She imagined a dazzling white swimsuit, her long legs bare on the sand, his eyes on them. She held his hand tight.
‘Is it difficult to swim?’
‘No, it’s easy. Diving is harder. I’ll teach you to dive too.’
She gasped and laughed at the same time. ‘Even Nabilah doesn’t dive.’
‘Why do you talk about her so much?’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes, you’re always going on — Nabilah does this, Nabilah said that.’
Soraya was taken aback. She did not want her admiration for Nabilah to be questioned, because it was not reciprocated. Nabilah had no time or sympathy for her, but Soraya was confident that she could win her over in time.
‘You’re still against her! You just don’t like her, do you?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Am I supposed to, when she causes my mother so much grief?’
‘She doesn’t mean to.’
‘She knew my father was married. She knew he had grownup children so why did she marry him? Because of his money, that’s why!’
He was blaming Nabilah to avoid blaming his father, but Soraya understood why her uncle had married Nabilah. She could imagine clearly his desperation to move from the hoash to a salon with a pretty, cultured wife by his side. Everyone loved Uncle Mahmoud, even though they were in awe of him. It made her say, ‘I would trade you my father for Uncle Mahmoud and Nabilah any day.’
He laughed. ‘Uncle Idris? Keep him.’
‘Do you hate him because he tore up your poem?’
‘And the things he said.’ He wasn’t smiling any more. ‘He certainly knew how to stop it in me.’
His bitterness did not surprise her.
‘Just ignore him and keep writing.’
He sat down on the sand and looked out at the sea.
‘It doesn’t come to me any more. As if it’s all gone dull inside. I read collections, I memorise whole poems, and I copy down the lyrics of songs that I like, but that poem he tore up was the last one I composed.’
She tucked her dress behind her knees and sat next to him.
‘Can’t you make yourself do it? Like homework?’
‘No, it’s not like that. Besides, I don’t care for it any more. No, that’s not true, I do care but I don’t have hope that I can amount to anything as a poet. After university, I am going to join the family business; I am not going to become a poet, so there is no point in wasting my time on it. Every family has a vocation. We are traders, not scholars or army men. We are men of the souq, not rulers or judges or engineers. Our great-grandfather started with one dingy shop in the Souq Al-Arabi and look how far we’ve come. Father has invested so much in my education and Nassir is not pulling his weight. I can’t deviate and be something else.’
He sounded grown-up and realistic, pushing back childish dreams. But it still seemed sad and she did not know what to say to him. Should she console him or applaud him? His words were heavy, too serious for this golden beach and holiday breeze.
‘Come on, let’s walk back.’
He stood up and they turned, retracing their footsteps, surprised that in many places the smudged imprints of their feet were unruffled by the reach of the waves. She felt him soften next to her, settle back to his normal, easy mood.
‘I have big feet for a girl, nearly as big as yours! Sometimes in shops I can’t find my size.’
They measured their feet against each other. He dug his right foot in the sand and then she nestled hers in the imprint. His feet, they concluded, were slightly but definitely larger.
Nur picked up a shell. He brushed away the damp sand from it and made it look like ivory. It was flatter and wider than the shells the fortune tellers used back in Umdurman.
‘Have you ever had your fortune told?’ she asked.
‘Yes. It was all nonsense. I didn’t like it.’
‘Oh, I love to have my fortune told. It’s exciting.’
He smiled and put the shell in her hand, closed her fingers over it. They were quiet for a while, facing the direction of the orange umbrella and the moss-covered rocks, reluctant to traverse the distance.
‘Do you know what time Nassir came home last night?’ He was smiling. ‘Three in the morning. I know because he made such a clatter and woke me up.’
She laughed. She had started to feel kinder towards Nassir this summer, especially after he had purchased her glasses.
‘Next week Uncle Mahmoud will come and he’ll have to behave himself.’
‘Yes.’ Nur smiled. ‘No more parties and no more belly dancers.’
‘Belly dancers!’ Her eyes widened.
‘What did you think — that his nights were men only?’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t really think about it.’
‘Maybe he’ll take us with him one night.’
‘Us?’
‘Yes. You and I. We’ll go to a cabaret. You’ll like the show.’
A cabaret. Did she have anything to wear for that? She imagined wine-coloured chairs and laughter, cigarette smoke and English soldiers, Greek girls dancing and, at the end of the evening, the voluptuous belly dancer. No! It would be one prank too many. They would never get away with it. Nur had a mischievous look on his face and she responded to his delight, his sense of adventure. He started to tell her about a night he and his schoolmates had gone to the Petit Trianon. Behind the sweet counter was a ballroom where a band played and couples danced. She listened, enraptured, and he put his arm around her waist as if they were dancing in the European way. It made her laugh out loud, but they were close enough to see Fatma waving at them to come back. Soraya couldn’t make out the expression on her face.
‘I wish she was the short-sighted sister,’ said Nur and this made her laugh in a different way.
They quickened their footsteps towards the umbrella.
‘If we had walked in the other direction, we could have sat on the rocks,’ said Nur.
The rocks were covered with slippery green moss, a lurid green in contrast to the beige sand and pale blue water. It was not a colour Soraya favoured and she was glad they had not sat on the rocks. Perhaps the moss and the seaweed would have stained her new dress.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said to him. Tomorrow, when she would be wearing her new bathing suit.
Nassir woke up when they ducked under the umbrella and threw themselves on the sand.
‘Zeinab, come and give me a kiss,’ said Soraya. ‘These cheeks of yours, I just have to pinch them.’ She cuddled her niece while Nur grabbed the newspaper off Nassir’s belly and started to read it.
Fatma, as expected, was annoyed. She whispered to Soraya, ‘Every day you two get more ridiculous than the day before. Behave, girl.’
‘Tell him, don’t tell me.’ She wanted to tease Fatma. It was amusing to see her angry.
‘I will tell him. You think I won’t? He shouldn’t be spending so much time with you alone.’
‘Why not? There’s nothing wrong with it.’
‘Soraya, behave or I will send you back.’
‘Back where?’
‘Back to Cairo. Back to Umdurman.’
This was so far-fetched that it didn’t have a sting to it.
Soraya laughed and gave her sister a hug. ‘When Uncle Mahmoud and Nabilah come every single one of us will be behaving properly.’ This was a reference to Nassir, and Fatma made a face.
‘Go play with them,’ Nassir was saying to Nur. ‘Why not? Go join them.’
Soraya turned to see that a football game had started further back in the beach where the sand was completely dry. Three men were kicking a ball; they were in their bathing trunks with their hair cut short.
‘Don’t you know they’re English soldiers?’ Nur didn’t look up and turned to a new page.
‘So what?’ Nassir said. ‘You’re the captain of the football team at Victoria. Tell them that.’