I Think of You: Stories (14 page)

for Nihad Gad

I
think of you often. I think of you often, and I remember. I remember, for instance, your old nanny coming into your room, the edges of her
tarha
caught between her teeth to hide half her face. Her eyes, filmed with cataracts, were so dim she must have been seeing you as though through a mist. I remember your husband turning from the phone, and the small gesture of your hand that stilled the impatient words on his lips. The old woman muttered indistinctly as she moved toward you, her arm describing cramped, arthritic circles with the smoking incense burner. Through the window, the darkness of the Cairo night was so intense, it seemed that if I reached out my hand I would touch black velvet.

Now the amber incense pervades this room, and as my eyes track the sweet cloud drifting behind the Baluchi cleaning woman, I see you once again sitting up in bed, splendid, your head wrapped in a turban of emerald silk. From the sofa I watched you: lit by a discreet lamp, your bed on a raised dais, a huge gray and white fur rug thrown over the bedclothes. In my light dress my body was warm with new life, but around your shoulders you drew a dark red woolen cloak and the fingers that held it to your breast were longer, more tapering than I had remembered, although still tipped in defiant scarlet.

Barbarian Queen, I thought then, Medieval Matriarch. Now, beached in this strange country, I wonder what these women among whom I find myself would make of you. Five women, each in a bed. They are dressed in grays and browns, garments fashioned so that underneath them they are all identical, solid bulk. Their hair is closely wrapped in dense black cloth, and more black cloth is folded back on top of their heads ready to veil their faces at a second’s notice. My white cotton nightdress, smocked, buttoned to my throat, wide-sleeved with a frilled cuff touching the backs of my hands, feels light, revealing, beside the dark layers that they wear. My hair is uncovered and loose. I pull it back and twist it into a halfhearted braid and I feel the movement of my arms making my breasts shift under the cotton. I have nothing with which to secure my hair.

Your head was wrapped in emerald silk. The front still showed a narrow black hairline, but at the back, a thin, smoky tendril had escaped. Your son, fifteen years old, came in and
wrinkled his nose at the smell of incense. Your old nanny slowly swung the burner into the corners of the room. Flat on the floor at the foot of your bed your dog lay; he flicked his tail and watched me with sad, uninterested eyes. Your son, before he left the room, climbed the dais to kiss you. Elevated, theatrical, your bed was worthy of Cleopatra; worthy of nights, afternoons, mornings of kingly caresses. And finally, of this.

I push my bare feet out from under the sheet and lower them from the bed. The perfect toenails I had once more achieved—twisting, bending, maneuvering around my now-enormous belly—are here ten small red badges of shame. And as my feet touch the floor, the nightdress slipping to reveal two ankles—swollen, but still ankles—the door of the ward swings open, a warning cough is heard, and a man walks in. Four hands fly up to four heads, four veils drop over four faces, and all sounds cease. Heavily I stand and reach for the curtains as the man, with lowered eyes, walks to the fifth bed and sits by his wife. I am not supposed to move, not supposed to move at all. But I walk slowly around my bed, drawing the green and yellow curtains, plucking at their edges, placing them carefully one over the other to complete my isolation. Awkwardly I climb again into the bed. I lie flat on my back and hold the sheet to my chin. I feel the tears well into my eyes and let them trickle coldly down my temples and into my hair. I do not want to be here.

Your hands were so thin and fine, a network of blue veins showed through the skin. Your eyebrows were carefully shaped: winged high above your deep black eyes. Your cheekbones

(oh, how I always coveted your cheekbones) stood out now even more. Your mouth remained the same: wide and strong, the full lower lip tensing as you pulled your cloak more closely around you. Your mother, burdened by years and by her fear for you, stood for a moment in the doorway. Your husband lit another cigarette. You looked at the evening paper and talked animatedly about a review. I sat on the sofa and wondered how you could. But on the other hand, how else could you have been?

The Filipina nurse whisks the curtains apart and stands smiling between them. “You have to have some air. You will be too hot,” she says, and briskly walks around the bed pulling them wide open. The man by the fifth bed has gone and the women are talking in low voices. The nurse picks up my wrist and stares at her watch. Then she puts my wrist down and shakes out a thermometer. As she puts the thermometer into my mouth: “You must not cry,” she says on a melodious, rising note. Why you are crying? Yo u will be all right.”

Do you cry, my dear? I’ve never seen you cry. And yet I think I can hear the great, wrenching sobs—late, late in the night, when all the house is asleep.

One of the women gets out of her bed and walks around to the sink just outside my open curtains and hawks and spits, then runs the tap for a moment. She takes the two steps to my bedside and stands looking down at me. “Do not weep,” she says.

I nod. So what if she spits into the sink? She didn’t spit on me.

“Why do you weep?” she says.

I shrug feebly. If I open my mouth I shall howl.

“You do not speak Arabic?” she says.

“Yes, I speak,” I say, but my voice comes out in a shaky whisper. I cannot make her out; with the shapeless smock and the wrapped head she could be anything from eighteen to forty-five. “Carrying, yes?” she says.

Again I nod.

“What is wrong with you?” she says.

I whisper, “High blood pressure.”

“All things are in the hand of God,” she says, and I nod. “Shall I raise your bed a bit?” she says. “You cannot be comfortable like this.”

I shake my head; I do not want to be comfortable. But she cranks the bed up anyway so that my shoulders and head are raised up a little. She is being kind. Curious, naturally, but kind too. But I do not want to be comfortable. I do not want anything except not to be here.

I want to be with my daughter. Over the phone she asks, “Why do we have to be separated like this?” She is five years old and chooses her words with care and I want to be with her, treading water in the middle of a cool swimming pool, my circling arms breaking up the sun’s reflection into patterns that form and re-form while she swims from me to the edge and from the edge to me again. I want to hold her foot as she sleeps—on her back, arms and legs flung out wide—and in the dim light, watch her eyes move under the delicate, slightly purple lids and wonder what it is she dreams of.

Standing at your window, I watched your driver and your old doorman kneel together inside your gate for evening prayers. I was sure they prayed also for you. In the street, a young couple loitered arm in arm in the crisp spring air and stared into a shop front glittering with fancy shoes. Beyond them, I could see the glow of Cinéma Roxy and I could almost feel the general hum as the open-air cafés of Heliopolis filled up for the evening. Your husband came up to the bed and looked at your drip. From the sitting room next door came the hum of conversation punctuated by the periodic click of the telephone followed by a chime as someone hung up and tried yet another number.

The Filipina nurse comes back with a young man in a white coat. The woman standing over me retreats to her bed. The doctor’s stethoscope dangles close to my face. He says: “You must not cry, madam, it is not good for you.” He speaks with a Syrian accent, his voice kind, and his eyes are a light hazel but too bright. I feel my mouth shape itself into a polite smile, and my hand lying by my side makes a slight gesture as though to say it’s nothing.

“You must not be afraid,” he says again. “All things are in the hand of God.”

I nod and close my eyes briefly. I do not trust myself to speak. He stands and looks at me. His mouth smiles and his eyes burn. I wish I could make him less uncomfortable. I move my hand again.

My neighbor in the compound said, “You can have a crisis at any minute. If you’re not in the hospital you’ll die.”

I said, “If I feel a crisis coming, I’ll run to you for help.”

“You won’t be able to run.”

“I’ll walk then.”

“It’s not a joke,” she said. “You have to go into the hospital.”

“How can I go into the hospital?” I ask. “The exams are this week, I have to be with my students.”

“You don’t understand,” she says. “I’m telling you: you’ll die.” In the end she brought me in for a checkup, and when they kept me, she took my daughter home with her. She looks after her and they phone me twice a day. When all is said and done, my daughter is the reason I would prefer to stay alive. She and this other, uncelebrated child inside me, clinging so tenaciously to life.

When your husband and the doctor left the room and we were alone, I climbed the two steps to your bed and picked up the hot-water bottle from where it lay on the fur rug beside you and said, “Wouldn’t it be better under the cover?” I lifted the rug and the quilt and the blanket and the sheet and snuggled the bottle against you and covered you again. I put my hand on your shoulder and said, “Would you like me to rub your back?” And you sighed, “Oh my dear, I wish you would.” I sat behind you. And when you allowed yourself to slump on to your side your spine touched my rounded belly and I felt the child inside me kick. I still don’t know if you felt it too. I rubbed your back. Gently, gently with my right hand, my left elbow resting on your pillow, my left hand on your shoulder. It comforted me so, I could have rubbed for hours.

The doctor with the burning eyes hurries back carrying a hypodermic. He says, “Like this you are making your blood
pressure go up. I will give you some Valium. Could you please roll up your sleeve?”

With my right hand I roll up my left sleeve.

The nurse says, “You want I do this?”

But he does not answer and eases the needle into my arm. The Valium hurts as it enters the muscle. He pulls out the needle and the nurse starts rubbing the tiny puncture with an antiseptic wipe.

“You will sleep now,” he says, and his mouth smiles.

My body is in pieces, each piece too heavy for me to support. My hands are grotesque pads, the now-ringless fingers so stiff I wonder at the time when moving them required no conscious thought. The wrists where I used to watch the shadowy pulse throb under transparent skin are now dense, opaque flesh. If I stretch out my arms and hang them through the rails at the sides of the bed they are—for a while—not uncomfortable. The left arm hurts and I have to be careful with it or the drip tubes will get tangled and blocked. My breasts are so heavy they drag at the skin of my chest. I have to wear a bra pulled high and tight. It cuts into my ribs and presses on my lungs. Every few minutes I have to disengage my right hand and lift the elastic and hold it away from me so that I can breathe. When I hang my arm back on the railing, the relief of not having to support it rushes through my shoulder and my chest. What will they think when they come in and find me like this: a suffering figure, arms stretched out to the sides? Or
do Christian images—even this one—not exist for them at all? They are probably not into images. Our religion is a religion of the Word, not of the Image. I close my eyes. Relax, they say. Relax, worrying is not good for you.

I am alone and this room is not unpleasant. There are no oranges or browns. The walls and bedclothes are white. There is a gray incoming-calls-only telephone by my bed and my mother, father, family call me from Cairo and my husband calls from London. There is a gray leather armchair. There is a television on a shelf in the corner; between it and the window there is a bilingual notice. The English reads: “Under no circumstance you must be alone with male doctor. Call sister urgently if male doctor approaches you for examination.” I think this is funny and copy it laboriously into my notepad. I am alone and so, unobserved, I can hold on to what is left of me. Next to the notice I have pinned up the painting of a big, bright butterfly my daughter brought me on her first visit. I keep my students’ exam papers next to me and correct them when I can.

In the morning the nurses detach me from the drip and I let myself carefully off the bed. I walk slowly across the room and into the bathroom. I pee with what precision I can into the waiting jug and cover it and replace it on the shelf. Although this is no longer the body I know, I wash it meticulously, spray it with eau de toilette, and dab moisturizing lotion on the bits I can reach. I brush my hair and do what I can with my face: I draw a black pencil along the puffy eyelids, apply some mascara and lip gloss. I put a bed jacket on over my nightdress. Back in the room, the bed has been made
and the nurse helps me into it. She twitters that I should not get up, that I should use a bedpan, that I should let her wash me with a flannel. I smile politely and say nothing. She is very clean and neat with her white linen uniform and her small features and glossy black hair pulled back in a ponytail. She measures my blood pressure, my temperature, and my pulse rate, and notes it all down. She reattaches my drip and I lie back weak and nauseated but ready with my face, my bed jacket, my notepads and exam papers for the doctors’ morning rounds.

They sweep into the room and position themselves at the foot of the bed. The consultant, majestic in his white robes and black and gold
abaya
stands center stage. The nurse hands him the notes and stands back. He looks at them and, slightly behind him, the Indian registrar with the slicked-back hair and a tightly shuttered face looks at them too. There is another doctor, Sudanese: Othello with a grieving face and a limp and an ebony cane. Three local house doctors stand farther back. They are women and all I can see of them is their dark eyes through the slits of their black veils.

When they go, the nurse asks if my arm is stiff. She whispers that it was wrong of the doctor to put the Valium in my arm. “It should be here,” she says, patting my hip, “but he was afraid to ask you. The muscle in the arm is not so big.”