9

THE CRIME WHOSE THREADS WERE spinning in my head was horrible. I was afraid of it myself.

An oppressive desire had taken hold of me to destroy—to destroy everything, to destroy my father’s wife, my father, Mustafa, and myself. I was thinking like a crazy person. I wanted to smash everything around me with my bare hands, for no good reason other than to relieve my feeling of inferiority and ease my anxiety about my weak character, which had been unable to lure Mustafa away from my father’s wife during the party.

I tried hard to drive those terrible thoughts from my head.

I tried to prevent the crime before it happened.

I tried to trick myself into believing that there wasn’t any reason to feel like this. I was telling myself Mustafa didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t ignore me. He had just found a woman who was good at talking, so he talked with her. Maybe he intentionally didn’t talk to me so it wouldn’t look like there was anything between us. Yes. He purposely ignored me so his eyes didn’t expose him, so his heart didn’t reveal him. If I was any other girl, he’d have treated me like he treated my father’s wife. But I wasn’t any other girl. I was the girl he loved, the girl to whom he had dedicated his heart, his life.

I was also trying to justify my father’s wife’s position. I told myself she was only interested in him as she would be in any new friend. She didn’t talk to him more than she usually talked to anyone else. She had a lively nature, a strong personality. If something attracted her to Mustafa, it was only what attracted everyone to him. His bold opinions, his strange philosophy of life. She didn’t want anything from him. She wasn’t chasing after him. There wasn’t a single piece of evidence that could stir up my jealousy or push me to hate her.

I was telling that to myself, and I felt I’d convinced myself to abandon my crime in the making.

But it wasn’t long before I pictured the way he’d looked at her, as if she were the only woman at the party. I imagined her looking at him as if she hadn’t seen a man before. I then recalled their long conversation, which went on and on as if they were tossing flowers to each other. Fire broke out in my veins—the fire of jealousy and hatred—as I pictured them dancing, his arm wrapped around her back until his palm reached her shoulder, her chest pressed against his, his cheek against hers, his nose plunged into her hair. The way she lifted her cheek from his and laughed as if he’d whispered something in her ear, and then pressed her cheek to his again.

No. That couldn’t be just dancing. If that was how Mustafa acted when he danced, how could I let him dance with her that way? No doubt there was something between them or something that could be between them. Maybe they’d agreed that he’d call her or maybe he gave her his phone number or maybe they’d promised each other to meet at his apartment—the same apartment where I met him, to listen to the same records that I listened to and lie down on the same wide couch that I lay down on.

I imagined her naked, lying in his arms as he looked over her, as if he’d come down on her from the sky. Exactly as I had imagined her between my father’s arms in the first months after she married him.

I felt I would choke on these images, that my eyes would come loose from their sockets. I heard Satan pour poison into my chest, repeating, “Watch out! Watch out for her! She could take Mustafa from you just as she stole your father! She’s a woman who has everything to entice men. A woman! As for you, poor thing, you’re just a virgin . . . just a virgin!”

I let out a scream that no one heard but me. I covered my eyes with my hands so I couldn’t see what my imagination was showing me, so I couldn’t see myself lighting fires everywhere around me as I stood in the middle of them, laughing maniacally. The craving to destroy took possession of me, so I destroyed. I destroyed until I destroyed myself and I made of myself a woman and not a virgin, so my father’s wife wasn’t better than me in anything.

I lifted my hands from my eyes and started pulling my hair, as if I were trying to tear it out of my head.

Turning over, I started biting the pillow and kicking the bed, as if I were in a terrifying fight with demons.

Finally I cried.

I cried for a long time, in agony.

My tears cleansed my mind of evil, they cleansed my heart of hatred.

I felt better, but I didn’t sleep.

I stayed up with my eyes open, as if I’d woken from a nightmare. I was afraid to sleep since the nightmare would come back to me.

I began to think about my whole life slowly.

As dawn broke, I imagined I heard Mustafa say to me, “When you’re in love, your heart gets so big that you accommodate and forgive everyone.”

I’m in love.

I’m in love with Mustafa.

My heart has to be big enough for me to love so much. So why didn’t I try to bring my father’s wife into my heart? Why didn’t I try to love her? One last time?

I decided to try.

I decided to do everything I could to befriend her, to reveal my secret to her, to open my heart to her and tell her that I was in love, that I loved Mustafa, the man she had danced with last night, that I’d loved him for a year, that I had become his and he had become mine.

I’d tell her everything.

And after that, I’d make sure that she wouldn’t take him from me, that she wouldn’t take the man a girl the age of her daughter loved.

After that, we’d become friends.

I’d find solace from my sin, my hatred, and my imagination, which concocted my crimes.

The next morning, I left my room at ten o’clock. After I washed my face, I put on my best day clothes. I was tired and worn out from what I’d endured all night. But I was intent on appearing happy. I put a layer of foundation on my face to hide my faded pallor, to hide the dark rings around my eyes.

My father and his wife were sitting at the table, just about finished with breakfast. I kissed my father’s head.

“Bonjour, Daddy!” I cried jubilantly, in a tone happier than the house was used to from me.

I went around the table and kissed my father’s wife on her cheeks, pressing my cheek against hers.

“Bonjour, Auntie Safi!”

I didn’t usually kiss her in the morning. Maybe I exaggerated a little—or a lot—when I pressed my cheek against hers, because she looked at me in surprise.

“Bonjour, my dear,” she said with a smile. “You look like you slept well last night.”

“Like a log,” I said, laughing.

“I’m not afraid of Nadia getting too little sleep,” my father said, laughing with me. “When she was young, she slept enough for an entire lifetime. As soon as she got home, she’d close the door of her room and fall right to sleep.”

I laughed again. But there was a bitterness in my laugh that I couldn’t hide. No one knew what happened to me when I went to my room and locked the door.

“You know, Ahmed,” my father’s wife said, as if she was finishing a conversation whose beginning I hadn’t heard, “the party was too crowded as well. Those people only do one or two parties a year and invite everyone without any thought.”

I knew they were talking about last night’s party.

“One could still meet nice people,” my father said in his sweet, good-natured way. “You know, I liked Mustafa. You think he was snobbish and conceited, but I found him nice. He knew how to talk.”

“He didn’t stop talking!” my father’s wife rushed in.

I felt my heart jump in my chest.

“We should invite him over,” my father continued.

My heart started pounding. I feared that my face had turned so pale that I didn’t have enough foundation on to hide it.

“Not by himself,” I heard my father’s wife say. “This kind of person is only invited to big parties. Inviting a bachelor is confusing. Do you seat him on the right or left? Do you walk next to him or next to your husband? And—”

“He’ll sit next to my brother, Aziz,” my father said, laughing and cutting her off.

I felt I had to change the subject before it ended with him setting a day to invite Mustafa to the house.

“You know,” I said to my father’s wife with a big smile on my lips, “you were the chicest person there last night, Auntie. There wasn’t a dress more beautiful than yours. All of the women were eating you up with their eyes.”

“Thanks to your father,” she said, looking at him. “He’s the one who picked out the dress.” She turned to me and continued, “You were the most beautiful one at the whole party. If you’d snapped your fingers, all the young men there would have run to propose to you.”

“Thanks to Daddy too!” I said, imitating her.

I laughed. My father and his wife laughed. My father didn’t have anything to do with choosing his wife’s dress any more than mine. But that was how his wife got close to him, always trying to convince him that everything was thanks to him. And that was why I tried to follow her—to get close to him.

My father finished eating breakfast and smoking his cigarette. He got up and came over to kiss me. He then left for the club, as he usually did every morning. His wife got up with him and said goodbye to him at the door, as she usually did.

I finished my breakfast quickly, then got up and went to my room. I picked up my needlepoint and went to the sitting room to wait for my father’s wife.

She came back from saying goodbye to my father and walked by, going through the rooms of the house. I heard her give orders to the household staff. She then came and sat next to me.

“It’s no use,” she said. “These servants—no matter what you teach them, you have to stand there right next to them.” She looked at what I was sewing and said, “Show me how much you’ve done, Nadia.”

I gave her the needlepoint and she turned it over in her hands. I was looking at her face as if collecting my courage.

“I want to tell you something, Auntie,” I said in a weak, trembling voice.

“Is everything okay, my dear?” she asked, still examining my needlepoint as if she were looking for my mistakes on it.

I hesitated as if I could no longer move my tongue. She moved her eyes away from the needlepoint and raised them to me. Maybe she saw the seriousness on my face. Maybe at that moment, she realized the kiss I’d given her that morning wasn’t just a kiss. She looked carefully into my eyes and then reached out and took my hand, pressing it tenderly.

“Tell me, Nadia,” she said in a calm voice, as if she were encouraging me.

I lowered my eyes so I didn’t have to meet her gaze.

“I—I’m in love!” I said like a naive child, barely able to speak.

“What?” she said in surprise, seeming not to understand.

“I’m in love with someone,” I said, my eyes still lowered.

“Oh!” she said, her voice raised in happiness, as she finally understood. “You mean someone has come to propose? That’s wonderful! Why are you being so shy, like this is something to be ashamed of? You can count on me, Nadia. I’ll talk to Daddy and I’ll take care of everything. As long as you love him and he’s nice, that’s it. You can consider yourselves married from today. Congratulations!”

I raised my eyes to her, appearing to be struck with disappointment. I looked at her, trying to work out who she really was. Was she really this naive or was she acting like this maliciously, just to embarrass me?

“No one has come to propose to me,” I cut her off, in a voice not without sharpness.

Her happiness faded.

“Aren’t you saying there’s someone who loves you?” she asked in disappointment.

“He loves me and I love him,” I said, my voice still sharp. “But he won’t propose to me.”

“How could he love you and not propose?” she asked, with signs of seriousness on her face.

“He’s not the marrying type,” I said, hesitating, feeling the weakness of my position. I once again lowered my eyes to hide from her stares.

“What?” she asked, the anxiety creeping into her voice.

“I mean . . . I mean,” I stammered. “We still haven’t talked about marriage.”

She was silent for a moment. Then, turning her head, she called out to the butler. “Abdou! Abdou!” She turned back to me. “These servants are a disaster,” she said, as if we hadn’t just been having an important conversation. “It’s eleven o’clock and the upstairs still hasn’t been done. Excuse me, Nadia my dear, while I go see what they’re doing.”

She marched off, doing everything she could to control her anger.

I felt that she’d slapped me.

I felt that when she said “These servants are a disaster,” it meant “These girls are a disaster.”

I felt I’d been insulted.

I felt everything in me rise up.

I got up to run to my room, afraid my tears would fall.

I locked the door behind me.

I threw myself on the bed and fixed my eyes on the ceiling.

I wonder today what would have happened to me if Safiya had listened to everything I said, if she’d shared my secret with me and learned about my love for Mustafa. Maybe she could have saved me, my father, and herself.

Maybe our lives would have been different.

But she didn’t.

She refused to share my secret.

She was above my emotions.

She preferred to be prim and proper, to maintain a thick curtain between us so that she could keep her position in the house, not subjecting it to anything that could reduce her standing.

That was what God wanted, or Satan. One of them wanted to add fuel to the fire burning in my chest—the fire of evil, jealousy, and hatred. A fire breaking out in my imagination and weaving dark crimes in its wake.

I began to think with a malicious calm, as if a poisonous snake had shot out of my head and started slithering on its stomach, venom dripping from its fangs. The same feeling took hold of me whenever I moved forward to commit some evil act. A feeling that mingled the deliciousness of fear, hatred, hesitation, and intellect. It was the feeling of the gambler who puts everything he’s got on the table and holds his breath waiting for the wheel of luck to stop.

At that moment, I was searching for a plan.

The plan with which I’d destroy my father’s wife.

I’ll put an end to her. I’ll make her pay for insulting me. I’ll make sure that Mustafa is mine alone.

But a part of me was thinking about something else—the part where what my father’s wife said had settled . . .

If he loves you, why doesn’t he propose to you?

I asked myself, “Could Mustafa marry me?”

I smiled mockingly at myself, my fate, and the man I’d fallen in love with.

There were times when I hoped I’d marry Mustafa, but it was always a distant hope—very distant. I saw it from behind the clouds of my thoughts like a beautiful, unattainable illusion, one that I had no right to keep hoping for, like I was hoping to be the queen of England or Audrey Hepburn.

Mustafa’s life, personality, and philosophy didn’t suggest marriage. I was even afraid he’d think that I was trying to marry him, so I was always uneasy whenever this thought occurred to me. I couldn’t talk about it or even hint at it.

His personality was too strong to stand in front of a marriage official. That was how he seemed to me.

According to his philosophy of life, love wasn’t tied to marriage. Love was a simple virtue, like truthfulness, faithfulness, and gallantry. He didn’t need official confirmation, procedures, or the intervention of the state and society. Just as the truthful person doesn’t go to the notary public to write a contract to confirm the truth, the person in love doesn’t need a marriage official to confirm his love.

That was how he talked.

That was how I’d tried to convince myself.

“You’re seventeen and I’m thirty-seven,” he once told me. “There’s twenty years between us. When you’re twenty-seven, I’ll be forty-seven. When you’re in your prime, I’ll be at the end. And when you’re at your peak, I’ll be finished.”

He told me this bitterly.

I thought, as he was talking, that he was thinking about marrying me.

“You’ll still be fabulous at forty-seven,” I said laughing, trying to lighten his bitterness.

“I’ll be old and toothless,” he said, his smile still bitter. “My hands will shake and I’ll walk bent over a cane.”

“May you be protected from evil!” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck. “May you be protected from evil! You’ll remain just like this, but your hair will be white. Then you won’t like anyone but me.”

He often brought up the age difference between us. Each time, I’d catch the anguish in his eyes. I’d hear it on his tongue. Each time, I tried to make him forget it with my kisses. I’d distract him with my kisses until he forgot his age and I forgot mine.

All these memories were mixed with my black thoughts about committing a crime. Once again, I collected my thoughts about my father’s wife and my love, Mustafa.

She was older than me. Her age was closer to his. There were only nine years between them, so he wouldn’t feel the same bitterness with her that he felt with me. Maybe her mentality was closer to his than mine. Maybe she could make him understand more than I could. Maybe she could give him more than me and take from him more than I’d taken.

I imagined Mustafa coming over to our house at my father’s invitation. I imagined him sitting with us in the parlor, having a conversation with Auntie Safiya, a conversation just between the two of them. I imagined his eyes meeting hers with subtly meaningful looks. I imagined her fluttering her eyelids and blushing as if she were shy.

I imagined my father sitting between them, not knowing anything. I imagined myself sitting with my blood boiling, unable to join them in conversation, unable to stop them from exchanging looks. I imagined and I imagined.

I felt that I was in a black vortex that circled around me violently. Questions like tarrying ghosts swirled around me.

Would she be his?

Would she be happy to have him without marriage?

Could she marry him?

Was she so strong that she could conquer Mustafa’s philosophy of life, love, and marriage?

I pictured my father’s wife as a giant, tall and beautiful, laughing enticingly, and then making all men kneel before her, raising their arms to her in supplication. She moved forward, trampling me under her feet, and meeting Mustafa on my corpse.

It was another nightmare—a nightmare that I saw wide awake.

I felt like I was screaming for help. I got out of bed, terrified of my imagination. Rushing to the phone, I called Mustafa.

I heard his voice, calm and lazy, as if it were coming from a distant world, a world in which there wasn’t all this torment that I was suffering.

I told him I wanted to see him immediately.

“Yes,” he said, as if half asleep.

I stood in front of the mirror for a few moments and then left.

I met my father’s wife in the salon.

“I’m going to visit Munira,” I told her on the way out.

My father’s wife didn’t respond.

I don’t know why I told her I was going to visit my friend. I didn’t usually answer to her and she didn’t usually ask me anything. Maybe the feeling of the crime being spun in my chest made me lie to her.

I went to Mustafa’s apartment.

I rang the bell. I waited for a bit, but the door didn’t open.

I rang the bell again. The door still didn’t open.

Mustafa hadn’t arrived yet.

It was the first time he was late, the first time he didn’t get to the apartment before me and wait for me to arrive.

Was this because of last night? Was he bored of me? Had he begun to open his door to another woman? To my father’s wife?

An incredible stubbornness overwhelmed me.

I’ll wait for him as long as necessary.

I felt that my feet were nailed in front of the door. Every minute seemed like a month. Some people went by as I stood there. I pretended to be waiting for the elevator. The elevator came occasionally, carrying one of the residents of the neighboring apartments. I had to get in and go down a floor or two and then come back up. I’d get out to stand in front of the apartment door again like a poor lost dog.

Mustafa finally arrived.

He was ten minutes late. He began offering apologies as he opened the door. His excuse was that he’d just woken up, that I’d called when he was still in bed and he didn’t have time to wash and get dressed. I accepted his apology in silence. We went in and closed the door.

He took my cold hands and kissed my palms. I didn’t feel any relish at his kiss. It didn’t flow in my veins. It didn’t rise up to my heart.

We sat in the office silently.

The silence between us lasted awhile.

“Were you happy with the party yesterday?” he asked in his lazy voice, breaking the silence.

“It seems you were the happiest person there yesterday,” I said, keeping a hold on my nerves.

“I’m always happy, wherever I am,” he said indifferently.

“But it seems there were reasons that made you happier than usual,” I said, looking at him as if leveling accusations at him.

“You were there. You were so beautiful.”

I felt he was lying.

“So that’s why you sat talking with me and dancing with me all night?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, feeling the storm blowing in on him.

“I mean Auntie Safiya.”

“Oh,” he said, as if remembering. “You’d given me a really bad image of her. It turns out that she’s beautiful and nice. Your father must really be in love with her.”

“Only Daddy?”

“Is there someone else?” He was surprised.

“You,” I said, as if trying to pour a bucket of cold water on him.

“Oh, please,” he laughed. “Shame on you!”

“Was it ‘shame on me’ the way you danced with her?”

“You know I’ve danced like that my whole life. It’s nothing new.”

“But she doesn’t usually dance like that.”

“She was dancing in the most proper way. She’s a respectable woman. Everyone who knows her must respect her.”

He reached out to put his arm on my shoulder but I moved away as if everything in me hated him and was disgusted by him. I began to observe him with a rebellious look in my eyes, searching in his face for the truth. Words were trapped in my throat and questions piled up until I could no longer talk or even think about what to ask him.

“Don’t be crazy,” he said, getting up to put on some records. “Don’t upset yourself.”

I didn’t respond.

I watched him as he turned his back to me. He seemed very far from me, far, far from my feelings, far from my emotions, far from my heart. He didn’t share with me the emotional turbulence that I was suffering. He didn’t even try to share or understand it. He was far from my doubts, far from the black thoughts circling my head. He couldn’t discuss them or save me from them.

He was another person, not a part of me, not a part of my soul.

He was calm, cold, and sincere, without any worries or concerns. All he thought about was his own pleasure: his records, books, apartment, the parties that he was going to, and his strange ideas with which he tried to appear unconventional.

Could Mustafa’s world—a world without responsibilities—be bigger than him?

That’s right. He was a person without responsibilities. Fate had spared him even the responsibility of working for his livelihood. I couldn’t be something that he’d bear responsibility for. He wasn’t responsible for me. I didn’t cost him anything. I was just a pretty girl who had thrown herself on him and whom he had taken to please himself with, to spend a nice time with among his records and books. At that moment, I thought he kept me a virgin not because he was afraid for my future or out of respect for my reputation or because he was a refined man who believed in virtue. No, he kept me a virgin so he didn’t have to bear the responsibility of turning me into a woman—something that I might hold him to, that his conscience might hold him accountable for, or that people and society might hold him answerable for. He was a coward fleeing from responsibility. That was my love, Mustafa.

I heard the tune of the first record.

I could bear anything at that moment except for music. I wanted to break something, to destroy something, to smash all the records, furniture, everything. But at the same moment, I was hoping Mustafa would try to destroy me instead of enveloping me with this palpable delicacy and those soft tunes. I was hoping he’d hit me, pull my hair, throw me on the ground, and kick me until I found something in his violence to divert me from my emotions and black thoughts.

All these thoughts passed through my head in a single moment.

“You know, your father is very nice,” I heard him say as he turned to me. “It’s clear he’s a model father.”

“He liked you too,” I said, as if my voice were rattling through the revolt of my soul. “He plans to invite you to our house for dinner.”

I saw happiness on his face.

“Really?” he said, jubilant, like a child.

I stood and went over to him.

“If Daddy invites you to our house,” I said sharply, fixing my eyes on his face, “I don’t want you to accept.”

“Why?” he asked idiotically.

“Because,” I said curtly. “For me, Mustafa!”

“But not—” he said.

“For me,” I said, cutting him off. “Promise me. Afterward, you’ll know why.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said indifferently. “For you!”

“Merci,” I said. “I’m leaving. I need to go. Daddy’s waiting for me at the club.”

“Really? Why did you want to see me then?”

“Because I missed you,” I said coldly. “Au revoir!”

I headed to the door quickly, almost at a run.

He couldn’t save me from myself.

I threw myself in a taxi, my breath ragged, as if I were panting after a long run.

Mustafa’s voice rose up along with the sound of the car engine: “She’s a respectable woman. Everyone who knows her must respect her!”

And me?

Was I not respectable?

Why was she respectable?

She wasn’t respectable. She couldn’t be!

I arrived home and Nanny Halima met me.

“Where’s Madame Safiya, Nanny?” I asked her.

“Upstairs,” she responded.

I smiled a wicked smile.

The crime would begin from upstairs.