‘Alhamdulilah, this is very good news. A thousand congratulations.’ His voice rang out, ‘Osama, come and carry your brother. Take him to his mother.’
After the crying baby was dispatched to Hanniyah, he turned to Shukry, ‘Tell me, who exactly will you be working for? And how much are they going to pay you?’
‘A family called Abuzeid. They favour Egyptians to work for them.’
It was a coincidence, but not particularly remarkable.
‘I know them personally . . .’ There was pride in Badr’s voice, he wanted his father to hear, really hear. ‘I teach Mahmoud Bey’s youngest son and daughter. I am at their saraya two or three times a week.’ He was boasting now. ‘I taught Nur Abuzeid until he went to Victoria College and found himself the best student in Arabic!’
Shukry did not pick up on his enthusiasm. He slumped forward and put his elbows on his knees.
‘But I am not sure I want to work as a farmer. I am thinking I should be patient and wait for another opportunity.’
Badr grunted with sarcasm. ‘You want to be like me, an effendi in a suit? You don’t want to get your hands dirty. But I have spent years studying. When did
you
learn? Did you finish school? No. Do you have a skill? No. You started to train as a nurse and then gave it up. You joined the army, and when you came back from Palestine, they dismissed you. So don’t be proud. You arrived in Sudan thinking the streets are paved in gold. It’s not so easy. Look at me.’ He waved his hand to take in the hoash.
Shukry didn’t look too happy with this lecture.
‘I would rather work as a nurse,’ he said. ‘The pay would be better.’
‘But you’re not qualified as a nurse. The hospitals won’t hire you.’
‘Well, I could work privately.’
Badr started to worry that Shukry might turn the job down or had already turned it down. Would he continue to be their guest indefinitely?
His father startled all of them by saying, ‘Don’t be ungrateful.’
It was never clear whether he was following the conversation or merely repeating a random phrase.
Badr continued, ‘You cannot just sit around doing nothing.’ He stressed the word sit, making it sound unpleasant.
Shukry took the hint.
‘I am a heavy guest, cousin. I should consider this farming job so that I can relieve you.’
Badr murmured the conventional, ‘Don’t say that, man. My home is your home.’ But it was clear that he didn’t mean any of it.
He stood up to get ready for the Isha prayer. It was getting late and Radwan had curled up on the bed next to him and slept. If Hanniyah didn’t wake him up for supper, he would pass the night with an empty belly, waking up at dawn ravenous.
‘Cousin,’ Shukry said.
Badr turned around.
‘Yesterday I had a twenty piaster note in my wallet. I left it with my belongings in the room and today I can’t find it.’
The sentence felt heavy to Badr’s ears. He turned stern, his schoolteacher self. ‘You must have misplaced it or it’s in one of your pockets.’
Shukry shook his head. ‘I looked everywhere for it. Someone must have taken it.’
Badr bristled. ‘You know very well that apart from us no one goes into the room. No strangers come here.’
Shukry looked him straight in the eye. ‘I want my money back. I don’t know who took it.’
Badr lost his temper. ‘Be careful Shukry, in what you are insinuating.’
Shukry gave a little laugh. ‘Why are you angry? Little boys can be naughty.’
Badr remembered the blue and gold marble in Osama’s hand. He became even more angry, and bellowed, ‘Osama, Osama, come here!’
The boy stood in front of them. In the lamplight, his skin was sallow and his rib cage stood out.
‘Did you take money from Uncle’s Shukry’s wallet?’
‘No, Father,’ came the automatic response.
‘Are you sure, Osama? Did Bilal or Radwan?’
‘No, Father, they’re too young.’
‘Too young,’ Shukry interrupted. ‘But you’re not too young. You could have shown them what to do. You could have set them up. If you did this, Osama, you had better own up.’
‘I didn’t do anything, Uncle.’ Osama was looking scared now, caught between his father’s glare and the guest’s.
Badr grabbed his son by the shoulder. ‘I will spank you hard, Osama.’
The boy burst into tears. ‘I didn’t do it! I didn’t do anything. I swear.’
Hanniyah stepped into the lamplight, the baby propped on her hip. Strands of her hair hung loose from her kerchief and she radiated heat as if she had been sitting over the stove, not only stirring the pot, but rousing herself for battle.
‘No one calls my son a thief!’ she shouted. ‘Do you hear me? No one!’
Badr surrendered to the realisation that the evening was not going to pass well. He should say, ‘Shut up, woman!’ but instead he let her speak her mind. He unleashed her, she who was his inner self, his unrestrained half; he let her loose on this burden of a guest.
On the last day that Soraya loved the sea, she was wearing her new blue dress, a dress that was made by a Greek dressmaker in Alexandria. It was the perfect beach dress, fresh watery blue and white splashes and a crisp white bow pinching her waist. Everyone said she was pretty. On the beach, under an orange umbrella she sat squinting from the sun, alert to the crescendo and break of the waves. With her were Fatma, Nassir, and their two children. They were waiting for Nur to join them. The long academic year was over and he had excelled in his Cambridge entrance examinations. He was now with some of his Victoria College friends who had not yet dispersed for the summer. Nassir was dozing in his deckchair, the newspaper he had been reading collapsed on the bulge of his stomach. He was too large for the shirt he was wearing and perspiring in spite of the breeze. Fatma looked out of place wearing her pink to be and annoyed that the children were kicking sand in her face. She preferred shopping to the beach. She would have been happier in Cairo, but Soraya adored the Alexandria lifestyle: the waking up late to the sound of the waves, and the aromas of a heavy breakfast. Waking up to the knowledge that all through the night Nur had been asleep on the couch in the living room, just outside the door, steps away from where she and the children slept. After coffee they would stroll across the Corniche, walk down the steps to the beach, hire an umbrella and some deckchairs, then settle down. Picking off from yesterday, the children were digging a canal. Zeinab, who was five, walked backwards and forwards filling her pail with seawater and dumping it in the
hole. The sticky, pliant sand tempted even Fatma and Soraya to mould it into shapes.
‘Don’t spoil my canal,’ said Zeinab, sounding serious and bossy like her grandmother Waheeba. Her baby brother toddled after her, panting a little, small and soft in this vast expanse of sun, sea and sky.
Waiting for Nur suited Soraya. The anticipation made her eyes bright and her skin radiant. This was the best summer ever, because Idris had stayed behind in Sudan. Even Uncle Mahmoud and Nabilah were held up in Cairo. So day and night, in this most wonderful of cities, Soraya and Nur were chaperoned by the most indulgent and inefficient of patriarchs – Nassir Abuzeid. Yesterday he had given them permission to go the cinema. Alone. Fatma had protested and nearly persuaded him to withdraw his consent, but Nur and Soraya made a dash for it and were out of the door before Nassir could change his mind.
In the silver darkness of the cinema, during the boring newscast before the film began, Nur whispered to Soraya and made her giggle.
‘Baranah. I can’t believe we are by ourselves! Baranah.’
The theme of this summer, its signature tune, were the lyrics: I love you, Soraya . . . I love you, too.
‘Will you marry me?’
This he said in English. It sounded formal and made her laugh. Who else would she marry? Who else
could
she marry? Her father, who in her eyes was a villain thwarting her every desire, would not dare, in his meanest of streaks, deny her the son of his eldest brother.
She put on her new glasses to watch the film. They were brand new and made her see as well as everyone else. The glasses were part of the summer. Away from her father and his disapproval, she had gone with Fatma to an eye doctor, chaperoned by the ever-generous Nassir, who paid all the bills and promised that he would never, drunk or sober, say a word to anyone lest it reached Idris. The prescription, tailored specially
for Soraya, was superior to that of the pair Nur had given her all those months ago in Umdurman and instead of heavy, thick frames, these were petal shaped, delicately feminine, with a slight point on each side and a dash of glamour provided by a gold stud in each corner. Nassir paid for this fancy pair of ladies’ spectacles. He was in the best of positions – he was with funds. After months of reducing his allowance in Medani, his father had relented and given him his usual lavish holiday supplement. Nassir hired himself a motor car, made contacts with his friends who were also summering, and threw himself into the nightlife entertainment of downtown Alexandria. Fatma’s protests were silenced with enough money to keep her shopping every day, and Soraya’s glasses, too, were a bribe, to buy her goodwill and support. When she wore them she felt sophisticated, like a woman of twenty-eight, not a schoolgirl. They made her look intelligent, as if she had graduated from university and had opinions.
‘I want to start smoking,’ she whispered to Nur. ‘I want a cigarette.’
‘Now?’
He was taken aback. Sometimes she glimpsed a childish sweetness in him, a simplicity that was embedded and would not go away with time and age.
‘Well, no. But one day.’
It was the glasses that made her crave a cigarette between her fingers. She wanted the sophisticated look, high heels . . .
‘Shush and watch the film,’ he said, squeezing her arm and guiding her mind back to the opening credits.
Fareed Al-Atrash’s latest film was his best and they floated out of the cinema with the tunes playing in their heads, the lyrics jumbled and half memorised. The Corniche was lively with lights and street vendors, the waves a background rhythm with the frills of their white foam a decoration. It was as if no one was asleep. Even the children, odd in their clothes after the beach nakedness of the day, their faces shiny with sunburn, were
grabbing popcorn, candy floss and grilled corn as if they had not eaten all day. The breeze lifted dresses, and if Soraya had straight hair, it would have got tossed and tangled. Nur held her hand and they walked arm in arm like other couples did, unthinkable in Sudan or in the presence of anyone they knew. Here, husbands and wives linked arms, whereas back home they did not even walk side by side. This was what Soraya wanted for them, to be a modern couple, not to be like Fatma and Nassir each in their separate world.
She said to him, ‘I wish we could stay here forever. When you graduate, ask Uncle Mahmoud to let you work in the Cairo office.’
‘It’s dull in the Cairo office,’ he said. ‘The real work is in Sudan.’
‘But it is so much fun here!’
She was used to pleading for what she wanted, for her whims and passing fancies. And she knew the need to wait for what she wanted, while continuing with the gentle application of pressure. But she sensed a restlessness in Nur, even before he spoke.
‘Let’s go back home. If we’re too late, there will be a row.’ There was something he wasn’t telling her, but she would tease it out of him.
‘What’s the hurry?’
She stopped walking as if to make a point and sat on the low stone ledge that separated the Corniche from the beach below.
‘You’d laugh,’ he said, his hands in his pocket.
‘I won’t, I promise.’
People passed and left bits of their conversations; words in Greek and Arabic, French and English.
He looked down and said in a low voice, ‘I want to write down the lyrics from the film’s songs before I forget them.’
She had promised not to laugh and it was an easy promise to keep.
‘I can help you. I can jog your memory.’
‘No. I want to do it myself.’
There were corners in him that she didn’t have access to. The part of him that wrote the poems, his masculinity, and a purity she did not share. Inside her was selfishness and impatience, unforgiveness and self-pity, all camouflaged by a wholehearted love for others and a delightful femininity. Her nature was immature and wobbly, faults that a mother’s sound care would have corrected.
On the last afternoon that she loved the sea, she walked with Nur on the beach. She did not have her glasses on, but that was all right; there was nothing detailed she needed to focus on, nothing tricky. Nur had arrived without his friends, had left them behind in Sidi Bishr so that he could be with her. On the way he had gone to change and was now wearing his swimming trunks and a white shirt. They walked along the edge of the water because Soraya had seen other couples do that and she wanted to imitate them. Her arm brushed against Nur’s arm. They were the same height, the same build, the same colour. Their feet pushed into the wet sand and once in a while the froth of a wave would encircle their ankles. The beach was not flat. It dipped gradually to the water and, in other places, steeply, yet the stronger waves reached up higher and further. The beach was scattered with umbrellas. Each had a different design but they were all colourful and gay. Rainbow stripes, polka dots, bright greens and the orange Abuzeid umbrella they were walking away from had different shades like the segments of an orange.
He said, ‘Why don’t you swim?’
The red flag was hoisted today, which meant that the sea was boisterous but swimming was still allowed. A black flag meant keep away, and when the white flag fluttered, the sea was calm as a carpet.
She lifted her dress up to her knee as a wave splashed up and reached them.
‘I don’t have a bathing suit.’
‘We’ll go and buy you one.’
She laughed and dropped her dress. Their feet were imprinted in the wet sand and the imprint would last until the next strong wave.
‘I don’t know how to swim.’
‘I’ll teach you.’ He held her hand, which meant they were out of sight of Fatma and Nassir.