by Emily Danby
‘I am the Mirror, and which one of us knows the other better than the other knows herself? Quick, we’ve only a few moments to talk.’
‘I know I’m imagining things. It’s all a dream. No, not a dream; it’s just my subconscious showing itself to me for a while.’ Hanan told herself, preening before the mirror. She perched on the edge of the bed, gazing into the mirror’s smooth surface as though searching in some far-off place for someone unfamiliar.
‘I didn’t throw her out! I couldn’t possibly have thrown her out! She’s still asleep in her room. She’s waiting for daylight, to start work.’
Hanan whacked the mirror. She stared into the two piercing eyes which glared back at her.
‘I haven’t even left my room! They’re just images! Images rotating in my exhausted brain,’ she said, shaking her head violently.
Hanan slapped her chest and pursed her lips. She groped at her arms and breasts, then grabbed the mirror on both sides, clasped it in her arms and shouted, ‘He’s still snoring, the old crocodile. There’s no way she’d even go near him, never mind wrap herself around him like that. She couldn’t have made herself get anywhere near his cold body, could she?’
She moved away from the mirror, lit a cigarette and drew back the curtain, watching the birds as their shapes changed and they became tiny, multi-coloured specks. A few white clouds made various shapes in the sky. For a moment she imagined there was someone watching her, sitting atop the clouds. Hanan closed the curtain and jumped onto the bed. After steadying her feet, she stared recklessly into the mirror, where another woman appeared, her appearance much like Hanan’s. The woman whispered to her, hissing almost:
‘You’re lying to yourself though, aren’t you? You’re jealous of her – a lowly servant, a nobody. She’s got you talking to yourself. Who gets jealous of a skinny, low-life servant who fucks an old man, who devours his dick like a... like a whore? She’s eating away at your insides. She’s eating away at you like a maggot, sucking dry the sweetness inside of you.’
Hanan sobbed. ‘I just want to hold her close to me!’ she cried out, her voice hoarse. Her skin itched. She groped at her thighs and tugged hard at her hair, yelping in pain. Imagining a voice calling her, Hanan bounded towards the window. She drew back the curtains and opened the window. Eyes loomed amongst the clouds, peering down at her. She shut the curtain again and inhaled the scent of her bed sheets.
‘Are you mad? You saw her with your own eyes. She was in his bed. It’s just your subconscious, you stupid bitch. You know what the subconscious can do to a woman disturbed by the unsightly things she’s witnessed.’
‘But I didn’t see anything unsightly. Aliyah is so slight, so soft and she’s got no one to turn to now. She’ll have to live on the streets.’
‘She’s just a pair of hands. Replace her!’ screamed the other woman from inside the mirror.
Hanan stopped on the tips of her toes, pulling at her hair and shuddering. She tried to close her mouth so that she could no longer hear the words coming from her own voice. She clung to the mirror, concealing the ghostly figure with her palms.
Hanan retreated from the mirror and hid in her bed, curling her body up into a ball and pulling the covers over her head. Her eyes remained open, staring back from the mirror. Closing them, she began sobbing, her body shaking. She stopped up her ears with the sheets but the voice grew louder.
‘It wasn’t a dream. Run downstairs – his flesh is covered with the traces of her saliva; the imprint of her lips is all over his skin. Look at yourself, you miserable wretch! Cry all you want, your days have turned to nightmares!’
Hanan threw the covers onto the floor and jumped up on the bed. She stood upright on the mattress, fell and attempted to get up again. In an instant, the bed seemed to become a pool of moving sand and she could barely get her footing before it quaked under her feet and she was on her knees again.
‘Don’t say a word,’ the mirror threatened. ‘Don’t talk to me about torment; I know it far better than you. I keep it stored away here in its velvet boxes. Look at me. Press on my heart, then you’ll know. Do it, before I break you; before I reduce you to splinters. Do you really think you are a living, breathing being? You’re nothing but emptiness and thin air. You never even existed. But if you just do the right thing, you can be free of your agonies. All you have to do is stick the blade into your heart. Isn’t it enticing? Go on, do it.’
Hanan struck out at her heart in the mirror and gave a loud laugh, delight sketching its way across her face. Suddenly she frowned and pressed her lips together.
‘I won’t do it. I’m not sure of anything.’
‘Liar! You’re lying. Ever since you were a little girl, you’ve lied and faked those pallid smiles, so that everyone would gather round you and applaud. And now where’s it got you? Prisoner to a dirty little maid.’
‘I’m begging you, get away from me! Why are your eyes so yellow? And why is your hair a mass of monstrous snakes?’
Hanan finally stood up from the pool of shifting sand and took a few heavy steps. She felt like a tiny ant. Everything around her grew longer and wider: the bed was the size of a train, the mirror as big as the sky and the ground below was a pit which she fell deeper into with every step, unable to keep upright. She began to tremble hard, shaking uncontrollably.
Hanan collapsed onto the mattress.
‘I can’t do it. I miss her! Why did I throw her out like that? Had I lost my mind? Maybe she’ll come back. She’ll knock on the door in a few minutes, for sure. She’s got nowhere to go, nowhere very far from me.’
‘Go on then, burn in your own hell; it’ll eat you up and make her the new mistress of the household. You won’t even know who you are then.’
Hanan jumped up once more, then struck the mirror, which gave out a loud noise, accompanying the howling wind as it sent the curtains flying into the room. Such a morning wind in the heart of summer seemed strange, she thought.
‘You’re lying. You know I’ve never asked for anything from life. I just want her to come back.’
As Hanan sat on the floor, out of the mirror there stepped an old woman whose appearance was much like her own. It was her mother, emerging from the depths, scowling straight at her daughter. Frightened, Hanan pulled the sheets over her head once more just as Aliyah had done as she fled the streak of light.
Hanan heard the howl of the wind once more and her mother vanished with the billowing curtains.
Every now and then, Aliyah looked back towards her mistress’s window, hoping it would open suddenly, Hanan waving out, calling her to return. But the window stayed shut, and her high heels were of little use in helping her to walk steadily.
Aliyah felt the cold make her skin quiver. Her bag was heavy. She wasn’t sure exactly what she had thrown inside before leaving. She remembered slipping the photograph in first – a faded photograph with tattered edges – and four old volumes of her favourite title: A Thousand and One Nights. Aliyah had never forgotten the name in all of the years she had spent in her mistress’s service. She had stolen the book by stealth, after she had been forbidden to enter the library; from it she had learnt how to draw the stories in pictures. She called the book ‘the grandmother’ after the television had shown her the power of grandmothers to turn their tasks into acts of domestic magic when they told stories to their grandchildren. Aliyah would dream that she was a spoilt granddaughter, whose grandmother would put on her gold-rimmed reading glasses, sit next to her copper-framed bed and tell her stories. In the middle of the night, she turned her fantasy to reality.
This dream had prompted Aliyah to create a little theatre on her bed. She would hold the book, sitting dignified, like a grandmother. Then, putting on the glasses which she had stolen from her mistress’s chest of drawers, she would gently clear her throat and read, her voice soft but clear. The glasses caused a few problems; they were sunglasses, with dark lenses which made it difficult to read. So that the tinted lenses wouldn’t obstruct her view,
Aliyah pushed the glasses to the end of her nose. Then she would read, pausing between passages to look to her left and talk to her imaginary granddaughter Aliyah. After they had finished their conversation, she would put the book aside, lie down and plead with her grandmother not to stop reading until the night was over and Scheherazade saw the light of day. Aliyah had memorised all of the stories in the book and knew all of the characters. She would weep for the beautiful princesses and for the lovers and, day by day, she became ever more infatuated with the heroine. She longed to act like Scheherazade, if only there were someone who’d take notice!
Aliyah no longer just narrated the stories; she had become talented at drawing them and acting them out. Sometimes she would mutter the spells she had memorised to ward off evil spirits and keep herself safe. She would play the wicked sorceress, guarding a sullen expression throughout the day as she peered at those around her with apprehension and suspicion. Every now and then, Aliyah would exhale all of the air from her lungs in one great breath, like a dragon. This, amongst other things, made the cook keep her distance; she swore to her husband that the filthy, black servant girl was mad, that she’d been possessed by the Djinn.
The book became Aliyah’s secret garden. She couldn’t bear to leave it behind, even though it was heavy and the pages were tattered, even though she was afraid that the master and mistress would accuse her of theft. It didn’t matter; she would take it with her. She wrapped it up in a few shirts and tossed it into the bottom of her bag. On top of the book she put her drawings of the stories she had memorised, which she had stored secretly, along with the red velvet, gold-rimmed notebook. Aliyah had held on to the notebook ever since she had started to keep a diary of her days in the house, realising too how important it was that she put her memories of the district of al-Raml down in writing. The idea came to her as she sat in the beautiful library, where she had taken to spending whatever hours remained of the day. The library, which opened onto a spacious balcony, was home to Hanan and Anwar’s hundreds of books of different types and sizes.
Aliyah had started to toy with the books as she cleaned the library. With the days that passed she read more and more of them, until the master and mistress realised that the servant girl, who disappeared towards the end of every day, was gnawing at the books like a mouse. After that, they forbade her from loitering in the library, so Aliyah resorted to trickery, carrying a book beneath her dress and going upstairs, then locking herself in her room to devour it with delight. In the morning she would return it in just the same way.
Aliyah began writing down everything that happened to her, keeping a diary in the velvet notebook which she had stolen from amongst the books. It was that same notebook which she stroked against her cheek during the many lonely evenings she spent waiting for her mother, imagining that the touch of soft velvet against her cheek was similar to the joy she would feel well up inside her the moment she caught sight of her mother’s faint smile.
After placing the tattered photograph inside the velvet cover, Aliyah had begun to stuff her bag at random with whatever was within her reach: pieces of jewellery that her mistress had brought her from Beirut and the embroidered chiffon nightdresses filling her wardrobe. As she wrestled with her possessions it dawned on her that, besides the clothes for sleeping or for housework which filled her wardrobe, all she owned was a pair of blue jeans and a white shirt.
From this load which weighed her down, it was the tattered photograph that Aliyah wanted to hold onto more than anything else. The photograph was the only material evidence she had to prove that she was not born from nothing, that once upon a time she had belonged to a family, even if she had stubbornly lived her life in her imagination.
Aliyah brought back to mind everything she could see in the photograph, particularly the piece of chocolate. She prodded at the bag, then came to a stand-still and looked back. The window seemed smaller than it had done a few minutes before. Sitting under a tree close beside a marble wall she held her bag in her lap. Opening the bag, she decided to rest a little while longer. Perhaps her mistress would change her mind and open her window.
Aliyah started to toy with her belongings again. She pulled the photograph out and held it carefully in her hands. In the first light of dawn, the picture seemed coloured ashen blue and dark yellow, but it was still the same image. She held it with quivering fingers, waiting for any sign of movement from the closed window.
She examined her position in the photograph, tucked in amongst her family. Still only four years old, she was dark-skinned – pitch black in fact – and wearing a woollen smock which only partially covered her tiny body, leaving her ankles exposed and her stomach to protrude where the garment had begun to fray in the middle. Her dark-brown trousers did not conceal her midriff; too wide for her skinny waist, they left one side exposed, whilst the other was concealed only by the skinny, bony figures whom she pressed up against. Everyone in the photograph was staring into the camera: Aliyah, her five brothers and sisters, her father and mother. Whoever saw them couldn’t fail to notice the blank astonishment on their faces. Aliyah recalled that this was the only photograph ever taken of her family. It was taken by a journalist wandering in the alleyways, flashing her camera, bestowing her smile here and there and buying chocolate for the children.
The memory had never left her, not because of the chocolate, which she never got to taste, or because of the photograph; it was the agonising beating she had received from her father which was unforgettable. That evening, the children had followed the journalist, laughing for her and then running away, burying themselves in their mothers’ laps whenever she approached. The journalist peered gormlessly at the women’s pregnant bellies and the scrawny children cowering between their legs or hiding in their mothers’ arms.
Aliyah pulled at her hair, twirling her curly locks nervously as she peered at the journalist’s blonde mane. Every now and then she jumped up, trying to touch it. It was the first time she had ever seen a white woman’s hair; in all her four years, she had never been beyond the neighbourhood alleyways. Aliyah imagined that after a few minutes the lady would go plant herself in their neighbour’s house, where there was a small television. Then she would climb into the television and become a plastic toy or maybe a cartoon show.
Her piercing gaze, the gleaming white around her two black pupils and her flushed complexion gave the journalist the appearance of a small wild animal. The children around her were afraid to hassle her, fearing the deep scratches she would engrave on one of their faces – whichever one dared to pounce on her.
Alone in the blue morning twilight, Aliyah recalled the day that the picture was taken. She had managed to get hold of quite a handful of chocolate and the other children had crowded around her, trying to steal it. She slipped away from them but they followed, and when they caught up a quarrel broke out. The quarrel ended only when they had all received a clout around the head from their mothers, who cursed the blonde woman for disturbing their day as they tried to break up the fight. By the time Aliyah returned, the chocolate had been trampled by the gang while attempting to snatch it from one another. Nobody got what they wanted; the chocolate had turned to a sticky goo which soiled their clothes even more, and the children could do nothing but stick out their tongues to lick the faint traces of chocolate from their fingers.
Daytime had drawn to an end and the children were tired from running and jumping about. Most snuck from their houses to the graveyard to smoke the cigarettes, or the stubs, which they had gleaned along with the remnants of any goods left by living souls visiting their dead.
The graveyard was where the neighbourhood boys hid their secrets; it was their kingdom, which they divided in their own way. Occasionally, they would let a few of the girls hang around, usually their confidants, who would smoke with them and share in their plots against the boys of other neighbourhoods. Aliyah was one of the girls not trusted with the graveyard’s secrets; she wouldn’t smoke the boys’ cigarette stubs or let them f
eel her backside and she took no pleasure in cleaning around the graves before the boys, who got to keep the hoarded goods, arrived. For these reasons, a large faction of the boys held a grudge against Aliyah and, as she ran away panting, they saw a suitable opportunity to attack. The chocolate in her hands was squandered. Aliyah stuck out her tongue and lapped up what she could of the melted remains, which had mingled with the snot running down towards her mouth. She gulped for air, swallowing her own mucus and never came to the sweet taste of chocolate.
Darkness grew thick in the neighbourhoods illuminated by nothing but a dim glow coming from the small windows, and most of the girls got scared, disappearing into their houses. There were two girls who would assist Aliyah in her many brawls with the boys. The first, a year older than herself, resembled a mouse: small, with slender limbs, a round belly and protruding teeth. When they got into fights, the girl would clutch at Aliyah’s hand before jumping on the boys’ backs and twisting round to bite them on the behind. The second girl was tall, with the wizened palms of an old man. Although still very young, she would accompany her sister to work in the houses, returning each time with a stash of precious objects which she stored away in her breast pocket: sweetmeats, rubber sweets – as she called them – toy soldiers, a single doll’s shoe, a colourful hair comb, plastic roses. The flowers, which she stole from the grand sitting-rooms, would be used to decorate the window in their home.
The two girls would encompass Aliyah like a binding rope, spitting straight at the boys who would lower their hands in obscene gestures to the level of the girls’ thighs. This always sent the girls crazy, and they would hurl back even cruder insults. But this time, when they heard the angry male voices the girls fled, leaving Aliyah to confront the boys alone. They had encircled her and were determined to get hold of what she had in her fist. Aliyah scarpered once more, darting through the alleyways. But before she could work out where she was, the boys jumped on her from behind. While one grabbed her by the hair, another plunged his teeth into her clasped hand, which she opened as the third boy twisted her arm. After prolonging the torture for some time, the boys were surprised to discover that Aliyah wasn’t holding the chocolate. All they found in her clenched fist was a sour taste, which lingered on their tongues when they attempted to lick her palm. The boys started to spit at her, kicking her and cursing her. To begin with, Aliyah remained calm and surrendered, but as soon as she’d scampered far enough away, she gestured with her fingers towards their backsides, cursing their mothers and the dirty place from which they had been born.
