Mitsy kept smiling and continued gently, “Please do not drink from my glass, Your Majesty.”
“And why not?”
“I’m not too well. I have a serious throat infection. My doctor has told me that it is rare but extremely contagious and can be passed on to anyone who comes too close or uses things I have used.”
The king stared at her, his smile vanished and his pupils dilated, apparently unable to take this in. Mitsy took a step back and told him apologetically, “My apologies. It’s just that I am worried about Your Majesty, with all those responsibilities, catching the infection.”
23
“Look, Umm Said,” said Aisha. “If you want Fayeqa to marry yourson, may the name of the Prophet protect him, I will go and fetch her for him myself.”
Umm Said muttered a few words of thanks, but Aisha carried on with gusto, “I know. By God Almighty, were we to search the whole world we would never find better than you. Marrying into your family brings us honor, so you can consider Said and Fayeqa as good as married!”
Umm Said still seemed a little anxious trying to make her point for the last time, “Let me repeat myself, Aisha. Without qualification, no happy ending. No ululations, no guests and no white dress.”
Aisha sighed. “Umm Said,” she said affectionately, “we’ll do whatever makes you happy. With God’s blessing.”
Umm Said had been trumped. She had not expected Aisha to agree to such austere conditions attached to the marriage. There was nothing to say. Umm Said got up to leave, and Aisha gave her a joyful hug and kiss as she walked with her to the door. Umm Said now felt that it had all been a clever trap laid by that wily Aisha and her coquettish daughter and that her son Said had fallen into it, dragging his mother along with him. Aisha had planned and executed the scheme with such cool calculation. She had stood by her so magnanimously after the death of Abd el-Aziz. Then she had sent over her useless daughter to seduce that fool of a boy, Said, and get her claws into him. And now, after all that, Aisha was agreeing to every last condition for the wedding. What a scheming cow she was.
The next Wednesday, the fatiha was read out, and the rings exchanged. The bride’s family had been as obliging as possible on the subject of the dowry, saying that financial matters were the furthest from their mind and that they were only interested in their daughter’s happiness. Aisha gave Umm Said no opportunity to disagree with her, except for one worrying thing that happened. Aisha was visiting Umm Said and let drop that Said had decided to open a savings account with her to set a little aside once he started his job in Tanta. Umm Said’s face turned ashen, but she made no comment.
When she was alone with Said in the apartment, however, she could not control herself and confronted him, “So you intend to start a savings account with Aisha…”
Said looked at her as if to say, “What of it?”
“Please God.” He nodded. “As soon as I have a job and get my first salary.”
His mother stomped over to him, and had he not been taller than her, she would have slapped him.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she shouted hoarsely. “You know we’re short of money. Instead of thinking to help us, you’re saving to help them?”
“It’s not a big thing,” Said said with a smile.
That was his way. He did whatever he wanted and then faced the reactions with complete sangfroid. Once he had decided on a plan of action, there was no reason to get emotional about it. His mother would rant and rave and start crying, but then she would calm down, and that would be the end of the matter.
The preparations for the marriage were going full steam ahead, and two weeks later, on the appointed day, they all went to Friday prayers at the Sayyida Zeinab mosque. As agreed, only the closest relatives were invited. There were no signs of celebration. Umm Said, Aisha and Saleha were still in their mourning clothes. The bride wore a beautiful blue dress with sequins on the sleeves and around the neck. Mahmud, Fawzy, Kamel and the bridegroom, Said, all wore new suits. Ali Hamama, the father of the bride, was beaming in his new brown worsted overcoat, made of English wool, which he wore over a fine beige and brown striped galabiyya, a stark change from his usually unremarkable appearance. In fact, he looked like an actor who was going to take off his glitzy costume the moment the play ended and go back to his shabby everyday clothing. The officiating cleric was a stout man with a compact face so perfectly round that it might have been drawn with a compass.
Ali Hamama reached out and took Said’s hand under a white handkerchief, and then he repeated after the cleric, “I give you my daughter, Fayeqa, who is a virgin of sound mind, according to the religion of God and his Prophet and the rite of Imam Abu Hanifa al-Nu’man, and in accordance with the agreed dowry.”
Instead of the ululations that usually pierce the air at this moment during Egyptian weddings, there was silence. The guests shyly whispered their congratulations, and Umm Said burst out crying. From the moment she entered the mosque, she had been trying to hold herself together, but just when the marriage contract was signed, she broke down. Who could have imagined that Abd el-Aziz, her cousin and her beloved husband, would die in his fifties and not be present at the wedding of his eldest son? How happy he would have been. Would that have been too much to have asked? Would it have upset the order of the world had Abd el-Aziz lived a few years longer and been able to witness his children’s weddings and to know his grandchildren? “May God forgive me,” she kept repeating through her tears. Affected by her mother, Saleha started crying too, followed swiftly by tears from Aisha, genuine or not. Saleha took out a white handkerchief and dabbed her eyes as the male guests tried to comfort the women. When the formalities were over, they all went outside, creating the highly unusual sight of two families departing in silence after the signing of a marriage contract. Fayeqa’s face had none of the dreaminess that one usually sees on a bride, only the steely look of a victor, or an exultant student, who, having studied hard, had gone up to the dais to receive an award. Indeed, Fayeqa had waged a long and hard campaign for the husband who was now standing beside her. She had used every ruse in the book to hitch Said, letting him see what charms were on offer and then retracting them until he submitted. She really felt for him whenever he stood before her almost weeping with desire, pleading with her to give herself to him. She had felt like a mother who had to be cruel to her child in order to be kind. She had done a lot in order to marry Said, and without a moment’s hesitation, she had foregone what all girls dream of: a white wedding dress, a party and the throne that the bride and groom sit on in front of all the guests. She had known both instinctively and from her mother’s advice that any delay in the wedding might see the opportunity slip away forever. Her mother’s voice rang in her ears: “A girl who knows what she’s doing has to bend with the breeze. Obey your mother-in-law. Don’t think of crossing her until the contract is signed.”
After the marriage, the couple spent a week in the Anglo Hotel on Soliman Pasha Street, courtesy of Uncle Ali Hamama, the bride’s father, who deemed this such an unprecedented and historic act of generosity that later he would keep throwing it back in his wife’s face whenever they had an argument. After the honeymoon, the couple carried on living separately in their respective families’ apartments until Said started his job as a teacher in the vocational school in Tanta, where he rented a two-room apartment in al-Geysh Street. As the train gave off a long whistle and left the station carrying the couple to Tanta, then and only then did Said Gaafar’s real life start. He would later feel that his whole life had been no more than a lead-up to his life with Fayeqa. She blossomed in a way that astonished him. From the very first days, she proved her superiority as a lover, a friend, a wife and a lady of the house. He discovered that she was a wonderful cook who never tired of spending long hours in the kitchen. If she tasted a new dish or even heard about one from him, she would not rest until she had found the recipe and mastered it.
She also managed to stretch the modest house budget, wh
ich he handed over to her on the first of the month, after first paying a percentage of his salary into the shared savings account. Bit by bit, she acquired everything they needed for the apartment. She bought a Philips radio and a Singer sewing machine on installments. Using the money in the savings account, she bought a beautiful suite for the sitting room and even managed to save a little for a rainy day. She insisted on saving a maid’s salary by doing all the dusting, cleaning and washing herself, making sure to keep her hands soft with lemon moisturizing cream. Fayeqa turned the apartment into a perfect little home, so clean that it sparkled.
All the energy expended on her homemaking skills, however, had no effect whatsoever on her sex drive. Marriage freed her from any feelings of guilt, and now Said discovered just how good she was in bed. She had all the right ingredients: she was beautiful and soft, she took care of her body, she was voracious and she gave her husband pleasure any which way he wanted, without a shred of inhibition. Had he not been absolutely certain that he was the first man in her life, he might have thought that she was a woman who had learned the art of love from practice. He remembered something she had let slip one day. She told him her mother had explained to her all about sexual relations because most marital quarrels, according to Aisha, could eventually be sorted out in bed if the wife was sufficiently skilled. Fayeqa allowed her husband free rein and played out all his sordid and dirty fantasies so well that at work and outside the apartment he never looked at other women. But all this delirious pleasure came with a price: Fayeqa learned how to whip him up into a frenzy of desire that she would satisfy only when she had him completely under her control. Said tried to avoid ever upsetting her, as he found her anger hard to bear. The couple’s ecstatic physical relationship gradually made them like two footballers scoring goal after goal or a vocal duet whose harmonies take a song to a new level. Fayeqa could now tell her husband’s state of mind from a single glance, from the expressions on his face, his tone of voice, his gait or even the way he was sitting.
One day he was grumbling about how difficult the headmaster was at the school where he was working. “Do you know what, Fayeqa?” he said anxiously. “My whole future is in his hands. One word from him can make or ruin my career.”
Fayeqa gave him a considered look as she pondered the situation. Then she suggested that he invite the headmaster to dinner and find out what he liked to eat.
Said appeared a little hesitant. “The headmaster is on a different level than me. How can I ask him what he likes to eat?”
Fayeqa smiled sympathetically, like a mother suffering her child’s stupidity. She placed her palm on his face, moved closer to him and planted a long, slow kiss on his lips, which made his whole body tingle.
“You can do it, darling,” she said.
The following day, when Said came home, he had an astonished smile on his face.
“Imagine that!” he told her breathlessly. “The headmaster has accepted the invitation. He’s coming with his wife on Friday.”
“Did you ask him what he likes to eat?”
Said could not help laughing. “He told me his favorite is pigeon stuffed with cracked wheat.”
It was time to get to work! Fayeqa got the doorman’s wife to come and help her clean and rearrange the apartment to look its best. Then she took some money from their savings and spent two whole days peeling and chopping away in the kitchen to produce a truly splendid feast. Fayeqa’s pigeon stuffed with crushed wheat was so good that the headmaster not only devoured four whole birds, but, notwithstanding withering looks from his wife, he let out sighs and groans of pleasure that were completely undignified and unbecoming of his position.
Needless to say, the dinner was a rousing success; Fayeqa even managed to strike up a firm friendship with the headmaster’s wife. When the headmaster mentioned his daughter’s high marks in her final examinations, Said’s wife seized the chance and asked him to pass on to her a piece of 21-carat gold jewelry with a Quranic inscription on it by way of congratulations. It was only natural that Said should then receive glowing praise in the headmaster’s reports. Fayeqa’s virtues, then, gave the lie to all those negative images of a dominant wife. On the contrary, many times a controlling wife manages to keep her family strong and the children’s future rosy. There are some husbands who need an energetic wife just as a naughty child needs a strict mother. And there are husbands who would go to the bad without a wife’s supervision, and others who, if they enjoyed too much independence, would end up falling into debauchery, causing grief for themselves and their family. Fayeqa controlled her husband for his own good. She could satisfy his baser instincts by providing what was his to take as a husband, all the while running his life like clockwork, keeping house for him and making his boss so happy that he had given him a pay rise and put his name forward for exceptional promotion.
Fayeqa even set very careful limits on his relationship with his family. On their first visit as a married couple to the old apartment, Said asked his mother expansively if she needed any money. “Thank God, no,” she replied. “We have enough to keep going.” Then she thanked him and showered blessings upon him. She sounded calm and happy, though it was a lie. She was in desperate need but wouldn’t dare ask him in front of his wife, and even had Said insisted, she would have given the same answer. So he took her at her word and changed the subject. The matter was left at that, but on the way back to Tanta, Said noticed Fayeqa looking uneasy beside him in the train carriage. She was sighing, giving only curt responses to him and looking out of the window as if she could not bear to look at him.
“What’s the matter, Fufu?” he asked apprehensively.
That was the pet name he used for her whenever she was upset and he was trying to soothe her, but Fufu did not reply. She sighed, tears glistening in her eyes as she reached for her handkerchief. At that point, Said’s concern turned to anxiety, and he put his hand on her shoulder. She brushed it away.
“Fufu. My darling!” he whispered intently. “By the Prophet, tell me what the matter is?”
When she gave no answer, he repeated the question. Suddenly her face changed and her eyes shot daggers at him. “You!” she said in a voice quivering with anger. “Do you want to spend all your salary on your mother and brothers and sister?”
Said was taken by surprise and answered in a shaky voice, “Of course not. Why would you think that?”
“You offered to give your mother as much money as she needed.”
“It’s my duty to ask her.”
“As the proverb goes, what you need at home you don’t give to the mosque. Your mother, thank God, has got two men supporting her, your brothers, Mahmud and Kamel. I have no one apart from you.”
“Darling, I only asked her if she needed anything. It was just a question.”
“Then I’m glad I’m married to such a paragon of generosity!” she sneered. She turned her back on him and went back to staring out of the window. The gesture expressed anger with a hint of coquettishness. Said tried to calm his wife, cajoling her and making small talk. But Fayeqa only smiled a little and mumbled a few words in response, the look of disgruntlement frozen on her beautiful face.
That night, when the couple went to bed, Fayeqa came out from her usual nightly hot shower with her rosy flesh and her black hair let down. Her red nightdress was completely open at the top and so short that he could see her thighs. As she stood primping in front of the mirror, the silent desire filling the bedroom was so heavy that Said’s vision almost blurred, and he feared his heart would stop. Unable to wait for his wife to finish preening, he got up and embraced her from behind, feeling the smooth flesh of her breasts in his hands. Then he started kissing her all over. Fayeqa gave in to his caresses, moaning and holding him back a little, finally letting herself be led toward the bed. But at the last moment, just as he thought she was about to lie down in front of him, she jumped up as if she had just remembered something and slipped out of his embrace, leaving the overwrought Said panting like a
wild bull. Keeping a little distance between their two bodies, Fayeqa leaned toward him and whispered in his ear, “Said, my dearest. I am your darling wife. Every penny you earn should be for us.”
In his state of overwhelming desire, Said could not get a word out, and to drive the point home and elicit his agreement, Fayeqa whispered again, “Promise me that you won’t spend a single piastre outside our home.”
Said nodded in agreement. Then Fayeqa let him do whatever he wanted with her body as she did everything she could to satisfy him, writhing and working him up to the point of supreme ecstasy twice without stopping.
Thereafter Said made no further offers of help to his mother. Not satisfied with this important achievement, Fayeqa instituted a new regime for visits to her in-laws. At the start she made sure that she and Said went to see them every week, but she gradually reduced the number of visits, telephoning them instead, until their visits to Said’s family took place only when there was a particular event or reason. After these consecutive victories, Fayeqa started behaving like any brilliant military leader developing new strategies. She would advise Said to tell his mother about their visits a few days in advance, the ostensible reason being, of course, that they should not just impose themselves out of the blue on Umm Said. But the real reason was to make the visits serve some useful purpose, in particular that Fayeqa and her husband could take back with them all the provisions that Umm Said would start preparing the moment she knew they were coming. During their visits, Fayeqa would complain about how hard it was to make ends meet in Tanta, where the cost of living was high and Said’s salary meager. She would go on about it so much that Umm Said would end up giving them a box full of ghee, sugar, flour, meat and chicken. Fayeqa, of course, would refuse to take it at first, but Umm Said would insist. Fayeqa would then grudgingly give in and hand the box to her husband while thanking Umm Said in a slightly offhand way so that she would not think her donations were indispensable. Of course Umm Said was not unaware of Fayeqa’s maneuvering and scheming. Deep down, she almost admired her wiliness and wondered where the girl had learned all her tricks. As for Said, she knew that he was too selfish to be depended on, but, as with all mothers, she was prepared to overlook her son’s shortcomings in order to keep his affection and to be able to see him, if only occasionally.