And the World Changed (20 page)

Ahmad's symbolic use of the Sphinx both as an ancient stone artifact and as the embodiment of an enigma and a mystery also turns Sam's notion of himself and Happy Dossa on its head.

• • •

“Here, let me help you with that, Sam! You look as though you're in pain!” she smiled, as she leaped up swiftly, standing on tiptoe to make it up to his six-foot-two as she held up his coat for him. Bending like a clumsy fledgeling giraffe he winced, turning and twisting his body imperceptibly to avoid the sharp twinges of pain in his shoulder and, slipping in his left arm first, violating age-old habit as a concession to pain.

It had been an afternoon of concessions. A cool, superficial smile curled his unwilling lips. Only a part of him was grateful.

“Thanks,” he muttered, more embarrassed than touched by this extravagant courtesy from a woman much younger than him, who had been battling with him moments ago as if they were sworn enemies. And that had been her stance in all the academic subcommittee meetings that year, through several long drawn-out fractious afternoons.

Hypocritical . . . um . . . bitch! His mind gave up the search
for a less vicious epithet. She had exhausted him with her crab tenacity . . . and a level of aplomb quite alarming in someone that young. She wasn't an ally. Never conceded an inch, wasn't afraid of taking on his academic might, didn't really care for him as a person nor respect what he stood for as a professional. He resented having to thank her now for this pointless gesture. Quite pointless! Everything that happened between them at meetings confirmed that their differences could never be reconciled; they stood on either bank of an endless Nile, divided by its length and breadth, unable to hear each other or even to see each other's faces clearly.

As he walked out of the meeting the Nile foamed angrily in his imagination, flowing as always at the center of his professional life. Egypt had been his field as a historian but also his love, his passion, his obsession, he reminded himself. He was the one who had formulated the theoretical framework for the course when the department (or more accurately, the university) had needed the injection of a glamorous new package on the prospectus to attract more students.

A course spanning several disciplines—art and sociology, history and literature—a broad sweep but one that would nevertheless carry within it, safely and securely, the kernel of Egyptian philosophy, a worldview well worth preserving and remembering. It took all his patience and self-control to now have to defend each choice, argue for every recommendation on the syllabus against this . . . this . . . woman, a nobody with her degree in politics from some dismal northern polytechnic. It was painfully obvious that she was driven by only one obsession, a simplistic sort of feminism which she flaunted tirelessly and practiced, in the main, through questioning the givens. Everything, always.

The subtle undertone of the questioning inevitably framed him as the prime suspect with a sinister motive behind each choice. More and more clearly he saw her strategy. She was the
crazy girl from
Oleanna
with all her hang-ups and the same parasitic vulnerabilities . . . and he was fast becoming her victim, the professor rendered powerless by the power of the students' union! Here was a parallel too real to ignore.

But the very next moment he was struggling to allay his own fears. Mustn't dramatize. That was only a play, the girl was crazy. This young woman is not. On the contrary, she is firmly rooted, seems reasonable, and is much too strong to crumble quite like that. He tried to recall her face as he came out of the campus—once again perturbed by the fact that he could never picture her in his imagination when she was not there, even though he had observed her closely, for minutes together sometimes, while she argued against him with great lucidity and passion. An unusual failure for someone with a visual memory as sharp as his.

What is it about her eyes that is so striking? They're strange . . . green, or perhaps hazel? Wrong somehow, with that skin color. Icy, disturbing, and yet, tantalizingly familiar. Unlike her voice, which is definitely annoying, a touch metallic, almost alien. Sometimes modulated to persuade rationally; at other times, vibrant with the tinsel glint of passion. Whinge, whinge, whinge! God, what a moaner! It has an edgy, raspy feel to it, a determination to accentuate their differences, to stay discrete, complete with its hint of . . . a . . . foreign accent. Funny how the educated Asian voice can become a double-edged weapon, insinuating a polite reasonableness as if it were trying to negotiate approval by attempting the utmost in correct pronunciation, even as it firmly draws a magic circle around itself, defining the boundaries of how far vowels might bend and to what degree consonants may unroll.

He wondered about her background once again. . . . Whenever people commented on her unusual name (whoever heard a name like that: Ms. Happy Dossa?) she would waffle on about it for fifteen minutes nonstop, without actually revealing anything at all about herself. If someone asked her more directly about
her antecedents she responded playfully, “Well, you know . . . Happy, because that's what I always am and always have been, a happy sort, and Dossa, because I used to be such a dosser!”

But Sam Jennings had come to his own conclusions about her. He decided that she was one of Idi Amin's Asians. She had the same sallow coloring and friendly extrovert manner which he associated with the Patels from their own corner shop. A kind of dogged tenacity fought through the air of long-suffering endurance and fatigue which always hung over the shop and around them. She had that quality about her, too. Certainly there was more energy about Happy, even more anger, perhaps.

Bloody . . . he thought, bloody . . . bloody . . . women! He was surprised at the venom coiled around the smoke that rose from an early cigarette cocked between his lips to shake off the tension as he walked down the corridor. Suddenly it struck him that it was not her Indian-ness that had battled with him and failed to capitulate that afternoon, but her femaleness. She had not been playing the race card today. Gender was the issue. Yes, bloody women.

He had promised Penny he would try to be home early that afternoon to see to the children's meal so she could get away for her school's open day. Now he would be late. “As always!” she might add if she had been someone else, but she wouldn't. He could already see her shrug of resignation, reproach withheld, in the face of his preemptive murmured apologies. He felt a sudden gush of warmth for her, a pride in the generosity of spirit that emanated from her lovely face with its fine bone structure, the flawless white of her complexion, the elegant tilt of her head. Thank goodness for Penny, for women like her!

Fortunately, the children alleviated the testiness of the moment with their gleeful demands for a bedtime story. He stacked the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and led them upstairs, trying to underscore a mental note to himself about remembering to do them later, before his evening's quota of television and alcohol.

Mr. Green was making a nuisance of himself, climbing onto the cabinets, jumping on and off beds, scratching the furniture and rugs, screeching in his ugly grating voice. Each mia-ao-oow stretched across the room like a howl of bereavement. He certainly knew how to annoy. For the hundredth time Sam regretted the choice of a pedigree cat; he had a family tree longer than their own, bought from the most reputable breeders specializing in the Siamese variety. Mr. Green was as wantonly capricious as any blue-blooded human was capable of being.

“Hasn't he been fed?” he asked Kirsty irritably.

“He didn't fancy canned food today, and Mummy said not to give him any of the roast chicken 'cause it spoils him.”

“Crafty devil,” Sam tried to ignore his tantrum.

Mr. Green kept up his annoying whine weaving his way between vases, books, and Samuel Jennings's much-prized collection of Egyptian bronze and porcelain curios and replicas, with a restless elegance typical of his kind. His eyes greener than ever in his pointed face, his spare coat bristling with righteous protest. He looked at him, beige-into-burnished-gold . . . burnished gold . . . the phrase resonated with an Egyptian memory . . . and he decided to take on Mr. Green.

“Well, we'll see who gives in first,” Sam said to Kirsty, firmly turning his back on the creature he had “spoilt rotten” according to Penny. The memory of that afternoon's defeat lined his resolve with steel now. “I'll show him who's the boss here. And I'll show her too, Ms. Dossa, wherever she comes from. Show her next time that I can be determined, too.” His thoughts returned to the meeting again.

“Come on, Dad! What happened next?” Kirsty drew him back into the present.

“Sorry, darling! Where was I? Oh, yes . . .” he returned to the page in a lazy drawl and Kirsty lay back on the pillow to summon up the pictures in her head as his voice droned on:

“. . . Then Thoth cast a spell over the palace so that every living thing slumbered. Only the Pharaoh, King Thutmose
himself, seemed to be awake . . . and yet it seemed that it was only his body which did not sleep. For, as if he were already dead, his three spiritual parts: The
Bai
or soul; the
Ka
or double; and the
Khou
or spirit left his body, and gathered about it where it lay on the royal bed as they would in the days to come. . . .”

It was their favorite. They called it the Egyptian Sleeping Beauty story. Sebastian was dozing already. Kirsty's eyes grew heavy well before the end. It was as if Amen-Ra himself had walked through the house to lull all living creatures in it by some mysterious process. Even Mr. Green had quietened and as Sam's eyes drooped, the dog-eared paperback slipped down to his chest.

He stood in the desert gazing at the pyramids, his neck bent back painfully as far as it would go, his eyes blinded by the glaring sun, treacherous silver sands shimmering around him. Against the twinkling sand, tucked among the gigantic pyramids of polished stone, he could see a majestic sphinx roughly hewn out of yellow sandstone. His eyes were riveted to the image: short, straight hair parted in the middle, unblinking stone eyes, strangely green, yet familiar . . . and dark full lips. He drew closer to the creature. Sand coated his polished black shoes with an abrasive film as he inched forward, ploughing heavily through the troughs and furrows that sucked him in, right up beside her stone paws spread out flat in steady defiance. As he drew closer his head leveled with hers, his chin jerked up, and his eyes locked into the mystery of the challenge. A challenge! His heart beat faster.

Tentative fingers shot out to touch the sphinx's face, but the stone felt rough and grainy, hot in the midday sun. His fingers trailed down along the yellowing stone cheek, the hair, and then stopped tremulously on the curve of her left breast. Miraculously, stone waxed into flesh, yielding, warm and soft to his touch. A vein throbbed beneath his ring finger, startling him out of his dream. He woke suddenly and completely and sat
upright in one movement, sucking in the fine thread of spittle trickling down the corner of his lower lip.

He looked at the children peacefully asleep, at Mr. Green in a pose of resigned slumber on the window sill, and rose with a sigh, feeling vaguely uneasy about the tactile quality of his dream, its irritating disregard for historical reality. A sphinx with a recognizable twentieth-century face and real breasts! As mad as the goon show! The memory of the sexual innuendo embarrassed and discomfited him. It was unworthy of him—it made him feel unprofessional and low in a way only she knew how to: Ms. Happy Dossa from nowhere special, with her crystal green eyes and her metallic voice.

Happy stood near the entrance to the Redgrave Theater, straining her eyes to see what exactly was going on inside. A pall of darkness hung over the entire auditorium, with the exception of the tiny stage, faintly lit with a yellowish glow. The theater was far from being full but the energy of the crowd ballooned with a manic intensity in the shadows, threatening to erupt into the glare-filled corridors outside. She tried to concentrate on what was being said—she had promised the Dean a detailed report back. The speaker was a short man with soft rubbery cheeks, dark curly hair, possibly a young Greek-Cypriot. She noticed the admirable ease with which he commanded and held their attention.

“Enough is enough! We'll not stand by and allow the cancer of fascism to spread once again. If evil forces are allowed to grow unchecked, they mushroom and refuse to be contained again. If the university continues its policy of appeasement and indulgence in the name of free speech then we have no choice but to fight with whatever weapons we can muster. We must take action. The publication of
The Green Dragon
cannot be allowed to continue!” Forceful thumps punctuated his last sentence. Cheers and warm applause followed.

He took a deep breath and raised his right arm, “Those
among the staff who insist on defending the right of the Green Dragon Club to organize and publish a paper as obnoxious and offensive as this take on a villainous role. They are helping to nurture hatred and treachery in the guise of virtue. Those who shield fascism cannot be trusted. We must regard them as our enemies!” More cheers and cries of joyous approval.

“Friends and comrades, we need your support and encouragement. Our cause is just.
The Green Dragon
must die. As many of you may know, two of our office bearers have been on hunger strike for the past week. A big hand for both of them. Peter Gold and Youseff al Saki are heroes. They're determined to pursue this action until all our demands are met. They're willing to court death to ensure the success of our campaign. The Green Dragon Club must be closed down and its organizers expelled from this campus and banned for a minimum period of five years!