'He's Cultural Attache at our embassy,' she said proudly.
Nasser must have been forgiven. No doubt a beneficiary of one of the arbitrary amnesties. Once labelled a 'Conspirator' and 'Traitor', he had become a leading member of the diplomatic community, installed in 'our embassy' in one of the most illustrious countries in the world. Will he be our Octavio Paz, I wondered.
'Good,' I said. 'Wonderful news.' Then, after an awkward pause, 'Will you be visiting him?'
'Perhaps for the honeymoon,' she said, laughing to someone beside her.
'Who's the lucky groom?'
'Well, I won't tell you,' she said, teasingly. For a moment I had the absurd thought that it might be me, that Mother, with her new talent for matchmaking, had fixed it all up. 'You know him very well,' she said. 'Here, he wants to talk to you. And, oh, Suleiman, I am very sorry about your father. He was such a lovely man. We have all lost a father.'
'Hello? Suleiman?' a deep male voice said. 'You can't recognize me? He can't recognize me,' he said again to Siham. 'It's me, Kareem.'
It seemed I had lost my voice. Was I overcome with joy or grief? Ridiculous to feel either.
'I wrote to you. Did you not get my letter?'
From these distances only blame and regret seem possible.
'I am sorry,' I said, and immediately felt the need to repeat my apology.
'May God compensate you and have mercy on Ustath Faraj,' he said, and I could tell from the feeling in his voice that he meant it.
I said nothing, couldn't bring myself to say the same about his father. I felt deep gratitude and searing envy. He was there in all the ways I couldn't be. Who knows what might have become of me, of Baba, of Siham, if I'd still been there? I imagined the new couple, strolling down a beach, perhaps in Goa, perhaps in Tripoli. Then I pictured them older, living on Mulberry Street, busy with children, because children change everything, reinvent life and make black days rosy, or at least that's what I have heard people say. I doubt I will ever find out. I wanted to congratulate him, wish him a happy and prosperous life with his bride, but I felt impotent somehow. Is this some divine joke, I thought, having her marry my childhood friend; couldn't you have had her marry someone else? But it made sense, of course: Siham's brother was a friend of Kareem's father. My mother might have orchestrated the match, who knows? Perhaps Father did too, perhaps he looked after the orphaned Kareem as his own; taking care of Kareem as Judge Yaseen had taken care of me; perhaps the world is fair and balanced after all; no one gains and no one loses, or no one gains and everyone loses equally. I could see my father shaking the hand of his old clerk, the Cultural Attache, to read the Fateha, to bless and seal the engagement. I could have given her a better life, away from the country that everyone wishes to escape. But the waters have returned and washed away the blood; everybody was getting on with their lives, busy forgetting, willing to forgive.
'How's Cairo?'
' Cairo 's fine,' I said, clearing my throat. 'Yes. Cairo is fine, I am fine.'
'Well,' he said, his voice withdrawing. 'Perhaps we'll come and visit you one of these days.'
'Yes.'
'Siham loves Cairo from all the films.'
'Yes. I would like that, I would like it very much, Kareem.'
Soon after I learned that my mother had lied. Father did die of a heart attack, but it had happened during lunch, while sipping his soup – this is the second death – at that same breakfast table in our kitchen and not 'painlessly'. He kicked as furiously as Ustath Rashid's legs did above the National Basketball Stadium, clawing at the table, without me, without my hands, my now grown-up arms, strong enough to lift him, to press him to my chest, to say all the meagre things people say at such moments. I heard the truth of it from Uncle Khaled, the poet. Returning from the funeral, he had stopped over in Cairo before heading back to America. We had met like this before, always briefly, in transit. I sense he blames me for leaving, for abandoning my parents, but it's a sign of madness, I know, to claim to know what is in another man's heart. I never told him that it was his sister who had sent me away, because I knew what he would say, 'But you have had many chances since to return,' and he would be right. And so I am wary of him.
We usually meet at Groppi, the cafe on Talaat Harb Square, in downtown Cairo. He often needs to pass by Madbouli, the bookshop on the same square. These meetings often remind me of mother's story of the Italian Coffee House, and, remembering her suffering, I would feel my blood pressure rise. I never ask him about his children – all with names like Ed and Amy – and he is only content with knowing if I am well. But when we embrace my eyes sting with tears.
25
It is December and the Central Bus Station in Alexandria is as busy as Mecca during the days of hajj. I sit in my car for a moment to collect my courage. I consider the option of not looking for her, of waiting here until she finds me. Then I open my door and stand beside the car.
I am twenty-four and still living in Cairo, the city she sent me to, like a faithful dog still waiting, confident that his owner will come to reclaim him. And she is finally coming. Because of the air embargo she is travelling by road. With the border controls the journey probably took twenty-four hours. She'll be tired. She'll have to stay for at least a month. One month! I wonder how it'll pass. I can't even remember her face. What if I don't recognize her?
I look down at my legs, my grown-up legs in their grown-up trousers, dark wool for the winter, ironed with a crease in the middle. You're a man, I tell myself. And she's coming to see you, to see what has become of her darling boy, her only son. How will she be? Looking old, no doubt. Veiled, too. What will she think of me?
Several buses are driving in and out of the station. I have no idea which one she's on. I remain beside my car. Then I see her. She is standing next to her suitcase like a girl in the city for the first time. Not veiled. Not a grey hair on her head. I suddenly realize how young my mother is. She was twenty-four when I was sent away, the same age as I am now; fifteen when she had me, the same number of years I have spent away from her. In the end all that remains are numbers, the measurement of distances, the quantity of things. Thirty-nine. She's only thirty-nine. What is she hoping for from life now, I wonder. How fitting to see her like this in Alexandria, in the city of fallen grace. I begin to walk towards her. She hasn't seen me yet. The mother who tried to never have me, the mother who never chose it, the mother who resisted in all the ways she knew how. I wave my hand above my head, thinking of calling her, but I can't utter the word. Then suddenly it comes. 'Mama,' I say and say it again and again until she sees me. 'Mama! Mama!' When I reach her she kisses my hands, my forehead, my cheeks, combs my hair with her fingers, straightens my collar.
The Sidi Mahrez poem is taken from a book entitled Libya: The Lost Cities of the Roman Empire by Robert Polidori, Antonino Di Vita, Ginette Di Vita-Evrard and Lidiano Bacchielli, published by Konemann Verlags-gesellschaft mbH, Bonner Str. 126., D-50968 Cologne, 1999-
The quotation from the Quran is taken from a translation by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall entitled The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'an, published by Dar Al-Kitab Allubnani, P.O. Box 3176, Beirut, Lebanon.
The first three quotations of Salah Abd al-Sabur are taken from his poem Night and Day; the fourth from the poem Tale of the Sad Minstrel. All have been translated from the Arabic by the author.