That Other Me (28 page)

It's evening, and I awaken to the kind of noise that's kept low so as not to disturb but still has the jarring effect of a school bell. I open my eyes but stay very still, keeping my face burrowed in the pillow. I hear the sounds of chickenhearted footsteps, careful rustles, and jittery breaths. It's my mother pretending to be a mother.

She switches on the small lamp by the door. I keep my back to her and wait, hoping she'll go away. Judging from the soft swishing sounds, I figure she's pulling clothes out of my suitcase, which I had left open in the middle of the room like a book, and arranging my clothes. When she finishes, she tiptoes closer to me, toward the dressing table. There's the ruffle of pages, and this, too, is an action easily guessed. She's opening the glossy copy of
Sayidati
magazine to the page in the arts section that contains my interview. There's quiet now. She's probably staring at my picture, which shows me with my lips slightly parted and a finger held lightly to my chin. There is a quote in bold letters: “My talent comes from my Egyptian blood.” I am sure it won me plenty of heartfelt cheer among Egyptians.

Mama doesn't pussyfoot around any longer. “Dalal, wake up. It's seven o'clock.”

I release the moan of someone struggling to come out of a deep sleep. “Did the hairdresser arrive? Azza here?” I turn and fix her with a groggy-eyed stare.

“You missed something important yesterday,” says Mama, ignoring my questions. “Abdullah Al-Rowaished complimented you on Dubai Television. He said—and these were his exact words—‘Dalal's voice is the most promising out there.' Can you believe that? And there's more.”

I lie very still, anxious not to miss a word. “Well, I couldn't very well leave the party to go watch the interview, could I?” I say, mocking her to mask my intense desire to hear the rest of what the great Kuwaiti singer had to say.

“The presenter asked him, ‘Can you see yourself performing a duet with her?' And do you know what he did?”

“What, what?” There's more air than sound in my voice.

“He hummed the tune of your song.” She claps her hands like an excited little girl. “His thick mustache curled to one side in a grin—so cheeky, but sentimental, too. And then he said, ‘Only her, lonely her, all alone? We can't leave her like that.' ”

To be endorsed by someone as important as Abdullah Al-Rowaished! It makes me giddy with delight. My pulse quickens, and I have to remind myself to feign indifference. If I do otherwise, Mama might see it as an invitation back into my life and career, the opening of a tunnel that would once more burrow deep into my head.

She sits on the edge of my bed, hungry for a detailed account of my first big adventure: last week I went abroad (first class; all expenses paid). Madame Nivine and Azza, who is now my official stylist, joined me, but they had to sit separately because their plane tickets were in business class. First we flew to Saudi Arabia and then Qatar to perform at two weddings. The families were distinguished and treated
me with warmth and admiration. They showered me with so many compliments, flowers, and chocolates, I thought I would cry with joy.

Mama pats the sheet gently. “Tonight is important: the recording of your second hit, hopefully!” She certainly knows her business. My first hit, already inserted in an album of mediocre songs (to be released), must quickly be followed with a second hit, which will require another album of boring songs to be recorded. It's the hit that guarantees the sale of the cassette. “You have to wake up so your voice has a chance to warm up.”

Yawning and stretching, I whine, “Let me sleep.”

She wanted to hear about the trip as soon as I returned to Cairo. I could have told her. Instead I went straight to sleep. And the next morning I went to my next booking, flying all the way to London (business class; still, all expenses were paid), where I performed at a party at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. I sang from 10:45 p.m. until midnight. It didn't matter that I was the B star, the opener for a popular Saudi singer named Rabeh Saqer. The audience lapped up my performance at each and every event. I leaned over and sang, “You wanna go?” and they'd chanted in answer, “Go, go, go!” I got goose bumps every time I replied, “And stay away?” and they hollered back, “Oh no, no, no!” Mama cocks her head to one side, expectation on her face. Yes, she wants the full rundown of my week.

There is a knock at the door, feeble and wary. I don't have to guess who it is. “She up?” Sherif bey asks.

“Don't come in,” I cry out, sitting up straight. “This is not a room for men.” When Mama's eyebrows furrow, I tell her, “Well, it's true, isn't it? He has no business walking in here, my bedroom, when I'm in my nightgown—or in any other dress, for that matter.”

“It's okay,” she says softly. “Don't get yourself worked up.”

I sniff and look away; she's been working hard to win me over. The suitcase is shut and set against the wall. The clothes, ready to be laundered, sit in neat piles by the door, arranged according to color
and type. I should be reveling in the attention. I scratch the sleep out of my eyes as if that would make me appreciate her efforts. Why am I not moved?

We live in Sherif bey's apartment. He is now my stepfather. I would rather have stayed where I was, behind the newly painted red door of the apartment in Imbaba. But I had no money. Mama had wasted no time marrying him, and once the lease on the Imbaba apartment expired, I showed up here with doleful eyes, ready to give exaggerated apologies for all the grief I'd given her just so she would not turn me away. (Where would I have gone?) I had braced myself, expecting long and miserable hours when I would have to bear her needle-sharp taunts. But the taunts never came; she must have realized that I was just steps away from a bright future, one that she could be a part of if I'd let her.

I could almost see the gears twisting in her head as she calculated how she could best demonstrate her affection. She had cleared this room, which Sherif bey used for storage—it had held his oud and sheet music, cleaning products, and an ironing board—and declared it my bedroom. When I stood in the middle of the emptied room, my jaw dropped, and she said, “You must have a space where you are comfortable. I want this to be your sanctuary.”

She'd filled the room with new furniture in so many shades of pink, it makes me think of dripping strawberry ice cream. The dressing table has an oval mirror and drawers with brass pulls. The headboard is a giant rose, and there are painted grapevines crawling up the corners of the closet; at the top sit bunches of ripe, magenta grapes. She seemed to delight in buying me new clothes—“You must always look your best”—and I found out that she can cook more than the common egg—“You can only deal with difficulties if you have the right nourishment.”

There was the effort of pretend intimacy, too: the lame shoulder squeeze, the failed back rub, and now what looks like the beginning of what might turn out to be an awkward hug.

“Look at you, all upset.” She leans forward with her arms floating in front of her, and I wonder if what I've been waiting for my entire life will finally happen: I'll receive a genuine loving embrace from my mother. But just as I expect, Mama has trouble completing the gesture, because it doesn't come from the heart. Once she's close enough to bite my nose, she pulls back like a tortoise into its shell. I feel nothing anymore. No warmth, no expectation, no hurt, no longing: a big, fat zero.

“He tries so hard with you,” she whispers. “Don't forget, you're living under his roof. He's paying for your upkeep. So a little consideration is not too much to ask, don't you think? All he wants is to be a part of your life, to protect you.”

“Does he want me to call him
baba
, too?”

“Don't be silly, Dalal,” she says, keeping her voice soft. She then tells me about a visitor who came by the day I flew out to Saudi Arabia: my father's employee-cum-fixer, Mustafa. “Big threats he brought with him, that one: warnings to stop embarrassing your father. Or else.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I don't know,” says Mama, “but Mustafa was spitting dynamite. So angry and rude that Sherif bey had to run down and get the driver to kick him out of the apartment. See, this is why you need us around, to protect you. Not that fat manager who you put so much faith in, who smiles and robs you at the same time.” Her eyes blaze. “Real family!”

“Hmm.”

“It seems your father had a small stroke last month, and he blames you for it.” She narrows her eyes and waits for a reaction.

My face is a blank wall. I am in no mood to explain that I'd already heard this bit of news through Mariam, and I hadn't bothered to tell her. “I want coffee.” She is taken aback by my indifference, but she doesn't comment. As she gets up to prepare my coffee, I grab her wrist.
“And if Mustafa comes again, you let him talk to me directly. Then I can tell him to go back to my father with the message that he can blame me all he wants—I. Don't. Care.”

Alone, my thoughts are pulled back to when Mariam called me with this information. A week later, and she had phoned again with a sadder piece of news, so infuriating that when I heard it my stomach clamped into a fist: the abrupt termination of her education in favor of an arranged marriage to a stranger. She was breathless, distraught, rattled out of her senses, and choking on too many emotions—a side of her I'm sure she's revealed to no one else.

As I spewed out a list of useless solutions—Stop eating! Run away!—that she did not hear, I paced the room. Without registering the senselessness of what I was doing, I pulled clothes out of my closet and threw them into a small bag. I didn't want to waste any time getting to her. How dare they lead her like a goat whichever way they please? Her only wish is to study. But my father is so cruel that he would deny her even this small thing.

It was a quick phone call, a burst of muzzled hopelessness on her part and feverish outrage on mine. It was only once I'd zipped the bag and put a lock on it that a sense of overwhelming helplessness weighed me down. Here I was, dreaming of adoring fans and a spacious apartment (which will come much later, of course) overlooking the river in stylish Zamalek, but I couldn't even travel to be with Mariam in her time of need. Frustrated, I'd flopped onto the bed. What could I do? I didn't have the money to buy a plane ticket.

The blow-dryer whirrs as the hairdresser tames my curls into fine threads. Azza leafs through my wardrobe, looking for the right top. I had told her not to bother because this is simply a recording and not a
concert or party, but she'd insisted and said she couldn't have me walking out looking shabby. She added, “Besides, you never know which important artist might casually pop into the studio.”

She has a point. I have recently employed her as my stylist, even though it's more for the company than her sense of fashion. She pulls out a striped silk blouse with a bow on the side of the collar. I refuse it. She tries another, powder blue, and I give her the okay signal.

My head sways gently under the heat. I gaze at my reflection, the left eye alert, the right with its lazy lid looking as though it might fall shut at any moment. I lose myself; it's a precious moment when I can lean back and digest my success. Madame Nivine's strategy has been to gain me fame and popularity through a hit single rather than a full album, though my album will be released a few months later, at the end of the year—“too many good tunes will just confuse the listener, habibchi!” It's all part of her strategy of maximizing the hype. And how well that has worked! My first single has blazed through the airwaves like a wildfire, playing over and over on the radio stations, a triumph of the summer. Madame Nivine told me it's the most requested song not just on Dubai FM but also on Bahrain FM, where the phones don't stop ringing from Saudi listeners. It's a station that attracts them because of its great selection of music.

It wasn't just that the tune was catchy. By some massive stroke of luck, the song found its way onto a cassette called
Nights of the Nile
, a compilation of hit songs by famous singers. My name is housed in plastic along with Abdul Majeed Abdullah, Anoushka, and Monica Fayyadh.

There's a little mall stocked with fake designer shoes and handbags at the Ramses Hilton hotel. It's on the circuit for Khaleeji tourists; it's popular because the shops sell traditional Egyptian goods like cotton sheets, towels, and galabias. I try to go there every few days because on the second floor there's a square kiosk that sells cassettes. My poster is plastered to it. A pair of bulky speakers blares popular songs at the
entrance. The owner is obligated to mute them whenever the call to prayer sounds on the mall speakers—but only if someone complains.

Azza accompanies me; we start at the café on the ground floor, sipping our coffees slowly to give the roaming shoppers a chance to notice me. So far there have been feathers of recognition; it seems that people are unsure whether mine is the same face as that on the poster. It's only once we stroll leisurely by the kiosk, pretending we are there to shop like everyone else, that they come.