Mahmoud charged into the house like a madman.
On his reddened face there was anger such as I had never seen.
Zubeida also left in a temper as soon as I arrived, shouting words of blame and reproach that I didn't bother to try to understand, and for the first time she didn't hug and kiss Fiona as she went out.
Fiona sat at the table opposite me, her head bowed, sorrow and defeat on her face.
Before Mahmoud could get a word out, I said, 'I'm sorry. I was wrong and I'm sorry.'
He opened his mouth to speak but the words choked in his throat, his face turned an even brighter shade of red, and in the end he exploded with,'Madame is sorry?'
Then he resumed, his tongue tripping over the words, 'I… I… I'm the last one to know?'
He came towards me, extending his arms and spreading his hands out as though he intended to hit me with both of them, or strangle me, but he suddenly raised a hand and struck himself on the forehead, stammering out again, 'I'll… I'll…
I'll throttle Salmawi, and Ibraheem with him. Me, the last to know? I swear I'll…'
'Wait a moment, Mahmoud!'
When Fiona stood up and addressed him, he fell suddenly silent. Her face was the colour of ashes but she spoke in a clear voice, suppressing her violent emotion. 'You should direct all your blame at me, Mahmoud, Catherine is not at fault. I'm the one who asked her to go out and get some air.'
He stood looking at her uncomprehendingly. Then he said, 'You too? But why?'
He turned and rushed out as he had entered. Fiona put her hand on my shoulder and repeated the question in a faltering voice.
'But why, Catherine?'
18. Mahmoud
I woke earlier than usual, in the midst of deep darkness.
Another night of little sleep.
And that name. Deird? Deirdre? Deiradra?
It's been going around in my mind from the moment I opened my eyes but I can't manage to remember it. A difficult name, and a more difficult story, Fiona.
The name won't come back to me and the details are slipping away. In the story there's an evil king, who wants this innocent girl Deirdre, who is in love with a beautiful cavalier. I don't remember whether the king kills her beloved and his two knightly brothers or someone else does. And does the beautiful girl kill herself out of grief over her beloved or does she die of sorrow? The details evaporate but I remember the ending perfectly. The king is determined to part her from her beloved even in death. He buries her far away from his grave and there's a river, or a canal, between them. A plant grows up from her grave, though — ivy, perhaps. It grows longer and longer and it spreads over the ground and across the water and, on the other bank, intertwines with a shoot that has grown up from her beloved's grave, and from their embrace grows a bush. The king orders that the bush be cut down and the two shoots cut back, but they spring up again and embrace again and again and again, until the king despairs and stops having them cut back. In death their love frustrates the will of evil.
It wasn't our smiling Fiona who told that story last night, but another Fiona, one whose face had emptied of blood and delivered her words sadly, one by one. When she'd finished,
Catherine asked her eagerly, 'Why did you cut the story short and leave out the beautiful poetry?' and Fiona replied, as she got up, 'That's enough for now. I'm tired this evening.'
Indeed, her painful coughing went on all night. It's getting worse day by day and with it my feelings of impotence. Sheikh Yahya's herbs haven't worked the same miracle as with Ibraheem, so what's to be done?. Catherine refused to agree to the two of them travelling to Cairo in the hope of finding better treatment and asked me the question I already knew the answer to: how? The journey would kill her. But her staying here will kill her too and kill me along with her. If Sheikh Yahya's intuition about her condition is correct, there's no hope, and there's still a long time to go before the hot weather when we can try the last possibility. Will she hang on till the summer comes and the sands get hot? Will she live? She has to live. If anyone deserves life in this house, it's her alone. Not me and not Catherine.
The sound of coughing became a little quieter, then stopped. I've grown able to distinguish the different types of cough quite clearly since Fiona moved to the ground floor. My hearing has become sensitive even to the sound of her breathing. What do I want from her? Nothing except that she live, just as Sheikh Yahya said that he wanted Maleeka to live so that the world could have some meaning. Why, then, can I not rid myself of her face, which pursues me at home, in the office and on the road, when I'm alone in bed and when Catherine is lying next to me? To what end will it lead us, that thing which comes unsought and cannot be escaped?
The cough started again, harder this time, and my heart began pounding. I had to go out, to get away. I jumped out of bed and Catherine didn't wake. Neither my movements nor her sister's coughing wake her. She has returned to her heavy sleep after the nights of moaning and groaning caused by the bruises made by the stones. The only worries that keep her awake are the temples of the ancestors! I wish that that day instead of throwing stones at her they'd…
No. Forgive me, Fiona. I don't wish any harm to your sister!
I washed quickly, dressed, and left the house.
The dark was still intense and there was a long time to go before the first streaks of dawn. I found no one awake at the station except for the soldiers of the night guard, whom my arrival at that hour greatly surprised. But as I crossed the courtyard I saw a phantom, whose identity I could not distinguish in the dark, moving as though to leave the place.
It was taken aback by me too, and came forwards, greeting me in embarrassment, then stood silent.
'Welcome, Sheikh Sabir,' I said.
I had seen him once following the assault on Catherine at the temple. He came to make a show of apologizing for what the zaggala had done, his words, as usual, hinting at other things. They carried a reproach to Catherine, 'because the lady went to the temple where these "ignorant" people suspect that she is practising magic', and a reproach to me because, since I'd permitted the lady to go to the temple, it would have been better to send a sufficient number of guards with her. Privately, I conceded that he was right, but I contented myself with thanking him and said I would take care it didn't occur again. Wasfi insisted that Sheikh Sabir should direct us to the zaggala who had carried out the assault so that we could flog them in front of everybody and make an example of them to others, but I said, decisively, that I accepted the apology of Sheikh Sabir and considered the matter closed.
In the dark courtyard, we stood facing one another without speaking. Finally, I said, 'Has anything happened, Sheikh Sabir, that requires the intervention of the police?'
He replied, with growing embarrassment, 'Not at all, not at all, Mr Commissioner. I was with the captain and… we were going over the accounts for the taxes.'
I laughed in spite of myself. 'You were going over them at this hour, Sheikh Sabir?'
'Yes. He told me before the dawn prayer. He likes to work early.'
'It's the early bird, indeed, that gets the worm. Goodbye, Sheikh Sabir.'
I left him and climbed the stairs to my office. One of the guards wanted to wake up Sergeant Ibraheem but I forbade him. I told him, 'We'll start work at the proper time, as we do every day.'
As soon as I went in, I felt cold, so I closed the open window and sat alone in the dark room. I need to be on my own and have this peace in order to think.
Think about what exactly? I'd become an addict of thinking about myself and every page I turned I found to be worse than the one before. Would that I weren't I! Would that I were my brother Suleiman, for example, that I were a merchant in Damascus and he an officer in the police. Why not?