Anatomy of a Disappearance (16 page)

The next time I surfaced I found that the night had wrapped us even tighter, coiled her bare thigh round my waist and pushed mine up between her legs. Like branches of a tree, each limb had found its natural way. And although the shame was powerful, it remained distant. I moved against her and she moved with me. It must have been a cloudy night because the yellow city lights reflected off the sky and entered the room. I saw her eyes blink in the weak sepia.

The sun did return. A stab of light was piercing through the window. Countless tiny fragments floated in its path. Every day it comes, this sun, newborn and fierce. I thanked God for the morning. I lay unmoving, tempering my breath, until Naima rang the doorbell. Mona sat up on the side of the bed, pulled a hand through her hair, then turned around and looked at me. She went to open the door.

Naima served breakfast then disappeared to tidy the bedrooms. There was only one bed to make. I wondered, if confronted, how we would explain that. She returned to the dining room and glanced at Mona.

I felt guilty the whole day. I became short with Mona. And she in turn became motherly, sitting on the edge of my bed, asking if I should not be reading a book. Then her eyes fell on my fingers.

“Your nails are too long. Here,” she said and ran to fetch the nail clipper.

That night I lay in my bed praying death would take me. In the middle of the night I was walking the apartment, wading through that peculiar stillness in which everything seemed possible: Mother’s voice, Father’s steps. I decided that by morning I would suggest to Mona that we close the apartment and move to London or Geneva or Alexandria or even Nordland—anywhere but here.

I went to her and found her spread on her back, taking long, deep breaths. I had the thought of strangling her. But then I wanted to kiss her, kiss her so hard as to suck the breath out of her. I lay beside her, but she went on sleeping. I pulled the covers over us. I crawled between her legs and there made myself as small as possible. I was on my side, my head near her groin and my knees in my chest. She hummed but did not stir. Now I could smell her. And the smell surprised me: moist and round, like your palms after a long hot day’s cycling. Then she was awake. It was a cloudless night, but still I could just about make out her face looking down at me, helpless in the dark.

Over breakfast the following morning I could not stop myself from watching her. She did her best to avoid my gaze, pulling tighter the wings of her dressing gown. There was nothing mysterious now about those breasts. Her nipples were like wilted grapes.

This time Naima was not only throwing glances but also setting the plates down noisily.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“This is wrong, Ustaz Nuri.” Then to Mona, “Wrong!”

Mona flinched.

I had never heard Naima shout before. She ran off to the kitchen crying. I heard her say, “It’s my fault. Forgive me, Kamal Pasha.”

“What’s the matter with her?” I asked, and shouted, “Naima.”

“Listen,” Mona said quietly.

“Naima, I am calling you.”

“You have to respect my wishes, Ustaz,” Naima said softly, as if I were there beside her in the kitchen. The belated insertion of Ustaz in the end brought on an aggressive melancholy that tied my tongue and made me want to rush to her, kiss her hands, beg forgiveness.

“Listen,” Mona repeated.

I could not stop the tears.

“I am sorry, Nuri, truly sorry. It has barely been a month and look how badly I am coping. I will be better, I promise. I have decided to move back to England, to be near you.”

Naima saw I was crying. She stood by the kitchen counter watching me.

Mona took a deep breath and seemed older all of a sudden.

“I will move to London. You will visit me there.”

“But you said you loved the English countryside.”

Her eyes blinked slowly like gates closing. Then, looking toward Naima, and in her broken Arabic, she said, “This time I will not fail.”

“I can help you. I can move to a school in London. I hate Daleswick.”

She shook her head again, tried to smile.

After breakfast I listened to her showering. At one point she hummed a tune, then stopped. I wondered whether she had bent to scrub her shins or had suddenly thought, Be quiet, silly woman; this is no time for singing.

I returned to the dining table, pretending I had not left my seat. She emerged dressed and perfumed, the apartment keys jingling off the medallion in her hand. She went into the kitchen and without a word hugged Naima and kissed her on both cheeks. Naima instinctively bowed and kissed Mona’s hand.

“Do we need anything from the shops? I will be back soon,” she said and walked out.

After a few seconds I rushed to the door and caught her stepping into the lift.

“Where are you going?”

She held a hand out and the sliding doors shuddered back. “To the doctor,” she whispered.

“Why?”

“It’s nothing, darling. Just a bad headache.”

I went to Father’s study and felt a panic at sitting in his chair. The room looked undisturbed. Naima—or, who knows, perhaps even Mona—must have come in and closed all the drawers and placed every object where it belonged. Father had left a book on the desk, with a page folded a quarter of the way in. I could pick up where he left off, I thought.

On the morning of my departure, Naima scrubbed the fridge door, although it looked perfectly clean. She did not respond when I said good morning, and whenever I came close her body hardened. Mona seemed impatient with Naima’s behavior. She kept saying, “You will see him soon,” which even Naima knew was a lie.

“Perhaps we should say goodbye here,” Mona said.

I stood beside my suitcase. Abdu, in his modest and quiet manner, crept soundlessly from behind and removed the luggage.

“No, that is not a good idea,” Mona then said, more to herself.

Naima stood still, her soapy hands clasped together. Her figure looked as stiff and precarious as a reed in water. I wandered over to her. She hugged me. There was nothing more convincing than Naima’s embrace.

Mona and I sat in the back of the car. She looked out of
the window, and I pretended to do the same. Abdu was also silent. He pulled the seat belt across his chest and looked at me in the rearview mirror. Although I could not see his entire face I knew he was trying to smile. Just then we heard Naima’s breathless plea.

“Wait.”

She got in the front passenger seat, and the usual argument ensued. But this time Naima did not resist for long. She did what she was told and fastened the seat belt. Every so often she would turn, take my hand and kiss it three or four times.

In the departure lounge the sheets of marble and glass amplified every sound.

“Call as soon as you arrive,” Mona said.

“What will happen to Naima?” I asked in English.

“Her salary will continue until we see what happens. And the same with Abdu.”

And when she spotted a tear filling my eye, she said, “It’s better this way. I will come see you as soon as I settle in London, if not before.”

And even though I recognized tenderness in her manner, I wondered if this was not punishment for what had taken place the night before.

She and I embraced. She let go before I did, then awkwardly tried to hug me again.

“OK, young man,” Abdu said, and we shook hands.

Naima hugged me too tightly. She held my face in her hands. They were unusually cold.

“Promise you will never forget me.”

She rubbed her wrists, brought a hand to her neck and left it there. She turned to Abdu, looking at him as if hoping for rescue.

Waiting in line, I could feel their gaze on my back, the weight of it. I spotted a man closed in behind glass partitioning, sitting at an empty desk and looking out of the window. Behind him and farther away from the window, a woman sat on a chair against the wall. She, too, was looking out of the window. The light paled their faces. There was a tender quality to their stillness. Then she moved, took out two sandwiches and handed him one. She might have been his wife or perhaps his sister visiting during the lunch hour. The world had to be sliced into hours to fill; otherwise you could go mad with loneliness.

I turned around and saw that they were gone. Lines stretched in all directions. I smelled my father: his musky, warm skin. I looked about and, even though he was not there, the smell persisted.

It was late January, winter just as dominant as it was when I left for Switzerland. I had been gone only six weeks, but it felt like an entire lifetime had passed. At Heathrow I had to force myself down to the Underground station. My heart was as tight as a knot. And when I boarded the train at St. Pancras and the door was shut, the racing pulse returned. I could not look anyone in the eye. My fingers were ice cold, the color beneath the nails white. I watched the fast-skipping fields. When the cab pulled up the long gravel path to my boardinghouse I saw that, despite everything, nothing at Daleswick had changed.

I was late by two weeks and felt overwhelmed by the amount of work I had to catch up on. Mr. Galebraith had telephoned Cairo after the first day of absence. Mona told him that I was ill. “Terrible flu,” I heard her say.

“So is it true or were you just skiving off?” Alexei asked.

“Actually,” I said, feeling my heart rise, “I wasn’t ill. Don’t tell anyone, but it was my father.” When he did not immediately respond I added, “But he’s fine now.”