‘No, he should be encouraged,’ said Nabilah, keen to contradict.
Nur was not young enough to be her son and she felt an affinity with his youth. He was being educated in Egypt, at Victoria College, a school few could afford. She was proud of this further proof that her husband was truly enlightened. He was sparing no expense to give his son the best possible
education. And one day he would do the same for
her
son, Farouk.
Waheeba sucked her teeth.
‘Encouraged?’ She mimicked Nabilah’s Egyptian accent. ‘We are not that kind of family. We don’t waste our time on jingles and silly words.’
‘Read it and judge for yourself.’ Nabilah walked over and, smiling, offered her co-wife the sheet of paper. ‘Read it.’ It gave her satisfaction and pleasure to underline Waheeba’s illiteracy. ‘Don’t you know how to read? I can teach you.’
Waheeba turned her face and shoulder away towards her husband and said, ‘Look at her! She gets up, she sits down, she walks backwards and forwards. What is wrong with her? Why doesn’t she settle down?’ She turned to Nabilah and said, ‘Sit and have a rest. Don’t trouble yourself with Nur and what Nur did and didn’t do. What’s in it for you?’
Before Nabilah could reply, Idris sprang from his seat and snatched the paper from her hand. He scanned it and tore it down the middle. He tore it once, twice, the noise slick and decisive in the silent room. A tall, dark man in a jellabiya with a set, impatient face taking action. He tore it again and dropped it in long, skinny strands on the floor. He sat down again and said to his brother, ‘You are spending money on his education and what does he come back from Egypt with – silly songs!’
‘Exactly,’ murmured Waheeba, facing her son. ‘Did you go to school, ya Nur-alhuda so you can write down shameful things?’
Nabilah looked at Nur, and the boy’s face had that closed, shamed look she had seen before on the faces of servants when they were being told off. She wanted to come to his defence, but when their eyes met, the look she found there was one of hostility. The logic of youth – it was all her fault, she was the meddlesome one.
Mahmoud got up from his bed and put on his dressing gown.
He looked tired and thoughtful, his handsome face strained.
He said, ‘Nur, you need to go back to Alexandria. The academic year has started and you’ve missed too many days of school already. I am better now – there is no need for you to stay any longer. Tomorrow morning I will give orders for your travel arrangements. Nabilah . . .’
‘Yes . . .’ She moved towards him.
‘If you need to send anything to your mother, Nur will deliver it for you. He will stop in Cairo on the way. Also check with the Egyptian servants if they want to send anything to their families.’ He put on his slippers and started to walk to the bathroom. The matter was settled, the subject closed.
After Idris left, Nabilah made a point of remaining in the room to outstay Waheeba. While Mahmoud Bey read the newspaper, she watched Nur pick up the torn pieces of paper from the floor. He crumpled them and threw them in the bin.
‘Later on I will talk to your father about this,’ she promised him, her voice low.
His response was an anxious look at his father’s face, hidden behind the newspaper. She did not say anything more. Perhaps later, in private, Mahmoud would admit to her that he had been on her side, that Idris and Waheeba had over-reacted. Idris must have guessed that Nur’s poem was addressed to Soraya and, as her father, taken offence. Later, Nabilah could convince Mahmoud that it was civilised and modern to allow young people to express their feelings through poetry, music or art. Now, though, she must bear this dull, metallic feeling of – not exactly defeat, but not exactly success, either.
Back in her quarters, she stayed up late, writing a letter to her mother, sharing every small detail of the evening’s events. But she felt far away from Cairo, and somewhat excluded. Was it her fate to be always in the periphery? Her late father had been a provincial judge who toured the towns and cities of Egypt, and the years of Nabilah’s childhood were spent adjusting to, and departing from, different schools where she was treated well
because of her father’s position. He had been an imposing, charismatic man, highly educated and liberal in his thinking. Had he lived, he would have risen high in the judiciary, and Nabilah remembered her mother tolerating the pettiness and deprivations of provincial life, struggling with packing, unpacking and setting up a new home; all in the hope of a brilliant future in Cairo. Yes, the Sudan was like a province of Egypt, and now she, Nabilah, like her mother before her, was yearning for the metropolitian centre.
Nabilah idolised her mother. She believed that she was less beautiful than Qadriyyah, though this was not true. She believed that her mother had the best clothes sense, the best hairstyle and that her cooking was superior. Nothing was good or real without her mother’s acknowledgement. That was exactly why Nabilah’s marriage had taken place and lasted for nine years. Her mother’s faith in Mahmoud Bey transmuted itself to the daughter and Qadriyyah Hanim had wholeheartedly, and with utter conviction, engineered her daughter into this marriage. She had brushed aside Nabilah’s protests: the twenty years age gap, his foreignness, his first wife and grown-up children.
‘You don’t want to marry an inexperienced youngster,’ Qadriyyah had argued, ‘who will wear you out and drag you around until he stands on his own two feet. You want someone established, mature, someone able to look after you and guide you. Mahmoud Bey will humour and indulge you; he will pamper and protect you. Wait and see, isn’t Mama always right?’
Yes, Mama was always right. Nabilah waited and Nabilah saw. But there were other things, like this exile from the one she loved most. Nabilah’s dissatisfaction, her low-grade unhappiness, was not entirely caused by this mismatched marriage, by this second-wife status or by this backward place. It was the banishment from her mother that was so hard to get used to.
Usually, after a massage, he slept deeply, but tonight he was restless. It had been years since Waheeba massaged his back – he couldn’t remember the last time, but it must have been before his second marriage. She was good at it, heavy-handed but effective. She might even have bruised him, and he would feel sore tomorrow, but after that the benefits of her treatment would be felt, significant and lasting. He shifted his weight and tried to find a more comfortable position. The room was airy because the windowpanes and shutters to the terrace were wide open. Without a full moon, the starlight was soft and untroubling and there was no reason for him not to sleep. He was not in pain; neither was he hungry or thirsty, nor was he lonely. His elder sons were spending the night in his room. Nassir, after his journey from Medani, was lying on his back, his hands folded on his belly, snoring loudly. Nur, on an extra angharaib, was lying on his side, the sheet as was his habit, pulled over his face. Mahmoud felt a surge of simultaneous fondness and grudge towards them. He was pleased that they were near him, but at the same time he envied how deeply they were sleeping. What were they dreaming of? He was not really interested, nor would he understand their generation’s concerns. His children were an extension of him and he had hopes and plans for them, which he expected them to obey, but his core, his inner depth, was independent of them.
This sleeplessness, he realised, getting out of bed and walking out onto the terrace, was a good sign, a sign that his illness was coming to an end. Perhaps in a day or two he could go back to work. He had been going over things with Idris, but not
everything could be done from home. It would be good to be back in the office again. the office. This word meant a great deal to him. He was not a merchant in the Souq Al-Arabi, as his grandfather had been. He was not the head of an agency, as his father had been. He was the director of Abuzeid Trading, a private limited liability company, one of the leading firms in the Sudanese private sector. There were British companies, of course – Gellaty and Hankey, Sear and Colley, Mitchell Cotts and Sudan Mercantile; there were the fabulous long-established Syrian-Christian families the Haggars and the Bittars but he, Sayyid Mahmoud Abuzeid, was indigenous. Let no one call
him
an immigrant! The immigrants came fifty-five years ago with the Anglo-Egyptian force, sent to avenge Gordon’s death and recover the Sudan. Those newcomers were adventurers and opportunists who knew that the defeat of the Mahdiyyah and the new British administration would herald an era of prosperity. Instead, Mahmoud Abuzeid’s grandfather had come in the early 1800s, fleeing conscription in the Egyptian army.
The Abuzeids had risen by a combination of financial sharpness and the drive to modernise. Unlike the Mahdi and the Mirghani family firms, who were supported by the British in order to distract them from politics and play them one against the other, the Abuzeids were independent. Mahmoud was proud of that. And he wanted to do more. He wanted to steer his family firm through the uncertainties of self-determination and stake a place in the new, independent country, whenever and whatever form this independence took. This was why he loved his office. The other burgeoning family businesses did not put so much emphasis on form. He, though, had an office, just like a British company, with secretaries, filing cabinets, qualified accountants, telegram operators, and everything was written down, filed in order. He needed to get back to work. A number of important meetings had been postponed because of his illness and too many things were now on hold.
Walking on the terrace tired him and he sat back on one
of the large metal chairs that made up the outdoor seating arrangement. The cushions were soft and cool underneath him, but by now he was bored with comfort. He wanted to be strong and energetic again. The doctor had assured him of a slow but complete recovery and Mahmoud wanted to forget these past days. He had not only been physically ill, but frightened, too, chastened in some way. Good health was a blessing, anything else a constraint. Being bedridden had made him feel morbid. Was he meant to think that death was around the corner? Should he start to put his affairs in order? He had seen the concern in his family’s eyes. His death would affect their lives. Nabilah and the children would return to Cairo – she would have no place here, he was sure, but Farouk and Ferial would be deprived of their country and their Sudanese family. It was an unhappy thought, and though he trusted that Idris would not deprive them of their inheritance, his young, half-Sudanese family, would bear the brunt of being orphaned more than their elder brothers, Nassir and Nur. He listened to the breeze from the Nile and the sounds that came from the fields on the riverbank. A donkey brayed and pigeons cooed, even though dawn was a long way off.
His mind turned to the names and faces of the friends and business acquaintances who had visited him. He challenged himself to remember them all, knowing that he would be able to check the accuracy of his memory by looking at the list Nur had been writing. Some had come more than once, and those who esteemed him most had come immediately on hearing that he was ill. Their concern was gratifying. It filled him with affection for them and a desire to reciprocate. He, too, if Allah continued to give him life, would visit them in sickness, commiserate with them in death and celebrate their happy occasions.
And how had his family responded to his illness? Idris had risen to the occasion and could not be faulted. Nassir, on the other hand, had taken too long to arrive from Medani. People would talk of this – it was embarrassing. The boy resembled him
physically, but was lazy and irresponsible, unlike Nur, who looked like his mother and yet held his father’s sense of duty inside him. Mahmoud always compared the brothers and always found Nur to be superior. Even though he was not the eldest, Nur would be the next chairman of the Abuzeid group of companies, the next head of the family. But what to do about Nassir? Years ago, on the night of his wedding to Fatma, Nassir had been too drunk to consummate the marriage. Mahmoud had laughed along with everyone else at the story of the groom, henna on his hands and kohl in his eyes, passing out fully dressed on his marital bed, but Nassir’s drinking was no longer a laughing matter. The reports that reached Mahmoud were damning. Nassir was never at the Medani office before eleven o’clock on any day of the week. It was clerks and employees who were running the Abuzeid Medani office, not the landowner’s son. Cotton was yielding millions these days because the English couldn’t get enough of it now that the war was over, but that was no excuse for Nassir to take things easy. It was the time to be aggressive, to develop and expand. Mahmoud resolved to confront him before his return to Medani, and if he didn’t pull himself together, he would summon him back to Umdurman to keep a close watch over him.
As for Nur, the boy needed to complete his education. This evening’s poetry episode was a phase he would get over. He was brilliant in his studies, outstanding in sports, especially football. An all-rounder, the English headmaster said, and how proud Mahmoud felt that his son was excelling at Victoria College. Every penny spent on the fees was worth this joy. It was especially gratifying to visit him in Alexandria. Mahmoud would park his car and visit the headmaster, Mr Waverley, in his office. With amazement – and a certain degree of alertness needed to follow English – he would listen to his son being praised. Such magical moments, sitting across the desk from the English gentleman who spoke loudly, slowly and clearly. Nur, his son was an all-rounder! After a few minutes – not long, for the English did not
like to waste time – Nur would arrive at the office wearing his navy school blazer with the letters V and C embroidered in gold on the pocket, the C underneath the letter V. Nur’s eyes would shine when he saw his father. He would rush forward and bend to kiss his hand before Mahmoud enveloped him in a brief hug. Then, obtaining special permission, Mahmoud would take Nur and his friends out for lunch. How those boys attacked their plates of kebab and kofta! As if they had been starving for weeks. They were not allowed such food in the dorms and they had to bribe the cleaning staff to buy them ful and falafel from outside. Poor boys, forced to eat English food every day: boiled potatoes, roast beef, and more tasteless boiled vegetables. Mahmoud chuckled.