I saw Rhea recently at the funeral of an old acquaintance from Cairo. I saw her come in the church with a strange, labored gait. She saw me and smiled sadly as one smiles on such occasions. I went up to her and kissed her in the jostling crowd. I had not seen her for nearly five years. Time never leaves us alone but through the few new creases and wrinkles on her face, evidence of beauty and sexiness were still apparent.
Her body well kept, her clothes, as always, tasteful and expensive.
“I came by taxi,” she said. I could not drive. “My legs are giving me trouble.”
“Those beautiful legs?”
She smiled.
“And the nest between them?” I asked. “Is it all right?” She hugged me and pushed her head in my neck to conceal her laughter in that mournful ambiance. Then she moved off in the crowd to offer her condolences to the widow and I did not see her again in the jam.
Some persons you see on and off throughout your life. You are not close but you are aware of them through rumors and gossip in your entourage and your paths cross now and then, mostly casually but sometimes with surprising occurrences. Rhea was my age but when I first met her after I returned to Cairo from studies abroad she was a woman and I was still a boy. Age, sometimes, is an irrelevant factor to maturity, or, in any case, to one‟s self-appraisal of it. She had just been engaged to be married to an elder cousin and when she came to our home for the traditional dinner invitation of welcome to our family, I expected to see a very beautiful woman because that was the way she was portrayed by my family. She was good-looking and attractive and had a sexy build but she was not the classic beauty I expected. She was lively, loud and had the mannerisms of an almost contrived sexiness and flippancy. It is this air of looseness and availability that electrifies the male sex and sets the testosterone coursing.
Rhea laughed a lot in contrast to her fiancé who was unattractive, silent and dull and people usually used the word, constipated, to describe him. And yet he was not stupid, my Cousin Harry. He was at least fifteen years older than me and was on much more intimate terms with my father, his uncle, than he was with me. In fact, we had very little to say to each other whereas a conversation could go on for hours between the two of them. Usually on business, which was strange because my father was a self-made businessman who was in the thick of it while Cousin Harry was idly sitting on a fortune, unwilling or unable to expand and multiply it. It was not for lack of brains. Perhaps it was a reluctance to risk or gamble on a new venture. Perhaps it was an innate laziness. The same that kept him from a university education, from an active social life, from the participation in any kind of sport or physical activity.
It did not seem to me a good match but I did not give it much thought. My cousin was wealthy and arranged marriages were much the rule in those days especially between wealthy families. Her family was wealthy, too, but not in the same league as Cousin Harry.
As I settled to my new life in Cairo, I started frequenting the same exclusive club in which both Cousin Harry‟s and Rhea‟s families were members long before my own parents were in a position to afford the yearly membership fees. I went there mainly for exercise and sport but as time passed I got to know many of the Greek members and met a number of old Egyptian school friends. After a game of tennis, a 77
jog around the track or a swim in the pool, I usually gravitated to one or another small group of friends to relax with a cool lemonade, an iced beer, a few laughs and usually quite a bit of good-natured gossip. They were a mixture of young men and women of various nationalities and a peculiar feature of their conversation was the easy, effortless and lax switchover from English to French to Arabic in assorted combinations. It is, of course, a lack of discipline and indolence of mind to substitute a word in French or Arabic when you are talking in English. But that was the way they communicated, it was quaint and charming and the habit dies hard. I still do it sometimes.
It was at the club that, little by little, Rhea‟s past unfolded in bits and pieces and I tracked her present with ever growing interest. She was the eldest daughter of a lower class family that, like my own, attained a measure of wealth through the industriousness and good fortune of the father. Her mother was handsome and scatterbrained and endured her husband‟s infidelities with the mind-set of tit for tat.
Rhea had two younger sisters that shared the same upbringing of their mother‟s slipshod morality and undue respect for Mammon. I had a sister as well who befriended the two younger girls of the family. Sometimes, not very often, I accompanied her to visits to the family‟s home, which was a luxurious flat in an exclusive neighborhood of Cairo. By that time, Rhea had married Cousin Harry and moved to another equally opulent flat nearby and I did not have occasion to rub shoulders with her there. I only met her occasionally at the club and when she visited us at home with her husband.
Fanny, the youngest girl was petite. A not especially pretty brunette who was, at the time of Rhea‟s marriage, in her final year of secondary school. She had an extroverted, wild temperament similar to Rhea‟s but her lack both of height and Rhea‟s flamboyant sensuality and good looks failed to provoke the kind of instant attention that Rhea enjoyed. Lisa, a couple of years older, was the prettiest of the three sisters and the most sober. She had finished school and was at that age when families, in our tight Greek community, activated their radars to scour the field for a suitable husband. It was the conservative culture of the late sixties, which burdened both families and progeny, male and female, with this agonizing need to settle their children. As a young man I was not exempt to similar pressures from my own family.
Apart of that, life did not change much perhaps since the Stone Age. Adulteries, infidelities, clandestine love affairs, the keeping of mistresses went on just as before, just as they shall continue in the future except that they were concealed. The façade had to be respectable and the hypocrisy of our society always surfaced in amusing and often malicious gossip.
It is so patently stupid to pressure a young man to get married. After five years of studies in Europe, after tasting a measure of independence, a measure of sentimental and sexual experimentation, my family‟s exhortations that I should start thinking of marriage, infuriated me and all they managed to do was put me off the one or two young women that attracted me. Lisa was one of them. There was an initial mutual attraction and because of that she started visiting us, ostensibly to see my sister but in reality to be close to me. I enjoyed her company and we laughed and joked a lot mostly at home and mostly in the presence of my sister. Taking her out on a date would have formalized the relationship and the radars of her family and the Greek community would focus on us. Eventually, my father asked me if I was interested in Lisa. I said I found her pleasant enough. He told me he heard that another eligible young man was about to propose to her and if I were interested he would go talk to her father to forestall the other suitor. My answer, that I was not interested in 78
marriage at the moment, visibly disappointed him. I kept away from Lisa after that and she subsequently married the young man.
At the club I updated, discreetly, my information on Rhea. Two school friends of hers, from the Greek school for girls she attended, happened to be in our group. I posed my questions, not more than one or two every time we met, with seeming indifference and usually not only were they answered but extra bonuses of information were included. Apparently Rhea was an unattractive little girl. Not only unattractive, but cheeky and none too bright. The fact was that she rarely bothered to open a book or do any homework. Cheeky, noisy, rude and yet her teachers tolerated her. Even liked her and not just because rich little girls are often the recipients of preferential treatment than the poorer wretches.
In the last two school years there was a physical transformation. Rhea grew taller and filled out beautifully. She came to school well dressed and radiated a new aura of sensuality. The ugly duckling had become a swan. She was still quite hopeless in her studies but that did not seem to matter much. Her sparkling disposition and giggles disarmed potential critics. Everybody, teachers and students admired her. She started going to the club alone, with the chauffeur, without her parents, and was very popular with groups her age, especially boys. She spoke perfect colloquial Arabic and looked at least two years older than she was.
When she graduated with a minimal knowledge of grammar, mathematics and other useless subjects such as geography and history, and at the precise moment her parents activated their radars, she befriended a tall, handsome young Egyptian called Hassan. The romance endured for over a year and the family‟s radars were twirling ever more desperately in view of this unexpected and odious development. Anyone could see that this relationship was doomed. Well, not exactly. Doomed is not the right word. Just that it could never end in marriage. Though Hassan was the scion of a rich family and being rich was a very weighty qualification for a prospective husband, Hassan was, unfortunately, a Moslem. A one-hundred percent irrevocable taboo. Had he been a Copt things would have been different. To the racist Greeks, a Copt though indisputably inferior, is at least Christian and the word, rich, would have played its mitigating role.
The future husband was eventually located with the main qualification manifestly present. He was Rich. He was fifteen years older than Rhea. No matter. He was dull, ordinary and unpopular. No matter. He was supercilious. No matter. He was reputedly tight-fisted. No matter. His crusty, overassertive mother was alive. No matter. He was very rich, thus, a very good match. I do not know, and the two friends were unable to enlighten me as to what pressures Rhea went through and how she reacted. At that dinner in our house nothing seemed amiss.
The marriage took place quite soon after and everything seemed fine. It was a sumptuous marriage and the church was overflowing with Rhea‟s family, relatives and friends. The ridiculous, boring ceremony with chanting priests, sing-song allusions to Abraham and Sarah, of two being joined in one flesh, of obedience and love, the tinkling of swinging myrrh receptacles was hardly audible above the noisy, muttering crowd. There were tears and laughter and excitement and everybody‟s eyes were focused on the beautiful bride in white. She was loved. She was adored. And she was pitied. They could not understand the match. Well, they could, but it was too blatant a mismatch.
At that time there were no videos and busybody cameramen to ruin a marriage ceremony. Just a lone photographer to take a few formal pictures of the couple. One classic and indispensable picture of any self-respecting marriage ceremony of that era 79
was a snapshot of the couple inside the car just as they are leaving the church grounds. Both husband and wife are asked to turn around and look out the rear window while the photographer snaps the shot. I have it somewhere, this picture. I really do. There is a small, round bouquet of flowers on the rear ledge of the car window. Cousin Harry, hair freshly cut, half turned, looks at the camera with bulging eyes and a bothered expression, without a smile, and Rhea in a white wedding gown and a small veil looks back as well. She is fresh and beautiful. Her expression is one of despair. It shouts at you, “Help! Please help me. I‟m being kidnapped.” Very soon, strange new details came out into the open. Rhea and Harry returned from a month‟s honeymoon in Greece and Rhea‟s belly was noticeably swollen. Five months later a healthy and certainly not premature baby boy was born.
On the day of its birth, Hassan, in ecstasy, was offering drinks at the club‟s bar to all comers celebrating the birth of his son. I could not figure it out. Was it true? Would Cousin Harry marry Rhea knowing she was pregnant with Hassan‟s child? True or false, was Hassan as low as all that? To ruin the reputation of his former girlfriend in such a public fashion however hurt he might have been by her ditching him? And the final intriguing question, did Rhea have sexual relations with Harry as early as three or four months before her marriage while she was still reputedly fooling around with Hassan? A few years later, certainly with many details of the pre-marital romance missing, it was clear to me that the boy was Harry‟s son. He was his father‟s spitting image. Both his facial characteristics and his body cast left no doubt.
Lisa gave birth to a baby girl a year after her marriage and Fanny, on graduation, came out to titillate, in her turn, the Greek circles we moved in. She did not capture the same notice as Rhea for she lacked her glamour but kept the gossipy club crowd‟s tongues wagging. I am not a moralist. In a way, I admired the contempt they displayed with regard to convention. They had the strength and sense of independence to pursue their pleasure and love affairs. I was in the same situation but much more inhibited. Being unmarried I felt I was continuously monitored in our small Greek circle. Every move towards a girl was assumed a step towards marriage whereas I just needed female companionship and sexual release. My family was pestering me to get married and my continuous refusals would not put them off. A loose girl could at most be called a bitch. It was her choice and responsibility. A male who plays the field might hurt the woman he befriends for sex by ruining her reputation. It seemed to me that it was a handicap to be considerate. I started contemplating leaving Egypt.
My sister continued her friendship with Fanny. I was glad and I hoped some of her reserve would dissipate through that friendship. Times were changing while Cairo‟s Greek society was immobile in its inhibitions and its furtive hypocrisy. One afternoon I drove her to Fanny‟s house and told her if I finished my own chores early enough I would return to pick her up. When I returned, she had already left. Fanny was alone and asked me in. I demurred but she insisted. She offered me a drink and we started chatting. Like Rhea, she was high spirited and gay and never at a loss for words. We had many laughs talking of our mutual acquaintances, her sisters and their husbands. She told me Lisa was not happy with her husband. He was rich but stingy. I told her Harry had the same reputation. She let out a peal of laughter.
“Yes”, she said, “but Lisa is daft. She‟s a goodie-goodie. Rhea knows how to manipulate her husband and she leads the life she wants.”
“Meaning?”
“She‟s back with Hassan.”
“My God! Do you mean they are divorcing?”
80
“Don‟t be silly. One doesn‟t divorce a gold mine.” After the first whisky she got up to refill the glasses, sat on my lap and we started kissing. I enjoyed it without taking it seriously. I did not get aroused. I was about ten years older than her and I considered it a sort of game that could not result in sex. In any case, I was jittery that her parents might pop in any minute. After a while she asked,
“Why are you so aloof?”
I really don‟t know why I answered as I did. I half meant it as a joke.
“Because I‟m no pedophile,” I said.
She jumped up, offended.
“Go to hell,” she said and went to her room slamming the door.
I got up and left the flat.
The next time my sister went to her house I asked her to tell Fanny that I was sorry.
“Sorry for what?” she asked.
“Just tell her I‟m sorry. That‟s all.”
When she returned she told me Fanny accepted my apology.
“What‟s with you two?” she asked.
“Nothing to do with you.”
So now I knew. It was not evident. Rhea came often to our home and we had become familiar and friendly. She was giggly and gay and I enjoyed being with her.
While Cousin Harry delved in deep conversation with my father I usually slinked inside the house to sit with my mother, sister and Rhea. It was always a merry time and after having learned of her clandestine affair with Hassan I started making jocular insinuations asking her,
“How‟s your love life these days?”
To which she would answer with resonant laughter.
Meanwhile Hassan ingratiated himself into Rhea‟s group of friends at the club.
It was not my group and, in any case, I neither wished to rub shoulders with Cousin Harry nor our handsome Casanova. I liked Rhea. I found her very attractive and superbly sexy and would have loved to have an affair with her but conditions were not propitious. I could not pretend to be Harry‟s buddy which Hassan little by little managed to do. I would not deign to be Hassan‟s rival either. I felt too much contempt for the way he reacted to Rhea‟s marriage and the birth of her child. Perhaps, also, I had too little money to interest her and I did not have a garçonnière to accommodate a tryst. I just let her understand in an underhand manner and copious compliments that I liked her looks, her body and her undoubtedly fervid temperament and I think she understood and enjoyed my attentions.
Cousin Harry was no fool. I often wondered if he was really unaware of the relationship that reignited between Rhea and Hassan or whether he had no choice but to let it continue. One never knows what goes on behind the closed doors of a household. Perhaps they had fights with Rhea and she was adamant where her affair was concerned. That it was either that or divorce. Perhaps she denied it and called his suspicions ridiculous. What was more than evident was that after a certain time Cousin Harry was considered by most of the Greek gossipmongers as a shameless cuckold. Hassan was presented to Rhea‟s extended family as Harry‟s best friend and Harry‟s mother, a cunning old lady who obviously saw through the whole conspiracy, abetted and perpetrated the myth. Not much love was lost between her and Rhea but it was either that or conceding that her son was a cuckold pure and simple. I think the 81
conspiracy extended throughout the totality of Rhea‟s clan, aunts, uncles, the cousins and cousins of cousins.
Without a doubt, Rhea was adored. She not only had high spirits and a gay disposition that enlivened the atmosphere around her but possessed the demagoguery of a politician who makes you believe you are an extremely valued friend and after you give him your vote he simply ignores you. Yes, Rhea was loved and brazenly protected and the condescending, unemotional, unloved Harry was tolerated as long as he kept Rhea happy and well provided with jewelry and expensive clothes. Sadly, it also goes to show that despite his arrogance and show of superiority, Harry was deeply in love with Rhea. Profoundly dependent on her. Totally unable to part with her to save his self-respect.
Four years after the birth of her son, Rhea fell pregnant again. Hassan had by that time consolidated his position as the ubiquitous friend of the family. Wherever the couple went, he was there. The club, family festivities, dinner invitations and even summer vacations in Greece. The only place Hassan was not allowed to come to was our home. My father, a stern and tough old cookie who was exceptionally fond of his nephew, would not have tolerated Hassan‟s insipid familiarities and jokes with the couple. I don‟t know how much he knew of the goings on. I am sure my mother knew but she, too, was playing the unsuspecting, loving aunt. Still, she might have intimated a thing or two to my father. And, I suppose, the scandalmongers were once again speculating on the perpetrator of the second fecundation. Quite truthfully, I was more than a little puzzled myself.
In those days I flirted discreetly with a married woman at the club. She seemed to like me and I tried to convince her to become my lover. Her answer was that she was disposed to break with her husband if I were serious about her but, if not, she could not possibly have an affair with me. “I would never be able to sleep with two men at the same time,” she told me. “I would go mad.” I assumed that was the mainstream female psychology as opposed to the male one. Did Rhea complacently accommodate two men?
A baby girl was born and I visited Rhea at the hospital on the second day after the birth. I went in early to avoid the hordes of well-wishers that would parade later to pay their respects. It was ten in the morning and Rhea was surprised and happy to see me. We were by that time familiar and whenever we met exchanged jocular and teasing comments. She was in bed in an upright position looking well and rested. Her thick black hair was well combed and she wore a lacy, white nightgown. Her breasts, full of milk, were visibly distended. I kissed her and told her she looked wonderful.
Virginal and sexy.
She laughed.
“Hardly virginal,” she said. “And my tits are so full of milk they hurt. The baby cannot consume all of it. They draw some out with a pump. I feel like a human cow.”
A cot was in the room and I went to see the baby. It was so shriveled and ugly I could not bring myself to say something nice about it. I just said, “She‟s so tiny!”
“Good thing, too. She nearly killed me coming out,” she said laughing.
We talked a little and then she arched and spread her legs beneath the sheets and flapped the bed covers over them a few times.
“My genitals are on fire,” she said. “I have a good mind to call a male nurse and have him blow on them.” And she let out a peal of laughter.
I stayed a half hour and left. Some things stick to one‟s mind.
82
I remember an invitation that was made some time later at the club restaurant.
Some time later, could have been six months or two years. Just as I do not remember the occasion for the invitation I cannot place the exact date. Twenty people around a long rectangular table with food and drink and a festive mood. The three sisters were there. The married twosome with husbands and the little one with two or three of her current, alternating beaus. The self-appointed master of ceremonies was Hassan although it was neither his invitation nor was he part of the reason for the celebration.
What remains in my mind of this event was the high spirits of the three sisters, of most of the guests and most of all of Hassan. Cousin Harry was aloof, uncommunicative and placid. Lisa‟s husband was silent but visibly seething. His marriage was not going well and he was annoyed by Lisa‟s unaccustomed antics and fawning conduct towards Hassan. Rhea, of course, was having a great good time with lots of giggling and joking and noisy laughing and little Fanny was enjoying herself much in the same vein. Perhaps because I resented Hassan, I found that noisy and merry evening unbearable and left with a lame excuse as soon as was decently possible. If it is at all feasible to desire a woman sexually and hate her at the same time, these conflicting emotions were churning in my soul.
Lisa separated from her husband soon after that evening and the husband let it be known that he was not disposed to be the second cuckold in the family. One was quite enough. Lisa returned to her paternal home with the pretty baby girl that was born in the meantime.
Coming out of the cinema one evening I fell upon Fanny. She was there with two other girls and I offered to drive them home. We first accompanied the two girls and then I drove Fanny towards her house. On the way she asked me to take her for a coffee. I said, “Sure, but why?”
“Will you stop being so rude?”
“Sorry Fanny. I didn‟t mean to be.”
“Scared I shall ruin your reputation?”
I laughed.
“My reputation can only be enhanced if I am seen with you.”
“That was a very snide compliment.”
“Nothing I say seems to suit you.”
“Anyway, I hope you are over your pedophobia.”
“Oh definitely. As far as you are concerned, in any case. And you do kiss very nicely. I did not have the chance to tell you that day.” She smiled.
“I have improved a lot since then.”
“I have not the slightest doubt.”
“I hate you.”
“Hate, love….it‟s two sides of the same coin.”
She laughed shaking her head.
“You really are presumptuous.”
“Perhaps. But hate, little Fanny, is better than indifference.”
“Which is what you have been bestowing me all this time.” I took her hand and kissed it. She smiled and we drove a few minutes in silence to the Night and Day cafeteria of the Semiramis Hotel on the Nile. Her smile troubled me. She had a strange, lurid smile. At times there was a touch of vulgarity to it. I cannot define it or describe this peculiarity. It was pleasant enough but it gave you a hint of sluttishness, of an obscure and sinister erudition of carnality, of an 83
unquenchable thirst for it. Sometimes it put you off but if you were in the right mood it excited you. I did not stop the car at the Night and Day. I drove on.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Wherever you want.”
She smiled. She got the message.
“Okay.”
I took the road to Heliopolis. In those days, the government was building a new suburb called Medinet Nasr in the desert. The roads were carved and paved with construction sites of unfinished buildings left and right. At night they were deserted.
“How‟s your sexy sister?” I asked her.
“Just as you know her. Having a ball. Not a thought in the world. If she‟s got an itch, there‟s always someone there to scratch it. Why don‟t you give it a try? I think she fancies you.”
“Oh I couldn‟t. My father loves Harry. He would kill me with his bare hands if he found out.”
“Hassan‟s getting married, by the way.”
“I don‟t believe it! Rhea must be heartbroken.”
“Are you kidding? She‟s laughing her head off. Telling everyone about it.
Making them doubt that there was ever anything between her and Hassan.”
“But how come?”
“It seems his family got wind of his affair with Rhea and is forcing him to break it up and settle down.”
“So it‟s all over?”
“I doubt it. He shall always be there to scratch her itch. Unless she finds someone else. She is so lucky this girl. She has a wonderful husband. I really mean it.
Harry, despite his obnoxious bearing, is really a good person and he‟s nutty-mad about Rhea. He once told me she‟s way too good for him. „All I have is money,‟ he told me. „Rhea is alive and dazzling.‟ He also loves his children. I am sure he knows what‟s going on but has no option but to endure it. He just tries to limit the damage; to curtail the excesses.”
Half an hour later we penetrated into an empty garage of a half-built apartment building. I shut off the car‟s engine. I moved close to her. She embraced me right off and we started kissing. I caressed her body and lifted her skirt. Her legs were thin and exciting. She fumbled with the zip of my fly but couldn‟t slide it open. “Take them off,” she whispered. We were very quiet as if we might be heard. She removed her panties as I pulled my trousers half way down. She straddled me and I slipped into her. It was warm and slimy and I hoped she felt as complete and as liberated as I did.
She started moving slowly and sensuously.
“I‟m not wearing a condom,” I whispered.
“It‟s all right.”
She worked at it intimating her desire, her need, her contentment with gentle moans, with a flailing tongue, with noisy breathing and I felt happy I was aroused and erect and inside her and was providing this agony of pleasure. It is a time when all one‟s hang-ups are overthrown. When society‟s conventional Judeo-Christian-Islamic inhibitions seem so trite and hypocritical. Here was this bitch, this slut, this whore enjoying sex. By God, she ought to be stoned, killed, annihilated.
As we were driving back she said she was leaving for Greece the next day.
“I‟m pregnant. I‟m going for an abortion.”
“Why Greece? Why not here?”
“Here it will be out the same day. My reputation is bad enough.” 84
“And who‟s the culprit?”
“Dimitri.”
“Yes, I heard you were going out with him recently. A playboy and a big spender.”
“He‟s good fun.”
“But he got you into trouble.”
“I should have been more careful.”
“Won‟t he marry you?”
“Who wants to marry him? He‟s twenty years older than me and anyway he‟s engaged to be married to an old flame.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head.
“I try to be broadminded but sometimes I am stumped.” She laughed.
“It was lovely tonight Tony. It was a craving to make it wi