The Open Door Read online

  She felt like she would burst. She tried to shout, to sing, or dance, or skip. She leapt from the bed right into the middle of her room, raced to the window, and jerked the shutters wide open. The yellowness of dawn was already shredding the drear of night. Head upraised, chest open, she breathed in the light, as if she were sucking each ray deep into her body before facing the next.

  Suddenly, standing at the window, she saw that a new stage of her life had begun. The world of her dreams had ended and could never return; her father had shattered that world. Now, before her, the world of reality lay open to her gaze. It was not their world, their grievous and restrictive world, a world that tied one down, but rather a world of freedom in which she could love, and love without fear or anxiety, censure or regret. It was her world, hers and his. It would be their world, one that the outer existence of others could neither penetrate nor control nor condemn as wrong. Her world was one in which she could show her feelings and express herself, like a bird flying unconstrained, in the full confidence that she was loved and desired, and yet was respectable too, and that everything she did was reasonable and acceptable.

  Layla turned her back to the window and leaned her elbows against the sash, closing her eyes. She began walking the room, bending and swaying as if in a dance; then she stopped and opened her eyes. In the distance the mirror reflected back to her the image of a rosy-cheeked young woman whose eyes gave off a light that was reflected in her lips and cheeks. Yet she suspected that the sun beaming out of the mirror was deceiving her; she ran to the glass and pressed herself against it.

  And Layla made a discovery. For the first time in her life it dawned on her that she was attractive, pretty, even. She found herself laughing out loud, all by herself, like a madwoman at the mirror, she thought. She stepped back a bit and tilted her head to one side, resting her temples in her palms. Gradually the waves of laughter rippling through her body stilled.

  Chapter Four

  FOUR DAYS PASSED BEFORE ISAM made an appearance. Layla waited for him from noon on the first day into the late afternoon, and on into the evening, and then into the second day, and the day following that. But still Isam did not appear.

  At first she made all sorts of excuses for him. Perhaps he was ill. Or he had had an argument with Mahmud. But she knew that he was neither sick nor at odds with her brother, and that sooner or later she would have to confront the fact she had been trying to avoid. She understood that Isam was avoiding her—no one else, just her—and when she finally admitted as much to herself, she was overpowered by an excruciating fear. She felt abandoned; she imagined herself alone, in a darkly frightening, forlorn desert. In this remote place she could see no reassuring wall against which to lean; at a moment when she was weak and felt unable to stand on her own feet she espied no one in that empty space on whom she might rely. She felt the ground giving way beneath her, yet she could not even give a glance behind her, for all ties between her and what was back there—all the ties that had linked her to her dreams—were sundered. And staring about her she saw only sullen desert. Yet to stare straight ahead was no help either, for before her lay only an opaque darkness.

  Had she been completely wrong? Hadn’t Isam looked at her that way? And if he hadn’t, then why was he staying away? Why avoid her? Had she tried to force Isam to feel a certain way about her? Had she imposed herself on him? But she hadn’t said a word! Not a single word! God, what had she done? What had she done, that now she felt so humiliated, so paralyzed by her own puniness? How could she have done something that so disoriented her?

  If only she could understand! If she knew the lay of the land her pain might be easier to bear. But try as she might, she could not understand why Isam had invaded her life in this way—and then why he had gone silently on by. She could always go upstairs to her aunt’s apartment, of course, where she would certainly see Isam, and she could demand an explanation. But that was not a possibility she could contemplate, even if nothing were to change for a thousand years! She would not try to force someone else’s hand; she would never impose herself, never. This feeling of ignominy was bad enough, this sensation of shame that she had had no part in forming. He had come to her; and then he had gone away.

  All around Layla, the world followed its everyday course. She awoke in the morning, and went to bed at night; she went to school, ate, spoke to people, studied. It would astonish her to find herself laughing now and then, and growing enthusiastic from time to time about something or other. The newspapers had begun to argue the necessity of organizing armed struggle in the Suez Canal Zone. Those who wanted to fight could even volunteer now. Mahmud was anxious and nervous, hopping about like a chickpea in a hot skillet, as he suffered the agonies of trying to come to a decision. In every person’s heart coiled a desire to be there at the Canal, face to face with the enemy in a battle of life and death. Layla was no exception. But every time this longing captured her heart she found an obscure pleasure in scorning herself. After all—and first of all—she was a girl, and a girl was not really a person. Even if she had been a man she would not be able to go, for she was weak, and the honor of struggling for the sake of Egypt was not the destiny of the weak!

  But as she thought about this a confusing idea slyly invaded her thoughts. In the demonstration she had not been weak. In fact, she had felt very strong. She had been nimble and quick, and the crowd had protected and supported her. Even her father had not been able to frighten her then, amidst all those demonstrating people. So . . . ? Yet this thought gave way to others, and she reverted to self-mockery. Her strength—if it really had been strength of any sort—had not come from within her but rather from beyond. And anyway, she chided herself, she couldn’t spend the rest of her life marching in a demonstration.

  The afternoon was drawing to a close as Layla sat with her mother in the living room. Gamila had decided to accept the bridegroom, her mother told her. The engagement ceremony would be held soon.

  “But Gamila was with me all day long in school and she

  didn’t say a thing?!”

  “Maybe she was afraid she’d hurt you.”

  Layla stared at her mother. “Hurt me?”

  “I mean, because you’re the same age, and now she’ll be married before you are.” Layla wanted to object to her mother’s words, but she could not muster strength even for that. She sat silently as her mother recounted the story from start to finish. But as she listened, Layla began to take more than a polite interest, interrupting her mother to ask about details she found hard to accept, or perhaps to understand. The groom was the contractor who had supervised the construction of Dawlat Hanim’s home in the new residential area of Doqqi. He’d asked her to please find him a bride, “daughter of a good family,” of course, and light-skinned. Dawlat Hanim had thought of Gamila. She had shown him a photo and he had proposed, offering to pay as an advance on the dowry the sum of 300 Egyptian pounds to cover the cost of furnishing four rooms for their future home. Layla’s aunt had thought the groom was a real catch; a girl would not be offered such a man more than once, she declared. But her financial circumstances would not allow her to shoulder the expense of a marriage for Gamila, for she and Gamila and Isam lived entirely on the pension that her late husband had left. The costs of Isam’s medical school education “have just about broken me,” she wailed, and “prices have climbed like wildfire.” But she had not been frank about any of this at the start; after all, “one has one’s self-respect, you know.” Instead, said Layla’s mother, Umm Gamila had explained that the girl was still young. But she had not said anything that would cut off the lines of communication with the groom, and she had Dawlat Hanim’s abilities as an intermediary to count on. In fact, she’d tried deliberately and carefully to make sure that the tie grew stronger, too strong to cut. But Dawlat Hanim’s patience had worn thin and Umm Gamila was forced to tell her the truth, admitting it tearfully. And the matchmaker took it upon herself to arrange everything. She took Gamila to Cicurel, the department sto
re downtown where all the best people went. She bought her a dress of pink lace. From Cicurel they went on to the coiffeur, where Dawlat supervised Gamila’s new hairdo and makeup. From there they went to Dawlat Hanim’s home, where the bridegroom was waiting.

  That was the turning point. When the groom saw Gamila before him, face to face, flesh and blood—“it’s just not the same as a picture to see her in the flesh”—he fell for her, and he fell hard—“he fell in up to his ears,” as Umm Layla put it so gleefully.

  What was beyond dispute, though, was that Gamila did not fall in up to her ears, at least not at first. She told Layla that the groom was an old man, and he was vulgar, and he had a potbelly. But gradually things changed. The groom took Gamila and her mother home in his Ford, and on the way he showed them his villa out on the new and flashy Pyramids Road. He would empty the villa of its tenants, he said, so that the bride could move in. Gamila’s head began to spin.

  But Gamila’s mother had not solved her problem. How was she to furnish four rooms with only three hundred pounds? Not to mention the garments that Gamila would have to have, and the nightgowns, and then the underclothes, and the rest. But she did not ponder the problem for very long. The next day Dawlat Hanim visited her to say that “the fellow is crazy about Gamila, he can’t sleep through the night!” And that from his respect and desire to honor Gamila he proposed to furnish the house completely out of his own pocket, and to supply the kitchen with all it needed, too, including a Frigidaire and a gas stove. Moreover, he would still pay the dowry he had proposed, that three hundred pounds.

  Well, said Umm Layla, the world was not vast enough to contain her sister’s delight. She began “filling the girl’s ear all the time; it doesn’t hurt, you know, to let her hear it.” Layla leaned her head back against the chair, imagining her aunt “chewing Gamila’s ear off,” as her mother put it. She could see in her mind’s eye the image of her aunt: her full body, that glowing dark skin, her carefully coiffed hair, the delicate and kindly features. She envisioned her aunt, bending over Gamila, kissing her, giving her a hug, teasing her as if she were still a little girl, and at the same time imprisoning her in her bewitching kisses, smothering her with loving concern. Layla smiled lightly. She knew her aunt’s ways. She knew them very well. Her aunt and her mother resembled each other only in their looks; in every other way, they could not have been more different. Aunt Samira was cleverer in the art of life; she always knew exactly what she wanted, and she got it, too, through her gentle persuasiveness, her kisses, and her affection. Perhaps Layla’s mother knew what she wanted, at least some of the time, but she did not always get it. Her strategies were the reverse of her sister’s: she mounted open attacks; she said exactly what she wanted; she reproached, and denounced, and lashed out. Aunt Samira, on the other hand, never said precisely what it was that she hoped for. She might hint, or make her desires known in a roundabout manner, now and then dropping a word to the wise, hemming and hawing and hedging. When she met resistance she would make a provisional retreat, just a step back, in order to regroup and advance once again. If Gamila said, “No, Mama, I don’t like him, I don’t want to marry him,” she responded simply. “Fine, then forget about it, honey. All I want is to be sure that you are happy.” A while later she would fling an offhand comment in Gamila’s direction, about so-and-so, that girl who’d married for love but then had failed in her marriage, because after all, material security was the foundation of every successful union. Another time, she would say to her daughter, “Gigi, I just want you to have the finest automobile in town, the best dresses; you’re so pretty, you’re gamila, Gigi, and what a loss if such beauty goes to waste, my dear.”

  “Clever indeed,” pronounced Layla’s mother, pulling Layla from her reverie.

  “Who?”

  “My sister Samira, your aunt, she’s so smart! She knows how to keep that girl under her wing. And the girl as well—her mind went to pieces when she heard this talk about the solitaire ring.”

  “What solitaire?”

  “The groom—may your future hold the like—is going to get her a solitaire, and—” A rap sounded against the front door. Layla got up to open it. Sayyida, her aunt’s maid, raised her sturdy face to Layla, her full lips opening in a smile.

  “The young mistress says, ‘Please come up for a bit.’” She gave Layla a folded piece of paper, which Layla opened. “Sanaa and Adila are here,” she read. “I wish you would come up. And if you don’t, I’ll come down to get you. Kisses and hugs.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said to Sayyida as the girl was closing the door. She grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and began to write, her face suddenly gloomy.

  “Why don’t you want to go up?” her mother asked.

  “Headache.”

  “You know what they’re going to say—it’s jealousy! Do you want that?”

  Layla chewed on her lip and bit back a flood of curses rushing through her head.

  “Me? Me, jealous?!”

  “Then go up and congratulate your aunt and the girl.”

  Torn, Layla stood in the middle of the room. She did not want to see Isam. Yet she could not cut herself off completely from her aunt, especially since if she did it would be explained in such a ridiculous manner, following on Gamila’s engagement. Anyway, no doubt he was still out somewhere with Mahmud. If she did see him, if he was there, she would simply treat him in an ordinary fashion, just as if nothing at all had happened between them.

  She opened the door and called out to Sayyida. “Okay, Sayyida, tell her I’ll be there in a minute.” Sayyida walked off slowly, moving her hips extravagantly from side to side.

  Layla stood before her wardrobe. Without consciously choosing it, she stretched out her hand toward her prettiest dress, the one as red as the inside of a ripe watermelon. Aunt Samira had declared that it set off the loveliness of her skin beautifully. No, she wouldn’t wear that one; she would not pretty herself up at all for him. She would make no effort whatsoever to get him back. She took her hand away from the dress and picked out a rose-colored blouse and plain black skirt. She ran a comb hurriedly through her short hair and climbed the stairs to her aunt’s apartment. She rang the bell.

  Dressed to go out, Isam opened the door. In that striped navy blue suit of which he was so proud, he stood motionless, blocking the doorway as if he did not want her to come in. Layla forgot completely how determined she had been to treat him in an ordinary way. The moment she saw him her face fell into a frown and she averted her eyes as he finally stepped back and she slunk into the sitting room.

  “Layla.” Isam called after her in a loud whisper. Turning to face him, she noticed a strange expression in his eyes. It was a look she had never seen in anyone’s eyes, the demeanor of a creature trapped and in pain, of a wounded animal. She could feel tears well suddenly in her eyes and she closed them, biting her lip to keep from crying. She turned back but he restrained her with a gentle hand on her shoulder, as if she were a fragile thing that he feared would shatter at a touch. By the time she turned to face him again, his face had relaxed and his eyes had grown softer, gleaming with a light that transfixed her body and settled somewhere inside. With her sleeve she quickly wiped away the two lone tears that ran down her face, shook her head confusedly, opened the door to the sitting room, and went in.

  The door to the sitting room had just shut in his face, but Isam did not move away from it. No. No, she could not simply leave him like that—and with tears in her eyes, too. It wasn’t possible; she must still be here with him, in his body, his blood, his arms. She was here—her tears wiped away by his kisses, her cheeks, her fine, rosy mouth, slightly open like a budding flower. Isam felt the blood hot in his veins, massing at the back of his head, as if Layla really was pressed to his chest and he was kissing her, his kisses dissolving the deprivation that had lasted four whole days, and assuaging the fever of those four days, too. Yes—he was kissing her, ecstasy, madness, without pause: the curve of that mouth, the curves on that
chest, the curved surfaces of that body. Isam shook his head, emerging from his dreamlike state. His face glowed like a beet. He sat down in the front hall, his eyes fixed on the door to the sitting room. He was filthy! How could he even dare to think about her in this way, as if she were . . . as if she were a cheap woman he might stare at in the streets? When she was the daughter of his aunt, the sister of Mahmud. And when her face was still that of a child, or a mother; the face of a sister, a face that would turn the very Devil away from evil. But he had not been able to stop thinking about her once during those four days, thinking about her in this dirty, shameful way.

  That day, when his body had touched hers next to the window, he had felt a sudden pang, a sharp pain as if a knife had gone into his back suddenly, and then . . . then she had looked at him, and . . . and he’d turned back into a child, feeling once again those same pleasurable sensations, those peaceful feelings of contentment that he had not felt for many years—a sensation still familiar from childhood, from that time long ago when his mother’s kind face would appear over his bed every night, descending close to his, and his body would bask in a tranquillity that lulled him. It was a pacific state the like of which he had not experienced since, and its sudden return gave him to understand, with an abrupt awareness, that his life was now bound irretrievably to that young woman, that pretty young woman who had stood facing him. Linked forever. Forever.