Nekropolis (17 page)

My daughter, Tariam, cries when I leave to go to see Hariba. She loves my mother, but she loves to go out with me and she hates it when I leave her behind. Her red furious face is the last thing I see, and I’m really glad to get out of the house.

Hariba always wanted to be a saint. It’s been her downfall, I think. We were best friends, I suppose we’re still best friends, so I know her better than anyone. I don’t mean that she wanted to be a religious saint, although she was always pretty religious, like her mother. She wanted to be right. She wanted to be with
qi’aida,
the invisible rule. I just want something other than the Nekropolis. I hate the Nekropolis. Alem, my husband, is looking for a flat in the part of town called Debbaghin. We haven’t found one that we like that we can afford. But my aunt Chama lived there for a while before her husband divorced her and she says we will. It just takes time.

The Nekropolis is all right, it’s where I grew up, but I want Tariam to grow up in a place that’s safer.

I’m not particularly thinking about anything when I see the
harni
standing there, at the end of my street. For a second I assume he’s a beggar, then I realize who it is. He sees me and comes toward me. My blood just freezes, I’m so frightened. I know he’s not going to do anything. The three times I’ve met him before he was nice. Today he has this hangdog way, as if he expects to be kicked.

“Ayesha?” he says.

I can’t think of what to say or do, so I say, “What do you want?”

“Is Hariba all right?” he says.

“Hariba is fine,” I say.

“Her mother said she was dead.”

The
harni
talked to Hariba’s mother? I love Hariba’s mother dearly, she’s almost a second mother to me, but she’s as old-fashioned as they come. I can’t imagine her with the
harni
.

“Hariba’s not dead,” I say. “She’s getting better, I think.”

His face opens up with relief and I feel sorry for him. “I have to go to work,” he says, “but can I talk to you a little, tomorrow? Here?”

“No!” I say. He’s the cause of all this. Where we’re standing, no one in the little shop across the street can see us, thank Allah. Old Miss Nessa is a terrible gossip.

“Please,” he says. “I just want to know if she’s all right.”

I go around him and walk as fast as I can. I’m afraid to look back. I almost expect him to put his hand on my shoulder, but of course he doesn’t. When I finally can’t stand it anymore and look back, he’s still standing there.

“I’ll be here tomorrow!” he calls after me. On the street. I’m so embarrassed I pretend he isn’t talking to me and keep walking.

It’s halfway across the Nekropolis to Hariba’s Aunt Zehra. Hariba’s Aunt Zehra is like my own aunt, we spent so much time there when we were growing up. Everybody watched Hariba and her sister and brothers because their father was dead and her mother had to work. For the first few minutes, my face is burning from meeting the
harni
. But then the walk helps me calm down, and my new sandals hurt where the strap rubs across my heel, which is a small and petty thing to think about compared to Hariba’s troubles, but it still hurts. My mother’s always comparing hurts that way. If I said I was sad because we were poor, she’d say, “But think how lucky you are that you have a roof over your head, not like the old man under the bridge who doesn’t have any place to go.” I was a married woman when I finally thought of something to say back: “Just because some man’s worse off than me doesn’t mean that I’m not poor, and I’m certainly not going to be happy about it.” I never have the nerve to say it to my mother, though. I just look at my husband, Alem, who knows what I’m thinking, and he tries not to laugh.

Zehra’s neighbors are an old couple. The old man is sitting outside, watching the world go by. He nods at me. I wonder what he thinks of Hariba.

Hariba’s mother is sitting with Hariba. She doesn’t look so good, Hariba’s troubles have made her face pull in and down. Even when Fhassin was in trouble, she didn’t change, she was always little and neither young nor old, but now she’s lined and tired. What could the
harni
have said to her? Did she even know what he was? Well, if she told him that Hariba was dead, then she did know who he was, and I probably shouldn’t have told him it wasn’t true.

She gets up when I come in. “I have to go and see to Nabil,” Hariba’s mother says. “Now that you’re here, I’ll go on home.” Nabil never left home, and Hariba’s mother takes care of him as if he were still a boy.

Hariba’s feverish. She opens her eyes and smiles at me. “Hi, sweetie,” I say. I can’t tell her about meeting the
harni
. “Tariam drew a picture for you.”

She holds it in her trembling hand. “Give her a kiss for me,” she says.

I think Hariba regrets giving up children the most. It’s not as if being jessed means she can’t have children, but who would marry her? Unless she could buy back her bond, and Hariba always said she was saving her money to have a little when she was old.

“Have you seen Akhmim?” she whispers.

I’m so startled I don’t know what to say. How could she know?

“Ayesha,” she whispers, looking to make sure Zehra’s niece can’t hear us. “I need to see him.”

“He got you into trouble,” I say.

“No, no, no,” she says. “It’s not like that. Can you find him? Have you seen him?”

I shake my head, lying.

“Please, please. I need to see him.”

“Zehra would never let him in here,” I say.

She sighs and surrenders, closing her eyes. After a moment I realize she’s crying.

“Oh, honey,” I say.

“I’m so scared,” she says. “Ayesha,” she says, “you’re the only one I can trust.”

I’m scared, too.

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The next day he’s there, waiting, of course. It’s a place where beggars sit, but his clothes are too clean and he looks too nice to be a beggar.

Mrs. Ibraham is out on the street behind me. I walk past him, ignoring him. He looks terribly sad. At least he has the decency not to say anything to me with someone watching.

Can
harni
be sad? They’re like AI, and some AI is sad and some isn’t. Some doesn’t have emotions like us at all, even if people like my mother don’t believe it. I don’t know anything about
harni,
though.

I look over my shoulder.

“Ayesha,” he says.

If it’s an act, or programming, it’s very good. But I keep walking. If my little girl, Tariam, comes out to play, will he remember she’s mine? Tariam would not know to be careful. But she doesn’t come to the end of the street, my mother will keep an eye on her. Tariam would like the
harni,
but she is shy and he’s a strange man. I can’t believe he’d take her.

Although he took Hariba. But not like that. Hariba is a grown woman. He didn’t just pick her up and walk away with her.

I could turn around and tell my mother to keep Tariam inside all afternoon, but I’d have to walk back past him.

I stop at a shop and buy a card phone. Calls are cheap, only a bit of silver. I call the shop near home-my mother always has a card phone around in case of an emergency, but she never remembers to put her number in so no one can call her. “Addi, sir,” I say to the shopkeeper, “it’s Ayesha, Zeinab’s daughter.”

When we were children, we were all in awe of Addi, who was so serious when we bought chocolate from him. But he’s just a poor man with a tiny shop.

“Yes, miss?” he says. “Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing wrong, Addi, sir,” I say, “but would you send a boy with a message to my mother? I saw some older boys I didn’t know at the end of the street and they looked a little rough, so could she keep Tariam inside this afternoon?”

He’ll send a boy to my mother. I could have told him I saw the
harni,
to call the police, but I didn’t. What if Hariba found out? And the
harni
looks so sad.

I’m soft-hearted. My mother, who used to visit family on the farm, says I’d starve to death if I had to butcher my own food and she’s probably right.

Hariba is better. She’s sitting up again. The first time I came to sit with her she was so sick and there wasn’t anything I could do. I kept asking her if she wanted a cool cloth, some tea, anything. I wanted to do something. There was nothing to be done, and I suppose I was one more problem for her, with my wanting. I told my mother I wouldn’t go back.

She said I most certainly would, that Hariba was my oldest friend. I said I didn’t know what to do.

“You don’t do anything,” she said. “You are just there.”

So I tried to just be there. But seeing Hariba sitting up is wonderful.

Zehra and Hariba’s mother are arguing about the doctor. “He didn’t do anything,” Zehra says.

“She’s getting better,” Hariba’s mother says.

“That’s because someone’s taking care of her,” Zehra says. “That horse doctor was a crook.”

“The patches helped,” Hariba’s mother says.

“Horse patches,” Zehra says.

“I want to sit outside, in the sun,” Hariba whispers. “Help me.”

She puts her bony arms around my neck and I pull her up. She leans against me and totters outside to sit in the doorway on her sharp-boned bottom. “You need a cushion,” I say. She gets bruises.

“It will get dusty.”

“I’ll dust it off,” I say, and get a cushion. “Have they been arguing all day?”

“All day,” she sighs. “Oh, Ayesha, I forgot my tea.”

I fetch it for her. Today Zehra’s old neighbor is either inside or gone to a café, and except for some children playing, the street is quiet.

“I make you run around like a servant,” she says.

“It’s about time someone waited on you,” I say. “You’ve waited on other people for years.”

“Oh, I didn’t wait on people,” she says. “I cleaned and kept accounts.”

Which didn’t sound any better to me. “I hate cleaning.”

“It’s not so bad,” she says. “Cleaning other people’s dirt is not like cleaning your own. I don’t know why. And you get to snoop.” She laughs at my expression. “I used to clean closets, hampers, drawers, everything. I knew everything about the mistress.”

“Like what?” I say.

“Like that she has to shave under her chin. And she’s worried about having a fat neck, she has this special antifat cream she uses, as if it ever did any good. And Mbarek-salah has this, um, device, that he can put his, you know, his thing in.”

“What are you talking about?”

Hariba looks around to make sure none of the children are in earshot. “It’s from outside of the country, you know.” I know. It’s forbidden. “It’s sort of like a plastic bag,” she says, “only it’s more like one of those floats children use when they can’t swim? And it’s shaped like a woman’s, well, you know.”

I know, but I can’t imagine it.

“It’s not filled with air, it’s filled with this, um, gel,” Hariba says. “So it’s more like a real woman. And when you turn it on, it sort of ripples, you know?”

I can’t help laughing.

“Really,” she says, laughing, too. “And it gets warm and it’s like rippling, and he sticks his, um-”

“I know what you mean,” I say, nearly helpless with laughter.

“Well, you can’t blame the poor guy, it’s not like he ever got anything out of the mistress.”

“You saw this thing? You cleaned for Mbarek-salah? I thought you were over on the women’s side.”

“One of the men on the men’s side was having an affair with one of the girls in the kitchen, and she told us about it. She got him to show it to her.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “No one would do that.”

“It’s true,” she insisted. “And think about it, it’s the perfect wife.”

I hold my hands up to my hot face, laughing. “You are wicked, Hariba!”

“No, really,” she says, “I’m not making it up!”

We laugh and then a silence comes.

“What was he like?” I ask.

“Mbarek-salah?” she asks.

“No,” I say, “the
harni
.”

“Why do you want to know?” she says, irritable.

“I don’t know,” I say.

She looks suspicious. “He’s good,” she finally says. “Better than anyone else I’ve ever known.”

Which doesn’t tell me anything about what he was like.

“You don’t believe me,” she says. “None of you believe me. This place is so backward, you all think he’s some sort of abomination.”

“Hariba!” I say, furious. All my life I have been trying to get out of the Nekropolis. She’s the one who was willing to stay here, and she would have if Fhassin hadn’t ended up in prison, if someone would have married her. She’d have stayed in the Nekropolis, had her babies, and made her funeral wreaths until she got old before her time.

“It’s true,” she says. “Just because he wasn’t born, you all hate him and you don’t even know what he’s like.”

“I’m
asking
what he was like,” I say through gritted teeth. “Listen, girl, I’ve been trying to get out of this cemetery my whole life and you know it, so don’t punish me because your aunt and your mother are living five centuries ago.” Of course, I do think he is an abomination-well, not an abomination, but something that should never have been. Look at what he’s done to Hariba’s life. But I’m not some stupid, superstitious old woman who can’t even read.

She snakes me a look.

I shrug. “Fine.”

“What do you want to know?” she says.

“What he was like. I mean, how was he different?”

She rolls her eyes. “He’s like a normal person, just nicer. He’s just a person. You met him. You liked him.”

I did like him, but mostly because Hariba was treating him so badly. “I met him for an hour one afternoon,” I say.

“Did he act different than a human?”

“He was awfully nice, for a man,” I say.

She laughs, a short sharp bark like a dog.

“I was only with you two for a little bit of time, and you didn’t even want me to talk to him.”

“I didn’t care if you talked to him,” she says.

“You acted as if I’d catch something if I looked at him.”

“I did not,” she says.

I’m too irritated to say anything, so I cross my arms and watch the street.

“I don’t know how to say what he’s like.” Hariba finally says. “He’s like a regular person, only better.”