The Open Door Read online

  With the back of his hand Husayn wiped away the drops of sweat that had collected on his brow. What had happened to her in the meantime, as brief as that interim had been? What had made her despise life so, to lead her to think about suicide? And then cause her to submit so passively, so that she faced people with a stiff body and even more severe face from which all life seemed gone? Yet during that short time, when she was not with Isam, hardly would he sit down with Mahmud before the guy would appear—ten minutes later, maybe a quarter of an hour at most—to sit composedly with them. No—it didn’t appear after all that anything had happened between them. True, Isam was one of those emotionally detached people whose actions and reactions, comments and feelings, were always so calculated. You encountered people like that every day—there were thousands of them just like Isam. Husayn had recognized the signs the first time he’d seen Isam. But after all, the fellow was a human being. It did not seem possible that something could have come between him and Layla that would shatter her so and yet leave him so completely unruffled. It must be as he had first thought. Layla must have heard something about Isam, perhaps from Gamila. Whatever it was, she had seen her world devastated before her eyes.

  So Husayn tossed and turned. He doubled over his pillow to cover his face. How had he come to be so certain of this? How could he have grasped the situation so precisely, and so rapidly—indeed, the moment he had seen her bewildered face as she entered the room? Even before he had seen her on the roof pushing Isam’s hands away from her body in disgust, he had understood. He had seized the situation fully, immediately, as if she had spilled out every detail, telling him, for instance, that she loved Isam, but that Isam had committed an act so horrible that it had eliminated all possibility of her loving or respecting him. He understood it all, swiftly and exactly, even though she had not so much as glanced his way. She had not even sensed his presence, leaving his hand—reaching toward hers—suspended in the air.

  Lord, how had he been able to size the situation up so readily, in that room, before Layla had made any sort of telling gesture? A simple guess? There’d been no preliminaries that would have made it a reasonable deduction, he puzzled. Yet he had understood perfectly, as if whatever barrier kept him from knowing what was in her mind had vanished. And she had not even turned his way, had not even sensed that he was there! No, no it was impossible. She had to have been aware of him. How could he possibly feel so strongly about her—how could he have these feelings that destroyed all logic, all limits, and penetrated him from body to soul—if she did not have something of the like, even just a bit, even one part in a thousand?

  Husayn flattened his pillow and rested his palms on it. When she had waved at him from the elevator and smiled, he had sensed a current run between them. On the roof, when he had whispered into her ear, “Believe me,” and she had turned to face him, and their eyes had met, he had said all he wanted to say in a single gaze—and she had understood everything. Hadn’t she? Then the current had been cut: Layla had heard Isam’s voice and her face had regained its hard lifelessness.

  Husayn closed his eyes, trying to banish Layla’s image as she stood there on the roof. He did not want that picture to form his memory of her. He wanted to see her as she had been the first time, when they stood at the stairs, the joy of life dancing in her eyes and face. Six months had passed. Surely she had gotten over the shock of that incident by now. And when I see her, he thought . . . . He shot upright in bed. Yes! He would see her, a few days from now at most. She would enter the room where he was, happiness dancing in her eyes and face, through her body. That wondrous, lovely buoyancy that had almost made him shout in the elevator would envelop him again.

  Chapter Eleven

  HUSAYN PERCHED ON A CHAIR in the sitting room of Muhammad Effendi Sulayman’s home listening to Mahmud’s mother, feelings of bitterness knotting his chest. This was his first visit to Mahmud’s home since their release; he had been in the apartment for about an hour, but there had been no sign of Layla. Mahmud was putting on his outside clothes so that they could leave the house together, and there seemed no hope that he would see her today. Perhaps he would never see her again.

  A shy smile played dimly on Mahmud’s mother’s face, giving it even more sweetness. Husayn swung his head toward the door of the room, as if in impatient expectation; his eyes went blurry. Before his gaze was the image of a kind-looking, fair woman, her full body stooping before a bread oven, face glowing in the flame, and a dark-skinned little girl hanging onto her hem. It was his mother, at home, in the Delta town of Sambalawin, his sister Samiha clutching at her gallabiya. It was the first time in many years that Husayn had seen his mother’s image clearly. He had lost her at the age of nine, and her image had always appeared in mid-movement, out of focus. But now he could see her clearly, and the tiny house, too—the door bearing its huge wooden bolt, the single date palm that always shook in a strong wind, those delicate, sweet layers of pastry still aglow from the oven, the thick cream and molasses. And the diffident smile, one soft hand rubbing his forehead and tidying his hair, light kisses over his eyes, quick and awkward.

  Her faint, shy smile still hovering, Mahmud’s mother spoke. “And so you live by yourself, son?”

  Husayn murmured something inaudible, his eyes still in the distance. He saw women swathed in black crowding into the house, and his young sister’s eyes, wide and round and confused, moving from face to face, searching in vain for her mother’s lineaments; and himself, burrowed into a mound of dried clover a little way from the house. The women’s wailing reached him like the muffled barking of village dogs on a storm-filled night. And his father, after the women had gone: he remembered his father dragging him with an unusual roughness then collapsing in sobs when they reached the threshold of the empty house. Then there was an unfamiliar woman before the oven, offering him the pastry, the cream and molasses. There were new brothers and sisters, strangers, and a father who was now a stranger. He had journeyed, a long voyage among strangers—in the city of Mansura, at secondary school, and then more strangers, in Cairo, at the College of Engineering. Even his sister Samiha had become a stranger, he thought, as he recalled their life together in Cairo after their father’s death, their struggle together as he tried to complete his studies, and then so he could put together enough money to buy the expected trousseau for her after his graduation. All of that was no more than a memory, and now the words got stuck on their tongues whenever he and his sister searched for a subject on which they could converse. It was never easy to find a topic that interested them both, for each had gone his own way, becoming utterly distant from the other, and the gleam of love in her eyes that had been his share had gone to another man. A strange man, a stranger.

  Husayn shook his head, trying to extract himself from his musings. These sorts of thoughts bothered and upset him. It was so cheap and easy, so self-pitying, to wallow this way. Undoubtedly deprived of a mother’s love, he had found people who cared wherever he had gone. He had found affection in deep, enriching friendships, but he had known it also in passing encounters with strangers who did not remain strangers for long. A bond of shyness with a curly-headed youth at the Mansura school; a sentence on his tongue one day that he had been unable to complete; a shared glance with an elderly man on Tram no. 12; a smile exchanged with a stern-faced worker in the Canal Zone, who gave him ammunition for his suddenly empty machine gun. And now, a reserved smile on the face of this woman who sat before him—a smile that meant she, too, was no longer a stranger. And he had managed to live to the age of twenty-four without this cheap self-pity. He knew, of course, why this bitterness had clouded his thinking just now. Yesterday he had spent the entire night dreaming of the moment in which Layla would come in and raise her radiant face to his, extend her hand, her eyes laughing, and say in her strong, resonant voice like that of a country flute, “Welcome.”

  Mahmud stood in the doorway, cutting an elegant figure in his navy-blue suit. “Come on, let’s go.”
/>   Husayn tried to conceal his agitation with a smile as he rose to his feet. “Whoa, you look very official! Or are you a bridegroom already marching in the wedding procession?”

  Mahmud gave him a worried look as he tugged at his white shirtcollar to bring it away from his neck. “I shouldn’t be wearing it in this heat, should I?”

  It was a new suit. Mahmud had had it tailored just before the battle for the Canal had begun. He had never worn it. He had gone to the Canal Zone, and after the Canal Zone, straight into detention, and there he had imagined himself wearing it, so that it had become linked in his mind to freedom. It had not been a conscious decision to put it on today; it had not occurred to him that it was totally unsuitable for the August heat.

  Husayn patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. It cools off in the evening anyway.”

  Mahmud’s mother stood up to say goodbye to Husayn, who responded with his usual broad grin. The mother extended a tentative hand to give him a gentle pat on the shoulder. “Goodbye, son.” Husayn crossed the living room with Mahmud behind him, as a voice rose from behind the door to an adjoining room, calling Mahmud. Then the door opened and there was Layla.

  Husayn whirled around. Layla’s face flushed, but she quickly composed herself and bobbed her head in his direction.

  “Mahmud, someone named Hamdi was asking for you earlier when you were napping. He says he’ll be waiting for you at the Rex Café at eight o’clock.” Mahmud looked at Husayn, shaking his head in wonder. “See? See—Mr. Hamdi and his one-sided appointments?”

  Husayn did not answer. He was staring at Layla with a bewildered expression on his face, as if he had no idea who she was.

  “Of course, you know Layla, my sister, don’t you, Husayn?”

  Husayn did not answer. He took a few hesitant steps toward Layla and put his hand out, gazing into her face as if he were searching for something. As if asking a question, or perhaps uncertain of the response, he ventured, “We’ve met before?”

  Layla’s eyes flitted from place to place before she extended her hand to Husayn and raised her face to him, cold, hard, empty of expression, on her mouth an artificial, tight little smile.

  “Yes, we have met.”

  Husayn noticed that the timbre of her voice had changed, too. It no longer came from deep inside, singing like a flute. Now it seemed to issue just from the tip of her tongue, a restrained, imprisoned voice. Husayn kept her hand in his, and his eyes on her, searching in despairing entreaty for whatever it was that had gone, whatever comprised that beautiful glow that had shone from her face and body. He dropped her hand crossly as if it were guilty of stealing one of his possessions. His eyes went blurry. He saw his sister Samiha, a child of five, crying and saying, “Let it fly away, Husayn, let it go.” And he, in his white gallabiya, shifted his gaze in confusion from his sister to the pretty butterfly pressed in the notebook, while Samiha cried hotly, “Let it fly away, Husayn, it will be so pretty when it flies!” And he was hugging Samiha to his chest, kissing her hair, telling her, “It can’t, Samiha, it can’t fly . . . .” Husayn looked at Layla again, and without saying a word he turned and practically ran out of the apartment.

  Though he returned to that apartment, never could he locate the elusive quality that had attracted him to Layla at the start. His throat choked with bitterness; he would leave again—to come back yet again. Why, he did not understand; perhaps it was because whenever he was not with her, the vision of her he carried was that image he had seen the first time. Or perhaps it was because he believed that with the force of his love he could return her to what she had been. Or maybe it was simply the result of that incredible, irresistible feeling, completely unsupported by any logic or evidence, that she was inevitably his and he was inevitably hers no matter how long the wait might be. He had to be very cautious. He had to change his approach, to think differently about how he might proceed. Alert always to what he wanted, he was accustomed to getting there by the shortest and most direct route. He detested stealth; he had always favored frontal attack. Had this been a normal situation he would have declared his love on the first possible occasion and proposed marriage. Then he would have waited for her to answer his love with her own. If it had been a normal situation he would not have given much thought to the fact that he was unemployed and broke, nor would he have worried that she might give these facts undue attention, if indeed she loved him. For he was an engineer, after all, and was sure to find work. He would begin on the bottom step, with her; they would begin together, side by side.

  But it was not a normal or a natural situation. And he had to step with the utmost caution, to move furtively around the protective shield she had imposed on herself, seeking an entrance, to reach those depths, somehow.

  He tried very hard to get her to converse; he worked to draw out her laughter, to stir up her enthusiasm, even to elicit some anger. But she would only talk with great reserve and laugh with guarded politeness. She seemed careful to avoid outbursts, whether of anger or enthusiasm, no matter the subject, as if she had lost the ability to summon either emotion. When her gaze met his searching, desperate eyes, she would smile apologetically as if to excuse her very existence. And then Husayn could no longer keep his doubts at bay. Were there any depths behind that shield? Or had Isam drawn Layla with him to the very bottom, into the filth, and lashed her there? Had he made of her a carbon copy, a mere one of the thousands of people who talk only after making their calculations, and open themselves to feelings only after deliberation? Was this shield really a mask to conceal her capacity to love, to feel, and to react, a bulwark erected in her fear of making herself vulnerable once again? Or was it no more than the characteristic expression of a truly inflexible and unfeeling human being?

  Was the self-loathing so apparent in her movements and words a temporary sentiment imposed by events? Or was it so firmly fixed in place that it had put out roots around her heart, choking out all sources of self-love and as a consequence all possibility of loving others? Did she grasp so tightly to rules of behavior and ancient traditions out of conviction, or were they a route to self-protection, the only solid ground she could find after the violent tremors she had passed through? Did she really believe the opinions she repeated? Did she truly think that love was nonsense, that all men were alike, and that to enjoy a respectable social status was paramount? Was she as admiring of Gamila and her marriage as she seemed? Did she really see her cousin as a paragon of wedded life?

  Her brother always remarked that Layla had changed, and so did Sanaa; and when Sanaa saw Husayn’s searching, despairing look focused on Layla’s face, she realized why he had wanted to know.

  *

  As soon as she managed to be alone with Husayn, Sanaa touched his arm.

  “Layla wasn’t like this before, you know. She’s changed.” Husayn raised his eyes to her and said questioningly, “Isam . . . ?”

  Sanaa blushed as if the conversation had taken a sudden direction that implicated her personally. “Then you know . . . ?”

  Husayn nodded. “But I don’t want Layla to know that I know.”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  Husayn lowered his head and smiled weakly, and Sanaa knew. He jerked his head up immediately and spoke abruptly. “But what exactly happened?”

  He assumed that Sanaa would hold back, but she did not hesitate. She told him briefly, in stinging words, as if she were whipping not only Isam but all men. Sitting down again, her back rigid, she said heatedly, “You’re the only one who can help her.”

  “Why me?”

  “Layla likes you,” she said shortly.

  Husayn’s broad smile lit up his whole face. “You’d never know it!” He hid his face for a moment. “Did she tell you so?”

  Sanaa shrugged and laughed sarcastically. “No, of course not.”

  Silently, Husayn raised questioning eyes to her.

  “Layla can’t possible admit that, not even to herself. She can’t possibly acknowledge a liking for a
nyone at all.” Sanaa stood up, still talking. “Layla has suffered enough. She doesn’t want to go through any of it again. She doesn’t want to fall in love with anyone.”