Mariam, I thought. Mariam. Mariam. Are you the answer to my prayers? Am I to be lucky enough to make you my wife? On my way home, I passed by the shop that sold wool in roves and braids and bought two batches of different colors. One was light brown, the other yellowish beige. I tried to sneak them into the house without my mother noticing but they caught her eye.
“It‟s just some wool,” I told her. “I want to knit something.”
“What‟s wrong, Makram,” she asked. “You have not knitted in ten years.”
“Nothing‟s wrong, mother. Something seems to be turning out right.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“When I am sure, I shall tell you.”
I went to Osama a few days later. She opened the door and she smiled and made way to let me in. She was barefoot again, wearing the same tattered clothing, her hair in the same mess. As I squeezed by her, I smelled the carbolic soap they used for the wash. I saw her neck was white and clean. She seemed prettier than the time before. I was getting used to her face.
“Please come in,” she said. “Osama Bey is in.”
“How are you Mariam?”
“Al Hamdou Lillah, thanks be to God.”
“Getting used to Cairo?”
“One gets used to everything.”
“Does that mean you don‟t like it here?”
“It is not easy to leave your home, your brothers and sisters. I miss them a lot.
You can still be lonely living in the midst of people. And Cairo does not change anything.
In any case, it is not like what you see on television. It is dirty, crowded and noisy. But as I said, one gets used to anything.”
61
Osama came out of his room to greet me and we sat in the small entrance hall. We talked for a while. Osama was in his third year of engineering studies at the university.
He was already addressed as Engineer Osama by lesser mortals, just as his sister was Doctora Odette from the very first term at Medical School. Our relationship was friendly and yet formal. Timsaheia tied us together in a way Caireans do not understand. A sort of obligation to keep in touch, not to forget our roots. All of us had a family home in the village, good or bad, and periodic visits to see family and friends were a must.
Osama called Mariam and ordered two Turkish coffees, his manner offhand and peremptory. He brought out their backgammon board and we sat down for a game. I hated the game and hoped it would end quickly with Osama‟s win. It made him so happy to win and I could understand neither the game‟s popularity nor Osama‟s pleasure when he won. But of course, it was long drawn and ended with my reluctant victory. To console him I told him he ought to have taken the game. He had the skill; I just had the luck. I hoped it would make him feel better but he smiled wistfully and said it was usually so in life as well. Well, I dearly hoped so. For three days now, I was living in a daydream. I had been very lucky in my life so far and was praying for a little extension of grace to make my new obsession a reality.
Odette came into the hall and we exchanged a few pleasantries. I told her that her preoccupation with her rats and mice and books made her neglect herself. Her hair sorely needed my attentions. How would she ever find a husband? She laughed and said she still had at least another five years of studies and specializations and for the time being rats and mice were her only preoccupation.
“Surely,” I said, “there are some handsome fellows at university whose attentions you would not spurn.”
“Makram, Makram,” she said laughing once again, “stop planting wicked thoughts in my mind. Do you want my father to take the stick on me? He has lived in Cairo most of his life but his upbringing is nineteenth-century Timsaheia. Like most sclerotic people of his times, he cannot accept the changing morality of our times, the evolution of our society.”
“He need not know anything,” I persisted.
“Oh dear, you really are a bad influence on me, Makram,” she said gaily. “This is a new development.”
Yes, it is, I thought. You are a fine girl Odette but you no longer interest me.
“By the way,” she added, “there is the Abdel Malak wedding on Sunday. Do you think…?”
“Of course,” I told her before she finished her sentence. “I shall come directly after lunch on Sunday. Be sure to wash your hair at least twice with the shampoo I gave you. I do not like to feel even the slightest hint of oiliness on the hair when I work.” Mariam, my tattered, barefoot angel, came in to collect the empty coffee cups. No one took any notice of her. Servants are usually invisible to their masters especially when they are barefoot and move about noiselessly. They are non-persons. They do not count.
Except to people like me who sometimes fall in love with them. I looked at her and mentally took her measurements. I was pretty adept at that. I would start the knitting in the evening.
“You are invited, of course,” said Osama. “Will you be coming?” An opportunity had presented itself and I could not let it go.
62
“Unfortunately not,” I said. “Something has cropped up and I shall not be able to make it.”
In the evening, at home, I took out my thick pair of knitting needles and the roves of wool and sat with my mother who was watching television in our tiny living room.
First, she helped me unwind the braids of wool and roll them into round balls. I, then, started adding and counting the stitches I put on the needles. My mother smiled.
“Just like old times,” she said. “Who is it for?”
“It‟s for a girl I want to marry.”
“Odette?”
“No, mother.”
“Who, then, for Heaven‟s sake?”
“Listen, I have not even talked to her properly. Just hello and good-bye. When things are more settled, I shall let you know.”
She looked at me surprised. I had never kept a secret from her. However, I did not want premature hysterics.
“May God illuminate your path,” she said and I started knitting furiously.
On Sunday, after lunch, I went to Odette with the little bag of my hairdressing tools and fixed her hair. Mariam let me in the flat and smiled at me. She was getting used to me. She seemed more attractive every time I saw her. Perhaps, I looked a little less ugly to her as well. We exchanged a few words. I asked her if she had news of her family.
She said, “No. The Doctora is expecting you,” and went inside to call her.
With Odette, I had a merry time. She was in high spirits. She did not want her hair too short and I cut it more than she wanted. She started complaining loudly, pretending to be very upset and I asked her to shut up until I had finished. I must admit, I did a very good job on her. I asked her if she would also let me make her up. She said Rizk effendi did not approve of makeup and I just emphasized her eyes with a little eyeliner, streamlined her eyebrows, removed with a little depilatory wax the hint of hair from her upper lip and put a touch of lipstick on her lips. She looked ravishing. She was so happy she gave me a kiss and said,
“Thank you Makram. You really are a talent. Long live Timsaheia.” I told her if she would marry me, she would be as beautiful as this every day of the year and, with a laugh, the crazy girl went out of her room shouting,
“Mother, father, Makram has proposed to me.”
Her startled parents, Osama and young Fawsi appeared from their rooms and I did not know where to hide my face. Finally, when she started squealing with laughter, they realized she was making fun of me. Her father told her to behave herself and I pretended to be angry and told her she deserved no better than her rats and mice. As I was leaving, Mariam came out of the kitchen and gave me a thin smile and a questioning look. She obviously heard the commotion.
In the evening, at about the time of the wedding, I shaved, dressed and combed my hair this way and that to no avail. I so much wanted to be just that little bit better looking but there was no obvious improvement. Oh, well, the song of the day was Doris Day‟s, „Que sera, sera‟. It applied, perfectly, to me too. I walked to Rizk effendi‟s flat and rang the bell. There was no answer and I rang many times more. In the end, I heard Mariam‟s voice asking who was ringing.
“It‟s Makram,” I said.
63
She opened the door and let me in. She wore the same clothes and was barefoot as usual. Her eyes were puffed up. She must have been sleeping.
“They are not here,” she said. “They have gone to the wedding. Didn‟t you go as well? They told me not to open the door to anyone.”
I walked to the small entrance hall and sat down.
“I shall sit here for a while,” I told Mariam. “Don‟t worry; they shall not be back until late. Yes, I was invited at the wedding but I decided to come and keep you company instead. I wanted to talk to you.”
“Why? About what?”
“Sometimes,” I said, “in life, a person meets another and for no obvious reason feels an interest, an attraction to that person. He feels the need to talk and become friendly and familiar with him. It can happen between two women, between two men, or between a man and a woman. I have felt that way with you. That does not put you under any obligation and I do not want anything from you. I just felt this attraction and I simply want to be your friend.”
She stood in front of me very much ill at ease and when I finished my small speech, she blushed. I asked her to sit down and she reluctantly did so, on the armchair furthest away from me. I asked her how she was getting on with her new life here, in the city, and tried to put her at ease by talking about Cairo, Timsaheia, my family and work.
About our move from the village to Cairo and the difficulties we faced in our first years here. I asked her about her family, her brothers and sisters and her tongue started loosening. She was the eldest of six children. Her father had recently developed a heart condition and could not work and their circumstances were dire. She had to come here to work. Her salary, five pounds a month, went directly back home. She felt lonely because the Rizk family, contrary to what they had promised her father, did not treat her as one of them but purely as a servant. They did not tolerate the slightest familiarity. Even Doctora Odette did not bother to exchange a few friendly words with her. They kept a wary eye on the food she consumed and had her sleep on a mattress in the kitchen where she was sometimes awakened by cockroaches running over her. Then she stopped suddenly as if realizing something.
“Are you not courting Doctora Odette,” she asked.
“I am Osama‟s friend,” I said. “I have no interest in Odette. I did have, once, but it‟s all over. In any case, she is not interested in me either but we are quite friendly and familiar with each other. I fix her hair sometimes and she likes to joke with me.”
“You made her very beautiful today.”
“One day, I shall make you very beautiful too. You are much prettier than she is.
Only we cannot do that just now. I do not want the Rizk family to know my feelings for you.”
“And you are interested only in me?” she asked and her face went all crimson again. She folded her legs sideways on the armchair and covered her bare feet with her skirt as if she doubted anyone would be much interested in a barefoot girl. After the cover-up, she looked at me and smiled.
“Yes, I said, from the very first moment I saw you. And when we have another opportunity to meet on our own again, I shall tell you of some plans I have. We cannot cram too many things on our first meeting. We must take time to get used to one another.
64
This is more for you than for me. My mind is set. I just want you to get used to me. Now I had better get going.”
I got up and went to the door. She followed me and I reached and held her hand.
She made as if to pull away and then relented. I squeezed it gently and a thrill suffused my being. I had never felt this way for a woman, before.
“Please be careful as you are going out so that no one will see you,” she said.
“Good bye Mariam. I had a lovely time talking to you. Much more enjoyable than going to the wedding. I shall be on the lookout for another opportunity such as this. You do the same.”
“Yes, I shall. Maa Salama ya Makram.”
On the street I wanted to run, I wanted to sing. I went directly home, into my room, picked up my needles and started knitting non-stop until midnight. The skirt was coming along very nicely.
Tania noticed the change. A new vivacity, a new gaiety in my comportment at work. Nothing would annoy me or put me out of sorts. My bustling energy kept the staff on their toes. My loud, hearty laugh was infectious and the smile coefficient shot right up at the salon with both clients and staff. Some aphorisms do turn out to be true. Smile and the world smiles with you, is one of them. My smile, brought about by what seemed a ready and steady acceptance of my person and intentions by Mariam. I kept up my visits to the Rizk household at discreet intervals, seemingly to see Osama but in reality to gaze and wordlessly adore my barefoot, tattered angel. To revel in the complicity of her glances. To exchange a few words and camouflaged tenderness. To squeeze her hand going in and out of the flat. To nurse my impatience for our next meeting.
“What‟s with you Jimmy?” Tania kept asking.
“What?” I usually inquired pretending not to understand.
“Come on, don‟t act dumb,” she would say. But I would not utter a word. “In any case,” she would add, “you do not fool me. Something‟s cooking.” Something was cooking all right but the fire was low and the stew would not broil fast enough. For five or six weeks I was unable to talk to Mariam privately. I could not act or take decisions on the basis of a tender look or a friendly smile. A proposal had to be accepted or rejected and plans to be made. I was getting impatient with the lack of momentum. Then one day, as I was leaving the flat, she whispered,
“Tomorrow they are all going out to dinner.”
“Are you quite sure?” I asked.
“Yes. Come at nine.”
The twin-set was finished. I had worked at it almost nightly. The top part came out well. The color combination was soft and pleasant. I packed it in a paper bag and took it along. I stayed outside the flat for a few minutes, silently listening. There was no sound inside and I rang the bell. My heart was beating hard. Mariam opened immediately. She smiled at my surprise. She had on a red dress that fitted her well, a jacket, as if she were about to leave the house, and wore a well-worn pair of shoes. Her hair had been washed and an attempt to give it shape was made. She was not the last word in coquetry but she was a presentable young lady. Almost, all of a sudden, too good for me. I had become used to the barefoot waif with the disheveled hair and tattered clothing. She was cut to my measure. One would have thought that my constant contact with women would have rendered me bold but, on the personal level, I remained as timid as ever. The new 65
Mariam looked intimidating. Nevertheless, she came up spontaneously and took my hand and when I embraced her, she did not push me away. Unattractive or not, I was her only friend. I was the only person who cared and who provided a little human warmth and affection in her arid and dreary existence.
“Mariam! You look wonderful.”
She smiled happily.
“Come in Makram,” she said, “we have not talked for so long. Sometimes I think I shall forget how to talk. The only thing I hear all day is, do this, do that, and I don‟t even have to answer. I just do what I am told.”
“Listen,” I said, “you are all dressed up, let us go for a short walk. It will be a change for you.”
“We can‟t. I don‟t have the key to the house. We shall not be able to enter if we go out.”
I laughed.
“So you are a prisoner,” I said. “It‟s funny. You cannot leave your prison because you cannot get in again. Well, we‟ll stay here and talk. By the way, this is for you.” I sat down on the sofa and she opened the paper bag and pulled out the pullover and skirt.
“Oh, Makram, it‟s lovely. You should not have bought it.”
“Please put it on,” I told her. “I want to see if I got the dimensions right.” She took off her jacket and started undoing the buttons of her dress. She kicked off her shoes, slipped on the skirt under her dress and then prepared to hoist the dress over her head. I covered my eyes with the palms of my hands and bent forward, folding my body over my legs. I was terribly embarrassed. Had the girl no shame? I heard some shuffling and then she said,
“Okay, now you can look. It‟s perfect Makram. Thank you so much.” It was a very good fit. My knitting exertions were successful.
“It fits very well, Mariam, and it suits you. But for God‟s sake did you have to change right here?”
“Why not Makram? You are my friend. You are like a brother. I know I can trust you.”
I was annoyed. Were those tender looks and hand squeezing we exchanged meant for a brother? Was I never to be taken seriously as a man?
“I am your friend and you can trust me,” I told her, “but I am not your brother or like a brother nor do I want to be a brother.”
She was surprised and perplexed by the harshness of my tone.
“I only wanted you to know how close I feel to you,” she said shyly. “You are the only person I have here in Cairo. Why don‟t you want to be like a brother?”
“Would you marry your brother?”
“No, of course not.”
“Well, that‟s why!”
She was silent for a moment as the implication slowly sank in. Then she blushed and stared at me.
“Do you understand?” I asked.
She did not answer. She just stared at me.
“Mariam, come sit beside me.”
66
And when she did, I knew the answer. It was, yes, I do. Twice over. Some things do not need to be voiced. It was, yes, I do understand. And it was, yes, I do want to marry you. She said it her own way. She came out of her trance and with a hint of a smile sat next to me on the sofa. Very close. Our bodies, touching. She said yes with her body, yes, with her proximity, yes, with her touch.
I held her hand. I still needed to hear her answer in words, in her own voice.
“So is it, yes, Mariam? Will you marry me?”
She smiled and leaned her head on my shoulder.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “but you shall have to ask my father. I cannot give you the final answer.”
I traveled to Timsaheia for the final answer. It was the easiest part of my marriage arrangements. The family was concerned about the loss of the five-pound monthly income that Mariam provided. I undertook to send them twenty, with that the deal was sealed, and the protestations of Mariam‟s first cousin, who had the priority to her hand, were ignored. The father arrived in Cairo and yanked her out of the Rizk household and back to Timsaheia, whereupon my twenty-pound monthly payments to the family commenced. My parents, and especially my mother, survived a severe bout of depression on account of my choice of a wife. They thought I deserved better than to marry a servant. Moreover, they deserved better than to rub shoulders with in-laws, the likes of Mariam‟s parents. As soon as they recovered partially, we traveled to Timsaheia for the engagement.
I cut and shaped Mariam‟s hair and she was like a doll but the family was outraged because they thought she looked like a hussy and the poor girl had to wear a headscarf whenever she left the house or when visitors arrived. She wore it all through the engagement ceremony but it did not spoil our good humor and high spirits. In Cairo, my cordial relations with the Rizk family cooled off when they found out after some delay that I had been the cause of their loss of a good girl servant. Only the Doctora was highly amused and would drop in now and then at the salon to have her hair done by Jimmy, who, she estimated and kept repeating, was the only artist Timsaheia had ever produced. Tania called me a sneak, when I announced my engagement but reminded me that not for one moment had she been fooled.
I started searching for a flat. I had put aside quite a considerable amount in savings and when I found one in a nice, quiet part of Shoubra, near my parents‟ house, I had no problem in paying the initial key money to acquire it. I then started buying the furniture and mattresses, bedding, towels and carpets. Every week, I would take the train to Timsaheia to see Mariam. I opened up our family home, cleaned it up and for the five months of our engagement, stayed there overnight. No question, of course, of bringing Mariam there. As her fiancée, I would visit her at her home and meet her in the presence of other members of the family amidst their chickens, rabbits and goats. We had, in the course of time, developed a minor vocabulary of looks, smiles, grimaces and gestures that allowed us to communicate and share a few private, unuttered thoughts, understandings and amusement. And we did manage, on occasion, to go for walks outside the village, in the fields, where I started a little long-delayed experimentation with sex and romance.
Perhaps, I should speak in the plural and say, „we‟ started, because Mariam was earthy and interested and exhibited no false modesty. She fully participated in our furtive kissing 67
and groping on deserted spots and when, one day, we saw two dogs coupling, I tried to pull her away but she insisted we stay and watch.
“We shall be doing that soon enough,” she said with a laugh.
No doubt about it, her uninhibited attitude was a great help in overcoming my sexual fears and timidity.
Every weekend I would give her a progress report on our flat. It was a hectic period of my life. What with my work at the salon, running around to finish the flat and my weekend visits to Timsaheia, I was getting exhausted. I hoped the hassle would soon be over. At the flat, something new would be added or fixed during the week and Mariam insisted on being briefed in detail. She was excited and was dying to come to Cairo to see it. However, that was out of the question. Not even on an invitation from my parents was it deemed decent for her to visit us.
The wedding took place in Timsaheia. As was the custom, the whole village participated in preparing the feast. Well, mostly the Copts but even some Moslem neighbors prepared food and sweets for the occasion. The ceremony took place at noon at the village church. Mariam wore a white wedding dress, which I brought from Cairo. Her hair had grown and she no longer looked like a hussy. She did not have to wear the kerchief but a veil of tulle covered her hair. I wore a white silk koftan over a white inner galabeia with a sort of high collar and white shoes. Mariam was more beautiful than I had ever seen her before but I cannot vouch for my own appearance. In any case, the village had not seen such glamour before or the luxury of wedding dresses arriving from Cairo.
Friends and relatives gathered outside our house with bongo drums, tambourines, flutes and clarinets and in a joyful, noisy, musical procession accompanied me to Mariam‟s house. All along the way, the women would yell that peculiarly Egyptian wail with a wagging tongue that announces a Farah, a happiness, a wedding.
Mariam came out of her house, smiling, and I could not believe I was about to marry this angel. She joined me and together, holding hands, we made our way to the church. The ceremony was long and tedious but I left the church feeling I had accomplished perhaps the most important step in my life, a step that was to be the foundation of my happiness. That brought Mariam to my life.
We spent that first night at the village, in our house, with my parents occupying the room next door. Not quite the ideal condition for a honeymoon‟s first night. Not when you could hear Hag Younes coughing and spitting in his handkerchief and your mother‟s shrill voice disparaging, undoubtedly, your in-laws. But Mariam and I were in high spirits, commenting and recounting the events of the day. Little by little, without a break in our chatter, as if we had been married for years, that wonderful girl started undressing and I did the same. She put out the light, came up to me and taught me the sweetness of a woman. The delight of an unclothed female body. The choking desire that every little part of it arouses. The delirium of lovemaking. The all-consuming blissfulness of love.
We left the next morning for three days in Alexandria. I had booked a room at a decent hotel and Mariam was ecstatic. She was in high spirits and joked constantly, kissing me, telling me,
“Thanks to you I have moved from Rizk effendi‟s mattress-in-the-kitchen to a room at the Metropole with a view of the sea.”
It was spring and the weather was cool. Out of the question to go to the beach. In any case, we had neither of us ever worn a bathing costume, much less plunged in the 68
sea. All we would do was sit on the parapet and watch the heaving waves break on the rocks and breathe the clean, humid, salty breeze. We took long walks on the Cornish along the seafront and feasted on peanuts, seeds and charcoal-roasted sweet corn. Took our meals in cheap restaurants and went to the cinema in the evenings. A real, magic honeymoon that lasted all of three days. Then back to Cairo to our new flat and a new exciting phase for Mariam of arranging the house. Of being the mistress in her own home. Of being a housewife and a loving companion to a strange, ugly little man that worshiped her.
It lasted a week, this whirlwind marriage and honeymoon and then back to Chez Raymond, and Tania and the teasing of the staff that for days and days referred to me as the „ aaris’, the bridegroom, and seemed to find my marriage an occasion for a thousand jokes, insinuating questions and sly smiles. I took it all in my stride. Nothing could perturb my happiness. Not even the fact that my savings had been exhausted and that Mariam and I had, henceforth, to watch every piaster we spent. I asked Tania if I could take up some of the requests that often came my way, to go and fix women‟s hair at their homes on the days when the salon was closed. It would be a source of a little extra money. I had never done this before out of loyalty to our shop. Tania said she had no objection, as she trusted me totally and knew I would never put my personal interest above that of the shop. Little did I imagine what a vast new vista of life this would provide.
There is something mystical in this relationship of coiffeur and client. An intimacy that develops and cannot be easily explained. It is present at the salon but I found it multiplied a hundredfold in the homes of these rich and leisure laden ladies.
Women who had everything and a surfeit of time to be bored. Women whose every need was taken care of except that little something that would make their life enthralling. They rarely had any intellectual interests or artistic inclinations and even when they meticulously attended cultural events, concerts and operas, it was so that they would see and be seen in the social arena. It was inevitable that the search for excitement would turn inwards to their own circle, their friends, their clubs and cocktail parties and the one thing that has forever engrossed and fascinated human beings, love affairs, men and sex.
Boredom is the source of everything that is bad, goes the saying. But then, everything that is bad, in this particular context, is what makes life interesting. It is the ongoing human comedy, that when seen with a pinch of objectivity, is funny, intriguing and eternal. It is the interplay of the reproductive instinct in a social edifice created by an intelligent species that possesses, besides the sexual drive, the sense of beauty, of time running out, of a thousand psychological inadequacies and needs, of a sense of uniqueness, an often enormous egotism and self-centeredness. My happy and peaceful home life with Mariam, by its completeness and need for nothing more, provided my own sense of objectivity. In this context, I was able to become a friend and confidant to most of my women clients that had a need to talk and expose their innermost feelings to a disinterested party who would not take advantage or spread this knowledge. I was the confessor who could not give absolution, the psychiatrist who could not pinpoint the illness or malaise but gave comfort simply by listening.
I sometimes wondered if these friendships were an essential part of my job. If, finally, I was sincere or, subconsciously, just used them as a way to entice the clientele and create a dependence on their part. Obviously, we were not of the same class. I was a 69
sort of servant to them in the sense that I provided a service. It could not be a friendship between equals. However, I