Ibrahim Meguid - The House of Jasmine

I smiled and said, “It seems that this will be the last time.”

When I returned to the apartment, I remembered the five hundred meals which Zinhum must have sold or even left at the store and received a cash refund. I was quite mad at first, and then I laughed at it all.

#

It had been a month since I had last visited my parents’ graves. I left work at eleven o’clock in the morning, and went to Masr Bank to deposit the new two hundred pounds in my account. I walked a little down Salah Salim Street, and in Manshiyya I found myself getting on the number five tram. What made me do that? It must have been my parents. I had thought of visiting them before, but I had never gotten around to it. My desire must have been stronger this time. It was one-thirty in the afternoon, and it was not yet summer, but the tram was crowded. I picked a spot next to the conductor, who was sitting by the back door. I leaned against the side of the tram. I was too preoccupied to let the crowding bother me. I didn’t want to complain to my parents about anything. I didn’t want to apologize for anything. I wanted only to see them, even in a dream. I didn’t have any photographs of either of them, and I had nearly forgotten what they looked like.

Suddenly I felt someone looking at me. I looked around and found a woman with a brilliant smile watching me. I was confused. I wasn’t ready for any adventures, so I tried to fix my eyes on my feet, but I continued to feel her gentle gaze on my face. I could not help looking up at her. She looked both radiant and a bit surprised. Her face disappeared behind a tall man who stood between us. It was over, but I kept trying to get another peek at her face every time the tall man moved. I didn’t realize that my attempts were embarrassing him, until I caught his eyes and saw that he was both uncomfortable and suspicious. I lowered my eyes and calmed myself.

At the entrance of the cemetery, I was received by dirty barefoot children begging for “charity,” skinny Quran reciters who hopped like wagtails and recited too quickly Quranic verses they didn’t know very well. I almost left. I needed to cry. I knew that, but I didn’t know why. I needed the tears to wash my soul, to clear my heart and mind of their burdens. Have I really turned out the way my father asked God that I would? At my parents’ graves, I stood alone, having waved my arms and shooed the kids and the reciters away. I suddenly remembered who the woman who had smiled at me on the tram was. She was Kawthar, Hani’s sister, who had been also like a sister to me in beautiful times past.

#

A month later, I was in a taxi, and couldn’t believe that the road the driver had taken was going to take us where I wanted to go. He was driving in alleys flanked by tall buildings that blocked the light and left the alleys quite dark, and streets that were crowded with workshops and cafés. He stopped in front of an area filled with shabby dark-colored tents, and said: “Here we are.”

He was right. There was the hospital, with its bare trees standing farther apart from each other than I remembered. A few people were looking out of each of its windows, and the houses around it looked as if they were frightened by their gloomy surroundings.

“As you can see, I can’t go any further,” the driver said.

“What is this?”

“You must have been gone a while. Those are shelters.”

I left the taxi and was met by clouds of moths and flies and a foul, stagnant stench. Should I go back? Why did I come, then? I stepped forward.

Naked children and pale women were standing outside the tents and tin shacks. A few men were busy with some wooden boards and tin sheets, and they all looked very desolate. Feces, feces! There were feces everywhere on the ground. A mesh of wires was hanging over the shelters, and I could hear the sounds of televisions and radios. There was only one meter between the tents and the entrance to the building across from them, and it was filled with chickens and ducks running in the mud and the bodies of dead cats. Where has God gone now? In the past, He had given us His paradise, so how could He leave us now? And in such a short time?

What a fool I am. A long time has passed. How had I failed to notice that when I brushed my hair in front of the mirror every morning? Oh Kawthar, did you have to look at me? I will probably not find anyone. You must have gotten married. A woman like you does not remain unmarried for long. Your amazing beauty and sweet fragrance stir the heart. Your face has become fuller and rounder, the face of a mature woman. I will not find you or Hani, who must be living with his wife in Cairo. Didn’t he tell me when I ran into him at Raml Station that he was going to call his fiancée in Cairo? Here I’m at the entrance of the dark stairway, where a man with a swollen face lies with his crutch next to his one leg. He doesn’t notice me going in as I tiptoe past him. He’s surrounded by chickens and ducks. The windows on the stairway are all closed and covered with dust and cobwebs. It’s pitch dark. Here I’m going up the stairs in the dark without meeting a single person, not a young man whom I knew as a child or an old man who might ask me about my parents. I know that a law was passed just after we left our apartment here, giving the residents permanent ownership of their apartments. Maybe this law was among the causes of my father’s death soon after our move, for he saw it as the ultimate proof of bad luck. Maybe he neither disliked the hills nor wished to disappoint me. Yet, it is impossible to live here, even after that law. No one can live in a place that God has deserted.

But I’m going up the stairs. I will not miss your apartment, Kawthar. It was larger than ours. Your father had finished grade school, and so got a three-bedroom apartment when he was employed. Will Ahlam meet me? Your little sister whom I remembered on the day you smiled at me in the tram. She had passed her grade-school exams on the day we moved out of here. She must be a grown woman now, and it is for her that I’m here today.

Ahlam had your fragrance when you and I were growing up together. You always matured faster than I did, while she remained a child to me. Maybe if she sees me, she will remember how I used to make her feel better after Hani, who was always joking, had teased her and then asked her to make us some mint tea. She would leave the room angrily, and a little later you would bring in the tea with a smile and rosy cheeks, and you would also offer us peanuts and pumpkin seeds. Sometimes you told us that a good movie was showing that evening on the new television set your father had just bought, and sometimes you said how relieved you were that you had quit after middle school, and didn’t have to study anymore, and sometimes you complained that nothing was on television except Gamal ‘Abd al-Nassir receiving other Arab presidents and kings all day. Do you remember that I tried to explain to you that the Arab leaders were coming for a summit meeting, and you shrugged and said: “What summit?” Hani and I both laughed at your response, and Hani said that his family was a bunch of losers.

The door is now open and I do not see Ahlam. Who is this little dark girl standing in the door?

“Who is it, Nur?” called a voice from inside. It sounded like Kawthar’s voice, with its distinctive hoarseness, which I can always recognize. So this little girl looking up at me was named Nur. What a distance there was between my eyes and hers.

“Who are you?” she asked quite casually. I smiled at her, but didn’t reply. She ran inside, and I heard her say, “Mom, it is a very tall man who doesn’t talk at all!”

I didn’t hear footsteps, but I saw Kawthar in front of me with her feet bare. Her blonde hair fell loosely down her back, but she no longer had her sweet fragrance.