Naphtalene. Alia Mamdouh

her hair, and caught her breath sharply before the mirror: “Is it true what Jamouli said? My face looks frightful. My God, I’m afraid of seeing it in the mirror. I’ve been afraid of that face for so long. I certainly was the prettiest among my sisters. When Umm Jamil came to find a bride for her son she said she wanted the most sensible girl. Oh, God forgive me! Is there any sense left now? Mama, come and look at Iqbal now. Jamouli is married, Mama. God Almighty. He married her and she is pregnant as well.”

      She smacked the surface of the mirror and dropped to the floor. She opened her legs and beat on them. She raised her nightgown from her slender thighs and pinched them. I could only see her undulating movement as she shook and hugged herself, as she raised and bowed her head and back before me.

      “What do I have left? I will never see the children again. Mama, come look at me now. No, no, let me come to you instead. I would love to travel there. I will see you and my brother Shafiq. I will be able to tell truth from falsehood. Poor Iqbal, humans get ill and are stricken and rise again. They must pick themselves up and stand tall. Death is an attitude. Why, Jamouli, why? Is she better than I am? I am the mother of your children, the mother of precious Adouli. Oh, Mama, who will wash Adouli’s hair now? Where will I go now? Jamouli is trying to drive me mad before I die, and I swear to God his dear mother is the only reason I have stayed.”

      I heard my father’s loud voice: “Iqbal, come rub my back.”

      She jumped up suddenly as if stung. Her voice was inaudible, smothered by tears. She opened all the doors of the wardrobe and started there. She took out my father’s clothes, his new uniforms, his ironed shirts, his hanging ties. She threw one uniform after another onto the floor, scattered the shirts, and hurled down the ties like a genie the hot earth had produced, or who had flown out of an oven.

      She shrieked and crawled. She snatched the clothes and threw them away from her. She turned and curled up on the ground, then stood up. She turned about, flushed with anger. These were the clothes of the long nights of waiting.

      These were the shirts of the only man who had ever known her pure embrace and sunk his beak down to the ailing roots. She had pulled him away with her hand, rubbed his back, chest, and hips, his thighs, legs, and feet. She had seized him by the arms and gone up to his head.

      She had whetted his appetite for sleep and snoring. She had covered him and gazed at him. She had sat at the end of the bed until he awoke, and when he called to her she went to him, bruised but radiant.

      This was the bed where she had learned he was a man, that he was the ruler, the father, and the chosen one. She trod and leapt and wailed. She pulled out the white undershirts and held them to her face, smelling and kissing them. She held his underpants, his white and blue handkerchiefs, and his socks, and moaned, “Jamouli is married and he’s got her pregnant! Oh, no! What shall I do now?” This was the first time I heard my mother’s voice torn out of her like a rope lowered to all of us. It cut through the walls and our ears. It was nothing like our voices or our daily quarrels.

      The voice started and awakened, stopped and then rolled on, carrying a banner high, stopping before me in the window.

      She did not see me but I saw her. She screamed in my face: “Go! Get me the scissors.”

      This was my father’s precious inheritance, his bed, his clothing, his bloody receptacles, his insides, his madness, the emblems of his police work, the conditions of his good looks and elegance.

      My father spent most of his wages on clothes. In winter he wore gray and black, and in the summer blue and beige. He glittered and shone as he stood in front of the mirror treating his glossy hair with a special white hair cream. He covered his face with cologne. On his body his clothes became like wings—he seemed to fly out to the street, and his mouth watered when he saw himself in the eyes of the neighborhood women. He shivered as he placed his watch with Roman numerals—it had been a gift from his grandfather in the days of the British—on its gold chain and hung it from his waistcoat, letting the chain gleam and flash across his stomach.

      He left the house alone, walking like a king—he had trained himself in this walk. He never bumped into anyone or greeted anyone with any hand movement. His fingers were in his pocket, his leather belt, the opening of his collar, his crisp trousers. He never took a step out of his way. He never lost a button or dropped a handkerchief. When he boarded a bus, he rarely took a seat, though when he did he made a great show of positioning his arms and legs. He held his breath, his arms folded tightly against his ribs, his skeleton perfectly erect. He took his uniforms to Abu Ghanim’s ironing shop himself; Abu Ghanim ironed the clothes of the rich families at the far end of the neighborhood. He picked them up himself too, felt, sorted, folded them, and hung them up in the wardrobe himself. He ordered my mother, “Wash them separately, and spread them to dry in the shade so they won’t fade.” We never dared touch them.

      He called out, “Where are you, Iqbal? Come wash my back.”

      I did not move; my head was splitting with her screams and sobs.

      She paced around the room, bent over, straightening up and taking whatever was in front of her, tearing it with her teeth and throwing it on the floor. She hiccupped. “I won’t die twice, and if I die now, I’ll die contented.”

      I wept in the courtyard. My grandmother, aunt, and Adil were walking in front of me. They went in to her, and now her voice was louder than my father’s. “Your son is married, Mama, Umm Jamil! Jamouli is married and the woman is pregnant! That’s your reward. But now he’ll see who Iqbal is.”

      His voice, our voices, her voice—all had drunk from the same river of madness and grown in the same house of utter ruin. Adil was squatting in a corner, watching and crying. My aunt picked up the clothes and books; now the room was starting to resemble the messy room high up on the flat roof.

      Farida wailed: “God protect us from this day! God will kill you, Jamil. Huda, come help me clean up before he comes in here or blood will flow tonight.”

      Alone, I watched, and watched, and watched, and stumbled, and bent over. My grandmother cradled my mother and hugged her tightly, prayed over her, and pulled her by the arm. “God is great, my daughter Iqbal, God protect you, God bless you, now let’s go, let’s get out of here before—”