I didn’t talk to Hazem, or anyone else for that matter, about the mouse incident that was cited in the testimonial of an inmate at Tadmur Prison in Syria. With his own eyes he witnessed another inmate being forced to swallow a dead mouse. I couldn’t bear to recall that tale, whether in imagination or in conversation, though it haunted me for weeks, even in my sleep, when it came back to me in nightmares. But I told Hazem about the Spanish woman who wrote about her prison experience during the reign of Franco. ‘This woman formed an extraordinary friendship in solitary confinement. She got to be friends with someone whose movements she followed in the cell, and who was her constant companion, observing her and talking to her all the time, telling her about herself and her husband and her three children, who’d been farmed out to three different families, because her husband was also a prisoner.’
‘Didn’t you say she was in solitary confinement? How could this friend reach her?’
‘Guess.’
‘Was it a tree?’
‘No.’
‘A bird?’
‘No. I don’t remember whether there was any access to the cell. Perhaps the wall had no openings at all.’
‘A model she traced on the wall of the cell?’
‘No.’
‘Then she must have summoned up her friend in her imagination.’
‘No.’
‘I’m stumped.’
‘The friend she loved and depended on was… a fly.’
There was a long silence. Finally I broke it. ‘I’m going to write a chapter of my book on this woman.’
‘Are you going to write about political detention in Egypt, or in the world?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you’ve been saying that you’d drawn up a plan for the book.’
‘I have three plans.’
‘Good heavens!’
‘There’s no need for mockery.’
‘All right, then let’s talk seriously. Plan number one?’
‘A book on the experiences of Egyptian prisoners at Mahariq, concluding with a chapter on my father.’
‘Dozens of people who’ve lived through that experience have recorded it — what would you add to their accounts?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘All right, then. Plan number two?’
‘An edited volume, each chapter of which contains a selection from the writings of political prisoners from a particular country, Arab or non-Arab. I would edit the book and introduce it with a general study of the subject.’
‘And plan number three?’
I faltered a moment. Then I said, ‘I forget!’
I hadn’t forgotten, but I was embarrassed to talk about my intention to write a novel that would invert the usual order of things, whereby it is those living outside the prison who are the prisoners, not the other way round. The idea was very tempting, but it was just an idea, one that crossed my mind from time to time, and had come to seem like the germ of some sort of literary enterprise. I’m not a novelist, so where did I come up with this mad idea of writing a novel, anyway?
Chapter five
Translation problems II
In the beginning, it was a honeymoon. A resplendent month, it extended spontaneously into the months that followed. The days leading up to it were like wedding celebrations, the house rocked by a feverish commotion of joy — and the guests, the good wishes, the ‘Hamdillah ‘a-ssalaama,’ ‘Thank God you’re safe,’ ‘Your presence illuminates the house’… and the chocolates, the sweets, baskets of fruit, flowers, and the potted houseplants delivered by one of the florist’s employees, each with a greeting card bearing the name of whoever had sent it.
My grandmother came from the village, bringing stuffed pigeons and ducks, and salted rice pudding. She also brought another gift, entrusted to her by my aunt (for the festivities in no way mitigated against her vow never again to darken the door of her sister-in-law’s house). My aunt sent fiteer pastry and meneyn biscuits, as well as dates and pomegranates. (My mother tasted none of this — she declared that it hadn’t been intended for her, and that it wouldn’t be right for her to eat any of it.) My father’s relatives — cousins on both his father’s side and his mother’s — brought cartons filled with bags of rice, flour, lentils, sugar, bottles of oil and soap, as well as bottled sherbet. The kitchen filled up with pies, cakes and petits fours, brought by my parents’ friends.
My mother went off to work lively, and came home livelier still, buzzing around like a bee, greeting people, bidding them goodbye, welcoming them, hosting them, laying the table, clearing it, all the while lighthearted and smiling. Lately we had engaged the services of a woman — the wife or sister of the bawaab, I think, or perhaps it was just someone he knew — to help us around the house. She would stand at the kitchen sink for hours, ceaselessly washing plates and cups, preparing tea and coffee, squeezing lemons and oranges and mixing sherbet with cold water.
I went to school, and when I returned home my feet had wings, as if I was flying to get to Eid. I didn’t spend a lot of time staring into the mirror to see what it was that was new about my face. The changes in my mother, though, were perfectly obvious to me. ‘Mama,’ I said to her, ‘you look prettier, and your voice is sweeter, too!’ She laughed. I don’t think it was her voice that had changed, but rather the cadence of her speech, which in retrospect I believe was smoother, just like the angles of her shoulders, spontaneously restored to their original soft curves. The difference seemed obvious to me on an intuitive level, even if I lacked both the knowledge and experience of people to understand these changes, and the facility to articulate them the way I can do now. My mother’s intense vitality — manifested in the swift agility of her movements and complemented by the sweetness of her gaze — had hardened during the period of my father’s absence. The lines of her body had grown angular and harsh, as if to express the effort of maintaining her composure and keeping her anxiety in check. But the strain showed in the unevenness of her speech, her high-pitched voice, and the erratic motions of her head and limbs.
After a week or two, the private honeymoon commenced. A sense of calm — pure and fine, novel and altogether strange — united the three of us. My mother and I no longer picked quarrels with each other, she no longer shouted, or spoke or moved in that spasmodic way that had made me think she was mad. In light of these new developments, I concluded that she was not mad after all, that rather she must have been in a bad way, exhausted, and frightened for my father. Or perhaps she had been mad, and was now well again. I began to relax into my life with my parents. Gradually I regained that childhood paradise from which I had fallen abruptly one winter morning, incomprehensibly, unreasonably.
I needed no wings to fly — I could soar even when I was chained to my seat in the classroom. Lessons were enjoyable, the teacher amiable, my classmates the nicest of God’s creations. I even approached the one-eyed beggar, who used to stand at the top of the street where my school was, and whose appearance frightened me so that I hurried past him without looking in his direction. I asked him his name, and took to saying, ‘Good morning, ‘Amm Darwish!’ and giving him whatever I could spare — my pocket money if I had remembered to bring any, or the sandwich my mother had made for me, or a piece of chocolate if I happened to have some with me.
Even though I spent a great deal of time sitting with my parents — staying up late with them, fighting sleep until it overcame me and my mother took me off to bed — nevertheless, contrary to both precedent and expectation, at the end of that school year and the next I got the highest marks in every subject we were taught. The day the certificates were distributed, the headmistress announced, ‘Nada has distinguished herself in every way; her academic performance is outstanding, likewise her behaviour with the teachers and with her classmates.’