“Yes, why?”
“For lice.”
She says her hair is clean.
“Do you have a loofah or should I bring you ours?”
She says: “No. I have one.”
“Do you have clean clothes?”
“I have some.”
He tells her to put her dirty clothes to the side to be washed later. We leave the room and she closes the door behind us.
We go into our room. I sit at my desk and start studying again. Father lights a cigarette. He leaves the room. I follow.
“Papa, why do they say about our master Ali, ‘God be generous to his face’?”
“Because he never looked upon the nakedness of any human. . even himself.”
I ask: “Is that a sin?”
“Yeah.” Selma bares her legs. There is a dark space between them. Mama Tahiya moves to her other underarm. She turns her head to study it. She feels it with her fingers. She stands up. She tells me as she gently takes hold of my ear: “Get to your room. Sit there and don’t leave.”I take her hand pleading, “Please, I’m begging you Mama, not by myself.” She studies me with a smile. “Okay. You can sit in the living room, but only on the condition that you don’t spy on me.”
I go into our room and then come back out. He walks around the living room, going back and forth with his hands clutched behind his back. He tells me she is a simpleton who could burn herself. Or she could trick us and not really take a bath: “Take a look and see what she’s doing.” I peek through the keyhole. My glasses knock against the door. I press them back up on my nose. I start looking again. I see her sitting down in the tub without anything appearing but her bare shoulders. Steam comes up from the pan of water. Mother grabs hold of the metal jar. She fills it half way with hot water. She forgets to mix in a little bit of cold.
I tell him she is naked and sitting in the tub. He says: “Let’s see,” and he bends over to look through the keyhole. He stands back up and walks around the dining table. He rubs his moustache with his finger. I notice that his eyes are shiny. He tells me to offer to help her rub her back. I do it without wanting to. She turns me down. She walks out after a while wearing a colored gallabiya and combing her hair. Water drips off it. He asks her if she boiled her clothes and she says: “Yes.”
She changes the water in the basin. She brings in the washtub for laundry from the kitchen. She puts it next to the basin. Father paces in the living room while he watches her. I get out my history textbook and I sit at the table, facing the guest room. She sits down on top of the low, wooden kitchen stool. She gathers up her gallabiya between her legs and her knees are bared and even part of her thighs. She is bending over her folded right leg. She puts a piece of the halva putty on top of her foot. She lifts it off and then rubs on it. She puts it on the middle of her leg. She does the same thing over again up closer to her thigh.
She moves clothes from the basin to the tub and rubs them. She dunks them in the water in the basin. She rubs them some more then wrings them out and hangs them to dry on the clothesline hanging in the skylight. She uses up all the water in the basin and the sink and then dries the floor. She takes the burner back to the kitchen. He tells her to soak the tablecloth for a while in the tub. We can see that the top of our wooden table has a large grease stain on it.
He tells her to light the stove to heat up the food for lunch. He throws himself into cooking the piece of meat. He adds bits of charcoal to it. He gets the green salad ready. He calls me and tells me to bring in a pack of salt from on top of the sideboard. I run over to it. I stretch out my hand to take the salt. Fatima beats me to it and I pull my hand back. She calls out: “Yes, Sidi. Right away.” She brings him the salt. I follow, feeling mad.
He finishes browning the meat and starts to heat up the bread over the fire. She puts two plates on the table. He says that the table is so dirty that he doesn’t feel like eating. She rushes to clean it with the kitchen loofah. He asks her to wait until we have finished eating. He takes the pan of meat into our room. He puts it on the round table. She brings in the two plates and the bread. She hangs on to her own plate. He sits on the edge of the bed. I drag the desk chair over and sit in front of him. He dishes out our food first. She holds her plate out to him. He serves her. She goes to sit on the floor, so he says to her: “Sit up on the bed. You’re just like my daughter.” She sits next to me. I lose my appetite.
The doorbell rings. She starts to get up to open it but he signals to her to stay put. He waves at me to go and see who it is. I open the door and find Abbas in front of me.
“Is Fatima here?” I don’t know how to answer.
“Okay then, can you just call the bey?”
I leave him and run in to get father. He gets up and leaves the room. He closes the door behind him. I think about following him, but I don’t want to leave Fatima by herself. I stand up behind the door. She stands next to me. We listen. My father’s voice: “Sit down, Abbas.” His voice sounds very firm. We cannot pick up anything from the conversation. Abbas’s voice makes him sound in a bad way. Father calls to Fatima. She goes into the living room and I follow. He says to her: “It’s settled, my girl. Go back to your husband. He won’t raise his hand again. You can come and get your clothes later, after they’ve dried.” Abbas heads for the front door with her right behind him.
~ ~ ~
He grabs his fez with his left hand. He lifts it up, level to his chest. Bends his right arm. His right hand comes up to the fez. He brushes off its sides with his sleeve. He sets it on top of his head. Locks the door to our room. He tells Fatima to cook the spinach just the way he taught her to, and to remember to throw in a few dried chickpeas. We go out and head for the street. The grocery shop is closed. I lean over towards the chemist. He pulls me sharply by my arm. We cross to the other pavement and pass in front of Hajj Mishaal’s shop. He is sitting inside. His body is huge. He is wearing a long-sleeved shirt and trousers. His hair is slicked down with Vaseline. He smiles an unsettled smile when he sees us. Father ignores him.
We turn into the next alley. We come out in the next street along. “Khalil.” I turn around angrily at whoever is calling my father without giving him the title of “Bey.” Aly Safa comes up to us in a rush. He is walking with his feet flying out to each side of him. He is wearing a blue suit coat and grey trousers. Father stops to let him catch up with us. They shake hands. I stand between them. Father pushes me to the right and we keep walking so that Aly Safa falls in to his left. Father asks him: “Where’ve you been? Did you get married or something?” Aly Safa says: “Do I look crazy?”
He reaches out to pat me on the cheek and asks: “Don’t you have school today?” Father pushes me away from his hand gruffly and says: “These days there’s a strike almost every day.” Aly Safa says he is running off to the electric utilities office and he goes on ahead of us. I ask father why he pushed me to the side. He says: “The thing is, he corrupts young boys.” I think about this strange puzzle.
We turn into a small side alley. There is a smell of mold and mildew. We go into a house with no doorman. We go up the steps to the second story. He knocks on the door of an apartment. A woman’s voice comes out after a while: “Who is it?” Father says: “Aziza, it’s me.”
The voice repeats: “Who?”
“Aziza, it’s me, Khalil. Open up.”
“Just a minute, Bey.”