The Open Door Read online

  Suddenly Mahmud rolled over on the bed and sat up. He faced his mother. “Why all this fuss?” His voice was abnormally loud, the words seeming to force themselves with difficulty from his throat. “Why? I told you, it’s a scratch. Child’s play, just child’s play.” Repeating the phrase, his voice faded and he fell back onto the bed, his energy spent. His mother looked hard at him for a moment. His face had no color and his eyes were a glassy green, with the pale stare of feverishness. Drops of sweat stood out on his forehead. His mother opened her mouth to speak then pressed her lips together tightly and turned to leave the room. As she reached the door, Mahmud’s faint voice came. “Mama . . . ”

  She stepped back into the room, but did not come all the way over to his bed. Mahmud sat up and beckoned her nearer. He leaned over to her as if he had a secret to tell. “You know—you know when you slaughter a hen and the blood runs out”—his voice was a whisper—“and the hen goes on moving, just for a moment, and then falls down, boom, and that’s it?” His eyes grew dark and his face went gloomy. He brought his fist down hard on the bedside table as he spoke in a voice that managed to be both a whisper and a wail.

  “People died, lots of people—and that’s exactly how they died.”

  “You’ll feel better if you nap awhile longer, Mahmud,” said his mother, stretching out her hands to his shoulders, trying to help him to lie back. He pushed one hand away slowly, his eyes searching out Isam’s gaze. “Why? Why, Isam?”

  Isam shrugged lightly and said calmly, “Why what?”

  Mahmud gave his head a vigorous shake as if trying to come out of a nightmare. He slumped back against the headboard. “Nothing.” His mother left the room. Layla took her place next to the bedside table and stood there looking anxiously at Mahmud in the silence.

  “You mean, you don’t want to talk about it!” exclaimed Isam.

  “What’s the point? If I told you about it, you wouldn’t understand anyway. You’re a guy who is all reason, all sense and balance. A guy who doesn’t react to things, who never weakens.”

  “Quit it, you! Enough nonsense, on your papa’s good name!”

  Mahmud smiled thinly and a hint of color crept into his face. “Look, Isam, do you know what I feel like? I feel as if someone hit me hard, really gave me a beating. And I couldn’t hit back. I couldn’t even yell anything.”

  Layla’s lips trembled and her face showed a wave of convulsions as if in response to a stabbing internal pain.

  “One day soon,” said Isam, “when the weapons are in our hands, they won’t be able . . . ”

  Wailing “Mahmud!” and pouncing on her brother, Layla interrupted. She shook him by the shoulders. “Mahmud! Mahmud, you’re the one who hit the English; it wasn’t them who struck you. You, it was you, Mahmud.” Her brother was silent, and so she twisted to face Isam, her hands still clamped firmly on Mahmud’s stooped shoulders.

  “Isam,” she wheedled, “it was Mahmud, Mahmud who hit the English. Wasn’t it, Isam?”

  “Could there be any doubt?” responded Isam with a reassuring smile.

  But Layla was not mollified. She turned back to Mahmud. “You, Mahmud, you. You.” The wail was more subdued now. Try as he might, Mahmud could not avoid the blend of hope and flat despair in those eyes that confronted him squarely. She buried her face in his shoulder and he stared into the distance. “Yes, Layla. It was us—we struck the English.”

  Still sheltered on his shoulder, Layla began to laugh, laugh after laugh interspersed with sobbing. She raised her head, a smile on her face and tears glinting in her eyes. “I knew it, I just knew it. And besides, that’s what I told them at school.”

  “What exactly did you tell them?” asked Mahmud.

  “Everything, and the teachers were really delighted to hear what you did, they think you’re wonderful, and—” Mahmud put his hand over her mouth. Layla pushed it away, her laughter now a teasing voice. “Even Inayat, she says you’re handsome!” At that, Mahmud tried to conceal his smile.

  “Inayat! Inayat who?” asked Isam. Her arms still around her brother, Layla turned to him. “You mean you don’t know who Inayat is? She’s the beauty queen of the Saniya School!”

  “Oh, her! You son of a gun!” exclaimed Isam. “Inayat! She’s a knockout.”

  Mahmud could not stop laughing. Satisfied that she had accomplished her mission, Layla sprang off the bed and hurried toward the door, but Mahmud stopped her.

  “Layla.”

  “Yes?”

  “First of all, you’re a liar.”

  “Liar! What d’you mean, liar?”

  “I mean . . . well . . . how would Inayat know, anyway? How could she have possibly seen me, to be able to say I’m a handsome hunk or an ugly ogre?”

  Isam peered from brother to sister, a sly grin curving his lips. Pointing to the cameo hanging on her chest, Layla said, “She saw this picture of you.”

  Now a glint of inquisitive attention snared Mahmud’s eyes. “Show me—which picture is it?” She took off the necklace and laid it in his open hands. He studied his own likeness with interest. Isam’s grin widened, and he struck Mahmud on the thigh. “Mahmud—“

  Mahmud turned to him, his left hand clutching the cameo. “What, Isam?”

  “So what do you have to say now about that beating you got?” Mahmud kicked Isam and let the necklace drop to the floor. His sister knelt hastily to retrieve it; as her head bobbed up, level with Mahmud’s, she paused in mid-movement, her eyes flashing as if an extraordinary thought had just popped into her head. “Me, too! When I get bigger I’ll show those Englishmen! I’ll carry a gun, I really will, and I’ll shoot them all. When I grow up.”

  “Could there be any doubt?” laughed Isam, as Layla rose to her full height quickly and wheeled around to go out, with the measured bounce of the demonstrators, waving her right hand up and down, intoning, “Weapons, weapons, we want weapons. Weapons, wea–” She stopped dead, her arm dropped to her side and the words stalled on her lips. Her father was entering the room.

  In a few days’ time life regained its normal course. Preoccupied with daily demands, people acted as if the events of that day had been erased from their memories. Mahmud returned to school, and Layla no longer heard questions about him or the demonstration. At first she felt resentful, but gradually her own concerns took over.

  One morning she woke up early as usual so that she could collar the newspaper before her father and brother were even up. Perched on the armchair in the front room, facing the apartment’s front door, she waited, her eyes shifting between the threshold and the clock until the newspaper appeared under the door. She had finished reading it and the clock said half past six, but still no one else in the family had emerged. She got to her feet, stretched contentedly, and tossed the paper onto the chair. But halfway to the door to her room she retraced her steps. She refolded the paper and ran her fingers along the crease, biting her lower lip, vexed at what she had to do out of fear of her father’s scathing remarks. She hurried to her room, struggled into her school pinafore, and searched frantically for stockings and shoes, under the bed, beneath the wardrobe. She tugged a comb through her short black hair as she poked her feet into her shoes, grabbed one book from the table, retrieved another from beneath her pillow, threw them into her leather book bag, then scampered toward the dining room as if someone were in close pursuit. Careening into Mahmud did not stop her, but she did slow down when she saw her father standing before the basin, shaving. She worked her mouth into a polite smile.

  “Good morning, Papa.”

  Her father muttered something unintelligible as he tilted his head back to shave his neck. She disappeared into the dining room and immediately demanded food in a loud voice. Her mother glared at her. “The ful-beans for breakfast haven’t arrived yet.” But her mother’s cold look did nothing to dampen her enthusiasm.

  “Anything’s fine!”

  “Why are you in such a rush? It’s not even quite seven and the first bell isn’t until eig
ht thirty.”

  “But that errand.”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “I just want to eat, okay?” She yanked a chair away from the table, sat down, and rolled a bit of cheese in half of a bread round. She spread a thin layer of jam on top and gnawed industriously at her sandwich, swallowing it in lumps so that she could be off for school, off to slam her school bag on the grass and join her classmates. Then the bell would ring and after a prolonged search for her bag she would head for arithmetic class.

  She settled into her seat, rested her arm on the desktop, and propped her chin on it, her eyes glued to the teacher’s hand as it moved across the blackboard. She must understand every word, she must, and every sum. She must. Miss Nawal said she had gotten better at arithmetic but she absolutely had to do even better—and better. Best in the class, so that Miss Nawal would show some fondness for her. Miss Nawal had to like her, she simply must.

  This was the only must in eleven-year-old Layla’s life. She must triumph, she must win over this slender teacher who pulled back her hair and wore it massed behind her head, who preferred mannish clothing, who could focus her small round eyes so intensely on you that it was as if she was going inside your head and ferreting out your thoughts; this teacher whose delicate lips would disappear whenever she tried to hold back a smile. Layla had begun the school year with a careful, polite smile always on her own lips. She sat primly through arithmetic class, her arms folded, ignoring the whispers of Adila, her deskmate. And even when Adila swung her legs to kick Layla under the desk, Layla restrained herself, only biting her lower lip. All of that, and she might as well not even have been in the room for all that Miss Nawal cared! When class was over, Layla waited until the last pupil had laid her workbook on the teacher’s table, and only then she placed hers on the pile, straightening the whole stack, and starting to pick it up so that she could carry it to the teachers’ room behind Miss Nawal. But Miss Nawal pressed her lips together and took the workbooks from her after thanking her. This peculiar teacher who refused to let a pupil carry her workbooks for her baffled Layla, but she did not give up. She knew a strategy that always worked. You could give the teacher an enchanting rose, and then when you went into the teachers’ room with whatever excuse you drummed up, you’d find the teacher there, the flower before her in a glass, and immediately you would know that some sort of bond had formed between the two of you. Hadn’t the teacher kept the flower, after all? And preserved it carefully? Your rose, in front of her, in the glass. But Miss Nawal did not do what she was supposed to do. She did not preserve the flower in a glass. In fact, she did not even take the rose from the classroom. Nafisa took it—snub-nosed, kinky-haired Nafisa. At first it had all gone according to plan, but then things had gone awry. Walking into the classroom before the start of class, Layla had given the rose to the teacher. Miss Nawal had inhaled its scent and then had laid it carefully on top of her attendance book before turning to write the day’s arithmetic problems on the blackboard. But before she had finished writing out the first one, she turned abruptly to face the class.

  “Whoever is first to solve this problem gets the rose.” So Nafisa got it as Layla looked on, her face stricken. She would snub Miss Nawal, she decided. And she did, until something transpired at home that caused her to revoke her decision. Her mother had asked her to bring her the alarm clock so that she could wind it. As Layla rushed over to her mother, the clock slipped out of her hand and the glass over its face broke. It shattered into pieces, just as the green vase with the handpainted white roses had shattered, just as the doll that said “mama” and had eyes that opened and shut had broken—just like everything in the house, in fact. Everything her fingers picked up. Her mother let out a scream, and went on screaming, as if something really horrid had happened, like a fire breaking out in the building. She bore down on Layla, face red with anger, and slapped both of her palms hard. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, she wailed, “What am I going to do with you? But what can I do with such rotten luck? God made you a real problem-child—may He take you and give us some peace!”

  Her father, appearing in the doorway to his room, brought the matter to a close in his unruffled way, his voice firm but empty of anger. “I told you before that this one’s no ordinary girl. She’s a fitiwwa, a real bull in a china shop.” He turned, went back into his room, and shut the door behind him.

  Layla stood before the oval mirror in her room. She stuck out her tongue, then ran it round her lips. Girl! Girl . . . girl . . . “A nice girl,” the Headmistress had said in the courtyard, pinching her on the cheek. The headmistress was fond of her, and so was Miss Zaynab, and Miss Zahiya, and Miss Ratiba, all of the teachers, in fact. All except . . . . Layla sucked her tongue in and clamped her mouth shut. All except Miss Nawal. Because they had to like her. They had to—everyone in the school had to like her. Miss Nawal had to like her. She had to. Layla closed her eyes and turned her back to the mirror. She could see Nafisa in her mind’s eye, holding a red rose to her snub nose. Suddenly she hurried to her book bag and took out her arithmetic workbook, her fat exercise book, and a pencil. She had an idea. She sprawled across the floor and opened the workbook to its first page.

  Thus began a fierce attempt to conquer those numbers. Stark, bold numbers, skipping along before her eyes, figures coming together or splitting apart, adding, subtracting without any obvious logic, multiplying, dividing, suddenly confronting her with an answer that stared her wickedly in the face. Use your brain, Miss Nawal had said. But in arithmetic her brain refused to budge. In Arabic composition her mind worked just fine; one word brought another, and one sentence yielded the next, and her hand flew to keep up with her mind: a flitting bird, streaking through the sky far above the flock, diving to its nest with anxious love for its tiny baby birdies, encircling them with its wings to keep them warm. Or: here she was, a little child lost and wandering among unfamiliar people who stared at her but didn’t see the tears in her eyes. Or she was Madame Curie, or she was a hero smashing the prison bars to save the folk from the colonizers. She was all of them, and others, too, if she wished. Or at the very least she could feel herself identifying and sympathizing with all of them. But in arithmetic, where was she? With a grocer, selling sugar and buying oil. With a faucet, dripping X number of times per minute. With a basin, filling slowly to the brim with all of those uncountable drops. She was with numbers that danced before your eyes without any beauty or sense. But, sense or nonsense, she absolutely had to understand every word and every letter.

  She began to get the better of the numbers. She grasped one strand from here, and wound in another from there; she twisted them together and held them delightedly in her fist. She began to make progress. Miss Nawal encouraged her at every step, until ahead of her remained only Nafisa. That girl could still solve the problems quicker than she could, and the grades in her workbook remained higher than the marks in Layla’s. Layla put all her energy into this mission: trying to outdo Nafisa.

  Nafisa was standing up to respond to a question from Miss Nawal. She got to her feet unhurriedly, spoke carefully, and answered precisely what was asked of her, no more and no less. Layla wondered if it was possible to surpass Nafisa, who was so very strong in arithmetic. All through elementary school she had done better than Layla, always staying several levels ahead. Now, could Layla possibly pass her in first-year secondary school arithmetic, when it was so difficult? And she was so weak—weak at arithmetic, weak in everything.

  Without warning, Miss Nawal directed a question at Layla, who stammered an answer. She sat down again and tried to focus all of her attention on the arithmetic problems. Silence came over the class, as Miss Nawal walked up and down the rows, reading the solutions from above the pupils’ heads. When she stopped at Layla’s desk, Layla bent her head lower, the pencil motionless in her hand as if she were thinking hard. Miss Nawal read, pressed her lips together, and bent over Layla.

  “You’re doing well indeed, my dear.”

  Layla’
s eyes met Miss Nawal’s. She felt a lump stuck in her throat and swallowed the saliva in her mouth with difficulty. Miss Nawal put out her hand and ruffled Layla’s hair, as if she were combing it from the nape to the crown, and then walked on.

  Layla reached her hands up to pat her hair into place, but they hung in midair and she felt her eyes tear over as she realized that, yes, she could outdo Nafisa, and ten more as good as Nafisa, as long as Miss Nawal stood by her.

  School was over for the day. Layla stood under the sycamore tree in the schoolyard. Gamila sat facing her on a wooden bench, and settled next to her on the grass was Sanaa. In the middle stood Adila, doing an imitation of their English teacher. Sucking in her cheeks and holding her body rigid, her arms stiffly to her sides, Adila marched, raising one leg and then the other in exaggerated regimental fashion. Her voice came out hollow as if she were a wooden doll. Gamila was laughing so hard that she had to cover her face with her hands. Sanaa doubled over, supporting her shaking middle with one hand. Layla’s cheeks puffed up into little balls and her eyes narrowed to slits; the howls spun from her mouth in waves that came faster and faster until one swept over the next and she could hardly breathe. She turned her back on her schoolmates, leaning against the sycamore trunk, trying to regain her breath. She took out her handkerchief to dry her tears. Her hand stopped in midair, her eyes still streaming, as she suddenly became aware that Adila had not completed her sentence and the laughter had stopped abruptly. What had happened? She whirled round to face her classmates. Sanaa had lowered her eyes to the ground and was yanking out clumps of grass, barely getting one fistful out before fiercely seizing another, as if she had been assigned the task. Gamila seemed to be staring at a distant horizon.

  “What is that bit of red on your pinafore, Layla?” came Adila’s voice. Layla’s head whipped around and she pulled the back of the pinafore forward anxiously. “Ink, must be ink. What else could it be?”