They arrived at the edge of the village, where squat mud-brick buildings faced railroad tracks. Many of the dwellings had blue doors, or hand prints applied with blue paint, the good-luck symbol of Fatima, the Prophet's daughter. Some façades were painted with pictures of boats and airplanes and cars, indicating that the lucky occupant had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and nearly all the houses were decorated with the name "Allah" in elaborate script, in order to keep out jinns and the evil eye. As they drove past women in doorways and old men on benches watching time pass, as Jasmine began to smell familiar aromas—beans cooking in oil, bread baking in ovens, dung drying on rooftops—she felt her twenty-one years of exile start to peel gently away, like petals dropping from a flower. Inch by inch, Egypt was insinuating its way back into her bones, blood, and muscle. What was going to happen, she wondered, when it reached her heart?
After waving to Nasr, who headed off in another direction, Connor turned the Land Cruiser toward the southern edge of the village, where a wider dirt road was accommodating donkey carts and camels loaded with sugarcane. "I'll show you the Foundation residence first," he said.
They passed a billboard that read A Child Is Born Every Twenty Seconds. It had been put there by the Cairo Family Planning Association.
"There," he said. "That's our biggest problem. Overpopulation. As long as people keep turning out so many children, we will never defeat poverty and disease. And it's a worldwide problem, Doctor, not just a phenomenon of the Third World, people irresponsibly reproducing themselves. Balanced population growth means a small family, one man and one woman replacing themselves, and two children fill that bill. What is the point to producing more? Where is the thought for the future, consideration for the planet, when families consist of more than two children?"
He gestured back to the billboard they had just passed. "That doesn't do any good, of course, and the television and radio stations run birth-control ads every hour and a half, but the government propaganda isn't having much of an effect, especially here in Upper Egypt, where babies are being produced faster than we can inoculate them. Last year, family-planning clinics all over Egypt distributed four million condoms for birth-control purposes, but people ended up selling them as children's balloons, since a condom costs only five piastres and a balloon is thirty!"
Connor maneuvered the vehicle down a lane wide enough for a donkey and its panniers, and then they emerged into open space where Jasmine saw the Nile stretch before her in the blazing orange glory of sunset. As he brought the Land Cruiser to a halt in front of a small stone house surrounded by sycamore trees, Connor said, "Back that way is the clinic, where you'll be staying. After I leave, you'll move into this house, the Foundation owns it. There are three rooms, electricity, and a servant." He paused to regard her for a moment. "It is good to see you again, Jasmine," he said more quietly. "I'm only sorry that we won't have much time together before I leave. Anyway," he reached into the back for her suitcase, "I'll take you over to the clinic. We have to leave the car here."
As they walked through the village, the westering sun seemed to drench the day with colors, and Jasmine delighted in the brightly painted façades—turquoise, lemon yellow, peach—a relief to the eye after the endless beige of the plain, mud-brick houses. By the time they reached the clinic, which was tucked between a tiny whitewashed mosque and a barber shop, the sun had dipped behind the red hills on the other side of the Nile, and a crowd was gathering in the lane, consisting, Jasmine saw, of men, children, and women past childbearing age. The girls and young wives, she knew, would be sequestered at home. Benches had been set out and colored lights had been strung overhead; banners fluttered in the breeze, bearing greetings written in both Arabic and English: WELCOME TO THE NEW DOCTOR, AHLAN WAH SAHLAN, (benches provided by waleed's coffeehouse). There were huge pots of steaming beans, platters of fresh vegetables and fruit, pyramids of flat bread, and enormous brass urns which, Jasmine knew, would contain licorice and tamarind juice.
"They've prepared a reception in your honor," Connor said, as they moved through a crowd that politely ogled the newcomer. Seeing the women in black melayas with children clustered around their legs, and men in galabeyas and skullcaps, Jasmine finally felt the jolt she had expected to feel at Cairo Airport. Suddenly she was back in Cairo, walking through the old streets with Tahia and Zakki and Camelia, laughing and eating shwarma sandwiches and thinking that the future was something that only happened to other people. She was dizzy for a moment, and she pressed her hand to the back of her neck.
The villagers stepped shyly away as she made her way through, and although they smiled, she saw puzzlement on their faces. An ox-bodied fellah in a clean blue galabeya stepped forward and shouted at everyone to be silent. When he turned to the new doctor, and said in English, "Welcome in Egypt, Sayyida. Welcome in our humble village, which you make shine with your honor. God's peace and blessings upon you," Jasmine saw confusion in his eyes. And she heard the villages murmuring among themselves: What is this? The Sayyid's replacement is a woman? Look how young she is! Where is her husband?
Jasmine said, "Thank you, I am honored to be here." They waited and watched, silence descending over the crowd, broken only by the sound of the banners snapping overhead. Jasmine looked at the faces surrounding her, knew the questions the villagers wanted to ask but were too polite. Searching for a way to open communication, she turned to a woman standing beside the clinic door, holding a baby. She was clearly not its mother, being elderly and with gray hair peeping from beneath her black veil. When she saw how Jasmine eyed the child, she drew it closer to her and covered it with her melaya, so that Jasmine smiled and said in Arabic, "Is that your grandchild, Umma? You do well to hide her, poor homely little thing."
The woman drew in a sharp breath and the onlookers gasped. But there was a spark of respect in the old woman's eyes as she said, "I am afflicted with ugly grandchildren, Sayyida. It is God's will."
"You have my sympathies, Umma." Then Jasmine turned to Khalid, the ox-bodied spokesman, and said, "In all honor and respect to you, Mr. Khalid, I heard you say that I am young. How old do you think I am?"
"My three gods, Sayyida! You are young, very young! Younger than my youngest daughter!"
"Mr. Khalid, I will turn forty-two when the next khamsins blow."
A murmur rippled through the crowd, and then Declan said, "I'll take Dr. Van Kerk inside, Khalid. She has had a long journey."
Jasmine followed him into a small reception room with freshly painted white walls, and sparsely furnished with an Ideal refrigerator, left over from the Nasser years when his slogan had been "Buy Egyptian," a map of the Middle East, dated 1986, with the area of Israel labeled "Occupied Palestinian Territory," and a few medical texts, including When You Have to Be the Doctor. The tall Nubian was just putting the last of the vaccines into the refrigerator, and when he stood up he seemed to fill the small room. "Welcome, Doctora," he said in a quick voice. "Ahlan wah sahlan."
"This is Nasr," Connor said. "He's our driver and mechanic. Khalid, the loud-voiced fellah outside in the blue galabeya, is also a member of the team. Khalid has gone through the sixth grade and speaks English, so he is our go-between when we make the rounds of the villages. He's our ambassador and smooths the way, so to speak."
Nasr bowed shyly and left.
"Your living quarters are through there," Declan said. "Not very fancy, I'm afraid."
"This is a palace compared to—" Jasmine suddenly slumped.
"What is it?" he said, taking her arm. "Are you ill?"
"I'll be all right. I came down with malaria in Gaza. I was treated in a hospital in London."
"You left too soon."
"I was in a hurry to come here, Dr. Connor."
He smiled. "Don't you think it's time you called me Declan?"
She felt his hand on her arm; he stood so close that she saw a small scar above one eyebrow, and she wondered how he had gotten it. "I'll be all right," she said, adding, "Declan," and liking the
feel of his name on her tongue.
His eyes held hers for a heartbeat, then he went to the door and said, "The villagers are waiting to welcome you."
"Please tell them I will be out in a minute."
After he closed the door behind him, Jasmine stood in the gloom and thought: He has changed. But how? Why? The last letter she had received from him, four years ago, had been written by the old Connor—funny, ambitious, a crusader. But something had happened since then. She sensed a bitterness in the way he spoke; his words were laced with a pessimism she would never have ascribed to Declan Connor. Did it have something to do with his wife's death? she wondered.
She looked around the tiny clinic, already making plans to find more chairs, a folding screen, perhaps some plants. And then suddenly she was thinking of her father, and this surprised her. In the years that she had been working for the Treverton Foundation, being assigned to a variety of clinics, hospitals, and medical stations in remote areas, most of them understaffed and understocked, this was the first one that made her think of her father. And she wondered now if he was still practicing medicine, if he still had his office across from the Roxy Cinema. She was further surprised to find herself suddenly wishing he was there, in that small room with her, so she could ask his advice on how to make the best with what she had.
Why do I think of him now? she wondered. And then she knew: It is because I am back in Egypt. I am home.
Jasmine went into the bedroom and opened her suitcase. On top of her clothes were two letters which she intended to answer as soon as she was settled. The first was from Greg, who had gone to live with his mother in Western Australia, now that she was a widow; he had written to Jasmine to say that he still thought about her. The second was from Rachel, and it included a photograph of her two little girls.
Through the open window, Jasmine heard the villagers outside addressing Declan Connor. "We respect the new doctora, Your Presence, but a woman in her forties, with no husband, no children, what good is she? There must be something wrong with her."
Then she recognized the voice of Khalid, the team spokesman. "That woman in blue jeans, my three gods, Sayyid! She will keep our young men from wanting to go to work in the fields, she will make every wife jealous. This is very bad, Sayyid."
Jasmine closed the bedroom door.
Declan tried to reassure them by saying that Dr. Van Kerk was a qualified physician, and would take care of them. But they were worried about her morals, and how she was going to affect the orderly life of the village. Those few, like Khalid, who owned television sets and VCRs, knew all about American women—except for those in Little House on the Prairie, they were wanton and not to be trusted.
But when Jasmine came out a moment later, everyone fell silent and stared.
She had traded her blue jeans for a caftan, her blond hair was hidden beneath a scarf, and she was holding a Koran and a photograph. She addressed the group in Arabic: "I am honored to have been chosen to come and live among you. I pray to the One God," she said, laying a hand on the Koran as the villagers' eyes grew bigger, "that He grants us health and prosperity. My name is Yasmina Rasheed, my father was a pasha. But I am called Um Mohammed." She held up the photograph. "This is my son."
Exclamations of "Bismillah!" and "My three gods!" filled the evening air as admiration suddenly shone in their eyes. Such a fine grown son, the women said to one another, and herself the daughter of a pasha!
An elderly woman in the white robes of one who has visited Mecca said, "Respectfully, Um Mohammed, is your husband then in Cairo?"
"I have had two husbands, the last one divorced me when I lost a child. I am the mother of this son and two babies who did not survive."
"Allah!" the women said, murmuring condolences and clicking their tongues; the new doctora had experienced every woman's tragedy and grief. They took her by the arm and led her to the chair of honor, which had a tasseled pillow; food was brought, musical instruments produced. The men, on their side of the lane, lit water pipes and relaxed into telling jokes while the women clustered around the new doctora, urging her to taste this, drink that, exclaiming over her misfortune and agreeing that all men are dogs, especially those husbands who abandon their wives because their babies do not survive.
Declan looked at the photograph that was being passed around, and although he saw the face of a handsome Arab youth, the boy was clearly troubled. There was a trace of defiance around the mouth, the eyes betrayed unhappiness, and the forehead was creased, as if the boy had been confused at the moment the shutter snapped. He also saw a strong resemblance to Jasmine.
Khalid sat next to Connor with a grunt and said, "My three gods, Sayyid, but the new doctora is a big surprise."
"She is indeed," Declan said, watching Jasmine with the fellaheen women, smiling with the dimples he remembered from fifteen years ago. She had never mentioned a son before; the young Arab in the photograph had come as a surprise to him. He wondered what other surprises lay in store.
FORTY
T
HERE WAS POISON IN MOHAMMED RASHEED'S BLOOD—A poison that possessed blond hair, blue eyes, and a figure like poured cream. Her name was Mimi, she danced at the Club Cage d'Or, and she didn't even know Mohammed was alive. But he knew that she was alive, and as the young man wrestled with this new obsession, he gazed morosely around the small, bare office he shared with filing cabinets, stacks of papers from floor to ceiling, and a fan that didn't work. He was wondering how the dazzling Mimi would ever notice such an insignificant person as himself.
This was hardly what he had had in mind when he had been attending university. But none of this was his fault; everyone was saying that Nasser's scheme to grant government jobs to all college graduates, although initially a good idea, was backfiring. It had been a viable policy in Mohammed's father's day—Omar had received a prestigious, well-paying position. But that had been over twenty years ago. Now, the universities were pouring out graduates at a faster rate than the government could accommodate them, resulting in their being squeezed into an already top-heavy bureaucracy in which men were given titles but little work to do. Mohammed's duties consisted of taking tea to his boss, rubber-stamping mountains of useless forms, and funnelling citizens and their complaints through the bureaucratic maze with "Bokra. Come back tomorrow." Small accomplishment for a man who would be twenty-five in two months. He suddenly saw himself at thirty, and even forty, still stuck in this dingy office, still unmarried, still a virgin, and still burning for Mimi.
He was obsessed with her, with having her. If only he could get married, then he might flush the poison from his system. But marriage was almost as unattainable as Mimi herself, because, like every other young man in Cairo, Mohammed first had to save his money, to show that he could support a family, after which came the interminable wait for an apartment to open up in this city that grew more crowded each day. On his paltry salary, how was he to accomplish such a prodigious feat? He couldn't ask his father for help; Omar still had a mob of children to support.
And Uncle Ibrahim had enough responsibilities with the crowd living at Virgins of Paradise Street.
Mohammed thought he would sacrifice anything if he could just hold Mimi in his arms ...
When the telephone rang, startling him out of his daydream, he pushed aside papers that were supposed to have been processed weeks ago—but why bother?—and answered, "Sayyid Youssef's office," prepared to fob the caller off with the usual, "Sayyid Youssef is a very busy man," and then hint that a special fee might speed things up. Baksheesh was about the only way an underpaid government clerk like himself could get ahead.
But, to his surprise, it was his Uncle Ibrahim, sounding tense and agitated. "Mohammed, I've been trying to reach your Aunt Dahiba, but the telephones are out of order in her building again. Stop by on your way home and tell her to come to my office right away. It's very important."
"Yes, Uncle," Mohammed said, and hung up, wondering what it was about. Since he didn't want to go to h
is aunt's studio, he picked up the phone and dialed her number, Cairo fashion, pressing a number and then listening to see if it connected, pressing the next one, listening, and so on. But at the end of the last number, he was rewarded with the familiar silence of a dead telephone line.
He looked at his watch. Only one o'clock. Mohammed's hours were from nine to two, with a one-hour lunch break. But he knew he wouldn't be missed, so he decided to close up and go to the one place in the city where he could lose himself in a daydream about Mimi.
Ibrahim hung up the phone and looked out the window of his office, from where he had a view of congested Cairo. The streets were jammed with Fiats, taxis, limousines, pushcarts, donkey carts, and buses jogging along at a precarious tilt, and the sidewalks teemed with men in business suits and galabeyas, and women in Paris dresses or black melayas. Ibrahim had heard that the city's population had reached fifteen million, and that in ten years it would double—thirty million souls occupying a city that had been built to accommodate one tenth that number. And he recalled sadly the gracious days of Farouk's reign, when the traffic had been lighter, the sidewalks roomier, the city having an air of spaciousness and elegance. Where had all these people come from? He turned away from the depressing sight, knowing that his bleak mood was a result not of looking at the city he still so much loved but because he had just gotten the test results back from the lab.
They were positive.
The question now was how to break the news to the family.
He looked at the two photographs on his desk: Alice—young, vibrant, in love—and Yasmina, whose birth seemed like only yesterday. He felt his heart move. Of all his children, including Camelia and the five girls by Huda, Ibrahim still loved Yasmina the best. Her banishment from the family had indeed been like a death; Ibrahim had mourned as surely as if he had buried her. There had been some consolation for a while, when Alice had maintained a link with their daughter in California. But Alice's suicide had severed the last fragile link, and Ibrahim would occasionally look up at the sky and wonder what sky was sheltering Yasmina at that same moment, at what place in the world she was.
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