That Other Me (12 page)

“Feeling better? What did the doctor say?”

I prop myself up on the pillow. That's enough of an invitation for Tammy, a first-year student and one of my two flatmates, to tiptoe into the room and settle at one end of the bed. The curtains are drawn and the room is dim, bathed in the cool blue of morning light. Still, I spot the inquisitiveness in her impish eyes. She senses there's more to the story I made up after arriving at the sakan just before midnight last night.

“The doctor says it must be some virus,” I say, and pat my head, which is slightly warm. I suspect that the injection he gave me triggered an allergic reaction. “It might be contagious,” I add, hoping this will make her go away.

Tammy acts as though she's immune to germs. “How could it be that you fell asleep in the library? And doesn't the staff check to make sure no student is left behind before locking up?”

“I really don't know, Tammy. But when I woke up, I realized I was in a corner that could easily have been overlooked.”

“Hmm.” She curls her lip at me with obvious disbelief, and I find myself wishing she had never discarded the veil that used to cover her entire face. But Tammy had sought a transformation as soon as she arrived in Cairo, and she started with her name: she changed a somber-sounding Fatima to the lighter Fatami, and later, with the playfulness of a wink, altered it one more time, to Tammy. Because of the new freedom she's found being away from her father, brothers, cousins, and every other male relative and neighbor in the tiny oasis village of Nahwa (deep within the mountains of the northern Emirates), she has taken to dressing differently, too. For her morning classes at the college she wears a satin shirt, bloodred and stretched a little too tightly around her chest. Tucked into a long black pencil skirt, it's belted just under her ribs with an eye-catching rhinestone buckle that draws attention to her slim waist. Her shayla, which she used to loop twice around her neck, has long since loosened and now sits as no more than an embellishment over yellow-streaked hair that's parted on the side and falls like a horse's tail down her cheek. “How come all the noise of people leaving the library didn't wake you up?”

I feel like I've turned into a creature of intrigue under her gaze. I shrug with a helpless sigh. These are the same questions Abla Karima asked me.
Amm
Eid, the doorman, was pacing up and down when my taxi pulled up in front of the sakan door. His relief at my safe arrival was immediate. I was the missing resident, and his hands had shaken as he raised them to the sky to thank Allah for my safe return.

“Where have you been, Sitt Mariam? We were worried sick,” he said. I did not answer him, only shook my head with puzzled exasperation. Slow-thinking in emergencies, I had already prepared a few excuses, but I couldn't decide which to use. He unlocked the sakan's door, metal with opaque glass for added privacy. “Abla Karima is worried sick, too. Every ten minutes she pops out here and asks me whether you have arrived yet.”

I was slightly relieved at the mention of this particular matron. She is the most docile of the lot. “Did she telephone anyone?” I asked. One call, that's all it would take to end my studies in Cairo, my planned career and independence.

“Not yet. But she wanted to, many times. She threatened to make a call if you didn't get here by midnight.”

I blessed her under my breath. Out of the four ablas, she is the only one blighted with indecision when things don't go according to protocol. If it were Abla Taghrid, she would not have hesitated to report me, and I'm sure the cultural attaché would have been waiting along with her, his arms crossed, his foot tapping the floor with extreme displeasure that this most sacred of rules had been broken. Amm Eid followed me through the entryway and to the next glass door, which has a beautified plastic covering showing swans gliding on a river. No man is allowed through it, and Amm Eid stopped in his tracks and looked around as if lost. On the one hand, he knew he should go back to his post. On the other, his ears were burning to hear my account.

He was in luck. The swan door burst open and Abla Karima waddled down the steps. Long necked with a beaklike nose, she always makes me think of the storks wading in the Nile's tributaries. Her hands fluttered with agitation and she rattled off a full list of questions, pausing only when her breath ran out and she had to replenish it with a massive gulp of air. When I told her, “I fell asleep in the library, I don't know how,” she flapped her hands some more—maybe to cool the heat that was building in her—and launched into another set of queries. “I'll have to report this, you know,” she warned. And that's when I staggered to the side, leaned against the wall, and said, “I think I have to see a doctor.”

Alunood ambles into my room with a pair of sandals dangling from her fingers. She is my other flatmate, a second-year fine-arts student. She has heavy eyelids and large downturned eyes that brim with
gloom. “You know you have probably been reported,” she says, and parks herself heavily next to Tammy.

“No, she hasn't,” says Tammy. “Otherwise the attaché would have been here already to find out all the details and punish her.”

“It's early yet.” As always, Alunood's voice is flat, with a no-nonsense quality to it. “He'll be here soon enough.” With that, she bends over and starts strapping the sandals to her feet.

“It doesn't matter,” I say. “I had no control over what happened. And if he doesn't believe me, there is always the doctor's report.”

“What exactly did he write?” asks Tammy, as if anxious for the pronouncement of some exotic disease.

My eyes grow heavy and I close them. Maybe it's the nagging guilt over making up so many lies. But what else could I do? Tell them about my secret escapade with Adel?

I suppose Dalal would have been proud of my performance. I acted as best I could, even though all the while I was convinced that everyone could see right through me. The doctor had shined a tiny torch into my open mouth and peered into the back of my throat. Then he pinched my nostrils to check for inflammation. He seemed unconvinced. So I said, “My head feels light.”

“Dizzy?” he asked.

“Yes. And there is pressure in my eyes. And I can't breathe properly, either.” I stammered with the mention of every fabricated ill.

The stethoscope emerged.

“My stomach hurts, too.”

I suppose I had described a few too many aches, each having nothing to do with the other, because the doctor hummed and scratched his head.

Tammy's eyes light up. “Maybe you fainted! Maybe that's what happened in the library.”

I nod weakly. There is a tingling sensation in my limbs, and this makes me worry once more about that injection. What was in it? Per
haps the doctor was trying to teach me a lesson for pretending I was sick. Maybe he was insulted by what I did next but could not resist accepting what was offered—for the first time in my life, I slipped him a bribe for a forged diagnosis.

It wasn't easy with so many people in the room, but it helped that they were in perpetual motion, opening the window for fresh air and closing it when the night air chilled the room too quickly. They rushed to the kitchen to prepare what remedies they could for all the ailments I complained of. There was thyme for my sore throat, mint for my stomach pain, and chamomile to slow my palpitating heart. In the midst of the pandemonium, I slid a hand into my handbag and pulled out a wad of notes I had no time to count. The doctor raised his eyebrows with surprise but quickly slid them from my palm as he took my pulse. I did not need to say anything else; he understood completely.

A sudden fatigue washes over me and I yawn. The girls decide it's time they were off to class and leave me to fall into a dreamless slumber.

It's early evening, and dusk's light is no more than a gray glow at the edges of the curtained window. It is quiet, and, stretching the sleep out of my limbs, I gaze ahead. A broad yawn finishes in a smile as I think of Adel.

I scratch the back of my head and finger my thick amber hair, letting it spill in a fan onto the pillow. I get goose bumps as I reflect on all the different expressions that played on his face last night. My palm slides over my nightgown to cup the suppleness of my chest. The other hand joins and I squeeze, feeling the pleasure warming me, lighting me from inside out. My tummy dips into a tight hollow and my ribs rise up, as if some hurdle for my roaming hands. They have snuck under
my nightgown, and for a while my fingers run up and down my ribcage, letting my imagination change the feel of them to something stronger, sturdier, rougher, even: a man's hand, his hand.

My skin heats with every stroke. My wandering fingers grow bolder and travel lower, as though searching for hidden treasure. There is noise coming from somewhere in the building. I close my eyes against it as my breathing turns impassioned. He cannot resist the feel of me. I am a writhing piece of dough, to be shaped and played with. The thought lights a powerful flame. Desire seizes my breath in rolling waves as I twist and jerk under a spell of sweet and agonizing quakes.

Spent and splayed like a starfish, with the covers in disarray, I grin at the ceiling before realizing that there are voices just outside my door. It is an argument, animated whispers between Tammy and someone else. There's an abla out there. I can't tell which one, but she is insisting that she needs to see me, and for a moment it puzzles me. The ablas don't come to our apartments unless there is a man around—doctor, electrician, plumber—and then they make sure to warn us to cover up or get dressed, since we often traipse around the rooms in our robes, pajamas, or nightgowns.

I hear Tammy snap at her, telling her that she can't go in because I am resting. Like all of us in the sakan, Tammy considers the apartment her private domain and shields it with zeal. One case of easy access, and the ablas will gladly form a habit of nosing into our affairs.

To fortify their position, or out of sheer frustration, the ablas are forever bossing around the rest of the staff: their assistants, the
dada
s who run their errands and clean the building's communal areas, the security men, the drivers, the doormen. Their demands are never-ending, and they insist on knowing every detail of the sakan's goings-on: who said what, who came by, who went where.

The girls' squabbles with the ablas are mostly over car bookings. Whenever a student wants to go out, whether to classes at the university, shopping, errands, or recreational visits, she has to fill in a request
form the night before with departure and return times, which is then handed to an abla for coordination. The ablas map the drivers' routes for the next day and group students in cars according to their timings and destinations. And that's when, without fail, the bickering begins. These are like territorial catfights, quick screaming bursts and threats that are settled quickly so that peace can return—until the next night. Arguments with the ablas are a daily occurrence, a part of life at the sakan.

Some of the ablas are more lenient or deal with problems by brushing them to the side, but not the one outside my door. Now that she is speaking louder, I recognize the voice as that of Abla Taghrid. She wears a skirt that stops three fingers under her knee to show her modernity and takes solid steps in a pair of closed black shoes with a slight heel to indicate refined practicality. Abla Taghrid is shrewd, with enough spite to create mountains of problems. In the five years she has been working at the sakan, she has gotten three students evicted.

“The well-being of every girl in this sakan is my responsibility,” she says. She is right outside my door. Any moment now, she'll burst through and flick on the light switch so she can catch me looking the image of health. I pull the blanket up to my neck and kick my legs to generate heat.

“Okay, I will tell her to come down once she wakes up,” says Tammy.

“I have to make sure she is fine,” insists Abla Taghrid.

“I told you, she is sleeping!”

“She has to wake up now. I have a message for her from her uncle.”

This piece of news sets jitters rushing through the length of me, and it takes every bit of restraint I have not to toss off the blanket and jump out of bed. I usually call the family about once a week just to let them know I am okay. Ammi Majed has never called me before. Could word of last night have gotten to him already? What could it be?

The door opens a crack and a pencil of light spills in just as I burrow under the blanket, pretending to be asleep. “Are you awake,
habibti
, my darling?” I thought she might linger for a while by the door, but she's right by my side, her voice sounding as sweet as if it were dipped in honey. The ablas would like us to accept them as second mothers, the protectors and guiding voices of experience. It's another way of cementing their position and setting themselves higher than the rest of the staff. Some, like Abla Taghrid, would like to get more involved in the girls' personal lives, always on the lookout for opportunities when one of us might be vulnerable enough to reveal a secret or two. That's nearly impossible, because we've labeled her captain of the moral police. Even new students are warned off as soon as they set foot in the sakan. “How are you feeling?” she asks.