The Open Door

Chapter Nine

He had changed enormously. His father noticed the transformation as they sat down to lunch. He gazed at his son in awed alarm for a few moments but said nothing. His mother ﬁlled his plate with helping after helping over his protests, as if he had fasted throughout his time at the Canal.

He tried to start a conversation; he asked the usual questions, about everyone’s health, about his aunt and Isam and Gamila; about his cousin’s wedding plans. He learned that she would be married within the week. But periods of silence between one sentence and the next were long, and they were uncomfortable silences, as if he were a stranger. No one tried to ﬁnd another topic of conversation. His mother wanted to ask him whether he was eating well there, and were there enough blankets, and had he been in any danger? But she knew that her husband did not want to hear a single word about any of these worries, and so she made do with gazing at her son, her eyes watering from time to time.

His father had one thing on his mind. One speciﬁc issue pressed on him, he could think of nothing else, and did not want to talk of anything else. But every time he was on the verge of saying something he would look at Mahmud’s features, newly stern and rugged, at the traces of lines on his forehead, at his eyes that had lost their old sparkle, as if something in them had died; and then he would lapse into silence again. It was no use. This person in front of him would never listen to him, would not heed his words, and would never retreat from what his acts had set in motion. For he had indeed changed. He had left the space of ﬁlial obedience entirely. His father turned his eyes away, before there could be any risk of meeting his son’s gaze.

As Layla stole glances at Mahmud, an indeﬁnable fear trembled inside of her. He was sitting rigid and straight, his left hand gripping the table edge, his face stiff. He seemed tense in the extreme, all of him, more tensed than reasonable caution would demand, as if obliged to always remain at the ready, never allowing himself to relax even slightly.

Layla began warily to eat. The sound of spoons hitting plates jangled her nerves, as if she dreaded that at any moment something would happen to irritate Mahmud, some word, some noisy interruption that would threaten his fragile, concentrated poise, that would cause him to put his head down on the table and break out sobbing. The thought bothered Layla terribly, and she tried very hard to get it out of her mind. Wasn’t this fear of hers laughable? Because she herself was weak, did she consider everyone as weak as she? Such a thing could not possibly happen to Mahmud. He was strong, he had fought the English for three months, and tomorrow he was returning to the Suez Canal to renew the ﬁght. Mahmud would never let himself go; he would never collapse, ever. Such a thing was unthinkable. And it was natural for commandos to be in such a state of wariness. For they were ﬁghting, not playing at it as she was, and as were those who remained far from the Canal Zone, satisﬁed merely to observe the outcome of the struggle.

Layla waited patiently for the meal to be over. Yes, Mahmud had changed. But everything between them would return to normal once lunch was over, once she was able to be alone with him in her room, or in his. Then they would talk to each other, really talk, as they had always done. She waited and waited for the end of the meal, her patience running out.

Finally they were alone in his room, and they did indeed talk to each other, as they had always done. They told each other things, yes; but something seemed to have come between them. She tried hard to reach Mahmud, to climb over the barrier he had put up between them, but her attempt failed. What had happened? Was he hiding something? No, he wasn’t hiding anything from her, for he had told her everything, everything it was possible for one human being to convey to another through words. But even so, that prohibitive barrier remained in place, coming between them, as if . . . as if things had indeed happened to him, things that had put him at a distance from her, that had caused him to age so that the gap between them was now much greater. Those experiences had turned him into someone who was no longer Mahmud, her brother whom she knew so well, but rather a person she could not intuit, whose moods she would not recognize.

But could so much occur in a mere three months? Impossible! It must be that something was causing him pain and she was simply not doing a good enough job at distracting him to cheer him up. Maybe Isam would be able to do something? Yes—Isam, after all, was his friend, his dear friend, who always knew his secrets. Then, too, he was a man, and men were more able in such situations. Yes; she would summon him to come down here at once.

Layla stopped the elevator, yanked the door open, and dove inside—and stopped cold, smiling in confusion. She had collided with a tall, brown-skinned young man as he emerged. The young man stepped back inside the elevator.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He smiled at her and Layla noticed an immediate change coming over his face. His angular, prominent features melted into a pleasant roundness as he grinned, so that his brown face almost reminded her of a suckling baby. Layla could not resist his smile, and she smiled back.

“Are you going up or down?”

The young man put up a hand to touch his soft black hair. “Neither. I’m getting out on this ﬂoor.”

Layla stepped back to make room for him to pass. She stepped into the elevator and closed the metal door. But he did not head for either of the two apartments. He stood watching her, in his eyes a bewitchingly commanding expression. As if he were ordering her to stay where she was. About to close the inner glass door, Layla asked, “Is there something you need?”

“Can you wait just one minute, please?” His voice did not have the same suggestion of command that his gaze held; to the contrary, it was quiet and utterly controlled. “Where is the apartment of Mr. Mahmud Sulayman, please?”

“Oh—Mahmud? Um, it’s right here.”

Layla pointed to her own home as it dawned on her that this young man standing before her must be Husayn Amir, her brother’s fellow soldier at the Canal. Her realization ﬁlled her with enormous relief, as if her worries and her brother’s cares had dissolved under the full smile that faced her. Had God just answered her prayer, sending Husayn deliberately at this particular moment to cheer Mahmud up, to stand beside him as he always had at the Canal? Her face lit up with delight.

“Welcome, welcome!”

She ﬂung the steel grating open and rushed out to lead Husayn to her apartment. Before her hand reached the doorbell, Husayn spoke.

“Layla.”

It wasn’t a question. He was addressing her. She turned and faced him.

“Husayn.”

“How did you know?”

Their eyes met and they laughed. Layla turned and pressed the doorbell. “Mahmud has talked about you a lot,” said Husayn.

“He’s written a lot about you,” she said without turning.

“So then we know each other pretty well. That means we’re friends.”

Layla turned to face him, a serious look in her eyes. “You’re Mahmud’s friend, right?”

Husayn nodded, smiling, and Layla went on. “And a friend helps his friend if he needs it, right?”

Studying her face, Husayn said, “Right.”

Layla knew instinctively that she could rely on him, and that Mahmud could, too. Her face broke into a big smile. “Fine, then. Excuse me.”

She left him there and returned to the elevator. As it moved, she gestured to him and waved, and then disappeared. Suddenly Husayn remembered the bad news that he was bringing to Mahmud. Now he felt like he was the one who needed help. They all needed help. The building began to sway before his eyes, the ediﬁce they had all built, brick upon brick, with their sweat, their nerves, their blood.

Gamila opened the door. Her face was rosy, her eyes sparkling, and no sooner did she see Layla than she threw herself into her cousin’s arms. She dragged Layla inside by one hand.

“The wedding dress arrived,” she said, breathlessly happy. “And what a dress, Layla! What a dress!”

Layla disengaged her hand. “Just a minute, Gamila. Mahmud’s arrived, and I want to tell Isam to go down and see him.”

“How can you?” said Gamila, her enthusiasm suddenly ﬂagging. “Aren’t you going to see my dress ﬁrst?” Then she smiled. “So, how is Mahmud?”

“Fine. Where’s Isam?”

“In the study. Anyway, it’s better this way. I’ll be putting on the dress so when you come back you can see it on me.”

Isam was sitting at the desk, a book open before him. Sayyida, the maid, was kneeling on the ﬂoor, wiping traces of coffee off the carpet with a damp rag. The offending coffee cup was still lying overturned at the edge of the desk. Isam got up, an embarrassed smile on his face.

“Hello, Layla.”

“Mahmud’s come.” Layla was still standing near the door.

“Really?” Isam’s voice carried no enthusiasm. Layla walked further into the room.

“Aren’t you going to come down to see him, Isam?”

“Right now?”

Layla stopped right in front of him. “Yes, right now. Unless you’re busy.”

Isam shrugged and smiled. “No, I’m not busy at all.” He turned to take his jacket from the armchair next to his desk chair, and as he walked forward he passed Sayyida. She raised her eyes, large and round like those of a cow, as she went on striking the carpet with the edge of the wet cloth.

“I want to tell you something before you go down, Isam.”

Isam was putting on his jacket. “What is it, Layla?”

Layla pressed her lips together and nodded slightly in Sayyida’s direction, trying to tell Isam with the set of her face that she would not talk in front of Sayyida. They stood waiting for her to ﬁnish what she was doing. There was no sign of the coffee on the carpet now, but Sayyida was still kneeling in her place, hitting at the ﬂoor with one end of the rag.

“Aren’t you ﬁnished, Sayyida?” Layla asked gently. Sayyida raised her puffy face to Layla and pressed her full lips together without saying a word. She went on hitting the carpet. The repeated movements bothered Isam, and he shouted warningly.

“Hurry up, that’s enough.”

Once again Sayyida raised her eyes, giving him a bold look but staying crouched on the ﬂoor. Then, slackly, she got to her feet.

“Yoo, Si Isam, you mean I should leave the carpet dirty?”

Layla took a relieved breath when Sayyida was nearly out the door, but then she came back in, her large body moving indolently, taking the cup slowly from the desk, and then leaving the room again, letting her full hips sway slowly, heavily, a half-smile on her lips that was not directed at anyone, as if she were smiling at something that had just come into her mind—a secret, something very private and signiﬁcant, something that gave her a sense of importance.

“Isam,” Layla started. Isam walked quickly toward her, took her hand, and bent over to kiss it gently, quick little kisses she could hardly feel, as if he were trying to placate her, to make something up to her after hurting her in some way.

“Isam, for my sake, be nice when you are with Mahmud. Just be really nice.” She looked away. “He’s changed, Mahmud is different, completely different, Isam.”

“I know he is sensitive, more so than he should be.”

Layla placed her hand on his shoulder. “That’s exactly it, Isam.”

“Do you remember how much he suffered during the ’46 demonstrations? But you were small then, so small, my love.”

Retrieving those days in her mind, Layla whispered. “But I do remember, Isam. I remember it all, as if it had just happened this morning.” She seized his hand and they walked together toward the outside door.

“I won’t go down with you, it’s better that way,” she said. “I’ll go see Gamila. I don’t want Mahmud to think that I got you to come down.” Layla pressed Isam’s hand, smiling, then released it, turned toward Gamila’s room, and opened the door.

Gamila’s back was to the door. Layla stopped short in the doorway and sucked in her breath. Wasn’t this her own white dress—the same chiffon, the same accumulating folds like a white bird’s unfolding wings? As Gamila straightened and turned to face her, Layla gave her head a shake, bemused by her foolish thought. Gamila’s dress was entirely different. The white chiffon was not actually part of it, but rather a ﬂowing veil that cascaded down the back of the dress. The gown itself was of white satin, embroidered with artiﬁcial pearls, sequins, and beads.

“What do you think?” asked Gamila triumphantly.

“Marvelous—it’s beautiful, really gorgeous! Fit for a princess, and you look better than the best.” But she felt some sort of inner strain, as if Gamila had taken something from her, something that belonged specially to her. Her white dress, her lovely white dress.

Gamila walked toward the mirror. “Wait—this isn’t the whole effect. Right now you can’t properly see its ﬁt. The zipper’s still open.”

Layla sat down, across from the mirror. “That Sayyida of yours is really annoying. There I was wanting to talk to Isam about Mahmud, and she was standing there, just hanging around. We even told her to leave and she still stayed.”

Gamila was zipping up the dress. “That’s because she has a crush on Isam. She’s his girlfriend, ya sitti!” The zipper closed with a harsh sound.

“His girlfriend? What on earth do you mean?”

Gamila gave Layla a sidelong glance and put her hand down to straighten the bodice of her dress. She gave it a sharp tug downward. “Layla, you are so naïve! Any fellow his age, and not married—you know—he has to do that. If he doesn’t, he isn’t much of a man.”

Gamila’s hands went up to her hair. She gathered it in back and piled it on top of her head. She turned her head to one side and tilted it, studying the effect, and then turned to Layla.

“What do you think of this hairstyle, Layla?” But when she saw Layla’s bewildered face, her mouth open stupidly, she broke out laughing.

“You know something, Layla? You know what you just made me think of? The night I saw them in the kitchen. That was the night of my engagement party. I got up in the middle of the night because I had an awful stomachache. I went into the kitchen to ﬁll a hot-water bottle. When I turned on the light, I had to ﬂick it off right away. And I was as stupid-faced as you are right now. I stayed that way for two whole days, too. Until Mama explained everything to me.”

Gamila sat down next to Layla, a sad look in her eyes. Layla wiped her face and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“Downstairs.” Layla’s voice was carefully level.

“Shame on you, Layla!” Gamila’s voice was disapproving. “Obviously the dress doesn’t please you. Why not, Layla? It’s so stylish—the skirt alone took seven meters. Look.”

She jumped to the middle of the room, threw her head back proudly, steadied the heels of her shoes and swirled around. The dress ﬂared, the skirts forming a widening circle. The room whirled before Layla’s eyes—the ceiling was the ﬂoor, and the walls were leaning in toward each other. Gamila came to a stop, breathless.

“Now what do you think? Really, have you ever seen a dress like this? Even in the cinema?”

Layla muttered something without even a glance at the dress.

“Stark naked. Completely exposed.”

“The chest, you mean?”

“All . . . exposed.”

Gamila reached for the bolero that was the dress’s ﬁnishing touch and put it on. She turned around, smiling lightly.

“Does that satisfy you, ya sitti al-shaykha, my ﬁne cleric?”

Layla shook her head despondently. Her voice was almost a whisper. “It’s no use. Exposed, bared—and from within. Exposed, Gamila, stripped completely naked.”

Now Gamila stared at her—and shrieked, for Layla’s face was ashen, her pale lips trembling, her eyes unfocused as if she were in a coma. She could not still her hands—clutching the neckline of her dress as if to force it closed, dropping to grasp the hem, yanking it as if she wanted it to stretch down to cover her toes, then rising again to clutch at the throat of her dress.

“Layla, what’s the matter?”

Layla gave her head a bewildered shake and collapsed onto the nearest chair.

“Layla, what’s wrong? What is it? Tell me!”

“Nothing.”

“I’ll call Mama.”

“No!” whispered Layla. “Don’t call anyone, because . . . because I have a stomachache.”

“Can I make you tea?”

Layla nodded. Gamila left the room. Layla heard her order Sayyida to make tea, and then she could hear her cousin’s footsteps moving in the direction of her mother’s room. She jumped to her feet and tiptoed cautiously to the door. The lost look in her eyes once again, she strained her ears and moved forward, crossing the front hall to open the outer door.

She pressed her hand to the wall for support and made her way to the stairs. She froze in place as the whine of the elevator forced itself into her ears and head; her whole body seemed to vibrate with it. The elevator passed her on its way down; she saw its cable straining slowly downward. She stretched her head forward over the wall that separated the stairwell from the elevator shaft, her eyes clinging to the cable as it was pulled downward. She hung her torso into the emptiness that the elevator had left behind, and stared at that cable, letting herself be dragged by the eyes. She steadied her hands and lifted more of her body away from the ﬂoor until she lay stretched along the top of the low elevator wall. The cable was pulling her downward, downward. Her grip on the wall grew slack, and the cable pulled her on.

“Layla!” It was Gamila, shrieking. A hand shot out to grab her. Pulled off the wall, Layla turned and found herself on the stairs face to face with Gamila.

“Layla, what are you doing? You’re crazy!”

Layla stood motionless, the same expression of empty loss in her eyes. Now a terror cold as ice swept over her body as it suddenly struck her: she had just barely been pulled from her death.

“Gamila, come downstairs with me.” Her voice was choked. She stumbled down the stairs, Gamila close behind her. She kept going, passing the door to their apartment, not realizing it until Gamila said something. She turned and retraced her way, up the staircase, her steps sluggish. Her room? No—not even her room. Down—she wanted to go down, down, where she would feel nothing, where she would not even be able to think.

She went in, shuddering as she noticed the open sitting-room door. Isam. Isam was there, with Mahmud. She headed directly to her room, swiftly, as if someone were giving chase. But as she reached her door the urgency in Mahmud’s voice, calling her name, stopped her. Gamila, she realized, was tugging at her. Her cousin pulled her into the sitting room, as if she’d been stripped of the will to move her own body. She came to a dead stop in front of Mahmud, who sat not far from the door, as if she did not even see anyone else in the room. At the sight of his sister, Isam jumped to his feet, waving at her dress. “What on earth are you wearing?”

“The city’s burning,” Mahmud said to Layla. She echoed him, a ﬂat statement of fact, no reaction on her face. “Yes, burning. Burning.” But another face gazed into hers, smiling broadly—a true, sincere smile, unrestrained by any caution. A strange face, the face of a stranger. Suddenly Layla yelped as if only in this moment she had regained consciousness and realized what Mahmud had said. “Burning? What d’you mean, burning?”

Mahmud noticed that Husayn was standing next to them, a smile on his face. “Oh—this is my sister Layla, and—” His gaze turned to Gamila, encased in her white dress, he paused, and ﬁnished his sentence in wonder. “And—my cousin. Gamila.”

Husayn’s hand hung in the air for a moment before Gamila’s met it ﬁrmly. She turned and whispered something into Isam’s ear, and, his face solemn, he immediately returned to the settee opposite Mahmud, Gamila close behind. Layla’s eyes remained ﬁxed on Mahmud. She mumbled, her lips trembling. “What, Mahmud? What do you mean?”

Mahmud’s face grew stony as he gazed into the distance. His voice seemed to catch on something, to have difﬁculty leaving his throat. “People. People burned the cinemas, and Fuad Street. The whole city is on ﬁre, it is all ﬂame and smoke.”

“People burning the city?” Layla wailed. “Why? Why would we burn our own city?”

Mahmud, biting his lower lip, said nothing. He shut his eyes; he left her alone; a stranger. Layla’s eyes wandered. Gamila was perching gingerly on the edge of the settee so she would not crush her dress. Isam was huddled at the other end. Her eyes came to rest on Husayn, who responded with his customary, broad smile.

“The truth is, the people have been wronged. Folks went out to protest the Ismailiya massacre, and then the Palace and reactionary elements took advantage of the situation in order to discredit the nationalist movement.”

With a shaking hand Mahmud took out a cigarette. “The betrayal didn’t start today, you know. It’s been there since the beginning, and now we’re seeing the upshot of it all. The end. This ﬁre, it’s the end—the end of the battle for the Canal.”

Layla ﬂopped onto a chair; she could see herself in the grand mirror that crowned the sitting room, despite the tears that blurred her vision. Across the mirror’s blank face broke the late-afternoon sun’s tapering rays, imprinting a blaze of redness on the glass. Layla tried to bring the ﬂaming mirror into focus: before her blurring eyes tongues of ﬁre slid across the sheet of glass, fusing her to its surface as if an act of sorcery lured her there. A painful droning drummed into her ears, as if thousands of old kerosene burners had all been lit at once.

“For a country boasting heroes like the soldiers of Ismailiya,” exclaimed Husayn, “this can’t possibly be the end. They were cut off, isolated—more important, they knew full well that the entire country had washed its hands of them. Sure, they could’ve surrendered—they knew that. They could’ve raised a white shirt, waved a white handkerchief, anything. But they didn’t. No, they died in their boots instead.”

Mahmud mopped his face slowly, heavily. “So, what’s the use? What’s the use, then? All that blood—it went in vain.”

Layla’s hand went up to her collar; she tugged it away from her neck, her eyes still held captive by the mirror. Blood and ﬁre! She staggered between them. Blood and ﬁre—she was hit, and now she was trying to save herself. Blood surrounded her on every side, and the ﬂames rose. But there sat Gamila, impassive, a cold stone statue in her pure-white dress. The word “betrayal” torched through Layla’s ears. Fire—it enveloped the city, choked the city! Fire, choking her! She jumped to her feet and tore from the room, from the apartment, out, onto the stairs—up, up to the ﬁre. She must see that ﬁre; she must witness the ﬂames gripping the city, the crimson cloud that choked Cairo. She must see it all. As she climbed furiously she could hear her cousin. Gamila had leapt from her serene pose, shouting hysterically. “The stairs! The stairs!” But it was some moments before she could regain enough control of herself to make them understand Layla’s alarming state of mind. Mahmud took off at a run toward the stairs, Isam pressing forward after him and Gamila behind them both. Husayn, pausing on the threshold, noticed the elevator’s slow ascent and stopped it.

On and on hurtled Layla, bounding up the stairs, propelled by a curious strength that pushed her, dragged her, urged her on toward the ﬁre. She did not see Husayn as she burst onto the roof, not even slowing down until she came right to the edge of the low encircling wall that ringed the roof and toppled onto it. By now the ﬁre had subsided to the point where it was visible only as scattered points of light, its feeble remains nearly vanquished. But the smoke stubbornly held out, crouching in the sky, enormous, stupefying, appalling masses of blackness everywhere—in the air, on the ground, a crushing weight on her chest.

When Husayn touched Layla’s arm gently, she started and stared at him in fear. He stood beside her, his back to the wall, his hands bracing him, his broad smile full in her face. Her features relaxed as she turned her gaze back to the masses of smoke.

“What’s the matter?” His voice, too, was gentle. She raised her eyes, staring dully at him for a few seconds before she returned her gaze to the viscid black smoke.

“What’s wrong, Layla?” His voice was even softer this time. She sighed deeply, her eyes still on the acrid smoke as she spoke. “Why does everything good always turn out badly in the end?”

Husayn perched on the wall edge and bent his head toward her. “This is not the end, Layla. We determine the end; we make it—me, you, Mahmud, everyone who loves Egypt.”

Layla gave a short, hard laugh that came out more like a howl as she gestured toward herself. “Me?” Her face changed completely, taking on a look of contempt as if she was speaking of a mortal foe. She stood up and walked heavily toward the door that gave onto the rooftop. Husayn caught up to her and put out his hand to pat her shoulder. His voice shook with feeling. “This isn’t the end. Don’t believe Mahmud. Believe me.” He turned her toward him and looked hard at her, his expression one of sympathy and entreaty. “Believe me.” He seemed to pour his entire being into the attempt to persuade her. As their eyes connected she found a conﬁdence there, in that frank, direct, gaze that spoke of goodness and an acute understanding. That gaze seemed to promise her a more pleasing tomorrow, and her tense face softened. But she tipped her head forward suddenly to listen as footsteps and voices approached the roof: Isam’s voice, calling to her. She studied Husayn for a moment.

“I don’t believe anyone,” she said ﬂatly. She turned again to walk toward the door, but stopped dead as Isam burst through the doorway, followed by Mahmud and Gamila. Isam ran toward her, his arms extended, his hands reaching to touch her, moving rapidly and with mad desperation from her face to her shoulders, all the while whispering her name. Layla felt as if something had died inside of her. She put out her hands calmly, pushed him away, and marched right up to Mahmud, who had stopped cold, bewildered by Isam’s behavior.

“Come on, let’s go—right now.” She plodded to the door, brushing right by Gamila, who stood motionless as a statue in her white dress, her back to the sky, a portrait framed in the ropy, ugly masses of smoke.

That evening, Mahmud went to jail. With many other irregulars, he would stay in detention for six months. As the sentence wore on, Layla’s father intoned an unchanging refrain. “I knew it. I knew this would be the end of it all.”

And as the sentence wore on, Layla’s entire existence was concentrated in her effort to conceal her turmoil from all of them. She went on as usual: talking, laughing, behaving as she normally did. At the end of each day she would return to her room in utter exhaustion, an actress whose spell onstage had gone on far too long. Stretched full-length on her bed, she ached through every part of her body. It was a pain whose source she could not exactly pinpoint. Her mother always referred to this sort of fatiguing ache—whose exact location you could never really ﬁgure out—with the same phrase: “My body is defeated.” Yes, that’s what it was; her body was defeated. And not just her body: everything. Everything inside of her was defeated, as if she had hefted a load that was really far too heavy for her capacity, and it had fractured her spine.

Wasn’t that what she had done, in fact? For she had challenged her father and posed a threat to her mother. She had ﬂown in the face of their accustomed practices, had rejected their most fundamental beliefs. She had fallen in love. And then, she had been so determined to abandon their narrow world for a world that was alive, a world vast and wide and full! She had wanted—had willed—that she and Isam would build a world of light. In their world all would be beautifully transparent, authentic and basic, so unlike the world she knew. Theirs would be a world of love; it would be the beautiful world of truth. And then what had been the result of it all? Coffee spilt on the carpet; a darkened kitchen; a defeated body; earth, mud—nothing but the soiled surface of that world she had tried to ﬂee.

And Mahmud? Mahmud had challenged and threatened them, too. He had gone, he had left, he had broken deﬁantly out of their world to sail, laughing and sparkling, into a world of . . . of love, that world of love, truth, and beauty. And he had returned crushed, cowering, withdrawn, his wings more than clipped. Filth had ﬁlled his eyes, ﬁlth and mud; the mud from which he had ﬂed. And a ﬁre encircled the city, the country—black, acrid smoke, and a darkened prison, and a world narrower than the one he had burst from so determinedly to sail beyond, laughing and sparkling. No. To sparkle was not the lot of her brother, nor was it her lot. To sparkle was the province of Gamila alone.

With radiant triumph Gamila’s eyes made a slow, careful circuit. “Really, Layla? Does the dining room set really please you?” She did not bother to wait for an answer; Layla, she knew well, had never in her life seen the like of this. Her aunt, she was well aware, was staring round in stunned delight—like a woman just come in from the village, thought Gamila with a ﬂash in her eyes, visiting Cairo for the very ﬁrst time. Her aunt’s husband was silent; this was the only way, she was certain, that he could hide the embarrassment and agitation he must be feeling.

From the huge window, the sun’s rays cascaded in, setting the redness of the carpet on ﬁre, and glinting against the marquetry work of the mahogany buffet. An almost painfully intense greenness pulsed upon them from the garden beyond the window, breaking the carpet’s ardent red. Sitting at the head of the table, Gamila beckoned the sufragi lightly, naturally, as if she had been doing so her entire life. The man walked all the way around the table to her side. Gamila spoke to him in an undertone, relaxed, smiling, animated, her hand toying with a diamond collar that circled her neck. At Layla’s arm, the sufragi bowed slightly as he offered her the plate—a pyramid of cassata sheathed in preserved fruit. Isam’s eyes ﬂashed as he looked at her with a smile. “Take another chunk, Layla,” he said. “You’ve always loved ice cream.”

He sat down to eat his own cassata with relish, at ease in his chair. He no longer felt any discomfort in her presence. At ﬁrst, when she had ended their relationship—and before he’d understood why—he had felt vexed indeed. When he realized that she knew, his chagrin vanished, though, for why should he feel at all embarrassed now? His conscience was clear and clean, his thoughts as transparent as the crystal goblets gleaming on Gamila’s table. He had done what he truly believed expressed his obligation to her; after all, he had saved her from something that made death look positively bearable. Anyway, there had been no other solution; and if he had acted any differently, then inevitably he would have harmed her. And he would ﬁnd it inﬁnitely easier to die than to harm her, when he loved her so, and always would.

But what Layla found so painful was Isam’s behavior. Why, he acted still as if he sincerely loved her! It bewildered her. How could he possibly love one woman with his soul and another with his body? And anyway, what about that other woman? Had it never occurred to him that she was a human being, too? That he had harmed her bodily and emotionally, that he had threatened her humanity? No, clearly it had not occurred to Isam, not at all. He seemed completely conﬁdent and at peace with himself. His face bore a new expression—the grieved look of the martyr to duty.

Yes, indeed, Isam was conﬁdent and at peace. And Gamila—well, she went far beyond conﬁdent! Gamila was proud; she was splendid; she was smugly victorious. She had accepted life as it was, and simply, without creating any complications. Gamila had not stopped to philosophize. She had listened to her mother and she had followed sanctioned practice. She had followed those fundamentals. And therefore life had been good to her. Life had offered its bounty, its contentment, its security.

There had been a time when she had regarded Gamila with a touch of disdain. She had considered herself stronger than Gamila, than her aunt, than her father—and stronger than their beliefs, their rules, their traditions. She had laughed with a certain superiority when her mother had said, “The one who knows the fundamentals does not suffer.”

Yes. She had existed for a time in the shadow of this silly illusion. But in truth it was she who was silly, trivial, conceited, and despicable. She was the doormat beneath people’s soles.