The Locust and the Bird (13 page)

15
One of Egypt’s most celebrated poets and one of the leaders of the modern Arabic literary movement.

‘Good God … You Could Sew
a Dress for a Flea’

A
T ONE OF
my coffee mornings, I noticed one of the women wearing a wonderful pair of stockings. They were softer and smoother than silk, just like the foam from soap. They were made from something called nylon. I explained what I wanted to Abu-Hussein and borrowed a pair to show him.

‘Devil take it!’ he said. ‘For shame! You want to display your flesh in public? For shame. What’s wrong with the best-quality cotton I’ve always provided?’

Mother said, ‘Good God, even a snail would leave a thicker trace than that nylon stuff!’

I took my time putting my feet into the borrowed stockings, as though I was handling eggs, though I’d been told that they were ‘ladder-resistant’. I fastened the garters and walked around in the stockings, absolutely determined to buy some, no matter what they cost. I’d already spent all my savings on my third coffee morning and the visit to Nadia’s nightclub, so as usual I needed to come up with a plan. I went to see our neighbour and begged her to confront Abu-Hussein with a false claim for a debt when he left for work the next morning.

‘A pox on you!’ she exclaimed, as she handed over the ill-gotten gains. ‘You’ll have me sent straight to hell. And a pox on the person who married you off when you were still a child.’

She had to fast for a whole week and say extra prayers to atone for the deliberate lie she’d told. Meanwhile I rushed out and
bought the magic stockings. I put them on and danced around, singing a song from Nadia’s nightclub: ‘“Now everything’s in the open; all the girls are ladder-resistant!” ’

I was desperate to buy all the shoes and dresses I’d seen in films. I wanted brilliantine to make my hair look glossy; I also wanted hairgrips and perfumed soap instead of the institutional-smelling Lifebuoy. But what I hankered for most was a handbag and real lacy silk underwear, not nasty cotton bloomers that reached down to my knees. I wanted lace petticoats too, not flannel shirts that hung below my waist. And shoes. More than anything I wanted a pair of new shoes, not the old white pair Abu-Hussein had bought for me, which he dyed black or brown for winter, and which left me with stained feet when it rained. I decided to slash the shoes with a razor blade so that he’d finally buy me some new ones. But my husband wasn’t having any of it.

When I protested, he reminded me that my dead sister had never had a penny of her own, even when she’d worked so hard for his business. I was the very opposite of Ibrahim’s wife Khadija, too, who put every single penny she earned aside for her children.

But I continued to steal money from Abu-Hussein whenever he left the room, or went to do his ablutions before prayers, or when he slept. Ibrahim brought home a piece of leather to mend Khadija’s and his children’s shoes and I cut off a piece and sold it. I even pinched a pair of shoes from a female relative, who’d hung around our house for a whole week, and sold them to a friend.

Then one day, as I watched Abu-Hussein unlock the black box and take out our day’s provisions, a truly devilish scheme occurred to me. I waited until he was fast asleep that night and stole the key from his pocket. Then I went to a shop in another neighbourhood and had an exact copy made.

Now I was able to take advantage of Khadija’s absences from the kitchen. I could open the box, scoop out some of the provisions, put them in containers, and take them to the homes of friends and neighbours and sell them at half-price. Sometimes I even sent Ibrahim’s daughter in my place. All went well until my husband came home early from work and ran into one of Ibrahim’s daughters hastily hiding a paper bag behind her back. He grabbed her and found some of the household lard inside.

My husband complained to Ibrahim about my pilfering. Then he went to see our neighbour, a highly respected judge, and asked him to have a word with me. Embarrassed and indignant, I went straight to see the judge myself. My husband was a skinflint, I explained, who considered even coffee beans to be an expendable luxury. I told the judge the only thing my husband thought about me was that I was lazy; I described how he checked my feet when I was asleep to see if I’d washed them. I was still young, I said, not old like him. When the judge tried to point out that Abu-Hussein bought me new dresses, obviously having been told as much by my husband, I posed a question.

‘Look at me, your honour. Tell me, how much fabric do I need to make a dress?’ By that I meant that, since I was short, it only took two yards of nice, expensive fabric to make me a dress.

Beaten into submission, all the judge could say was, ‘God is almighty and He alone has the power and the might!’

This did nothing to stop Ibrahim from yelling and screaming at me.

‘You don’t have a single drop of shame in your entire body! Good God, you’re so cunning, you could sew a dress for a flea. Now everyone will spread the word that you’re a nasty little thief.’

With disgust oozing out of his nostrils, Ibrahim raised a hand and struck me. I was overcome by my hatred and my
powerlessness. Frustrated beyond endurance, I ran to the primus stove, doused myself in Kerosene, and grabbed a box of matches. But Ibrahim leapt over and snatched them from my hand. I began to cry and couldn’t stop. I stood there panting, looking around at the world, relieved I hadn’t actually burnt myself alive, and glad that I’d managed to scare Ibrahim. But my skin had started to sting and by the next morning I was covered in a terrible rash.

In spite of my feelings of desperation and fear, when I got caught stealing, I was totally unrepentant. After all, I needed money. The list of wonderful things I wanted – the clothes and hair ribbons – got longer, and the films on Burj Square kept changing. I sold my wristwatch and said it had fallen into a ditch full of rainwater. My husband spent hours bent double with a sieve, sifting through the water and mud in the hope of finding it.

I watched Abu-Hussein’s trousers like a hawk, but to no avail. He even started taking his clothes with him into the bathroom. So one day I knocked on the bathroom door and asked if he’d like me to rub his back with a loofah, just like a normal wife would do. My husband was happy; normally I wouldn’t let him touch me or even come near me. I rubbed his back and put soapsuds all over his head, then scrubbed his back again and put even more soap on his head. I poured some water to make the suds froth right up until they were dripping down his forehead and into his eyes.

‘You’re making my eyes sting,’ he grumbled.

I gasped, pretending to be surprised, and then scooped up some water. But I didn’t pour it over him until I’d reached out and removed some coins from his pocket. Only then did I pour the water over his head. The soapsuds must have hurt a lot because he began swearing at me and calling me a pimp’s daughter.

When I’d spent the money and told all the women in the house and my female neighbours about my little plan, they burst out laughing. Word spread about my exploits, but people tolerated me because I was young and funny. And anyway, the entire quarter knew how generous I was to the poor, giving out both food and undergarments when they came to the house. Soon my husband pinned a notice to the front door: ‘No begging at this house.’

But the beggars couldn’t read or write, so the notice stayed up a day or two before Ibrahim ripped it down.

The Gallant of the Night

T
WO YEARS PASSED
before I discovered that a bouquet of flowers sent to me after Fatima’s birth had been from Muhammad. It had never occurred to me that they might have been from him because, a year after I’d got married, he’d sent me a message through Fatme:

You’re married? You’ve betrayed me! I’m the biggest fool in the world for surrendering my heart to a little girl. I hope I never set eyes on you again!

After the boy at the grocer’s delivered the bouquet, Ibrahim had been determined to learn who’d sent it. He persisted for months, quizzing the boy on the subject. The boy changed his story each time, eventually insisting that it was from one of the ladies who came to my coffee mornings. I was certain the boy next door had sent the bouquet, until quite by chance I bumped into Fatme and Muhammad’s sister Miskiah. She told me Muhammad had sent the flowers; and that, even though he’d sworn he’d never love anyone again or get married, he was still in love with me. She went on to tell me that he’d become a detective in the Sécurité Générale and had recently transferred to Beirut. In fact he was living with her and his other brothers, no more than five minutes away from our house.

My heart began to pound with sheer joy. Every word he’d ever said to me or I to him, every gesture we’d exchanged
came flooding back. I began falling in love with him all over again. And then, as if in response to my reawakened feelings, one morning I awoke early and saw a blue silk handkerchief on my windowsill. The next day there was a red carnation, the next day a frangipani flower, then a sprig of basil. As I lay in bed at night, I listened for the sound of his footsteps until I fell asleep. Then, I’d dream of footsteps to the sound of our neighbour’s cistern, water falling drop by drop.

With the arrival of winter, the wooden shutters were kept tightly closed and so Muhammad sent me a rose via the boy at the grocer. Then one day I saw a dead rose placed carefully on the building’s electricity box. I clutched it to my heart and hurried to the grocer’s.

‘What’s the significance of a dead rose?’ I asked. ‘Do you think that the man who gave me this rose is sick?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, with a dramatic look. ‘Very sick!’

‘Did he tell you,’ I asked, ‘that this was the last time he’d be sending a rose?’

‘Yes, he said this was the last time he would send you a rose.’

I hurried straight over to Fatme’s house and told her about the dead rose and asked after Muhammad’s health. It was as if my visit to Fatme gave him the green light. The next day, on my way to a coffee morning, I spotted him in the distance, reading a newspaper.

He walked up to me.

‘Look at you, married under all that finery,’ he said, gesturing to my golden bracelets, earrings and necklace. ‘So the gold shone so bright that you forgot about me.’

Tears slid down my cheeks and I wanted to explain everything to him. Instead, I let him hold my hand, oblivious to the passers-by.

From then on I saw him almost whenever I left the house, like a rock in the middle of the road. I’d forgotten
how attractive and wonderful he was. Whenever I saw him, I’d think: Muhammad’s even better-looking than Abdal-Wahhab!

He began to follow me everywhere. Mira came to stay again and we went to the cinema. As we watched the film, I heard a whistle each time the hero proclaimed his love for the heroine. When I looked around at the end, there was my hero, sitting in the back row. Sometimes Mira would take me along with a group of women to the Fawwar Antelis Park to pick cyclamen. I’d sit there happily, jingling my gold bracelets. Then I’d stand up and do an impersonation of my friend Fadila singing ‘Liar, liar!’ or describe the plot of the very latest film I’d seen. And often I’d spot Muhammad, alone or with a friend, sitting right opposite our table and staring straight at me; if I brought a cup up to my mouth, I’d see him take a drink too. I’d smile, and so would he; I’d put my hand on my cheek and he’d imitate me exactly. He’d point to the brooch of cherries I’d pinned to my chest and indicate I should move them to the left. When I stood to wash my hands, he’d start plucking a flower and scattering its petals on the ground.

Every time I set eyes on him, my heart began to pound. Places became intimate and beautiful; I was happy and smiled all the time. Someone loved me and understood me. I was content to make do with the language of signs and pounding hearts. I was a married woman; I could not go beyond certain limits. But all he seemed to ask was to follow me wherever I went. It seemed that he just wanted to be near me.

Each morning, my niece Maryam would find a bloom waiting when she got up to knead the bread. She’d hide it in her dress pocket for me.

‘Just look what the gallant of the night has left!’ she’d whisper, watching me clutch the rose to my heart. ‘Be careful, Auntie,’ she would warn me. ‘Take good care. Please
remember, we’re all dependent on Abu-Hussein. If you put a finger too far into the water, the current may carry you away!’

She was right, of course, but whenever I saw Muhammad, my mind would detach itself and run towards him.

Once a thief managed to get into our house early one morning. Maryam, as she was kneading the bread, spied him hiding behind the door. She pushed against the door as hard as she could, trying to squash him. All of a sudden she stopped pushing.

‘For my sake,’ she said, ‘I hope you’re not Muhammad.’

‘No,’ the thief replied. ‘My name’s Mustapha.’

Clang, Clang, Clang … Gotcha, Gotcha, Gotcha!

B
Y NOW I
was thinking so much about Muhammad that I couldn’t stand being in our house. Even if I was on my own outside, I felt closer to him. Making matters worse, there was the huge and ever-widening rift between me and Ibrahim, and between me and Mother too. There was trouble every time I wanted to go out. The noose seemed to be tightening around me and Maryam. If we even laughed, we’d hear my husband say, ‘The Devil’s with us,’ or Ibrahim would bellow, ‘Bitch’s daughter!’

If we plucked our eyebrows, we’d stay out of sight till the redness disappeared. Maryam hid herself away when she bleached her black hair with peroxide, keeping it concealed for several days under a scarf. But the thing we feared most was Ibrahim catching us on our way to the cinema in Burj Square. We became so paranoid that we believed he might cut us off by this corner or that bend in the road, even far away from the tram line. Clang, clang, clang – he’d lean his foot on the warning bell of the tram and the noise would echo all around. Clang, clang, clang … gotcha, gotcha, gotcha!