Ibrahim embraced his mother for a long moment. He had wanted to send one of the boys with her, perhaps Mohammed, for protection, and Omar had seconded the suggestion, declaring that he didn't want his grandmother roaming Saudi Arabia on her own. But Amira had subverted their plan by choosing three girls to accompany her, rendering Mohammed's company unnecessary.
It wasn't just the pilgrimage to Mecca that made Ibrahim uneasy—after all, his mother would be among a large throng headed for the holy city. It was what she planned afterward, on the return trip. "I am going to try and trace the route my mother and I followed when I was a child and we went on a journey," she had said. He didn't understand what was so important about a trip she had taken long ago, and he was troubled by a premonition that he would not see her again.
"Be happy for me, son of my heart. I go on a journey of joy." And she turned toward the ferryboat, wondering if the sparkling blue sea it was to sail upon was the azure sea of her most recent dreams.
Mimi wore the latest style of Oriental dance costume: a slinky evening gown reminiscent of the 1950s, made of scarlet satin and crimson sequins; she wore high-heeled shoes with ankle straps, and one long evening glove on one arm, leaving the other bare. The clever lighting in the picture showed her blond hair to its best advantage, giving her a wild look. As if she could devour a man—eat him alive and make him beg for more.
As Mohammed stood outside the Cage d'Or, hands thrust into his pockets, he was oblivious of the people going into the nightclub, the busload of tourists that streamed around him, the loud Arab businessmen arriving in search of a good time. He burned for Mimi. But he didn't dare go in.
If only Auntie Dahiba hadn't gotten sick. On the night following the afternoon he had come upon Mimi in his aunt's studio, Mohammed had fallen asleep with Mimi's photograph in his mind, contemplating a plan to meet her, a scheme nearly adolescent in its construction, but fueled by an adult's lust. And then Auntie had gone into the hospital; she had closed her studio and Mohammed's dream of meeting Mimi there had been dashed. In the four weeks since, he had come nearly every night to this club perched out over the Nile, to gaze at the place that had, years ago, been one of Farouk's favorite gambling houses. And he had stood here, staring at Mimi's picture on the marquee, wishing he had the courage to go inside.
Why shouldn't he? He had money, and he was certainly old enough, having celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday two days ago. The family had thrown a big party for him, and he had received plenty of gifts. But little money. And money was what he needed. Mimi would not be interested in a penniless government clerk. As he was held entranced by that cascading blondness, thinking that the annual birthday card had yet to arrive from his mother from whatever part of the world she was in, he was unaware that a man had come to stand next to him. And when he heard a low voice say, "Western imperialist decadence," Mohammed looked around to see whom the man addressed.
He was startled to see Hussein, who had watched him at Feyrouz's coffeehouse, the man from his Muslim Brotherhood days, and whom Mohammed had once been afraid of. When he realized that this was the second time in four weeks that he had encountered Hussein—they had nearly collided on the sidewalk a week ago when Mohammed had emerged from the government building where he worked—he wondered now if those occasions had been just a coincidence.
"I beg your pardon?" he said, aware of two sensations: the hot, gritty breath of the khamsin, and the dark, dangerous eyes of Hussein.
"You were with us once, brother," the man said. "I remember you at our meetings. But then you vanished."
"My father—" Mohammed began, suddenly afraid, and wondering why.
Hussein smiled, not a warm gesture. "Do you still believe, my friend?"
"Believe?"
Hussein gestured toward Mimi's picture. "This is the filth that is undermining Egyptian values and destroying our fundamental Islamic faith."
Mohammed looked at the poster, and then at Hussein. From inside the club, they heard strains of an orchestra tuning up. She would be on the stage soon, his beloved Mimi, dancing in front of all those strange men. He desired her, he detested her. Mohammed began to sweat.
Hussein stepped closer and said in a low voice that was almost a growl, "How can a man keep his thoughts upon God, how can a man remain faithful to his wife and family, when Satan throws such temptation in his path? These nightclubs are funded by Western dollars, they are part of a plot to strip away Egyptian pride and honor and decency."
Mohammed stared at Mimi's picture, at the swell of her breasts and hips, and suddenly realized that her smile was a mocking one. The khamsin seemed to blast his skin with thousands of needles. Sweat ran down his face, under his collar, and between his shoulder blades. He felt as if he were on fire.
"We must cleanse Egypt of this pestilence," Hussein murmured, "and return to the ways of God and righteousness. And we must use any means we can."
Mohammed regarded him in fear, and then turned and fled.
Nefissa was glad she had sprained her ankle and had therefore been unable to accompany the family to Suez, because her accident had necessitated Mohammed staying with her, and therefore he was unable to go to Mecca with Amira. Nefissa had been furious with her brother and son that they should have even made such a suggestion. It would only have given Amira one more opportunity to tighten her control over Mohammed, the way she controlled everyone else. But Nefissa was determined: the boy was hers.
And she had plans for him which no one, not even Omar or Ibrahim—not even Amira—was going to meddle with. Happiness might have eluded Nefissa all these years, but it could be hers yet, when her grandson was married to a girl she had already chosen, and the three of them took up residence in the new flat Nefissa had secretly paid for.
She was just looking at the clock, wondering where Mohammed was, where he went to every night, when she heard the door to the flat open and close. He came into the living room, where she was reclining on a sofa, her injured foot on a pillow. He quickly kissed her and turned away, but not before she saw that he looked pale and troubled.
"How are you tonight, grandson of my heart?" she asked, suddenly concerned.
He kept his back to her as he went through the mail he had picked up in the foyer downstairs. "I am well, Grandmother—" He stopped, and she saw his shoulders stiffen.
"What is it?" she asked.
"My birthday card," he replied in a tight voice. "It came."
Nefissa watched her grandson take a seat on the divan and stare at the envelope for a long moment before opening it. She had once been able to keep Yasmina's correspondence from Camelia, but she had not even attempted to keep these cards from her grandson. Mohammed looked forward to them every year; she even knew which drawer he saved them in. She knew that if she forbade him to have them, then he would have made a martyr of his mother and placed her on a pedestal. The available fruit, Nefissa counseled herself, was far less tempting than the forbidden.
When she saw him suddenly frown at the envelope, she said, "What is it, my darling?"
He brought it over. "I don't understand, Grandmother. Look, the envelope bears Egyptian stamps."
"Then it is not from her."
"But it is her handwriting!" Mohammed tore open the envelope and read the familiar, "In my heart always, Your Mother." Then he examined the envelope more closely, and when he saw the postmark, he cried out. "Bismillah! She is in Egypt!"
"What!" Nefissa took it from him and brought the envelope into the light. When she read the postmark—Al Tafla, A.R.E.—she suddenly went cold. "In the name of God," she murmured. "Yasmina? In Egypt? Where is Al Tafla?"
He ran for the small atlas that was wedged in the bookcase between a dictionary and a collection of the poetry of Ibn Hamdis, and he frantically tore through the pages, his hands shaking because it was very important to find the exact spot, he had to know where Al Tafla was, precisely. He dropped the book, scrambled for it, then came to the page showing the green Nile Valley bisecting two yellow dese
rts. He quickly ran his finger down the river, then up again, up and back until: "Y'Al-lah! Here it is! It is south of Luxor and before—" He threw the book across the room, where it hit the TV set and tumbled to the floor, loose pages fluttering down.
Nefissa struggled to sit up, reached for the back of a chair, and pulled herself to her feet, wincing with pain. "Grandson of my heart," she said. "Please—"
"How can she be here," he cried, "and not come to see me? What kind of mother is that? Oh God, Grandmother! I am so confused!"
When she saw how he cried, how convulsively the sobs racked his slender body, she suddenly became alarmed, filled with a new fear. Yasmina in Egypt! What if she came back to claim her son? Legally, Yasmina could not touch him. But Mohammed was a man now, and one soft word from his mother could steal him away from Nefissa forever.
"Listen to me, my darling," she said, reaching for his arm. "Help me to sit down. There's a good boy. Now I must tell you something. The time has come for you to hear the truth about your mother."
He ran a hand under his nose as he helped her into the expensive brocade chair that was especially hers. It was from this fine seat that Nefissa gave orders to Nala and the servants, and coddled Omar, Mohammed, and the children. She drew in a steadying breath and said, "This will not be easy for me, grandson of my heart. The family has not spoken of your mother in many years, not since she went away. Please sit down."
But Mohammed couldn't sit. The khamsin rattled the windows like evil jinns playing pranks, and the apartment seemed too hot, too confining. He stood in the center of the living room, on the carpet his grandmother declared had once belonged to her friend Princess Faiza, and which she had purchased long ago at an auction.
"Tell me, Grandmother," he said in a tight voice. "What happened to my mother?"
She stiffened her back and said, "My poor boy, your mother was caught committing adultery with your Uncle Ibrahim's best friend." As she spoke the words, Nefissa was ashamed at the pleasure it gave her. "She was married to your father at the time."
"I ... I don't believe you," he said, tears filling his eyes.
"Ask your uncle, when he returns from Suez. Ibrahim will tell you the truth. Even though she was his daughter. She had no honor."
"No!" he cried. "You cannot say that about my mother!"
"It pains me to tell you this, for she dishonored our family. This is why no one speaks of her. Ibrahim banished your mother on the eve of the Six-Day War, a dark day for Egypt, for all of us." Nefissa pressed her lips tightly together. She wouldn't tell him the rest, how Yasmina had begged for mercy, how she had pleaded to be allowed to keep her son, and how Omar had taken Mohammed away that night, never to see his mother again.
The young man remained rooted to Princess Faiza's carpet, shaking violently, sweat shining on his face. He suddenly ran from the room and Nefissa heard him vomiting in the bathroom.
When he came out, white-faced and stumbling, she reached for him, but he ran out of the flat and plunged blindly out into the streets, knocking people out of his way. He made his way to Feyrouz's coffeehouse, where he prayed his friends were—Salah and Habib, to make him laugh, to make it all a bad dream waiting to be dispelled by jokes and laughter. But his friends weren't there. But Hussein was, with his dangerous eyes and dangerous ideas, and Mohammed sat numbly with him, cradling his head in his hands as Hussein talked of ridding Egypt of the godless. And as he listened, young Mohammed saw a black cloud roll toward him, like an evil fog, like the maw of an evil jinni about to devour him, and he said, "Yes," to whatever it was Hussein was proposing, while he silently vowed: I shall go to Al Tafla and punish her the way she should have been punished twenty-one years ago.
FORTY-THREE
J
ASMINE SEARCHED THE NIGHT SKY FOR HER BIRTH-STAR, MIRACH in Andromeda, that she might draw strength from it for what she was about to do. But the stars had the sparkling brilliance of fireworks, making it impossible to pick out one from so many. So she looked at the moon shining over the Nile, large and round and silver, like a beneficent light, and she reached up to embrace its power.
After a silent prayer, she turned away from the river and made her way back into the sleeping village of Al Tafla, going through the dark alleys until she came to the house of the sheikha, the wisewoman who was also a fortune-teller and clairvoyant. Jasmine had to act quickly. In three days, Declan Connor would be gone.
Declan paced the creaking boards of his veranda, unable to sleep. He paused every so often to scan the midnight sky for clouds. All day the villagers had heard the distant rumblings of thunder; the air had felt electrified, and birds had been sighted in unusually large flocks. Was a storm coming? But how could there be, with no clouds? Declan pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and, lighting one, considered his own personal storm.
He was leaving Egypt in three days, and he couldn't get Jasmine out of his mind—the way she had felt in his arms when he had comforted her four weeks ago, after they had buried her brother. He was consumed with the memory of her body against his, her warmth, her breasts pressing against his chest, her tears dampening his shirt, and the way she had clung so tightly to him. He had never wanted a woman as he had wanted Jasmine in that moment, and he cursed himself for it. He had no right to feel such desire, not with Sybil lying in her grave.
He went to the edge of the porch and looked out over the dark river, where the moon traced a silver ribbon on its inky surface.
When he heard the rumble again, Declan realized that this time it wasn't the thunder they been hearing all day, but something else—distant drums. He threw down his cigarette and stamped it out. Definitely drums. But where, at this hour?
He slowly walked away from his small house on the Nile and headed toward the village, and as he drew nearer, the drums became more distinct, and he realized they were playing a definite rhythm. Who would be having a party in the middle of the night?
Al Tafla was closed up tight, no light shone from even Waleed's coffeehouse. No fellah or fallaha went abroad at night because of the jinns and evil spirits that populated the darkness. And despite the heat, doors were barred, windows were shuttered to keep out demons—or curses sent by envious neighbors.
Declan found the clinic dark and locked; there was no light in Jasmine's window. But, to his surprise, he saw torchlight flickering over the walls of the courtyard behind the clinic, where the oven, laundry tubs, and chicken coop were. Making his way down the alley that was so narrow his shoulders brushed the mud-brick walls, he saw, in the courtyard, men with musical instruments—wooden flutes, two-string fiddles, and wide, flat drums, which they were thumping rhythmically over hot coals. There were women present as well; Declan recognized Khalid's wife, Waleed's sister, the elderly and respected Bint Omar, all stepping back and forth over pans of burning incense and murmuring incantations. He couldn't make out the words; they weren't speaking Arabic.
And then he suddenly realized what they were preparing for—a zaar, a ritual trance dance for exorcising demons, in which the participants became frenzied and lost control of themselves. Although foreigners were not normally permitted to take part in zaars, or even to watch, Declan had secretly witnessed a trance dance in Tunisia—a stambali—and the dancer, a man, had dropped dead from a cardiac arrest.
Declan grew alarmed. Where was Jasmine?
He started to go in, but a woman barred his way. "Haram!" she said. "Taboo!"
But another woman, the village sheikha, intervened, approaching Declan with a dark, inquisitive eye. The sheikha was a powerful woman in Al Tafla, with tattoos on her chin to advertise her proud Bedouin origins, and with whom he had clashed over the issue of the brutal and barbaric custom of circumcising little girls. He was about to demand what was going on, and where the doctora was, when, to his further surprise, she stepped aside and said, "You may enter, Sayyid."
A few of those sitting on benches around the courtyard acknowledged him with a smile or a nod, the rest moved around the small spa
ce as if limbering themselves up for an exercise. The women walked in slow circles, raising and lowering their arms, stomping their feet, moving their heads stiffly, while the drummers heated their drums over the coals and the fiddle player tuned his strings. The sheikha, in her flowing black robes, was going around lighting candles and incense until the sultry night air was filled with exotic smoke and perfumes.
Declan looked around for Jasmine. He knew better than to interfere with a trance dance, to try to stop it, but he wanted to know why it was being held here, at the clinic, and what Jasmine's part was in it. The man he had watched die in Tunisia had been young, and he had thrown himself into such a frenzy that he had hurt himself. Everyone knew that zaar dances could be dangerous, because they involved the expulsion of evil spirits, who were generally reluctant to leave. For Declan, it was the lack of conscious control that was dangerous.
Was someone ill? he wondered, as he took a seat next to Mrs. Rajat, who sat against the wall smoking a pipe with her eyes closed. Was this to be a healing zaar? Or was someone feeling unlucky perhaps in some way, and wanting to free himself of negative energies? Or had the thunder all day simply made the villagers nervous, anxious to fend off the jinns the storm was surely bringing? Declan sat warily against the mud-brick wall, which still retained the day's heat, and felt his uneasiness mount.
When all the candles were lit, the sheikha give a signal and the drummers, with the exception of one, silenced their instruments. The lone drummer, in a long white galabeya and white turban, moved around the courtyard, thumping a repetitive beat. The women closed their eyes and stood where they were, swaying slowly from side to side. After he made a few circles, the drummer changed his beat; he continued around the courtyard, thumb and fingers tapping out a hypnotic rhythm. After a moment, he changed the rhythm again, and another drummer joined him, adding a beat that altered the rhythm slightly.
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