‘Yes,’ I declared recklessly, anxious to establish my self-sufficiency. ‘Sometimes I cook it with milk.’
‘But how?’ she said. ‘Don’t you know you have to have an oven to cook rice with milk?’
She shook her head sadly as I floundered for an answer. ‘What will you do with your stove when you go?’ she demanded.
‘Why don’t you give it to me?’ said the other woman.
‘No he won’t,’ said Ustaz Sabry’s mother, casting her a significant look. ‘It’s no use asking: old Taha must have his eyes on it already.’
She began to stroke my arm with a maternal weariness. ‘Tell me my son,’ she said, ‘when are you going back home? Isn’t your holiday over yet?’
Summoning my dignity as best I could, I told her I was not on holiday; what I was doing was work, serious work (secretly I had begun to have doubts on that score, but I wasn’t going to admit them to her). I still had a lot of work to do, I insisted, and it would be several more months before I was finished.
‘Your poor mother,’ she said. ‘She must miss you so much.’
Still stroking my arm she flashed her friend a smile.
‘He is very fond of cows,’ she told her. ‘He often goes down to the fields to take pictures of cows.’
Her friend nearly dropped her cauliflowers as she spun around to look at me, her mouth falling open in amazement.
‘Yes,’ said Ustaz Sabry’s mother, nodding knowledgeably. ‘He goes down to the fields whenever he hears the cows are out. He goes with his camera and he takes pictures of cows — and sheep and goats and camels.’
‘And people too,’ I added reproachfully.
She pursed her lips as though that were a subject on which she would prefer to reserve judgement. Her eyes in the meanwhile had fastened upon a distant cabbage, but before shuffling off to bargain for it she gave my arm a final parting pat. ‘You must come to us whenever you want anything,’ she said. ‘Sabry so much likes to talk to you — why, just the other day he said to me, the people of Egypt and India have been like brothers for centuries. You must consider yourself one of our family.’
I turned back to the carrots as she went off to hunt down her cabbage, but no sooner had I begun to pick through the pile than I was interrupted once again.
‘Over here, ya doktór,’ a voice called out to me. ‘Come over here.’ It was Busaina, sitting cross-legged behind her own plastic sheet, waving a bunch of green coriander.
‘Here, ya doktór,’ she said. ‘Come and buy some things from over here so I can say khalas and make my way home.’
My very first glance at the collection of vegetables in front of her told me that they were the most miserable in the market: a few fraying heads of lettuce, some ragged bunches of watercress and a heap of soggy onions mixed with a few other scraps. Unlike the other piles in the row, hers didn’t consist of remnants from the morning’s sales: it was so large that it was clear that she had sold hardly anything at all.
It had happened to her before, ‘Amm Taha told me later; her vegetables were often untouched at the end of the morning. It wasn’t her salesmanship that was to blame — she was, if anything, a real professional, the only woman in the market who actually made a living by selling vegetables. Her problem was that her vegetables did not come directly from the fields — she gathered them in bits and pieces, going from house to house and buying leftovers. It wasn’t often that she could bring vegetables from her own family’s land, for there were so many people in their household that they rarely had anything to sell. When they did, it was her brothers’ wives who usually brought them to the market; that was their privilege as the wives of the house, and Busaina, as a sister, had to fend for herself.
Her family had welcomed her back after she left her husband, and according to the custom of the village they had given her all the support they could, and would go on doing so, even if her husband did not meet his obligation to send money for the children. But she for her part had begun to look for work the moment she arrived, for she wasn’t willing to let her children be raised as dependants in her brothers’ household. She had known, when she left her husband, that she was entering upon virtual widowhood, for although she was still in her twenties it was almost a certainty that, as the mother of two young children, she would not be able to marry again. Having renounced wifely domesticity, she had become doubly ambitious for her sons and had begun to work long hours carrying her basket around all the markets in the nearby villages.
‘What am I going to do, ya doktór?’ she said, flicking the flies off her vegetables with a loud, full-throated laugh. ‘I’ll have to throw these things into the canal — maybe the catfish will want to eat them.’
Her hilarity increased when I picked out a bunch of watercress and held out a twenty-five piastre note. I‘ll save some of that for my son’s wedding,’ she said, and her shoulders shook as she handed me my change.
A few minutes later, when I was bargaining over a bunch of grapes with a travelling fruit-vendor from Damanhour, I was taken by surprise to hear her voice, shouting angrily over my shoulder.
‘Say that again, boss,’ she challenged the fruit vendor. ‘I want to hear you say that again. Fifty piastres for that rotten bunch — is that what you want to charge him?’
The vendor stood his ground, but a sheepish look came over him as he began to explain that it wasn’t his fault, things were getting more and more expensive day by day, and he had to come all the way from Damanhour in his donkey-cart. ‘And besides,’ he ended lamely, his voice rising to a high-pitched whine, ‘they’re good grapes, you just try them and see.’
‘ “Good grapes”,’ mimicked Busaina. ‘So if they’re so good why don’t you keep them yourself?’
‘Wallahi,’ swore the vendor, pointing a finger heavenwards. ‘I’m not asking too much — that’s exactly what it costs.’
‘I go to the market every day,’ said Busaina. ‘Don’t try to fool me. I know, you’re having fun at his expense.’
‘But he’s from the city,’ the vendor protested. ‘Why shouldn’t he pay city prices — since he’ll only take them back with him?’
‘He lives here now,’ said Busaina, ‘he’s not in the city any more.’ She snatched the grapes out of my hand and thrust them back on to his cart. ‘Thirty piastres, not a girsh more.’
‘Never,’ said the vendor, with an outraged yell. ‘Never, never — I’d rather divorce my wife!’
‘Why don’t you do it?’ shouted Busaina. ‘You’ll see: she’ll clap her hands and cry “Praise God”.’
That was when Yasir appeared, just as an audience was beginning to collect around us. Through his adjudication Busaina was vindicated and order restored, and after she had gone triumphantly back to her pile of vegetables, Yasir and I had a long conversation which ended with his offering to take me to meet his father, Imam Ibrahim, at any time of my choosing.
11
TAKING YASIR AT his word I stopped at his shop one morning, several days later. He was busy with a client, but he immediately laid down his razor and offered to lead me to his father’s house, on the far side of the village square.
He had let Imam Ibrahim know that I wanted to talk to him, he said, so my visit would not be unexpected. He would have liked to stay himself, to listen to me talking to his father, but of course he couldn’t leave his shop for long.
‘But come and eat with us this afternoon,’ he said with a smile, leading me across the square. ‘Come after the midday prayers. My father will be there too, insha‘allah, so we can sit together and discuss all kinds of matters.’
The Imam’s house was directly opposite the mosque, squeezed in amongst a maze of low huts, each crowned with a billowing head of straw. Yasir rapped hard on his heavy, wooden door and after making sure that someone was stirring inside, he hurried back towards his shop, with another quick reminder about eating at his house at midday.