Virgins of Paradise

by Wood, Barbara

  Every time this happened, Amira pictured her mind as a deep well, with bubbles trapped at the bottom. Once in a while, for no apparent reason, a bubble would break free and rise to the surface of her mind, releasing the memory it contained. Sometimes they were familiar memories, ones she recognized, such as the day she had met Ali Rasheed in the harem on Tree of Pearls Street, but often they were forgotten fragments from her past—a face, a voice, a sudden rush of terror or joy. Or a peacock. As the years passed, the bits and pieces came back, forming a patchy mosaic of her early life, but so much still remained to be filled in: her life before the raid on the desert caravan—for she was certain now that she was the child in her dream—where and when the raid took place, what became of her mother afterward. And what of the peculiar square tower she sometimes saw in those dreams?

  It amazed Amira that she should have forgotten such important facts in her life. Would they ever fully return? she wondered, as the vision of the peacock began to fade. And what had happened to block those memories of her earlier childhood?

  "Children," she called. "Come and have some lemonade."

  Yasmina's eyes grew big and round when she saw the apricot balls—they were her favorite, which was how she had earned the nickname "Mishmish," Arabic for apricot. But before she could reach the bowl, Omar elbowed her out of the way and took a big handful. Still, Amira had made sure there was enough for all of them. As she felt the warm sun on her shoulders, inhaled the fragrance of the garden, she was suddenly filled with a luminous joy. She saw the future: in ten or fifteen years these children would be married, and there would be new babies in the house. She thought: I shall be a great-grandmother, and not yet sixty! Praise God, Lord of the Universe for His generosity and beneficence. Let it be like this always ...

  She frowned suddenly. The smell of smoke was getting stronger. What could it be? She looked at her watch. Maryam and Suleiman would be back from the synagogue soon, she would ask them if they had seen anything out of the ordinary in the city.

  Suddenly realizing that the smoke was from no ordinary fire, she stood up and said, "Come along, children. Time to come in and do your lessons."

  "Oh Umma," they protested, "must we?"

  "You have to learn to read," she said, as she inspected Zachariah's knee, which he had scraped when Omar pushed him. "Because then you will be able to read the Koran. God's word is power. When you have perfect knowledge of the Koran, then you are armed for anything in life. No one can take advantage of you, or hurt you, when you know the Law."

  Alice laughed. "They're just babies, Mother Amira."

  Amira smiled to hide her rising alarm—the smoke was getting stronger. And now she could hear shouts in the streets. "Come along, quickly. Do your lessons today, and tomorrow you will have a picnic at Grandfather's tomb."

  This cheered them, and they ran into the house laughing, because the prospect of a day at a grave was always fun. Once a year Ibrahim took the children to the City of the Dead, where they put fresh flowers on the graves of Ali Rasheed, Camelia's mother, and Alice's baby. Afterward, they always enjoyed a picnic lunch. Then they would come home and Amira would explain to them how the spirit went to paradise when the flesh was put in the ground. Zachariah in particular liked hearing her descriptions of paradise, and he couldn't wait to get there. But the girls were sometimes confused. If the Koran promised so many rewards to men in the afterlife—gardens and virgins—Camelia had once asked, then what was a girl's reward? And Amira had laughed and hugged her and said, "A woman's reward is to serve her husband for eternity."

  A servant came running into the garden. "Mistress! The city is on fire!"

  They joined the others up on the roof, from where they could see flames and smoke.

  "It's the end of the world!" cried the cook.

  Amira could not believe what she saw—a city on fire, and the Nile itself, reflecting the flames, also appearing to burn. Explosions followed one after another; and then there was rapid gunfire, as if it were a war zone.

  "Declare the unity of God!" cried the cook.

  "The Lord is exalted!"

  Auntie Zou Zou came out, supporting herself on a cane. Her old eyes widened, and she cried, "Compassion is God's alone! The city is burning."

  The servants started wailing and praying. "Are we under attack? Is the whole country on fire?"

  Alice had turned as white as her wool cardigan. "Why isn't the government doing something? Where are the police, the soldiers?" Amira surveyed the billowing black smoke, which seemed about a mile and a half away, and tried to determine what was burning. Ali Rasheed had brought her up to the roof years ago, and pointed out various landmarks, so that Amira could at least know something of the city she lived in but had never seen. And the smoke was where Ali had said the British had built their fine hotels and cinemas. She anxiously sought Abdin Palace, where Ibrahim was attending a banquet, and tried to determine if it, too, was burning.

  The hour was late, and flames were still leaping against the night sky, as the family waited anxiously for word of Ibrahim. Maryam and Suleiman Misrahi had arrived a short while before, after rushing to the Misrahi Imports warehouse, fearful that it, too, had been set on fire. But although it appeared that Suleiman's highly profitable import business had been spared, they had seen sights that had made them disbelieve their eyes: hundreds of buildings had been set on fire, nearly all of them British. And now, in Amira's grand salon, as the family gathered beneath the flickering brass oil lamps, watching the clock creep toward midnight, a voice on the radio solemnly listed the destroyed establishments: "Barclay's Bank, Shepheard's Hotel, the Metro Cinema, the Place de l'Opera, Groppi's ..."

  As the clock was just chiming twelve, a shadow appeared in the doorway. Cousin Doreya was the first to see him. "God is merciful! Ibrahim!" And she ran to him, the others following.

  As they embraced and kissed and brought him inside, Ibrahim assuring them that he was all right, that he had not been attacked, he turned to Suleiman and said, "Can you help me with something?"

  They left, and returned a moment later supporting a young man between them, his head wrapped in a bandage. When Alice saw him, she gave a startled cry.

  "Eddie! My God, Eddie!" she said, as she threw her arms around him. "What are you doing here? When did you arrive? You're hurt! Are you all right? What happened?"

  He smiled weakly. "I wanted to surprise you. I guess I've done that."

  "Oh Eddie, Eddie," she sobbed, as Ibrahim told the others what had happened at the Turf Club. "He was taken to Kasr El Aini Hospital, and they telephoned me at the palace, once he convinced them he really was related to me." He sat down with a sigh. "Everybody, this is Edward, Alice's brother."

  Amira kissed him on both cheeks, and welcomed him, eyeing the bandage. "I am sorry you arrived on such a sorrowful day. Come, sit down, did they treat your wound well in the hospital? I don't trust them, I will take a look at it."

  A servant brought a bowl of water, soap, and a towel, and after Amira inspected Edward's wound, and determined it was not serious, she washed it, applied a camphor ointment she had made herself, and rewrapped it with clean gauze. Then she ordered a medicinal tea to be brought up from the kitchen, containing chamomile for his nerves, dandelion to promote healing.

  Suleiman said to Ibrahim, "What is happening now? Are the fires under control?"

  "The city is still burning," Ibrahim said weakly. "And there is a curfew. The mob came within a thousand yards of the palace."

  "But who is responsible for this?" Amira asked.

  When Ibrahim said, "The Muslim Brotherhood is rumored to be one of the forces behind the riots," everyone remembered the terrible day, five years ago when, to protest the British stealing land from Palestinian Arabs, the Brotherhood had blown up movie houses that were showing what they called "Jewish-controlled American films."

  "But is it a takeover of the government?" Maryam asked. "Has there been a coup?"

  Ibrahim shook his head with a baffled expre
ssion. There had been no attempted takeover of the government, no move whatsoever to unseat Farouk. Nonetheless, there was no doubt that it had been a preplanned, very organized riot. The only question was, who was behind it, and why?

  "What is the king going to do about it?" Suleiman said.

  Ibrahim didn't respond. He knew Farouk's policy would be to do nothing. After all, as the monarch himself frequently declared, the riots weren't directed against him, but toward the British. Farouk knew he looked good compared to the hated English, and fully expected to come out a hero in the end.

  A voice came over the radio, solemnly reading from the Koran, a ritual usually reserved for the death of a high official, and as they listened, each of those gathered in Amira's grand salon concentrated on their separate fears:

  Edward decided he was going to get his sister out of here and back to England.

  Ibrahim thought about the boat tickets to England with which he had planned to surprise Alice. But he knew Farouk would never give him permission to leave now. The trip would have to be postponed until the trouble subsided, as surely it would.

  Suleiman reached for his wife's hand, thinking of the Jewish establishments that had also been torched in the riots.

  And Amira wondered what would become of her son, and her family, if the tide should turn against the king.

  NINE

  T

  HE SWELTERING JULY EVENING WAS FILLED WITH THE perfume of Cairo's many gardens, and the fertile smell of the sluggish Nile. Cairenes strolled down the sidewalks as movies let out and restaurants began closing up, and one young family in particular, having just enjoyed a film and ice cream at the cinema, filled the summer air with their laughter. But when they arrived at their apartment house, the husband found an urgent message waiting for him. He read it quickly and destroyed it, then, putting on his military uniform, he kissed his wife and children good-bye, asking them to pray for him, because he did not know if he would ever see them again. He hurried off into the night toward a dangerous appointment that had been set long ago. His name was Anwar Sadat, and the revolution had begun.

  Nefissa was trying to cool off in the sunken marble tub of her private bathroom, enveloping herself in a delicious cloud smelling of almonds and roses. For the first time in her life, she had to suffer the hot summer nights of Cairo. Ever since the riots back in January, on Black Saturday, as the day was being called, there had been increasing outbreaks of violence, and tension had risen in the city. Ibrahim had decided that it wasn't safe for the family to travel, and so had left them all at home when he joined Farouk at the summer palace in Alexandria. But Nefissa was going to Alexandria whether Ibrahim liked it or not. And she was not going alone.

  She laid her head back, closed her eyes, inhaled the heady fragrances of her bath, and thought about Edward Westfall, who was going to be her motoring companion to the coast tomorrow.

  As she pictured his wavy blond hair, opal-blue eyes, and cleft chin, she raised her knees and felt the silky water cascade over her skin. She reached for a crystal bottle of almond oil, poured some into her hand, and began gently to caress her thighs. In her bath, Nefissa was sometimes almost able to bring herself to a kind of delicious precipice, on the other side of which, she knew, there must be something sweet and sublime. But she could never quite achieve it. She had a vague memory of long ago, when she was a little girl, exploring herself and discovering a stunning pleasure. She seemed to remember rewarding herself with that dizzying sensation whenever she wanted, but then had come the night of cutting—her circumcision. Amira had explained that the impurity had been cut out of her, that she was now a "good" girl. And since then, Nefissa had not been able to recapture that rare sensation, not even when she was married.

  As that same pleasure continued to elude her now, leaving her only with a hint of what might have been, she thought of her lieutenant and their one night together, and reached for a sea sponge to lather herself with creamy almond soap. Why did women mutilate one another, she wondered. When had the cutting first begun? Amira had said it was started by Mother Eve, but if that was so, who had performed the operation, since Eve was the first woman? Could it have been Adam? Why were boys' circumcisions performed in daylight, accompanied by a big celebration, while a girl's was done in the secrecy of night and no one spoke of it afterward? Why was it a matter of pride for boys, but shame for girls?

  Nefissa sighed restlessly. She wasn't in love with Edward Westfall; she didn't think she even particularly liked him. But he reminded her so much of her beautiful lieutenant that whenever she looked at him, or he spoke to her, she felt a strange reaction deep inside.

  What pleasure it gave her to think about that night in the old harem at the princess's palace, when she and her English lieutenant had made love until dawn! It still seemed like yesterday; Nefissa could recall every tiny detail of every delicious moment—the small scar on his right thigh, the salty taste of his skin, and how wonderfully he had made love to her. While the sad-eyed women in the murals had looked on, and while the nightingale had sung to the rose in the garden, Nefissa had experienced an ecstasy, a passion, of a kind she was certain most women only dreamed about.

  And when they had said good-bye, as her beautiful officer had kissed her for the last time in the light of dawn, promising that he would write to her, that he would come back, Nefissa suddenly, in one brief moment, understood they would never see each other again.

  He had not told her his name, not once among all the kisses and caresses and sweet words; they had kept the night a complete fantasy, as if they, too, were as unreal as the sultan's concubines painted on the walls. And in the years since, she had received no word from him. All she had was the handkerchief he had given her, made of fine linen and embroidered with forget-me-nots. It had belonged to his mother, he had said.

  Nefissa rose languidly from the bath and rubbed herself down with a thick towel made of luxuriant cotton from her brother's own fields. As she applied a creamy moisturizer of lanolin, beeswax, and frankincense, mixed with Amira's herbs, she wondered again about her lieutenant. Was he still in England, married perhaps? Did he ever think about her?

  Nefissa felt her youth slipping away; she was twenty-seven, and time's passing was following her like a shadow. Although she knew Amira was anxious for her to remarry and have more children, and although she had received offers from many well-to-do Egyptian men, Nefissa was not interested. She wanted to recapture something she had once had. Which was why she had started noticing Edward. If she put her mind to it, she could picture him in the lieutenant's uniform, see him standing beneath a lamppost and lighting a match. She didn't love him, she would never love a man as she had loved her lieutenant. But if the best was unavailable, then second-best would have to do.

  As she slipped between cool, lavender-scented sheets, Nefissa told herself that she was looking forward to going to Alexandria with Edward tomorrow. She might not feel any passion for him, but he was English, after all, and blond and fair-skinned, and perhaps in the darkness of a bedroom she might almost believe she was making love again to her lost soldier ...

  Beneath the hot July moon, shadowy figures moved silently through the deserted streets of the sleeping city as armored columns emerged from the Abbasseya barracks, quietly rolling their mounted guns, tanks, and jeeps. They blocked the Nile bridges and all roads leading from Cairo, and took over General Military Headquarters, interrupting a late-night meeting at which the general staff had been voting to arrest the revolutionary leaders who called themselves the Free Officers. The switchboard was swiftly taken over, and orders were immediately issued to all staff officers and troop commanders to report at once to headquarters, whereupon they were taken into custody and locked up. An armored brigade was dispatched down the Suez Road to intercept British troops possibly coming from the Canal. Everywhere the revolutionary soldiers took up occupation, they met with little or no resistance.

  By 2:00 a.m., Cairo was under the control of the Free Officers. All that was le
ft to do now was push on to Alexandria and the king.

  Edward Westfall stared at the gun in his hand. He had used it before, during the war; he was not afraid to use it again.

  Dawn was breaking, and the open shutters of his bedroom windows admitted a warm morning wind and the call to prayer from Cairo's many minarets. Edward hefted the .38 Smith & Wesson in his hand and offered his own silent prayer: God help me. Please don't let me succumb to my weaknesses again. I am being seduced, and I can't help myself. Please God, deliver me from this vice which plagues me, which is destroying me, and which I am helpless to fight.

  Edward had told everyone, including himself, that the reason he was still in Egypt six months after his arrival was because he was worried for his sister's safety. It was also what he had told his father when he had written back in January, asking the earl to ship some things to him because an unscrupulous taxi driver had absconded with his clothes and sporting equipment. "I can't get Alice out of Egypt," he had written, "because of some antiquated law about a wife needing a husband's permission to leave the country. And Ibrahim just doesn't see the danger." So Edward had asked the old man to include his service revolver from the war, one of the .38 Smith & Wessons Britain had distributed to her troops when the supply of double-action Enfields had run out.

  Edward really had planned on rescuing Alice and Yasmina from this dangerous place. But that had been months ago, and was no longer the reason why he was still here. The real reason was a secret, one he would not confess even to his sister, a reason that he loathed to admit even to himself.