I Think of You: Stories (5 page)

The red car went slowly up the east side of the square. Behind the mosque another building was coming up. The floors that had been completed were already graying as the rest were piled on top of them. A placard proclaimed the project:
THE FIRST ISLAMIC INSTITUTE IN THE GOVERNORATE OF GIZA
.

Between them, the Mosque of Ismail and the Islamic Institute took up five-sixths of the garden. Aisha looked at the strip that was left. The few trees were dusty and the grass was sparse and yellow. The whole place was strewn with bricks, cement, steel rods of varying lengths, and mounds of sand. There was no one about. It felt more like a demolition than a construction site. She wondered about the frogs they used to hear at night. And the crickets. Where had they gone? Had they all moved into the sixth of semi-garden that was left? And what did they do about territorial rights? How could they coexist in such a drastically reduced space? But then, maybe they didn’t. Maybe the strong had overcome the weak and a race of superfrogs was now living in the remains of the garden. The builders of the Mosque of Ismail and the First Islamic Institute in the Governorate of Giza were helping evolution along.

The road was bumpy and dotted with potholes. Some of the potholes were full of stagnant water. Aisha looked around her. She remembered a bright winter day, a motor scooter wobbling under her as she tried to ride it down a smooth road. Finally it had collapsed on its side and she had fallen, one leg caught under the little Vespa. Everyone had run to her, but she had picked herself up and tried again. She looked around. You’d be mad to try to learn to ride a motor scooter down this road now.

She arrived at the top of the square. Six years ago their house had been the only one along the north side. Pretty, in five stories of reddish brown and beige, it had looked over the garden. Now it was flanked by tall apartment blocks and so stood diminished, looking bleakly out over the dusty road and the Pepsi-Cola kiosk that had sprung up on the pavement in front of it.

Aisha looked around for a place to park. There were no trees to cast any shade and one side of the road was much like the other. She pulled the car over to what used to be the curb and stepped out into a sand heap. She shook the sand from her shoes. The curious heads hanging out of windows were still there, but now a number of them were covered in the white Islamic headdress that was spreading so rapidly. Did they belong to the same people as six years ago? Or different? Younger sisters, perhaps, daughters? Out of the corner of her eye she could not tell. Ignoring them, as she had always done, she walked purposefully in.

The tall glass doors were still there. Miraculously they had not yet been broken. The marble-floored lobby was clean, but

there were no plants in the pots and there were cigarette ends on the dry, cracked earth. A strange man in a striped galabiya was sweeping the marble floor. She wished him good day. He answered sullenly, leaning on his broom, waiting for her to pass.

“Are you the doorman here now?” she asked.

“God willing,” he replied briefly.

“Where are Abdu and Amna?” she persevered.

“Abdu? They took him into the army long ago. And Amna has gone to live with her folk in the village.”

“Oh.”

She started climbing the stairs. She wanted to ask more. Had Abdu and Amna finally had their much-desired baby? Or were they still barren? What had Abdu done about learning to read? They had been incorporated into her dream of coming home, these two. She had even gone down to Mothercare and looked for Babygros for Amna’s longed-for child.

Repeatedly she had imagined in detail the scene of her homecoming. It would be the beginning of the academic year, a warm October day. She would drive up to this door with Saif. Abdu would jump up and come running out, wearing his broad grin and his white peasant’s underwear, his eyes and teeth shining in his dark face, crying, “Praise God for your safe return, Sitt Aisha!” He would grab her hand and try to kiss it while she protested and insisted on shaking his hand. “How are you, Abdu? How are you doing? And how is Amna?” And hearing the noise, Amna would look out from the room below the stairs and, seeing her, come out tying
her colored kerchief around her hair, her slow, shy smile spreading over her pretty face. And she too would praise God for her safe return and ask, “Have you come to stay with us for good now?” And when Aisha answered yes, Amna would say, “You fill the house with light.” They would carry her cases upstairs. They would all have to make two journeys because there would be a lot of luggage after such a long stay abroad. Later, she would unpack and come down to give Abdu and Amna their presents: for Amna a dress length of brightly patterned synthetic material with the trimmings and buttons to match, and for Abdu a watch. And if there should be a child …

She had arrived at her floor. The passage was dark. The old worn-out key was ready in her hand, but she could not see the keyhole. She reached out blindly and the key immediately fitted into the lock. Is it coincidence? she wondered. Did I just happen to find the lock? Or does my hand remember? She turned the key. It was a little stiff but the door opened. She felt a surge of irritation. Typical. Going away for two weeks and not bothering to double-lock the door. Then she remembered. It’s nothing to do with me.

She pushed the door open and a forgotten but familiar smell met her. She stood still. It couldn’t be. She had always thought it was the smell of fresh paint and that as the flat grew older it would vanish. For the year that they had lived in the flat it had constantly been there and she had thought, With time it will go. Time had come and time had gone and the smell was still there. Maybe he’d had the flat repainted? Her
hand, moving along the wall, found the light switch. No, it had not been repainted. The walls were the same: olive green on one side, beige on the other. It must be a ghost smell, she thought. Like a ghost limb. When they cut off your legs you go on feeling the cramps in your toes. Only now they are incurable. I’m smelling fresh paint because I’m used to smelling it. It’s not
really
here, but I’m smelling it.

Her eyes traveled along the entrance hall and fell on the white marble basin in the middle of the green living room wall. A sheet of cardboard had been laid across it and balanced on it were some telephone directories. What plans they had had for it. It was to be a small fountain, the wall behind it to be inlaid with antique ceramic tiles and its pedestal surrounded by plants in large brass urns. They had had to wait— a question of money. But the basin had been there. It was the very first thing they had bought for the house. Wandering down the old bazaar one day, they had found it thrown carelessly into the dusty corner of a junk shop. The owner had wanted ten pounds, but they had got it for eight. All three pieces: the basin, the back panel, and its pedestal. They had carried the heavy marble carefully to the car and later she had made inquiries about getting it scoured and polished. Someone recommended a shop in Taht el-Rab’ and she had gone with her mother-in-law. When they got there it turned out that the man specialized in cleaning tombstones. Saif ’s mother had been shocked and urged her not to leave the basin with him. But she had laughed. No omen could dim her happiness, no headstone mar their future, and she had left
the marble basin to be cleaned among the winged angels and the inscribed plaques. Later it had been fixed—with its beautiful shell-like back panel—into the green wall. And sometimes she had filled it with water and put in it a small machine that made a miniature fountain. It had always delighted their friends, and she had sat on the black rocking chair and watched it for hours.

She craned her neck. The rocking chair was there. In exactly the same position she had left it six years ago: angled by the French windows under the smaller bookshelves. A present from her white-haired professor of poetry, it had arrived three days after the wedding with a huge bouquet and had immediately become her favorite seat.

She stepped inside the flat and closed the door quietly behind her. It needed oiling. The handle was hard to turn. She faced the darkened flat and felt it tilt. She headed quickly left down the long corridor to the bathroom. She did not switch on the light but crouched in front of the toilet, retching. She wondered whether the cistern worked. It did. That had always been a good thing about the flat: they’d never had trouble with the plumbing.

Washing out her mouth she glanced up and saw her reflection dimly in the large mirror hanging beside her. She looked. It had been part of a Victorian hall stand which she had found in a junk shop and he had declared hideous. So they had compromised: the top and bottom of the stand had been cut away and disposed of, and the mirror with the intricately carved frame now hung suspended on the wall. She
switched on the light, then went back to the mirror. The reflection staring back at her was not the one she was used to seeing there. The changes moved into focus. A slimmer face framed by shorter, more curly, though still black hair. A string of now-taken-for-granted pearls shone around her neck. She fingered the pearls. She remembered a hotel bedroom in Paris and the wonder and delight when the pearls were thrown into her lap as she sat up in bed. He had created Paris for her. As he had created Rome. Then he had stopped. Brussels, Vienna, Athens. They were all untouched by his magic. Why? They had still been together. She shook her head. Her expression too was different. The open, expectant look was gone. Instead there was—what? Repose? Something that people took for serenity. But she knew. She knew it was frail as an eggshell. She shook her head again and looked around. The shower curtains and matching bits and pieces had been bought in Beirut. Such a tight budget. And onion soup: her first taste of
soupe à l’oignon gratinée
eaten with melba toast in the Hotel Martinez at one o’clock in the morning as they’d planned their shopping list for the next day. She had loved it. The thin strands of the
gratinée
stretching as she pulled the spoon away from the dish, the melba toast crisply cutting through them. Could it all come back again? she wondered. She stroked her pearls.

She put her hand out to the mirror. She lightly traced the outline of her face with her finger. But the mirror was a wall between herself and the warm flesh behind it. She could not feel the contours of her face: the nose marked no rise, the lips
no difference in texture. And it was cold. Her finger still on the mirror, it came to her that that was an apt metaphor for her relationship with him. She could see him, sense his contours and his warmth, but whenever she made a move to touch him, there would be a smooth, consistent surface. It was transparent, but it was unbreakable. At times she had felt he put it there on purpose and she had been furiously resentful. At others it had seemed that he was trapped behind it and was looking to her to set him free. She stood very still. Twice in the year she had lived in this flat she had locked herself in here: squeezing herself into the corner behind the door and crying till she could not breathe. Twice he had not come looking for her, and when she had finally crept out, exhausted, she had found him comfortable within his cloud of blue smoke in the living room, reading, with Bob Dylan on the record player. The bad times seemed to have been a succession of bathrooms. Hotel bathrooms all over the world had seen her locked in, head over the bowl, crying, or simply sitting on the tiled floor reading through the night while he slept alone, unknowing, in large double beds that mocked her.

She turned and walked back through the corridor to the living room. The cane-backed sofa and armchairs sat quietly in the dark. She crossed over to the sofa and sat down, feeling again the softness of the down-filled green-velvet-covered cushions. She examined them closely. The feathers were still escaping from the seams. Years ago, she had thought, In a couple of years all the feathers will have gone! But here she
was, six years later, and they were still there and still escaping. She looked around. The books were all in place: economics and electronics to the left, art and literature to the right, and in the middle, history. The paperbacks were in the smaller bookcase built into the wall. On its lowest shelf were the records. There were far more albums there now than before. And the music center was new too. The old, battered record player had ended up with her. Together with a few of the old records.

She lifted her eyes to the wall above the music center. Her portrait had gone. Painted when she was twenty-one and given to them both as a wedding present. He had vowed he would always keep it, and when he had a study of his own he would hang it there. Now it hung in her parents’ home, in her father’s study. In its place was an old Syrian tapestry. It showed the Arab knight and poet Antar on horseback, and his beloved cousin Abla in a litter on a camel’s back. Abla had been on a journey and Antar was proudly escorting her back to their settlement. His horse pranced, tail swishing and neck arched high, and Abla peeped coyly out to smile at him from behind the canopies of her litter. On one side were inscribed the verses:

And I remembered you
When battle raged
And as lance and scimitar
Raced for my blood
I longed to kiss
Their glinting edges
Shining like your smiling mouth

and on the other:

I am the lord’s knight
Famed throughout the land
For a sure hand with the lance
And the Indian sword.

They had bought it in Damascus. One day, wandering down the labyrinth of narrow streets that made up the covered market surrounding the Umaynad Mosque, they had come across a tiny shop selling fabrics and tapestries. They had gone in and spent time looking over the materials and she had spotted this one in black and gold. She had laughed as she showed it to him. “This could be your motto. He thought a lot of himself, like you.” For a moment he had been defensive. Then he had trusted in her good faith and laughed and bought it.