19

THERE WAS SOMETHING SMALL THAT had happened that I hadn’t paid much attention to at the time.

It was during the party for my father’s marriage to Kawthar.

The phone rang. I lifted the receiver and said hello a number of times, but no one responded. I heard someone hang up. After a bit, the phone rang again. I picked up, and again, no one responded. It rang a third time, and I saw Kawthar rush to the phone in her bridal dress, beating me to the receiver. She spoke in a low voice for a moment, and then put the receiver down and went back to the guests. She stood next to my father with her wide, sweet smile full of activity and life, without mentioning anything about who was calling.

I didn’t pay attention to that incident that day. I was happy. My heart and mind were clear. I was happy with my father’s marriage and happy with Mahmoud beside me. I wasn’t ready to think badly about anyone, and anyway, I couldn’t disturb a bride at her wedding party.

Some weeks passed and I didn’t notice anything unusual.

Thinking about Mahmoud occupied my entire being and every second that passed. I sometimes went off alone so I could imagine myself talking to him, scolding him, and confiding in him. Sometimes I imagined him on the streets of London picking out a wedding gift for me. Sometimes I saw him in my imagination with another girl, and then I’d get upset and angry, and I couldn’t sleep. I waited for his letters as if waiting for an urgent appointment.

My father seemed almost to float from happiness. He went back to walking with pride and dignity, as if the entire earth were his. He went back to singing in the shower every morning and filling the house with joy. He went back to embracing me roughly, trying to lift me off the ground as if he was trying to prove his strength to me, showing off his masculinity. He went back to being organized and steady, just as he had been. He’d go out on time and come back on time. He was never late for lunch or dinner. He once again accepted family invitations and went to soirees with me and Kawthar.

Kawthar always seemed happy and in a good mood. Her wide smile embraced the whole house and she spread lightness and joy. But she wasn’t a housewife. Not at all. She was pampered, a flirt or, as the French say, a coquette. She couldn’t stand to keep watch over the house or take the servants to task or go into the kitchen or take over the household expenses. She left all those things to me and Nanny Halima. I accepted the duties of the house excitedly and wholeheartedly. To tell the truth, they were diversions for me while I was waiting for Mahmoud. Kawthar thought that continuing to supervise the house was a way for me to maintain my place and importance. As for Nanny Halima, she was always annoyed and always complaining, since she didn’t like that Kawthar ignored the running of the house, even if I was the one who took her place.

A few golden weeks went by.

Then I started noticing things.

As soon as my father left the house, Kawthar would take the phone and disappear with it into her room. She’d disappear for a while and then come back with her hair messed up and her ears red from pressing the receiver against them.

Sometimes, after my father had left, she’d leave the house alone without inviting me to go with her, claiming she was visiting her mother or one of her friends. She’d come back nervous and worn out before my father got back.

“No one called?” she’d ask me breathlessly with a weary smile. “No one asked for your father?”

When I responded no, she seemed to calm down. She went into her room to change her clothes and tidy herself up. She then appeared happy and lively, like she hadn’t even left the house.

None of this escaped me.

I wasn’t so dumb or gullible that I couldn’t make out what was behind it all.

I started wondering . . .

Was she having an affair?

Was she betraying my father?

I didn’t need to wonder. The truth was so clear that there was no room for doubt.

Yes. She was betraying my father, robbing him of his honor, bleeding him of his dignity with another man.

I had kicked the faithful wife out of his life and put a cheating one in her place.

I’d sold the innocent one and brought in the criminal.

Oh, Lord!

Has Your punishment begun?

Oh, Lord!

Could You not forget?

Oh, Lord!

Oh, magnificent vengeful One. When will You be forgiving and merciful?

I stopped sleeping. I started feeling like there was a snake slithering over my body, under my clothes, making me writhe. I started feeling as if I was living in a garbage bin. Everything around me was filthy. Everything around me was hypocrisy, lies, deception.

Why was she cheating on him?

What did he lack that other men had?

Maybe she didn’t love him.

Then why did she marry him?

Maybe because her lover was the kind of man who didn’t get married—someone like Mustafa. Maybe she married my father so he could give her the status society demands, give her the easy life that she was living. She married him as a setup to betray him, in cahoots with her lover. She betrayed him with intent and purpose, with premeditation, as the law says.

All those thoughts were swimming around my head. What should I do?

I could crush her. I could kick her out of the house like a dog. If my mind wasn’t incapable of destroying goodness and crushing innocent people, it wouldn’t be incapable of destroying evil and crushing criminals.

But my father . . .

My poor father . . .

Could he bear another blow?

Could he bear losing two wives, both accused of cheating?

Could a man’s dignity bear the weight of all that pain and suffering?

I remembered my father’s state immediately after he divorced Auntie Safiya. I remembered him wandering around drunk, squandering everything, cheap women toying with him. No, my father must not know.

Kawthar had to stay in his life at any price. Whatever it cost. Whatever this charade, this hypocrisy, this deception cost me.

What is adultery anyway?

Adultery is a crime that is only committed once the husband knows. The husband is usually the last to know, and until he finds out, the crime hasn’t taken place yet. It’s like the crime of swindling. As long as you don’t know that there’s been a swindle, as long as you don’t know that someone has swindled you, there’s no crime. As long as you don’t know that something has been stolen from you, theft, in your mind, hasn’t taken place.

The law on adultery recognizes that it’s a crime that takes place only with the knowledge of the husband. If the law gives a husband the right to forgo making an accusation of adultery against his wife, then it no doubt considers the husband who doesn’t know to have forgone his right.

Society, too. It doesn’t punish the cheating wife unless her husband knows. Society might whisper and it might point from a distance, but it doesn’t scream, doesn’t accuse, and doesn’t punish unless the husband finds out. And the day he finds out is the day the divorce takes place and catastrophe ensues. Society opens its mouth, and thousands of tongues come out to crack like whips.

Was that true?

I didn’t know. Nothing mattered to me those days except for looking for a logic to convince myself to cover up for my father’s wife, to preserve my father’s happiness.

I was determined, to the point that I began accusing myself that I was the reason for what Kawthar was doing.

Why not?

Kawthar, when she was a student, was as innocent and unblemished as a crystal. Then she fell in love with Medhat, my cousin, with a pure love that could have ended in marriage if I hadn’t intervened and torn up their love. It drove Kawthar crazy. She shriveled up as if she no longer had any blood left in her. Then they married her to a man far from her heart, personality, and dreams. She divorced him after a year. After the divorce, she let herself go into the world, into corrupt society. She no longer had hope to protect herself with. Fate didn’t leave her any virtue to defend herself with. She was sinning now. Maybe she’d sinned a lot. But why? Because she didn’t find happiness in virtue. She only found in it torture and degradation and living with a man she didn’t love.

If she’d married Medhat, would all of that have happened to her? Would she have cheated on him as she was cheating on my father now? Would she be as frivolous and greedy as she was now?

I didn’t think so. A wife either loves her husband or she’s an adulteress. There isn’t a wife who loves her husband and cheats on him, and there isn’t a wife who doesn’t love her husband and doesn’t cheat on him, even if she cheats on him with herself. That’s what Mustafa said. I think he was right.

I was the criminal in both cases.

I committed a crime the day I broke up Kawthar and Medhat, and then again when I covered up for her so she could be a treasonous wife, cheating with another man.

I committed a crime the day I chose her as a wife for my father, so he would be the duped husband.

That was what I’d tell myself to increase my conviction to cover up Kawthar’s cheating, to protect my father’s happiness.

Meanwhile, Kawthar strived to make my father happy.

I couldn’t accuse her of abandoning my father’s happiness.

On the contrary. She’d come back from meeting her lover and then bestow on my father double the pampering, tenderness, and submission, as if she were trying to compensate him or ease her conscience.

My good, naive father was happy all that time. I hadn’t seen such happiness on his handsome face before.

I, alone, was being tortured.

I, alone, smelled the scent of betrayal, a bitter heavy stench that entered my lungs.

With the passing days, Kawthar knew that I was on to her secret.

She knew that I was covering it up.

It wasn’t possible for us both to live in a single house without one of us discovering the secrets of the other. Kawthar wasn’t so stupid that she thought she could hide on the phone in her room, leave the house for those supposed appointments, and come back looking suspicious without stirring up my doubts.

Despite that, we didn’t talk about it.

Maybe she could see my distaste toward her. But we both ignored it. We both kept control over the disgust between us, so we seemed like close friends whenever my father was with us.

I didn’t bring it up, and neither did she.

Until one day . . .

As we sat at the breakfast table, Kawthar said she was going to visit her mother.

I swallowed my pain along with the food that I was chewing.

“Why don’t you tell her to come and have dinner with us tonight?” my father asked lovingly and kindly. “We haven’t seen her in days. I’ve never seen a mother-in-law like that.”

My father left.

Soon after, Kawthar went out.

I was left alone. Then I started reading Mahmoud’s letters for the thousandth time. Those letters were my solace, my hope, everything I was living for. Between their lines, I imagined Mahmoud coming back from London to marry me, to carry me far from this house, far from Kawthar, far from my father whose love had exhausted me, the love that had ruined my life and with which I’d ruined his life.

I only had one hope: Mahmoud.

Mahmoud’s letters were always delicate—more delicate than I had expected. They were more delicate than his calm talk, his tender glances, his refined culture, his kisses, which rested on my lips like the touches of angels, more delicate than his breath, which encircled me like the wings of small butterflies in love.

In one of his letters, he wrote:

“It’s strange—I didn’t know that the women of London were faceless. I haven’t seen a single woman’s face here. I see only one face, which I took with me from Cairo in my imagination. The face of a girl with golden hair, green in her eyes, a sweet stream on her lips, and a rose on her cheeks, her skin woven by goodness, her breath innocent, and her smile like a child’s.”

In another letter, he wrote:

“I wonder sometimes what brings us together. Are we similar or are we contradictory? No, each of us completes the other. You’re light and I’m dark. You’re a little too tall and I’m a little too short. You’re emotional and I’m logical. You’re heart and I’m mind. You look at the sky and I look to the depths. You’re an angel and I’m human. You and I form a complete person. Each of us is half of the other. Here, far from you, I feel that I’m half of myself. I want to return to my other half!”

I was deeply in love reading these letters, seeing in them a beautiful, sweet, and kind image—the image of me through Mahmoud’s eyes.

Suddenly, the phone rang. It was my father.

“Where did Kawthar go?” he asked, his voice going up and down as if driving over potholes. “I called her mother, but I didn’t find her there. Do you know where she went?”

I was nervous, but I did everything I could to hide it.

“Daddy, I think she went to the doctor,” I said, as if throwing myself into the ocean to save someone drowning.

“Doctor? What doctor?” he asked, surprised. “When I left this morning, she felt fine. I’ll go see her right away.”

“Don’t worry, Daddy,” I said quickly. “She should be home any moment. I don’t think it’s serious. She’s been complaining for two days and she didn’t want to tell you so you wouldn’t worry.”

“I’m leaving now,” my father said, hanging up.

I walked around the house like a crazy woman. I looked out the windows, searching for Kawthar, hoping she’d get back before my father.

But she didn’t.

“Did she tell you she was going to the doctor?” my father asked when he didn’t find her at home.

“No,” I said. “I was cleaning up my room and I didn’t think to ask her.”

I started calming my father and consoling him, even though I was the one who needed calming and consoling. I asked my father if I could go to the neighbors’ apartment to get a needlepoint pattern from their daughter. I didn’t wait for his permission. I left quickly, went out to the street, and stood waiting for Kawthar. I looked all around until I convinced the doorman that I was waiting for a car that I was going to take.

Kawthar came after a bit in a taxi.

Before her feet hit the ground, I went up to her, whispering in her ear what had happened and advising her to tell my father that she’d been at the doctor, not at her mother’s.

I then let her go up before me.

When I got to the apartment, I heard my father talking to her anxiously.

“But you’re not telling me what’s wrong or why you went to the doctor.”

“No, I’m not telling you,” Kawthar said playfully.

I intruded in the conversation.

“You’re back. You made us worried!”

“Please,” my father said again, pleading. “Put my mind at rest.”

“My dear,” Kawthar said, so lightly that I envied her for her nerves of steel, “what do you know about women’s things? I’ll tell you later, when we’re alone!”

She went up to him, kissed him on the cheeks, and looked at him with fake tenderness.

My father’s face lit up. His eyes sparkled and his mouth dropped as if he’d suddenly understood something.

My father was aghast, as if what he understood surprised him so much he couldn’t speak. He looked at Kawthar with a mixture of shock and admiration.

“Is it really true, Kawthar?” I said, to tighten the great lie.

“The doctor still isn’t sure,” Kawthar said, putting on a show of being bashful.

From that day, my father pampered his wife and looked after her, paying attention to everything she was eating and every step she took. He bought books about pregnancy, until Kawthar was forced to take him to the doctor. No doubt she gave the doctor another lie, and then left to tell my father that she wasn’t pregnant after all.

From that day, the situation between me and Kawthar was out in the open.

She was open about cheating on my father.

And I was open about covering it up.

The caller no longer hung up when I picked up. It seemed that Kawthar had told her friend that I was in on their secret and that I was covering it up for them. He then found the courage to speak to me.

“Hello? Miss Nadia? Can I please speak with Kawthar?”

I knew it was him, her boyfriend, but I pretended to ignore him. Perhaps he’d pretend to ignore the truth too—claiming, for example, that he was the brother of one of her friends.

“Who’s this?” I asked him coldly.

“Samir,” he said in a polite but impudent voice.

I could do nothing but give her the phone.

That was how I learned his name.

Samir!

Despite that, I didn’t give Kawthar the chance to talk to me about him. I wanted to keep myself far from them, to stay as far as I could from this heavy stench that clogged my lungs —the scent of betrayal.

I’d prevent her from talking about herself or her boyfriend. I’d be dry and resolute in blocking her. But she didn’t notice. She would smile sarcastically as if she was sneering at me. She knew she had me by the neck and that I wouldn’t be able to do anything about her treachery. She knew I was drinking the poison silently and that I was letting her trample my dignity, that she could whip me whenever she wanted and I wouldn’t moan or complain.

She knew I’d cover up for her, not out of love for her but to preserve my father’s happiness. She knew I’d sacrifice everything—my dignity, my comfort, my entire life—for this love, the love of my father.

She exploited my love for my father. She held me by my most delicate and sensitive part and had started torturing me.

I was tortured horribly.

I was tortured by the wound from having my own dignity trampled. I was tortured by the deception of my father. I was tortured by my hatred for Kawthar, a hatred branding me, burning my heart.

I was quiet about this torture for a long time.

I was afraid it would explode in me and stir up the forces of evil inside me, to bring the house crashing down on my father’s head as had happened once before.

I was trying to flee from this torture to Mahmoud. I’d write him at length, telling him everything about Kawthar—about her cheating, and my duped father. I’d complain. I’d seek refuge in him. I’d beg him to come back to save me.

Then I’d tear up what I wrote.

He didn’t have to know.

He must always stay out of all these problems that I was immersed in, clean and pure so I could live with him . . . clean and pure.

Fighting this torture exhausted me. My body withered, and everything inside me became broken. My eyes dulled, my lips seemed to deflate, my cheeks become sallow, as if my blood were too ashamed to face my father and people in general. My silence grew, but I was trying to seem happy before my father, so I didn’t make him worry. I intentionally went out with him and Kawthar, so I didn’t upset him by staying home alone, so I didn’t give Kawthar the chance to rejoice at my misfortune.

I once went with them to the Auberge Restaurant, and on the way to our table, I saw Mustafa.

With who?

Auntie Safiya!

Safiya’s brother was with them, as well as some friends.

Mustafa and Safiya were so absorbed in each other that they were ignoring everyone around them. Each was immersed in conversation with the other, as if they were continuing the conversation they’d started when they met the first time.

My father saw Safiya and pretended to ignore her.

Kawthar looked at her with cheap haughtiness, and then put her arm on my father’s arm, letting out a loud laugh as if she wanted to snatch everyone’s eyes away from Safiya.

As for me, I looked at the two of them pathetically and submissively. I looked at them for a long time.

Mustafa looked at me as if suddenly remembering that he’d seen me before.

Safiya smiled broadly at me, appearing happy to see me. She nodded hello from a distance.

In that moment, I didn’t care about Mustafa. I didn’t feel his presence. Instead, all my emotion was directed at Safiya, all that I’d done. I felt as if I wanted to throw myself on her chest and cry, to tell her what was happening to me. I wanted her to take me with her to her house far from Kawthar, far from her betrayal, far from the deception, hypocrisy, and lies, and the terrible stench of it all.

I spent that evening in a daze.

I wasn’t thinking about Safiya and Mustafa or what could have brought them together. I was thinking about myself, my life, my bad deeds, my fate, my torture, my misery.

My dazed state didn’t dissipate, and finally my father suggested we go back home, since he thought I was tired. Kawthar refused—she didn’t want to leave before Safiya so she didn’t seem to be having less of a good time than her.

I kept looking at Mustafa. He was dancing with Safiya as if embracing an angel that he was afraid he might harm. I looked at them like I was looking out through black bars into a beautiful world from which I’d been banished.

When I was back home in bed, every part of me longed for Mahmoud.

He was the only hope that I had left of being saved.