Chapter Three

The next morning Layla was late getting to school. The bell was already ringing as she arrived. Passing through the main entrance, her demeanor stiffened, as if she were in wary anticipation of some particular event. As she glanced round, though, her features relaxed and she took off at a run. The bell was still ringing, but the pupils had not yet formed themselves into the usual line. Girls were scattered in small knots across the courtyard, and she began to flit from one group to another in some confusion, without knowing why she did so. The words that flew into her ears tumbled directly into her heart; a shiver that began in her feet ran all the way up her body, until it came to concentrate in her head, leaving a prickly feeling down to the ends of her hair.

“Bring down the girls who’ve gone up to the classrooms! No, no work today, none of the girls will work.” “Aliya, go see about the first-year girls, reassure them if they’re scared.” “Scared? They’re all fired up!” “Yes, they’re even bolder and braver than the older girls.” “We’re every bit as ready as the boys are.” “Girls, girls—girls have just as many feelings about it all!” “We have to show what we feel!”

The bell rang and rang, supervisors and teachers clapped their hands, but the girls remained scattered in their little groups. Layla found her own friends.

“Come on over here, Sitt Layla!” called out Adila. “Come see your cousin, she doesn’t want to go!”

Layla looked astonished. “Go? Go where?”

“The demonstration, of course.”

“You’re all going out there, to join a demonstration?”

“Of course we’re going. The whole city’s jumping with excitement, all the schools will join in, why shouldn’t we show how we feel, too?”

Discussion stopped suddenly as the headmistress appeared in the courtyard, but the bell went on ringing, its shrill urgency outdoing all. The small groups fell together into a single, huge, human mass, each knot of girls bolstering the next, and the shouting rose.

“Down with imperialism! We want weapons—weapons!”

The headmistress approached the microphone. Woman’s job was motherhood, she said. Woman’s place was in the home, she said. Weapons and fighting were for men.

A stifling silence fell heavily over them, but just for a moment. A dark figure, her short curls bouncing, her shoulders wide and firm, broke the ranks. Her black eyes shone as she crossed the yard and mounted the four steps that divided the students from the headmistress. She stood in front of the woman. Her voice shook as it came through the microphone.

“Our esteemed headmistress says that woman belongs in the home and man belongs in the struggle. I want to say that when the English were killing Egyptians in 1919 they didn’t distinguish between women and men. And when the English stole the Egyptians’ freedom they didn’t distinguish between men and women. And when they plundered the livelihood of so many Egyptians, they didn’t stop to think whether that belonged to men or to women.”

Yells went up from the crowd, and students skittered about, hugging each other. As the voices rose they became one: “Down with the English! Weapons, weapons—we want weapons!

The headmistress stepped back.

“She’s great!” Layla said to her friend Sanaa.

“Yeah, that’s true toughness. Could you do something like that?”

Layla laughed as she closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself in such a situation. “I wish.” Then, a moment later: “What’s her name?”

“Samia Zaki. She’s in her prep year, science division.”

By unspoken agreement Samia was now the leader, and the pupils followed her to the school’s main gate. Samia pounded on it and the girls followed her example, but it remained tightly shut. The rhythmic slogans stopped as the would-be demonstrators broke up into groups, gesturing, shouting to each other. But all grew quiet as they heard a muffled commotion in the distance. They listened as it rose gradually into a deafening shout. One girl took the steps at a run.

“It’s the boys—the students from Khedive Ismail School.”

The girls gathered again into one mass and the shouts rose again in unison, slogans batted back and forth from the boys outside to the girls inside and back again. “No more imperialism!” “Down with the agents of imperialism!” “Weapons, weapons—we want weapons!” “We’ll die so Egypt lives forever!” The girls hammered harder and harder on the gate and one of the boys climbed up the school wall. “Get away from the gate,” he called. The girls drew back and the gate began to give way under a succession of blows from outside.

“Hurry up, Sanaa,” said Adila. Sanaa followed her without even a glance back as the little group parted into two, Layla staying with Gamila, who declared, “I’m not leaving this place.” Layla shrugged as she walked forward toward the gate. “Fine, stay. Me, I’m going.”

“Layla, you’ll have to take responsibility for whatever happens, you know,” warned her cousin. “Suppose your family sees you—your father, or Mahmud?”

Layla’s lips went pale. “My family, my family! Am I the only one with family?” There was irritation in her voice, but she paused uncertainly, wavering between her solidly planted cousin and the mass of classmates pushing forward.

“Come back,” urged Gamila. “Come back, it’s better to stay here, this is going to be a mess.” But just as she spoke a knot of girls pushed forward into Layla’s path as she was trying to step back. She tried to push her way against the human mass that was surging ahead, but the crowd swept her forward with it and the distance between her and Gamila grew. And Layla found herself in the street.

The boys stepped back to clear a space for the girls, who pushed forward to take the lead in the procession. The boys fell in behind them. On either side of Khayrat Street passersby stopped and gathered, the owners of the little shops along the street emerged to watch, and so did the children who peopled the side streets. Faces filled the windows above the street, and balconies were crammed with watching figures. Layla walked on, staring round, fear vying with embarrassment to assail her. She was afraid someone she knew would catch sight of her; she felt an embarrassed shyness about her full body and was sure that every pair of eyes on the street was focusing on her. The rhythmic yells surged like waves and abated, the first wave chased by a second, the pair coming together into one swell. Applause, the watching women’s trilling zagharid, all of those hands waving, hundreds of eyes sparkling, bodies everywhere, rising and falling in mad leaps. Mouths open wide to shout, drops of sweat glinting on a broad forehead, feet pounding, flags and banners fluttering, tears streaming down, and always the pushing, the pushing, on and on.

Blood pulsed into Layla’s head and she felt a surge of energy. She felt alive, at once strong and weightless, as if she were one of those birds circling above. She pushed through the lines and found herself scrambling onto classmates’ shoulders, heard herself calling out with a voice that was not her own. It seemed a voice that summoned her whole being, that united the old Layla with her future self and with the collective being of these thousands of people—faces, faces as far as she could see. Then that new voice was lost, caught up in thousands of others, and she slipped down from her perch.

A pair of eyes was drawing her, staring in mute insistence, in an unyielding appeal that enveloped her, to stifle the wells of strength in her body and spirit. She kept moving forward but she felt the eyes follow her with unabated pressure, as if they were aimed at the back of her neck. Layla saw herself at home, at the dinner table, her father’s face darker than usual, twisted in anger, his hand out threateningly, her mother’s paled lips. A fierce shudder ran through her body and at once her legs felt as though they would collapse. She whipped around. She saw her father. Yes, he was standing there, in that spot where she thought she had seen him, on the pavement at Lazoghli Square, next to the café. Even from here she could see his teeth as he chewed furiously on his lower lip.

Behind her the crowd pushed forward without mercy, pushing her further from her father, his face very dark indeed, and away from the image of her mother, her lips even paler now. Her father vanished from sight and she saw only the crowd of thousands, and herself melting into the whole. Everything around her was propelling her forward, everything, everyone, surrounding her, embracing her, protecting her. She began all of a sudden to shout again, in that voice that belonged to someone else, a voice that joined her whole self to them all.

 

Layla’s father was still chewing on his lip as he opened the door. He opened it silently, impassively. He was equally cool as he closed it. Only then did he bring out the slipper concealed behind his back. He tried to throw her to the floor but her mother slipped between them. He pushed his wife away and she stood motionless to one side, her lips quivering. He yanked off Layla’s shoes and against her feet sounded the slap of the hard slipper. As it hit against her legs and then her back, Layla could hear that slap mingling with the sound of a woman’s laugh on the stairs outside, the screaming of a newborn, and her mother’s choked sobbing. She heard her father’s voice, shouting at her mother—“shut up!”—and again, the crack of the slippers, one blow after another, a momentary silence between each, a pause, suppressed breathing, then the slap ringing out again. Then there was the rustle of her book bag as she dragged it across the tiles, the squeak of teeth on leather as she clenched the bag in her mouth, her father’s steps receding, the sharp sound of his door slamming, her mother’s steps coming near, the sensation of her hands punctured by the iciness of the floor tiles as she crawled on hands and feet to her room.

Inside, she braced herself and got to her feet in time to close the door in her mother’s face. She turned the key in the lock. She dragged her feet across to the chair that faced the bed and collapsed onto it. She seemed unable to breathe; she put her hand to her neck. She stood up slowly and practically ran across the room, whispering, “Where can I go? I can’t possibly stay here.” As if blinded, she knocked into her bed, the wardrobe, the chair. Her mother was knocking on the door, tapping, tapping, lightly.

“Open up, Layla.” Her voice was a loud whisper. Layla stood still in the middle of the room and covered her face in her hands. “Where can I go? I could close a hundred doors but they still wouldn’t go away. They won’t leave me alone, they’re always there, even right now with the door shut tight. Always there, my father, my mother, always there, bearing down on me, pressing down on my chest to squeeze my lungs to nothing. There isn’t a single moment when I can forget, when I can dream, no, not a second when I can just think about anything I want, in any way I want, never a moment just for me, for me. It’s always me and them, every single minute, me and them and the truth, the sad, sad truth, me and them, pressing down on me, on my body, on my body stretched out in the living room.”

She paced the room. “What can I do? God, what will I do?” And paced. “Kill myself? Then what?” She pictured herself lying on the bed, eyes closed in death, her body rigid, her father pressed against the bed and crying hard, as hard as, well, as . . . a child. And all those people he feared so much were pointing at him and saying, “That’s him—the one who killed his daughter.” Then her mother’s face would grow dark, threatening, and she’d scream at him. “You—you, you killed my daughter.”

No. Her mother’s face would never darken. She’d never scream at Layla’s father. All her life, she would go on walking on tiptoe, her tears streaming down, voiceless, soundless. Layla fell weakly onto the foot of her bed and buried her face in her hands. Why live? Why? She wasn’t a human being, she was just a mat, a mat rolled out in the front room, in front of the door, the sort on which people wiped their feet. No one loved her; there was not even anyone there to treat her like a human being. Her mother rapped harder on the door.

“Open up, my dear. Eat a bite, won’t you, or at least have something to wet your throat a little? A drink of water, honey—”

Long ago, at the table. Layla, a child. Her father speaking.

“Layla isn’t really our daughter. We found her at the entrance to the mosque. Look, Mahmud, even our skin—you and I are light, and so is Mama, but Layla—only Layla has such dark skin.” She had stared at her mother, who had laughed.

“We found her in a little bundle, poor miserable thing,” her mother had chuckled. “Let’s raise her, we said, and get our reward in heaven.”

Layla found herself drawing her hand back and hiding it behind herself exactly as she had done when a child. Her mother resumed knocking, lightly, and whispering. “Open, open up, my dear. Layla, come on, you’re being silly, its silly to be so stubborn. You’re acting like­—” Layla swung her legs back and forth, back and forth, and muttered to herself, “Like a dog, an insect, like a mama bear. Papa said when he was in bed sick and I was hugging him, he said, just like a mama bear that hugs her cub so tight he dies.”

“Why? Why did you hug him so hard? Why weren’t you gentle like he wanted?” Everything she did, she did with her whole heart, she pitched right in, heart and soul, and she always thought that was right, but lo and behold, every time it turned out to be wrong. Everything she did—mistake upon mistake, and now, no one was left to love her. Well, what about at school? If Adila had seen her lying full length on the living room floor, she would have just shrugged her shoulders and said, “That was the wrong thing to do, you know. It was your mistake. You didn’t speak up when they got on your case, because you’re weak. What it all comes down to in the end is that you’re just a feeble person.”

Layla spoke out loud, her voice wispy, weepy. “What can I do, Adila? What can I possibly do?” Fine. It was true. She was weak, she was feeble, just like her mother. And just like her mother she would remain weak all her life. Her lips would just keep going paler and paler, and her tears would pour out endlessly, without a sound, without a voice.

Her mother’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Dear, now, really, must we be so loud that they can hear us all the way to the end of the street? Open up, come on, dear, you’ll die of hunger.”

“Open the door, Layla,” said Mahmud. “Papa’s gone out.”

Now she noticed that the room had grown dark. She had not turned on the light. The knocking on the door grew louder but still she did not answer. Mahmud sounded exasperated now. “Layla, do we have to break down the door?”

She sat for a moment longer and then got up hesitantly, walked to the door, turned the key, and sat down again, her back to the door. She heard footsteps behind her. The light went on, hurting her eyes, and she raised both hands to shade them.

“Get up, come on now, no more stubborn foolishness,” said her mother. “Get up, my dear.” Layla lowered her hands and looked wordlessly at her mother, whose eyes held a stunned expression that was now rapidly changing into a look of unqualified disapproval.

“Well, did anyone tell you to do the horrid thing you did? You’ve scandalized us; you’ve disgraced us all over the neighborhood. Now, isn’t Gamila a girl just like you? Why did you have to go and do what you did?”

Mahmud came in, a glass of water in his hand, and brought it over to Layla, who took it without raising her eyes. Her insides churned as the water went down. She doubled over, and her mother reached from behind, bringing her arms around her daughter. Mahmud stood facing the window, his back to Layla. When their mother left the room, he swung round slowly and spoke, flustered, as if he found it difficult to bring up the subject.

“Layla, I’m sorry about what happened. I promise it won’t happen again, ever.”

Now Layla’s tears came streaming, and her lower lip twisted. A wretched look came into her eyes. She shook her head as she spoke. “What’s the use? What’s the point, Mahmud? I’ve been killed, that’s it, and it’s all over. After what happened today, everything has changed, I’m not a person any more, just a mat. A doormat for shoes.” Layla covered her face and broke into a wail that shook her whole body. Mahmud came close enough to lay his palm on her shoulder.

“Stop now, Layla, that’s enough, c’mon, for my sake. Stop exaggerating.”

“It’s the truth.”

Mahmud didn’t speak for a moment, and then only hesitantly. “You know, Layla, the important thing is for you to understand that you were wrong. If you realize that, then you won’t be in as much pain as you are right now.”

Layla pushed Mahmud’s hand away violently and jumped up, her lips trembling.

“You too? You too, Mahmud? You’re saying I was wrong?” Her voice ebbed to nothing as she went on, over and over. “You too, Mahmud! You too!”

“Calm down a little, let’s talk about this sensibly.”

“Sensibly! Where’s that sense you’re talking about?” I don’t understand anything at all, nothing at all. So I’m wrong . . . wrong why? I haven’t robbed anyone. I haven’t killed anyone. I went out in a demonstration with a thousand other girls. All I did was to show what I felt.”

Layla paused, as if she were pondering something. She spoke again in a fainter voice, as if addressing only herself. “Wrong. Yes, indeed, I was wrong. I showed what I felt as if I were a real human being. I forgot. I forgot that I’m not a person, I’m only a girl. A woman. Yes, I forgot.” She laughed, though it sounded more like a wail, and looked squarely at Mahmud. “Isn’t that what you wanted to say, Mahmud?”

“I didn’t say anything so stupid, and you know it. You know I respect women. I believe that women are exactly like men.” Layla finished his words for him as she flourished her hands in the theatrical posturing of a public speaker. “She has all the rights and bears all the responsibilities.” Then she turned to Mahmud with a watery smile. “On paper, right? Right, Mahmud? On paper?”

“Paper—what paper?”

“They’re such lovely words, when you see them written down. But when we get serious, when your sister shows what she feels, when she expresses herself like a human being, then all of a sudden she’s wrong! Isn’t that so? She’s wrong, and the mistake becomes bigger than she is—it controls her from head to foot, her whole existence, everything she is.”

Mahmud’s voice was loud and sharp. “This isn’t any way to have a sensible discussion! Calm down a little, and I’ll explain it all to you, so you’ll understand.”

Layla shook her head. “I don’t understand anything, Mahmud, I don’t get it at all.” The strain of anger in her voice had become a tone of despair. “What’s right? What’s wrong? I don’t know whom to believe. Or whom not to believe. Or what to believe, or what not to believe. What should I believe? Who’s right?”

Mahmud said nothing.

“So tell me, Mahmud. What should I do?”

She looked at him pleadingly, as if her life depended on how her brother would answer her question. Mahmud’s panicky bewilderment showed in his face; how desperately he wanted to make it easier for her with his words! Any words; if only he could lie to her as he had done when she was little, thrusting her little head into his chest. But she was no longer little, he saw; she had grown more, grown older, than he had supposed. He wanted to tell her that it was not her problem, not hers alone anyway; it was his, he wanted to assure her; it was their whole generation’s dilemma. But it seemed idiotic to spout grand philosophies when he could see a human being suffering in front of him.

His mother came into the room just then, carrying a platter of food. So Mahmud just mopped his face, and the question remained unanswered, suspended between them in the emptiness. Their mother put the platter down on a small wood table next to the chair.

“Sit down, dear, have a bite to eat. You poor little thing, wallahi, a bundle of misery! And now you’ve brought all sorts of trouble down on your head.”

Layla’s eyes did not leave Mahmud even to acknowledge her mother’s presence. Her insistent wait for her brother’s response made him uncomfortable, and when he did finally speak his voice was edgy. “Didn’t you hear what she said? Obey her, Layla, sit down and eat.”

Layla’s eyes flickered shut and then opened to gaze at him again. “Leave the room first, both of you.” The mother glanced at her son, waiting to see what he would decide. He beckoned her toward the door and followed her out. As he busied himself with closing the door behind him he deliberately met Layla’s stare. Yes, his sister understood. She knew well that he, too, was confused, as bewildered as she was. And every bit as miserable and wretched. He knew what was wrong, what was right, she understood that—but he knew it on paper. Yes, on paper. She stared at the food and then looked away. She turned off the light and felt her way back to the chair.

 

Layla heard a light tap on her door. It continued, lightly but determinedly, even when she did not respond. Then the door opened and vivid light invaded the room. Isam stood at the door, an abashed smile on his face.

“May I come in?”

She was silent. Isam’s smile faded, and he began rubbing his chin furiously.

“Isam, please leave me alone right now. Please.”

Isam’s face brightened immediately and he stepped into the room. He perched cautiously on the edge of the bed, facing Layla, and leaned forward, clasping his hands around his knees.

“Leave you alone! How can I do that, ya sitti, my dear lady—aren’t you my little sister?”

Layla began punching the chair, in rhythmic, staccato raps. His sister! His little sister! That sentence simply no longer had any power to move her, although she had not forgotten that at one time, as she reached out desperately to be rescued, that expression had saved her. When Mahmud had leapt up in their building’s courtyard one day, shouting “Layla isn’t my sister! Layla isn’t ours!” Isam had quickly faced him down. “Okay, then, she’s my sister, she’s my little sister.” And that was that—end of discussion. I’m Isam’s sister, Isam’s little sister. From that day on he’d teased her with this title.

Isam sat motionless, his eyes still fixed on Layla. She became aware of her hand striking the chair and withdrew it, slipping her arm down tightly against her body. She slumped back against the chair and rested her head. Isam got to his feet and half sat on the armrest of Layla’s chair. He leaned down toward her and put his hand gently to her cheek, stroking it from bottom to top, and pushing back a lock of hair that had fallen across her forehead. Layla held her breath until Isam’s hand had completed its circuit. Her heart, beating violently, seemed to plunge all the way to her toes.

“What is this? You don’t want to talk to me, ya sitti?”

Despite addressing her as an adult, his voice was light, diminutive, a voice to address a little girl—a silly, negligible little girl. Layla felt her head get hot, and she bounded up from the chair as if bitten, turned her back on Isam, and strode to the window. Behind her, Isam laid his hands on her shoulders. She whipped round roughly to face him. “Listen, Isam, I’m not a child—” As angry as her voice was, she left her sentence incomplete as she saw Isam’s face convulse as if he were in severe pain. Beads of sweat shone on his forehead, and his breath blew hot onto her face. She felt his body touching hers, and stepped back as far as she could, until she was plastered against the window frame. Isam’s features relaxed, his eyes softened, and they glowed in a way that pierced her body, a glow that came to rest somewhere unfathomable inside of her.

Her mother’s footsteps broke the moment of stillness between them, a moment when his eyes were on hers and that light coursed deep within her. Isam gave his head a shake, as if he were trying to awaken from a dream. His face reddened and he yanked out his handkerchief to wipe his forehead dry. He began rubbing his hand across his chin nervously. As her mother opened the door halfway, Isam turned, without another look at Layla. Still on the other side of the door, her mother stepped back to make way for him. Isam closed the door gently, carefully. Layla heard whispers in the living room, and then she could hear footsteps moving further from her bedroom door. She went over to her mirror and leant her cheek against it. But the pure coldness of the glass did not extinguish whatever it was that flamed like sparks inside her chest. In fact, it seemed to fuel that warmth even more. She ran to the window, flung it wide open, and hung over the windowsill, dipping her head and arms into the air.

How long had the moment lasted? An instant? A whole life? Whatever it was, she had lived it before, every detail of it. When had that been, though? Before her birth, or after it? In reality, or through a dream? As a curtain of haze glided slowly off the moon, Layla felt the light douse her, drifting downward like flowerpetals from her hair and hands. A tremulous gust of cold seemed to lay her body bare to the moonlight. She straightened up, closed the window, and went back to her chair. The sight of the food, forgotten, made her hungry, and she swallowed her dinner ravenously. She shoved her head into a nightgown, turned off the light, and climbed into bed. She slept immediately, and deeply, waking at first dawn.

 

As she came out of her slumber Isam’s name was on her tongue. Her eyes stayed closed around his image, as he stood facing her, his eyes focused with a thrilling brilliance on hers. Though lying in bed, she almost felt as if she were living that moment again, and it seemed as though an intense, concentrated beam of light had pierced her body to settle inside. She sighed, stretched, and opened her eyes. She called back to her mind Isam’s features, yesterday, in her room, as he gazed at her. She tried to remember what he had looked like a year ago, one month ago, even the week before, but it eluded her. In fact she felt as though she had never set eyes on him before yesterday, when there he was, standing opposite her, looking at her, only yesterday, with his clean-shaven face, in his smart suit, the tones of the very darkest-roast coffee, with his sky-blue necktie and white shirt. Layla slipped her hands under her head, still on the pillow, and smiled. It was all so laughable: Isam, who was always there, who had been around her since childhood, under the same roof—but only yesterday had she seen him. And this was another funny thing. How could it be that only yesterday she had seen him? After all, she’d seen him thousands of times, ever since those childhood days when he had played with her. He was the one who had taught her how to count from one to ten, how to write her name in Arabic and English. He was the one who had shielded her from Mahmud when he acted the bossy big brother. As an adolescent, too, she had seen him every day, but even then she had not really seen him! Why, when he had come to her yesterday he might as well have been an entirely new being. Or maybe it was just that she had always seen him with eyes other than yesterday’s—the heart’s eye, the eye . . . well, the eye of love. Layla shot upright in bed, hugged her thighs to her chest and held them there with her arms. Yes, that was it! Love. It really was. “Isam loves me,” she whispered, “and I love Isam.” She listened intently to the words, to each word in turn; as if they held some magic ingredient, they filled her with a tingling happiness. She repeated the sentence over and over as if it were the refrain to a song, listening to its rhythm in her soul with each repetition, nodding her head to its beat, elated with her discovery.

She felt like she would burst. She tried to shout, to sing, or dance, or skip. She leapt from the bed right into the middle of her room, raced to the window, and jerked the shutters wide open. The yellowness of dawn was already shredding the drear of night. Head upraised, chest open, she breathed in the light, as if she were sucking each ray deep into her body before facing the next.

Suddenly, standing at the window, she saw that a new stage of her life had begun. The world of her dreams had ended and could never return; her father had shattered that world. Now, before her, the world of reality lay open to her gaze. It was not their world, their grievous and restrictive world, a world that tied one down, but rather a world of freedom in which she could love, and love without fear or anxiety, censure or regret. It was her world, hers and his. It would be their world, one that the outer existence of others could neither penetrate nor control nor condemn as wrong. Her world was one in which she could show her feelings and express herself, like a bird flying unconstrained, in the full confidence that she was loved and desired, and yet was respectable too, and that everything she did was reasonable and acceptable.

Layla turned her back to the window and leaned her elbows against the sash, closing her eyes. She began walking the room, bending and swaying as if in a dance; then she stopped and opened her eyes. In the distance the mirror reflected back to her the image of a rosy-cheeked young woman whose eyes gave off a light that was reflected in her lips and cheeks. Yet she suspected that the sun beaming out of the mirror was deceiving her; she ran to the glass and pressed herself against it.

And Layla made a discovery. For the first time in her life it dawned on her that she was attractive, pretty, even. She found herself laughing out loud, all by herself, like a madwoman at the mirror, she thought. She stepped back a bit and tilted her head to one side, resting her temples in her palms. Gradually the waves of laughter rippling through her body stilled.