Virgins of Paradise

by Wood, Barbara

  When Zachariah came into the room a moment later, removing his gold wire-rimmed glasses to rub his eyes, Yasmina embraced him, too, and murmured, "Praise God we are all together."

  He turned to Amira and said, "I had no luck, Umma. I have wasted another morning at the office of the defense minister, trying to find out about the Misrahis. This time I was told the minister has gone out of town! It is impossible to see him. There are hundreds crowded into his waiting room and out into the hall, all with petitions like ours!"

  Zachariah glanced at Tahia, but couldn't look at Jamal. Since Tahia's wedding, Zachariah had not allowed himself to even contemplate the physical side of her relationship with the older man. But this morning Jamal had proudly announced that Tahia was expecting their first child, and Zachariah couldn't bear the thought of what her pregnancy was proof of.

  "Zakki," Amira said quietly, so as not to alarm the others, "don't worry about the Misrahis any more. Maryam told me today she is going to California with her son. We have other, more urgent matters to attend to."

  He looked around, noticing for the first time that everyone was busily stripping the house. The job of collecting all the jewelry had fallen to Alice, who was going from bedroom to bedroom, making sure all drawers, jewelry boxes, and purses were emptied of anything of value. Basima saw that all designer fashions, satin and silk undergarments, crocodile shoes, and fur coats were brought into the salon and folded into empty flour or potato sacks. The boys then carted these off to the kitchen, where Sahra oversaw their placement around the big tiled room, in full view so that soldiers seeing them might not suspect their true contents. Rayya helped Doreya remove paintings from the wall and wrap them, while Haneya assisted Alice in the garden, digging holes to receive the pots of jewelry that had been collected. Everyone worked quickly and silently, without the joy and merriment that usually accompanied household projects. Night was coming, which meant the soldiers could arrive at any time, and the women had nowhere near rendered the house bare, with everything of value safely hidden or disguised.

  "Will this work, Umma?" Zachariah said. "Everyone knows we're rich."

  "They will think we have fallen on hard times," Amira replied. "Our cotton holdings have dwindled to nearly nothing, and your father practices medicine in a middle-class neighborhood that is rapidly turning fellaheen. When the soldiers come, they will see a once-wealthy family reduced to penury, living off a small income and their pride." Amira had also closed out her own personal bank account and hidden the cash in the pigeon coop.

  When she turned to supervising the stripping of the divans, the luxurious satin and velvet throws being folded and carried up to the roof to be hidden in the fruit shed, with plain blankets laid down in their place, Yasmina went to Zachariah and said, "Where is Father?"

  But the twenty-year-old shrugged. "He left the house this morning right after breakfast. Umma and Auntie Alice were at Auntie Maryam's, and he told them to come home and hide everything. I didn't go to classes today. Mishmish, do you know what's going on? Why are we in danger?"

  Thinking of Jamal Rasheed's visit to her father's office the night before, she was tempted to tell her brother what she knew, that Hassan was behind it all. But Zachariah seemed so lost and confused. Although he had been born five months before Yasmina, she felt like the older sibling. So she smiled and said, "Don't worry. It will soon pass and everything will be all right." Then she took her son from Nefissa and hurried upstairs.

  In the bedroom she had shared with Camelia when they were little, Yasmina found her suitcases already there, one open on the bed, ready to be unpacked.

  As she put her son down, he said, "I'm thirsty, Mama." She took him into the bathroom, filled a glass with water, and then sat on the edge of the tub to watch him drink, marveling, as she always did, that this little boy was hers. She smiled at the concentration with which he drank—all ten tiny fingers grasping the glass, his eyes downcast, his eyebrows forming a furrow. Yasmina had observed the same intensity in other things Mohammed did, even if it was only playing with his building blocks, and she wondered if she was already seeing him as he was going to be as an adult. He would be handsome, she could tell, like most of the Rasheed men, and perhaps a little vain, but he had already learned to laugh at himself, the way Egyptians did. Even now, after he finished drinking, he looked down and saw that he'd spilled a lot of the water on his shirt. He shrieked and laughed and called himself a hopeless donkey, and then he surprised Yasmina with an adult remark that he had picked up from one of his uncles: "God must love clumsy people, he made so many of them!"

  She laughed and drew him to her, and he giggled and said, "May we play 'Happy Families,' Mama?"

  Her moment of joy died suddenly, as she remembered the danger the family was in, and the errand she must run.

  "I tell you what," she said, stroking the hair that never seemed to stay combed, "we'll play in a little while. I have to go out, but when I come back we'll play any game you want." Then she hugged him again and thought: I will not let any harm come to you.

  As they went back into the bedroom, Nefissa came in, saying, "Such turmoil! Cousin Ahmed and his wife and children are coming in from Assyut. The house will be full tonight!"

  "Auntie, I have to go out for a while. Will you watch Mohammed? Everyone is so busy that I'm afraid he might get ignored."

  Nefissa sat on the bed and pulled the boy onto her lap. "Nothing could give me more joy," she said, producing a piece of candy from her pocket and giving it to him.

  When Yasmina suddenly dropped her purse and retrieved her belongings with trembling hands, Nefissa noticed what she had not seen upon her niece's arrival—that the young woman was highly agitated. "If the Visitors of the Dawn frighten you so," she said, "then wouldn't it be better to stay here?"

  "This is an appointment that cannot wait, Auntie."

  Nefissa's curiosity was piqued. "What—" she began. But Yasmina rushed out.

  When Mohammed squirmed on her lap, Nefissa put the three-year-old down and decided to unpack for her niece. She started with the opened suitcase on the bed, lifting out the carefully folded nightgowns and lingerie. But as she drew out Yasmina's plastic toiletries bag, it fell open and the contents spilled out. As she replaced them, she came across something that at first baffled her. When she realized it was a diaphragm she was stunned.

  Birth control? No wonder no children had come after Mohammed! But surely Omar didn't know about this.

  As she finished putting everything back into the bag, she saw that a lipstick had fallen to the floor, and when she picked it up, she found a piece of paper that must have dropped from Yasmina's purse. An address was written on it, in Yasmina's handwriting.

  "What did you say?" Ibrahim said, taking a step closer to Hassan.

  "I said I want Yasmina. If you give her to me, I shall take your family's name off that list."

  "You dare!"

  "She is mine! You promised her to me and then you broke that promise, proving that you are not a man of honor. On that day, you and I ceased to be brothers. But we need not be enemies. Tell Yasmina to pay me a call and we can—"

  "Go to hell."

  "I hadn't thought you would be so resistant. After all, your entire family's welfare is at stake."

  Ibrahim's hands curled into fists. "And we will fight you as a family. You accuse me of having no honor. Then you don't know me. I would rather see my family on the street than lose our honor."

  "Remember, my friend, you already have a prison record—for crimes against the Egyptian people."

  "If you touch my daughter—"

  Hassan laughed. "I remember when we were young, Ibrahim, and you would go on and on to me about how you wanted to do this or that, and how you were going to stand up to your father about it. And then I would see you, nearly a grown man, standing before him with your head bowed, saying, 'Yes sir,' like a schoolboy. Don't make a fool of yourself, my friend. You will only regret it."

  "Yes, I have done things in my li
fe that I am now sorry for," Ibrahim said, startled to hear himself make such a confession, further surprised to realize that he meant it. "They were the actions of a weak man," he said. "I am not proud of them. You mention my father. He was a strong man, and next to him I did feel weak. But my father is with God, and I am on my own. If I have to fight you, I will."

  He stepped up to Hassan. Their faces were so close he could smell his friend's familiar cologne. "Stay away from my family," Ibrahim said. "Stay away from Yasmina, or you will regret it."

  Hassan smiled. "Threats, Ibrahim? I have the power here, not you. Remember, I put you in prison once already."

  "I know," Ibrahim said quietly.

  "According to your record, they ... interrogated you. Is that right?"

  Ibrahim's jaw tightened. "You will not provoke me into fighting you, not here, not now."

  "I don't want to fight you. I want Yasmina."

  "You will never have her."

  Hassan shrugged. "One way or another, she will be mine. And you will learn once and for all that I am not a man to be trifled with, a man with whom you can make contracts and then break them. You humiliated me, Ibrahim, and now I intend to do the same to you."

  As Yasmina's taxi arrived in front of the house set far back from the road on Pyramids Way, she did not see another taxi just depart, nor the passenger inside. Her mind was on what she was going to say to Hassan. As she followed the path through the trees and shrubs, she felt confused. Why was Uncle Hassan doing this? When Jamal had spoken his name in her father's office the night before, she had thought it was a mistake. But, seeing the look on her father's face, she had thought: Can there be any truth in it?

  At the front door, which was large and intimidating, she felt her resolve weaken. It couldn't be true. Not Uncle Hassan. And yet ...

  He hadn't been to their house in over four years. He hadn't attended her wedding, or Camelia's birthday party, or Zachariah's high school graduation. For a close friend of her father's, worthy of being called Uncle by his children, Hassan al-Sabir had been curiously absent from their lives in recent years. She took a deep breath and knocked, and a moment later was following a servant into a living room that looked like a museum. Hassan was there, and as he rose from the couch, Yasmina realized that this was the first time she had ever been alone with him.

  "Yasmina! My dear," he said. "Well, well, this is a surprise. You've grown. You're a woman now." He clasped her hands and smiled. "Welcome, and God's peace upon you."

  "God's peace and His blessings upon you, Uncle Hassan."

  His smile deepened. "So I am still your uncle, am I? Please, sit down."

  Yasmina regarded the leather sofa spread with leopard skins; her eyes grew wide as she took in the rest of the surroundings.

  "As you can see, my dear," he said, "I am doing very well these days."

  She was drawn to a framed photograph on the fireplace mantle—a picture of two young men in white polo flannels, leaning on each other and laughing.

  "That is your father and I at Oxford, many years ago," Hassan said, joining her. "Our team won that day. It was one of the best days in my life."

  "Uncle Hassan, I came to talk to you about my father."

  Hassan went on staring at the photograph. "My experience at school would have been a very lonely one if it hadn't been for your father," he said quietly. "I was all alone in the world, my father had just died, my mother had died years before, and I had no brothers or sisters. If it weren't for Ibrahim Rasheed befriending me I would have been wretched." He looked at Yasmina. "I loved your father very much—more than he knew, I think."

  She thought Hassan's look had softened, making him seem younger. "Uncle Hassan, do you know why I've come to see you?"

  "First give me news of your family," he said, taking a seat on the sofa and beckoning to her to join him. "Are they well? Tell me," he said as he moved closer to her, "how is your grandmother taking the Misrahis' misfortune?"

  "The Misrahis? Umma is very upset, of course. We are all upset. But why—?"

  "I hear she's been rushing around like a chicken without a head, trying to make things right."

  Yasmina frowned. "I beg your pardon?"

  "Did you know that I've always privately called your grandmother the Dragon? She has never liked me. From the very first day Ibrahim brought me to your house, when we returned from Oxford. That was long before you were born, my beautiful Yasmina." He lifted a lock of her blond hair and sifted it through his fingers. "I saw it in her eyes, when he introduced me to her. She was smiling, and then she suddenly went cold. For no reason, little Mishmish. And did you know that I wanted to marry you? Your father and I even signed the engagement contract. But the Dragon made Ibrahim break it. She said I wasn't good enough for you."

  She stood up quickly, nearly tripping on the zebra-skin rug. "Uncle Hassan, I heard something last night which I find impossible to believe. It is about the Visitors of the Dawn and a certain list of names."

  "Yes, the list. What about it?"

  "I was told that my family is on that list."

  "What if it is?"

  "Uncle Hassan, do you have anything to do with the Visitors of the Dawn?"

  "But of course, sweet Mishmish. The Zuwwar el-Fagr are under the direct command of Defense Minister Hakim Amer, and I am his right-hand man. And so whatever they do is a result of my orders. As a matter of fact, I was responsible for the search and seizure of the Misrahis' apartment in the first place. I sent the soldiers there."

  "You! But why? What had they done?"

  "Nothing, they were quite innocent. I used them as bait, so to speak."

  "What do you mean, bait?"

  "I want something, and this is my way of getting it. I was the one who added the Rasheed name to that list. Upon my order, the soldiers will visit your house on Virgins of Paradise Street, and I assure you, they will be most thorough. They will strip it bare, and then confiscate the house itself. Your grandmother and the others will be out on the street. Unless, of course, I get what I want."

  Yasmina began to tremble. "What is that?"

  "You, of course." He stood up and walked toward her. "I can take the Rasheed name off that list. I can make your house safe from the Visitors of the Dawn. But it will require a certain, shall we say payment from you. Here, now."

  She stared at him in shock.

  "Blame your father, Yasmina, it was he who dishonored our friendship, by marrying you to Omar instead of to me. I have waited all this time to take my revenge. And now I shall have it, through you. Your father can't stop me this time, I shall have you after all."

  She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. "And if I refuse to cooperate?"

  "Then I will send soldiers to Virgins of Paradise Street. And I assure you that no one will be spared."

  "I won't give you what you want."

  "Yes, you will." He reached for her and drew her to him. When she tried to push him away, he gripped both of her wrists with one hand and tore her blouse. "Now you won't tell anyone about this," he murmured, slipping his hand under her bra and cupping a firm young breast.

  She broke away and ran across the room, stumbling over a table, sending a vase crashing to the floor. He caught up with her, swung her around, and pinned her against the wall.

  "After all," he said, "in these cases it is the woman's honor that is ruined, not the man's. Remember, you came here of your own free will. You will do everything I say, and I shall enjoy it very much. And who knows? You might enjoy it yourself."

  Out on the road, Nefissa pulled her car up to the spot where she had seen Yasmina get out of a taxi. Her grandson was with her; she had taken Mohammed for ice cream, and then curiosity had led her to the address that had fallen from Yasmina's purse. She gazed for a moment at the secluded villa behind the trees, and then, seeing a woman sweeping the path that led to the house, she rolled down her window and called, "God's peace upon you, Mother. Can you tell me who lives in this house?"

  "Fear God, Sa
yyida, that is Hassan al-Sabir," the woman said in a low voice, "a very powerful man."

  Hassan al-Sabir!

  But what on earth was Yasmina doing with Hassan?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  T

  HE AUDIENCE IN THE CROWDED CAGE D'OR NIGHTCLUB jumped to their feet and cheered: "Y'Allah! Camelia! Dahiba!" It was time for Dahiba's drum solo, the climax of their show, and so Camelia blew kisses as she left the stage. Although it was autumn, the evening was warm; she was anxious to get out of her costume, which was a plain white cotton galabeya with a simple scarf around the hips. Because of the atmosphere of austerity prevailing over Nasser's new Egypt, Camelia and Dahiba, like all other entertainers in Cairo, had put away their flamboyant costumes, removed the glitter from their shows and modified their choreography to give the audiences more beledi, "folk," and less showy Oriental. But even with such curbs, their audiences were always packed and enthusiastic.

  Backstage, Camelia was surprised to find Yasmina waiting for her. The sisters had seen little of each other in the past few months, and Camelia was shocked to see dark circles under Yasmina's blue eyes. Camelia was further alarmed when she realized Yasmina did not have her son with her; Mohammed always went everywhere with his mother. Despite her appearance, Yasmina smiled and hugged her sister, and declared that she was dancing better every day. "And have you seen this, Lili? Read it!"

  Camelia read aloud the newspaper article Yasmina had circled: "The lovely Camelia, new to the Cairo club scene, is a dancer of unsurpassed excellence, possessing the suppleness of a serpent, the grace of a gazelle, and the beauty of a butterfly. This reviewer predicts that one day Camelia will surpass even the great Dahiba, her mentor." The piece was written by Yacob Mansour, whose reviews Camelia had never read before.