Butterfly Wings: An Egyptian Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) Read online

  Ayman had lived his life believing that the woman at home was his mother. Was she not his father’s wife? Did the children—he, his older brother Abdel Samad, and their sister Nesma, who was five years younger—not call her “Mama”? True, Mother dealt differently with Nesma. She took greater care of her and showed her more tenderness, but he thought that was because she was a girl or because she was younger.

  The woman was not callous and did not mistreat him. If he was sick, she gave him money for the doctor and told him how to get to the clinic. But if his sister caught a cold or the flu, Mother would rush her to the doctor and change the routine at home. No one would be allowed to talk loudly if she slept after taking her medicine, and no one would eat in front of her if she was not allowed certain foods.

  As a child, how he longed to be a little girl like Nesma for his mother to cuddle. How he longed to be the youngest so that his mother would help him with his homework and go with him to the end-of-year party at school like other parents.

  Ayman grew up longing for something missing. It was the same longing the kittens born in the stairwell had for their mother’s milk. He would watch those blind, trembling kittens on his way back from school. He often threw their mother a few pieces of bread to help her produce the warm milk without which her young would die of hunger.

  One day he returned from school and found neither the cat nor her kittens under the stairs. He discovered that, in their mother’s absence, the old lady who lived on the ground floor had thrown them out onto the street. That made him furious and made him hate that ugly old lady even more. She had become embittered by age and was nasty to the neighbors as well as the kittens.

  He searched for the kittens in all the streets around the house, but could find not a trace of them. Every now and again, he would hear the mother cat meowing when she returned in search of her children. Abdel Samad said, “Give up on it, brother. Don’t make those kittens a headache for us. They’re not part of the family.”

  Of course they were not part of the family, but they stood for the family Ayman wished he had. Abdel Samad did not understand this. He expected nothing from the “mother” they lived with under the same roof. He had an independent life and did not care what anyone thought. He worked at the supermarket at the end of the street and had his own income, which gave him a certain independence from his parents. But did that make him emotionally self-sufficient? How did he overcome the instinctual longing of children for their parents? That was what Ayman did not understand.

  Then Abdel Samad turned sixteen. That day, he brought home the application form for an ID card from the police station. His younger brother asked him, “What’s that?”

  He replied as though talking about grown-up affairs that were no concern of Ayman’s: “These are the forms for my ID.”

  That was the beginning: the moment when Ayman first learned that his doubts were correct.

  Abdel Samad sat at the dining table in the living room and started filling out the forms. He asked Father for some information, and Father asked him for the papers and started filling them in himself. As soon as Father filled in the section for the mother’s name, Abdel Samad exclaimed, “But that’s not Mama’s name!”

  Father remained silent, saying nothing for a while. Then he said, “Just you keep quiet and take the forms to the police station.”

  Abdel Samad did not argue. He got up, took the paperwork, and said he would go in the morning. Right then, Ayman leapt out of his chair and grabbed the forms from his brother’s hand. In the box for the mother’s name he read, “Amna Abdel Rahim al-Saadi.” He repeated it at the top of his voice, looked at his father, and said, “Why did you write that name?”

  “It’s nothing to do with you. When you grow up and are as old as Abdel Samad, I’ll tell you.”

  “But you didn’t tell Abdel Samad.”

  Father did not reply.

  The boy pressed again: “Who is Amna Abdel Rahim al-Saadi? Please tell me, Baba.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Father said to him, “She’s your mother, but she died.”

  Ayman gaped for a moment, then burst into tears as if his mother had died at that very instant. He fired questions at his father. “How did she die? When did she die? Why didn’t you tell us our mother was dead? Why didn’t you tell us before?”

  Father avoided answering his son’s series of questions, dodging them as if they were bullets aimed deep into his heart. Then he said, “It’s an old wound and there’s no need to open it again.”

  His son asked, “Where did you bury my mother? Where’s her grave? Why …?” Father cut him short, telling him to drop the subject.

  This discovery upset Ayman and turned things upside down. He felt he was living a big lie. His mother was not his mother; his real mother was an unknown quantity; and his father was concealing what it was his right to know.

  In the morning, Abdel Samad went directly to the police station to apply for his ID. Ayman stayed in bed, incapable of getting up. Questions filled his mind as he sought the truth. It was certain that his father’s wife was not his mother. He had known that in his heart anyway, without anyone having to tell him. But what had actually happened? How had his mother died? Had she been ill or killed in an accident? Where was her family? He must have aunts and uncles, so where were they? Why had his father concealed it all? Plus, was it really true that his mother was dead? Was it not possible that she was still alive? How could he find out what his father did not want him to know?

  Abdel Samad, unlike Ayman, was not one to waste time for nothing. Getting something was his prime concern, and that did not apply to wondering about his family: where they lived, what they did, and all the rest of the questions his brother Ayman wondered about. Although Ayman was only two years younger than him, Abdel Samad thought his little brother still had a long way to go before he would grasp what life was about and learn how to cope with it. What was the point of rushing to find out about your family? He too knew nothing about his aunts and uncles. Even when it came to his father’s family, he only knew that his grandfather’s name was Abdel Samad—as the eldest son, he had been named after him. In any case, that grandfather was dead, just like his mother, and he had never seen him or gotten to know him. He knew his uncle who lived in the countryside and visited them every few years when he came to Cairo to go to the Mosque of Hussein or to sort out some official paperwork. All he remembered about him were the things he brought with him. These included “farmer’s cream,” as his father’s wife called it, and whose pleasantly sour taste he discovered when he stuck a finger in the jar and took a surreptitious taste. He knew that he also had an aunt in the countryside. He had never seen her, but had heard his father talking about her. He could not be bothered to ask about her. What was the use of having relatives here and there? What was in it for him when it seemed they all lived in the countryside? The only person of any use to you was yourself.

  His little brother often talked to him about these things, and Abdel Samad would say to him, “Concentrate on your studies and forget about these old wives’ tales. What have we got to do with aunts and uncles? Haven’t you heard the proverb that relations sting like scorpions? Everybody’s a scorpion, so look out for yourself and your own interests.” In Abdel Samad’s eyes, Ayman was still a child because, like a child, he was looking for emotional ties and worrying about things that had no place in real life.

  Abdel Samad was happy to have applied for his ID card. It meant a lot to him and marked a transition in his life. From now on he was an independent being, not dependent on anyone. An ID card was the symbol of this independence and proof of his being a man. Now he could work without having to get his father’s permission and, if he found a job that paid enough, he could leave the house and begin his own life.

  The subject of the brothers’ mother became the talk of the teachers at Ayman’s school after he went and told the math teacher, Miss Fatma, who was fond of him. In his innocence, which so annoyed Abdel Samad, he tol
d her how he had found out that his mother was not his real mother, that he had another mother who had died. The teachers talked about it all day and asked both Ayman and Abdel Samad about their mother and her story. During break time, Abdel Samad took his little brother to one side. He grabbed him by his shirtfront and said menacingly, “If you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll whack you till I break your jaw. What does any of this have to do with the teachers?”

  An argument developed and Ayman said to him, “Leave me alone. It’s nothing to do with you. I’m free to say what I want.” Their voices grew louder and they started to grapple with each other. Miss Fatma heard them through the staffroom window. She called out to them and told Abdel Samad off, saying, “Don’t you have any feelings?”

  He replied, “What have feelings got to do with it?”

  “I’m amazed at you and your brother. You’re as different as black and white. Haven’t you just found out after all these years that you have a mother who’s not the mother you thought you had?”

  “What use is that? She died years ago and that’s the end of it.”

  But for Ayman that was not the end of it. He did not broach the subject with his older brother again, but it kept him awake at night for long years to come.

  3 Dr. Ashraf

  Doha must have dozed off, for when the hostess came by with the menu, she woke up with a start. She was always startled when someone woke her up. She did not know why, though she had read once that it was a sign of repressed insecurity. But surely that could not apply to her. Her life was as safe and secure as was imaginable. Perhaps that deadening security was the bane of her life, making it dull and uninspiring.

  She glanced without interest at the menu, the words swimming before her rudely awakened eyes. Her neighbor looked at the menu and said to the hostess, “Great menu! Like a five-star restaurant!”

  The hostess went to open Doha’s table, but she signaled to her not to. The hostess raised her high, penciled eyebrows as she said, “Wouldn’t you like something to eat?”

  “No, thank you,” replied Doha.

  The hostess gave a forced look of disappointment and asked, “Don’t you like our food?” as if she had cooked it herself.

  Addressing the hostess and the man next to her, Doha answered, “I have some reading to get on with before we arrive in Rome.” She felt he was itching to start a conversation. Whenever strangers sat next to her she took refuge in reading, so as not to give them the chance to engage her in conversation.

  She opened her magazines and started to scan the pages without reading. The hostess was busy fixing her neighbor’s table, and then he was busy eating. She hoped that the accompanying silence would last until the end of the flight. But as soon as the hostess left, another steward came along. He was in semi-military uniform, like that worn by the officer her husband had spoken to on the phone. He introduced himself: “I am Captain Mohammed Muhyi, in charge of the cabin crew.” She replied with a curt hello. He continued, “It appears that Doha Hanem wants to get us all fired.” She did not understand and looked wordlessly at him. “Madame Doha al-Kenani, the wife of Medhat Bey al-Safti, that is. A VIP of the first order, and on whose account instructions were given in advance by the head of the board and the party secretariat.” What did this loudmouth want? “Turning down our food means questions being asked and perhaps an investigation that might end with us losing our jobs.” He smiled broadly, imagining he had said something clever or witty.

  She repeated what she had said to the hostess about reading and added, “Plus, I eat a particular diet, which I do not depart from.”

  The man replied sorrowfully, “We were not informed. If we had been, we would have made what you wanted.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t eat before three in any case.”

  The steward went sadly off, and the man next to her started a conversation that did not end until the plane landed at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. “What a strange coincidence that I should be sitting on a plane next to my political rival,” he said. She gave him a half-smile as she wondered what he meant.

  He asked her to let him see the newspaper she had taken from the hostess if she was done with it. She had not read it yet, but silently handed it to him in the hope that he would be absorbed in reading. But he went on to explain that he had given an interview to the paper and wanted to check whether they had faithfully printed what he said. She made no comment. He quickly leafed through the pages until he found the interview. “Here it is,” he said. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a large photograph of the man with his black beard, above the headline “Dr. Ashraf al-Zayni threatens the regime: ‘Meet the demands of the people or expect the floodgates to open.’”

  He was quiet for a few minutes as he read the piece, then exclaimed, “They’ve left out the most important line in the whole thing, and they call themselves the opposition press! Every paper has its own agenda. None of them cares about the public interest.” He looked at her as if expecting some response.

  She said, “Sorry, I don’t follow the opposition newspapers.”

  He smiled as he said, “Yes, of course, you only read the papers of the ruling party.”

  The cheek of it! She maintained her composure and said, “The truth is, I’ve got nothing to do with politics or parties, and I don’t read the papers.”

  He continued speaking normally: “Well, I’m fated to have to deal with all the newspapers.”

  She said to herself, “And I’m fated to have to deal with you, it seems.” She turned her face to the window to put an end to this ridiculous conversation between the wife of one of the most senior leaders in the ruling party and, it would seem, one of the most impudent leaders of the opposition. Still he went on: “If the problem was the press, it would be easy. But the truth of it is, the whole country is corrupt. Everyone has their own objectives, and no one cares about the public interest.”

  She was nearly out of patience. She said, “I told you I wasn’t interested in the press or politics.”

  He finished reading the paper with his interview and handed it back to her, saying, “Thank you for the paper you have not read. You should know that there isn’t anybody who isn’t interested in politics.” Then he got up to go to the toilet. She sighed in annoyance, praying this would be the last exchange between her and the passenger she was stuck with. It seemed that all politicians lacked decency and taste. The members of the ruling party she had met with her husband at official functions were not so different from this member of the opposition. For that reason, as far as she could, she avoided going to those functions, which made her feel dispirited. What did she care about some interview given by this dissident with his thick black beard and off-putting smell? What had he said in the interview? Political talk was always the same old stuff, whether from the government or the opposition. She reached out and picked up the paper. There was a mention of the interview in the middle of the front page with his picture and the line, “Strongman of the opposition, Dr. Ashraf al-Zayni, at his most dangerous.” What an exaggeration! If it was the most dangerous, the government would have fallen today after the paper came out. She turned the pages until the interview, which took up a whole page. She looked at the man’s photograph. Did he mean what he said? Her life with her husband had taught her that politics was fraud and pretense. Yet he had an innocent, childlike face in spite of his thick black beard. The beard was not Islamic, but closer to the European style of intellectuals and academics. In another photograph he was holding a pipe that gave him a serious academic air.

  His photographs were powerful and full of life. She remembered the smell with which he had announced himself when he came onboard perspiring heavily. The air-conditioning must have cooled him down. She looked up from the paper to find the subject of the photographs standing in front of her. “I’ve caught you red-handed! Didn’t I tell you that there wasn’t anyone not interested in politics? Aristotle said more than two thousand years ago that man is a political animal.” He had a
friendly smile on his face and it seemed as if he was talking to an old friend without inhibition.

  His words embarrassed her and she replied quickly, “I wasn’t interested in the interview for political reasons. I was just looking at the pictures.”

  He laughed as he retook his seat next to her. “Like children do?”

  She decided to reply with the same cheek: “I wasn’t actually contemplating the beauty of the pictures. I was trying to determine the personality of their subject.”

  But his impudence had no bounds. “So your interest was personal rather than political, then.”

  She blushed and wanted to say, “Who do you think you are that I should care?” But she checked her defiance again and said, “My interest really was personal. I wanted to know whether the leaders of the opposition, as they call them, are honest or are all liars.”

  “I’ll tell you frankly that most of them are liars, and in that respect are no different from the government’s men.”

  She looked directly at him for the first time and said, “And what kind are you?”

  He replied without reserve, “I make an effort to be honest with myself. I don’t say or do things I don’t believe in, which has caused me a lot of problems, even with political colleagues. But my aim isn’t winning the friendship of politicians, but achieving the goals that I work for. In fact, the masses are more mature than politicians. They can always tell who’s honest and who’s a liar.”

  She decided to use another weapon, sarcasm. “Do tell me what these aims you are working toward are. A cabinet post? Fame? Or jihad for the sake of Allah?”

  He replied, still with a sense of fun, “Why all of that? All I want is to embed a few principles, without which there won’t be democracy or popular rule.”