Glamour (21 page)

“We could have some coffee in the garden,” she suggested. “Talk some more.”

Ahmed grinned.“Dinner is over . . .
cousin
. And I am sure you know you are far too delectable for me to linger over with coffee and sweetmeats. Already you tempt me.You should go to bed. We can dine together tomorrow.”

She sighed.“I will miss you.” Helen blushed.“I like to be with you.”

His eyes darkened. “Don’t play with me, little beauty. I am not the sort of man to be teased.You have signed the nikkah, but you say you want to leave. And yet now you want to be with me. Which is it?”

She stepped back; the longing to kiss him raged in her. Or rather, to be kissed; to have Ahmed reach out and pull her to him.

But he wouldn’t make it that easy. He would force her to be explicit. To choose him. Helen could not do that, she told herself.

Ahmed stood, and his dark eyes glittered.

“Good night,” he said, “cousin.”

“Good night.”

And she reluctantly turned from the vaulted dining room to her room.

The next morning, when she woke, Ahmed was not there. Helen showered and dressed, telling herself to snap out of these schoolgirl fantasies. She was
not
going into an arranged marriage. She
was
going home. It was easier, when Ahmed was not right in front of her.

Sternly, she dressed herself in her best American Levi’s, with her Nike sneakers and a crisp navy silk shirt, perching her sunglasses on her head. That looked good, too. Rather defiantly, she stomped down the stairs into the kitchen and lifted her head at Ahmed’s staff. But nobody said a word, and she suddenly remembered her cousin had plenty of Western suits.

“Breakfast?” The housekeeper fussed about her, offering meats, fresh juices. Once she had poured Helen’s mint tea into a bright red glass, glittering with gold patterns, she came forward with a neat envelope, presented on a silver tray. “The master left it for you.” The woman made no attempt to speak English. Helen ripped it open.

Dear Helen,

I go to the gym most mornings, then on to work.You are free to do as you wish. I have instructed Fahdah to accompany you around the city, with her brother Mahmoud. Mahmoud is my driver. He has served in the army and can act as a bodyguard for your safety.There are many tourist attractions in Cairo.

Helen’s face flushed as she read this. Attractions! He saw her as some kind of holidaymaker.

If you prefer, you can return to the embassy and try again. Or there are plenty of mosques, restaurants, coffeehouses, and the like. Fahdah knows them all. There are also boutiques. I have left a credit card with Fahdah for your use, should you wish to go shopping. I hope you will have a pleasant day.

The note was all stiff politeness. She hated it. How could she go to a mosque to pray with two minders watching her? Impossible. Eat in a restaurant on her own? Spend Ahmed’s money buying souvenirs?

The situation grated. He knew she was a fish out of water here, but she shouldn’t be, she just shouldn’t.

Carefully Helen sipped at her fresh orange juice. There was no point in going to the embassy again. And besides, she felt an overwhelming desire to prove Ahmed wrong. She was not some mere Western tourist, she was Jordanian-American. And Helen desperately wanted to prove that to her cousin. To impress him.

She looked around for Fahdah.

“Yes, madam?”

“Fahdah, I would like to improve my Arabic,” Helen said. “Could you and your brother kindly accompany me to a public library?”

Fahdah gave a toothy smile. “Yes, madam!”

When Ahmed returned that night, Helen stopped herself from racing downstairs to meet him. She was in her room, reading poetry, very slowly, using a dictionary. But after she heard his bedroom door bang, and the sound of his feet padding down the stairs, Helen emerged. Her heart was thudding in anticipation. She tried telling herself not to be so ridiculous.

“Hello, Helen,”Ahmed said, in English.“Did you have a good day?”

Helen took a deep breath.“Yes, thank you, cousin.” She spoke Egyptian Arabic. “I went to the library, and afterward read in the park. It is a wonderful city.”

He raised a brow and smiled slightly. Fahdah rushed forward, jabbering at him a million miles an hour—Helen still couldn’t follow it—and pointing at Helen.

“You are trying to recall your Arabic?” He turned and smiled, slowly, and Helen’s heart flipped over. “What a wonderful thing to do, cousin.”

Helen smiled back. She was proud. And more to the point, she was thrilled that he was pleased. She had surprised him.

“Tomorrow is Saturday,”Ahmed said.“If your passport has not arrived, shall we take a cruise on the river?”

“Thank you.” She sighed. “That would be wonderful.”

The next week, Helen got intermittent updates from the U.S. Embassy. Her passport was progressing. She thought of calling Sally, or Jane, but the idea of letting them into this whole affair was insupportable. When I am safe home, Helen thought, I will see them both. Jane was mourning, and should not be troubled by Helen’s problems with her parents. She had no thought of calling Mama and Baba. They would hear from Helen only face-to-face.

But besides all that, her life in L.A. could wait. Helen relished each day she spent in Cairo. Her Arabic was slow, but Ahmed was patient. He worked, but came home frequently to see to her comfort.They went to restaurants, they took a boat on the Nile, he brought her to the great museum and let her marvel at the treasures. One afternoon he took her on a drive in the country. Always with the smirking Fahdah sitting patiently in the back of the car. Ahmed was punctilious about chaperones and Helen’s honor.

Sometimes she wished, just privately, he wouldn’t be.

They laughed and joked together. She had never met any man quite so comfortable in his own skin. At first, Helen was merely filled with dread at the thought of her passport arriving, of going back to her neat, modern little house on Third Street. After a day or two, though, she knew she was kidding herself. It wasn’t leaving Cairo she dreaded. It was leaving Ahmed.

She was falling in love. And it didn’t matter at all how much she tried to fight it. He was attractive, confident, learned. And sometimes, when he looked at her, it was with that predatory intent that made her skin prickle, her body flush.

The call came the next Monday. Eight thirty a.m., prompt.

“It is for you.” Fahdah handed Helen the receiver, and her heart was already thumping in her mouth.

“Hi, is that Ms. Helen Yanna?”

She would recognize that Boston accent anywhere.

“Yes.”

“Your passport is ready for collection at the embassy, ma’am. Come in any time and pick it up. I have a case number for you. . . .”

Helen wrote down the details and hung up carefully. Her eyes were prickling red. She looked up to find Ahmed staring at her.

“Congratulations,” he said, stiffly. “It has been a pleasure having you at my house—cousin. Go with God.”

“I will be here when you get back,” she said hastily.“I have to pick it up, and then book a flight. Nothing will be settled until tomorrow.”

“I must get to work,” Ahmed replied distantly, and he turned on his heel and left.

That night, supper was miserable. Helen had cried most of the day. She had tried to sort herself out before Ahmed returned, but repeated washing of her face and application of concealer could not disguise her red eyes and tear-stained cheeks. And Ahmed was visibly cold.

“I hope . . . ,” Helen began. She was trying to make small talk, but her voice cracked. Dying of shame, she swallowed hard, and lowered her head.

Ahmed shrugged. “You should rejoice, not weep. You are going home.” He gave a minute smile. “Free and unmolested.”

Helen could not joke. A tear brimmed under her lashes and splashed onto the table.

“What is the matter?”

She saw him gesture, very slightly, with one hand, and heard the immediate sounds of the servants all withdrawing, melting away from them, the soft pad of slippers as they left that part of the house.

“You know the matter,” she said weakly. “I—I don’t want to go.”

He smiled, a conqueror’s smile of pure triumph, and Helen, excited, gasped, but also shrank a little; Ahmed was not a man who would accept half measures.

He reached out and put one rough fingertip under her chin, tilting her face toward him.

“You have been here a while, girl. It is time.You must make a decision.You know you are free to leave tomorrow,” he said.“Go back to the West, go and find some gum-chewing surfer who will call you Helen, or some boring lawyer who will ask you to dye your hair blonde.You can call your parents anytime you choose. The international code for the United States is double zero one.”

She watched in dismay as he walked toward his own bedroom; but then he halted at the door.

“I will be sleeping on the second floor,” Ahmed said, once again, answering her unspoken question. “If you want me, come to me. But come as
Haya
. And come prepared to be my wife. In all things.”

Her heart pounded, and her palms broke out in a sweat. Pure adrenaline.

“Ahmed . . . ,” she began. But he had turned, and left her.

In turmoil she rose and went to the window. He was still arrogant—son of a bitch, he was arrogant! But a good man, all the same. There was nobody here to police him. Yet there had never been any hint of force, no question he would make her do anything against her will. She could see Ahmed was a believer . . . that he knew her rights, knew his faith, would not attempt to deprive her of her natural liberty.

And yet, if she chose, freely, to go to him, it would be on his terms.

The heat of the afternoon was just starting to fade away. Helen turned from the window and ran down the stairs, toward the courtyard.

“Come as Haya,” he had said.

The fountains were dancing; the birds sang. It was quiet, and cool. Helen—no, Haya—she felt the name out again in her mind, and it felt right upon her. Her birth name, her Islamic name. Haya.That Ahmed had given it again to her, that she was here, in Egypt, learning her native tongue, with him; it felt now as if she were crossing into another, ancient, more fitting world.

The name was right. He had put it back upon her, and she settled into it, feeling the Arabic sink into her mind. The first battle he had won. And already she sensed it would not be the last.

Haya sat on the edge of one of the flower beds, and tried to think.

The studious, shy young man she had met in her parents’ dining room was no more. Here, Ahmed was an entrepreneur; in charge, successful, a man who had arranged his house, and his life, in his own way.

And a man who loved another woman.

A dead woman. A ghost.

Haya probed herself. Yes, she wanted Ahmed. Her body was in turmoil now.Was it because he was the first, the only one to have kissed her, to have made her squirm? She didn’t think so—the boys she’d seen in America, at Sally’s party, on the street—none of them had ever made her feel that way. The bland, handsome movie stars and rock singers had left her cold.

Ahmed was different. His dominant, masculine side—you could call it arrogance . . . Haya knew it aroused her. And Ahmed was good—there was that to admire; none of her father’s heavy-handedness, combined with hypocrisy; Ahmed drank little, and he didn’t attempt to trick her.

If Haya went home, what then? The rage of her parents. School politics at Miss Milton’s. Wanting to be as pretty as Sally, or as clever as Jane . . .

Of course she would see her friends again. But what was to stop her doing that as a married woman?

A little while here, in her own land, and Haya already felt her childhood slipping off her like a snakeskin. She was grown; she had passed into womanhood. And the thought of Miss Milton’s and schoolyard politics was ridiculous.

She had left that behind her when she landed in Egypt, by herself.

Haya al-Yanna was a woman now. And she knew that she would one day marry.

If
not
Ahmed, then whom?

True, Haya hadn’t chosen him—yet. But Ahmed was demanding she do so, before he touched her.

What was there for her back in L.A.? Somebody more ‘suitable’? More Anglo? Richer?

Haya put her fingers to her lip, tracing where his mouth had crushed hers. She felt weak with desire. Ahmed made her stomach churn, excited her in a way she’d never known before.

Right now, at this moment, Haya realized she had no desire to go home.

She knew that if she did, she would never see Ahmed again.

Then what was her choice? To affirm the nikkah.To do it all over again . . . to go in to him, and let Ahmed touch her . . .

Her lip trembled. She was afraid.

For ten minutes she sat there, paralyzed, staring at the water that cascaded into the pond.

Then finally, Haya rose and went back into the house. She turned left under the peristyle, and climbed the stairs to the guest bedroom suite.

Ahmed was sitting in a carved wooden chair, piled with cushions, facing a western window, watching the sun set over the roofs of Cairo. A book lay open, facedown, on the mantelpiece.

“You have come to me, Haya?” he asked, without looking round.

“I don’t know,” she said, and her voice wobbled.

Ahmed stood up, came over to her, and enfolded her in his arms, gently this time. Haya started to cry. She didn’t know why, not exactly. But she was here, in Egypt, and it was strange, and her parents had sent her here. And she wasn’t sure if she had fallen in love.

“Come on,” Ahmed said, when she had finished. He kissed her lightly on the top of the head. “Do you want to be a tourist, now, at last?”

“What?” she said, dabbing at her eyes.

“Let’s go out to the pyramids,” he said.“Go and see the son et lumière. It’s . . . what do you Americans say . . .”