Stealth (New Directions Paperbook)

by Sonallah Ibrahim

  We go into our room. I sit at my desk and start studying again. Father lights a cigarette. He leaves the room. I follow.

  “Papa, why do they say about our master Ali, ‘God be generous to his face’?”

  “Because he never looked upon the nakedness of any human . . . even himself.”

  I ask: “Is that a sin?”

  “Yeah.” Selma bares her legs. There is a dark space between them. Mama Tahiya moves to her other underarm. She turns her head to study it. She feels it with her fingers. She stands up. She tells me as she gently takes hold of my ear: “Get to your room. Sit there and don’t leave.”I take her hand pleading, “Please, I’m begging you Mama, not by myself.” She studies me with a smile. “Okay. You can sit in the living room, but only on the condition that you don’t spy on me.”

  I go into our room and then come back out. He walks around the living room, going back and forth with his hands clutched behind his back. He tells me she is a simpleton who could burn herself. Or she could trick us and not really take a bath: “Take a look and see what she’s doing.” I peek through the keyhole. My glasses knock against the door. I press them back up on my nose. I start looking again. I see her sitting down in the tub without anything appearing but her bare shoulders. Steam comes up from the pan of water. Mother grabs hold of the metal jar. She fills it half way with hot water. She forgets to mix in a little bit of cold.

  I tell him she is naked and sitting in the tub. He says: “Let’s see,” and he bends over to look through the keyhole. He stands back up and walks around the dining table. He rubs his moustache with his finger. I notice that his eyes are shiny. He tells me to offer to help her rub her back. I do it without wanting to. She turns me down. She walks out after a while wearing a colored gallabiya and combing her hair. Water drips off it. He asks her if she boiled her clothes and she says: “Yes.”

  She changes the water in the basin. She brings in the washtub for laundry from the kitchen. She puts it next to the basin. Father paces in the living room while he watches her. I get out my history textbook and I sit at the table, facing the guest room. She sits down on top of the low, wooden kitchen stool. She gathers up her gallabiya between her legs and her knees are bared and even part of her thighs. She is bending over her folded right leg. She puts a piece of the halva putty on top of her foot. She lifts it off and then rubs on it. She puts it on the middle of her leg. She does the same thing over again up closer to her thigh.

  She moves clothes from the basin to the tub and rubs them. She dunks them in the water in the basin. She rubs them some more then wrings them out and hangs them to dry on the clothesline hanging in the skylight. She uses up all the water in the basin and the sink and then dries the floor. She takes the burner back to the kitchen. He tells her to soak the tablecloth for a while in the tub. We can see that the top of our wooden table has a large grease stain on it.

  He tells her to light the stove to heat up the food for lunch. He throws himself into cooking the piece of meat. He adds bits of charcoal to it. He gets the green salad ready. He calls me and tells me to bring in a pack of salt from on top of the sideboard. I run over to it. I stretch out my hand to take the salt. Fatima beats me to it and I pull my hand back. She calls out: “Yes, Sidi. Right away.” She brings him the salt. I follow, feeling mad.

  He finishes browning the meat and starts to heat up the bread over the fire. She puts two plates on the table. He says that the table is so dirty that he doesn’t feel like eating. She rushes to clean it with the kitchen loofah. He asks her to wait until we have finished eating. He takes the pan of meat into our room. He puts it on the round table. She brings in the two plates and the bread. She hangs on to her own plate. He sits on the edge of the bed. I drag the desk chair over and sit in front of him. He dishes out our food first. She holds her plate out to him. He serves her. She goes to sit on the floor, so he says to her: “Sit up on the bed. You’re just like my daughter.” She sits next to me. I lose my appetite.

  The doorbell rings. She starts to get up to open it but he signals to her to stay put. He waves at me to go and see who it is. I open the door and find Abbas in front of me.

  “Is Fatima here?” I don’t know how to answer.

  “Okay then, can you just call the bey?”

  I leave him and run in to get father. He gets up and leaves the room. He closes the door behind him. I think about following him, but I don’t want to leave Fatima by herself. I stand up behind the door. She stands next to me. We listen. My father’s voice: “Sit down, Abbas.” His voice sounds very firm. We cannot pick up anything from the conversation. Abbas’s voice makes him sound in a bad way. Father calls to Fatima. She goes into the living room and I follow. He says to her: “It’s settled, my girl. Go back to your husband. He won’t raise his hand again. You can come and get your clothes later, after they’ve dried.” Abbas heads for the front door with her right behind him.

  He grabs his fez with his left hand. He lifts it up, level to his chest. Bends his right arm. His right hand comes up to the fez. He brushes off its sides with his sleeve. He sets it on top of his head. Locks the door to our room. He tells Fatima to cook the spinach just the way he taught her to, and to remember to throw in a few dried chickpeas. We go out and head for the street. The grocery shop is closed. I lean over towards the chemist. He pulls me sharply by my arm. We cross to the other pavement and pass in front of Hajj Mishaal’s shop. He is sitting inside. His body is huge. He is wearing a long-sleeved shirt and trousers. His hair is slicked down with Vaseline. He smiles an unsettled smile when he sees us. Father ignores him.

  We turn into the next alley. We come out in the next street along. “Khalil.” I turn around angrily at whoever is calling my father without giving him the title of “Bey.” Aly Safa comes up to us in a rush. He is walking with his feet flying out to each side of him. He is wearing a blue suit coat and grey trousers. Father stops to let him catch up with us. They shake hands. I stand between them. Father pushes me to the right and we keep walking so that Aly Safa falls in to his left. Father asks him: “Where’ve you been? Did you get married or something?” Aly Safa says: “Do I look crazy?”

  He reaches out to pat me on the cheek and asks: “Don’t you have school today?” Father pushes me away from his hand gruffly and says: “These days there’s a strike almost every day.” Aly Safa says he is running off to the electric utilities office and he goes on ahead of us. I ask father why he pushed me to the side. He says: “The thing is, he corrupts young boys.” I think about this strange puzzle.

  We turn into a small side alley. There is a smell of mold and mildew. We go into a house with no doorman. We go up the steps to the second story. He knocks on the door of an apartment. A woman’s voice comes out after a while: “Who is it?” Father says: “Aziza, it’s me.”

  The voice repeats: “Who?”

  “Aziza, it’s me, Khalil. Open up.”

  “Just a minute, Bey.”

  The door opens to the figure of Hajj Abdel ’Alim’s wife. She is taller than father and has a face that is white and beautiful with tiny black moles scattered over it. The hair on her head is wrapped in a scarf that starts at the middle of her head and goes down to her neck. There is a pigtail coming out from under it. She is carrying a child in her arms.

  “Please, come in, Bey”—(she pronounces the title like all the fellah women do)—“You’re one of the family.”

  Father and I go in. It is a wide hall with no furniture at all. There is a room in front of us where Sofia, the sister-in-law of the hajj is standing. Behind her you can see a bed, raised on high brass posts. Father speaks to her: “Good health to you.” She answers coldly: “Good health to you too.” He ignores her tone and follows Aziza to another room. We stop at the door. The same kind of bed is there with a child lying on top of it. Father says: “I’ve just come to check on you. Do you want to send him food or anything?”

  “The Lord preserve you, Bey. Selim has taken him food and money.”

  Fathe
r turns back towards the front door and I follow. “Inshallah he’ll come out today. Anyway, if there’s anything you need, tell me.”

  “May the Lord always keep you in our lives, Bey.”

  We leave the apartment. We go out to the main street. We head toward the closest tram stop. We get on. We change cars at ’Ataba Square. We take the new one to Abdel Aziz Street by the big fire station. The tram turns around in front of the Omar Effendi department store. We get off after two more stops. We cross the tracks to the pavement across the street. We stop in front of a huge building with crowds of people gathered in front of it. Father puts his hand on his chest right over his heart. I ask him: “What’s wrong?” He says: “There are lots of pickpockets around here.” We go up a few steps that pass through stone pillars. We walk into a large hallway full of people. A vendor is sitting cross-legged at the base of a marble pillar. In front of him is a tray with falafel patties, loaves of pita, and small plates of salad. He is surrounded by people eating.

  At the next column is a cross-legged man with many women around him, squatting on the ground hugging their knees. He wears a gallabiya decorated down the front with black thread. An old fez sits on his head. A student’s satchel made of canvas sits in front of him with papers stacked up on it. He has an fountain pen in his hand. We go up the steps to the second floor. We cut through the crowd until we’re in a hallway with large rooms that are closed up on either side of us. Father goes up to each door and reads the paper sign nailed to it. We go on searching but it is no use, so we go back to the stairs. We’re surprised by a woman pulling off her cloak, followed by her black gallabiya. Underneath she is wearing a man’s shirt and yellow trousers from army salvage. She pulls a bench up from under the people sitting on it and uses it to attack people standing around her. A man in a gallabiya and skull cap tries to stop her, but she knocks him back with a head butt. We run down the steps and stop near the entrance to the building.

  Dr. Mandour shows up wearing black trousers and a grey coat. He says: “Is everything alright?” An assistant comes up to him carrying his black lawyer’s robe. Father says: “We read your article in the Wafd al Misri newspaper. What happened between you and Akhbar al Youm?” He laughs: “Nothing. I called it a piece of yellow journalism because it’s a British publication that set out to make the case for the king against the Wafd Party. It’s always calling him the just ruler, the great governor, or the leader of the faithful.”

  I sneak over behind the writer. A squatting woman dictates in front of him as he writes. The pen must not be absorbing any ink because he keeps dipping it into the ink bottle after every few words. He scolds her every now and then. After the writing is done, he waves for her to go over to his co-worker, who holds up a small piece of brass shaped like a ring. The woman leans over and hands him the paper. He shouts at her: “Your name?”

  She answers: “Aida.”

  He says: “Give your complete name, woman.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean your name, followed by your father’s name and your grandfather’s name.”

  She takes out a paper rolled up in her chest and gives it to him. He unwraps it in a hurry and reads. He scratches her name into the piece of brass. The writer takes it and presses it into a small box. He studies the stamp, and asks: “Are you Aida Girguis Estafanous?” She answers with a southern accent: “Yes.” He presses the stamp down on the paper and hands it to her. She gives him money. He says to her: “Give it to the head clerk.” He points to the man standing nearby. His fez is taller than everyone else’s and his reading glasses have dark lenses. He takes the paper from her and goes with her to the falafel vendor. She buys him a loaf of bread and a few pieces.

  I hear father’s voice calling my name, so I run over to him. He shouts at me for leaving him alone. We head over to the other side of the building. There is a pack of country women sitting on the ground with their children. We go into a big, crowded room. She sits in the front row next to my grandma. She wears a black silk coat and she has a sheer grey scarf wrapped around her head. She is taller and wider than she was the last time I saw her. Grandma looks over her shoulder, worried. A strange smile is painted on her face. She looks at me without blinking. Her pale brown face is surrounded by a faded, off-white scarf. Mother notices me. I can’t tell if she knows me or not. She suddenly talks to me in a very normal voice, like we’ve never even been separated: “How are you?” She doesn’t ask me to sit next to her. She turns back to pay attention to the judge. She listens to a sheikh in a caftan and turban wearing reading glasses. I turn around looking for my father. He waves to me from the entrance to the hall. I go to him.

  We squeeze ourselves on to the end of the bench pushing over the others sitting there. We notice Selim sitting up in the front row. The judge’s stand is up at the front. Lawyers gather in front of him, including Dr. Mandour in his black coat. They’re talking to each other, but we can’t hear them. Hajj Abdel ’Alim is standing behind iron bars. The judge says something that makes the lawyers all stand back. The clerk calls out for the other accused people to come in. All of a sudden, the hearing ends and the judge disappears through a door behind the judge’s stand, followed by his helpers. The people sitting down get up and walk over to the cage holding the accused. The prisoners start calling out to their friends and relatives. Hajj Abdel ’Alim notices us. He seems very happy and not scared.

  We leave the courtroom and head out to the right. After a short walk, the Abbadin Palace comes into view. Alongside I can see the wide square stretching out in front of it. We stand in rows from the early morning all the way through to the afternoon. The school official is leading us. We’re wearing the blue shirts that they’ve passed out to us. They look like nursery school uniforms. We wait for the appearance of the king to celebrate him on the anniversary of his coronation.

  We turn to the left and go down a street with lots of shady trees. We stop in front of a fancy building. A Nubian doorman meets us. We get into a clean elevator. It goes up slowly without making a sound. I sit down on a seat fastened to the wall. We stop at the fifth floor. We knock on the door of Tante Zeinab’s apartment. Her black maid Zahra opens the door for us. She welcomes us and pulls me to her chest. She kisses my cheek. I know her whole story from father. She was owned by Tante Zeinab’s family before the Khedive Ismail outlawed slavery, but she had no idea who her family was or where she had come from, so she stayed on to work for Tante Zeinab.

  We sit down in a cozy sitting room by the front door. Family pictures hang on the wall. Tante Zeinab shows up after a while. She moves slowly. Dark and short. She pants the whole time because she has a weak heart. “How are you, my brother?” I know she is my father’s cousin from his mother’s side. And that she was engaged to him when he was young, before he married Um Nabila. She never got married after that, and she lives with her brother Shams, who also has never married, even though he is very old too. She looks at me, smiling gently. Zahra sits at her feet. Father asks: “How’s your health?” She says: “Fine. All that God brings is fine. Any news of Rowhaya?”

  “None.” The iron door is closed. In front of it are neighborhood women and their children. They are looking through a big crack in the coated glass. I can see mother through it, standing in front of the door to the apartment. Grandma is beside her . . . and the daughters of the landlord. My father is all dressed up. His head is bare. She is screaming: “You want to poison me? You’ve put poison in here.” She points at a glass cup sitting on the banister. Father says in a quiet and tired voice: “Relax. Drink up and it’ll calm you.”

  She says as she pants for breath: “Have you had lunch, my brother? We just ate and Shams has gone for a nap.” She makes a big effort to get up. We follow her inside. An untidy room with no furniture in it except a round table with chairs. We sit around it. Zahra brings us spaghetti and green salad. She serves me. She sprinkles grated Egyptian Romano cheese on my plate. I try to use the fork. It is the first time I’ve eaten pasta wi
th cheese. I don’t finish all of it. Tante Zeinab asks her to open a jar of fruit compote. She brings in a stained glass jar and serves me pieces of apple and pear. She adds a spoon of syrup.

  I go to the bathroom with father. Some machine is hanging on the wall. There is a drawing of a flame on it with the words “Shell Gas” above it. Father says it is to heat the water. We go back to the room at the entrance. Zahra brings a cup of coffee for father. He asks Tante Zeinab how much the water heater costs. She says: “Sixteen pounds.” They ask each other questions about members of the family.

  “Do you see Nabila, my brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Well . . .” He stops and looks at me. He tells Zahra to take me to the balcony. I go along with her even though I don’t want to. I steal a glance behind me. Father is talking in a low voice. He looks like he is saying something really serious. We go out on to the small circular balcony. From its left hand corner, I can see the wide, empty square in front of the palace. He carries me in his arms and sets me down on the iron fence. His strong hand rests on my knees. I look out at the crowds gathered in the square.

  I draw a map showing the ground levels on the African continent. I mark the high ground and the low spots. I mark off arrows showing the directions of the winds. Suddenly, a shout goes up from the alley. I run to the balcony. The alley is dark. The shouting is coming from the apartment of Siham and Selma. I turn my head to look at the entrance to the alley. I am waiting for father to come back from visiting Hajj Abdel ’Alim to congratulate him on being let out of jail. I turn around and go back inside. I get right up to the door to our room. I listen. The light in the living room is on. I can hear the sound of Fatima in front of the sink. She cleans the glass of the gas lantern. She hangs it on a nail over the sink and then disappears into the kitchen. I go out into the hall. I carefully go up close to the door to the washroom. I can hear her lighting the kerosene lamp.