Three Daughters: A Novel (39 page)

“No.” Her tone let him know there was something serious to come. “It’s the one school that has everything.”

“What? Oh, we’re back to that.” He pulled his chair in and hunched over the table. “Nijmeh is too trusting. I don’t want her exposed to every new fad and radical idea. Those precocious European children have been shuttled around to accommodate parents. Their morals are nonexistent. I know because it was like that in my day. It’s much worse now.”

She was about to say they had survived it, but he would be reminded of how much she had been influenced by Margaret and of how she had almost married Victor Madden. “Your niece goes to school with Europeans and Peter’s no fool.”

“Delal has the will and cunning of a twenty-five-year-old woman. No one will influence her. I don’t envy Peter bringing up that bundle of will.” He stopped speaking while the waiter put down their drinks. “Nijmeh is different. She’s all loving heart and trust. She would put herself in anyone’s hands.”

“You make her sound like a piece of fluff. She’s tough, Samir.” Actually she was touched by his description of his daughter. It thrilled her that he loved her so completely.

“Strong of spirit, yes. But too trusting. If she had one finger’s worth of Delal’s natural cunning, I would feel more relaxed.”

Well
, she thought.
Am I going to give in now and stop hammering on the subject?

Nadia looked around at the grand old dining room and felt a wave of nostalgia. She couldn’t see those turbaned waiters without remembering how berserk she had been when Victor used to bring her here for lunch. Adrenaline crazed. As if some fantastic adventure were about to involve her. Well? It had. She shuddered and gulped her drink. She had been singled out for adventure, all right.

The waiter brought their soup and hesitated before leaving. “See that couple?” He was proud to offer titillation with their double consommé. “Prince Peter of Greece and Princess Irene. They’re waiting out the war in the Greek Orthodox patriarch’s palace. Over there”—he pointed to an impeccably dressed, handsome man—“Aly Khan. One of the richest men in the world. His father, anyway. He’s a little short, but who cares, hah?” He flashed his teeth. “Enjoy the soup.”

Did Samir have a point? Nijmeh was good-natured. So eager to please. But Nadia felt too strongly to give in. “You want to put a wall around Nijmeh and my loyalty is split,” she said softly, and this clearheaded statement made him stop eating and look up.

“Not a wall. Just limits.”

“I’m a product of Friends and you couldn’t find a more docile provincial woman.”

“You’re not provincial.”

“Of course I am. I’m the madonna of the outdoors.” She laughed. “You know who called me that? She didn’t think I heard her, of course. Diana. I thought it was funny. I use the farm and walk and ride over the property more than anyone, and isn’t that what you love and want to preserve? I’m satisfied with the country life. I don’t even yearn to go to Beirut to shop and gamble, like Julia does. I’ve worn this dress far too often. I’m a country girl. Wait—I just thought of something. My mother says she spent two-thirds of her waking life out in these hills. She claims to know every major stone in the road from here to her house. Am I just repeating what my mother did?”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

She pursed her mouth and finished her soup. “I haven’t budged you in the least. I haven’t gotten anywhere.”

“Where did you want to go?” He reached out for her hand and smiled. “I don’t want you to be angry.”

“Then will you reconsider?” The fact that he was holding her hand in full view of the other diners gave her an emotional jolt.

“I can’t.”

“Oh, Samir. I had my heart set on Nijmeh going to Friends. It’s perfect for her. I want her to have all those wonderful experiences. These are modern times. Nothing’s going to happen to her.”

“I don’t want to take the chance,” he said. “I don’t want her to be modern.” The look on his face put an end to her pleading. His fears were visceral and went beyond Nijmeh. He feared losing control. He feared life without a family. Had he ever suspected anything? If she had given him five children, he wouldn’t feel so protective of the one. He was too much of a gentleman to remind her that Nijmeh was his only chance to pass on what had been entrusted to him.

She stopped arguing, but allowed herself the luxury of a small snit for a reason that made her feel flushed and edgy. She was always eager to make love and sometimes she wished she could hold back and have him coax her. Suppose she stayed in a snit and didn’t turn to him when he touched her? What would he do?

“Do you feel like dancing?” he asked. The Yugoslavs were playing “
Bei Mir Bist Du
Schön
.”

She laughed. “We don’t know how to dance to this.”

“That’s true,” he said. “But I feel like holding you in my arms.”

The few times the sheik had thought about his deathbed, he had envisioned crowds of people lining the room: brothers and sisters, in-laws, nieces and nephews, countless first and second cousins, and, above all, children and grandchildren. So it was a shock—even more than the fact that he was going to die—that there were only two solitary figures.

Samir stood by the window, alternately looking out and glancing at his father. Julia sat holding his hand.

“Where are the girls?”

“Delal’s too boisterous. I was afraid she’d tire you.”

“Delal’s like me, you know.” He was whispering in a voice so frail the words vanished before they escaped his lips. “I see a lot of . . .” He couldn’t continue.

Julia nodded. “I know. She can’t sit still. And she’s very smart. I don’t envy her teachers. They’re weary. I can see it in their eyes when they talk about her.” The sheik tried to smile. “Oh, Baba. I’m sorry. I won’t talk anymore.”

The sheik’s eyes moved to Samir and he came to his father’s side. “Nijmeh?”

“Nijmeh has a cold and I was afraid to bring her.”

He raised an eyebrow and grunted as if to say,
What does it matter? What is a cold to a dying man?
He beckoned for Samir to bend down. “Be careful with Nijmeh.” That was not precisely what he wanted to say, but he had to be economical. His second grandchild touched him in the most provocative way. She was beautiful, but not with the empty fragile looks of his wife. Nijmeh had knowledge and substance and strength of character that made her beauty almost heartbreaking. His every instinct twitched when he thought of her. He didn’t know how or why she had happened into his son’s life, only that she had appeared when she was desperately needed. Never for a moment had he believed that Samir had anything to do with her conception. Still he loved her and regretted not being able to protect her. Ten thousand dollars in French gold Napoleon coins were stored in her name in Barclay’s Bank, to be presented on her twenty-fifth birthday. That was the only way to help her.

If he hadn’t been so wretchedly tired, he would have liked to warn his son. He wanted to say,
Don’t think you can change too many things in life. Look at me—I ran around trying to control everything and in the end few things turned out the way I envisioned them. Enjoy your daughter and let her be.

Yet hadn’t he done the same with Samir? Sent him down a precise, narrow road? Samir had been a splendid, open boy but with a will of stone. Nijmeh wasn’t as strong. Samir could spend a lifetime creating her and, in the end, she would belong to the man she loved. The idea of expressing all those complicated thoughts made his head swim. No. The time for advice was over. Samir was on his own. How strange life was. Julia had been ignored and allowed to make of her life what she would, while Samir had been tended like a hothouse flower. So why was Julia’s life so effortlessly pleasant while Samir’s was persistently dogged by shadows?

He felt certain that if he had a few more months to think it over logical answers to his questions would emerge. He had done what he thought was best and he would do the same again. Perhaps this was only a temporary wrinkle in the fabric of time and the plan would work itself out after he was gone.

He waited for solace to come. He waited for his heart to relax, for his chest to expand and broaden, for his mouth to curve upward with relief. He waited for one puny sign from God that what he hoped for was a possibility, but there was not enough time.

“Are you going to take the cookies to Slivowitz,” asked Miriam, “or forget them again?” She opened the package, pulled out a sugar-coated ring of dough, and offered it to Nijmeh, who was going with her grandfather to the king’s birthday parade.

“I didn’t forget them,” said Nadeem. “He can’t eat the cookies. They’re not kosher.”

“Of course they are. I didn’t mix animal and dairy.”

“You didn’t cook them in a kosher pan.”

“Oh, Nadeem, for heaven’s sake. Take him the cookies. Tell him we cooked them in a special pan. Tell him anything. What difference does it make? He lives alone and eats in restaurants. He’ll be glad to have something homemade.”

“Miriam, if we don’t leave right now, Nijmeh and I will miss the one o’clock bus. I’m not going to take the cookies and I’m not going to lie to Slivowitz.”

“
Ya Allah.
” She stomped back inside the house but despite her annoyance was secretly thrilled with Nadeem’s obstinacy. He always stood firm when he was right and never lost his dignity. She opened the package and looked ruefully at the perfect little rings of confection in her hand. Then her face brightened and she ran down the road after her husband.

“Nadeem . . . Nadeem . . .” He looked back and stopped. “It’s all right. I made them in a kosher pan. I mean, I made them in a new pan. Zareefa brought me a new pan and this was the first time I used it. Now you can take them.”

Nijmeh looked soberly from one to the other to see who would win. Nadeem sighed and took the package in his hands. “All right. I’ll take them, but I’m not promising anything. It could be that there’ll be some other obstacle we can’t foresee.”

Miriam, her mood transformed, bent down and kissed Nijmeh. “Have a good time,” she said. “Take care of
Sido.
” Then she stood in the road and waved to them until they disappeared.

“Your grandmother is a determined woman,” said Nadeem.

Nijmeh nodded and offered her hand to be held, which, inexplicably, made his throat thicken. He loved his granddaughter for many reasons. The most compelling—he wouldn’t admit this to anyone—was that she was Nadia’s daughter. Beyond that, there were the special delights of a child of six or seven. The portion of touchingly innocent legs left exposed between her hem and the cuffs of her socks made her seem so vulnerable. He gladly accepted her company whenever it was available and for the last two years he had taken her to the king’s birthday parade, importuning the banker Slivowitz to let them watch from the balcony of his office on Jaffa Road.

He took her to Slivowitz not to show her off but because the old banker loved to see her. “I’m a Jew,” he would tell her gruffly, as if it were something exotic.

“A Jew?” she would say questioningly. She was never afraid to speak up.

“That’s right. A
yahudi
is what your grandfather would call me.
Yahudi
.
”

“What does that mean?”

“It means nothing. Your grandfather and I have been friends for thirty years. Twice I’ve lent him money and he always paid me back. Even when he lost it, he paid it back. He goes to church and I go to the synagogue because by me, Christ isn’t God. He was an interesting man. Poetic. Obsessive. But not necessarily God. Unless we’re all God. In that case, all right.”

“What kind of thing is that to tell a child?” asked Nadeem, but he knew Nijmeh could take it. “You call Christ an obsessive but interesting man?”

“It’s true. Figure it out yourself.”

Today when they arrived at the suite above the jewelry store, Nadeem was shocked at how old his friend appeared. He had seen him just six months before. Slivowitz looked confused to find them there.

“We came to watch the king’s birthday parade,” said Nadeem.

“Ah, the king’s birthday. Tell me again why we should celebrate the birthday of a foreign head of state who doesn’t know his”—he looked at Nijmeh—“where it comes out from where it goes in? Those bastards have lied to us both and we look forward to waving flags for George VI. Is he thinking about us at all? Does he care one whit if we’re flourishing or dying? We’re idiots.”