‘THE FIRST TIME WE SEE YOU IN BLACK DIRT,’ FLAVIA said. ‘Do you mind if I smoke, by the way?’
‘No, not at all,’ Mariam said.
Flavia extracted a soft pack of Gauloises from her pocket and a cheap disposable lighter. She lit up with a sigh of relief. ‘The camera moves in a long tracking shot through the service corridors,’ she said. ‘It enters the laundry room. Steam rises and fogs the camera, and for a moment the viewer can’t see a thing. Then the fog clears as the camera pushes further into the room, and suddenly an image forms, of a young woman, looking directly into the camera, her eyes haunting, her face framed by the steam.’
She was reading from her notebook.
‘You’re being too kind,’ Mariam said.
‘It’s true,’ Flavia said. ‘You somehow seem so young and innocent, yet world-weary. It’s a captivating moment in the picture.’
‘It was actually the second scene I was in,’ Mariam said. ‘The first time Tom yelled “Action!” I had to walk across the room holding a laundry basket and I was utterly terrified. I was only in the background. It’s the scene where the spy and the girl first meet in the laundry room, when they have that argument. Eddie Constantine was old for the role but somehow he carried it off, even opposite Alessandra, who was so young and pretty. And of course he dies at the end.’
‘There was death on the set too, wasn’t there?’ Flavia said. She paused with her pen poised and looked sympathetic.
‘Off the set, yes,’ Mariam said. ‘It really was very sad.’
*
‘Mariam! Mariam!’ Mona said. They had gone out for soda again after work. ‘Guess what?’
‘What?’ Mariam said.
‘I’m going to be in the movie!’
Mona beamed. Mariam had to smile.
‘You are?’ she said.
‘Yes! They want to use the kitchen for one of the scenes. The old detective guy—’
‘I think he’s a spy,’ Mariam said.
‘Well, whatever he is, he chases some bad guy across the hotel, and they get into the kitchen and have a big fight. They want us to be there, in the background. And we get paid for it!’ Mona beamed. ‘Oh, and the chef even gets to say a line!’
‘What’s his line?’ Mariam said.
Mona stood up to her full height, pointed a quivering finger in the air and said, ‘Get… out!’
She collapsed back on the chair laughing. ‘Poor Mr Mohamed is terrified!’ she said. ‘He was so eager to do it and now all he does is practise. Do you think it’s better if he uses a big spoon instead of pointing? He could shake it at them, like he’s threatening them with it.’
‘I’m going to be in the movie too,’ Mariam said. ‘They want to film in the laundry room. But they asked if I could be available for a couple of other scenes. Apparently the director likes the way I look. I don’t even know what this movie is about! Is the Italian girl supposed to be Egyptian?’
‘I think so,’ Mona said. ‘They’ll all speak English anyway. Hey, that’s amazing news, Mariam. Are you excited?’
‘I’m scared,’ Mariam admitted. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘You just stand where they tell you to stand, and say what they tell you to say,’ Mona said. ‘That’s acting.’
‘When did you become such an expert?’ Mariam said.
‘It’s not hard!’ Mona said. ‘Looking after dying patients in a hospital is hard. Cleaning pots and pans all day is hard. Acting is just pretending. Kids do it all the time.’
Mariam reflected that this seemed a cruel way of describing what, as she now realised, she had been so desperate to do and so afraid to admit to herself. To act was not to pretend, it was to be, for a little while, someone else, but no less real for that. Movies made people happy. They allowed the nurse to be snatched away from the world of the dying, for the patients to escape momentarily the prison of their failing bodies, for the dishwasher to find solace in a world of light where everything was possible, for just a little while.
Mona was wrong, Mariam thought. But she didn’t know how to say it.
They finished their sodas and said their goodbyes. Mariam went home, as she always did, the crowded roads filled with cars and motorbikes, buses and trucks, and pedestrians weaving their way in and out of the traffic. She barely noticed. She felt she was in a dream. At home her grandmother stood by the cooking coals, stirring a pot with a long wooden spoon.
‘I’m going to be in a movie, teta,’ Mariam said. Her grandmother smiled. She put her hand on Mariam’s face. Her hand was rough and warm.
‘God gives what the heart desires,’ she said, ‘but the heart is seldom wise. Is this what you want, Mariam?’
‘It is,’ Mariam said.
‘Taste this,’ her grandmother said. She lifted the spoon to Mariam’s lips. The stew was rich and smoky, more lentils than meat.
‘It’s delicious,’ Mariam said.
Her grandmother nodded. She reached for the salt and scattered some into the stew with a thoughtful expression, then looked up and smiled.
‘Go with God, Mariam,’ she said.
*
Time passed. Mariam did the ironing. She carried laundry across a room in a camera’s gaze. She watched the spy and the girl’s first kiss on the balcony, illuminated by lamps that burned like the sun. She saw soundmen and doormen share cigarettes as they skulked outside on a rare break. She saw Mona in the kitchen, in a scene, stirring a pot as the spy chased a baddie across the room, throwing utensils and pushing over pots. She saw the chef shout angrily while waving a spoon, saying, ‘Get – out!’ as Mona tried not to laugh. She saw the old lady, Edna St James, speak intensely with Tom Greene as they went over lines of script. She saw Soraya, talking quietly with Henrietta Feebes.
The order of the world had been irrevocably upset, Mariam thought. She had been offered a glimpse of what lay behind the scenery, and of those who move behind it and repaint the world. She tried to read a worn-out copy of The Spy someone had left out one day on a chair in the dining room, but she found the going hard and abandoned it after a while. It was full of guns and pretty girls and that kind of thing.
Dr Müller came back from Alexandria. Umm Zayed still frowned whenever Mariam was late, but she didn’t say anything. One day Tom Greene gave Mariam a line to say. It was a scene where the spy walks in the street outside. It was a Cairo of the movies.
Mariam sat with her back to the wall, a begging bowl by her feet. The spy hesitated when he saw her. Something like compassion filled his rugged face, and he dropped a coin in her bowl. She looked up at him (really at a camera lens) and said, ‘Thank you, mister.’ The spy walked on. Unbeknown to him he was being followed by a sinister man in a black hat.
The director yelled ‘Cut!’
*
‘It’s arranged,’ Mariam said.
Fuad and his cousin Fayez were passing the long-stemmed hose of a sheesha pipe between them. The water in the bowl gurgled as they drew smoke in turns. Fuad grinned at her excitedly.
‘We’re going to get so rich,’ he said.
‘I don’t want anything more to do with this,’ Mariam said.
‘What exactly did you do?’ Fayez said. He looked at her with eyes that were a little too bright. He didn’t smile. Mariam didn’t like him.
‘I put a note under Dr Müller’s door, like we agreed,’ Mariam said. ‘The place near the necropolis, two days from now. The rest is up to you.’
‘He better pay up,’ Fayez said. ‘Or else.’
‘Or else what?’ Mariam said.
‘Or else I don’t know,’ Fayez said, staring at her. Fuad slapped him on the shoulder.
‘It’s just business, Fayez,’ he said.
‘You’re soft here in the city,’ Fayez said. ‘Too rich and too fat.’
‘Soon we’ll all be rich,’ Fuad said. He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as his cousin.
‘Where are the mummies?’ Mariam said.
Fayez gestured carelessly behind him.
‘Can I see?’
‘Do what you like.’
Mariam went around them. She peered into the small storage room. The two shapes inside were smaller than she expected. It was dark, she couldn’t make out details, and she withdrew quickly. She thought, these were hardly pharaohs that Fayez was trying to sell. Just some dead people from long ago. It made her feel sad.
‘I’ll see you, Fuad,’ she said, coming back.
‘Thanks for arranging it, Mariam,’ Fuad said. He elbowed his cousin.
‘What?’ Fayez said, irritated. He stared at Mariam. ‘Why are you still here?’ he said.
‘I’m not,’ Mariam said. She left, not looking back.
*
The hotel was no longer its usual cool, refined space. A madness took hold of the bricks and mortar, of guests and staff alike. Hot tungsten lights burned unnaturally in nooks and crannies, men and women who looked busy and important moved from place to place carrying things or ordering other people to do things. Even Mr Rahim, the elderly doorman, looked different in the new lights; taller, younger, his moustache more black, as though it had been varnished anew with shoe polish. He stood proudly by the elevators as men with a heavy camera on a tripod tested out shots and a boom operator rested standing against one wall. No one paid the slightest attention to Mariam. She peered into the hotel bar. She had never been to a bar before. She saw the reporter from Al-Ahram, Ali Mubarak. He sat chatting to Mrs St James.
‘Do you see,’ Mrs St James said, ‘it has to happen that way, the death of the spy is inevitable, it is the moral imperative, and yet as he lies on the rubbish heap, the blood ebbing out of his body, we never know for sure if he lives or dies, and so we’re offered hope…’ She paused, then laughed. ‘Of a sequel, anyway!’
Ali Mubarak laughed with her. Mrs St James lifted her drink with a shaking hand. The ice tinkled in the glass. ‘Of course, I don’t know if they will keep my ending or not. Tom is undecided. A movie is never the book, you know.’
Ali Mubarak said something; Mariam didn’t hear what.
‘The overall theme of my books?’ Mrs St James said. She took a sip of her drink. The glass hovered unsteadily in the air. ‘Moral choices, I would say. Well, that and fucking.’ She brayed a laugh again, then looked confused. She blinked. The glass slipped from her fingers. It fell to the floor. The glass broke. Mrs St James looked surprised. Then she slowly toppled in her chair.
Ali Mubarak sat there looking stupefied. Mariam was the first to run to the fallen woman. Mrs St James lay on the floor like a broken doll. Mariam lifted her head gently, and Mrs St James’s eyes opened, for just a moment. Her lips moved without sound.
‘Don’t try to speak,’ Mariam said. She looked around her.
‘Help!’ she shouted. ‘Somebody help!’
When she looked down at Mrs St James again, the old woman’s eyes were closed, and she was no longer breathing. The body slackened and relaxed suddenly. A long, mournful fart emanated unexpectedly from Mrs St James. With it came a horrible smell as the dead woman expelled the contents of her last supper into the world.
A laugh escaped Mariam’s lips, startling her, and she began to hiccup. The old woman didn’t look peaceful in death. Mariam gently laid down the head, with its eyes that would no longer see, its mouth that would no longer speak, onto the floor. She wiped her eyes from tears she wasn’t aware of.
That’s how they found her, with Mr Mubarak of the newspaper still gaping stupidly to one side, and Tom Greene took Mariam, helped her up, and held her as she clung to him, crying at something, she didn’t know what.