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

  Time went by, and one day she read in a women’s magazine a long piece about premature ejaculation. She realized she was not alone and that quite a lot of men suffered from the same problem. Some would not seek treatment, for that meant an admission of impotence. They were not impotent, though the condition could lead to impotence.

  In this way she found out that she had nothing to do with her husband’s problem. She hated him so much that she thought more than once about getting divorced, but her courage failed her. Divorce was something unacceptable to her family and to his. Besides, she would never have the courage to tell her family the reason for the divorce, and her family believed that avoiding a divorce was far more important than any reason she might have.

  She really did hate Medhat. How could he have gone through with a marriage when he knew he was not up to his conjugal responsibilities? Plus, why did he always make her feel like the guilty one? How was she supposed to know that her husband suffered from premature ejaculation? It seemed as if there was an element of chance to marriage. A wife would only find out how lucky she was after the wedding. Prior to it, was there any way for a woman or her family to know the sexual prowess of a prospective husband?

  Thoughts such as these preoccupied her for a long period, but she did not dare broach the subject with anyone, and she had no means to end the situation. She was officially married, but in reality she was an unmarried woman, or a divorcee, or a widow, and had to suffer in silence. A divorcee could remarry, like an unmarried woman or a widow, but Doha had to carry on as she was.

  She thought several times about talking to her brother. He was all the family she had left since their parents had died. Also, she would be comfortable talking to him, despite not having discussed such a subject with him before.

  In time, Doha started to get used to married life. She kept herself busy studying fashion design, in the hope that this would provide meaning and direction to a life without marriage, without children, without meaning.

  Her hatred for Medhat al-Safti turned into something worse—indifference. He was both there and not there. Like a caterpillar, she spun a chrysalis of fashion around herself but there was no hope of her one day emerging from the chrysalis as a butterfly with wings to soar.

  12 Black and White

  Abdel Samad managed to find a night job as a bouncer at a place on Pyramids Road. His friends who were regulars there had suggested it. He had noted down the address and gone to find it. It was a seedy-looking place right at the end of Pyramids Road. Above the entrance hung a sign bearing the name “Black and White Café,” and a picture of two small dogs, one black and one white, just like the label on bottles of whiskey. The café must have been named after the whiskey, although Abdel Samad discovered later that the café did not serve whiskey. It had not even applied for a liquor license. This was a very particular kind of café, one that made its money in another way, unfamiliar to Abdel Samad. A way he had never imagined existed.

  Inside the café, Abdel Samad stood out of the way as he waited to meet the manager who might hire him. He watched the youthful male clientele sitting quite at ease with young women. Some of the guys had their hands inside the tops of the girls sitting with them. To begin with, he thought they must be couples who had come to the place together to be able to canoodle as they pleased. But then he realized that all the girls worked as hostesses at the café and that the guys came on their own. He vaguely remembered what his friends had told him about their adventures here, but had not paid much attention at the time.

  The café only served juices and sodas to the guys, who paid ten or twenty pounds for one. The hostesses, wearing skimpy, revealing clothing, sat with the young men and let them grope them. A girl would take hold of a guy’s hand and place it on her breast or inside her clothing so he could touch her as he wished. Equally, the girls would put their hands between the customers’ legs and feel their cocks, either through their clothing or from the inside. This would continue until the guy’s desire was satisfied—inside the café. It was like a brothel, just one where no one took all their clothes off. If the vice squad or the tourist police should make an entrance, everyone would quickly adjust their clothing, and the police would find nothing more unusual than patrons having drinks around the tables.

  This devilish idea perfectly expressed the genius of the Egyptian mind, which can subvert any rule that restricts freedom and get its way despite any obstacle. Abdel Samad was impressed by it. He felt the place was safer than the neighboring nightclubs, which saw lots of fights and arrests—something he was not ready to risk in the run-up to his departure.

  The manager checked out Abdel Samad’s slight build and somewhat tanned complexion. He found nothing distinctive about him except the sharp and captivating look in his eyes. He had the eyes of a hawk that could spot its prey from miles away. The man said, “Yes? What do you want?”

  “I’ve come about the security job,” replied Abdel Samad.

  “Have you taken a look at yourself in the mirror?” shouted the manager. “Is that the body of a bouncer? The way you look wouldn’t deter anyone. In fact, it’s an open invitation to all the neighborhood thugs and toughs to have a go.” Abdel Samad did not expect to get the job, but the manager continued, “Have you got good eyesight?”

  “Twenty-twenty,” he replied.

  “Then you’ll stand at the entrance, and if you catch sight of anything resembling a cop, come straight in and tell me personally in less than three seconds. Any longer and you’ll be fired on the spot.”

  The manager looked at him as if he expected him to refuse the job. But Abdel Samad asked, “Is that all there is to it?”

  “That’s all you’re capable of.”

  Abdel Samad started going to his day job in the morning and spending most of the night at the café, where he was paid daily.

  During Abdel Samad’s last phone call with the Sheikha before he started work at the café, he told her that he did not have any problem paying the amount required. She said to him, “Well, we’ve nearly made our dream of getting married come true then.” She also told him that she was counting down the minutes and seconds until he arrived in Kuwait. In the same conversation she told him that the man who had prepared his work contract would soon be in touch regarding the five thousand pounds, and that as soon as the contract was signed, the man would give him his ticket.

  Abdel Samad did not call the Sheikha again until he had amassed the five thousand pounds. As soon as he had the whole amount, he went to the cybercafé. He sat down at a computer and opened his email. There were two messages from the Sheikha. The first said, “Where are you? I miss you. Ever since you lost your cell phone I’ve been missing your tender voice. I waited for you to send me an email last night, but you didn’t. Please reply. Please send me a phone number I can call you on because, as I told you, I can’t give you my number. My brother is living with me and won’t accept our relationship before we are married. I want you to hurry up getting here so we can marry and live together. Please pay the required amount to Hagg Abdel Mu'ti in Egypt as soon as you can and come to me. I’m burning with desire for you.”

  That email was followed by another from the day after. “I’m nearly out of my mind. Please don’t do this to me. My business manager came to see me today and suggested some deals. I didn’t understand one word of what he said. In the end I got cross and ended the meeting. Please come to me and take over my affairs. I’ve no idea how to run them and don’t understand what that business manager does. I hope you have met up with Hagg Abdel Mu'ti and sorted it out. I’m longing for you. For your warm embrace. For the heat of your body. Don’t leave me like this, I beg you.”

  Abdel Samad replied immediately. “My dearest darling, your emails have made me so happy. It’s as if they say what I feel. I’m also burning with desire for you. Everything is ready for me to come to you. I had a few things to sort out before leaving that kept me away from you. But it’s all for your sake. I’ll call Hagg Abdel Mu'ti tomo
rrow, or the day after at most, to sort everything out, and then the next day I’ll be with you, my love. After that you won’t need anyone else in your life. I’ll be your lover, your husband, and your business manager. I’ll make it so you won’t even need your brother. I want you to be entirely mine so we can be at home on our own. Just the two of us.”

  He did not know what else to add and decided to make do with what he had written. He clicked send and the email went off to the Sheikha. Abdel Samad was about to leave when the owner of the place stopped him. “What’s the story, Abdel Samad? This is the fourth time you’ve used the Net without paying.”

  “I told you I’d pay everything in one go.”

  “When?” asked the man.

  “I get paid on Thursday. Then I’ll pay you all I owe and more.”

  “I don’t want more. I just want you to pay what’s due.”

  “Thursday, then,” said Abdel Samad as he left the cybercafé.

  The man heaved a sigh. “Lord, give me patience,” he said.

  13 A Black Hole

  Doha did not meet Dr. Ashraf in Rome again. She spent two days wandering around the fashion shops and fending off calls from the ambassador and his wife. She turned off her phone, but the ambassador’s wife left a message at the hotel asking after her.

  She wanted to be alone, freed from all her obligations. Aimlessly, she wandered the streets of the city. Her mind was elsewhere and her legs took her from street to street. When she felt hungry, she had a bite to eat at the nearest restaurant or café, then resumed strolling. She seemed to be searching for something, but without knowing where to look.

  She reviewed her whole life, everything she had done since becoming self-aware. Her work made her happy and gave her life value. But for that very reason she could not understand the emptiness that had continued to grow inside her over the years. It was a massive black hole that sucked in everything around it.

  Here she was in the Villa Borghese Gardens. What had led her there? Sunset was approaching, but, on that spring day, the sunlight was still streaming through the leafy trees and casting an endless net of light and shadow over the green lawns of the gardens.

  Tired after a whole day’s walking, Doha sat down on the first bench she came across. The bench was in the shade, but surrounded by sunlight on both sides. The imminent sunset would shroud her in darkness, just as her life was shrouded in darkness. Her moments of happiness were as transient as the small spots of light that flitted from the shadows of the trees onto the green lawns.

  She had been in the gardens for no more than half an hour when the daylight around her vanished. The green of the grass turned black; the trees around her turned into frightening specters that shook their branches at her with every breath of wind or stood trembling in fear amid the darkness of the gardens, the darkness of the night, and the darkness of the black hole in her heart that threatened to swallow her whole existence.

  She left the gardens and, for the first time since her arrival in Rome, took a taxi. She returned to the hotel utterly exhausted. Her tiredness was as much physical as it was mental. She went straight up to her room and flopped onto the bed. She had no desire to eat dinner, no desire to call the ambassador’s wife in response to her message.

  When she woke up the next day, her head felt like an overinflated balloon, or a football that had been kicked around all night. She did not open the window that overlooked the fountain in order to take in the cool morning breeze as she had done every day before.

  A few minutes after getting up she lay back down on her bed. What to do today? Where to go? Involuntarily, she dozed off again and was woken after a few more minutes by the noise of the tourists who had started to arrive in the square.

  Where to go today? Should she call the ambassador’s wife? Definitely not. But she did not want to spend any more time wandering the streets. The streets had exhausted her and made the repressed pain surface. Instead, she would go to a museum.

  As soon as she stepped out onto the street, it started to drizzle. “How come the weather’s like this in the spring?” Doha asked the doorman.

  He replied with a smile: “It’s a spring shower, Madame. Or if you prefer, it’s the clouds shedding the last rains of winter to pave the way for clear summer skies.”

  “It’s no bother, anyway. I’m going to spend a day at the museum.”

  “You’ll find it will stop in a few minutes.”

  In the street, Doha listened to the raindrops as they fell softly on her hair and brushed her face. The sun was shining and sunbeams were breaking through the tiny crystalline droplets to form threads of light holding beads of water. Magical necklaces that only she could see.

  She decided to walk a little and enjoy the singular weather that combined the soft sunshine of spring with the pure raindrops of winter. She looked up at the sky in a desire to experience sun and rain together, and briefly forgot her troubles.

  At the National Museum of Rome, she wandered the galleries as she had wandered the streets the day before. She stopped in front of a large marble sculpture of Augustus Caesar from the first century AD. She contemplated it at length. It was her first time seeing it in real life, but it was familiar from her studies of the history of fashion, for it showed a fine example of a Roman toga. Over the ages, the statue had lost its arms. Below Caesar’s head there was only a toga. He might have been a mannequin just to display it.

  The toga was a hit in all the lands of the Roman Empire. In Egypt, however, the local dress, with its distinct and defined features, influenced Roman fashion in equal measure.

  Why did she not design some clothes inspired by ancient Egyptian styles? They had dazzled the world and outlived the fashions of Egypt’s conquerors, from the Persians to the Romans. The clothing of ancient Egypt was an essential part of any fashion course. John Galliano, former designer at Christian Dior, even put on a whole show a few years ago inspired by ancient Egyptian dress, which drew unprecedented international acclaim.

  Doha remembered her beautiful Egyptian butterfly with its stunning colors. For the first time, she was consumed by questions of identity in fashion. She had always evaded such questions before, in the belief that the road to fame meant imitating Western fashion. She felt her view of fashion was changing and, more than that, her view of life was in a period of transformation. Perhaps that was what made her aware of her emptiness, made her feel down and depressed. Yet, at the same time, she felt she was undergoing a metamorphosis. Transition was always hard on the self, weighing you down and plunging you into darkness until you emerged from the dark tunnel into the light and air.

  She slipped silently back to the hotel and did not venture out that evening. She made no calls; she had no desire to speak to anyone. She went back to The Butterflies of Egypt. She stared and stared at the tiger butterfly. There was another butterfly that also held her attention: all white and very small in comparison with the tiger, this was the cabbage white, which, the book said, was the most common butterfly in Egypt. But the tiger had stolen her mind, and whenever another butterfly caught her eye, she went back and found it was still the most beautiful and special.

  Doha felt she was that butterfly. How she longed to have wings to fly like the butterfly. Real wings, not an item of clothing alluding to the form of the butterfly that she would wear for a few hours, then take off and once again be wingless. She realized that a butterfly without wings is just like any other insect. But its wings elevated it to another level and crowned it the most beautiful, magical creature.

  Doha read that the tiger butterfly’s jet black body with its white spots had a bitter taste and was poisonous to any bird or animal that tried to eat it. Whenever she read something about this butterfly, she felt she was reading about herself. Didn’t some people believe in reincarnation? If it was true, perhaps she had been an Egyptian tiger butterfly in a past life. Or perhaps she was that butterfly right now in this life.

  14 A Ray of Light

  Hassan, as soon as he met
Ayman at the Community College, blurted out, “Where have you been, Ayman? I tried to call you all day yesterday, but your phone was always off. I started to get worried about you. If I hadn’t seen you today at college, I would have gone to your house to find out what had happened.”

  Ayman explained that he had lost his phone, that was all. Hassan continued immediately: “I’ve got some good news for you. My mother has found your mother’s name and wants to see you. Come and have dinner at my house after college.”

  Ayman could not believe his ears. A burst of light expanded before his eyes. “Please, let’s not wait,” he said to Hassan. “Let’s go to your house now. You don’t know what it’s like to be lost like me. I don’t sleep at night any more.”

  “But my mother won’t be back from work yet. She’s expecting you at dinnertime. Let’s finish the day, then go together. Mom told me to say that she’d made your favorite baked lentils.”

  Ayman endured his longest-ever day at college. Lecture after lecture droned on. He kept asking Hassan, “Didn’t the Hagga give you any details?” Each time, Hassan assured him that he knew only that she had found his mother’s name, and that he should stop thinking about it and focus on their lectures. Several times Ayman tried, but he understood nothing of what was being said. He might have been at another college listening to lectures on a strange subject.

  The final lecture of the day was on Arab society. “There is a unified Arab society, despite its geographic extent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf. It has one history and one culture, and consequently one identity. It follows that Egypt belongs to the Arab nation, and as the mother of that nation, it is one of the most important centers of Arab identity. The separation between Egypt and the Arab world is a separation between members of one family, the separation of children from their mother.”