Amira hesitated. The only other living person who knew this secret was Maryam Misrahi, living in far-away California. "I do not know, Venerable One," she said.
Keen eyes studied her. "What lunar mansion?"
Amira shook her head.
"Your mother's birth-star?"
"I do not know." She added quietly: "I do not know who my mother was."
Qettah sat back, and her bones creaked with the chair. "This is a sad thing, mistress. Without knowing the past we can never know the future. All is in God's hands. Your fate is written in His great book. But I cannot read it for you."
"But I did not come to have my future read, Venerable One. I came to have a dream interpreted, and perhaps to find answers to my past."
"Tell me the dream."
As Qettah listened with her eyes closed, Amira said, "I see a handsome young boy, not yet a man, tall and straight, with large beautiful eyes and a full mouth, smiling. He is dressed in elegant robes, and when he holds his hand out to me, it is a graceful gesture. In the dream, he doesn't speak, but I sense a message from him—I feel as if he is trying to reach me, trying to tell me something. The dream lasts only a few seconds, and then the boy vanishes."
"Do you know who he is?"
"No."
"Have you had this dream more than once?"
"Several times."
"Does this boy frighten you?"
"This is the wonder of it, Venerable One. I feel love for him. Who is he? Is he someone who is trapped in my lost memory? He beckons to me, as if he were telling me to search for him, to find him."
Qettah studied Amira with keen eyes. "And you think he is from your past?"
"I sense this most strongly. But I do not recall him in my memories. Could he have been someone who lived at the house on Tree of Pearls Street, where I lived as a girl? Is he perhaps the spirit of a son I never had? Is he my brother, and belonging to that most remote part of my memory which is lost to me?"
"Perhaps he is none of these, Sayyida. Perhaps he is a symbol of something in your life. We will see."
The tea was ready and Qettah poured some into a small chipped cup, inviting Amira to drink. When there was only a teaspoon left, Qettah took the cup in her left hand and swirled it three times, in large circles. Then she turned it over into the saucer and lifted it to read the leaves.
Silence crept into the room, broken only by the occasional rattling of the mashrabiya screen as wind whistled through it. Amira felt the edges of her melaya flutter against her ankles, she stared at Qettah's improbably wrinkled face and thought of each deep line as a chapter in the old woman's life. But Qettah's expression was unreadable.
Finally the astrologer looked up from the tea leaves and said, "He is a real boy, Sayyida. Someone in your past."
"Is he still alive? Where is he?"
"Have you ever dreamed of a city or a building, Sayyida? A landmark that might identify his whereabouts?"
"I have memories of a square minaret."
"Ah, the mosque of al-Nasir Mohammed perhaps, on Al Muizz Street?"
"That is not the one. The minaret I dream of is not in Cairo, but far away, I fear."
Qettah studied the leaves again, and then nodded, as if to confirm her reading. "You say you are a widow, Sayyida?"
"For many years now. Who is the boy? Is he my brother?"
"Sayyida," Qettah said with wonder in her voice, "he is not your brother, he is your betrothed."
Amira frowned. "I don't understand. I have no betrothed."
"This is the boy you were intended to marry, long ago. You were engaged to him."
"But ... how is that possible? I have no memory of this!"
Setting aside the cup and saucer, Qettah brought out a small brass phial, which she gave to Amira to hold between her hands for seven counts. She then poured the contents onto the surface of a bowl of water, and the perfume of roses suddenly filled the air, along with another underlying fragrance Amira could not identify, but which reminded her of the sunrise.
Qettah fixed her eyes on the swirling oil, and after a moment, said, "You will be taking a journey, Sayyida."
"Where to?"
"To the East. Ah, the betrothed is here again."
Amira peered into the bowl, but saw only pearlescent ribbons of oil on water.
"Sayyida," Qettah finally said, placing her hands on the table, "the signs show that your path was somehow diverted from its original destiny. You went where you should not have gone; you did not go to where you should have gone."
"So my dreams of a raid on a caravan are not merely dreams, but actual memories. I had thought they were, but was never certain. Perhaps my mother and I were on our way to see this boy when the raiders attacked and kidnapped me."
"This was not supposed to happen, Sayyida. Another life was intended for you."
"In the name of the Eternal One," Amira said. "What shall I do?"
"The young man beckons. Go to him. Go to the East."
"But where in the East should I go?"
"Forgive me, but that I do not know. Make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Sayyida. Sometimes," Qettah said with a smile that broke her face into a thousand creases, "God illuminates us through prayer."
Amira left the Old City in great excitement, and followed winding alleys until the streets began to broaden and she was once again on a wide boulevard where tall modern buildings loomed and cars sped by. Here she saw further signs of war and defeat—sandbags piled up in front of doorways and windows covered with dark-blue paper. A city, she thought, braced for Armageddon.
She also saw signs of the changing times. The modest melaya and galabeya, so prevalent in the poor quarter, were nearly absent in this modern Cairo, as young men went by in blue jeans and Western jackets, and girls displayed their legs beneath short skirts. A billboard dominating Liberation Square showed a blond woman in a white bathing suit drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola. Next to it, another billboard advertised a movie, depicting a scene in which a man in a tuxedo held a gun, while the seductive shadow of a woman hovered behind him. When the signal light changed, Amira tugged her melaya tighter about her and hurried across the street; because she could not read, she was unaware that the billboard had been for a Hakim Raouf movie, and that the actresses in the credits were Dahiba and Camelia Rasheed.
Before heading for the spacious tree-lined avenues of Garden City, Amira crossed Liberation Square and joined the heavy pedestrian and motor traffic that poured between the massive stone lions guarding El Tahrir Bridge. She found herself searching the faces of the men she passed, to see if she recognized the beautiful youth of her dream in any of them. Is he here, she wondered, a breath away from me? Have our paths crossed a hundred times and we do not know it? Does he dream of me as a girl, and wonder who I am, why he should be having this dream?
She paused to look at the Nile. Tomorrow was the festival of Shamm el-Nessin, "Sniffing the Breeze," the one holiday shared by Muslims, Coptic Christians, and even atheists, in celebration of the first day of spring. Families would be gathering on the banks of the river for picnics and egg hunts. At least one drowning would be reported.
Amira gazed down into the water and felt, mingled with her excitement, a sense of pending disaster. Everyone was saying that President Sadat was leading Egypt toward another conflict with Israel. If so, how many were going to die this time? What other young men from the house of Rasheed would shed their blood in the desert?
And then she thought of the boy in her dream. She was certain that he held the key to her past, and to her identity. But where in all the world was she going to find him?
"Here, Sahra, let me help you with that," Zachariah said, as he lifted the heavy kettle of hard boiled eggs from the stove and placed it in the sink.
Secretly pleased by his attention, Sahra said, "God bless you for your help, young master. I'm a little under the weather this morning, but I shall be fine tomorrow, God willing."
The kitchen was crowded and noisy as children around the la
rge table painted eggs and tied ribbons on chocolate bunnies. Tahia, one of the adults supervising, gave Sahra a curious look, and remembered that Auntie Doreya had complained of malaise at breakfast. Tahia hoped there wasn't something going around, a late winter flu perhaps, that might upset the children's fun tomorrow at the spring festival.
When six-year-old Asmahan suddenly screamed, two other little ones burst into tears, and Omar's youngest, the eight-month-old twins, howled. "Children, children," Tahia said, trying to restore order. "Mohammed, you shouldn't have done that. A great big boy like you, picking on your cousin." She put her hand to her lower back and straightened. She was eight months pregnant.
Nefissa, also sitting at the table with the children, said to her daughter, "Don't scold the boy, Tahia. It was Asmahan's fault," and she stroked ten-year-old Mohammed's hair as she fed him a piece of chocolate. Nefissa thought he was so like his father, when Omar had been that age, that she gave her frowning grandson another hug.
Tahia exchanged a look with Zachariah, who privately thought Mohammed needed stricter watching. The boy wasn't to blame; his father was away most of the time on government assignments, and although his stepmother Nala, Omar's second wife, was a good disciplinarian with their other four children, it was Nefissa who had authority over Mohammed, and she was spoiling him as badly as she had once spoiled Omar.
"When I was a girl," Sahra said, as she brought another batch of eggs to the table, "the wealthiest man in the village, Sheikh Hamid, distributed little ducklings and chicks made of sugar and almonds to the children. The more fortunate of us received new clothes, and nobody worked in the fields, we would picnic and listen to the firecrackers being set off by boys on either side of the canal. There were some Christian families in our village, and I remember that it was the only time our families all celebrated together." When she turned back to the sink, she put her hand on her abdomen and winced.
Zachariah nestled an egg in a napkin and showed little Abdul Wahab how to draw on it with a wax pencil. "Have you ever been back to see your family, Sahra?" he asked, watching Tahia out of the corner of his eye. Her lush, pregnant body flooded him with desire. He had once thought that purity was seductive, but now he found fecundity more so.
"No, young master," Sahra said, gulping down a large glass of water. She couldn't remember having ever been this thirsty. "I haven't been back since I left, when I was a girl."
"But don't you miss your family?"
She thought of her beloved Abdu, who had planted Zachariah in her, and whom Zakki now so strongly resembled. "My family is here," she said, silently blessing Abdu's memory.
"Mama!" cried one of the little ones. "Got to go pottie!"
"Again?"
"I'll take him," said Basima, and she scooped up the child and hurried out.
Haneya's daughter, Fadilla, frowned as she watched her aunt leave the kitchen. At twenty, Fadilla was still unmarried, which surprised everyone because she bore a strong resemblance to her great-grandmother, Zou Zou, who had been a beauty. "I was up all night with it myself," she said. "I wonder if the family has caught something."
"That makes the sixth case of diarrhea in the house," Tahia said. "I think Umma has a medicine for it."
As she opened a cupboard and surveyed the neat rows of jars and bottles and phials, all meticulously labeled with Amira's secret symbols, Zachariah watched her. On the day Tahia had been wed to the elderly Jamal Rasheed, Zachariah had vowed to her that he would not touch another woman. And he had kept that vow. But he was also keeping another, secret vow: that he was waiting for when she would be free again. Because he knew now for certain that they were destined to be together.
He had seen it in a vision, the day he had died in the Sinai Desert.
Feeling his gaze on her, Tahia looked over at Zachariah and smiled.
Poor Zakki, she thought. The terrible things the Six-Day War had done to him! His hair was receding, his shoulders were stooped, and he wore glasses with thick lenses. Zachariah was middle-aged at twenty-eight; one of her children had even erroneously addressed him as "Grandpa Zakki." If only he could have kept his job. Facing youngsters every day in a classroom might have helped him to stay young, but Zachariah had had one of his "spells" in front of his pupils, terrifying them, and so the headmaster had let him go. Now Zakki was looked after by the whole family, especially the women, who doted on him and watched for spells. He didn't have them often; the last one had occurred over a year ago. But when they struck, he was as vulnerable as a newborn baby.
Tahia didn't know exactly what he saw when the trouble came over him; only once, in the months after he came back from the Sinai, did he try to describe the "landscape of his lunacy," as he called it—a horrific image of barren desert, burned-out tanks, charred bodies, jets swooping down from the sky and strafing the sand so that it shot up in geysers. The medics said Zachariah had actually died on the battlefield, his heart had stopped beating, he had drawn no breath, and they had pronounced him dead. But then, a moment later, miraculously he had opened his eyes and was alive again. Where he had gone to in that long moment between heart beats, no one knew.
But Zachariah knew. He had gone to paradise.
And because of it, he had returned from the war a man filled with such beatific peace, such a calmness, that, in his presence, others grew calm and tranquil.
Everything about him, it seemed to Tahia, was supernaturally gentle—his eyes, his voice, his hands, as if his man-soul had departed his body and an angel-soul had taken its place. He frightened her sometimes, he seemed so otherworldly, but he also made her heart swell with love for him. The war had changed him, as it had changed Egypt, and it had changed Tahia herself as well: at twenty-seven, she harbored her very first secret—that, although Jamal Rasheed was her husband, Zachariah was her love.
Amira came into the kitchen then, calling out, "Sabah el-kheir. Morning of goodness." The children stopped what they were doing, stood up respectfully, and said, "Sabah d-nur, Umma. Morning of light." Then they resumed their noisy industry.
Because she had gone straight to her rooms upon returning from her secret visit to Qettah, to shed her dusty melaya and freshen up before joining the family, Amira did not look as if she had just returned from the crowded Zeinab Quarter. Her outfit, a smart black wool skirt and black silk blouse, stockings and polished, high-heeled shoes, gold bracelets, diamond and antique emerald rings, and a simple pearl necklace had transformed her from bint al-balad to bint al-zawat, "daughter of the aristocracy." Just as she had always taught her girls that a woman's beauty was her second most cherished asset after her virtue, Amira had taken extra care with her makeup, the eyebrows perfectly drawn, lips skillfully outlined and shaded to hint youthful fullness, and blusher applied to a youthful complexion that had known only the finest creams and oils. Her hair, once black, was now a rich auburn, thanks to a weekly henna rinse, and was worn in a French twist pinned with diamond clips. Amira walked with grace and authority, and because she was fashionably plump, the sign of a woman who has borne children and lives well, she did not have the appearance of approaching seventy.
She paused to smile at the children, chattering like monkeys while they painted eggs as well as themselves. She thought of them as precious twigs sprouting from the various branches of the Rasheed tree; nine of them, her own great-grandchildren, possessed her distinctive, leaf-shaped eyes—not a Rasheed trait. What leaf-eyed ancestor had donated his or her looks to these babies? she wondered. Whose blood have I passed along? Perhaps I will find out when I learn who the boy is in my dreams, calling to me.
Peals of laughter brought her back to the kitchen. If only it was like this every day, she thought, feeling her good spirits restored. The house full of the happy noise of children! But with young couples setting up homes of their own these days, and unmarried women choosing to live alone, the resident population of the house on Virgins of Paradise Street had shrunk. Omar's five children—Yasmina's son Mohammed, nearly ten years old, and the four
younger ones by Omar's second wife—and Tahia's children—six-year-old Asmahan and her three younger brothers and sisters—did not live here. Nor did the young women helping the children to paint eggs: Salma, the wife of one of Ayesha's sons who had been killed in the Six-Day War; Nasrah, wife of Amira's nephew, Tewfik; and Sakinna, a cousin on Jamal Rasheed's side of the family. Lovely girls, Amira thought, but with modern ideas. Only Narjis, named for the narcissus flower, seventeen-year-old daughter of Amira's niece Zubaida, appreciated traditional modesty. In fact, the girl's cousins teased Narjis about having taken a step backward, because she had adopted the new "Islamic dress" that some university women were starting to wear.
The futures of all these children and young women, whether they lived in this house or elsewhere, were Amira's responsibility. She had already paid a visit to Mrs. Abdel Rahman down the street to discuss a match between Sakinna and the Abdel Rahman son, who was graduating from the university this year. And for Salma, who had been widowed too long, Amira had her eye on Mr. Waleed, who held a well-paying post in the Ministry of Education. And Rayya's tempestuous sixteen-year-old daughter, who was arranging eggs in baskets, would be ready for engagement in a year or two. For her, Amira would look for a man who would be firm and take her in hand. But what to do about Fadilla, the twenty-year-old beauty who had announced her intention of choosing her own husband?
"There will be five more for dinner tonight, Sahra," Amira said as she went to the counter to examine the nine plump chickens being prepared for roasting. "Cousin Ahmed telephoned, he and Hosneya and the children will be joining us for the holiday." Which would bring the total of house guests to over fifty, a figure which gave Amira some degree of solace. In troubling times it was good to have the family together.
She looked through the kitchen window and saw that, overnight, the mishmish tree had bloomed, promising an abundant apricot harvest. It made her wonder about the other Mishmish, the banished granddaughter. Like Ali before him, who had proudly refused to speak Fatima's name, Ibrahim had not spoken of Yasmina since she went away.
Virgins of Paradise Page 33
