On the eve of the wedding her mother came to thank him. He studied her face curiously and saw an old woman with traces of past beauty lingering still on her features. He stared at her in suppressed anger. “Is everything all right?” he asked.
“Thanks to God and yourself.”
“Why are you in such a rush?”
“She’s been engaged to him since she was born,” she said resignedly.
As she went he cursed her silently, and wondered sadly what stops people doing what they want to do.
14.
Zahira married Abd Rabbihi the baker in a modest ceremony. He had not seen her since she was six but had grown used to thinking of her as a wife. When he saw her on their wedding night he was shocked by her beauty, but he was charged with traditional knowledge and advice which obliged him to assume a firm and lordly air. He was twenty-one years old, tall and muscular, a typical local man with his prominent cheekbones, flattened nose, and thick mustache. His head was shaved smooth and shiny as a pebble except for a luxuriant lock of hair at the front. He recited a few prayers, then assumed a brusque, somewhat rough manner to appear intimidating and hide the sweetness inside.
She marveled at his virility, succumbed to the heat of his passion, and yielded to him as if to fate.
She found herself living in a basement flat, consisting of one room and an entrance hall which served as both kitchen and bathroom. She thought about the paradise she had lost but her instinct told her that she had been a visitor passing through, not a permanent resident there. This basement was her home and her destiny. Here she possessed a man, and would realize her dreams and find peace of mind.
15.
Love had taken over Abduh’s heart and almost destroyed his cover, but he went to great lengths to demonstrate his masculinity. Before the first month was out, he asked her, “Are you going to sit at home all day like a lady of leisure?”
“What would you like me to do?”
“Satan finds work for idle hands!”
16.
That was how Zahira became an itinerant seller of sweetmeats. Enveloped in a blue work gallabiyya, she paraded the streets crying, “Turkish delight! Come on, boys and girls!”
By being free to wander the streets, Zahira discovered who she was. She became aware of her power and charm. Eyes devoured her, tongues sang her praises, her appearance enchanted and provoked. She was strong, spoiled by nature, and pampered and flattered by the people she met. She rebuffed amorous advances with disdain, and her self-confidence grew.
17.
The bond between her and Abd Rabbihi grew stronger. He was her man and she was his goddess. He treated her with conventional male superiority but found her as tough as she was affectionate, as quick to anger as she was loyal and faithful. She bore him a son, Galal, and the sweet wine of motherhood flowed through her veins, bringing her new happiness.
18.
Abd Rabbihi used to deliver bread to Madame Raifa.
“Why do you let your wife roam the streets?” she asked him one day.
“We have to make a living, madame,” he said humbly.
“There are many ways to earn a living. I’m on my own and I could do with a maid. Working for me would pay better and keep her away from the wickedness of the streets.”
Abd Rabbihi was taken aback and asked in some confusion, “What about the child?”
“I’d never separate a mother and child,” she said coaxingly.
His ambition got the better of him and he said quickly, “Mother, father, and child are at your service.”
19.
“Madame Raifa!” murmured Zahira apprehensively.
“She’s very rich and she’s all alone,” said Abd Rabbihi.
“But she’s Aziza’s mortal enemy!”
“That’s nothing to do with us, and working for her is easier and more lucrative than begging in the alley with a basket on one arm and a child on the other.”
“I’d prefer to work for Aziza.”
“But she hasn’t asked you, which means she doesn’t want you,” said Abd Rabbihi irritably.
Zahira said nothing but her dream of paradise was reawakened.
20.
Aziza erupted in fury when she heard the news. “That girl’s always in a rush!” she exclaimed.
“She didn’t mean to annoy you. She’s just trying to earn a living,” said Ulfat.
“We should have priority!”
“She has a child who’s not old enough to be left,” protested Ulfat, “and if he came with her he might bring germs.”
Aziz followed the conversation with interest. He sensed that his wife would not be happy if Zahira came back and felt a pang of unease, as if an accusing finger was pointing at him.
“Ulfat’s hit the nail on the head,” he declared resolutely.
21.
Zahira was combing Raifa’s hair in the sitting room when a servant came in to announce the arrival of Muhammad Anwar. From comments of Raifa’s, Zahira knew that the visitor was her stepson and that he remained loyal to her even after her visits to Rummana in prison had become common knowledge. The man entered shortly afterward, greeted them, and handed her a neat package, saying, “Caviar for madame!”
Raifa beamed with delight. Muhammad was a young man of average height with pleasant features, wearing a beautiful cloak and caftan.
“You’re good to me, Muhammad,” she said.
“I wanted you to taste it before any of my customers,” he declared gaily.
“When are you going to let me pay for it like the rest of the caviar lovers?” she teased.
“When the sun rises in the west,” he said.
He drank from a glass of cinnamon tea full of nuts. Raifa burst out laughing. “You’re a good man, Muhammad,” she repeated.
As he sipped the tea, his eyes fell on Zahira, still busily arranging her mistress’ hair. He could hardly believe what he saw, and fastened his eyes on his glass as if to escape the vision. “God protect me from His creation,” he breathed.
“How’s business?” asked Raifa.
He extricated himself from his reverie. “Excellent, thanks.”
Zahira noticed him looking at her with shining eyes, imploring, and smiled inwardly.
22.
Muhammad Anwar frequented Raifa’s house at every possible opportunity. His visits became a matter of routine for Zahira, like his passionate glances. He was careful to avoid rousing the slightest suspicion in Raifa’s mind, according her household the loyalty and respect it deserved. Every man who saw Zahira went crazy over her. She became convinced that she was the best-looking woman in the alley. And she was a Nagi like the great merchant Aziz! It was strange how people’s lives turned out. One woman ended up in a big house, another in a basement. One got a rich businessman, another a baker. She herself had decided her fate when she was blind. Even her instinctive attachment to her husband did not satisfy her. Life wasn’t a cycle of desire and motherhood. It wasn’t poverty and hard work and pretending to enjoy serving a rich old lady. It wasn’t possessing an amazing strength, then squandering it doing servile work. Inside she was changing, slowly but persistently. A movement each day, a jump each week, and a great bound each month. She was discovering herself layer by layer. From within her sprang all sorts of creatures, resolute and ready for action. In her imagination she interrogated her mother and her husband, questioned her home, her lot in life. She resented everything that demanded her to be content: the handed-down wisdom, the old lady’s kindness, her husband’s male prowess. She had drunk a burning draft of elixir which had inflamed her imagination, intoxicated her, and made a new dawn blaze into life.
“Have you heard the news?” said Muhammad Anwar to Raifa one day. “A woman’s the new clan chief in Birgawan!”
“I’d like to see a woman toppling the men,” laughed Raifa.
Zahira gave an admiring smile and inside her a secret fire stirred. Muhammad Anwar flung her a desperate, entreating look and she suddenly wondered
if it would take a man like him to realize her dream. Her heart gave her no indication of the answer. She appraised him dispassionately and was struck forcibly by the idea that a woman’s weakness is her emotions; and that her relationships with men should be rational and calculated. Life is precious, with vast possibilities, limitless horizons. Love is nothing more than a blind beggar, creeping around the alleyways. She sighed and said to herself, “The only thing worse than having bad luck is putting up with it.”
23.
Zahira was feeding Galal when Muhammad Anwar suddenly rushed into the room. She thrust her breasts inside her dress, and pulled the veil more tightly around her head and face, full of embarrassment. He looked agitatedly at her, then asked, “Where’s Madame Raifa?”
She was sure he was being devious—he must have seen Raifa passing his shop in the carriage, but she answered politely, “She’s gone out.”
He hesitated, then said, “Perhaps I’ll wait for her. No, I should come back later, shouldn’t I?”
“Goodbye, then,” she answered firmly, not bothering to go through the motions of courtesy.
But he had no intention of going. He was transfixed by an overwhelming force. He moved closer, his eyes wild, full of frantic desire. She stepped back, frowning. He moved closer again.
“No,” she said sharply.
“Zahira!” he muttered derangedly.
“If you don’t go, I will!” she exclaimed.
“Have pity on me. I…I love you.”
“I’m not a whore.”
“God forbid! I love you.” He retreated, scared by the specter of Raifa, and as he turned to go, he sighed, “How can I marry a woman who’s already married?”
24.
She lived in a whirl of revolt and anticipation. Life had to change. She possessed the strength to alter the boundaries of her existence. Every minute without change was a victory for submission and hopelessness. But how could she start to fight? She seized her chance when Raifa was suffering a bad headache. “I could stay the night,” she volunteered.
“What would your husband say?”
“He won’t die of fright if he spends the night alone!”
Two hours after the time she normally returned from work, Abd Rabbihi came to find out what had happened.
“Madame’s ill,” she explained.
He was silent, unsure what to say. “Don’t you think you should have let me know?” he said at last with some bitterness.
“Madame’s ill! Can’t you understand?” she snapped back angrily.
25.
When she returned to the basement the following evening, Abd Rabbihi realized that Raifa had only been slightly unwell and there had been no need for Zahira to spend the night with her. A wave of anger engulfed him. “She didn’t really need you. She’s got a house full of servants,” he said.
She reacted furiously, looking for any excuse to be angry with him. “Is that my reward for doing someone a kindness?” she retorted.
“Your behavior gets worse every day. You’re not to go back to that house,” he said resolutely.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“To hell with the house and its mistress!” he shouted.
“I’m not ungrateful like you,” she screamed back.
He struck her across the face and stormed out.
Zahira was beside herself with rage. Her suppressed resentment burst to the surface. She threw a final dismissive glance around the room. The blow preoccupied her entirely and grew in her mind until it took over her emotions and deadened her senses. Indifferent to Galal’s screams, she drummed her fists on the bed.
She walked away from the basement with the child, consigning the past to oblivion.
26.
Madame Raifa was surprised at her returning so quickly, only an hour after she had left.
“Have you got room for me, madame?” asked the girl.
“Why, for goodness’ sake?”
“I can’t live with that man any longer,” she said miserably.
Raifa shook her head wonderingly, and Zahira went on, “He was going to stop me working for you.”
“How ungrateful of him!” burst out Raifa angrily.
“And he hit me.”
“He’s a beast. He doesn’t know what a treasure he has.” She thought for a little, then said, “But I don’t like to break up families.”
“I know what I’m doing,” insisted Zahira.
Raifa smiled. “Make yourself at home then, Zahira.”
27.
Abd Rabbihi the baker fidgeted with embarrassment under Madame Raifa’s gaze. He mumbled apologetically but remained fixed on his goal, stubborn, full of male pride.
“So what if I hit her?” he said. “She’s not permanently damaged.”
“You’re at fault, and you’re stupid too,” she said virulently.
“She must come back with me now,” he insisted, still polite.
“When you’ve learned her worth and not before,” said Raifa sharply.
He forced himself to leave. He had begun to see his surroundings through a red haze of anger.
28.
Abd Rabbihi sat in the bar taking deep swigs from the calabash and wiping his mustache on the sleeve of his blue gallabiyya. All he could talk about was Zahira. “She’s run off and taken the boy with her.”
“You’ve got no guts,” said a drunk.
“Madame Raifa encouraged her,” he objected angrily.
“Act like a man,” advised Sanqar al-Shammam.
“What do you mean?”
“Divorce her!”
His face twitched with anger. “I could kill a woman with no trouble at all.”
Nuh al-Ghurab, the clan chief, guffawed loudly and slapped him good-naturedly on the back. “What a hero!”
His anger subsided and he said meekly, “I’ll take advice from my master.”
“Trample her underfoot until she’s like a wornout rug,” said Nuh, his eyes red from drink and drugs.
“Divorce will bring you peace of mind,” said Gibril al-Fas.
“Divorce is useless in a case like this,” said Nuh.
“Who said that marriage is half of religion?” demanded Abd Rabbihi. “It seems more likely to make you commit sins!”
29.
Abd Rabbihi went reeling through the darkness and came to a halt under Madame Raifa’s windows. He was inflamed with drink and anger. The conventions of masculinity and the overwhelming urgings of his love struggled against one another in his overloaded heart. “Come down here, Zahira,” he shouted hoarsely.
He was having difficulty keeping on his feet and the strength began to flow out of him. He called again: “I’ve got the fire of the baker’s oven and the demons from the archway on my side.”
A window opened and Khalil al-Dahshan, the imam of the mosque, looked out.
“Who’s that madman out there?” he demanded angrily.
“It’s me—Abd Rabbihi, the baker.”
“Get out of here, you drunkard.”
“I want my wife. The law’s on my side.”
“Stop making such a racket around the houses of respectable people.”
“Will I only get justice from the devil then?”
“Go to hell.”
Abd Rabbihi flung himself at Raifa’s door, beating on it with his fists, until Sheikh Gibril came down from his house and hauled him away, protesting, “Stop it! You’re crazy! Come with me. I’ll try and put in a good word for you with madame.”
30.
Gibril found Raifa in a wild fury. Now Zahira was not the only one to have a quarrel with Abduh.
“That miserable baker,” she fumed.
“He’s only too ready to serve you,” said the sheikh.
“Didn’t you see his effrontery? Am I going to hand her back to him and let him have his revenge?”
“I really think he loves her.”
“Animals don’t know what love is!”
“What if he tries to use
the law to make her go back?”
“Let him do his worst!”
31.
Nuh summoned Abd Rabbihi to the café where he held court. He looked hard at him, then said imperiously, “Divorce the woman!”
Abd Rabbihi was astounded. Despair engulfed him. He realized that Raifa knew how to get her own back. The chief found his silence oppressive and roared, “Have you lost your tongue?”
“Didn’t you say, sir,” he began modestly, “that divorce was useless in a case like mine?”
“You’re useless,” mocked the chief.
“The law’s on my side, sir.”
“Divorce her, Abd Rabbihi,” said the chief in a dismissive tone.
32.
The divorce took place. Abd Rabbihi was dragged toward it like a condemned man to the gallows. The dream was over, the precious jewel lost. Zahira was drunk with victory and the joy of freedom. At the same time she felt a twinge of regret inside her for the passion that was lost to her forever. She held Galal tightly to her breast, fruit of a love she knew had been precious. Her ambition quickly reasserted itself and her personality was clearly revealed: hard, steeped in pride and suffering.
“I get what I want when I make up my mind,” boasted Raifa happily.
True. She was a strong, influential woman. But she would not have had her way without recourse to the clan chief. The power of the clan chief: eternal subject of fantasy, fatal source of unhappiness for the Nagi family, summit crowned with shining stars!
33.
She smiled encouragingly.
“Congratulations on regaining your freedom and honor,” said Muhammad Anwar, the man with the caviar.
Taking his chance when Raifa went to attend to some business he whispered, “I’m waiting.” His eyes gleamed with desire and he persevered with his plea: “I want to do it legally.”