The Mirage

55

I reached the Abbasiya Bridge a few minutes before the scheduled time. The weather was pleasant and it was quite dark, so I waited under a gas lamp. I’d come in a state of angst and tension that reminded me of the state I’d been in on the day the carriage took me to the pub on Alfi Bey Street for the first time. And all this for the sake of a woman with neither beauty nor grace. In fact, I would have been embarrassed to be seen with her in public. When it was nearly time for her to arrive, I was ridden by the same fear that I’d felt over and over during the wait that had begun that afternoon. What if the tragedy repeated itself? There was still time to flee. But I didn’t budge. This woman was my only chance to reclaim my lost confidence. Besides, I was possessed by a spirit of adventure the likes of which I’d never seen in myself. “Give it a try!” it said to me. “You won’t lose anything. Or, at least, you won’t lose anything new.” I was roused from my thoughts by a medium-sized car that pulled up in front of me next to the sidewalk. The car window opened and through it I saw the face of the strange woman, who was seated behind the steering wheel. She smiled at me and invited me to go around and get in on the other side. Muddled, I did as she said, and in less than a second, I was sitting next to her. I pulled the door closed and remained sitting right up against it, so self-conscious that I was hardly aware of what was around me. I could feel her eyes on my left cheek, but I kept looking straight ahead until she burst out laughing.

Then, in a voice that sounded delicate by comparison with the coarseness of her face and body, she said provocatively, “There’s no need to be shy anymore.”

She took off, handling the car with deftness and ease, and said, “Let’s go to Pyramids Road.”

She was driving so fast I was petrified, and whenever she was forced to slow down by other cars or a traffic light, I breathed a sigh of relief. Yet strangely, she stopped speeding like a maniac when she’d left the busy streets behind. After catching my breath, I looked furtively over at her and got a close-up view of one side of her homely face and her compact bosom. At the same time, I recalled an image of her plump bronze legs. Then I remembered that she was just an inch away from my leg, and my body went into an uproar. I was amazed to find her calm and serene as though she were accompanying her husband or her brother, not a strange man about to die of awkwardness and self-consciousness.

Her eyes still on the road, she asked me, “What shall I call you?”

“Kamil Ru’ba,” I replied briefly.

I contented myself with this rather than adding the title “bey,” which often drew a laugh.

“Nice name,” she murmured.

I felt as though I ought to ask her for her name, too. I’d chosen a suitable phrase to use and was gathering my courage to utter it when she said simply, “You can call me Inayat.”

“Nice name,” I muttered shyly, though all she heard was a whisper.

Then suddenly she turned toward me and said with a smile, “Strange that you’re so shy! Don’t you know that shyness is out of style? Even virgins have given it up without regret. So why are you holding on to it?”

I laughed nervously and made no reply.

“But enough of this,” she went on. “Medicine is only effective when it’s given at the right time. Now tell me, for heaven’s sake, what led you to mix with the Nubians in that filthy coffee shop?”

Wondering what to say, I thought for a while until I hit on a fib that would get me out of my fix.

I said, “One day I was coming back from a long trip, and it was the only place I could find to rest.”

“That’s about the first day. But what about the second and third days?”

A fitting answer came to me off the top of my head. So, overcoming my shyness, I said softly, “You were the reason for the second and third days.”

She looked at me with a laugh and said shrewdly, “Are you telling me the truth, or are you just trying to evade the question by flirting?”

“No, I’m telling the truth,” I said.

Looking back at the road coquettishly, she said, “So then, why do you keep sitting up against the door as though you don’t want to touch me?”

Feeling muddled, I didn’t know what to do.

“But we’re on the road,” I said apologetically.

She burst out laughing, then said, “We’re in the car, not on the road! Besides, even the road wouldn’t keep people like us from sitting up next to each other if we wanted to. Don’t make phony excuses. Now tell me, how old are you?”

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“For shame! And how many women have you been with?”

I made no reply, feeling I wasn’t up to her and her questions. Then, as though she were surprised at my silence, she said reproachfully, “Do you mean to say you’ve never been with a woman before? Am I the first woman in your life? My Lord! Haven’t those green eyes of yours snagged anybody yet? If not, then I got to you just when you were about to drown, and may God reward me richly for my good deed! My Lord, who could believe this? How do you live, and what are you doing with your life?”

Again I made no reply, as her words had pained me without her realizing it. However, she may have seen the look of discomfort on my face, since she let up on me and asked me no more questions for some time. Then she asked me about my work, and I replied that I was a government employee. I added that I was on a short vacation, after which silence reigned once again. Meanwhile, she shifted slightly in my direction until her shoulder was gently touching mine. The contact sent life coursing through my cowering heart, whose pulse raced to the beat of my fear and shyness.

When I went on clinging to the door and not making a move, she stifled a laugh and said pithily, “A step from me and a step from you. Now are you still scared?”

Her invitation met with a willing soul and a fearful heart. Resisting the fear with everything in me, I slid over ever so cautiously until my side — from the lower leg to the top of the shoulder — came in contact with tender flesh that was redolent with a sweet, captivating perfume. I paused for a moment to take in the luscious feel of it, my whole body trembling. Then she turned toward me, and I felt her breath on my cheek.

“Are you still scared?” she whispered in my ear.

Not at all. I’d been intoxicated by passion. Still breathing on my cheek, she leaned her head toward me until my mouth dove into her swelling lips, whereupon she quickly shifted her head away from me and looked back at the road ahead of her. I placed my left arm around her thick waist and began covering the side of her neck with kisses.

“Easy does it!” she murmured with a laugh as she veered off to the side of the road.

Then she stopped the car, saying, “Let’s rest for a while here. It’s a safe place.”

Looking out, I saw that she’d chosen a spot halfway between two streetlights. It was pitch dark and the area on either side of the car was vacant. Aside from the cars whizzing by us at lightning speed, we were surrounded by a deep silence.

“Isn’t it dangerous?” I asked her in a whisper.

Wrapping her right arm around my neck, she said, “It’s safer than your house.”

She then turned until her right shoulder was touching the back of the seat and folded her right leg under her left thigh. We were now face to face, and the neck opening in her dress receded to reveal her swelling bosom. I leaned forward and rested my head on her chest, filled with amazement and tenderness, and I was intoxicated by the fragrance of a human body more delectable than the sweetest perfume. I rested there peacefully for I don’t know how long as her hand played with the hair on my head. Then I lifted my face toward hers and devoured her lips, and she devoured mine. It was as though we were eating and swallowing each other alive. Fear was gone now, since there was nothing left to justify it, and I was filled with life, with madness, and with boundless confidence. I don’t know where the confidence came from, but this woman was fully in charge of the situation, and in her I found the guide that I’d lacked all my life. She restored to me both confidence and peace of mind because she relieved me of all responsibility and took me slowly and gently. At that moment, more than ever before in my life, I realized that the laying of any responsibility on me was liable to cause me to lose myself, and that I could only find this fragile self of mine when I was in strong, steady hands. The world melted away in a wild, magical intoxication, and I emerged drunk on the wine of victory and profound satisfaction. Deep inside, I felt a desire for this woman equaled only by my desire for life itself. In fact, she herself was life, dignity, manhood, confidence, and happiness. My lips parted in a smile of victory and joy and I cast her a look of gratitude the depth of which she couldn’t possibly have fathomed. In her presence I was wallowing in the dirt. But it was good, loving dirt that yielded confidence and happiness. I realized the mistakes I’d made in the past and I remembered my beloved wife with a sense of grief and despair that nearly shattered my dreamlike bliss. Yet I had no hesitation about holding her responsible for all my misery. That’s how it seemed to me. At the same time, my heart pined for her even at that moment and in that place.

As for the woman, she tapped my nose with her fingertip and said, “Happy?”

“Very,” I replied from the heart.

She took my left hand in both of hers and murmured, “What a wonderful child you are.”

“A child in his third decade!” I said with an embarrassed laugh.

Then a look of seriousness and concern flashed in her eyes, and I noticed her running her fingers over my wedding band. With a stunned look on her face, she cried, “Are you married? That never even crossed my mind!”

Fear came over me, and I looked at her without saying a word.

Then she laughed out loud and said, “How is it that that never even occurred to me? But how can I believe this? My Lord, why did you run after me? Isn’t your wife to your liking? How dissolute can you get?”

Discomfited and befuddled, I looked down and didn’t say a word.

“Don’t you love your wife?” she asked in a tone of concern.

I was vexed by the question, and I hesitated for a moment, not knowing what to say. However, the delicacy of the situation forced me to say in a voice that was barely audible, “She’s a nice lady.”

She broke in, saying, “I’m asking you whether you love her!”

Sensing that lying becomes a virtue when in the presence of women, I said with an indignation that I concealed with a smile, “No.”

Her features relaxed.

Then again she asked with concern, “How long have you been married?”

“Nearly two years,” I said, saddened by the mention of marriage.

“Didn’t you love her before?”

“No.”

“They married you to her without your having known her previously?”

“Yes.”

“What an unforgivable sin!” she cried angrily. “And she, doesn’t she love you?”

And for the first time I replied truthfully, “She doesn’t love love.”

Her eyes widened with incredulity, and she opened her mouth so wide that I saw a couple of gold teeth that I hadn’t seen before.

“Ahhhh,” she said. “Now I get it. There are women like that. And why wouldn’t there be? Not all women are complete.”

We exchanged a long, wordless look accompanied by a smile.

Then I asked her with a laugh, “And you. Aren’t you married?”

Without taking her eyes off me she replied, “I’m just a widow. My husband was a prominent rear admiral by the name of Ali Pasha Salam. When we married, he was old and I was young. Then a few years later he died. So I came back to live with my mother. And only God knows who I’ll be living with tomorrow!”

She smiled at me and began to whistle. Then she picked up her purse, took out a powder puff and proceeded to dust her face and her neck with it. After arranging her disheveled locks of hair, she cast a glance at her face in the car’s side mirror.

“When does your vacation end?” she asked.

“In a few days.”

“We’ll meet often,” she said calmly. “Every day, if possible. The car will do until we can find a more suitable place.”

She sat up straight again behind the steering wheel. However, I took hold of her wrist, then put my arm around her neck. She let out a brief chuckle and held me to her rounded bosom as she said, “Who do you think you are, smarty pants, making me spruce myself up all over again?”