The Open Door Read online

  “What do you want, Isam?” A strain of alarm had crept into Layla’s voice.

  “I’ll kill you.”

  “You’re mad!”

  “I know I’m mad,” said Isam, without losing the note of deadly calm from his voice. “But I told you—I said, don’t go over to where he is.” He walked slowly toward her, his head jutting forward, like a cat stalking its prey, step by careful step. She moved back until she was hard against the bed. Her voice held tears in it. “I was just seeing if I could make you angry. Isam, I was just trying to annoy you.”

  He got so close that he could almost touch her. She slipped from his hands and stood facing him, the bed between them.

  “Don’t wear yourself out trying to get away, Layla,” he said in the same voice. “You won’t escape from me.”

  “Please, Isam. Please, leave me alone.”

  Isam wiped his hand across his face violently. “So why didn’t you leave me alone, since you love someone else?”

  “I was playing a trick on you, trying to tease you. That’s all.”

  She tried to steer for the door but he caught up to her, grabbed her by both shoulders, and turned her roughly to face him. He leaned her forcibly back against the door.

  “I know you were playing a trick on me. But you won’t do it again.” He put his hands on her bare shoulders, where they stayed, fingers splayed out near her neck bone.

  “No, I won’t. Ever.” Layla rolled her head back and closed her eyes as Isam spoke viciously. “So how long have you been playing tricks on me? How long have you been with that beast?”

  Her head straight and still, Layla said calmly, “Go ahead and kill. Go on, now, show me.”

  His hands still on her neck, the middle finger of his right hand moved toward her chest.

  “As long as that is what you think of me, it’s better if you just go ahead and kill me.”

  “Why? Am I mistaken?”

  She didn’t answer, but tears rolled from her closed eyes. The finger of his right hand moved back to her neck and he bent his face to her, repeating it. “Am I mistaken?”

  She spoke without opening her eyes. “You know—you know you are wrong!”

  His lips fell onto hers and stayed there, but without movement, in a sort of exhaustion. Then they went rigid as his hand clenched her neck. He moved his face back and said in a choked voice, “I told you not to go back, and you did. You did.” His body shuddered and so did his voice, and his eyes rolled as he shouted like a madman. “You belong to me! You’re mine! My property! Understand?”

  His grip tightened on her neck and she yelled, her voice hoarse. “Get away!”

  She put her hands out and, with a strength she didn’t realize she had, she tore Isam’s hands from her neck and ran to the sofa, where she stood facing him like a bristling cat. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from me! Totally! Understand?”

  Isam hung his head while her voice got sharper. “I am not your property, I’m not anyone’s property! I am a free person! Understand?”

  Isam attacked her, his face glowering; a violent, wordless struggle began. Isam got the upper hand and threw her down onto the sofa. His body was like a rock on top of hers, his hands clenching her arms like iron shackles, his mouth pressed over her eyes, her mouth, her neck, her chest. The tap-tap of footsteps on the roof; the women’s zagharid; music; a heat breaking out on her face and body; Isam’s uneven breaths, his feet, crushing hers; the trilling louder and louder; the music. The sound of footsteps stopping in the corridor, and a knock on the door, and a voice calling, “Mister Isam—Mis-ter Isa-a-a-m!”

  The knocking got harder, the call came again; Isam heard nothing. Then, the sound of her teeth on his cheek and his scream. He suddenly awoke to the rapping on the door and the voice, and his fists abruptly relaxed around her arms. Blow after blow came down on her shoulders, and his stifled wailing, his steps as he moved away, and the screech of the door as he opened it, shut it, and his mad shriek in the corridor.

  “Enough! Get away from me, get away, before I kill you!”

  The sound of the maid’s drawn-out voice, as she said, “Oh, sir!” and her steps receding, Isam’s footfalls, loud in the corridor, coming, going, slowly growing distant. The outside door slamming, shaking the whole apartment; the sound of her breathing, deep, as it dawned on her that she had barely saved her neck. The coldness of the dark room, biting her feet as she tiptoed out of the apartment and ran down the stairs, still in darkness, feet bare, as if she were dreaming.

  Yes, a dream, a leaden one—and over, now, praise be to God. It had not ended that evening, though, but rather five days later. Five days—after which Isam came to see her. It was the Isam she knew, the one she loved, not that stranger who had sent fear and chills into her heart and body. He came to her, his face shining, peaceful, in control of himself, tender—as if somehow he had been reborn.

  “Okay, Layla, okay. No more problems. I’ve found a solution. I will never again touch you, or bother you. I will only look at your pretty face and listen to you talk. I will love you and I’ll wait until we are married.” His features relaxed, his eyes softened, and a steady light came into them that burned Layla’s body and settled inside her. It did not occur to her, in the joy that flooded over her, to ask Isam what solution he had found to the crisis that had made her suffer so.

  *

  “The solution?”

  Mahmud wrote to Layla: “There is only one solution. The solution is for something amazing to happen, something that will shake those people to the core—all of those respectable, complacently settled folks. It has to be a miracle—only that will compel them to tear their shrouds to bits. Otherwise the situation will not change. The shrouds will not be torn apart because those folks will be holding so fast to the cloth and hiding themselves behind it. They will reckon that those shrouds are protecting them, strengthening them, when in fact the shrouds just fetter their ability to think and act. Behind these shrouds they go on living, each one saying, ‘No, I will not risk it, I will not put myself in danger, I will not move outside of the circle that has been sketched out for me. For then I might bring harm on myself, and I might damage my own interests. I might hurt my future; I might harm my children. No, I will think only within the confines of what my society finds acceptable. I will have no desires except for what those around me desire, and I’ll act only as they do. I will feel only the same emotions. And I will not react, for that is the other half of pain, and I want to spare myself all pain. I will do only what is in my own interest.’ So they go on living under their shrouds. They never experience a grand love, nor do they ever make great sacrifices. They do not linger in the world of the intellect, the imagination, the senses. They marry; they have their children, who are all in the same molds. They think alike, the same things impress them, and they have identical preferences and make identical choices. Repeatable patterns and identical molds—that is what it all is, Layla. Masses of people, without any extraordinary spark, people without any distinction, without any special skills or abilities, without any powers of invention, and without any readiness to really love.”

  In the three months that Mahmud had spent in the Canal Zone, his writing had never stopped or been interrupted. But his letters, long at first and so wonderfully packed with his feelings and reactions, became shorter and more matter-of-fact week by week, until finally they consisted of only a few lines asking after the family’s health. Layla sensed that he was hiding something from her. More than once, she prodded him in her letters. And despite her blunt persistence his responses always skirted around her question. When she insisted, he wrote saying he was terribly busy; the small number of guerilla fighters meant added work, he said. Their number meant that a fellow had to focus his thinking—indeed, his entire existence—on this work. Therefore, his aim in writing was simply to reassure the family.

  Layla had a hunch from the allusions in these notes that Mahmud and his mates were feeling lonely and isolated
. She sent asking whether this was the truth he was hiding from her. In his last letter to her before leaving the Canal Zone, he wrote:

  “Yes. We certainly are isolated. I’m not the only one who feels that way, everyone here does, but it does not affect us so badly that we are incapable of fulfilling the mission for whose sake we came here. But no—and even the betrayals and the spying are not particularly important, they do not make a big difference. In fact, those who are betraying us, and those who are spying on us, are really the exception; and they can be rooted out. The ones who have truly isolated us are not the traitors and the spies, but rather the millions of good people who love Egypt, but only as long as this love does not clash with their own selfish interests. The true betrayal is the betrayal of those folks who love Egypt with their hearts and mouths but not with their limbs and blood.”

  That letter contained painful news of conditions at the Canal. In addition to feelings of isolation, arms and ammunition were running short, organization was deficient, uniforms were lacking, and food was wanting. The great majority of freedom fighters were laborers, poor folks from city and village who had left behind their work, children, and whole families that they had been supporting. The government was procrastinating unforgivably about giving the fighters weapons and money for essential expenses.

  In the same letter Mahmud informed Layla that he was coming to Cairo with his buddy Husayn on an official mission. They would not stay in Cairo more than twenty-four hours, he told her, and they would return directly to the Canal Zone.

  Mahmud’s language seemed emotional, angry. It was as if—as if he were implicating her as he cast blame for the situation! But what could she have done? Yet, wasn’t it the truth? Wasn’t she one of the good people who loved Egypt but not enough to tear apart their shrouds and jump to its rescue? Layla felt mortified, as if she had committed a crime; the sense of humiliation had still not left her as she extended her hand to greet her brother.

  Chapter Nine

  HE HAD CHANGED ENORMOUSLY. HIS father noticed the transformation as they sat down to lunch. He gazed at his son in awed alarm for a few moments but said nothing. His mother filled his plate with helping after helping over his protests, as if he had fasted throughout his time at the Canal.

  He tried to start a conversation; he asked the usual questions, about everyone’s health, about his aunt and Isam and Gamila; about his cousin’s wedding plans. He learned that she would be married within the week. But periods of silence between one sentence and the next were long, and they were uncomfortable silences, as if he were a stranger. No one tried to find another topic of conversation. His mother wanted to ask him whether he was eating well there, and were there enough blankets, and had he been in any danger? But she knew that her husband did not want to hear a single word about any of these worries, and so she made do with gazing at her son, her eyes watering from time to time.

  His father had one thing on his mind. One specific issue pressed on him, he could think of nothing else, and did not want to talk of anything else. But every time he was on the verge of saying something he would look at Mahmud’s features, newly stern and rugged, at the traces of lines on his forehead, at his eyes that had lost their old sparkle, as if something in them had died; and then he would lapse into silence again. It was no use. This person in front of him would never listen to him, would not heed his words, and would never retreat from what his acts had set in motion. For he had indeed changed. He had left the space of filial obedience entirely. His father turned his eyes away, before there could be any risk of meeting his son’s gaze.

  As Layla stole glances at Mahmud, an indefinable fear trembled inside of her. He was sitting rigid and straight, his left hand gripping the table edge, his face stiff. He seemed tense in the extreme, all of him, more tensed than reasonable caution would demand, as if obliged to always remain at the ready, never allowing himself to relax even slightly.

  Layla began warily to eat. The sound of spoons hitting plates jangled her nerves, as if she dreaded that at any moment something would happen to irritate Mahmud, some word, some noisy interruption that would threaten his fragile, concentrated poise, that would cause him to put his head down on the table and break out sobbing. The thought bothered Layla terribly, and she tried very hard to get it out of her mind. Wasn’t this fear of hers laughable? Because she herself was weak, did she consider everyone as weak as she? Such a thing could not possibly happen to Mahmud. He was strong, he had fought the English for three months, and tomorrow he was returning to the Suez Canal to renew the fight. Mahmud would never let himself go; he would never collapse, ever. Such a thing was unthinkable. And it was natural for commandos to be in such a state of wariness. For they were fighting, not playing at it as she was, and as were those who remained far from the Canal Zone, satisfied merely to observe the outcome of the struggle.

  Layla waited patiently for the meal to be over. Yes, Mahmud had changed. But everything between them would return to normal once lunch was over, once she was able to be alone with him in her room, or in his. Then they would talk to each other, really talk, as they had always done. She waited and waited for the end of the meal, her patience running out.

  Finally they were alone in his room, and they did indeed talk to each other, as they had always done. They told each other things, yes; but something seemed to have come between them. She tried hard to reach Mahmud, to climb over the barrier he had put up between them, but her attempt failed. What had happened? Was he hiding something? No, he wasn’t hiding anything from her, for he had told her everything, everything it was possible for one human being to convey to another through words. But even so, that prohibitive barrier remained in place, coming between them, as if . . . as if things had indeed happened to him, things that had put him at a distance from her, that had caused him to age so that the gap between them was now much greater. Those experiences had turned him into someone who was no longer Mahmud, her brother whom she knew so well, but rather a person she could not intuit, whose moods she would not recognize.

  But could so much occur in a mere three months? Impossible! It must be that something was causing him pain and she was simply not doing a good enough job at distracting him to cheer him up. Maybe Isam would be able to do something? Yes—Isam, after all, was his friend, his dear friend, who always knew his secrets. Then, too, he was a man, and men were more able in such situations. Yes; she would summon him to come down here at once.

  Layla stopped the elevator, yanked the door open, and dove inside—and stopped cold, smiling in confusion. She had collided with a tall, brown-skinned young man as he emerged. The young man stepped back inside the elevator.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He smiled at her and Layla noticed an immediate change coming over his face. His angular, prominent features melted into a pleasant roundness as he grinned, so that his brown face almost reminded her of a suckling baby. Layla could not resist his smile, and she smiled back.

  “Are you going up or down?”

  The young man put up a hand to touch his soft black hair. “Neither. I’m getting out on this floor.”

  Layla stepped back to make room for him to pass. She stepped into the elevator and closed the metal door. But he did not head for either of the two apartments. He stood watching her, in his eyes a bewitchingly commanding expression. As if he were ordering her to stay where she was. About to close the inner glass door, Layla asked, “Is there something you need?”

  “Can you wait just one minute, please?” His voice did not have the same suggestion of command that his gaze held; to the contrary, it was quiet and utterly controlled. “Where is the apartment of Mr. Mahmud Sulayman, please?”

  “Oh—Mahmud? Um, it’s right here.”

  Layla pointed to her own home as it dawned on her that this young man standing before her must be Husayn Amir, her brother’s fellow soldier at the Canal. Her realization filled her with enormous relief, as if her worries and her brother’s cares had dissolved under the full smile that face
d her. Had God just answered her prayer, sending Husayn deliberately at this particular moment to cheer Mahmud up, to stand beside him as he always had at the Canal? Her face lit up with delight.

  “Welcome, welcome!”

  She flung the steel grating open and rushed out to lead Husayn to her apartment. Before her hand reached the doorbell, Husayn spoke.

  “Layla.”

  It wasn’t a question. He was addressing her. She turned and faced him.

  “Husayn.”

  “How did you know?”

  “How did you know?”

  Their eyes met and they laughed. Layla turned and pressed the doorbell. “Mahmud has talked about you a lot,” said Husayn.

  “He’s written a lot about you,” she said without turning.

  “So then we know each other pretty well. That means we’re friends.”

  Layla turned to face him, a serious look in her eyes. “You’re Mahmud’s friend, right?”

  Husayn nodded, smiling, and Layla went on. “And a friend helps his friend if he needs it, right?”

  Studying her face, Husayn said, “Right.”

  Layla knew instinctively that she could rely on him, and that Mahmud could, too. Her face broke into a big smile. “Fine, then. Excuse me.”

  She left him there and returned to the elevator. As it moved, she gestured to him and waved, and then disappeared. Suddenly Husayn remembered the bad news that he was bringing to Mahmud. Now he felt like he was the one who needed help. They all needed help. The building began to sway before his eyes, the edifice they had all built, brick upon brick, with their sweat, their nerves, their blood.

  Gamila opened the door. Her face was rosy, her eyes sparkling, and no sooner did she see Layla than she threw herself into her cousin’s arms. She dragged Layla inside by one hand.