Virgins of Paradise

by Wood, Barbara

  When he caught his passing reflection in a store window, he felt his confidence blossom. Omar knew he was good looking. He had lost his baby fat and had developed a lithe, angular physique; he possessed penetrating dark eyes and had finely arched eyebrows that met over his nose. At the moment he was an engineering student at Cairo University, but when he obtained his degree and a job with the government, and received the allowance entitled to him from his late father, he knew there wouldn't be a woman in all Egypt who could resist him.

  But that was in the future; the reality was that he was still only a student, still living with his mother on Virgins of Paradise Street, and still relying on his Uncle Ibrahim for spending money. What woman would look at him? On the other hand, here was his cousin Camelia, warm and alive on his arm, wafting her perfume in his face, tossing her black hair and flashing her honey-brown eyes. Unlike every other female in Egypt, it was possible that Camelia might not be totally off bounds to him.

  "I'm starving!" she said when they reached an intersection. "Let's get something to eat before we go home." The four young people linked arms, the girls in the middle, and ran laughing across the street to where vendors in galabeyas busily dispensed kebabs, ice cream, and fruit to the hungry movie goers. Omar and his sister and Camelia bought shwarma—hot strips of lamb and chunks of tomato stuffed into pita bread—while Zachariah had a hot sweet potato and a glass of tamarind juice. He hadn't eaten meat since a terrifying incident that had occurred when he was seven years old. On the feast day of Aid el-Adha, which commemorated the prophet Ibrahim's readiness to sacrifice his son Ismail, Zachariah had watched a butcher preparing a lamb for the feast. After the animal's throat had been slit and all the blood drained out, the butcher, crying, "In the name of God!" had pumped air into the carcass to separate the skin from the flesh. Zachariah had watched in horror as the animal got bigger and bigger while the butcher struck the carcass with a stick to distribute the air beneath the skin. The seven-year-old had screamed. And he had not eaten meat since.

  As they ate, trying to keep from being buffeted by the sidewalk crowd, Zachariah was troubled by one aspect of the film they had just seen. The "bad woman" in it had been a divorcee of loose morals, a stereotype in most Egyptian movies. It made him wonder about his own mother, of whom he still knew nothing because his father refused to speak of her. Zachariah couldn't believe his mother was anything like the divorced women in the movies. After all, old Auntie Zou Zou, who had died the year before, had been divorced, and had remained a pious woman for most of her life.

  Zachariah knew what his mother must have been like, even though there were no photos of her in the family albums. She would have been beautiful, he decided, and religious and chaste, resembling the saintly Zeinab, whose mosque the family visited once a year on her holy day. Zachariah loved to fantasize about going in search of his mother, and the tearful reunion they would have. Omar had once said, "If your mother is such a wonderful woman, why has she never come to see you?" Zachariah's only answer was that she must be dead. Martyred now, as well as sainted.

  When they stepped off the curb, Zachariah took Tahia's elbow. As her cousin he was permitted this liberty, but the shock that shot through him at the feel of the warm skin beneath her sleeve was far from cousinly. Unlike Omar, who had only really noticed Camelia two years ago, Zachariah had been in love with Omar's sister for as long as he could remember, back to when they were children playing in the garden. Tahia reminded him of his fantasy mother; she was a model of Muslim virtue and chastity. The fact that, at seventeen, she was nearly a year older than he was didn't bother him; she was small and delicate and, despite eight years of education at a private girls' school, still innocent and ignorant of the greater world. And also unlike Omar, whose ambitions went no further than a quick, hot encounter, Zachariah's thoughts centered upon marriage and the noble, spiritual aspects of love. He and Tahia were cousins; they were fated to marry. As they hurried along the sidewalk, alive with youth and happiness, Zachariah composed a poem in his mind: "Tahia, if only you were mine! I would make rivers of happiness flow beneath your feet! I would command the moon to make bracelets of silver for you! I would command the sun to send down necklaces of gold! Green grass beneath your slippers would be emeralds; raindrops on your body would turn into pearls. I would work magic for you, my beloved. Magic, and much, much more."

  Tahia didn't hear the poem, of course, and anyway she was laughing at something Omar had just said about the somber Russians in the streets, a familiar sight ever since the Soviets had come to help build the High Dam at Aswan. Cairo shops sold Russian goods and displayed signs written in Russian, but Egyptians couldn't warm to people whom they called "heavy blooded."

  Zachariah began to sing a love song—"Ya lili ya aini." "You are my eyes"—and the others joined in. They were drunk on youthful power as they hurried down the street, dodging pedestrians. The streets were brightly lit; music poured from open doorways. Fellaheen women sat on the sidewalks in black melayas, shucking ears of corn and roasting them over open fires, a sign that summer had almost arrived. The warm air was filled with the aroma of meat and fish sizzling on grills, and the sudden, heady bursts of perfume from flowering trees. It was a great time to be young and alive and in Cairo.

  As the foursome reached Liberation Square, on the other side of which, on the spot where the British barracks had once been, the new pharaonic Nile Hilton rose, Camelia was oblivious of the possessive way Omar's arm tightened around her elbow. She was thinking of the great Dahiba in the movie they had just seen. All of Egypt adored Dahiba; how wonderful it must be to be so talented and famous! Camelia believed she was born to dance. She could remember how naturally it had come to her when she was little and had imitated the women who danced the beledi at Umma's parties. When Umma had agreed with Ibrahim that his oldest daughter had talent, Camelia had been enrolled in a ballet school. She had been eight years old; now, ten years later, Camelia Rasheed was the academy's star pupil and there was talk of signing her on with the National Ballet. But Camelia didn't want to be a classical ballet dancer. She had other, wonderful, secret plans. She had decided she would tell her sister Yasmina about them when she got home.

  Omar noticed the way young men in the street glanced at Camelia, furtively, and then looked quickly away when they realized she was with male relatives. A lingering look, perhaps a bold word of greeting, and Omar and Zachariah would be required to set upon the offender with insults and fists. Only the month before, when the five Rasheed teenagers had been out shopping, Yasmina had gone off to browse by herself, and a young man had brushed up against her, his hand grazing her breast. She'd given him a sharp rebuke, but it was Omar and Zachariah who had driven the boy into the street, hurling insults and abuse at him until other pedestrians joined in and the shamed boy had disappeared down an alley. Secretly, Omar hadn't blamed him. A public crowd, such as in the market or on a bus, was the only opportunity a young man was given to feel a girl. Omar himself was frequently guilty of such "accidental" grazes. In fact, he sometimes followed a girl, hoping to get lucky. So far, he had gotten away with it. So far, no brothers or male cousins had jumped on him for threatening a family's honor. And it occurred to him now, as they struck out across Liberation Square, dodging taxis and buses, that Camelia was a perfect target. After all, he was the male cousin in this case. Who would she report him to?

  Surely not to her father, because Omar knew Uncle Ibrahim's secret. And he laughed now, to think about it.

  "How did you get these scars?"

  Ibrahim rolled away from the woman and reached for the cigarettes beside the bed. They always asked him about the scars after they had made love and taken a closer look at his body. It had bothered him at first, but now his response was automatic. "During the Revolution," he said, in a tone that usually shut them up.

  But this one persisted. "I didn't say when, I said how."

  "With a knife."

  "Yes, but—"

  He sat up and drew the sheet
over his thighs and groin to hide the evidence of the torture he had suffered in prison. His torturers had thought it funny when they had cut him there, pretending they were going to castrate him and stopping just within inches when he screamed and begged them to stop. No one, not his mother, nor Alice, knew about Ibrahim's special interrogation at the prison.

  The woman snaked an arm around his waist and kissed his shoulder. But he stood up, pulled the sheet around himself like a toga, and went to the window. Cairo's bright lights and traffic glared back at him. The window was closed, but he could hear the noise of the street, three stories down, the cacophony of car horns, cafe radios, street musicians, laughter, arguments.

  It amazed Ibrahim how Egypt had changed in the ten years since the Revolution. He recalled how, after the Suez War, in which Egypt had been defeated by Israel, aided by France and Britain, an explosion of Egyptian national pride had taken place. The slogan "Egypt for Egyptians" had swept the country from the Sudan to the Delta like an enormous Nile tide, resulting in a mass exodus of foreigners from Egypt. The face of Cairo was changing. All restaurants and shops and businesses were owned by Egyptians; clerks, waiters, and office workers were Egyptian. There were other, more subtle signs of the caretaker having departed: sidewalks were neglected and crumbling, paint was peeling from façades, shops had lost their chic European look. But Egyptians didn't care. They loved their new unity and freedom; they were drunk on national pride. The hero of this curious multi-revolution was Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Egyptians loved a hero. Nasser's picture was seen in store windows, at news kiosks, on billboards, even on the marquee of the Roxy Cinema across from Ibrahim's office. On one side of the film's title was Nasser's smiling face; on the other was the face of another hero, the American president, John Kennedy, whom Middle Easterners loved because he had brought to the world's attention the torture and imprisonment of Algerians by the French.

  As Ibrahim watched the pedestrians in the street below, spilling off the sidewalk and impeding the flow of traffic, he recognized members of the "new" aristrocracy: military men and their wives. Pashas in fezzes had vanished, the new lords of Egypt wore army uniforms and escorted women who tried to dress like American movie stars. This new class, arrogant and self-important, spoke disparagingly of the old departed aristocracy while they flocked to public auctions where the estates of the exiled nobility were put on sale. The wives of the newly prosperous officers snapped up china and crystal, furniture and gowns once owned by important families; the more renowned and "old" the name, the more desirable the goods. Ibrahim sometimes wondered what would have happened to the Rasheed estate if he had stayed in prison, or had been executed, or if they had left Egypt, as friends had advised. Would his mother's jewelry, which had been in the family for two hundred years, adorn one of these high-heeled women? Would Nefissa's fur coats embrace the shoulders of a woman whose father was a cheese maker?

  For the sake of his mother and sister, Ibrahim thanked God he had insisted they stay, because, once the uncertainty and fear of the revolutionary years had passed, the Rasheeds had entered a new prosperity. Despite the government sequestration of large farm holdings, restricting each family to a mere two hundred acres, Ibrahim and others of his class had gotten around the law on a technicality: the two hundred acres were per family member. Because of the size of the Rasheed clan, Ibrahim's vast cotton holdings had barely been touched. And so Amira and the other women in his house still had their servants and jewelry and automobiles. And for this, at least, Ibrahim was thankful.

  "Dr. Rasheed?"

  He looked at the woman's reflection in the glass. She was still lying on the bed, smiling invitingly. But he was finished with her. He would pay her and never see her again. Next week, it would be a new prostitute.

  "You have to go now," he said. "I have a patient coming."

  He watched her in the window as she dressed, slipping her voluptuous body into a tight skirt and sweater, touching up her bouffant hairdo and heavy eyeliner in the dresser mirror. He hadn't lied. He did have a patient coming. He had scheduled the appointment for this hour on purpose, so he could get rid of the woman without lying. Besides, it was not unusual that he should be seeing a patient at this time of the evening; Dr. Rasheed's practice was now so busy that he scheduled patients at all hours.

  In the two years following his release from prison, Ibrahim had lived quietly, almost reclusively. He hadn't gone out, had not contacted his old friends, but instead had pored over medical books until his old education came back to him, the profession he had allowed to atrophy while he had attended King Farouk. When he was ready, he had taken this small suite, which consisted of a tiny waiting room, an examining room, his office, and an adjoining private apartment where he could retire between appointments. For a time, he had enjoyed a slow, low-key practice. But then his life had taken an ironic and unexpected turn: he had become fashionable.

  He stared at the flashing lights of the Roxy Cinema across the way, and saw the woman reflected in the glass, moving around the room behind him, picking up the money he had left on the dresser, counting it, slipping it into her sweater. With a final glance at Ibrahim, she was gone and he was alone again.

  When he had come timidly out into the world and quietly opened his medical practice not far from Liberation Square, Ibrahim had kept his past a secret; no one was to know about his former alliance with royalty. But word had somehow leaked out, and soon it was known all over Cairo that King Farouk's personal physician was now in private practice. Rather than hurting his reputation, as he had thought it would, his past made him a celebrity. The same officers' wives who were buying up the estates of exiled aristocracy flocked to the king's former physician with their ailments. Dr. Ibrahim Rasheed was in great demand.

  Not that he was a particularly skilled practitioner, or had developed any love for medicine. Ibrahim was just as indifferent to his profession as he had been back in medical school, when he had pursued the career because it had been his father's. He had returned to medicine because it gave direction to his life.

  A crowd suddenly surged from the movie theater and when Ibrahim saw the four young Rasheeds, he remembered that it was Thursday night. As he watched them making their way through the crowd, laughing and talking, Ibrahim remembered being young once, long ago, before prison and King Farouk. He had been young and happy and optimistic. Just as these were: Nefissa's beautiful children, the conceited Omar and tender Tahia, and his own sweet daughter, Camelia. Even her way of walking was more fluid and artful than anyone else's. He searched the crowd for Yasmina, and then remembered that Thursday was when she did volunteer work at the Red Crescent.

  Ibrahim saw Zachariah, but his eyes didn't linger for long upon the boy who now caused him such pain. Zachariah, the bastard son of a fellaha, whom Ibrahim had had the arrogance to call his own. Was Amira right, had he mocked God? Not a day went by in which Ibrahim did not wish he could turn back the clock and relive that fateful night.

  He left the window and stubbed out his cigarette. It was time to get ready for Mrs. Sayeed and her gallstones.

  Yasmina came breathlessly into the grand salon, where the family was gathering for Um Khalsoum's monthly conceit on the radio. "Sorry I'm late!" she said, pulling off her scarf and shaking out her blond hair. She kissed Amira first, and then her mother, who asked, "Are you hungry, darling? You missed dinner."

  "We stopped for kebab," Yasmina said, as she took a seat on the divan between Camelia and Tahia.

  Thursday evening was the one occasion in the week when both sexes got together, the men and boys on one side of the salon, the women and girls on the other. The nineteen members of the Rasheed family were settling around the radio, with snacks and glasses of tea. While waiting for the concert to begin, Amira worked on the family photo albums, which no longer had blank spaces where the disgraced daughter, Fatima, had once been displayed. Amira had gradually filled these with pictures of other family members, and as she pasted a photograph in the last blank space that her
daughter had once occupied, Amira thought: Fatima is thirty-eight now.

  "Mishmish," Zachariah called from across the room. "We saw the new Dahiba film this afternoon!"

  Omar gave Yasmina an insolent look. "Where have you been?"

  "At the Red Crescent. You know that."

  "Who walked home with you?"

  Yasmina didn't mind when Omar interrogated her this way; it was his right as a male blood relative to do so, and she was obligated to answer. "Mona and Aziza. They walked me to the gate." Omar needn't have worried; Yasmina would never think of going down a street alone, because boys felt free to hurl insults and pebbles at girls who walked alone. She wondered if it was true what Umma had said about that sort of thing never happening in the days of the veil.

  "Oh, Mishmish!" Camelia said. "You should have seen Dahiba dance!" And she stood up, placed her hands behind her head, and did a slow hip roll. Omar's eyes nearly popped out of his head.

  "Why are you late, darling?" Alice said.

  "We went to a hospital!" Yasmina was excited. She was graduating from high school in June and then in September she would start University—not Cairo University, where Omar went and where Zachariah was soon to attend. Yasmina was going to go where Camelia was currently enrolled, at the prestigious American University, which, although co-ed, was small and private and had a better guarantee of a girl's safety. And she knew exactly what she was going to study—science.

  When Ibrahim came into the salon, the family greeted him respectfully. He kissed his mother first, then Alice. Camelia was disappointed to see that Hassan al-Sabir was not with him. Ibrahim occasionally invited his friend to listen to Um Khalsoum's monthly concert at the Rasheed house. But because Umma always seemed uncomfortable when Hassan came over, his visits were infrequent. Still, Camelia was hopeful. The crush she had had on her father's friend when she was little had blossomed into an adolescent love.