15

MY FATHER BECAME A DIFFERENT person.

He was no longer dignified, calm, responsible, or tender. He became miserable—an unbearable drunk who could not get enough to drink.

It didn’t happen gradually but all of a sudden, as if, when his wife left the house, she took with her my father’s mind, conscience, and will, leaving him an empty box, an empty body. There was nothing in him. You couldn’t rely on him for anything.

The day after the divorce, my father left in the morning after checking on me and he came home very late for lunch, drunk, stumbling, slurring his words, his eyes unable to focus on anything.

He came to my room and stood at the door.

“How are you now?” he mumbled.

I looked at him in surprise and disapproval, without responding.

Ashamed at my look, he didn’t say anything else. He turned and went to his room.

At that moment, I remembered that I’d become the mistress of the house, so I pressed the bell on the side of my bed to call Nanny Halima.

“Go tell Abdou to take lunch to Father,” I said in a tone that had been absent for a long time. A tone that I tried to make commanding, despite my weakness.

“Master says he ate lunch out,” Nanny Halima said when she returned.

From that day, throughout the time of my illness, my father would eat his lunch out. He’d insist on seeing me in the morning and waiting for the doctor when he called on the house. But other than that, he didn’t insist on anything. I no longer saw him except at random times for just a few minutes. He was always drunk, making a great effort to hide his slurring and stumbling. A great effort that occupied all his thinking and all his will, so I saw none of what he used to give me—none of his tenderness.

He no longer took care of me as he did in my youth.

He no longer worried about my comfort.

He no longer sat beside me to talk to me about his problems.

He became a stranger—a stranger from me and the house.

When I recovered from my illness, I found myself alone. I’d even lost my father. His drinking made him too ashamed to face me, so he kept away, he disappeared. Whatever sense he had left that he was a father responsible for his daughter made him return home each day . . . or maybe it was just out of habit.

I was at a loss as to how to bring him back to me, to bring him back to his caring self.

I’d go into his room in the morning and find his clothes strewn on the ground. I’d find him sleeping, his face puffy, the stench of alcohol on his breath. I’d collect his clothes and set them in their place, open the windows, and go over to him to try to wake him up with my kisses, but it would take a long time. Even getting him to open his eyes was a struggle. As soon as he saw my face, he’d give me a wide smile and a tender kiss. Then, as if remembering his condition and misfortune, he’d withdraw his smile and his kiss would be cold and fleeting on my cheek. He’d turn his eyes away from me.

“I think I was out too late last night,” he’d say apologetically.

Every morning, he’d repeat the same words until they no longer had any meaning, either on his tongue or in my ear.

I’d wait until he finished his morning shower—a silent shower, with no singing as before when his wife lived with us.

I’d then help him get dressed and sit with him during breakfast, which he always ate by himself, since he got up around noon. We didn’t talk much during his breakfast. Just a few short questions and shorter answers. He’d finish his breakfast quickly and rush out as if he was fleeing something, as if he was fleeing me. I’d go out after him to say goodbye at the door, but he wouldn’t turn back, as if he was afraid he’d find his wife following him, as she used to.

I was tortured in my loneliness.

It was tearing me up. I felt I was living in mourning, as if my clothes were black, my chest was black, my head was black . . . I was mourning myself.

I submitted to this torment, to this mourning. I was atoning for my crime, like a monk in the temple of fire, burning herself to be cleansed of her sins.

I sometimes tried to escape from it all.

But I didn’t know where to hide.

I tried by supervising the servants. All of a sudden, I noticed that, without realizing it, I was imitating Auntie Safiya. I was imitating her smile and her liveliness, all of her traits. I’d even repeat the same words that she used to direct the cook and the butler.

The servants received my orders unenthusiastically. It seemed like they had mocking smiles on their lips, as if each of them was asking me: “What are you compared to her?”

When I noticed this, my misery and my feeling of mourning increased. I rushed to my room and threw myself down on the bed. I tried to summon my tears but they didn’t come. They had run dry. I had already cried enough for an entire lifetime.

I sometimes tried to escape by calling some of the girls in my family, or by inviting them to visit me, but the conversation wouldn’t last long and it wouldn’t take long for their visits to become boring. It was like I was hearing them talk from a distance and could barely make out what they were saying. It felt like I was looking at their faces from a distance and that I barely knew them. I was so tormented by what I had done I could no longer see or hear clearly.

I talked with Mustafa on the phone, turning to him for comfort, pleading with him to give me some relief. But Mustafa was distant from me too. His words encircled me without entering my heart or head. He didn’t know what was wrong with me, so how could he soothe me?

I refused to meet him. I don’t know why. But I resisted and refused his repeated invitations. Maybe I was trying to atone for my crime by denying myself Mustafa. Maybe I wanted to confirm for myself that I could be a responsible mistress, responsible for the house and my father’s trust. Maybe my suffering was stronger than my love and my desires. Maybe the forces driving me to meet Mustafa had gone.

What were those forces?

I didn’t know.

But I no longer felt the need to meet him—that pressing, insane need pushing me to him.

I remained in the loneliness that my father would leave me in. Unable to sleep, I’d spend the night wandering the house like a sad ghost, or like the arms of a clock moving through the minutes and the hours. I’d drift from room to room, feeling like I was fleeing from Auntie Safiya chasing me. I could almost see her image on the walls. I almost felt her breath behind my ears. I almost heard her footsteps following me. She was everywhere in the house. She was sitting here, eating there, standing to supervise the servants, knitting a sweater . . . I felt afraid, to the point of terror. I’d run to Nanny Halima’s room and pound on her door with both hands, screaming, “Nanny Halima! Nanny Halima!”

The poor thing would be jerked awake, terrified to see me standing in front of her scared and shaking.

“Come sit with me, please, Nanny!” I’d implore her. “I can’t sleep.”

She’d walk behind me to my room.

I’d lie down on my bed wide-eyed, afraid to close my eyes because armies of devils would attack me. Nanny Halima would sit on the ground next to the bed talking about anything. And whatever she was saying would always end with Auntie Safiya. She’d let out a sigh for her as if she were lamenting the virtues of someone dear who had passed away. I felt this lamentation like a whip burning my chest and back. My tears and the screaming in my heart would flow.

Nanny Halima would get tired of talking and lamenting, and her eyelids would fall over her eyes as her head drooped to her chest. She’d slouch down to the ground and sleep under my feet like a guard dog. I remained wide-eyed, keeping my eyes open so the devils wouldn’t attack me.

That was how I was living after I recovered from my illness.

That was how I was.

I tried to fight it, to change my state and find any other way to live.

I believed that if we moved from this house, my condition would change and I’d be able to begin a new life without this torture. I’d be able to forget my crime and my father would be able to forget his wife.

I began to convince my father to move.

I thought he’d never agree. This big house had always been dear to him. He was born there. I was born there. It had housed our family since my grandfather.

But my father was easily convinced, as if he no longer cared about where or how he lived.

He wasn’t interested in the details that I went into, as I tried to convince him how expensive the big house was compared to a small apartment in one of the modern buildings. He simply agreed to move without discussing it, without even paying attention.

I started searching for an apartment in one of the new buildings. One of the women of the family always came with me. In this search, I found something to distract me, at least during the daytime.

We finally found an apartment in a building on Mohamed Mazhar Street in Zamalek.

An apartment with five rooms. In my mind, I divided it up into a room for the salon, one for a dining room, a third for an office, a fourth for my father, and the last for me.

I tried to put my own stamp on the apartment.

But I failed. I had failed to develop my own taste. In everything I bought or planned, it always seemed to me that I was adopting Auntie Safiya’s taste. I tried to resist this but, in doing so, I found myself abandoning her standards too.

I took some furniture from the old house, things from the study and my room, and some of the chairs from the parlor. I insisted that my father’s bedroom have new furniture. Everything in it needed to be new. I wanted to help him forget, to distance him from everything that made him remember his wife: the bed that brought them together, the dresser that kept their clothes, the mirror that her image was stamped on. Maybe then, he’d forget.

It took me three months to prepare the new apartment and then we moved in.

I stood and looked at the big house one last time before I left it forever and left all my memories there—memories of my childhood and my youth, memories embedded in its walls and inscribed on its floors, memories traced by the tears of a tortured girl who didn’t understand what had happened to her, other than that she was created in this world and found herself in this house.

I started feeling like I bore in my chest a heart wrapped in spiderwebs, a decrepit heart.

*

Were we happy in the new apartment?

I certainly felt a great deal of relief from what I had been suffering. I felt I was more active and better able to face the reality around me. I also felt I’d started shaking off some of the dullness that had been creeping into my youth, and that my blood was beginning to rise up to my cheeks again, even if with difficulty at first.

But my father’s state got worse.

He persisted in his drunkenness.

When I went into his room in the morning and collected his clothes strewn on the ground, I began finding traces of cheap lipstick on his shirt.

One day, I happened to be coming back from the doctor in a taxi when I saw his car parked in front of one of the buildings near al-Azhar Square. Another time, I saw his car again in front of the same building. I decided to go by the building a third time, and saw it there again.

I was sure that my father must have his own apartment there.

An apartment like Mustafa’s.

I didn’t say a word. I tried not to think about it. I didn’t try to hold my father accountable or put him under surveillance. It seemed to me that he had the right to have his own apartment and to meet whatever women he wanted there.

But that wasn’t my father.

It wasn’t the father I knew before he got married, who was living for me and sacrificing his youth to care for me and raise me. My father was always a different kind of man than Mustafa.

I began to hate Mustafa because my father had become like him.

Until one day . . .

The doorbell rang around one in the afternoon. Abdou came to tell me that there was a woman at the door who wanted to meet my father. When he informed her that my father wasn’t home, she asked to wait for him until he got back.

I went out to meet her.

I stood aghast when I saw her.

I didn’t know how to address her, how to pick the first word that I’d direct toward her. I couldn’t imagine what this kind of woman could want from my father. My surprise turned to haughtiness and derision. I stood up straight, pursed my lips, and began inspecting her, as if taking her measurements.

She was a cheap woman, who looked like a prostitute. Bright makeup was plastered on her face. Her dyed hair fell on her shoulders. She wore a yellow dress that revealed half her breasts, even though it was the middle of the day. Over her dress was a loose red coat two years out of style.

Had my father sunk so low?

Had he lost everything, even his taste and dignity?

Was this the kind of woman who visited his apartment?

I thought of Mustafa’s apartment at that moment and began measuring myself against that woman. Both of us were going to the apartment of a bachelor. I was going to Mustafa’s and she was going to my father’s. Was I like her? Like this woman?

I felt my insides surging up toward my lips as I heard myself scream out in my chest: “No, I’m not like her! I’m not like her!” I was in love. I had suffered. An unknown force had pushed me to Mustafa’s apartment.

All those thoughts passed over me in a moment. Then, as I stood there haughtily, with my back straight, I heard myself say to the woman, “Who do you want?”

“Mr. Ahmed Lutfi,” she said, turning and looking at me as if she were undressing me. “Doesn’t he live here?”

“Yes,” I said coldly. “But he’s not here. He’s out.”

“Can I wait until he comes back?” she asked, taking another step inside the house.

“Why? Is there something you need?”

“A lot of things,” she said, giving me a mocking smile, not seeming to notice how coldly I was addressing her. “Do you mind?” She walked into the apartment and sat on the chair in the entryway. “Let’s hope Mr. Ahmed isn’t too late!”

I stood looking at her from a distance, half admiring her boldness and shamelessness. I gripped my nerves so I didn’t explode.

“I’m his daughter,” I said in a light voice, as if trying to skirt around a scandal. “Can you tell me what you want? Maybe I can help you.”

“I didn’t know,” she said with a raised eyebrow.

“What didn’t you know?”

“I didn’t know that he had a grown daughter, a bride like you. You know, you look exactly like him. The first time I saw you, I thought you were his sister.”

“Well, now you know. Could you tell me why you want to talk to him?”

“It’s better not,” she said, moving her eyes over the pictures hanging on the walls. “It’s better that you don’t know.”

“I know everything about my father,” I said, challenging her.

“I don’t think so,” she replied coldly.

“You can’t wait here!” I exploded. “My father isn’t coming home for lunch and I’m going out now. I can’t leave you here alone!”

She stared at me as if she were looking at a child.

“Do you have five hundred pounds?” she asked in a calm voice, ignoring my screaming.

“Five hundred pounds for what?” I asked, taken aback.

“A promissory note that your father wrote me,” she said, looking me over while straightening the arms of her coat.

“A promissory note?” I asked, as if talking to myself. “For what? What did he take from you that he wrote you a promissory note?”

She let out a loud, intense laugh.

“He took the dearest thing from me, sweetie!” she said, raising both eyebrows.

I didn’t argue with her.

“He must have written you the promissory note when he was drunk,” I said, again as if talking to myself.

“He’ll have to explain that in court,” she responded indifferently.

I dropped into a chair and felt my head spin. I imagined my father in court, standing next to this woman before a judge. I imagined the courtroom packed with wagging tongues—tongues of people, tongues on chairs, tongues hanging from the ceiling, tongues planted in the ground, all of them long, very long, moving around like snakes and cracking like whips, then turning around my father, raising him and lowering him, tossing him around in the midst of maniacal cackling laughs. As I saw all of that—saw my father’s honor violated and the tongues crushing his reputation—my eyes opened wide with terror and I cried out, “Daddy! Daddy! My dear father!” And the tongues of the people responded to me with maniacal laughs.

Then the fantasy was gone.

“Can I see the promissory note?”

“When I see the five hundred pounds!”

“When is it due?” I asked, thinking out loud.

“It’s two days past due,” she said, starting to take me seriously. “I’ve been looking for Ahmed everywhere and I haven’t found him. I had to come here. He owes me.”

“Can I ask you a favor?” I asked meekly.

“What?” she looked at me in astonishment.

“Delay the promissory note for a week. If you don’t get the money by then, do what you want.”

She examined me closely and was silent for a moment.

“Where will you get the money from?” she asked hesitantly. “Your father?”

“I’ll get it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter how. Just don’t look for my father. Don’t ask anything from him. I’ll bring the money to you. Give me your phone number and address and I’ll bring it to you myself.”

“And if you don’t?”

“You won’t lose a thing. The promissory note is in your hands and you can file a case at any time.”

“Fine,” she said, getting up. “But only for you. May God grant me patience. If you bring me what I’m due, there won’t be any courts and scandals.”

“Merci.”

She gave me her phone number and left, without me shaking her hand goodbye.

I slammed the door behind her, as if sweeping her from the house, as if I was getting rid of something odious poisoning the air around me.

I sat thinking, thinking. My mind felt choked, unable to breathe. But, after a while, I thought I’d found a way I could get the five hundred pounds.

I decided to hide the news of this strange visit from my father. It would kill him if he knew that this woman had come to the house and that I’d met her and learned about this dirty promissory note.

I decided to deal with the five hundred pounds myself.

I called Mr. Gerges Shanouda, the manager of the farm, and asked him to come to Cairo to meet me that day. I was careful that he would arrive when my father was out of the house.

Mr. Gerges came, surprised. It was the first time I’d called him and asked him to meet me. He had a look of urgency on his sweaty face, desperate to know what was happening.

“Mr. Gerges,” I said as he sat down opposite me, “I want you to get me five hundred pounds, either tomorrow or the day after.”

He raised his lips from his coffee as if fire had burned his tongue.

“My God, Miss Nadia. My God!” he stammered in surprise.

“I’ll write you a receipt for it,” I said, trying to calm him down. “At the end of the year, when the bill is due, my father will know.”

He took out his folded handkerchief and wiped his fine lips with it. He lifted it to his face, blew his nose violently, and then raised his silver glasses and wiped them.

“That’s not what I mean, miss,” he said. “But . . . but . . .”

“But what?” I said sharply, as if the blood of all the Turks since Sultan Suleiman was surging through my veins.

“There’s not a penny at the farm,” he said as he settled his glasses back over his eyes. “The safe is empty. It’s been a long time since the farm workers were paid. Some were paid in advance, but whoever wasn’t has nothing. Your father this year has needed money urgently. He’s never been like this. We only see him from time to time. He comes, sits for a half an hour, collects the money, and leaves.”

I was quiet for a bit. I remembered that my father had spent two nights every week out of the house, on the pretext that he was at the farm. I always chose to believe what he said. I preferred not to let my imagination run wild, picturing him spending the night at his bachelor apartment.

“You mean there isn’t even five hundred pounds?” I was unable to look Mr. Gerges in the eye.

“I wish,” he said shaking his head, driving away flies with his antique fly whisk. “Really, Miss Nadia.” He paused for a moment and seemed to be thinking what he should say next. “Only two months ago,” he said, his voice raised, as if he’d been holding his breath, “your father sold forty acres to our neighbor Abdel-Ghaffar Pasha at a dirt-cheap price. He took the money in cash, and since that day we haven’t seen him.”

My eyes widened in surprise and terror, before I caught myself and quickly tried to hide my horror.

“I know your father, but what does he do with all this money?” Mr. Gerges asked after a bit, becoming bolder. “He’s never been like this before!”

I gave him an angry look. I understood he was attacking my father.

“My father has entered into a new company,” I said, my eyes fixed on him. “He’s building a new factory.”

Mr. Gerges shook his head as if he didn’t believe it.

“May God grant him success, Miss Nadia. But there’s nothing more bountiful than the land. What are these companies and factories?”

“Regardless,” I said, shutting him down. “Thank you very much, Mr. Gerges. I’ll get the money from somewhere else. Don’t forget to pass my greetings to Umm Atiya.”

I left him and walked toward my room.

“Thank you, miss,” I heard him say behind me. “But Umm Atiya passed away three months ago.”

I stopped in my tracks.

Then, without responding or saying, “May God have mercy on her soul,” I continued to my room.

I began pacing back and forth as if imprisoned in a black, windowless jail.

What happened?

What happened to us, Lord?

Umm Atiya died—the last person from the days of my grandfather, whom we all loved. She died and my father didn’t know. Or maybe he knew and forgot to tell me, as if her death wasn’t worth discussing.

And my father was selling his estate!

My father was the one who almost lost his mind when the land reform law took four hundred acres from us, and here he was selling the estate to squander the money on women who resembled prostitutes.

What had happened?

How could I prevent these catastrophes? How could I save what was left of my father and our land?

Why couldn’t I think?

Why couldn’t I find a solution?

Why was my mind so energetic and alive, sparkling and glittering when I was plotting something devious, and why was it so lazy and confounded when I tried to set out on the path of goodness, tried to atone for my crimes and save my victims?

I needed someone next to me.

Someone to help me.

Someone to take my hand and lead me onto the path to goodness.

Mustafa jumped to my mind.

Why Mustafa?

Why him? I thought I’d grown apart from him. He was no longer in my life, he was just a memory that I could neither forget nor recapture.

I don’t know. Maybe because he was an experienced person who could show me how to deal with this kind of woman demanding money. Maybe because he was a philosopher who could show me the path by which I could regain my father.

I didn’t know.

But I went to him.

I went with a pounding heart.