?”

He looked at me. “Not yet,” he said, then averted his eyes as if chasing an idea from his head.

I felt a lump in my throat. I felt a cold breeze that Mustafa unleashed on my heart. I decided to stay silent.

We had this kind of conversation several times. Each time, it ended without him soothing the doubt, but rather torturing me: the suspicion that he had a relationship with another woman, an older woman who might be cheating on her husband or a divorcée, not a girl like me who wasn’t yet seventeen.

I started prodding him.

I started prodding him toward me.

I clung to him whenever we sat to read a book. I put my hand in his and kept his hand in mine. I let my hair down so it fluttered on his face.

No doubt he felt all this provocation, and had to exert all his will to resist it. He’d find any excuse to jump up from next to me or pull his hand away from mine or move his face away from my hair.

I felt his resistance.

Whenever he resisted, I provoked him even more.

I’d get ready for this provocation before I went to him like I was setting out on a hunting trip. I put on the perfume that he loved and I wore clothes that showed off my charms—as much as I understood charms at that age.

I’d stand naked in front of my mirror. Looking at my body, bit by bit, as if picking out parts that Mustafa liked, as if looking at myself with his eyes, at my thighs, torso, waist, breasts, shoulders, and back, which a light shadow cut through, reaching from the top of my shoulders to my lower back. I knew all the secrets of my beauty. I counted the beauty marks that adorned my white skin: one on the top of my thigh and another on my side.

I was anxious whenever my eyes stopped on my chest. My chest was a little small for my height. I knew this, but I didn’t care at all, until I imagined getting myself ready for Mustafa. Until I started standing naked in front of the mirror, imagining Mustafa standing next to me.

I started flipping through fashion magazines, looking for a bra that would fit my chest and make it look more pronounced under my clothes. I bought dozens of bras of all brands, all the American and Parisian designs. I hadn’t thought that this minor flaw on my body could wear me out so much. My feelings got so intense that they gave me a complex that pushed me to examine the chests of all the women I met, comparing theirs to mine, and it pushed me to feel that the only reason anything happened to me was because of the small size of my chest. It got to the point that when I went to Mustafa, I started looking closely at his eyes, afraid that they’d fall on my chest.

But Mustafa never looked at my chest or my body. As usual, he only looked at my face, as he had since we first met.

Until one day . . .

Mustafa was standing next to the turntable putting on some records, murmuring the words to one of the songs.

I came and stood next to him, putting my hand on his shoulder. He’d taken off his jacket. I leaned over the turntable pretending to read the names of the records, and then I turned to him so that my lips were almost touching his.

“I like this record a lot!” I said, giving him a flirtatious look.

He didn’t respond. Instead, he looked at me for a while. I saw something new and alluring in his eyes, as if he’d finally decided something that he’d been thinking about for a long time.

I felt him breathe faster than usual. I noticed a slight blush on his brown face.

“That’s it,” he said in a voice I hadn’t heard before, as if talking from deep within. “Have you released me from my promise?”

“What promise?” I asked, my lips still near his, my voice almost a whisper.

“You don’t remember that I promised you the first time that—”

“No,” I said, cutting him off. “I don’t remember.”

He broke into a smile that disappeared quickly. I then felt his face come close to mine, his cheek rest on mine. His lips moved forward and touched mine.

Finally he kissed me!

I felt nothing but delight at this first kiss, the kiss I’d been waiting for all those weeks.

He put down the records in his hand and pulled me to his chest. He lifted up his hand and plunged his fingers into the folds of my hair while his other arm still held me tightly. I wished it were tighter. Leaning over, he kissed my neck dozens of times.

He raised his head and looked at me as I was still in his arms.

“I’ve resisted so much, Nadia!” he said in a trembling, breathless voice. “I . . .”

He didn’t finish. He looked at his shirt and saw traces of my lipstick on it. With a big smile, he unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it out from under his pants, took it off, and tossed it on the floor.

I saw his bare chest.

I’d looked at men’s bare chests many times at the beach. I’d even seen Mustafa’s bare chest at the beach. But I never thought that a bare chest could arouse in me all the emotions that it did that day. I felt as if a burning heat were coming out of his chest. I felt as if a great strength were emanating from this bare chest, pulling me to it.

I was confused, as if I’d become weak, as if everything abandoned me, as if I were no longer able to stand on my feet, as if a fire had broken out in my veins, smoldered inside me, and then melted me.

I couldn’t look at him or his bare chest anymore.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a rough, broken voice.

I didn’t respond.

He was quiet for a while. I felt his eyes looking over my face.

He then reached out, pulled me to him, and pressed my head to his chest. My lips pressed onto his skin, onto a part of his flesh.