We made love twice more that night. I was fascinated by her capacity for enjoyment of sex, by her lack of inhibitions, by the sense of fun she introduced to our lovemaking. She would hum her little tunes which I could never make out. She would tell me little jokes when I told her I loved her or tell me with a twinkle in her eye, how worried she was because she had forgotten to buy cooking oil at the end of a passionate kiss. She would cover my head with her loose, comfortable dress and ask me to bite her nipples. I told her if she were tired of me there were better ways to let me know than choking me to death or even trying to uproot my tongue with her savage kisses. She said she knew of even better ways than these. She would work me out till I dropped. She had that capacity and was sure I had it too. I said, „Then, it's good bye,‟ I loved her but I loved young Alex as well. I was not quite willing to sacrifice him at the altar of love. And she wondered how dull a person could get! Not to talk of hypocrisy. All those avowals of love, where did they go? Disappear into thin air?
We put on our clothes as best we could and as I switched on the car engine to leave, being a man, I needed reassurance. I pulled her to me and kissed her tenderly and just when our lips parted I sealed her mouth with my hand.
“Please don't tell me about the lovely pair of shoes you saw at the shopping center.”
“Okay, what do you want to know?”
“Did you really enjoy our lovemaking?”
She smiled and caressed my cheek. “I hated it, you little crybaby, couldn't you tell?”
But when we reached the main desert road and turned right for the city, she started crying.
I pulled her to me and she put her head on my shoulder.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now what! Now what! How insensitive can you get? You fuck and it's all over.
What do you care?”
“You are terribly crude and unfair sometimes. I do care, very much, if you are unhappy. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No I don't,” she said like a stubborn child.
She kept her head on my shoulder. Oh, the eternal Eve! At once my baby, my equal and, undoubtedly, my superior.
“It's the first time I have been unfaithful to Talaat,” she said after a while.
“As far as I understand, he is not unaware and he is willing to tolerate it. Which is something absolutely out of the ordinary, even given the very special circumstances you are in, and speaks of a very compassionate, a very big-hearted person who loves you very much.”
“You don't know the half of it.”
“I'm sure I don't,” I said. I was sure I was about to find out.
She was silent for a while. Then, she laughed.
“How funny you men are,” she said. She reached and held my genitals. “Without this you feel worthless. Emasculated means to be feeble, ineffectual and helpless.”
“Quite true my little Eve. Without this you were dreaming of the snake. It is part of love. There is so little love in our world and yet is life worth living without it? That is why I consider myself so fortunate I love you, whatever the consequences. That is why I 29
am so unbearably happy I made love to you. I shall probably not sleep tonight thinking about it.”
“Better take a sleeping pill, my boy. We have a squash date tomorrow afternoon.”
“I wouldn't miss it for the world.”
A little later she went on to talk to me about Talaat. The truest, purest Sheikh I have ever known. A genuine man of God to whose memory I dedicate this narrative.
Talaat bey met Leila at a party. These were very proper, family-supervised affairs, where young people were supposed to meet, enjoy themselves and single themselves out for eventual pairings leading to engagements and marriage. They took place almost exclusively in upper-class circles and all of the guests were of similar social status so as far as a social mismatch was concerned the odds were fairly low.
In the early sixties, the Islamic renaissance was still in the incubator and a moderate amount of alcoholic drinking was tolerated. After dinner, the lights were lowered, the music and dancing and flirting would begin in earnest. Bathrooms and bedrooms would be patrolled and the most daring sexual play would be a furtive kiss in a dark corner. Every age has its mores. The young people find their path to adulthood as best they can. Love cannot be stifled and a look or a touch of the hand can be as thrilling and as troubling as sex. Now that it is unbridled and we are getting on in age, we sometimes regret the sex we missed. But we had romance and dreams and we did not play with the law of averages: try for five, one is sure to fall. It took too much time and emotional investment to root for just one girl.
Talaat was there. He was older than the majority of young people but he was a friend of the family giving the party, was handsome, well-dressed, rich, in fact the most eligible unattached young man in sight. Leila, too, of course, was there. A fresh and gorgeous eighteen, gay and popular, having a terrific time, flirting with everyone.
Nothing attracts a man more than the aura of a star and the popularity of a woman.
Nothing attracts a woman more than the aura of success and assurance in a man. They were drawn to one another like a positive to a negative charge. He introduced himself, danced with her, found out her name, flirted with her and asked about her father. He was a lawyer. How lucky! He needed a lawyer. He wrote down her father's office address. She had just finished St Clare's in Heliopolis and was planning to enter the American University.
“Would you like that,” he asked?
“Sure,” she wanted to study literature and philosophy. “Well, it's either that or getting married,” she added.
Did she have someone in mind? No, that was the worst of it. She did not want to be bundled off to a rich, chubby little businessman.
“And if he were not chubby,” he asked?
She smiled.
“Do you mean someone like you?”
“Masalan” (for example), he said and smiled but peered at her with apprehension.
Her reply interested him infinitely. Only she did not reply.
She asked, “How come you're not married?”
“I am a hardened old bachelor.”
She laughed.
“The more hardened they are, the harder they fall.”
30
He laughed too.
“Perhaps, you are right. You are wise beyond your age,” he told her.
They danced the rest of the night together. Then the driver came to pick her up and they had to part. He said goodbye and kissed her hand.
“I shall see you again soon,” he said.
“You have not asked for my phone number,” she told him. “Or am I expected to ask for yours?”
He laughed.
“Don't worry, I shall be in touch.”
The following evening he went to the lawyer's office. He introduced himself, Talaat El Lamloumi. The name was impressive. The extended Lamloumi families were practically feudal lords over a large section of southern Egypt. Whole villages were situated inside their holdings. The only government the peasants of the area had known, until the Revolution came along, was the Senior Lamloumi Family Council whose word was law. It was said, the family even had a gallows where they executed by hanging the people they put on trial for crimes committed in their area and were condemned to death by the Council. Abdel Nasser started breaking up their power, little by little, and eventually decimated them financially.
“How can I help you,” asked Leila's father.
“First let me tell you how happy I am to meet you. I believe we shall be seeing quite a lot of each other,” said Talaat bey graciously.
“I sincerely hope so,” answered the puzzled old lawyer. “The honor is mine.”
“Mustafa bey, I have two cases to put before you. One is more or less routine. The other is so serious that it shall affect the whole of my life and well-being. Shall we start with the minor problem?”
“As you wish. People usually start with their major problems.”
“I prefer to get the less serious affair out of the way. It is complicated and intractable but in the end it does not matter so much. The serious one, I believe, shall be settled satisfactorily in which case I shall be in no frame of mind to tackle the minor question anyway.”
They talked about the minor problem, which had to do with a school the family owned and staffed in a village and was now forcefully taken over by the Ministry of Education even though it provided free education for the peasant children. Then, when the course of action was settled, Talaat bey took out his visiting card and passed it on to the lawyer. The lawyer looked at it and then looked hesitantly at Talaat.
“I am not one of the very rich Lamloumis,” Talaat told the lawyer. “Please be kind enough to inquire about me.”
“Whatever for?” asked the lawyer.
“Yesterday, at the Mohammadi Soliman residence I met your daughter, Leila. I request her hand in marriage.”
Mustafa bey was flabbergasted.
“Talaat, my son, you met Leila yesterday and you are asking for her hand today?
Are you serious? Does she know? She has had dozens of proposals and has rejected them all. She claims she wants to continue her studies. And you know, I tend to agree. I am against this conventional rush, rush of our society to marry off a girl as soon as she 31
finishes secondary school. I believe Leila is too high-spirited, too full of life to assume the responsibilities of marriage just now. I don't want our flower to wilt before her time.”
“That is the last thing I want, as well. Please, first complete your inquiries as to my person and then discreetly ask Leila whether she finds my proposal acceptable. I have reason to believe that she shall. I would not have made it otherwise. And you can call me when you have an answer.”
Three days later, he received a phone call from Leila.
“Mabrouk! (congratulations). You are accepted!”
“By whom?”
“By everybody. Can you come for tea this afternoon at seven?”
“Yes, yes. So my nightmare is over?”
“Perhaps, it is just beginning,” she said with a gay laugh.
“We got married in a hurry not because anything pressed,” continued Leila, “we were just very much in love. A fairy-tale marriage, of course, a month-long honeymoon in Europe and America and a new luxurious apartment to redecorate in Zamalek on our return. Then, things started getting sticky. The socialist virus entered Abdel Nasser's bloodstream and his bunch of thieving cronies encouraged this upheaval of our society to amass their wealth. Poor, envious, two-bit army officers most of them, who were incapable of defending their country when the need arose. The confiscations of land from large landowners started taking place, leaving us with two hundred acres.
“A year or so later, another chiseling left us with half that. Then the company where Talaat worked was nationalized and was dumped with a whole lot of other companies and all were bureaucratized, messed up, disorganized and made as inefficient as possible. Talaat lost his way in this labyrinth of army-officer cronyism and stayed on just for the eventuality that we might some day need his salary and later his pension to survive. Luckily, it has not come to that. Despite everything, we have led a very comfortable, happy life together. I used to tell him, „Talaat ever since we married, things have gone from bad to worse for you. I was your unlucky card.‟ And he used to get so annoyed and angry with me. He asked me if this would not have happened had we not married. Was I responsible through this marriage, as well, for the fate of thousands that were treated in the same way? „You are the sun that shines in my life,‟ he always tells me.
“We were of course unable to have children. We made the rounds of doctors without much success. It seems his sperm was congenitally weak from Lamloumi inbreeding and that was that. We thought seriously of adoption and it was I, finally, that rejected the idea. I did not think I would be a good mother and I did not want to be burdened with a baby that was not mine. Perhaps, that was selfish because Talaat wanted it very much. He said that in my later life a child would be a great comfort and companionship. But I was happy with my life as it was. I had my social activities and sports and studies. I call them studies but they were not really studies. Just some external courses now and then at the AUC when the subjects came up that interested me, and lots of reading.
“A few years ago when the question of adoption was finally forgotten, Talaat started worrying about the Islamic inheritance laws of this country. Without a child, if he happened to die, nine tenths of his money would revert to his family. So, little by little, he started, through fictitious sales, legally transferring his land and fortune to me. He did all 32
this as quietly as possible so his family would not notice thus avoiding quarrels and bad feelings. Now, practically everything he owns is in my name.
“The knockout blow in our lives was of course his prostate cancer. Evidently, we knew the consequences beforehand but what was the alternative? After the operation and recovery he fell into a severe depression. He could not bear the fact of his impotence. He was thinking of me above all else. He thought he did an injustice to marry me. That he wronged me, that he was inexcusable. He wanted to divorce me so I would find someone else to build a new life. He urged me to look around for another man and as soon as I found one he would divorce me. He threatened to commit suicide if I refused.
“I have been living this nightmare for nearly two years. How could I possibly abandon a man I loved dearly with body and soul for eighteen years? A man who offered me his unbounded love and all his fortune? One day, after an acute bout of dejection and saying he could not bear this life any longer, quite spontaneously I told him, „Talaat, please don't torture yourself. Please, understand that you are no longer my husband. You are my father. I am no longer your wife. I am your daughter. Whatever happens, I shall never abandon my father. I cannot imagine you would ever think of abandoning your daughter with your crazy suicidal schemes.‟ These few words worked like magic. He started regaining his interest in life. He returned to work, and there he met and befriended, who else? Our Sherif effendi.
“He learnt that Sherif worked in a little industrial concern owned by a Greek young man called Alexanthros Patakis. He learnt that you were a good boy. Young and good looking. That you were university educated, polite, well mannered, a sportsman. It was important to him that you were a sportsman. You fitted, almost perfectly, a picture he had already constructed in his mind. The picture of my future lover. He was playing a dangerous game with human feelings and emotions, yes, but with us, at least, the possibility of marriage was altogether unlikely. All we could do was hurt ourselves. He had his back covered. There was not much fear he would lose me. Can this little bit of selfishness born of so great a love be held against him? Can this burial of his own ego with the sole concern for my well-being not be considered the ultimate of generosity and altruism?
“He asked Sherif to bring you to his office, supposedly for a coffee but in fact to give you the once over and you unwittingly went. It was after that meeting that he announced he had found my perfect dream lover. I was terribly shocked to start with.
Surprised that Talaat would actually reach the stage of putting his vague notions to practice. But reality tempers you, and thinking about it reduces the outrage. I was even curious to see where it would all end. I could not imagine these mad schemes would ever come to fruition. Our subsequent setbacks were your recalcitrant refusals to accept our repeated invitations to the farm. „If he could only have one look at you,‟ Talaat would tell me, „Mr. Alexanthros Patakis would be here like a streak of lightning.‟ „Why don't you take a picture of me, naked, with your Polaroid and then we can send it to him in a sealed envelope with Sherif effendi,‟ I suggested with some irritation. „If all else fails, it will be our last resort,‟ Talaat told me laughing.”
She turned and kissed me on the mouth.
“But they say, if you don't win at first, try and try again,” she said smiling. “We did, we won and it was heaven.”
33
We fell into the pattern of meeting in the evenings of our swimming days. The next day would be the squash appointment but not an early réveil. The Friday was our Sabbath, our day of rest and recuperation. Leila would spend it with Talaat at the farm. I was often invited there by Talaat Bey but I never went. I could not overcome a sense of guilt and embarrassment towards that man. Often, in our sporadic phone conversations he used veiled language to insinuate that he had no problem with the status quo and that it was a practical and beneficial solution to Leila's problem and that he bore no ill feelings towards me. On the contrary, he was relieved that her life was moving so peacefully along.
He did not quite get it right. Our life was not moving peacefully along. It was moving passionately along. Deliriously along. It was moving at the edges of obsession and sanity. I believe we were both madly in love. We could not get enough of one another. Not only was our compulsive lovemaking indispensable. Our squash games were essential, our daily, morning telephone conversations were vital, our swimming and jogging were necessary, looking at each other's eyes was crucial. Our main problem was finding shelter for our love jousts.
Leila and Talaat owned a wooden cabin used for picnics at Sahara City, a stretch of desert behind the pyramids and we would sneak in at night, our hearts beating for fear that the Bedouin caretakers of the area would spot us. We would make love in the dark and leave just as furtively a few hours later. Often we would visit the limestone quarry or other deserted spots we discovered by and by. Once or even, sometimes, twice a month I would feign a trip to Alexandria and dismiss the servant for a day or two. We would sneak in the flat with Leila at two or three in the morning and spend the whole of the next day in bed in a shuttered house with locked doors, silent conversations, sandwiches and fruit for lunch and dinner and unanswered phone calls. They were the most joyful and blissful days of my life. An alternation of sleep and feverish passion, companionship and soul-consuming love.
Was the need to hide, the secrecy, feeding our passion? Perhaps. In any case, we did a good job of it. I do not think we aroused the slightest suspicions. At the most, an ironic comment might have been heard at the club, „There goes Leila, again, with her little squash trainer.‟
For two years, we were the best-kept secret in Cairo. Well kept because just three people knew it. Leila, Talaat and I. My family had moved to Greece at about the start of my affair with Leila as my father needed specialized medical attention which he could not get in Egypt. I had gained the reputation of an oddball, unsociable loner in the Greek circles where I should ordinarily be circulating. It suited me fine. My life was bursting with Leila. If anything our dependence on one another increased as time passed. Talaat had become the veritable father figure that looked over us and advised us through Leila. I hardly ever saw him. His kindness towards his newfound daughter was hard to believe, his complicity in helping her pull off the craziest of schemes was barely credible and his love for her seemed without bounds. He was still working at his public sector employment but Sherif effendi told me that he seemed to be aging fast. His health problems seemed not to be over.
Once, after soul-wrenching lovemaking, I told Leila that, sometimes, I imagined what we were experiencing could not possibly be true. We were most likely just a tale 34
from the Arabian Nights, Alf Leila ou Leila, of Scheherazade and that Talaat was the wise and benevolent Caliph Harun-al-Rashid.
She thought about it for a moment and then burst into tears.
“That was a horrible thing to say.” She hugged me and held me tightly. She searched my face. “What made you say that,” she asked?
“Horrible? My darling, I was trying to invoke the magic of it all.”
“It sounded like a prophecy.”
“What prophecy?”
“Don't you see? Nearly two and a half heavenly years have already gone by. Not many more nights are left from the thousand and one. Talaat is deteriorating steadily. I can see it day by day. I cannot bear the thought of his death and I cannot bear to think what will happen to us after he dies.”
“I am sorry to speculate on it, but what can possibly happen to us after he dies?”
“To start with, you are terribly unfeeling to pose the question so cold bloodedly.
Secondly, you are either terribly naïve or else you know nothing of Egyptian society.”
“So, tell me.”
“Think about it on your own. I have no wish to continue this conversation.” Was it an inadvertent prophecy this uttering of mine? That we were living a dream, a tale? And like all dreams and tales, this too, would not last very long?
A few weeks later, a distraught Leila played a terrible game of squash and in a fit of anger smashed her racquet to bits on the wall of the court. Her bad mood overpowered me. I could not be gay and insouciant, I was gloomy and silent. When she smashed her racquet, we collected the bits and left the court. We started walking to the changing rooms.
“It's Talaat, isn't it?” I said.
“Yes. We were at the hospital this morning for the results of the latest tests. He has had a metastasis of the cancer to the bones. There is nothing to be done about it except to irradiate him regularly at the Kasr El Aini to reduce the pain. He has just a few months to live. Of course, he has stopped working since about ten days. Sorry Alex, I shall not be jogging tomorrow with you. I just do not feel like it.” The next day I was surprised to find her downstairs.
“Leila! Good morning my darling.”
“Good morning Alex. Talaat insisted I come,” she said simply and started jogging ahead of me.
It was a desolate piece of jogging that day at Shara'a El Opera. The pace was fast.
No laughing and kissing, just a little caressing of her hair and a few tears. The swimming was much better. The alternating cold and warmth seemed to yank her out of her despair and when we finished and had our shower and were walking to her car, she smiled at me and the sun came out. She was the sun that shone in my life as well.
“I feel much better,” she said. “I am sorry, Alex. Call me up later if you can.” Our life, inevitably, entered a new phase. At Talaat's urging we tried as much as we could to keep on the old track but that was clearly impossible. Every other day Talaat had to be taken, in the morning, to the Kasr El Aini hospital for Cobalt irradiation. Leila, of course drove him there and back. It was becoming a difficult exercise. He was, after just a few weeks, practically unable to walk and a servant would go with them to lift him onto the folding wheelchair they had bought for transportation inside the labyrinthine 35
university hospital. Luckily, he had the credentials, as a senior official of a public sector company, to be afforded special treatment. He did not have to wait for his turn, for hours, like the dozens of penniless unfortunates, old men, women and children who were there to treat their malignant tumors. He was whisked in and out of the lead-sheathed irradiation chamber and then wheeled to the doctor for a cursory examination in order to have the area of his spine painted and marked that would require the next irradiation. The whole process took less than an hour.
On one occasion when Leila's car was out of order, I offered to help them out and we drove Talaat to hospital in my car. He was a shadow of his former self but his graciousness and politeness were unchanged. He thanked me profusely for my help and was smiling and even gay all the time we were together. Leila hardly spoke throughout the trip and it was Talaat who kept the conversation going. When we returned home, he asked me if I could spare the time for a cup of tea with them.
“We have not talked much, us two,” he said. “Perhaps it was due to our circumstances which were unusual, to say the least. And I would be grateful for a few words with you, my son. We have to reach an understanding because my daughter, Leila, will need special consideration after I am gone.”
We went upstairs and sat in the living room. It was midday and Talaat ordered some tea. He asked Leila if she would like to stay. She was, of course, free to do so or not. He just did not want to pain her. Yes, she wanted to hear whatever he had to say to me.
We drank our cup of tea and engaged in inconsequential small talk for a while.
Leila was silent and apprehensive. Lost is a better word. She kept glancing at Talaat and me. Where had that self-assured, spirited, witty, outspoken young woman gone? Talaat looked at me for a long time. He seemed to be taking my measure.
“First, I want to thank you, my son, for making Leila happy and allowing me to enjoy her brightness and cheerfulness, her radiance and luminosity, in my house, and the unabated love she has offered me all through our life together but especially these last few years. I do not think she would have ever left me but a happy woman is a happy and pleasant companion. Is it not strange that her love for two men bound her to me, dare I say, even more than before when it was exclusively mine? Is it not a miracle that I managed to overcome my ego, petty jealousies, my very conventional upbringing and stern religion and accept to become her father and pursue exclusively her happiness? I thank Allah for that. I do not pray to him often but sometimes I do express my gratitude for these small mercies. And the big gifts of life. The biggest of which is Leila and the immensity of my love for her.
“I shall soon be gone,” he went on. “I shall be mourned. I shall be forgotten. Such is life. It is as it should be. Remember, time is the big healer. You must remember this because you, too, shall be hurt by my death. It is unavoidable in the society we live in.
You love Leila. Oh, yes, I can see that. Promise me, my son, that you shall only do what is best for her. Promise me that you shall not think of yourself. Only of her. Promise me.”
“I promise, Talaat bey.”
“You solemnly swear this to me?”
“I solemnly swear it to you.”
“You will have to leave her when I die. A thousand plans, a thousand thoughts, a thousand schemes might cross your mind. Do not be fooled. You shall have to leave her.” 36
Leila started crying. Silently. Her head bent, covering her eyes with her palm.
“You extracted a heavy promise from me Talaat bey. I did not know leaving her was indispensable. I am not a Sheikh like you, or a saint. I cannot imagine how I shall ever manage that.”
He was shocked and angered. His eyes grew wide and his lips started trembling.
“Are you retracting your promise?” he asked in an incredulous voice.
“I cannot retract my promise, Talaat bey. I repeat to you what I promised: I shall do what is best for Leila. I shall not think of myself. That, I solemnly swear.”
“That is good enough. I know you are sincere. You shall soon realize how intractable the situation that will shape up with my departure will be. I do not want you to torture Leila with your love. I want you to act in her best interests and this you have promised me twice. In good faith, I believe. Go, my son, you have lifted a big burden from my shoulders.”
I shook hands with him. He could not get up but he smiled pleasantly. Not a hint of self-pity.
“I knew you were a good person,” he said, “the moment I saw you.” I walked to the door and shook hands with Leila.
“Call me,” she said.
She did not have to tell me. My telephone calls like amoeba cells divided and multiplied. It was madness. We should have been drawing apart. We were seeing less of each other and drawing ever closer. I called her in the mornings. Every free moment she came to my mind. Sometimes just to say, “Everything fine? I love you.” She called me in the evenings because there were usually visitors and family at home. She called me in snatches, in between, and when they left at night to tell me Talaat's news. I had to know detail by minute detail. I started believing his words. That he was my increasingly withering lifeline to Leila. That his death would spell our severance. The why or the how, I never discussed with her. Nor the thousand frantic stratagems to preserve our love that cluttered my mind. She got angry whenever I tried to broach the subject.
“I cannot bear to discuss what will happen after Talaat dies while he is still alive in my house,?