Two Women in One (6 page)

But she called out faintly, ‘Saleem.’

He remained silent, looking at her. ‘Why did you leave me yesterday?’ she asked.

His unflinching eyes fixed hers. She hid her face in her hands and cried.

‘Why are you crying?’ he asked her in a hushed tone.

‘You don’t love me enough.’

‘You don’t love anybody enough. You fear love like it was death — you’re middle-of-the-road. That’s Bahiah Shaheen for you.’

‘No!’ she shouted.

He handed her his white handkerchief to dry her tears. Her black eyes glistened in the sunlight and he smiled. ‘What did you do last night?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Haven’t you painted anything new?’

‘No.’

He paused for a moment. Then: ‘And what are you doing tonight?’

‘I don’t know’, she whispered.

Reaching into his pocket, he drew out a small key. He handed it to her. ‘This is the key to my flat in al-Muqattam’, he said. ‘Come any time after three. I’ll be waiting for you.’

He vanished behind the college building. As she stood there, her fingers coiled around a small metal object with a rounded top and a hole in the middle. Its tail had small pointed teeth. As she ran her fingers over it, a shiver swept through her like particles of soft hot sand tingling in her hands, down through her legs, up through her head, along her neck and arms, and accumulating in the hand that gripped the small object.

It looked like the key to any other door. But she knew that objects change when feelings do. A little metal key can suddenly become magic, radiating heat that surges through the body like a burst of air and swells in the palm of the hand, filling it to overflowing.

She felt drops of sweat in her hot hand under the solid object, but when she ran her finger over its metal surface, she froze. Wrapping it in her handkerchief, she put it in her pocket and slipped through the crowded grounds, moving with a panther’s long strides. She felt eyes staring at her, and slid her hand into her pocket to hide the key, as if, magical as it was, it might tear through handkerchief and pocket, leaping into view, as visible as the sun.

As she headed unthinkingly towards the college, her hand still thrust into her pocket, she heard a voice calling, ‘Bahiah.’

She turned and saw Dr Alawi behind his white spectacles, surrounded by female students.

‘Bahiah, where’ve you been?’ he asked in his authoritative tone. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

Momentarily at a loss, she said, ‘I’ve been in the girls’ lounge.’

‘Come to my room for five minutes’, he said in a tone that bordered on command.

A female student whispered in her ear, ‘He’ll cane you with a ruler.’

Another laughed, clapping her hand over her mouth, ‘He’ll dissect you with his forceps.’

A third leaned forward and said, ‘He’ll tear you to pieces.’

A fourth sighed, ‘Lucky you — I wish it was me!’

Moans, groans, sighs, and gasps, a hidden burning desire buried within her like a germ that sought to torture her body, rip it apart, destroy it so completely that nothing would remain.

She followed him into his office. He had already taken off his white coat and spectacles. The tension had gone out of the lecturer, who now stood as an athletic young man, slim and with a pale complexion, now reddish in the gleaming sunlight. His eyes were wider than usual, as if he was surprised: ‘What’s the matter with you these days, Bahiah? This is not the Bahiah we used to know.’ She shuddered in panic, as if he had stripped off her clothes and glimpsed part of her so private that she had concealed it from others’ eyes and kept it for herself alone. Pulling the collar of her blouse up around her neck, she said angrily, ‘I’m the same as usual.’

He replied in the quiet tone of the confident lecturer, ‘What about skipping your anatomy classes?’

‘I was busy with the exhibition.’

‘No, Bahiah. It’s not the exhibition. You’re busy with something else.’

Her lips parted in astonishment, but she pursed them quickly, as if angry. She turned to leave, but he blocked the way and continued to lecture her. ‘You’re busy with something else, Bahiah.’

She raised her eyes to his: ‘No.’

As if he had not heard her reply, he asked in a quiet, confident voice, ‘What’s bothering you, Bahiah?’

‘Nothing’, she said again.

There was something between herself and Dr Alawi — something unspecified and incomprehensible but nevertheless real and palpable. She sensed it in his blue eyes when he looked at her, and in his voice when he spoke to her. Sometimes she wondered what it could be. She had seen him once in a dream. He was wearing a shirt and trousers and he was as slim as an athlete. His arm was hairy and looked reddish in the sunlight. He picked her up and tried to embrace her, but she slipped away. He put his arms round her, tore her hands from her mouth, and kissed her. She pushed him away, only to find there was no one there. She had been dreaming. She was surprised that Dr Alawi could force himself on her in her dreams, whereas she did not desire him when awake — on the contrary, she loathed him. She detested his piercing blue eyes and his laugh. He did not laugh like other people. His laugh was dignified and masterful. His guffaw was fake and abrupt. No sooner had it started than it was cut off. He always made people feel as if he was a lecturer, someone who knew what they did not and owned what they did not. He mounted the podium with steps like other lecturers: slow, self-confident, even relaxed. His bottom was a little flabby from sitting too long on comfortable chairs.

One of his hairy reddish hands was on the door knob, the other on her shoulder, patting it as teachers do their students. But now his hand rested there a moment, a quick touch like an involuntary contraction of the muscles. There was a slight tremor in his voice as he said, ‘Bahiah, you know I care about you.’

He collected himself quickly, resuming his quiet confident lecturer’s tone: ‘Exams are coming up soon. And I want you to pass.’

At the tram stop she looked at her watch. Half past three. Her heart pounded. As she reached in her pocket, her fingertips found the hard metal edge. She withdrew her hand, shaking, as if she were carrying a bomb that would explode the moment she touched it, blowing her body to pieces on the asphalt. As the tram drew near, with its crowds and noise, she kept her distance from the others, so that no one would collide with her. Then she changed her mind and decided to walk home.

After Qasr al-Aini street, she headed for Nile Street. The sun shone on the river’s surface, while the warm air caressed her face, bringing a light refreshing humidity. She closed her eyes under its warmth. The Corniche was deserted at that hour of the afternoon. The windows of the houses were closed, their shutters drawn, not a soul inside or out. The sounds of her footsteps on the asphalt rang in her ears with that familiar regular beat. But what sounded familiar to her ears seemed strange to her mind. The tapping on the asphalt came not from her own feet, but from others behind her. She turned, but there was no one. She felt almost disappointed, as if they had arranged to meet and he had not turned up. But she knew he was not behind her, that he was waiting for her in his flat at al-Muqattam, any time after three.

She glanced at her watch. Quarter to four. Her heart thumped and then stopped. Her black eyes looked up, her long thin face was pale and her short black hair fell over her neck and ears. Her delicate shoulders were softly rounded under her blouse. Her small breasts rose and fell with each breath and her red fingers clutched her leather satchel bulging with anatomy textbooks.

She came to Fam al-Khaleej Square. Before her was Nile Street and the bridge leading to her home in Rowdah. On her right was the Nile, on her left the road leading to al-Muqattam. Anyone seeing her would have expected her to turn left. But she did not. She remained standing where she was. She knew that to turn would be a matter of supreme importance. It would mean that she was Bahiah Shaheen no longer, that she had become that other, stronger being, equally desired and feared.

It was a dreadfully momentous time, which seemed like death. No, it
was
a kind of death — one person was dying and another being born — a brief moment if she would turn left. All she had to do was raise her foot, move it over the ground and bring it down again: no more than an instant, yet it seemed a lifetime to her, like all the years of her life so far and all the years she would have in the future, as if her whole life lay at her feet and she had only to step down and she would crush it to pulp, to soft ashes.

The street on her left was no longer a street. For streets, like everything else, change minute by minute according to our view of the world, the pulse in our veins, the change in the air with every new breath, and the surge of the sea with every wave. The street lengthened and protruded from the belly of the mountain like an outstretched arm. Above it, caught between the mountains and the buildings, a strip of sky formed a second arm. The two huge arms, like those of the mythical god, stretched out before her like the gaping jaws of fate, extending toward the horizon, lying in wait for her, willing her body to turn to them.

She longed to throw herself into those outstretched arms. But her body held fast and she was unable to lift her foot from the ground. She shuddered in panic and her satchel fell, the anatomy books scattering all over the road.

From the corner of her eye she saw the white label on the cover: Bahiah Shaheen, 1st Year Anatomy. Her arms seemed to shrink. They refused to pick up the books, but with her body still bent over the pavement she manged to gather them up and put them in her bag. Stooping over was enough to bring back Bahiah Shaheen full force. That other person disappeared down the long corridor and her feet quickly began to head towards home with determination.

As she walked her body’s movement seemed strong and victorious, but her true feeling was entirely different. She felt defeated, and when she saw her house in the distance her heart sank, as though she were a lifer being led to prison, driven by an irresistible force as strong as steel. She felt chains around her hands, feet, wrists, ankles and neck, pulling her mercilessly towards that small red house.

Her home, her room and her bed were now no longer her own. Objects, like people, change not only in form but in meaning too. We never know the reality of things: we see only what we are aware of. It is our consciousness that determines the shape of the world around us — its size, motion and meaning.

She had thought of her home as a safe refuge from the crowds on the tram and at college, from the sun’s heat and the winter cold, a place where her father would give her her daily pocket money, her mother would feed her, where her brothers’ features mirrored her own. Everything around her evoked serenity. But now the house had become a prison, her father a guard, sitting on his bamboo chair watching her every movement, and trying to detect her secrets from her expression. Her personal papers in the drawers of her desk and under her pillow were covered with the prints of her mother’s fingers, searching for her secrets, looking for love letters or her boyfriend’s photograph. Her sisters’ eyes besieged her with questions. Even worse were the almost daily visits of her uncle, his wife and their son — the business school graduate who since childhood had been picked as a potential suitor, with his silly smile and his murderous idiotic happiness.

Now she was sure that she did not belong to this family. The blood in her veins was not theirs. If blood was all that connected her to them, then she had to question that bond. She had to question the very blood that ran in her veins and theirs. Her mother had not given birth to her. Maybe she was a foundling, discovered outside the mosque. Even if her mother had conceived her — and whether or not her father had played a part in this — it did not mean that she belonged to them. Blood ties, she felt, were no bond at all, since they were no one’s choice. It was pure chance that she was her mother and father’s daughter; neither she nor they had chosen.

She did not know how she had arrived at this point of view, but she was sure of this one conclusion, that only human choice gives this bond any meaning. And from this she concluded something else: she wanted to establish some kind of bond with Saleem, something that would make him stop and come towards her when he saw her among thousands of others, something that would make her, alone among thousands, stop and come towards him. This deliberate movement towards him was the only thing that would give meaning to that bond, the only thing that would give her life meaning — otherwise what sense did it have?

She had had no clear purpose. She had never known exactly what she wanted from life. All she knew was that she did not want to be Bahiah Shaheen, nor be her mother and father’s daughter; she did not want to go home or to college, and she did not want to be a doctor. She was not interested in money, nor did she long for a respectable husband, children, a house, a palace or anything like that. What did she want then?

Bahiah Shaheen’s mind was not her own. But she had another mind. She could feel it in her head, a swelling thing that filled her skull, impishly and secretly telling her that all these things were worthless and that she wanted something else, something different, unknown but definite, specific yet undefined, something she could draw with the tip of her pen on the blank sheet of paper like an individual black line. But when she looked at it, it became a long line stretching as far and wide as the horizon, with no beginning and no end.

She wandered the streets like a lost soul. Like a particle of air lost among millions of others floating in a void, she surrendered herself to the wind and was blown back and forth. It may have seemed as if she had abandoned herself to the sensation of being lost, as though she relished her own dissolution and annihilation, but inwardly she resisted, tensing her muscles and fending off the random motion. She refused to submit to it; she forbade her feet to move; with all her might she fought to stop.

She found herself standing like a wild pony, her tall slim body erect, her black eyes looking up, her black hair falling over her forehead, ears and the nape of her neck. Her nose was straight and sharp, her lips pursed in anger. She looked round to see where she was. But she had never been here before. Nor had she ever seen the house, nor the people around her, who came and went in a never-ending stream. Nobody knew her and she knew no one. The blood pounded through her heart. Her breath came in great gulps as if she were drowning. Life around her had turned into permanent liquidity, water above and below, and her hands and feet found no solid purchase.