That Other Me (35 page)

A C star would have commenced the evening's entertainment at 10:30 p.m., and a B star would have followed an hour later. Then a break, during which dinner would have been served for the two thousand guests before my dazzling performance, the A star, at 1:30 a.m. I'll sing for a couple of hours, plus another half hour for the encore.

Once we reach the suite, Gino Ghazal asks him, “Do you have the balance payment for Sitt Dalal?”

“Of course, of course,” says the concert organizer, nodding too eagerly. “Right after the show.”

“No, now,” Gino Ghazal says, and this starts an argument, which I act as though I don't hear. Sitting at the vanity table, I steal glances at their reflections while the hairdresser puts a spring into some of the ringlets on my head and the makeup artist sharpens her black pencil, having been given permission to see whether a beauty mark might add to my glamour. She makes a mark in the center of my right cheek.

“I told you to make sure that money was with you when we came: the full balance, cash, in crisp dollars. Didn't you hear me?” says Gino Ghazal.

“I thought you were joking.”

“I said it a thousand times. Would I make the same joke that many times?”

The concert organizer is flustered. He looks at his watch. “Listen, we're late already. I have a ballroom filled with distinguished people who have bought tickets, mostly Khaleejis who have traveled all the way here to see her.” He stomps his foot. “They want her now! What am I supposed to tell them?” When my manager remains unimpressed by the performance, the concert organizer closes his eyes and cracks his neck—once, twice—and utters his next words calmly. “Look, I understand what you're saying. But for now let's get her on the stage, and, wallahi, I promise you I'll have your money before she finishes her first song.”

“No.”

“No?”

“What guarantee do I have? You could keep stalling and then disappear after she finishes singing.”

“You insult me!”

“That's not my intention. But I have to put my client's interests first.”

“We have a contract!”

“Yes, we do. But I still say she won't go on until she is paid fully.”

“Please.” The word hangs in the air, and when Gino Ghazal hardens his demeanor the concert organizer scurries toward me and begs. “Sitt Dalal, please talk sense into him. The audience is impatient for you: Dalal, the Gazelle of the Desert!”

He stands behind me, the suffering of a hungry beggar in his eyes, while I take my time trying to decide about the beauty spot, which has already been tested and failed in two different locations on my face. In this third trial it sits just below my lips, on the left side. Should I keep it or not?

“A thirty-member band is waiting for you onstage. They're playing Umm Kulthum to pass the time. How long can they keep doing that? The audience is already fed up.”

Having decided that the beauty spot stays, I turn around and shrug. “What can I do? I know nothing about such matters.” I smile at him sweetly. “I'm the artist here.”

He opens his mouth, but before he is able to utter a word Gino Ghazal squeezes his arm and leads him away, scolding him for causing undue stress to the star. The concert organizer starts yelling and threatens to call his lawyer and the police, too, to make sure we get thrown in jail for breaking the contract. Coolly, my manager tells him, “We haven't gone anywhere. We're here, waiting.”

The situation seems to be getting out of control. I'm gripped by fear when I realize I might not step on that stage after all. Azza mouths the time: ten minutes late. I turn around. I'm about to tell my manager to back down when I see him reaching into his jacket and pulling out what he calls his “cigar of success.” He will light it once I get onstage and will follow a ritual of finishing it only with the concert's end, nearly three hours later. He sniffs it, rolling it under his nose. He's ready to celebrate another success. And there's the concert organizer, snapping his fingers and whispering something to an assistant who has suddenly materialized and who then flies out the door.
Ten minutes later the assistant is back, breathless and clutching a fat envelope, which the concert manager snatches and hands over to Gino Ghazal.

There is light chatter while my manager counts the money; every person in the room feigns uninterest. How to sit still? Everything dims as the excitement rushes through me like a crazy river. I can see them, all those adoring eyes focused on me. Under the lights, I'll be a golden glow. I won't just stay on the stage, like so many other performers. Once or twice I will step down and weave my way between the men and women, all those distinguished Khaleejis, seated around the tables. I shall sing from my heart because that's the only way I can, and at the end the stage will turn into a garden of single red roses flung at my feet by the adoring audience.

I'll start with my first hit song: “Only Me, Lonely Me.” The musicians will play an extended introduction to key up the audience before I come into view, mike in one hand, the other posed in a floating salute. It will not sound the same. There's a twist in the melody, with layer upon layer of newly added harmony. It's enriched, not so simple anymore, just like the girl who first sang it three years ago. She's not the same, either.

It's 1:55 a.m., and Gino Ghazal's cigar is wedged at the edge of his mouth. He pulls it out and calls, “Everybody.”

We're looking up already.

“Five minutes.”

She takes me straight from my doctor's appointment to the palm grove in Al-Khawaneej. I'm in a foul mood. Strapped in the front passenger seat of my Mercedes, I glare fiercely at the blur of dunes running along the road. Once we get there, I watch out the side mirror as Ophelia jumps out from the back seat of the car. She delivers the wheelchair, and I have a ridiculous notion that I'll be able to get into it on my own. I heave and twist around, succeeding in getting my legs to dangle out of the car. But as I try to shift onto my feet I run into trouble; the car's seat is too low.

Aisha surveys my reddening face with the most awful expression of indulgence and worn-out pity, as if to say, “Let the old man have his moment.” It makes my blood boil and I shove Ophelia, who is standing in her assisting mode—arms stretched out, hands swimming like a pair of fidgeting fish at the sides of my ribcage—at the ready to scoop me up.

I swear at her: “Daughter of a whore!” From my warped mouth it sounds like a crow's caw. She beams at me, humoring me as if I were
a baby practicing his first word. I pause, the pressure building in my head as I use every shred of concentration to shape the next insult: “
Ya bgara!
You cow!” It comes out as a stutter, sounding like “ha ha ha”—slurred, too. Ophelia claps her hands good-humoredly before latching them under my armpits.

Nothing comes out the way it should. Thoughts clamber over one another in my head, like those tiny red ants that scurry around, looking to build something out of chaos. Only I never succeed. My mind is in perpetual tumult. Sometimes I have trouble remembering things: names, places, people. Other times the memories are as clear as the winter sky over my head. My brain busies itself by sending signals, futile commands I have trouble following. It looms like an overblown balloon, a dubious far-reaching world pressing against my skull. That's how it is, how it has become, now that this stroke has rendered my whole being senseless.

I am up. Ophelia hands me the cane. I had rejected the medical crutch—an embarrassment!—raising such a fuss that they had no choice but to get me a wooden cane with a rubber cap at the bottom, which I'm tempted to use on her immediately. But I wait until I've taken the two steps to the wheelchair and settled into it safely. As she positions my feet onto the footplates I jab her back with rough pokes, pushing her away. When she secures the worry beads, weaving them between my fingers so the string doesn't slip out of my contorted right hand, I strike at her ankles.

“Leave her alone,” Aisha says. “Let her do her job.” But I am trembling, working up a fit that has me lashing out as best I can. Horrible noises are coming out of me. My limbs jerk in every direction and I'm deaf to Aisha's pleas to “look at your palm trees, how lush they are!” as the women wheel me over to the end of the patio. It has yet to be completed; they park me in front of a sharp dip of dug-up earth, near a stack of bricks, and walk right past me, roaming
off toward the palm trees to give me a chance to calm down. Time to punish the wild old man!

I object aloud, “How can you leave me like this in my state?” Of course no one understands a thing, but Aisha assures me that she'll be right back. She mocks me! How dare she treat me this way? Even though her constant presence irritates me more often than not, I'm outraged that she would walk away like that—my own wife!

It was a bad stroke that affected the left side of my brain. The doctor kept saying I was lucky it didn't finish me off. After the surgery to remove the hematoma, I remained in the hospital for more than a month before being sent home. But the recovery, the grueling physical-therapy sessions to retrieve my lost strength and mobility, was so quick that I was sure I'd soon be as I once was. The doctor was impressed with my progress, and this drove me to continue—until my visit to his office this morning.

I can't see Aisha, who, although close by, is concealed behind the layers of palm fronds. She says something to Ophelia in a voice too soft to hear. I hate her. I hate them both. I hate myself. I contemplate what would happen if I just got up and plunged over the edge and into that dirt hole. I'd probably break my neck. And that would be that. But at least I'd succeed in making them feel sorry for having neglected me—my whole family, the despicable lot of them.

My eyes moisten and I close them against the humiliating threat of spilling. God knows, it's hard to control! There doesn't have to be any particular reason or emotion to set it off. It just happens, leakage from a warped garden pipe. And then I'll start bawling for what feels like an eternity, unable to control that braying noise and the sticky dribbling of spit. Eventually I'll sink into a heavy dispirited sulk.

I try to make as little noise as possible as I weep. They don't know anything. They don't know what the doctor said to me, the cruel truth that this, this me, is as good as I'll get. Eight months on and this is the
full recovery: the nerves damaged beyond repair, my face melted on one side, my life flushed to nothing.

I look for a diversion, something that might steady my whimpering, my sniveling, which will only get worse. There's the string of worry beads Hareb gave me all those years back, which I've taken to carrying with me all the time, wrapped around my benumbed fingers. I snatch it out of the useless hand and start twirling it to recover some sense of control, of dignity. I focus on one bead at a time, rubbing it between thumb and index finger before flicking it down along the string.

It works. It plugs up the torment, and I make my calculations. How many steps to the edge? I'll just have to get up and walk—if one can call it that—to find out. The longer I stare at the drop, the fiercer grows my determination to take action, to make a statement. I can't punch or kick or rage effectively, but I can alarm them. I want to give them all a piece of my mind: the so-called friends—Saeed, Mattar, and even Mustafa—who don't visit anymore because they got sick of my tantrums; my sons and daughters who all this time were looking forward to the day when I'd be suffering like this, just so they could get their hands on my money; and Mariam and Dalal and Aisha, too. I want them all to know that the force that kept them in order is still . . . still . . . I don't waste any more time probing for the word, the exact meaning, because I've slid to the edge of the wheelchair.

Planting my right foot to the ground, I push up on my left foot using the stick. I stand unassisted for the first time since the stroke. I don't move. I wait for a signal to go ahead, quivering slightly with apprehension in case it does not come. But then it does: I'm able to shift on my good leg and sling the other forward in a wide arc. I can barely contain my groan. Two more steps; I know I look awkward, my body shifted to the side, my right arm twisted into my chest, the fingers crowding my tucked thumb. I don't care, because here comes the plunge.

It's a pathetic tumble. Instead of crashing into the earth headfirst, I stagger to my knees and then proceed to half slide, half swim down
on my belly: no more trauma than a mouthful of mud. I would jump back up and climb into my wheelchair quietly if only I could. Instead I stay motionless, waiting to be rescued.

What happens next I have to imagine, because I keep my eyes closed. There's the wheelchair being shifted down to my side. There's the grip under my armpits. There are my feet dredging clumsy lines in the earth without the sandals, which have slipped off. I tighten my eyelids against Aisha's rebukes, high-pitched with distress, against her swatting palms as she brushes the clinging soil off my face and kandora. I don't dare open my eyes. I am too ashamed.

“Ah, you should have seen him, all shaky, all muddy.”

She fusses over him to chase away the anxiety of being somewhere she shouldn't be. “There's no one here in the middle of the week,” she says, and pats his head as if she suspects a fever. She covers his shoulders with a shawl, then joins me on the wicker chairs. They are newly unpacked, their tags still on, as is the matching low table in front of us. “You should have seen him,” she says again, still quite baffled at the way he fell off the wheelchair just before I arrived. “I don't know what he was trying to do, but he must have tripped.”

It's January, and a mild sun shines. The trees swish and break its rays, casting splotchy patterns on my uncle's face. I catch him in profile, his jowls saggy under a head that hangs heavy in sleep over his chest. His arm is twisted and pressed to his ribs, the fingers frozen into claws. A string of amber worry beads winds tightly around his hand; he clutches them as if they were valuable gemstones.

The maid arrives with a tray, and Ammiti Aisha lifts the flask, pours the tea into a couple of tulip glasses, and adds a teaspoonful of
sugar to each. “I bring him here because it usually relaxes him, but not today,” she says, frowning. Her fingers quiver slightly when she hands me my tea. “They won't like it if they find out I'm here. So I don't tell anyone, and I don't stay too long.”

We are in the shade of a palm-frond awning held up on wooden beams. A cool breeze blows and we lean back and inhale deeply at the same time. We sip the tea quietly. She doesn't need to explain anything. I already know that whatever worth she had in her household disappeared the moment she smuggled me out of the house.

I often wonder whether she considered what she was giving up, and every time I come to the conclusion that Khaled's death must have snapped something in her. Her children were sickened by her action. They considered it a betrayal. More than three years later, she still has not been forgiven.

I remember that stormy night as if it were yesterday. How strange that she launched her plan just as I'd jumped out of the room! She'd acted quickly after discovering my daredevil escape, dragging me under the pelting rain toward a waiting car.

The doorman caught sight of us through the window of his little room by the gate. The flickering blue light of his television set highlighted the alarm and confusion on his face. He scampered out of his hut, getting drenched within seconds, and waved his arms in panic, trying to block our escape. Ammiti Aisha shoved him aside and pushed me into the backseat of her sister's car. Slamming the door shut, she waved us off—her figure a watery blur as I looked back through the car's window—and stayed behind to face the consequences. Ten days later she walked out and joined me at Shamma's house, and soon after, she asked for a divorce, which she never got.

My uncle is a little distance away, still turned toward the spread of palm trees but wheeled a safe distance from the edge of the broad patio. The patio has been newly built just in front of the small rest house at his farm in Al-Khawaneej. Saif and Ahmad had decided to
make it a play area for their children. They run the company now, and from what I understand, this has caused a catastrophic rift between them and the rest of the siblings. The girls accuse the two older brothers of being greedy tyrants.

Ammiti Aisha reads my thoughts, it seems. “They argue all the time,” she says. “The girls want to see the money, and Saif and Ahmad won't allow it. ‘It's not ours,' they tell their sisters, even though they spend it as if it were.” She fixes her sight on the six bicycles. New and gleaming, they stand in a neat row, arranged according to size, at one side of the house. “Saif says that it's a responsibility entrusted to them. Ahmad always makes sure to add the word
temporarily
, meaning until their father is capable again.” She scoffs. “Of course, the girls don't believe that. And who can blame them? I mean, all these months and he's worked so hard just so that he can . . .” She shakes her head and waves her hand at him. “Just look at him.”

My uncle is still asleep. A trickle of drool slides down one side of his lips. The maid, who sits on her heels in front of him, massaging his right foot and looking as bored as can be, reaches out for a tissue and dabs at it.

“I asked them to employ a nurse, but they said he doesn't need one, that the maid is strong enough to deal with him and clever enough to administer his medication. Isn't that right, Ophelia? Clever, nah?”

Ophelia snickers and beams a sunny grin at us before moving on to rub his left foot. I hadn't recognized her with the weight gain; she now has a wrestler's body. “The girls are preparing a case against their brothers,” Ammiti Aisha continues. “Mona and Amal are the engines, insisting it's the only way. Nouf, of course, is always spoiling for a fight, without a thought spared for the damage that will certainly follow. As for Badr, well, he was hesitant, but in the end they bullied him into joining.”

“And Nadia?”

“Ah, that one. As you know, she's slightly softer, doesn't like making too many waves.” Ammiti Aisha lets out a heavy sigh. “But she's left in want of money since that husband of hers finally made good on his threats to divorce her. He left her and their five children after he decided that it was a scandal to be married to one of the Naseemys. He said it tainted his name in the eyes of society and opened him to ridicule, because everyone knows that no respectable family can stay that way with a singer in it. What excuses he came up with! We all knew he'd taken another wife long before Dalal appeared on the scene.” Her shayla doesn't need adjusting, but she fiddles with it anyway. She pulls it down to just above her eyebrows and then slides it back up to her hairline. “The fights, the bickering, the ugliness all around me. And you know what, I don't even bother trying to repair the situation. I watched the way they fought over Mama Al-Ouda's gold when she died and thought,
What's the point?
Which of them pays attention to what I have to say, anyway?”

Sunlight falls in strips across her face. I listen and keep very still. It's the first time Ammiti Aisha has opened up to me like this. But then again, there hasn't been an opportunity before. I've stayed away these past three years, carving a life that I can call my own. Every so often I call her, but they're typical phone conversations, filled with nothing more than pleasantries.

After Mama Al-Ouda died last August, I'd packed and was heading to the airport to be with my family for the mourning period when Ammiti Aisha telephoned me. She told me not to come, to stay in Cairo and mourn privately, because she knew her children would not have allowed me into the house.

She is shaking her head. She continues where she left off. “The married ones hardly come to visit now that their father is in this condition and their fortunes don't depend on him anymore, and the twins, still living at home, hardly have a word to say to me. My grandchildren
are no better.” She leans forward and starts rocking. “All the plots, all the nastiness,” she mutters, her face frozen in a heavyhearted expression of pain. “No sooner did the doctors get your uncle stable and send him home than they appeared like vultures, ready to peck and rip. Then, during one of his emotional bouts, Saif and Ahmad were there to take full charge of the business and make sure the transfer of power was legal.”

They are their father's seeds. It's a morbid thought, and I look away. The sky is a vivid blue with scratches of cloud. Glossy-feathered mynahs call to one another and white-cheeked bulbuls chirp and chatter. Wishing for some of their lighthearted cheer, I follow them with my eyes as they flit about from tree to tree. I watch them and count my blessings.

After the escape, Shamma used all her resources to retrieve my government scholarship, and within a month I was on a plane back to Cairo. I have started afresh with my studies, this time following my passion in botany. I share an apartment in the Emirati girls' sakan with none other than Buthaina (now studying for her doctorate), who has proven to be the guiding sister I'd longed for. And there's Dalal, elevated into a world so different from mine—one day up, one day down—rushing about, always busy, so that it's hard to catch up with her news. On the outside she looks different, more refined and self-assured. On the inside I don't know, because she only tells me what she imagines I want to hear. I don't scold anymore. I don't push. I stand back and wait—for a time when she might really need me.

And love—I think I might be finding that, too, in a fellow Emirati student who has shown an interest in me. It's not there in the sense of that overwhelming longing I used to feel for Adel, which made me forget everything just as long as I was near him. (I heard he dropped out of college and went back home soon after my return.) No, this is taking its time: a sprouting of little moments, a dawdling smile, a slow gathering of feelings that leaves behind a sense of serenity and security.

“They did to their father what their father did to yours.” There's a tremor at the back of Ammiti Aisha's throat. “You were cheated, Mariam. We all knew it, and we kept quiet about it.” Her lips quiver; she looks ready to cry. I shake my head to indicate that she mustn't.

“It's fine,” I say, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “I'm fine.”

I think about that and realize that it's true—I am fine. I find myself rising and walking toward Ammi Majed. With every step I anticipate that familiar wringing resentment, the cramping fretfulness, that I used to stifle whenever he was close. It doesn't come, and I wonder if that's because of what he has become—old, powerless, friendless, and dependent, a picture of wretchedness and defeat.

Standing to the side of the wheelchair, my hand moves as if following a will of its own. It floats up and hovers just above his shoulder. Ophelia keeps ahold of his foot, but her fingers have stopped moving. I stand there for a moment with a mind gone blank, and then I ask, “Why did you go back to him?”

Ammiti Aisha is unfaltering in her response. “Because it's my duty.”

My hand drops to my side and I nod. My gaze drifts over the grove, its lush palm fronds rustling with a hasty breeze, and settles on the late-afternoon sun, a grand ball, bright as a tangerine, poised and ready to descend into the distant dunes. My breathing is even. There is peace.