“I wouldn‟t know where to start. I am a hairdresser, not a masseur.” 76
“Oh, Jimmy, you disappoint me. I would have thought that you would jump at the offer.”
And we would get into one of those semi-serious, teasing and intimate conversations that inevitably cropped up every time I went there.
“Tell me, Jimmy, wouldn‟t you make love to a woman other than Mariam?”
“No, I would not. I really don‟t see, Margot, why you are so interested in my sex-life and preferences. I am not exactly the ideal-lover type that would suit you.”
“Jimmy, my love, my love, my love, how would you know what lover-type would suit me. Perhaps I have a weakness for ugly ducklings like you. But tell me, quite frankly mind you, was there never another woman you lusted for except your Mariam? She is turning out to be hors concours.”
“Oh, let me be, Margot, please.”
“I beseech you my love, answer my question. I have to know how far your madness goes. I have never seen another oddball like you.”
“People who live in glass houses…etc…etc. Will you hold still? With all this talk, I cannot concentrate on my work. You shall go to the reception looking like a clown.”
“Please, Jimmy. I am dying to know. Just say, yes or no.”
“Yes or no.”
“Come on. Cut it out!”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Today is just for yes or no. The who, is for next Sunday.” I thought and thought about Margot. I could not get the image of her amazing nude body out of my mind. That night I made love to Mariam as passionately as usual but I initiated it. When we calmed down, she asked me what had happened that day. I said, nothing much, the usual routine with the crazy Margot and my other two clients. She said it was the first time I made love to her so passionately and the first time I started it. I told her I loved her more with each passing day. I could not wait for her to start kissing me.
She said she would not give up her privileges so easily and she started kissing me and we entered into a second long-drawn session of lovemaking and when we finished she said it was the best time to tell me that in nine months she would make me a present. Some days are luckier than others.
The following Sunday, as soon as I entered her room, after our greetings and a little small talk she said I had promised to answer a question. I pretended I had forgotten what the question was and would she please repeat it. She smiled ironically indicating she did not believe me.
“The question,” she said, “was: Who?”
I said, “You.”
She smiled. She was happy. Even goddesses want to be told they are beautiful.
The fact alone is not enough. It must be constantly acknowledged and reiterated.
“My vanity has been caressed,” she said.
“I really find it difficult to believe that my opinion matters all that much.”
“Of course it does. First of all, a compliment is a compliment even if it comes from a half-wit. You may be a half-wit but you are also a person whose opinion I value because, due to your job, you are in the midst of the most elegant and beautiful women of Cairo. The only black spot is that I come out second-best after Mariam.” 77
“In my heart. Not in fact. “
“Thank you, Jimmy boy, you may be the oddest, ugliest, most effeminate straight person I know but you are my true, good friend.”
“So are you, my dear Margot. If I didn‟t have Mariam, I would, perhaps, not have covered my eyes when you strutted in the room without a stitch on. I might have even given you a massage. But wouldn‟t that spoil our friendship?”
“It would all depend on you. Are you a good sport? Most men are not. They take a refusal as a personal affront. They think because I have an active sex life I take on all comers. So when I let them know they are not wanted, they feel insulted and they spread the most disgusting stories about me. They may say I threw myself at them and that they gave me the cold shoulder. You see having a bad reputation is a self-reinforcing process.
Many more men than usual make a try for you and when they don‟t get their way they start being nasty. And of course some things that happen accidentally add to the legend.”
“Like that incident at Agami?”
“Oh God. Are they still talking about it?”
“Well, I was told about it during my first days at Raymond‟s when you came in and I had to do your hair because Raymond was busy with another client.”
“It was one of those things! A thing that happens so rarely and it had to happen to me. In public, no less. Some of the silly women said it was God‟s doing. How stupid can one get?”
“What happened exactly?”
“Exactly? Exactly? You little scandal-monger, you want to know what happened exactly?”
“I‟m sorry. Forget it.”
“No, no, I‟ll tell you. Exactly what happened. Will it change anything? Will I be a different Margot?”
“No. But by the time you finish the story you‟ll be a Margot with a different hairstyle.”
“Oh? Are we changing it?”
“Just a little. I saw something new in a magazine that might suit you.”
“Well, if it doesn‟t, I‟ll wash my hair and we shall start all over again and you‟ll miss your other appointments.”
“Meanwhile …ah hum!”
“Oh yes, the story. It was early summer and Safouat and I were invited for lunch at a friend‟s villa at Agami. You know, lunches there are sumptuous affairs. One spends the day at the beach and lunch starts with aperitifs and hors d’oeuvres at three and extends almost until sundown. At the time, I had an Italian diplomat as a lover and I managed to get him invited as well. Aldo was a very good-looking chap. Not as good looking as you but he was young and wanted it all the time. Something like you and Mariam.”
“Forget it Margot. I have lost interest.”
“Oh you are a cry-baby. You just want to know all about my private sex life and you don‟t want to reveal the slightest detail about yours. Do you call that friendship?” I did not answer. I kept working on her hair.
“This Mariam of yours is giving me a complex. I want to meet her sometime. I am curious to see the woman that bewitched my sweet, funny little Jimmy and found in him 78
her ideal companion. That‟s why I keep referring to her. I have some indiscreet questions I want to ask. Shall I ask them? Well, I shall ask them and you need not answer. Is she a hot number? Does she want it all the time?”
She was teasing me as usual. Trying to get me annoyed. I pretended I was deaf. I kept on working.
“Okay, Jimmy, sorry. Let us get on with the story. You‟re not angry, are you?” I did not answer.
“Oh, so we are angry! Okay. Better, get on with the story. We spent the morning at the beach. The weather was perfect and for once, the sea was quite calm. Its color has to be seen to be believed. A turquoise-green for the first hundred meters or so turning to a deep purple further inside. The house, a luxurious villa, was practically on the beach and the hosts had a bar installed in the garden of the house. Some of the guests were drinking, some were sunbathing and others were swimming.
“Safouat was drinking with some friends. He never swims. He is rather selfconscious of his paunch. At home, he has about ten showers a day and with every shower, he weighs himself without any clothes on as if the quarter-kilo of his underwear will muddle his calculations. He keeps track of every half-kilo that comes and goes and just like unwelcome guests, he pulls a long face when they come and rejoices when they leave. In the end, all the gloominess and all the rejoicing do not matter because nothing much changes. The paunch, much to his chagrin, is a permanent fixture.
“Anyway, I was sitting on a chaise-longue under an umbrella in a two-piece, sexy swimsuit with about ten men who could not take their eyes off me. We were talking, joking and laughing. Nearby, under another umbrella, about ten worried women were keeping a lookout on us. They were the wives of the ten prospective Casanovas. Aldo was another uncomfortable person. He was not one of the bunch and he did not like being ignored. Especially since he felt superior because he was the great Italian lover who possessed me body and soul. The truth is, Jimmy, that wherever I go the temperature goes up. I stir emotions and cause commotions.”
“You can say that again.”
“Oh?” She turned, looked at me and smiled. “I say, that got you out of your torpor,” she said.
“Torpor? What torpor? Don‟t you see I‟m working trying to make you beautiful?”
“It must be a tough job!”
“Oh Margot, you know what I mean. You would be beautiful even without any hair at all. I am just trying to make you as beautiful as possible.”
“All right, Jimmy, I forgive your faux pas. Shall I go on with the story or have you lost interest?”
I looked at her and smiled.
“Do as you please,” I said.
“Boy,” she said, “you are as coquettish as a woman. You cannot say a straight yes. So, where were we? Yes. Aldo asks me to join him for a swim. We get up and dive into the glorious water. It was one of those magic early June days that was not too warm and the crystal-clear sea was just whispering and rolling tiny little waves at the edge of the fine, white sand. We swam some way off into the deep. Ordinarily, this is quite dangerous at Agami but on that day, there was no fear of underwater currents pulling you 79
in. The only currents tugging at me were the currents of desire. I felt like taking off my bathing costume and swimming naked. Have you ever swam naked, Jimmy?”
“No.”
“You should try it sometime with Mariam. The sensation is truly unique.”
“When I buy a villa at Agami and learn how to swim with a bathing costume on, I might give it a try without one.”
“We‟re not bitter are we?”
“Can happy persons be bitter? I am a happy person. Like my compatriots, I am also a fatalist. I know Agami is not for me. It is way beyond my reach. So what I am really saying with a total lack of bitterness is that it is unlikely I shall ever swim naked. I shall have to rely on your descriptions.”
“Oh, words cannot do justice to the freedom and sensuality one feels swimming without a bathing costume. It is as if an invisible hand is caressing you all over your body. It can be very arousing. There are beaches in the south of France where people go about completely naked and nobody takes any notice. Nakedness can eventually become very boring but swimming is another thing. Anyway, after swimming for a while with Aldo, we came out to where we could tread on the sand and we started playing games.
We would dive, kiss and caress each other underwater until we nearly choked and would surface laughing.
“There were very few people in the sea and we started getting bolder and bolder in our underwater sex play. Then, suddenly Aldo yanked the bottom part of my costume off and swam away. He tried to frighten me and tease me. I was both worried and aroused. Danger of detection can be an aphrodisiac. I suddenly felt an overpowering need to make love. To make love within the field of vision of all our friends without anyone suspecting the slightest thing. I called him and he kept going further away. I followed him for about twenty to thirty meters and then I stood and waited until he came back and I dived and pulled his bathing costume down as well. I did not manage to get it off. It was half-way down his legs and I started fondling his genitals. He was surprised but stood still. He was enjoying the sensation and was getting aroused. He tried to kiss me and I told him to be careful. They must not see us kissing or they would suspect we were making love. All the action must take place underwater and we must also move about and not stay rooted in one place. We started lovemaking in earnest and when we could stand it no longer, he lifted me and I enveloped him with my legs. It was nice and easy in the water. I was light as a feather and the birdie found its nest.”
“Boy,” I said, “you really go into graphic detail.”
“I thought you wanted the story exactly. And then why the false embarrassment?
Do you and Mariam do it in some different way which perhaps we ought to know?”
“No, Margot. I suppose the basics have not changed much since Adam and Eve left Paradise except that we do it above water.”
“Look, it was wonderful underwater. I mean if that thing had not occurred, it would have been perfect. We started moving slowly and sensually enjoying the sensations heightened by the novelty of the act, when suddenly the sphincter of my vagina contracted in a spasm and held Aldo‟s penis in a vice-like grip. He was surprised and pained and tried to disengage to no avail. We tried desperately to separate but it was impossible. Aldo was groaning with pain and the tight grip around the base of his penis prevented the blood from evacuating, which would cause him to lose his erection. We 80
were trapped. We were stuck like two dogs after a coupling. It seemed my reputation as a bitch was to be explicitly confirmed. There was no way out except to call for help.
“Anna, a woman from our group was swimming closest to us and I called her. She approached and I explained the situation and asked her to alert Safouat as discreetly as possible and have him call an ambulance. The poor woman was alarmed and embarrassed but she casually got out of the water, walked to Safwat and called him aside and then I saw Safwat go into the house. It was an interminable half hour before the ambulance came from the nearby village of Dekhela. I was very grateful to Anna and Safouat for their cool and composed performance. Until the ambulance arrived, no one had noticed that anything was amiss. But then as the two orderlies holding a stretcher, a doctor and Anna carrying a blanket walked towards us, they realized something was wrong. The little group waded into the water with their shoes and clothes on and the doctor and Anna gingerly laid us on the stretcher, which was held by the two male nurses. Aldo was whimpering. Undoubtedly, he was in pain and so was I but I tried to make it all seem a joke and told him he was all set for a leading role in a porno movie. And that if he managed to move a little bit, I might get an orgasm.”
“You really are inimitable Margot. I swear I admire your spunk.”
“Oh hell, what else was there to do? It was not the end of the world. What was unusual was my vaginal spasm and not the lovemaking. Adultery in our circles is practically a sport. The scandal and shock that was expressed by our friends was sheer hypocrisy. I would not be cowed by a bunch of hypocrites. Some of my so-called friends called me the following days to ask whether I was all right and to commiserate with my mishap. I told them it was too bad this happened to me just when I was about to have an orgasm but the sensation of lovemaking in the water is unique. They should try it sometime.”
“I absolutely do admire your cheek. So how did it all end?”
“Aha! You want to know the end? Exactly?”
I smiled.
“Forget it,” I said.
“You little hypocrite. Is it not enough I have to deal with the hypocrisy of this world, do I have to be burdened by your little phony tantrums as well?” I had finished my work.
“How do you like your hair?” I asked.
“Very nice. Oh, yes! It‟s really lovely. Thank you, Jimmy. You are terrific. That‟s why I put up with you my little gossipmonger. So let me finish my story. I know you are dying to hear it. As I was saying, they laid us on the stretcher and Anna covered us completely with a blanket. At least in the sea we were cool. Under that blanket, we nearly suffocated. Anyway, we were carried to the ambulance and we drove off directly with Safouat in his car following. As soon as we were off, the doctor uncovered us and gave me a spasmolytic injection and in ten minutes, Aldo was released from my vaginal captivity. He gave me the bottom part of my bathing costume, which he had been clutching throughout our ordeal and I put it on. At the tiny and miserable village hospital, I put on my clothes that Safouat had collected and brought along. Of course, we left directly for Cairo with a sullen Aldo in the back seat. Safouat was considerate enough to collect his clothes as well and his other affairs. Needless to say, that was the end of my 81
romance with Aldo. I cannot abide persons without a sense of humor. I don‟t know how I manage to put up with you.”
“And what did Safouat have to say about this whole affair?”
“He said, „Darling, you really must be more careful.‟” If I were asked with whom I would like to find myself on a desert island, I would, of course, answer, with Mariam. However, if Mariam were excluded from the choice, I would answer, Margot. For there was never a dull moment in her presence. She was an extraordinary person. An original, uninhibited artist of life. Of her life. She fashioned it and lived it in the way she loved it. The true pure hedonist.
Adel was born a year and a half after Mariam and I were married. We had time enough to enjoy the intimacy of a couple in privacy but his birth in no way diminished our love and sexual craving for each another. Indeed his slightly premature birth, his feeble health and the anxiety as to whether he possessed normal mental faculties brought us closer together, if that were at all possible. He did not inherit his mother‟s good looks but neither my awkward unattractiveness. He was somewhere in between. He was skinny and sickly and I suppose that if he were left to fend for himself, unattended, as most of the very poor children are in Egypt, he would not have survived.
Mariam was a loving mother though she did not spoil him. She just took care that he would eat properly, sleep early and keep his person clean. He turned out to be of more or less normal intelligence though, often, the expression of his face did not look altogether normal. He had a permanently puzzled expression on his face and a look of wonder and surprise. Well, one does eventually get used to it but he was fated, like me, to be the butt for teasing and bad treatment from children of his age. Sometimes he cried because of that and Mariam consoled him and told him that in life not everything was smooth sailing. That there would always be people who would be nasty and unpleasant but that for us he was the most wonderful child in the world. Her tenderness always touched me. She constantly told Adel, “You are the happiness that entered our life.” And I would remind her that there was a lot of happiness in our lives before that and she would smile at me and say, “Yes.”
I was becoming well known in my profession. I could have easily opened a salon of my own and I would have started with at least half the clientele of Chez Raymond that would switch over to me but not for a moment did I contemplate abandoning Tania. It was to her I felt I owed my loyalty rather than Raymond. It was through her that I enjoyed the authority I had at the shop. She trusted me completely and even when Raymond was in the salon, she seemed to count more on me than her husband. In a sense, I had marginalized his role there. His very frequent and long absences inevitably led many clients to ask for my services and my more subdued and tasteful style of cutting and arranging hair was preferred by most of the women. He did not seem to mind. He was a cold, unemotional man and his conduct towards me was impeccable.
A question that troubled me was: did I have the right to forego the considerable amount of money I would earn having my own shop and thus deprive my family of a better life? There were pros and cons both ways and in the end, my loyalty to Tania always won through. I just could not possibly leave her. I could not become her competitor and break up her business by removing a good part of the clientele of her shop. In any case, she was aware of that and she paid me handsomely.
82
It is strange how much in life you can misjudge a person. Most of us are of the opinion that we are shrewd judges of character. The more extrovert of our acquaintances are always more predictable and it is true that still waters run deep and consequently we tend to be more circumspect in reaching conclusions about the quiet ones. Yet life never ceases to surprise us by overturning, sometimes so utterly and shockingly opinions, which we have long held. We witness events which we would never have imagined possible.
I had pretty much figured out Raymond. I had worked, by now, for him and Tania for well over a decade. He was a special talent in a vacuum. He was uneducated and generally did not exhibit any special interests other than his profession and a materialism that the money he earned from it made possible. He was constantly buying things for himself, his family and gadgets for his home. If you went to his house, he was liable to take you to the bathroom to show you a new shower system he brought from the States or the toilet paper with pictures on it, presumably to amuse a person before he put it to a more mundane use. Otherwise, he was not an interesting person to be with and he had very few opinions or issues that concerned him. He was more reserved than sociable and I always found it difficult to keep a conversation going with him. His extraordinarily strange turn-of-the-century appearance did not predispose you to imagine that he would be attractive to the opposite sex and though he was exceedingly polite and a kind person, he seemed more than a little boring.
I was unprepared for the telephone call I received from Tania. I had just returned from work and felt tired. Hairdressing is not an easy profession. Most of our work is done standing up with a lot of back and knee bending and when the day is busy, it can be very exhausting. Tania sounded agitated. She asked me to go to her house immediately. I tried finding out what the trouble was but she would not tell me over the phone. She lived in Zamalek not far from the salon and though I had returned home by public transport, I took a taxi to get to her. Raymond was abroad and I could not imagine what the matter was. When she opened the door to their flat, she threw herself in my arms and started crying hysterically. I nearly went into shock myself, to see my dear, tough Tania in such a state. I immediately presumed Raymond must have had an accident. That he was probably dead.
“What is it Tania,” I cried. “For God‟s sake what‟s wrong? Is Johnny all right?”
“Yes,” she answered between sobs, “he‟s in his room.”
“And Raymond?”
“Yes. Damn him.”
“Damn him?”
“The bastard is married. He has two sons.”
I was lost. I could not manage to get a coherent sentence out of her. She was sobbing and her tears were wetting the front of my shirt. I took her hand and made her sit down on a sofa. Little by little, she started to calm down. She looked at me imploringly.
“Oh, Jimmy,” she said, “don‟t ever leave me. I have only you to count on. The bloody kid has known it for years. But they were buddy-buddies. He kept his mouth sealed. Raymond even provided him with women. There was not a thing, big or small, he would not do for Johnny. All Johnny had to do was ask. His wife called me this evening.”
“Johnny‟s wife? Is he married?”
“No, Jimmy. Raymond‟s wife.”
83
“Please, Tania, calm down and tell me what happened, step by step, so that I can understand.”
She was silent for a while contemplating the ruin of her life. Nothing much would change really. Life would go on and materially she was as secure as ever. As she explained later, the salon was in her name and she had a respectable amount of money put away. However, the true life of human beings, the thing that gives meaning to their existence is the bond that binds them to others. The need of a consort, of a mate, the need to love and be loved by a child, and on a secondary level, the web of relationships with others that fuse one in society. Without these, life is meaningless. It was the betrayal of her mate and child and the abyss of emptiness that faced her that brought forth her outburst of sorrow and despair.
She said the phone rang and an Egyptian woman introduced herself as Raymond‟s wife. At first, Tania thought it was a farce and then the woman explained that she had been married to Raymond for fifteen years and had two sons by him. She reminded her that she had worked for a spell at the salon and she claimed Raymond had fallen in love with her; had become a Moslem and married her as a second wife. She had decided to call Tania because a legal hitch necessitated her signature on a document they needed and Raymond did not seem disposed to ask her for the signature that would reveal his second marriage. Therefore, she had taken the initiative to get in touch with Tania for the signature and to let her know how things stood.
Tania‟s world collapsed by an earthquake not of tectonic plate movement but by the uttering of a few sentences. She called Johnny and after lengthy, loud and furious interrogation found out that he had known about the marriage for years and had met his two half brothers and he told Tania to cut out the hysterics because it was no big deal.
She was not of an age to act like a lovelorn teenager. It did not mean his father did not love her. A man can love more than one woman at a time. The attitude of her son was another stab in her back.
“I have no one else but you, Jimmy,” she said. “How strange to find yourself all alone so suddenly. How strange to clutch at a stranger for survival when your own blood has betrayed you.”
I was dumbfounded and completely at a loss. I did not know what advice to give for I was not the one feeling the pain. The only thing I could counsel was patience until Raymond returned from abroad to hear his side of the story. I stayed late that night with her, heard much of her life and was surprised to learn that Raymond was an inveterate womanizer. He had started exhibiting that trait as soon as he made some money and of course, he was in a milieu where the opportunities abounded. Tania, meanwhile, subscribed to the philosophy that the less she knew about his affairs, the better. The worst part of it was that he initiated Johnny in sex at a very early age and was spoiling him by satisfying his every whim. He had already succeeded in making him a cynical and insensitive macho even with his own mother.
Tania demonstrated her toughness the next day by going about her work as if nothing had happened. There was no doubt that this whole affair was gnawing at her insides but one could only admire her strength having witnessed her heartbreak.
Whenever we happened to be alone at the end of the day, she could not prevent the subject from surfacing. From this, I understood how much it actually preoccupied her.
She was searching the past for clues. She wanted to figure out how it started and how, for 84
over fifteen years, her husband lived a parallel life without her suspecting that something was not altogether normal. A life with another home, another wife, two children, a completely new set of in-laws and acquaintances, all of them Egyptian. Of a different race, a different language and culture, a different religion. How a man so devoted to Christianity could become a Moslem? What was his name now? Mustafa, Hamza, Abu Bakr? She vaguely remembered the girl. Her name was Sabah. Apart from her youth, there was nothing exceptional or particularly attractive about her or else she would have remembered. She worked in the hair-washing section and, yes, she was loud and a little vulgar. Perhaps, that is what attracted him. The vulgarity. A trait that seems to excite men. It fires their libido. Men are strange beings. They want a sweet, demure wife and a vulgar mistress. They deprive their wives of sex and go looking for it in the gutter.
“I can‟t get over it, Jimmy,” she would tell me over and over. “Fifteen years he fooled me and I thought I was smarter than him! Of course, the circumstances helped him. His job with the princess gave him the opportunity to come and go as he pleased without arousing suspicion. Now, that I think of the past, I realize that this was the reason why he would never tell us when he would arrive from abroad. He wanted the freedom to be able to go and stay with his other family for a while. To go and see his children and make love to his other wife. Oh, how it burns me up. Did he have one or two mistresses on the side as well? I might be perverse but I sincerely hope he did. I cannot bear the thought that I was the only one betrayed with that sluttish washerwoman.” Raymond arrived suddenly a few weeks later. When he went home, he found that his key could not open the door. The lock had been changed. Sabah probably told him about the phone call and he was wary of going to find Tania at the salon. He called her on the phone and she told him that, henceforth, his home was with Sabah and that if he wanted to talk to her, they could meet at a coffee shop. She asked him to do her the favor of taking Johnny with him at Sabah‟s. She could not abide a younger version of Raymond in her house.
Since that first