Cairo in White, page 10
“I saw you on the day of your wedding, when it was too late to do anything.”
Saw her where, Zahra wanted to ask, and with whom, but Suma tactfully changed the subject.
“You should call Mama and Baba.”
“They think I’m happily married, making large sums of money, and too busy with my Egyptian social group to call. I think it’s better that way.”
“What about Aisha? Doesn’t she deserve to know her grandparents?”
“No child deserves that.”
They dropped into silence again, and Suma fingered the moss growing between the cracks.
“Tell me more about you,” Zahra said.
“I’m doing the same thing I was doing five years ago. Working in Uncle Malik’s shop, going home to rest, doing the same thing the next day. My life is just a series of wakings and sleepings, like a cat but without any of the fun.”
“How can you do it?” Zahra imagined their elderly uncle but could get no further than the image of him eating oatmeal, globs falling from his mouth like slop from the snout of a pig.
“Because if I stop, I remember.” Again Suma turned her head to look for Aisha. “Where is she?”
They both jumped up, Zahra running and Suma hurrying as fast as she could towards the small stream where Aisha had been playing just minutes before.
“Aisha!” Zahra tried to curb the panic in her voice. “Where are you?”
“Mom!” Across the river, Aisha sat up in a tree like a monkey, blissfully ignorant of their panic below. “Look what I did!”
“Wow, you got so high this time! Be careful coming down.” Zahra took a few paces back and sat down on the grass to wait for her daughter to join them.
“Shouldn’t we help her, Rah?”
It felt strange to hear her nickname, like it was the name of an old childhood friend. “She got over there. She can get herself back.”
Sure enough, within two minutes Aisha skillfully maneuvered her way down the tree and across the rocks, then landed with a small thud on her side. Suma picked her up and hugged her, her focus off in the distance. As she placed the little girl gently on the ground, Suma turned to Zahra and said, “I have to see him, Rah. I have to.”
Zahra wrapped her arms around her shrinking waist and sank into their support. “Must I give you everything, Suma?”
Her sister took a step back, as though Zahra had slapped her. The ability to take such hits was a trait Zahra had acquired long ago.
Suma opened her mouth to speak but instead plopped on the ground and sat, motionless, for a few minutes.
Aisha came over to Zahra and put her tiny hand in her mother’s larger one. “Mom, what’s wrong with Aunt Suma?” she asked in a concerned, loud whisper.
Zahra didn’t answer and instead spoke to Suma in a voice she hoped conveyed a confidence she did not feel. “You may see him once. Just see him. Do you understand?” She could no longer see Suma’s blue eyes beneath her squinted lids but she imagined them jumping back and forth. “I know how it feels to want something you cannot have, Suma, but that is life. You made a choice, as did I, and you are six years too late.”
Suma focused her pained eyes on her sister, but Zahra did not falter. Finally, she cast them down again. “Okay. Just take me to him, and I’ll do what you say.”
Suma was quiet on the ride home, so the only sounds were Amr Diab crooning about his love and Aisha interrupting his flow to ask blunt questions about her aunt. “Where did she come from? Is she going to sleep over? Can she stay in my room?” Once she determined that her aunt spoke limited English, the questions grew worse and worse. “Is she married? Why is she so fat? Is her husband fat, too?”
“Aisha!”
“What? I’m curious! You say that’s a good thing.”
“It is when you’re curious about the bugs that live under the sand box or how many babies a pig can have at once. Not when you’re asking inappropriate questions about your aunt while she’s sitting right here.”
Aisha smiled sweetly at Suma in the rearview mirror and went back to her book of mazes. It took Zahra several years of parenting to get the bag packing down to a science. She could finally prepare an entertainment bag that would keep both Aisha and Nor occupied for at least three hours. This was made even easier by the fact that Nor could play his Gameboy until the battery ran out. She did not understand how he could live more inside the games than real life, jumping through portals to capture dragons or rescuing army soldiers behind enemy lines. The dazed and amazed expression on his face kept him calm on long drives and kept him and Aisha from fighting over the last bag of chips or who got to pick the music.
Her daughter, on the other hand, preferred real-life battles like the time she fought Charlotte’s new tree with a pointy stick and removed every single one of its leaves like a chef loading a kabob stick. Zahra had always dreamed of having a Christmas tree, though, of course, she did not celebrate the holiday, and one year she had brought a real spruce into their living room along with the fresh scent of the forest. Within an hour, three-year-old Aisha had climbed halfway up the unsteady branches and managed to flip the entire thing over, putting a dent five inches long in their wall. Several times Zahra had wished for a straightjacket to wrap her daughter in just to keep her from jumping on anything, breaking anything, and setting anything on fire. At other times, she remembered climbing the wall back in Cairo and knew which side Aisha got her adventurous nature from.
When they arrived at the apartment, Zahra sent a prayer up to Allah. Please, give me strength. Then she unlocked the door and swung it open to reveal Nor sitting on the couch playing a video game, lost as always in the world of dragons and knights—lost, that is, until he looked up and saw Suma. Then the Gameboy dropped to his lap, his powerless hands like those of a grandmother laying down her sewing for the night, and he stood up and faced his birth mother with a look Zahra had never seen on the serious face of her little boy. It was the look of an expatriate returning home, a weary traveler setting down his bags in the comfort of an inn, and that look broke Zahra’s heart in a place she had not thought was capable of breaking again.
* * * *
The nights after Nor left with Suma were the worst in Zahra’s life. She barely slept, and when she did, the nightmares of her pregnancy returned like wraiths that haunted every night and day. She and her daughter shared bunk beds—neither of them could bear the thought of sleeping in Nor’s room—and she could hear Aisha’s peaceful sleep above her as she counted and recounted the slats in the wooden frame. What was inside of her was not a demon exactly, more like a feeling trying to claw its way out like a woman buried alive, but it waited every night and it was desperate. She kept seeing visions of Nor, of his first tooth, of the first time he rode a bike without the guide of her hand, of his first day of school when he walked out of her embrace and faced the world alone and unafraid. Had he known all along? Had he felt the absence of his birth mother like Zahra had felt the absence of her lover, the ache inside his ribs so strong he had to hug his sides to keep them from collapsing?
When they left, Nor had reached up and taken Suma’s hand, an act of love he had not shown Zahra since he was a toddler. They fit together, mother and son. Even in her pain, Zahra could not deny that they needed each other. At the last moment he had turned, ran back to her. He took both of her hands in his like a man ten times his years. The mouth made by his fingers was so small that they could only hold the tips of hers.
“You understand.” His eyes were serious behind his glasses.
No matter how hard she tried to shield her children from her loss, they had sniffed it out. Her longing was like a third child in their mismatched family, and it had become an unspeakable part of each of them.
Now she had to bear yet another loss with the grace and composure expected of her as both a mother and a daughter. She walked to the bathroom like a woman possessed and proceeded to wash every inch of her feverish body in the porcelain tub where her children used to play with rubber ducks and mini trucks. She paid special attention to her face and feet. In the bedroom, she found her prayer rug carefully tucked in the bottom drawer of her dresser, dusty from the many years it had lain in undisturbed slumber, and spread it in front of the desk.
Her feet were shoulder width apart, grounded like trees, and when she felt steady enough she raised her hands and whispered, “Allahu Akbar,” softly into the sky.
Her body sunk back into the familiar routine of prayer. The supplications and verses she had memorized long ago rose like steam and surrounded her with a comfort she had not thought possible when she let go of Nor’s hand for the last time. Her hands dropped to her knees, preparing to bend, and then she heard a rustle next to her and froze.
Aisha stood beside to her in the same position, her mirror, and it felt like Zahra was watching herself as a child when her father had first showed her how to praise God. Zahra looked straight ahead and bent her back and Aisha did the same. In synchronized movements, they both straightened again and whispered, “Allahu Akbar,” before kneeling and moving into sajdah position with their foreheads on the ground.
Aisha completed the entire cycle without pause, the prayers as natural to her as climbing a tree or reciting her favorite storybook. This too was a sign from God, a sign that her daughter would bring the serenity of acceptance she prayed for. Zahra rolled up her rug and placed it back in the drawer where it would remain until the next night. Her rug was soon joined by a smaller rug purchased for Aisha at the local Arab grocery. Only then did Aisha run into her empty arms and pat her mother’s sweat-soaked hair as Zahra cried for all that she had lost.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” Aisha whispered. “I’m here.”
Chapter 12
Cairo, May 2010
The day Aisha met Kareem passed slowly. She waited until she heard her grandparents descend into sleep, then turned her computer on and anxiously waited for her e-mail to load. Right away, she saw his name in her inbox and could breathe again, though she struggled with the English letters he used to write Arabic sounds.
Aisha,
It was a pleasure meeting you today and I would like to see you again if you feel the same. Tomorrow at 2:00 PM, in front of the café?
Kareem
Not exactly the love letter she had been hoping for…then again, perhaps he was as nervous as she was. Her fingers hovered over the keys like bees over a flower before plunging into its pollen center. She typed out about ten draft replies, all shorter and more abrupt than his and that sounded as if a robot could have typed them, then she finally gave up and hit send. She had never had to think this much before she spoke, never felt the pressure to hold back her abrasive tone when she was angry or her joyous laughter when she was happy, and she realized not only did she have to adjust to the language of Egypt but the masks as well. As Selma had said about her grandmother, if she played along with their games, she would be free. It would take all of her self-control, but there was something about Kareem that felt worth it.
The next afternoon, she told her grandmother that she was going to Selma’s then called her friend from a pay phone. “I need you to do me a huge favor.”
“What kind of trouble are you about to get yourself into? Can I come?”
She imagined Selma as one of the dating coaches in so many American films, whispering dating tips into a tiny speaker in her ear. “No, not this time. I met a guy, and he wants to take me out this afternoon.”
“A guy? Who is he? Is he Egyptian? Where did you meet him? Do I know him?”
“Selma, calm down! He’s just this Egyptian I met in a coffee shop.”
“Fine, well, of course I’ll cover for you. Is he religious?”
“I guess, why?”
“You might as well start picking out your wedding dress!”
“Selma, you are being ridiculous.”
“Okay, okay, pretend I never said anything. But Aisha?”
“Yes?”
“I want to be Maid of Honor.” The line went dead.
Aisha rolled her eyes and put the phone back on the receiver. She met Kareem in front of the coffee shop and right away, she felt ten degrees warmer than during the walk over. Despite the Cairo heat, he wore a tight-fitting black button-down shirt paired with tight jeans and real leather shoes. He was the spitting image of one of the models in Rose’s magazines. Aisha questioned how he could possibly be interested in her when he could date any girl he wanted.
“You look beautiful,” he said when she walked within hearing distance. “I’m still planning out our day. I forgot to ask what you’ve already seen.”
“Not much, to be honest. My grandparents are too old to go exploring, so I’ve mostly just seen the four walls of our living room.”
“Perfect, then we are about to fix that. Even though I’ve seen these sights many times, they never lose their beauty.”
They took a cab to a clay-red building with an arch like a smaller, plainer version of the Champs-Élysées, and a pair of sphinxes greeted them the way cats waiting by the door for their master to arrive might. The front yard was covered with people, tourists, and tour guides, and Egyptians returning to the familiar museum like she returned over and over again to the Lincoln Memorial. Aisha had never seen so many cameras and smiling faces. After Kareem bought their tickets, he took her elbow and led her through the throng of people and security to the first floor.
“We only have two hours before our next stop, so this will be a tour on fast-forward,” he joked. “Should you need to pause the tour for any reason, please raise your hand like so.”
He demonstrated raising his hand, and she giggled at his announcer’s voice and his raised eyebrows. She had been so tense the past week; it felt good to laugh.
“Now down here we have papyrus scrolls and coins, pretty exciting stuff for us professional archeologists of the group but a little above the recognition of the common man. Then we’ll move on to the good stuff—mummies and King Tut and all those rock star exhibits you Americans are so obsessed with—and then race through the rest of the second floor before petting the cats on the way out and hopping in a cab. Any questions?”
She raised her hand.
“Yes, you in the pretty white dress.”
“How do you know all of this?”
They started walking through the scrolls as he explained. “I was a tour guide for a year after I dropped out of school, before I knew my uncle would offer me a position in his construction company. My sister used to do it before she became an accountant, and she helped me train and find clients. For a guy who hated school, learning the facts and memorizing every location’s ins and outs was pretty difficult, but money is money, and I needed some.”
“And now you help your uncle build apartment buildings?”
“Pretty much. I have to say that being a tour guide trained me well, since he uses me to talk to clients, manage projects, and field apartment building complaints. I learned all those skills from days with fat Europeans who wanted to climb the pyramids and take pictures with the sphinx, and since then, nothing has been worse. How about you?”
“School? I graduated from American University this past year with a degree in Women’s Studies but no job yet in that field or any other. That’s part of why I’m here. I need to figure out what I’m going to do with my expensive degree.”
Kareem stopped her to point out a stone and read her the hieroglyphics, and then they continued on to the mummy room.
“What’s a ‘Women’s Studies?’” he asked.
How could she explain this without making it personal? “Well, for example, I wanted to study the treatment of women in Islam, so I took a class about it. I wanted to know about gender and how children grow up knowing how to perform it, so I took a class about drag queens…men who dress as women. This probably all sounds like a foreign language to you.”
“You can get a degree in all that?”
“I did, and I loved it.”
He thought for a minute. “I guess it sounds interesting. There’s not really much of that here, but my sister works and makes most of the money for our household, so I definitely believe women are capable of great things.”
“What about your parents?” she asked as they walked around the mummies.
Before he answered, Kareem explained who each of the eleven queens and kings was and how he or she had influenced the country while Aisha read the signs and listened to his voice. His mind was like an encyclopedia, and his eyes flickered as though he was turning each page and reading their bios right from it.
“They died a few years ago, together, in a car accident. Now it’s just my sister and me.” He stopped and looked at her over the glass case, and for the first time, she could see the boy who hid behind the happy-go-lucky persona.
“I’m so sorry.”
He looked down at the wrapped remains and said in quiet voice, “I come to this room when I get overwhelmed by work or my family. It reminds me that no matter how much money seems to matter in this world, it won’t come with me in the next one.”
“That’s a beautiful philosophy.” She looked down at the face of one of the queens, charcoal black but preserved in a petrified sleep, and a shiver ran up her spine.
He shook off the compliment. “It’s how the Quran tells us to live, but most people ignore it—people like my uncle, who only want power and wealth and don’t care who they have to step on to get it. What is that verse? ‘Mankind will only increase their desire for this world, and they will only go farther and farther away from Allah.’”
“My mother says the same thing to me. In some ways, you remind me of her.”
“She must be a smart woman.”
“She is…smart, kind, and always willing to sacrifice. It can be a lot to live with.”
“One day she will be rewarded.”
