14

I ASK YOU AGAIN.

What pushes the toddler to destroy a doll and then cry about it?

What pushes the boy to climb a tree to tear up a nest and torture the birds inside, and then burst into tears when the birds die?

What is the secret of this unknown strength that controls people their whole lives?

What are people?

And me . . . what am I?

Why was I born to this father? Why did I find myself in that house? Why did I destroy the beautiful doll? And why did I cry after I destroyed it?

Let the psychologists say what they want. Let them search in the human psyche and write dozens of books. But me? What was my crime?

What was my crime from within this complicated psyche that I found inside me?

If I was born a criminal, why is my criminality torturing me?

If I’m tortured by my criminality, why do I commit crimes?

Oh Lord.

Take me.

Take me so I can ask why.

Take me so I can ask about Your great wisdom in torturing me.

Take me, or put an end to the torture so I can rest.

But I’m afraid of You. I fear You. I’m terrified of You. I fear Your power and I fear Your wisdom. I fear Your revenge.

Yes, God must punish me, since this is His way. This is His wisdom.

It’s His wisdom to inflict the killer on his victim and then punish the killer. To inflict some of His creation on others and then take the perpetrator and the person harmed to task. Both of them are His slaves, His creation, the work of His hands.

I’ve become an infidel!

No. No, Lord, I haven’t lost faith in You. You’re my firm faith, but my mind is oppressed trying to understand You, and it’s weakened by the secret of Your wisdom.

I ask God the Great for forgiveness! I ask God the Great for forgiveness! I ask God the Great for forgiveness! I ask for Your forgiveness, and I ask You to be kind to me. I ask You to have pity on me in Your punishment.

I was overwhelmed by a strong feeling that God was punishing me.

Whenever I was hit by a sharp pain during my illness, I began to think it was divine justice. I’d clench my teeth as if chewing on the pain, repeating to myself, “This is for my crime against Auntie Safiya.” Even when small things happened, I thought they were God’s punishment for “Auntie Safiya’s crime.” When a bottle of perfume spilled or a glass broke or I lost something or the price of cotton dropped, all those things were God’s revenge for what I did to Auntie Safiya.

I spent two months in bed, until I regained my strength and my illness abated.

In the eyes of the people who knew me, I spent those two months as a weak, pure, innocent angel who couldn’t take the blow and couldn’t bear to live in the same house with sin. It had made me ill.

Auntie Safiya called Nanny Halima from time to time to check on me. She’d ask about what the doctor said, what I ate, and when I took my medicine. She’d asked her questions warmly and precisely, as if she was still living with us and still responsible for me.

She called once when I was on the way to recovery. I heard Nanny Halima talking with her. I thought I could hear her voice too, like an echo in a crystal glass. I felt an urgent desire to talk to her, to embrace her clear voice with my ears, but I hesitated. I felt as if my ears didn’t have the right to embrace her voice. Up to that point, I hadn’t talked to her because of how unwell I had been. I’d hear her voice only in my imagination, and I’d get what she said from Nanny Halima.

I had an incredible desire to hear her voice.

I was like the criminal who wants to hear the voice of her victim, to be reassured that she has survived.

I rang the bell next to my bed.

“Nanny! Nanny!” I called out in a weak voice. “Bring me the phone.”

“Please wait a moment, ma’am,” I heard Nanny Halima say. “Miss Nadia will speak with you.”

A moment of silence passed.

“Yes, ma’am,” I heard Nanny Halima say. “May God preserve you and prescribe peace in every step you take.”

She hung up.

“Madame Safiya says hello,” she came and told me with a sad smile. “She says, ‘Thank God you’re feeling better.’ She couldn’t talk because she was in a rush. She’ll call you later.”

I knew she didn’t want to talk to me.

She didn’t want to let me hear her voice or hear mine.

I wasn’t angry. I didn’t get upset. I didn’t feel like I’d been insulted. I didn’t even think about the reason she gave to avoid talking to me. Maybe she didn’t want to continue a relationship with me after the divorce. Maybe she was afraid I’d construe her talking to me as courting my father, as her trying to get back in the house. Maybe anything. But I didn’t dwell on her motives. Instead, I had a deep feeling that it was her right to refuse to talk with me. It was her right to insult me and for me to submit happily and silently to this insult.

After that, Auntie Safiya didn’t call, as if she was satisfied that she’d checked on my health and could now disappear far away, very far, to a place where I couldn’t find her or set eyes on her.

Weeks passed before I had the courage to call her, before I convinced myself that I had to thank her for her concern.

I heard her tender voice on the phone—the voice I’d lost forever. I felt that I was weaker than this voice—too weak to face it or catch it or respond to it. I felt as if the tender voice was swallowing me up and dissolving me in its folds until I could no longer find myself.

“Auntie, how are you?” I made a big effort to say in a cheery voice.

“How are you, Nadia?” she said calmly. “How’s your health now?”

Like a shy child, I responded, “I missed you, Auntie.”

It seemed like happiness had abandoned her, or that she was making a big effort to hide it.

“Take care of yourself, Nadia,” I heard her say in a cold voice, like it was coming through the cracks in an iceberg. “Do what the doctor says. Renal colic is terrible and needs attention.”

“I don’t care about my health,” I said as if apologizing for something she didn’t know about. “All I care about is that you come back home. Without you, the house is worthless. It’s empty, with no feeling. Please, Auntie!”

“Merci, my dear,” she said, cutting me off, her voice becoming colder and more rigid. “I have to go. Au revoir.”

I didn’t believe her.

“Au revoir,” I said miserably.

I didn’t try to talk to her on the phone after that.

I was sure there was no hope to atone for my crime by bringing her back to the house, back to my father.

Auntie Safi was lost.

The ideal wife who shone light on my father’s life until I extinguished it with my own hands was lost.

She was lost.

I was the one who ruined her.

I was the one who destroyed the doll.

I sat crying out of grief for her.

During my illness, my uncle also checked on me by phone. If my father picked up, he’d hang up without saying a word. If Nanny Halima answered, he’d question her at length. When I was on the way to recovery, I began talking with him. He always avoided talking about what happened. But I pressed him. I wanted him to tell me the details, about everything that happened between him and my father, everything that happened between him and Auntie Safiya. I wanted him to confirm that he was going to marry her after my father divorced her, as if I wanted to convince myself that what I’d done wasn’t a crime and that Safiya would replace my father with my uncle.

I would have been happy if my uncle had married Auntie Safiya, just as he tried. My conscience would have been relieved.

But my uncle avoided talking about any of it. He avoided my questions and his evasion only increased my torture. He slammed in my face all the doors through which I could relieve the burden of what I’d done that weighed on me so heavily.

I begged him to come to the house so I could see him. I pleaded. I insisted. I tried to squeeze my tears down the phone to him, but he refused and kept refusing.

“Soon, when you recover and get out of bed,” he’d tell me, trying to seem funny and happy as usual. “I’ll make a rendezvous with you and we’ll meet like lovers!”

I let out a bitter, miserable laugh.

My mother would come visit me.

She’d come with her husband as if she were on an official courtesy visit. She’d inform us when she was coming so my father could leave the house, so they didn’t see each other. She’d sit right next to me, but I felt that she was far away. She’d smile, but it wasn’t from the heart. She’d talk, but I felt that she was talking to someone other than me. She didn’t understand me. She didn’t try to know my true self in order to understand me. For her, I was a sick dear friend, and she had a duty to visit me and check on my health. She’d come to cheer me up, to tell me the news from our social circles and the plots of the latest movies.

That was my mother.

That was her simple nature. She didn’t take anything seriously. She was a pampered, dreamy, happy person who looks at the entire world through her own simple, indifferent way of life.

I loved her.

But could I confess to her?

Could I tell her the details of my crime and then throw myself in her arms and cry—cry until I emptied all my tears on her tender chest and then ask her to show me the way to atonement?

Never.

She wouldn’t understand.

She wouldn’t believe me.

I could imagine the confused, hesitant look that would come into her eyes when she heard my story.

“What you’re saying is not possible,” I imagined her telling me. “It’s not possible. You didn’t do that. I don’t believe it. Your whole life you’ve had a wild imagination. Like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. It’s the same idea—that she’s a criminal. But she’s not a criminal at all. It’s her imagination.”

That’s what my mother would say if I confessed to her.

But I didn’t.

We didn’t even mention the divorce. My mother didn’t ask about the details, unlike the other visitors, who were persistent in their questioning. She ignored the whole thing. It was a disgrace, a subject that should not pass across the lips of a respectable lady, or before a pure, innocent, virginal girl like me.

My mother would come to visit me.

But . . . nothing more.

Mustafa tried to call me too. My father would answer, and he’d hang up. Nanny Halima or the butler would answer, and he’d hang up. Then he’d give our agreed-upon sign when I was far from the telephone, which was to let it ring twice and then hang up before someone picked up, so I’d understand that he was waiting at home to talk to me.

But I didn’t talk to him.

Even when I began to recover and I could have talked to him on the phone, I didn’t.

I was thinking about him. I was thinking about him a lot. He was a part of my life that I couldn’t forget as long as my heart was beating and my mind was functioning. But thinking about him took on a new aspect. It began logically and calmly, like a lawyer researching a complicated legal problem. I no longer devoted my emotions or caprices to him. Mustafa was no longer a drug that I was getting more and more addicted to. Instead, he became a man occupying my life. A man who couldn’t move my emotions without moving my mind. It became clear that I used to love Mustafa irrationally, unconsciously, and I now felt that I’d woken up. It was as if the blow I suffered after committing my crime was like the electric shock they give patients to jolt them out of their insanity.

I woke up.

I started asking myself, “Is it true that I took revenge against Auntie out of jealousy over Mustafa?”

I couldn’t answer this question.

I knew I’d be lying if I tried to tell myself that I did all of this for Mustafa.

Why couldn’t it have been my father?

Yes. Why couldn’t the real motive have been my love for my father and my jealousy over him? My father who was everything to me, and was captured by another woman.

I loved my father.

But did I love him to the point of committing this crime?

I couldn’t find an answer for that either.

Could it simply have been an evil spirit that took control of me? Simply egotism. Or hatred. Or my feeling that I was weaker than Auntie Safiya. If she hadn’t been perfect, if she hadn’t crushed me with her personality, I wouldn’t have taken revenge against her.

These questions inundated me as I thought about Mustafa. I was left with the firm belief that my love for Mustafa wasn’t the motive, rather it was a piece of evidence that I used to convince myself to commit this crime.

But Mustafa had something else.

He was the only man I’d let take possession of my body.

Why did I let him?

Why did I give him my body?

Because I loved him.

Why didn’t I resist this love and put limits on it, to protect my body? Why didn’t I assert my willpower over myself so that I didn’t give him anything prematurely, so that I didn’t pluck the flower before it bloomed, before marriage?

I conjured up the exciting, violent days I spent with Mustafa—the days when I was melting in his arms, when I forgot myself in reckless adventures.

Was that love?

Do all girls do what I did?

No. Impossible.

It was something else.

Maybe it was “mischief.” Maybe it was simply wanting to take my femininity in hand. Maybe it was me seeking to imitate or challenge my father’s wife, or maybe it was me fleeing from something inside me.

Yes, I was fleeing from myself.

Yes, I was fleeing from crime to crime.

I felt ashamed as I pictured those days. Ashamed of myself. I felt humiliation and lowliness. I felt I couldn’t bear myself. And I felt I’d remain obedient to Mustafa forever.

I gave him my entire arsenal, so how could I resist him?

He revealed my secret, my body, so how could I refuse him?

This body became his—his right. How could I pull it back from him?

I believed, during those days, that my body was my dignity, my pride. If I’d given my dignity and pride to Mustafa, I had to stay with him, to stay with my dignity and pride as a possession of Mustafa.

Finally I decided to call him.

I heard his voice for the first time in two months. He sounded the way he always did, slow and lazy, his words coming out like sighs.

“Nadia,” he said when he heard my voice. “Where are you? Where have you been all this time?”

“I’ve been sick, Mustafa,” I said with a weak smile on my lips as if recalling memories that had passed . . . distant memories that wouldn’t return.

“I know you were sick. I heard about it. But you still could have talked to me on the phone.”

“I could not, Mustafa,” I said, defensively. “I was very sick. The doctor forbade me from talking on the phone. Daddy didn’t let me have the phone in my room.”

“How are you now?”

“Better, thank God.”

“When will I see you?”

“Not yet, Mustafa,” I said, in a pleading tone. “The doctor still isn’t letting me get out of bed.”

He was quiet for a bit.

“What happened to you?” he asked reluctantly.

I hated his question. I felt as if he had left me lying on the bed, as if he were leaving me behind for something else, for another woman. I wanted him to talk about his longing for me, his desire for me, his sleeplessness, his helplessness during the time I was sick. I wanted to seek refuge in his tenderness and love from my suffering, the suffering of my sick body, the suffering of my sick self. But the glass he brought me was empty, dry. There wasn’t any tenderness or love in it.

So I ignored his question.

“And how are you, Mustafa?” I asked. “I missed you.”

“May you never know any unpleasantness,” he said, formulaically. “I’ve been worried about you—about the whole family. Really, no one could believe what happened.”

“What happened?”

“I mean, the story of the divorce,” he said. I heard in his voice a desire to hear all the details. “Your father, your uncle, and Madame Safiya. The story everyone is talking about.”

“Don’t believe people,” I said sharply. “They’re all liars. No one gets divorced without people making up a thousand and one rumors.”

“But the divorce has to have a reason.”

“There’s no reason,” I said, still furious. “There wasn’t harmony. They couldn’t live together. That’s all that happened.”

“You mean this story about your uncle isn’t true?”

“No, not true,” I said, almost screaming. “Lies, lies, lies!”

“Okay. Swear on it.”

“I swear to God, lies!” I said forcefully.

“No, swear to me,” he said coldly and conceitedly, as if I were a child he knew was very attached to him.

“I swear to you, Mustafa,” I said. “Lies!”

“Have you ever lied to me before?”

“Never!” I said, my voice still raised.

He was quiet for a bit.

“I agree,” he said at last.

“What did you say?” I asked in surprise.

“Safiya couldn’t have done that. She doesn’t seem like the kind of person who could do all those things.”

I started quickly thinking about what Mustafa had said. He was intent on convincing himself of Safiya’s innocence, intent on confirming that she hadn’t had a relationship with my uncle. Why? Why was he so interested in her? What was her value to him? Why did he care if she had a relationship with my uncle or not?

I was surprised at myself.

I didn’t feel jealous.

I wasn’t jealous about Mustafa.

His interest in Safiya didn’t stir me up, didn’t mobilize the forces of evil inside me.

My pulse didn’t race and my heart didn’t pound. My blood didn’t pump in my veins and my chest didn’t tighten.

What had happened to me?

What had become of me?

I was shaken out of these thoughts by the sound of Mustafa’s voice as he spoke nonchalantly and coldly, as if he was remembering something trivial he’d forgotten.

“What did the doctor tell you?”

“It’s over,” I said listlessly. “The crisis is over, thank God. I had colic in my kidneys. It’s better now, but I have to stay in bed for three more days.”

“You can call me, right?” he said, trying to show me some affection.

“Yes.”

“Every day?”

“Every day, Mustafa.”

“Every hour?” he asked, letting out a small laugh.

“No,” I said, trying to laugh too. “Impossible. Maybe every two hours.”

We had a moment of silence. It seemed an unknown hand was trying to separate us, but we feared this abrupt separation, as if we feared that the silence between us would last forever.

“Au revoir,” I said hurriedly, before the distance between us grew even greater. “I have to take my medicine now.”

“Au revoir,” Mustafa said at the same moment, as if he’d been spared from the weight of a duty.

I buried my head in my pillow and plunged into myself once more, looking for the truth . . . my truth.

That was how my illness ended: I found no one who could help me justify my crime. My father, my mother, my uncle, Mustafa, Auntie Safiya—they were all strangers to me. None of them understood me. They all saw me as the weak, pure, innocent girl. They saw my innocent face like the face of a child, unpolluted by the crush of life. They didn’t see my sick, oppressed, complicated self—the self in which the howl of wild beasts and the tweeting of sparrows were mixed, in which storms raged before being blown away by fresh air.

I found a doctor to treat my sick kidneys, but I didn’t find a doctor to treat my psyche. I felt that I alone would bear the secret of my crime forever. The horrible secret, the secret eating me up, sucking my blood, tearing me up inside, dissolving my youth.

A secret that no one could help me with except God.

If God forgave me.

After a few days, I got out of bed.

I got up to find the house was all mine. I was its mistress, sitting on its throne. My father was all mine. I was the only one who bore his name. I was the only one he came home to.

As soon as I looked around, I saw the truth I’d been trying to ignore.

I saw the house that I’d regained had been demolished.

I saw that my father had come back to me a broken man.

I saw that when I toppled Auntie Safiya, I destroyed everything with her, even myself.

Yes, I’d been destroyed.

I was on the verge of turning nineteen, but I started feeling like I was forty, weighed down with worry, always miserable, always bored, always hopeless, always afraid, always feeling suffocated. I moved with slow steps as if I were afraid that with each step, the earth could split open under my feet and swallow me, afraid that my mind would move to commit another sin.

When I looked in the mirror I did not see the Nadia that I knew. This wasn’t my face: the sunken eyes surrounded by dark rings as if the hand of the devil had stroked them; the faded cheeks, as if my blood couldn’t reach them; the pursed lips that looked like they were suppressing pain; the knotted brow and the sharp look in my eyes. No, this wasn’t my face.

I’d rush to put makeup on, trying to hide the blackness under my eyes, but I’d give up and throw it all down on the ground.

The defect wasn’t on my face. It was inside me.

My psyche had become senile and decrepit.

I had become senile and decrepit before I was even nineteen.

Then the punishment began.

God’s punishment.