That Other Me Read online

  DEDICATION

  For my Mother

  Maryam Ali Gargash

  The Diamond of the Family

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  1:Majed

  2:Dalal

  3:Mariam

  4:Majed

  5:Dalal

  6:Mariam

  7:Majed

  8:Dalal

  9:Mariam

  10:Majed

  11:Mariam

  12:Majed

  13:Dalal

  14:Mariam

  15:Dalal

  16:Majed

  17:Mariam

  18:Mariam

  19:Dalal

  20:Majed

  21:Dalal

  22:Majed

  23:Mariam

  24:Dalal

  25:Majed

  26:Mariam

  27:Dalal

  28:Mariam

  29:Dalal

  30:Majed

  31:Mariam

  32:Majed

  33:Mariam

  34:Majed

  35:Dalal

  36:Mariam

  37:Dalal

  38:Mariam

  39:Dalal

  40:Mariam

  41:Dalal

  42:Majed

  43:Dalal

  44:Mariam

  45:Dalal

  46:Mariam

  47:Dalal

  48:Majed

  49:Mariam

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Maha Gargash

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  MAJED

  Tok, tok, tok, tok, tok.

  There are women standing on the other side of my bedroom door, taking turns knocking. There are seven of them, and each is more beautiful than the last. I can tell what they look like—fine-nosed and fair—even though the door is closed. Their accents are flawless, but I know they are not Emiratis.

  Tok, tok, tok. I grin at their impatience and wait a moment before inviting them in. “Enter!”

  I am young, with not a gray hair on my head. I listen to their light footsteps over the thick carpet. Even though my eyes remain shut, I can see everything. They form a circle around my bed, which sits in the middle of the room. Their gowns float around them, their silhouettes flashing bare when the light hits them from behind.

  Yes, there is light, too: hundreds of lines, beaming through tiny holes in the wall. A shaft catches a rising knee; another illuminates a twisting shoulder as an arm twirls. “Come!” I demand, feeling the hairs on my body rise. And when they do, I start grabbing at them. There! Her hair is soft, and she bends out of the way. There! I snatch the air as another one spins away like a wheel. They are so fast, but I don’t stop lifting my arms toward the ring of dancing women who loom over me.

  Blocking the light, they reach down to caress me. But instead of rapture, I’m filled with horror: they fix their long fingers around my neck. Bold, cold, they squeeze. I am a writhing worm as I struggle to break away, and once I realize it’s useless I cry out with a force that shakes the length of me. But there is no sound. I yell again. “Arree!” This time it’s as shrill as a whistle, and I don’t stop until I’m up and on my knees, sweating and shivering on the bed.

  I am awake and staring at the face of a child, who holds a bucket in one hand and a rag in the other. My rattled wits are reflected in her tiny eyes. And no wonder! My wizar, the checkered cotton wrap I sleep in, has crept up and twisted around my neck. My chest, tummy and all that hangs below are exposed in full view of this girl, who stands frozen in place at the foot of my bed, unable to look away from my sprouting forest of hair. I hurry to hide my nakedness with a pillow, too stunned to ask who she is or what she is doing in my room.

  Tok, tok, tok. It’s the sound of a hammer breaking cement, and it triggers sharp pain along the length of my forehead. The noise comes from downstairs, not from behind the door, which now opens. My wife, Aisha, rushes in and orders the girl out, admonishing her for having entered the room while I was asleep. “New maid,” she says to me. “She doesn’t know the ways of the house yet.” Her eyes round. “What happened to you?”

  I fumble to untangle my wizar, puzzled at the two thick knots. How is that possible? How much did I struggle in my dream? “Can’t I wake up peacefully in this house?” I grumble. My throat is parched, and I cough before continuing. “Can’t I wake up to silence and privacy?” The curtains are just short of being fully drawn. Only a sliver of white light beams through, but it’s enough to drill a hole through my head, just like the bright-green numbers of the electronic calendar on the bedside table—15:01:1995. I search for the aspirin in the drawer.

  “I know, I know,” says my wife, handing me a bottle of water. “But it’s an emergency.” She waits for me to swallow the two pills before continuing. “I had to send a driver to Hor Al-Anz to fetch the plumber. He called to tell me that the plumber is away, visiting relatives in Ajman. I tell him, ‘Can’t you think for yourself?’ ” She taps her head. “But it seems he can’t. So I ordered him to drive out to Ajman.”

  I slide off the bed and tighten the wizar around my waist. My eyes burn. I want to splash cold water on my face. As I hobble to the bathroom Aisha follows me, continuing her account of the morning’s household incident.

  “No one expected the pipe to burst. It just did, and the dining room is flooded. I hope the carpets won’t be completely ruined. We’ve spread them outside in the sun to dry. I don’t know how long . . .”

  My wife utters each detail with relish, as if I care about any of it. I close the bathroom door, but her voice travels through the thick teak wood, crisp and anxious. “. . . Persian carpets. We couldn’t hang them, of course: too heavy with all that water. So we spread them over the garden benches, and . . .”

  These domestic accounts and complaints are tedious, and fueled by the incompetence of an army of servants. Who killed the purple-flowered bougainvillea by giving it too much water, and the potted gardenias by exposing them to too much sun? Was it our Pakistani gardener or the landscaping company that comes twice a week to maintain the garden? And yesterday’s fish, which was fried until the flesh turned rubbery instead of being steamed in the Chinese way, as was instructed. Which of our two cooks was responsible? Was it the Muslim Bengali or the Christian Indian? The cooks, bickering, each pointed his finger at the other. Who can tell with those two? They hold their views on the best way to chop onions or boil rice with the same vehemence as they do their political and religious beliefs.

  “The drivers didn’t help carry the carpets out. Of course, one of them was getting the plumber. But the other one—well, he conveniently disappeared.”

  My eyes are red. I lean over the sink and let out a loud belch.

  “Once I find him, he’ll make an excuse, probably tell me that he went to pray, even though there’s still another hour before the muezzin’s call for the midday prayer.”

  She is chattier than usual today. It exhausts me to have to listen to her. The sooner I get ready, the sooner I can leave the house. I turn on the tap. It gurgles and spits air.

  “. . . Because we turned the water off.”

  My tongue feels like a piece of leather. There’s the plumber’s hammer again, a drill boring through my skull. When will the medicine work? I pull open the bathroom door.

  “Of course, lunch won’t be affected. There is water in the outside kitchen. But that pipe, that pipe . . .”

  “I want to wash my face,” I say in a hoarse voice.

  Without delay Aisha stops her prattle and hurries to fetch the bottle of water, three-quarters full, from the bedside table. I watch her with a scowl on my face: her willowy build
, with only a slight broadening of the hips—a finger’s width added, I think, with each of her eight deliveries. I guzzle down enough of the water to relieve my parched throat and, without bothering to lean over the sink, splash the rest over my head.

  My wife does not fetch a washcloth as the water slides along the sides of my face and down my torso. Through the gaps of her burka, she narrows her sharp black eyes at the puddle that forms at my feet. I wait, but she says nothing about the mess. She calls the maid, and when no one answers, she tightens her shayla, the black head cover, around her head and rushes out of the room.

  There’s my face in the mirror, swollen and tinged a sickly green, as if I’d been poisoned. It’s not the first time. More and more often, this is how it looks the morning after a long night at the Neely—that’s the code name for the deep-blue, three-bedroom apartment where I drink (privately, of course) with my friends. Situated a few streets off the main road in Al-Qusais, it has a balcony that overlooks an empty plot of land. Few cars pass there at night because it’s in an industrial area, packed with warehouses and printing facilities. This suits us well, but we park our cars out of sight anyway, in the basement garage.

  “Finally,” I mutter as another new maid enters, carrying two plastic buckets of water. She strains under the weight but, surprisingly, manages to place them in the bathtub without spilling a drop. I bend over, and cry out as soon as I scoop a handful. “Where did you get this water? It’s as hot as boiling stew.”

  She opens her mouth, but no words come out. Aisha rushes in and, with a few well-chosen questions, extracts the necessary information. This second new maid has boiled the water because she was given to understand that everything in this house has to be hygienic. That’s why she pulled bottled water from the fridge and poured it into a huge pot. That’s why she boiled it before bringing it up.

  “Stupid, stupid girl,” Aisha admonishes her. She tightens her lips and raises her hand as if to strike, but pulls the maid’s ear instead. “Now, run down and get some more bottles from the fridge. Quickly!”

  “No can, madam. Fee-neesh.” Her singsong voice prompts my wife to pull her other ear.

  “I’ll make you fee-neesh! Go down. Bring ice. You know ice?”

  “Yes, yes, ices.” She darts out of the bathroom.

  “Now, that first tiny maid comes from some jungle,” Aisha says, “but this one who just delivered the buckets is from Manila—at least, that’s what is written in her papers.” The pain in my head turns sharp and I press my temples to numb it. My wife doesn’t seem to notice. She continues her soliloquy. “Being from a big city like that, she should know the basics.” She dips her index finger in the water to check the temperature and pulls it out abruptly, cocking her head as if surprised that I was telling the truth. “I’m certain it’s those recruitment offices,” she continues. “They must forge all the details.” I could easily shut her up with one harsh reproach, but the thought fatigues me, and besides, I don’t think there’s enough saliva in my mouth to speak. So I call up one last bit of patience and herd her out of the bathroom. I’m about to close the door when the ice arrives. The cubes lose shape as soon as the maid empties them into the buckets.

  Finally, after Aisha quickly checks whether I need anything more, they leave me alone. I climb into the bathtub and hunker down, pinning my knees to the sides for balance. I scoop water into a plastic jug and pour it over my head several times. The temperature is bearable, and I can hear the birds outside because the plumber has stopped smashing the wall. As I soap my body, I begin to feel better. I am working up a lather when I realize I need to calculate how much water I’ll need to wash it off. “A quarter of a bucketful,” I predict out loud, and guffaw. Here is one of the richest men in Dubai, crouched on his heels like a coolie, stingy with his water, as he takes his bath out of a bucket.

  2

  DALAL

  The stone flies high into the air. Then there’s a deafening crack at the second-story window and muffled squeals from inside the girls’ sakan, the dormitory of the Emirati college students in Cairo.

  I had raised my fist high and thrown blindly. I had not expected my aim to be so perfect. All I wanted was to get Mariam’s attention so she would sneak out and meet me. I stand in place, stupefied. A girl—not Mariam—rushes to the window. She is in her nightgown, her head wrapped in a polka-dot head scarf. She would have spotted me had Azza not yanked me out of the glare of the streetlight. We squat down behind a dusty hedge as the window is pushed open.

  “Ehh! What’s going on down there?” That’s the voice of the abla, one of the matrons responsible for the sakan girls. I try to stay still, but Azza’s perfume, a sharp bouquet that is an insult to any flower, shoots up my nostrils. I sneeze, and that gets the matron hollering out into the night again. “I can hear you down there, you mangy hooligans. This is a respectable building with decent people living in it, you hear me? Show me your faces, you cowards.” She is a barrel of a woman, blocking my view of the group of girls now huddled tightly around her. “I’m going to call the police. I’m going to call them right now.”

  I hear a girl suggest that it might be thieves. “Or murderers,” a silly one adds. The abla retreats and shoos the girls away. Once she slams shut the broken window we straighten up, and Azza clicks her tongue. “What you go through for your cousin,” she says. “What’s wrong with just showing up at the door and asking to see her?”

  “It’s after nine,” I reply, brushing the dust off my jeans and silky purple blouse. “You know she can’t leave after nine.” I gaze at the entrance of the building. I’ll have to bribe the doorman. Not willing to part with my money so easily, I’d kept this as a last option. “They’re grown women in there,” I grumble, “and they treat them like children.” Suddenly I’m struck by the importance of this mission. “I will demand that they treat those students—so clever that they are studying law, medicine, engineering—with respect. ‘Stop treating them like prisoners!’ That’s what I’ll say. ‘Give them the freedom to come and go as they please, to have some fun!’ ”

  “But what if they don’t want any of that?” Azza asks. “Maybe they’re just here to study and leave with degrees. Don’t forget, you’re talking about Emirati girls.”

  “Young women,” I correct her. “Seventeen years old, like me. Nineteen, like my cousin Mariam. And older, too.”

  “But they’re Emiratis.”

  “And what am I?”

  “Well . . . yes . . . But your mother is Egyptian, thank God.” She raises her arms to the sky. “You’ve got that Egyptian mischief in you.” She starts giggling for no reason. I give her a nasty look, which she ignores. I turn my back to her and start walking away. “Sometimes I think you do things without thinking,” she persists as she hurries after me.

  “Sometimes you make the stupidest comments. Now will you stop it?” I swing around to face her. There’s just a ribbon of moon on this January night, but I know she can see my glower. She may have brought the car, her father’s battered maroon Fiat, but she knows that she is in the company of future promise. Yes, that’s how I visualize myself, ever since I found out today that I have a confirmed appointment to meet with the famous composer Sherif Nasr. “Look,” I tell her. “All I want is for Mariam to be with me right now, to celebrate my good news.”

  She points at the doorman. “But what about him?”

  “Leave him to me,” I say. “Just go and get the car and meet me a few buildings down, at the corner of the street.”

  “But how will you get past him?”

  “Just go, pretty one,” I say, even though she’s the opposite of pretty, and I march to the entrance of the sakan.

  “How did you manage to get me out?” Mariam asks me as soon as we’ve walked out of the doorman’s hearing range. Her eyes are long and slightly hooded; they widen as she searches my face for an explanation.

  “He told me to sign and just go, to enjoy the night, not to worry.”

  “But what about t
he permission? I didn’t get one.”

  I greet her with a kiss on the cheek and say, “I’ve made a special arrangement with him.”

  “What arrangement?” She crinkles up her nose, slightly raising the upper lip of her broad mouth. She is darker than I am, but there’s a dazzle to her because of the strange mix of tones in her face. That attractive coppery shine in her complexion is brought out by her bright eyes, which are the color of pale honey, and her auburn hair, which is many shades lighter than her skin.

  I blow out air with impatience. Must I explain everything? She should know that I paid him—simple as that. At first the doorman held his fist lightly over his heart in a show of honesty, but then those wily fingers loosened and tapped his chest. It didn’t take long for his hand to open, indicating his readiness to bend a rule or two. “I jiggled my breasts and shook my hips at him.” I chuckle at the predictability of the gasp that comes out of my dear cousin.

  “You think it’s just him in there?” she says, fixing her shayla loosely around her head in a way that reveals the full breadth of her glossy bangs. They sit neat and straight, just above her crescent-shaped eyebrows. Like many other Emirati girls studying in Cairo, Mariam does not wear an abaya, a voluminous black robe, but she still dresses conservatively. Her pale-green shirt, decorated with tiny creeping vines, is buttoned at the cuffs. Her ankle-length skirt has the right amount of looseness so as not to cling to her figure. “There’s also the night security guard and the abla. If she finds out I’m missing she’ll send a letter to the cultural attaché, who will surely call my uncle—Ammi Majed will not be happy—and then I could be expelled.”

  I decide right away that the more books Mariam studies, the slower her mind works. She should know that I gave the doorman enough for him to share. “All taken care of,” I say. “Don’t worry.”

  “How can I not?” she says. “You know what it’ll mean if I’m found out. No chance for a degree. And then what would I do? My life would be ruined.”

  “Ruined!” I exaggerate the whine in Mariam’s voice. My features freeze into the classic look of desperation that Egyptian actresses put on when faced with the inevitable heartbreak woven so predictably into every drama’s script. Tragedies are always hurled at women. I slap my chest and repeat, “Ruined!”