ARAB (18 page)

“Good morning, Bashir!” a woman called from a balcony. “Is that for me?”

“For Umm Sayid,” Bashir said.

“Aah! Why should Umm Sayid have all the luck? You should have married my Hoda. You would be bringing
me
the groceries,” and she laughed that toothless guffaw that used to sicken him.

He tilted his head and smiled at the woman whose ugly daughter he had spent weeks avoiding, stumbling occasionally over her in the darkened hallway of Umm Sayid’s building, stationed there, he suspected, by this ambitious, domineering woman.

As he raised his eyes to sheets and shirts and underwear dangling off the balconies and closed his brain to the piercing shrieks of children and yapping dogs, he wondered why Umm Sayid persisted in living in this cesspool.

“Just a few blocks from here, it’s better. Just up the street you could have a second-floor apartment with an air-conditioned room.”

“And who can afford that, fancy pants?” she said. “Even if I could, my friends would hate me. I’ve lived here all my life, Bashir. I am content here. My beloved Ahmad lived here,” and tears filled her eyes at thoughts of her first-born who had died in the very room Bashir now brought groceries to—neither a kitchen nor a living room, an everything room with baskets, he called it—clean but cluttered. A patina of gritty sand filmed the cushions on the sofa, the television in the corner, shelves above the sink. Everything except beds filled this room—the cold-water faucet, the single light bulb hanging off the ceiling, the woven baskets into which Umm Sayid was now storing the loaves of bread Bashir had brought her.

“I will stay here, God willing, until I die,” she had told him a thousand times.

He watched her close the basket and go to the sink. As she looked at him, squeezing water from a towel, her eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong? Why are you limping?”

“It’s nothing. I tripped and scraped my knee.” Not wanting to talk about his injuries, he said, “Have you seen Aleyya?”

“You’ve lost weight. Are you eating? What are you eating?”

He laughed. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. Does Aleyya still live here?”

“She’ll live here forever,” the woman said. “Why, you think she’s found a lover?” She threw her head back and laughed. “I don’t know what’s the matter with her. She needs a man to take care of her.”

“They don’t think that way anymore,” Bashir said. “They’re emancipated now.”

“Aah….” She waved that off with disgust. She had married at eighteen and had tried with all her heart to love the man her mother had selected for her. But he was a fool. First it was other women, then it was hashish and whiskey and spending all his free hours with his friends. Umm Sayid locked him outside one evening when he came home drunk. She never saw him again. There were rumors he had been seen piloting a felucca near Port Said. She didn’t care. She reported his disappearance to the police. They promised to keep a lookout for him, which she knew meant nothing. She took a job in a shoe repair shop on Ahmed Oran Street to support her family and worked there until the arthritis crippled her hands. Now she lived on subsidies from the government and the largess of Bashir, whom she had taken in as a boarder when Aleyya asked her to.

With his buttocks wedged into the edge of the sink, Bashir watched the woman pry the lid off a basket. She was gaining weight, her face had taken on a puffiness that worried him, but she claimed to be in good health. “The doctor said I’ll live to be a hundred,” she had told him.

“And when did you see him last? Was it about that swelling in your ankles?”

“It’s what he tells all the women—’stay off your feet,’ like we have servants to run errands for us. He has servants. That’s why he over-charges us.”

“Truly, when did you see him last?”

“I don’t know. The other day. It doesn’t matter.”

He laughed. “You should see him…and maybe lose some weight.”

“Don’t be impertinent,” she said, pushing him aside so that she could wash her hands. She was a big woman, like most of her friends. Too much starch in her diet, he suspected.

“Is there anything else you need?”

“You are going?”

“I have work. Tell Aleyya I was asking for her.” He kissed Umm Sayid’s cheek.

“You are a good boy,” she said. “Umm Amir’s husband says he heard you are chasing after the daughter of some government big shot. He said the police were asking questions about you. Why don’t you take Aleyya’s friend Sakeena? She’s always liked you, you know.”

“I’m not ready for anything like that.”

“So why are the police asking questions about you?”

“It’s nothing to worry about. I’m not in any kind of trouble. They investigate everyone who comes into contact with the children of high officials.”

“But you take chances, Bashir. You are too ambitious. You must be careful. I worry about you.”

Somewhere in the depths of his mind, he suspected that he loved Umm Sayid. If so, she was the only woman except Aleyya he felt that way about. She had taken him in when Aleyya had asked her to, and she had never asked for money.

“So what brings you here?”

“Just in the neighborhood,” Bashir said.

“No, really. Why are you here? I can tell. There’s something wrong, something on your mind.” She slatted water off her hands, turned and confronted him. “What is it, Bashir?”

“Just something I wanted Aleyya to do for me.”

Umm Sayid looked concerned. “What is this about?”

“Nothing,” Bashir said. “I have a friend. It’s her birthday. I wanted Aleyya to recommend something.”

“And you came here? You didn’t try her shop? She’s never home this time of day. You know that.”

It stopped him. Why had he come here? Why hadn’t he gone to the store? She could be there. She probably was there. “I forgot,” he said.

She visually questioned him. “Then it’s nothing,” she said angrily. “If this is one of your jokes—”

“I’m sorry,” Bashir said. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s this new opportunity. It’s making me jumpy.”

She pushed him aside, still annoyed. “You’re crazy,” she said, crossing the room.

“I’m sorry, really.”

“Get out of here,” she said, angry because he had frightened her and was not being honest with her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll find her at the store.”

He smiled and threw her a kiss and went downstairs checking his watch. It was nearing noon. The presence of Umm Sayid had helped him. Although he had lived in her apartment for only a few months, she had become more a mother to him than the woman who had abandoned him in Gaza.

Walking past heaps of rubble, smelling the sour odors of sewage, Bashir felt a sympathy for Umm Sayid’s wish to stay in this neighborhood. Her friends were here. She had status among them. She read tea leaves for them. They respected her.

But why had he come here? It wasn’t to see Aleyya. Was it to see Umm Sayid? He didn’t know what it was. He was tired. He needed sleep. Despite the poverty and the clutter, he always felt safe in this apartment. No other place on earth seemed more like home to him.

As he walked toward his car, he noticed Aleyya’s friend Sakeena Mahfouz waving from an upstairs window. She was nice. He liked her. She would probably make a good wife. But he wasn’t ready for that.

He didn’t know what to do. He got into his car and started the engine and drove toward the heart of the city. He parked on the sidewalk of a narrow street near Maydan at-Tahrir. He stepped out of his car and worked his way through a crowd of women in front of a clothing store. Way up the sidewalk he saw Aleyya being forced into a police car by two uniformed women. He flattened his back against the doorframe of the shop and watched Aleyya struggle with the women and finally duck into the police car. He watched the car move slowly down the street toward the square.

He ran to the shop where she worked. The white-haired gnomish Ismat Haqqi looked up at him from a box he was picking through.

“She’s not here,” he said.

“What happened? Why the police…?”

His small shoulders twitched in a shrug. “Who knows?”

“What did they say?”

“‘Come with us’ is all I heard.”

Long gray hairs from the edges of his bald scalp swung across his mouth as he shook his head and lowered his face over what he was working on. He picked at his lips. “Two women, police, I suppose—brought her into that corner,” pointing a bony finger. “They talked and then they left.”

“What did they say?”

“Nothing to me.”

Bashir returned to the sidewalk, stared down the street, then walked slowly to his car. It had to be about him. There could be no other reason for the police to question her. Someone must have told them she was his friend. Umm Sayid? Would they come for her? Had someone told them he had just visited her?

He was sickened by the thought of Umm Sayid and Aleyya getting into trouble because of him.

He drove to the alley and walked cautiously toward Umm Sayid’s building. He found her upstairs washing clothes.

“The police have taken Aleyya,” he said. “I don’t know why, but it’s because of me and they’ll come after you.”

“What are you talking about?” She read his expression and apparently believed he was serious, but, as usual, she questioned his judgment.

“Your sister in Suez” Bashir said. “I can take you there. Please. Please. I am not joking.”

“Why would they come for me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what they want, but they’ll come. Please! Please!” and he tugged at her arm, water dripping off the small towel onto the floor.

“I can’t just go like this?”

“She’s your sister! She won’t care. Please!”

“But I’ve done nothing wrong! Why would they want me?”

“They took Aleyya. Why would they want her? I watched them force her into their car. They’ll come after you. They know you’re my friend. Please, we have to go!”

She could find nothing in his expression to confirm or confute what he was saying. But he scared her. Still protesting, she allowed him to tug her out of her apartment. “I haven’t seen Aida for weeks!” she complained, rushing past a woman who was dumping water from a pail into a street drain.

Working their way through heavy traffic, they found the road to Suez, and entered the polluted air of that industrialized city in late afternoon. They found Aida sitting on a barrel in her yard smoking a cigarette. She was smaller than Umm Sayid, eyeing her sister with surprised laughter.

“Hey! Hey!” she said, leaping off the barrel, embracing her sister, holding her at arm’s length to look at her. She glanced over Umm Sayid’s shoulder and smiled at Bashir.

*

“I don’t know,” Umm Sayid said. “Is it an inconvenience?”

“Only if he comes around,” and Aida laughed. “But I haven’t received my check yet, so not to worry. Of course you’re welcome!” She glanced at Bashir. “Can you at least stay for dinner?”

“I have to get back. I have to find Aleyya.”

“I have room,” she said, waving her arm at the long wall of her house.

“I appreciate that. You’re a generous woman.”

“You’re family, Bashir!”

He smiled, kissed both women on the cheek and went to his car. Back in Cairo, he visited Umm Sayid’s house. Alleya was not there. A woman sweeping the hallway downstairs, said Aleyya had not been home. “But sometimes she stays with friends,” the woman said.

“If she shows, tell her Umm Sayid is visiting her sister Aida.”

“And where does her sister live?”

“I’m not sure,” Bashir said.

As he drove over long shadows on the highway north, Bashir suffered for his friend Foad and now Aleyya, both held by the police because of him. They were no longer routinely checking on a friend of Amina al-Khalid. They were looking for a man who worked for Faisal Ibrahim. If he turned himself in, they would imprison him. They would not release Foad and Aleyya. They would accuse them of aiding a criminal.

Bile rose to his throat and he stopped the car and leaned out the opened door and threw up. A car whipped by with girls at open windows laughing and yelling “party, party!”

He drove to a park on the river, got out of his car and sat on a wooden bench with his face in his hands, elbows digging into his thighs, breathing the fetid odors of the nearby river.

From early childhood he had avoided problems by devoting himself to work, to his studies, free in the belief that he would build a future that would make him immune to everyday problems. He would establish himself in a secure position and look after his family. Problems would slide into the past and the future would lie before him like a garden.

But that had been a childish indulgence. Dreams would no longer carry him past these problems. Now there was no one to help him—not Foad, not Esmat Bindari. There was only Faisal Ibrahim, a man who didn’t play games, didn’t issue empty threats. He had no choice. He would find out what Faisal wanted. He would do whatever it was. Surely Faisal didn’t expect him to kill anyone! Faisal had friends in the police. Maybe they could help free Aleyya. What would he think of himself if he didn’t look after the only people in the world he thought of as family? It was his obligation.

What have I done? I don’t deserve any of this. What has happened to the world? Why can’t I live my life the way I want to? What did I do wrong?

I have to find Faisal!

That nurse! Ailo! She will know! If Faisal’s in the city, the agency will know! Why didn’t I think of it before!

Chapter Fifteen

“Is it Diab?” Nick asked, crouched behind a trashcan next to Yousef in an alley outside a Nasser-era tenement on the west side of Cairo. A man had just fired a burst from a second-story window that blasted a hole in the wall behind them, leaving a stink of broken cement clouding around them.

“I don’t know,” Yousef said, more angry than scared, his pride wounded. He hadn’t expected resistance. He had wanted to show off an easy capture.

“You’ve never seen him?” Nick said.

“I think I told you that,” Yousef snapped. He brushed dust off his sleeve, drew his head back from something foul-smelling in the trashcan. “I’ll go to that doorway down there. You stay here. I don’t want you hurt.” All around them sounds of the city—children yelling, dogs barking, squealing brakes, big trucks grunting.