Virgins of Paradise

by Wood, Barbara

  But she had been accepted into the family; everyone called her either sister or cousin; she was treated as if she had lived there all her life. And when the baby was born, the perfection would be complete.

  Ibrahim came out onto the terrace then, saying, "There you are!"

  "I had to get some air," she said, thinking how handsome he looked in his tuxedo. "I'm afraid the champagne's gone to my head!"

  He laid a fur stole around her shoulders. "It's chilly out. And now I have two of you to take care of." He had brought her a chocolate truffle with a creamy center; he put it between her lips and then kissed her, sharing the truffle.

  He drew her close. "Happy, darling?"

  "The happiest I have ever been."

  "Are you homesick?"

  "No. Well, a little. I miss my family."

  "I am sorry that you and your father aren't friends. I am sorry that he doesn't approve of me."

  "It's not your fault, and I can't live my life just to please him."

  "Do you know, Alice, that I have lived all my life to please my father, never being quite successful at it. I have never told anyone this, but I have always felt a little like a failure."

  "You are not a failure, darling!"

  "If you had known my father, God rest him in peace, you would know what I am talking about. He was very well known, very powerful, very rich. I grew up in his shadow. I don't recall him ever having a kind word for me. He wasn't a bad man, Alice, but he was of another generation, he belonged to the era when it was believed that to show affection to a son would be bad for his character. I sometimes think that my father had expected me to be an adult the day I was born, because I didn't have a childhood, except with my mother. And when I became a man, no matter what I did, I could never please him. That's one of the reasons why," he said, touching her cheek, his eyes glistening, "I want a son. Giving my father a grandson will be the first achievement I can look upon with pride. A son will give me my father's love at last."

  Alice kissed him gently, and as they turned away, out of the cold, they did not see a small commotion on the opposite riverbank, Nile fishermen shouting about something they had found.

  SEVEN

  Y

  OU ARE VERY LUCKY, MY DEAR," AMIRA SAID TO HER DAUGHTER-in-law as they sat on the roof beneath the stars, examining the tea leaves in Alice's cup. "Qettah tells me that tonight is a most propitious night for having a baby," Amira added. Alice looked over at the astrologer, who sat at a table by the dovecote, studying charts and graphs, occasionally consulting the brilliant night sky. Alice laughed. She was nine months pregnant and a week overdue. "I shall try to comply!" she said.

  Nefissa, who was sitting beneath an arbor of bright blue wisteria, exchanged a knowing smile with her sister-in-law. Every birth in the Rasheed house was accompanied by fortune-telling, stargazing, superstition, and magic, heightening the mystery of an already exciting event. She could see that it baffled Alice, who had told Nefissa that births in her own family had always been somber, hush-hush affairs.

  Others had also come up to the roof to enjoy the spring night and share in the drama of Qettah's mystical forecasts—aunts and female cousins who were unmarried Rasheeds, or had been married to Rasheeds, and who now, being husbandless, were under Ibrahim's protection. They ate and gossiped while Amira and Qettah read the omens.

  Nefissa was watching two toddlers playing on a blanket—one-year-old Camelia, whose mother had died in childbirth nearly a year ago, and Nefissa's own little girl, Tahia, fourteen months old. Nefissa's four-year-old son, Omar, had chosen to go tonight to the cinema with his uncles. But Nefissa could concentrate on neither her sister-in-law's impending childbirth, nor the two little girls. She was thinking of the time and trying not to look anxious.

  Tonight she was going to meet her English lieutenant at the princess's palace, and they were going to be alone.

  The women gathered on the Rasheed roof awaiting the important event entertained themselves with sweetmeats and tea and chattered in Arabic and, for Alice's sake, in English. Alice loved the sound of Arabic; she had even started learning to speak it. When Qettah pointed to a star rising above the dome of a nearby mosque, sparkling like a beacon between two minarets, and said, "There is Rigel, a very strong sign," Alice replied uncertainly, "Al hamdu lillah," and again shared a look with Nefissa, who winked.

  As the other women encouraged Alice, saying that she was starting to speak Arabic like an Egyptian, Nefissa looked at her watch again. She was so excited she wanted to shout from the rooftop. But she was also cautious, afraid of being disappointed again. Since their meeting in her carriage four months ago, they had set up several rendezvous, all through the princess, in whom Nefissa had confided. But each attempt had come to nothing—twice the officer had not shown up; once Nefissa had had to stay home; and once the princess had let them down.

  Would they be successful tonight? she wondered. Would his commanding officers let him go, would the princess keep her word? Nefissa thought that if she could not get a chance to be with him, to feel his touch, to know his kiss, she would die.

  Finally, she rose and said, "It is time for me to go."

  Amira looked at her. "Where are you going?"

  "The princess is expecting me."

  "With Alice so close to her time?"

  "It's all right," Alice said, knowing about the romantic rendezvous, relishing being in on the secret.

  Amira watched her daughter leave, and wondered where Nefissa had found such a strong will. Amira had taught her children obedience, but they seemed to have minds of their own. Fatima had been like that, Amira thought suddenly, wondering as she often did where her lost daughter Fatima was at that moment, where she had disappeared to after Ali had cast her out of the house. Amira had once even thought of trying to find her, enquiring through friends and acquaintances, but Ali had forbidden it, and although it had caused her pain, Amira had dutifully obeyed.

  "Oh!" Alice cried, and everyone turned to her. When she put her hands on her abdomen and said, "I think it's time," they jumped up and rushed to her.

  Amira murmured, "Praise God," and went to help her daughter-in-law into the house, while Qettah fixed her eyes on the stars.

  As a close friend of the princess, and well known at the palace, Nefissa was escorted inside by a tall, silent Nubian in a white galabeya, red vest and red turban, one of an army of servants employed in the two-hundred-room palace in the heart of Cairo, their sole purpose being to attend to the needs and comforts of the princess and her new husband. Built during the Ottoman era in an exotic mixture of Persian and Moorish architectural styles, the palace was a maze of corridors, rooms, and gardens, and as Nefissa followed the Nubian through elaborate marble archways, she heard in the distance an orchestra playing a Viennese waltz—the princess and her husband, entertaining guests.

  Finally she was brought to a part of the palace she had never visited until recently; the servant lifted a velvet drape, and Nefissa entered a vast room with an enormous fountain in the center. She recognized it as a beautiful old harem, no longer used. The floor was of a highly polished marble so richly dark blue that it looked like deep water; Nefissa was almost afraid to walk on it, and thought that, if she looked down, she would see fish glinting in its depths. There were low divans around the walls, covered with velvet and satin spreads; hundreds of brass lamps were suspended on chains, all of them lit, casting reflections on marble columns and arches and a high ceiling inlaid with intricate mosaic. Just below the ceiling there were screened balconies overlooking the room, where Nefissa imagined the long-ago sultan must have sat and watched his women in secret.

  Nefissa saw curious murals on the walls, scenes of nude women bathing in the central fountain, some even entwined in erotic embraces. The women, of all ages and types, seemed afflicted with a kind of languorous melancholy, prisoners of their own beauty, caged like birds for one man's amusement. Were these the portraits of women who had really lived? Nefissa wondered, as she became capt
ivated by their doelike eyes and voluptuous limbs. Was she gazing upon the faces of women who had once had names, and who had dreamed perhaps of freedom, and the real love of a man? As she studied the scenes, she saw that in each, in the background, was a man, darker skinned than the women, dressed in a long blue robe. He appeared to be strangely detached from the activities of the bathers, neither aroused by them nor disapproving of their sensuous play. But who was he? Certainly not the sultan, who would appear larger than life, in sumptuous clothes, and surrounded by nymphs. What had the artist meant by including so odd a figure?

  Nefissa turned away from the strangely disquieting paintings, and felt her heart race. She had been waiting forever for this night. What was her English lieutenant going to be like? She wondered, as she began to pace, praying that he would show up. In her fantasies he was a gentle and considerate lover. But she had heard stories among the princess's circle of friends, liberated women who mingled freely with foreign men, and who complained that the English lacked passion. Would he be as detached from their lovemaking as the mysterious man in the murals? Would he walk in, sweep her off her feet, satisfy himself, and say good-bye?

  When Nefissa heard the mournful cry of a peacock somewhere out in the garden, her anxiety mounted. It was getting late. She had waited in this strange harem, with its ghosts of sad, imprisoned women, twice before, and both times she had been disappointed. She felt her anxiety turn to panic. Time was running out, not just for tonight, but for her freedom. Nefissa tried not to think of the men her mother was attempting to match her with, wealthy, eligible, and not unattractive. How long was she going to be able to keep finding excuses for not marrying this one or that one? How long would Amira's patience hold out? When would she finally say, "Mr. So-and-So is perfect for you, Nefissa, and he is a respected man. You must marry again, your children need a father."

  But I don't want to get married again, she wanted to say, not just yet, for then my freedom will end and I will never have an opportunity to know what it's like to experience an evening of wonderful, forbidden love.

  Nefissa heard a door open somewhere behind her, then footsteps crossing the marble floor.

  The velvet drapes stirred, as if by a breeze, and suddenly there he was, removing his military hat so that his blond hair gleamed in the light from the overhead brass lamps.

  Nefissa caught her breath as he looked around the vast chamber, his polished boots echoing on the marble floor. "What is this place?"

  "It's a harem. It was built three hundred years ago."

  He laughed. "It's like something out of A Thousand Arabian Nights!"

  "The Thousand and One," Nefissa corrected him, hardly believing he was there, that she was there with him, and that they were finally alone together. "Even numbers are unlucky," she added, wondering where she found the voice, the courage to speak. "And so Scheherazade told one more tale after the thousandth."

  He looked at her. "My God, you're beautiful."

  "I was afraid you would not come."

  He walked up to her, close, but not touching. "Nothing could have kept me away," he said quietly.

  When Nefissa saw how he turned his cap around and around in his hands, her heart flew out to him.

  "I frankly never expected to meet you like this," he said. "You're so—protected. You're like one of these—" he gestured to the murals—"a woman bound in veils, a prisoner behind wooden screens."

  "My mother is very protective. She thinks the old ways were better."

  "What if she were to find out about us?"

  "I can't even think of it. I had a sister, she did something, I don't know what. I was only fourteen at the time, I didn't really understand, but I heard my father shouting at her, calling her names. He sent her out of the house without even a suitcase, and we were forbidden ever to speak her name again. Even now, no one mentions Fatima."

  "What became of her?"

  "I don't know."

  "Are you afraid now?"

  "Yes."

  "Don't be." He reached out to touch her; she felt fingertips brush her arm.

  "I'm leaving Egypt tomorrow," he said. "We're being shipped back to England."

  Nefissa was used to the dark, seductive glances of Arab men which, whether intentionally or not, burned with promise and male challenge. But the Englishman's eyes were open and blue like a summer sea, with an innocence and vulnerability that she thought more exciting than the other kind.

  "Then this is all we have?" she said. "Just this hour?"

  "We have the entire night. I'm not expected back until morning. Will you stay with me?"

  She went to a window and looked out at the deep, indigo night, in which white roses bloomed and a nightingale sang a sweet, sad song.

  "Do you know the story of the nightingale and the rose?" she said, unable to meet his eyes.

  He stood behind her, so close that she could feel his breath on her neck. "Tell it to me."

  "Long ago," she began, feeling as if she were on fire, that if he touched her, she would become a flame, "long ago, all roses were white because they were virgins. But one night a nightingale fell in love with a rose, and when he sang to her, something stirred in her heart. Then the nightingale came close and whispered, 'I love you, rose,' and the flower blushed and turned pink. But then the nightingale came even closer, and the rose opened her petals and the nightingale took her virginity. But because God had decreed that roses should remain chaste, the rose turned red with shame. That is how red and pink roses came into being, and to this day, when the nightingale sings, a rose's petals will tremble, but they will not open, because God had never meant for a bird and a flower to mate."

  Putting his hands on her shoulders, he turned her to him. "And what of a man and a woman? What did God intend for them?"

  He took her face between his hands and brought her lips to his. He smelled of cigarettes and whiskey, both forbidden to her, and she tasted them now, on his lips and tongue.

  He pulled away and, removing his belt and holster, stood silently facing her. With fingers that trembled uncontrollably Nefissa undid the buttons of his military tunic. He wore no shirt under it, and the pale, taut skin, the supple chest and broad shoulders, touched her strangely. She ran her hands over the powerful muscles and the flat abdomen, fascinated. She could not help comparing this man's spare, lean body with that of her late husband, who had been soft, delicate, almost feminine.

  With a sensuality she had never thought she'd experience, the lieutenant pushed her blouse from her shoulders and unfastened her skirt.

  "My God, you're beautiful!" he repeated, staring at her.

  And there was no need for any hurrying at all.

  "Why does Britain want to take Palestine from the Arabs and give it to the Jews?" asked an indolent young man who was high on hashish. "The Arabs didn't take that land from the Jews, but from the Romans, fourteen centuries ago. Tell me what European country would be expected to give up territory it had held and occupied for fourteen hundred years? What if the Indians demanded Manhattan back? Would the Americans give it to them?"

  On Hassan al-Sabir's houseboat, moored on the Nile, several friends reclined on low couches, sharing a water pipe and occasionally helping themselves to grapes and olives, cheese and bread, from a brass tray. Ibrahim was among them, thinking about Alice, wondering when the baby was going to come. He and Hassan were close friends; they had both been at university in Oxford, where anti-Eastern prejudice had formed a special bond between them that remained after their return to Egypt. Like Ibrahim, Hassan was twenty-nine, attractive and rich. But unlike his friend, Hassan was a lawyer, and very ambitious.

  "I suppose it's all a matter of who was in Palestine first," Hassan said, bored. "But why bother yourself about it? It's none of our affair."

  But the young man insisted, "We're not the ones who persecuted the Jews during the war. We recognize the Jews as our brothers, as we all are descended from the Prophet Ibrahim. And we have lived peacefully together for centuries. This
new Israel would not be a homeland for a persecuted people, but just another excuse for further European occupation in the Middle East!"

  Hassan sighed. "You are becoming dangerously political, my dear fellow. And tiresome."

  "I know what will happen. They will not come to live as Semites among Semites, as our brothers, but as Europeans looking down upon the miserable Arab. Didn't it happen here? We aren't allowed to join the Turf Club or the Sporting Club, because they don't allow gyppos! We have to make Egypt for Egyptians, or else we'll go the way of Palestine."

  An intense young man with sharply defined cheekbones said, "Britain will never leave Egypt. Not while they want our cotton and the Canal."

  "By God," said Hassan with a laugh, glancing at Ibrahim, who clearly had no interest in the conversation, "why bother yourselves over such things?"

  "Because Egypt has the highest death rate in the world. One child in two dies before the age of five. We have more blind people than anywhere else in the world, too, and what have our so-called protectors done about it? In the eighty years the British have occupied Egypt, they haven't attempted to bring pure water to our villages, or build schools, or establish a medical service for the poor. They might not have done anything specifically to brutalize us, but they've been indifferent to us, which is just as bad!"

  Hassan rose from the divan and, gesturing to Ibrahim, went out on the deck. Although he had an apartment in the city, where his wife, mother, unmarried sister, and three children all lived, Hassan spent most of his time on his houseboat, where he entertained friends and women. Tonight he was wishing he had invited prostitutes instead of the junior partners from his law firm. "Sorry, old boy," he said to Ibrahim as he lit up a Dunhill. "I shan't invite them again. I had no idea they had all these thoughts and opinions. I say, you're looking rather happy."