23

IT WASN’T EASY FOR KAWTHAR and me to convince my father to break off the engagement, despite the masterful performance that we put on for him.

As soon as we heard the front door open and my father walk toward us, I turned my face to the bed and pretended to cry. Kawthar leaned over me, patting my back as if she were consoling me. My father stood at the door of my room, aghast.

“What—what happened?” he asked as if he’d lost his voice. “Why is Nadia crying?”

Kawthar stood up, in complete control of her nerves.

“Come, Ahmed,” she said. “I want to talk with you.”

She pulled him by the hand and took him to the study. She told him that I was determined to break off the engagement with Samir and that I couldn’t stand him anymore. She told him that during the three months that we were engaged, I hadn’t let him kiss me even once because I didn’t love him, that she and I discovered he had an Italian girlfriend and he hadn’t ended his relationship with her, and that he’d proposed to a girl in Alexandria before, but the engagement was called off after he stole diamond bracelets from her. The girl’s family decided not to notify the police to avoid a scandal. And so on. She told him Samir’s history and all the rumors about him, which she knew better than me.

Despite that, my father still didn’t want to break off the engagement.

Breaking it off was more serious in his mind than going forward with it.

My father was afraid of what people would say, afraid that it would damage my reputation.

He came into my room with Kawthar behind him. I had moved over to the mirror and sat down, pretending to dry my tears.

“I can’t believe all this, Nadia,” he said, standing behind me, his distraught expression reflected in the mirror.

I decided to follow a new tactic. Instead of crying again and trying to stir up his love and sympathy, I turned to him, trembling, and screamed in his face.

“You’re the reason, Daddy! You’re the one who threw me into this. You’re the one who sold me to a scoundrel criminal! I didn’t think you wanted to get rid of me that badly! It would have been better if you’d just killed me instead of this torture!”

“Me?” my father said aghast. “Me, Nadia?”

“Yes, you!” I cut him off, still screaming. “You should have asked around about him before ensnaring me in this!”

“I did ask around,” he said, worried.

“But did you really? You went and disappeared for two hours at the club and then came to tell me he’s a good guy.”

“Aren’t you the one who agreed to it, Nadia?” he said, trying to calm me down, trying to deny responsibility.

“I agreed to it for you,” I said, hitting the commode with my hand. “You kept pressing me until I agreed. I’m ready to die for you, Daddy, but not like this. Shame on you! Shame on you!”

“But, Nadia,” Kawthar said, rubbing my shoulders. “Everything has a solution and this can go away.”

She turned to my father.

“The truth is, we’re the ones who were wrong, Ahmed,” she said.

“But how were we wrong?” my father asked, as if he were about to go crazy. “I saw her with my own eyes sitting with him at Groppi’s. I understood she was in love with him.”

“So, if I talk to someone on the phone or say two words to him on the beach, that means I’m in love with him?” My voice was so loud it was going through the walls. “Someone asks me to marry him. What else do you want me to do than take Kawthar to hear what he has to say and come tell you? What more do good girls do? More than let their fathers deal with their marriage and future?”

My father was silent. He seemed to be persuaded that he really was wrong and that he really had hurried to announce my engagement to Samir.

I calmed down.

“Do what you want with me, Daddy,” I sighed. “It’s in your hands.”

“I’ll only do what you want, Nadia,” he said, not looking at me, as if he was embarrassed. “But I say we wait a bit until we confirm what we’ve heard about him.”

“It’s not what we’ve heard. It’s the facts. For two months, I’ve been trying to lie to myself. But I can’t. I curse everything I see and hear. I didn’t tell you anything until I knew it was no use and they were true.”

“Fine. Let me think about it. It’s not so easy . . .”

“I’ve thought a lot,” I said in the same sad voice. “Kawthar thought a lot with me. You think about it on your own.”

My father looked at me silently. He moved his lips as if he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. He turned and left with slow, sad steps. Kawthar walked out behind him, giving me a look to reassure me about the success of the plan.

I smiled.

A smile of victory.

I stayed in my room. I refused to leave for lunch. I refused to leave for dinner. I left my father to Kawthar, so she could convince him and instill our revolt against Samir in him.

At seven o’clock, the phone rang. Samir was calling, as he usually did every evening. I didn’t tell him anything. I even spoke to him gently and sweetly, and as usual I apologized for not meeting him, since I was sick and had a headache, but I promised to meet him the next evening.

He couldn’t know anything before the plan was finished. He needed to be surprised so he wouldn’t try to ruin it.

The next morning, my father left early. Kawthar told me she was able to convince him to break off the engagement, but he insisted on asking around about Samir so he was sure he wasn’t making a mistake. Kawthar’s tone was harsh and bitter. She was wide-eyed. Her lips were trembling. Her hair was a mess and she didn’t change out of her nightclothes, as if she’d given up making herself look nice for anyone. In this state, I saw in the hateful way she looked at me a clear accusation—I was the cause. I was the one who had broken her heart and taken her away from her love. Maybe at that moment, she remembered this wasn’t the first time I’d broken her heart: I’d done it before when we were students and she was in love with my cousin Medhat.

I could feel it.

I was afraid of this feeling.

I had to be sure she was on my side until the engagement was called off. I had to blow on the fire of her hatred for Samir and her desire for revenge against him, so she didn’t backtrack on the plan we’d hatched together.

“I really don’t know if what we’re doing is right or not, Kawthar,” I said, sighing. “Maybe Samir is being treated unfairly.”

Her eyes glinted. It was that terrifying glint that I wanted to keep lit until my engagement was broken off.

“Treated unfairly?” she exploded. “He deserves the noose! He’s been driving me up the wall for three months. He’ll do the same to you, more and more. Let me tell you, he’s a criminal!”

Until my father got back, I pretended to hesitate and act confused as she encouraged me to continue the plan, insisted on it.

He returned with the worry of the entire world on his head.

He’d gone to ask a lot of the people he knew about Samir, his morals and his past. Maybe he asked some people he’d asked before the engagement was announced. But when people saw signs of worry and anxiety on his face, they guessed he’d learned what they already knew about Samir and they began revealing the truth to him—the horrible truth about Samir’s past. Maybe they made up things to make it even worse.

That’s how people are.

They don’t tell you their opinion. They tell you what they think you want to hear. If they think you want to hear praise about someone or support for an idea, they’ll praise or support. If they think you want criticism or opposition, they’ll criticize and oppose.

I wonder how many girls were made miserable after marriage because people lied when they were asked before the engagement.

My father sat next to me, destroyed and embarrassed, as if he were a sinner coming to beg for forgiveness.

“I really made a mistake,” he said in a weak voice that pierced my heart. “Forgive me.”

I threw myself on his chest. Each of us felt like a sinner asking the other for forgiveness. I wanted to tell him with my kisses that he was an angel, that he was cleaner than the world, that I was the sinner, the criminal, and he was the innocent victim.

Kawthar couldn’t control herself as she watched us kiss each other, and she cried. My father thought she was crying out of love for him and me, but I guessed she was crying out of grief for herself.

My father looked between me and Kawthar. A small smile came to his lips as if he were praising God for our love for him. He then drew from this love strength to puff up his chest. He went over to the phone, called Samir at the insurance company, and made an appointment to meet him at four o’clock at the club for an important matter.

I pulled Samir’s ring off my finger as if extracting a thorn dug into my hand, and I gave it to my father.

“Don’t forget this,” I said happily.

Samir went crazy when he heard my father announce the end of the engagement.

My father told us what Samir said to him, how he started pleading and asking for sympathy, claiming that what was said about him were lies and swearing on his love for me. “I know who’s behind this,” Samir said. “I know the one who did this. It’s Madame Kawthar, sir, because she didn’t accept me. She’s angry with me, and—”

“I won’t let you talk like that about my wife!” my father cut him off. “Please go.”

He tossed the engagement ring at him and left.

Samir didn’t say anything to him about his relationship with Kawthar, since he was still hoping he’d find a way to get back to me, but we had closed all the doors in his face. He sent all of our common friends around to us, but we refused even to talk about it. He tried to contact me, but I refused to speak to him, hanging up as soon as I heard his voice. He tried to contact Kawthar, and maybe he spoke with her once or twice, but Kawthar could no longer do anything after all that, even if she forgave him and wanted him back.

When Samir lost all hope, he started talking openly in our social circles about his relationship with Kawthar. Maybe he meant for whispers about this to reach my father, but my father interpreted it all as slander from a filthy man who thought he’d been cheated, so he didn’t pay any attention to him.

I saved myself.

I saved myself.

But did the world settle down? Did my sky clear up? Did I sleep?

No.

I was still sleepless!