Desiring Cairo

by Louisa Young

  ‘She belongs to Eddie,’ I hissed to Sa’id, as I resisted. It is very hard to resist a dancer who is trying to get you up. I know, I’ve been one. But I really don’t like being pushed around.

  ‘No,’ I said to her. ‘Fuck off.’

  She understood. Everybody does. She made some inexpressibly rude Turkish gesture and moved on. Sa’id went to the loo, telling me to – well, motioning through the noise – that I was to stay put and everything would be OK.

  The next thing was absolutely not all right. Back she went on the stage, and announced to the assembled mob that as a special favour to her Egyptian friends Hakim and Sa’id el Araby and for the pleasure of her loyal Egyptian fans the lovely dancer Angelina, Amira Amar, who has not danced in Cairo for eight years, has agreed to make an appearance. Gratifyingly, there was some applause. Unfortunately, I was too angry to notice.

  I pushed back my chair, pulled Sa’id’s scarf around me and walked swiftly to the door. The cloth seemed to fill; I felt like a ship in full sail, and suddenly mouth-witheringly aware of the dirty pictures Janie had made, combining the dancing and the veils and the porn. Made and sold through Eddie.

  Go up on stage for him? Dance for that fucker? Last time I danced for him I spat vodka in his face. And on his dick.

  ‘Where is he then?’ I said. ‘Where is he?’ The doorman was nonplussed, but soon steered me round to the back of the club, to an alcove. Where sat Eddie, two girls, a big lug in a bad shirt and Hakim, looking green even in the dim light, blocked in by the lug.

  ‘I want a word with you,’ I said, and grabbed Eddie’s arm, and hoicked him to the door. ‘Outside,’ I said. Luckily everybody thought it was funny – a woman pushing a man, a joke, obviously. No one followed. The lug offered to, but Eddie gestured him to stay with Hakim.

  I would have thought it was funny, too. This is what it comes down to: ‘Oy you – outside.’

  In the corridor, nightclub lit, I pushed him up against the wall and looked him in the eye. He didn’t struggle. He was loving it.

  I can’t do this wrapped in Sayeed’s cloth. I stood back from him and lifted the mass of fine white wool up over my head, pulling it and casting it aside, and I stood there in my long shift and my bare arms again, my free woman visible woman clothes. My me clothes. He should have knocked me down or left, or something, but he didn’t. He watched. He wasn’t alarmed by my anger at all. He liked it. Girl disrobing. In a public place too. Mmm!

  I put one hand against the wall and leaned in towards him. I’d always assumed I was shorter than him but I wasn’t. I looked down at his throat: the throat I’d bitten in my lust, the throat I’d pictured as I’d thought his dead body burned, the throat to which Sa’id had held his blade. I leaned on my good leg and I thought of strangulation. As I breathed out he breathed in and I realised he was taking in my breath, savouring it, watching me. And I breathed in his breath, and I looked him in the eye.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I said. ‘Leave me alone, leave my friends alone, leave my family alone. I don’t love you, I’m not going anywhere with you, I don’t care who or what you threaten. This is stopping right here. Here and now.’

  He didn’t love that. Well he did, because it upped the stakes a little. But he never gave me the respect necessary for the stakes to go really high. He wasn’t scared of me. He only wanted the shag, he didn’t need it – he could live without it. I was nothing to him. He didn’t even bother to bring his lug out of the club. He was just winding up the sexual energy, artificially, so that he could have a sweeter and more pornographic orgasm at the end of it. Ain’t that just like a bloke. He doesn’t give a shit.

  But the only way he would stop tweaking my chain was if I took the fucking collar off. So I did.

  He carried on breathing me.

  ‘But you owe me,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No I don’t.’

  ‘One fuck.’

  ‘God, you’re like some fucking street boy! One fuck, madam. You owe me, mate. You owe me my sister, my reputation and my peace of fucking mind. I would like to kill you and I might yet.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ he said, with a little smile. ‘Way to go.’

  So this was how he was going to end. Knifed by a rent boy, some street creature with a pretty arse who wanted an extra ten quid.

  And for a second I lost my concentration. And in that second he tripped me, grabbed me and pushed me round the corner. Some service corner. Dark.

  ‘It’ll have to be rape then,’ he said. ‘What a waste.’

  Whereupon I kicked and screamed, and no one came, whereupon I was cursing my bad stars and stupid temper and punching him in the mouth, as far as I could reach, whereupon a dark figure came up the corridor like a shark and leapt on him, and pulled him, and began to punch him, rhythmically, hypnotically, whereupon there flashed a gleam of silver and I cried out, ‘No! Stop it!’ and pulled my rescuer off my enemy.

  Fuck.

  Protecting Eddie Bates.

  Fuck.

  Of course the lug appeared. Then the hotel security – this is Five-Star, after all. Eddie was rapt, shocked, with blood on his mouth. And the shark? It was Hakim. I went to him and took the knife, and kissed his cheek, and held his head, comforting him and holding him in, holding him still, holding him down. Grateful to him and angry with him. A thought skittered across my mind: Thank God Lily is a girl.

  I pulled the scarf to us, hid us in it. It smelled of Sa’id: leather, sandalwood, cleanliness.

  The guard was pushed aside by a more important guard, then he was pushed aside by the nightclub manager, then he was pushed aside by the manager of the hotel.

  I tried to look demure, or shameful. Or shamed. Or something. ‘This man attacked me,’ I said, in Arabic, gesturing Eddie, clutching the white cloth. ‘This man defended me.’ Gesturing to Hakim.

  ‘This woman attacked me,’ said, Eddie, but he said it in English, and anyway … women don’t attack men in nightclubs. Specially not women with veils. Even if the veil has slipped.

  ‘This man is my brother,’ I said. ‘This other man I don’t care about. Please don’t tell my husband. I must return to him. Please. This foreign man is just a fool. He is nothing.’

  And the parlaying began, and my husband was sent for. And out he came. Purple with fury. Spitting his Arabic like a fishwife. What the fuck had I been doing? What the fuck was going on? He leaves me for two minutes and look. He thanked the guards. He took Hakim by the scruff of the neck; he looked at Eddie, and he didn’t spit at him. But he might have.

  The manager was confused.

  ‘Home,’ Sa’id said to me.

  The trouble was, I didn’t know if he meant this anger. Or what he meant by it. Who he was angry with.

  The guard wanted to know should they call the police. Nobody had seen the knife.

  ‘Of course,’ said Sa’id. ‘But my wife will not speak to them.’

  And you see nothing happened. Eddie was saying nothing. Sa’id was taking me away. And there was only one witness – me. Who was, anyway, involved. And anyway I had no say – I was some bint in a cage. I was off scot-free.

  Sa’id gave his name and address. One of the managers seemed to know him. Hakim gave his. I didn’t have one to give. I was Mrs Sa’id. Property of, like it says on the back of the biker girls’ jackets.

  As I turned to leave, Eddie said, ‘Did you just save me?’ I looked at him under the shadow, and said nothing.

  ‘Quits then,’ he said.

  Sa’id looked at me.

  ‘Aiwa,’ I said.

  And left. Free as a fucking bird.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  God, when he created the world, put a great sea between the Muslims and the Christians, ‘for a reason’

  Sarah in her relief was very angry with us all. We ignored it. Hakim was chastened. I was chastened. Sa’id, despite the fact that he’d been on his arse on the bog at the moment of crisis, was the only one who seemed to hold his head up.

  We drove back to
Amina’s, a funny edgy bundle of people, emotions ricocheting around the car. Sa’id opened the door for Sarah and Hakim, and said to them both, ‘Go to bed.’ Sarah looked at him, and said, ‘Sa’id.’

  For the first time he looked at her. I swear it was the first time.

  ‘Later,’ he said.

  ‘Sa’id,’ she said again.

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘Later,’ he said. More gently.

  She looked at him for a full minute, her face dramatic in the dim light and shadow of the night. He said nothing more; just stood, eyes shut. But something changed.

  She went towards the lift; not obediently, but carrying her expectation like a parcel under her arm. To be unpacked. Later.

  Hakim refused, and said he wanted coffee.

  ‘Go to your mother, Hakim,’ Sa’id said brusquely. The policemen at the gate raised their heads. One was smoking. They looked unbearably weary. Hakim risked an unruly look, then went after Sarah.

  Me, he told to stay in the car. Exact words. ‘Stay in the car.’ I was beginning to get annoyed with him.

  We drove off again.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I said.

  ‘We are going where young couples in this damn city have to go if they want to talk in private. We are going to the Corniche el Nil, to promenade. And to talk.’ He was angry. I didn’t like it. It didn’t suit him. His straight nose got even straighter and looked narrow and pinched.

  So we arrived on the Corniche, and he parked and took my hand and practically pulled me across the eight lanes of intersecting suicide traffic that invented new lanes as and when it wanted, even at two in the morning, and we stood by the river and looked out. Tonight it was black, with neon stripes of green and orange, waving, like a baladi dress in chiffon and interweave.

  We leaned against the balustrade, and for a while we said nothing.

  I felt sad, actually, because I realised that I liked him being authoritative with other people; or when it suited me, but not now. I felt we were about to come up against it.

  ‘So what happened?’ he said. ‘How come you were out in the corridor with the man you didn’t want to go anywhere near?’

  So I told him. About the dancer’s announcement, and my flash of temper, and my realisation about the chain. About being tweaked. ‘It’s what you said,’ I told him. I told him I felt safe, in public. I told him I just had to tell Eddie.

  There was some silence.

  ‘It’s not your fault Hakim was working for him,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Nor that Hakim felt so strongly to defend you.’

  ‘I’m glad he did.’

  ‘I’m not. He could have been hurt.’

  ‘Sa’id, Hakim had a knife. It wasn’t him who was going to get hurt.’

  His beautiful eyes opened a little wider. It changed the effect of the light on his cheekbones. They go back so far – to his ears. Such a strange face.

  ‘Then he could have been arrested.’

  ‘Yes. But he wasn’t.’

  ‘Yes. Because you were quick-witted.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He sighed.

  ‘So are you happy now?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you aren’t.’

  He smiled.

  ‘I’ll talk to my mother,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t give a shit about your mother.’

  It wasn’t true. I just didn’t then. I was feeling too much else. I felt the ground opening up beneath my feet. I felt love lurching.

  ‘Now that you have sorted it out,’ he said, ‘– have you sorted it out?’

  ‘I think so,’ I replied. ‘I think – he said quits. I think he means it. I think – yes. From what I know of him. His mentality.’ I used Sa’id’s word on purpose. His word in my mouth to bring us closer again.

  ‘Well, I must go back to work,’ he said. Then, ‘Tell me one thing.’

  I knew what it was. Knew it couldn’t have passed him by. Knew I wouldn’t be so lucky.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ I said. Why waste time.

  ‘He said. Let me get this right. He said you did and he didn’t.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  I didn’t want to say it. I was ashamed. I didn’t want to tell him. In a way this was the moment when I started to cry, the crying that didn’t stop for weeks.

  But I did say it. I took him close to me and felt the warmth of his cheek, as close as a razor, and I whispered it in his ear, into his black curls, breathing their familiar scent, and I held his head to my mouth, and whispered as if he wasn’t there, as if I was just practising saying words, words I found difficult. When I finished talking my tongue brought one of his curls between my teeth, where I held it for a moment, afraid to let go.

  I thought it quite likely that he might hate me now.

  We weren’t on the same side any more. We had been for so long.

  ‘Sa’id, you’re not on my side any more.’ I said it out loud, breaking the silence that followed my confession. The silence while the words did their damage.

  ‘It’s not that,’ he said finally. ‘It’s just we’ve come a little further.’

  I was silent. I didn’t know if I believed him. I hitched myself up on the balustrade to sit. He reached his hand out to steady me. At least he wasn’t tipping me in the Nile. I lit a fag. And waited.

  ‘So I must go back to Luxor,’ he said. ‘There is lots of work to be done.’

  Oh not like that, Sa’id. Please not like that, after everything.

  ‘You know my father made our business but he never liked it. I like it. And I’m good at it. So I must go and do it.’

  And?

  ‘It’s what I do.’

  And?

  I smoked. If I looked back at an angle I could see the reflection of my cigarette glowing deep in the deep water. Glowing brighter, and dimmer.

  He looked so young. He should be along here with a 13-year-old Egyptian virgin, not with me.

  ‘Sa’id, please. Please.’ I wasn’t crying.

  ‘You saved Hakim tonight. You caused his danger – you did, you made him want to protect you – and you saved him. You are doing the same to me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, foolishly.

  ‘Shut up,’ he said.

  I turned away so that I could watch the river better. All the lights on in Giza across the way. Pyramids down there. This ancient Nile. He leaned beside me. Facing in to the city.

  ‘Why are you so angry with me?’ I could think of a thousand and one reasons, but I wanted to know which was his.

  He was silent for a several moments. I counted.

  ‘Because you put yourself in danger. You did it without me.’

  ‘But it was my … danger. It was mine.’

  ‘Yours and that man’s.’

  ‘Are you jealous of that?’

  ‘Yes, but that is not …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t let me … you prevented me,’ he said. I knew what he meant but he kept talking. ‘Your anger took you. You were not with me – not because I wasn’t there physically. But inside, you were alone. Because you wanted to be alone. You are by nature alone.’

  I knew what he meant. He meant that when it came down to it I didn’t need or want a man because I am that kind of Englishwoman. I wasn’t going to let him say it, because it could never be taken back, and it wasn’t true.

  ‘I am what I am, but that doesn’t mean I can’t love,’ I said. Dammit he is meant to love me for my character, not despite it.

  The silence sat. Floated on the water. Drifted away downstream towards the delta, and the sea.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘and we won’t talk about it for a few days.’

  Can you do that? Can you get away with it once the subject has been raised?

  His eyes had gone dark as the river.

  The only other option is to jump in and swim home.

 
; *

  That night separate beds, the next day he was out, doing things, finishing off business. I wanted nothing but to sleep until I could take him in my arms again and make it all right. I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t. But it wasn’t. There was a story in the back of my mind that I read years ago, about a northern woman on the beach at Alexandria, married to her Egyptian love, losing him, pinioned on the edge of each world by her love for their child, watching the surf which licked Europe lick Africa. Something about how the beach knows nothing of the desert, and the surf knows nothing of the depths of the sea. Written by an Egyptian woman, Ahdaf Soueif. I do believe that east and west can meet, that north and south can live. I do believe it.

  *

  Hakim was curdling my coffee again over breakfast. He wanted to go over everything. He wanted blame, redemption, love and demonstrations that we had not lost faith in him. Well, I could understand that. He wanted to apologise; he still wanted to kill Eddie. Last night he had personified the collapse of a stout party; today he was almost raring to go again.

  ‘It’s over,’ I said.

  For moments during the night I had wondered, could I really believe that? Just because he had called it quits? Why wasn’t I afraid that his wildness would just skip over that promise the moment it felt like it, and put me back where I had been before? Why did I trust him? Well, I didn’t trust him. I trusted myself. To deal with him, any time, any way. I’d rather not have to, but I could and I would. I’d done it before, and I could do it again.

  ‘For you maybe, not for me,’ he said. And that was true. I didn’t know for sure that Eddie would leave Hakim alone. Or Sa’id. I thought he would. But there’s always a but.

  ‘Hakim,’ I said, gathering myself to consider him in the midst of my own travails, preparing to matronise. And realising in time that it wouldn’t do any good. And still I couldn’t tell the truth about our enemy. But I had to make sure Hakim would not go poking about in Eddie’s embers, stirring things up.