Excerpt from Chapter 2
It happens during one of Mentuhopti's legendary performances. Spurred by the peculiarity of her condition, she dances on pieces of coloured glass that are arranged like rosebuds on the ground. Al Majhoul beats the drum till it draws blood and his heart turns into a heavy red cloud above Cairo. The thrusts of his rhythms open it and the crowd, in ecstasy, drinks from the waters that pour down from it.
Jinniya, drawn in by the music, dances on the city's roofs – and then, in a moment of terrible confusion, their eyes meet.
The music stops abruptly. The ensuing silence covers the square in a white scream. The crowd, in fear, disperses, unable to admit into their world the reality of what they have just seen. Only one girl, a ragged, dreamlorn 15-year old, remains heavily glued to the spot. Jinniya's eyes, Mentuhopti's eyes and the eyes of Al Majhoul are now fixed on hers. The girl's instinct is no less sharp and infallibly stark than the cat's; she instinctively comprehends the situation.
She smiles.
Her smile is as ragged as her clothes, as warm as her dreamy moments, as cold as the road and as generous in all that as the two rows of pearl-white teeth it exposes.
“There is only one solution”, her voice breaks the silence, “and that's run for it as fast as we can. Anyway”, she smiles roguishly, “what have we left to stay for?”
“They can run”, says the cat, “they are the subversion but I am the instrument of the law in the order to which I belong. They are the culprits but I am the executive of the judgement. They are the ones on the run but I am the hunter. What is there left for me poor, miserable cat to do?!”
Mentuhopti bursts into laughter: “So it's you too? Truly, the snake's life comes to an end when it bites its own tail.”
“Poor cat”, throws in the girl, “My name is Aysha. What's yours?”
“Jinniya.”
“Look, all of you”, says Aysha, “the house that I come from is a bad one. But with all that, it was still the house of a Muslim. The house to which I came when I left it is worse but I haven't forgotten what I learnt in the first. My name's sake, all the days of her life, used to contradict the ahadith of Abu Huraira who relates that a woman was condemned to eternal damnation on account of a little cat. However deep I may have fallen, I know what I owe her, and so I tell you that two people's happiness should not be destroyed for a cat's sake.”
Jinniya gives a hiss that freezes Aysha's blood and makes a fiery, threatening move with her right paw. Her furious eyes spray two blinding flashes. For an instant, she appears in another aspect; an aspect which at once transforms her small cat-sized person into a gigantic presence the sheer proportion of which drowns out the horizon, as its dimension covers both earth and sky. It extends, indeed, beyond them.
Then she giggles, full of herself.
Aysha, doing her best to pull herself together, goes on in a generous tone: “And yet, we know that the prophet (s.a.w.s.) has never treated any animal cruelly, and a cat must not be allowed to suffer. So we must consider Jinniya's welfare too.”
“Yessss”, says Jinniya with emphasis.
“Dear friends”, Aysha continues, “you must know that since I've taken to the streets, I'm known as Aysha Al Mun'aisha, and though I do not know how to help myself, I have solved many people's problems. Let me solve yours!”
“May I know your age, lady?”, asks Al Majhoul, “And let me introduce myself to you as well. My name is Majhoul, and this is Mentuhopti.”, he adds.
“It's an honour Effendim.”
“A pleasure, Madame.”
And in response to his question, Aysha states in a sovereign manner: “My lifetime amounts to 15 years or any similar number not too distant from the one I have mentioned.”
“Go on, then”, says Al Majhoul, “there's no wisdom like that of a 15-year old.”
To his great surprise, Aysha's suggestion turns out to be the perfect answer: “Even though you're looking at it from different angles, your problem basically is the same. How I see it, my esteemed friends, the best thing for you to do is to join up. Instead of each of you running away from the other, you might want to join forces to run away together from the one thing you really want to get away from. And if you take me with you I can even help you. Materially, I mean.”
Jinniya smiles from one ear to the other, purring: “The name you've got fits you, my sweet. To think that such brilliance has been wasted on a human! What could you have been if you were a cat!”
“So you are in agreement with this suggestion, Lady Jinniya?”
“Oh yes, Mentuhopti, for once I am, for I have more to gain this way than I stand to lose any other. Eternity shall have its day but what if we take the chance to have ours? Let hunter and hunted be one in the pursuit of life!”
“What, in terms of material things, could you have to offer?”, Al Majhoul, suddenly turning pragmatic, asks Aysha.
“A flying rug, Sire”, she answers, “is what I have to offer.”
“Ma sha Allah!”, exclaims Mentuhopti, “so those things do exist?”
“Indeed they seem to”, responds Al Majhoul, “I happen to have seen one just recently.”
“Where was it?”, enquires Aysha with interest.
“Near the National Museum. A flying merchant used it.”
“That's the one!”, Aysha happily exclaims, “That flying merchant who owns it is my father.”
“No and no! There are no coincidences in this world, nor are there in the other!” This is Jinniya's triumphant voice. “Now we truly know that we must do it. It's Al Qism wa'l Qadru'l maktoub! I shall be your first witness, Mentuhopti! At your wedding, which is blessed by fate!”
Aysha smiles with joy: “And I shall be your second!”
“For real?”, Mentuhopti half questions, half states, half exclaims.
“Yes”, confirms Aysha, and Al Majhoul adds profoundly: “In this world in which nothing is real, a flying rug is the one thing that is.”
Thereupon, as it ought to be with such enterprises, the modalities are discussed.
It turns out that Aysha's father, the flying merchant, is one of the weak points of the plan because a) he has expelled Aysha from his house for following her heart in a sensitive matter, which we shall handle in greater detail later on, so the denounced daughter cannot come near him lest he kills her and b) he guards the flying rug with such jealousy that he has given up sleeping for fear someone might snatch it. This is understandable, for it is the soul of his business, hence his livelihood. But he also has a weakness which his daughter knows only too well: he cannot bear criticism and positively loses control of himself whenever anybody dares to question the fervency of his faith.
Aysha's plan to divert his attention is thus simple but demands the cooperation of a person other than herself: someone must approach her father when he is selling his merchandise and suggest that he has grown his beard only in order to hide his lack of religion. This will infuriate him in such a way that he is certain to drop his guard over the flying rug, and the rest shall come by itself.
“Lovely”, says Al Majhoul, “it will be my pleasure to do that for you. I shall divert his attention and Mentuhopti will snatch the rug and then we're off, all together, Mentuhopti, you, my own humble self and the cat. But since our fates are now joined together by the same strings we should also know each other's history. If you don't mind me ask, daughter: what is it that has turned your father against you so fiercely? Possibly it is something we too should be aware of.”
“Oh, how insensitive of you!”, Mentuhopti exclaims, annoyed.
Jinniya gives a sly kind of purr: “If you ask an old cat, there's only one thing that can turn a father against his daughter...”
Mentuhopti shakes her head in disapproval: “Oh, Lady Jinniya, now you're being insensitive too. Let poor Aysha answer for herself or remain silent. It is a woman's right to answer or not to answer, and you should remember our forefathers' wisdom that says: never look a gift horse in the mouth, shouldn't you?”
Aysha embarrassedly looks to the ground, whispering: “Ah! It was love that confused my forsaken heart with mirages of happiness. Narrow is the path to the spring well and too much thirst corrupts the seeker. But the power of love is like the power of Hades, as Sayyiduna Sulaiman tells us; irresistible and strong as the call of death.”
When she raises her eyes again, there is no shame in them, and in a firm voice she narrates her story, facing Al Majhoul, Mentuhopti, herself and the cat.
“Ya Ikhwan al karam, I’m the daughter of a merchant who measured with maladjusted weights. At a tender age my being was subjugated by his heavy hand and my youth was annexed by his age so as to be integrated into his dominion. So I grew into his thoughts and his thinking, which corrupted my longings; longings I’m no longer able to name.
He made a fortune of imprisoning a careless demon who bought himself free with a flying rug, which is exactly the one we are intending to steal. But the demon was a vengeful one and cursed him in such a way that all his sons were turned into daughters before they were born. I was his seventh daughter, and when I was born he went to bury me in the depth of the earth but my mother watched him, hidden behind a tree.
When he had completed his work and after a long du’ah recited the Sayyidu’l Istighfar so Allah may see his repentance and avert the punishment, and then disappeared into the night, my mother dug up the earth and brought me back to the house, feigning ignorance of all that had happened. Initially, my father didn’t notice me among his other daughters. But when my mother one day happened to call me by my name, he heard it and angrily demanded: ‘Who is it you are calling Aysha?’ To avert his anger from her, I answered: ‘It is me, father. Don’t you remember that Aysha is what I’m called?’
He grew pale and mumbled in irritation: ‘But how can this be? Didn’t I see my own hands bury you some three years ago?’
My mother responded: ‘In the night you made amendments and expressed your regret of that deed, Allah has heard you and returned the dear girl to you.’
He always made it a point that he was a man of faith, and thus he could not have declined a gift of God. So he feigned great happiness but secretly, he held it against me that I was still alive and that same night he discreetly divorced my mother. Being the man he is, he left all my sisters with her but insisted that he keep me. So it happened that I accompanied him on all his business trips and sales- and purchase-related journeys.
He cheated people out of their money. He cheated people’s money out of their pockets. He cheated me out of my protests. He fled the police on his flying rug that was the major attraction of his appearance and the main adventure of my childhood and thereby created an illusion of superiority. He was a ragged sovereign of the road and an expert on all the tricks of the trade. It will not surprise you to hear that I admired him a lot.
When times were bad, he sold the rug to unsuspecting customers and made me creep up on them as soon as the money had been handed over, sit down on the rug and fly away with it. When on such days, back home, we sat over our meal, he laughed a lot and called me the pearl of his age.
In those days, I took these tricks for expressions of a Solomonic wisdom. But his authority got its first and devastating crack when one day he tried to sell the thing to an extremely handsome young magician. My father, mistaking his youth for ignorance, intended to play the same trick on him. Lo, sirs, how ill-advised was he! My beautiful magician immediately grasped the nature of the article he saw before him, and before him, he saw me as well and-- need I say more? As soon as my father had knocked on the table uttering the word ‘foulous’ -’money-, as is the custom of the merchants, taken his money and left the place for me to secretly sit down on the rug and fly away with it, he steered it back to his house with an invisible hand, and I found myself looking into the darkest, most brilliant, most glowful, most promising eyes with only my heart to defend what was left of me against the sheer might of their beauty.”
“Ya Amanu’llah!”, sighs the cat.
“Poor girl!”, Mentuhopti exclaims in true sympathy.
“And as you were left in the trap of this awkward situation,” Al Majhoul anxiously enquires, “have you been able to face up to the temptation?”
“I faced it,” responds Aysha with the smile of a Grande Dame.
“Pardon the nature of my question”, Al Majhoul continues his enquiry, “it is asked out of concern, not out of curiosity. We all are citizens of this country, and we all form part of the ummah. If a young girl is corrupted, I dare say, it concerns us all. So don't mind the fact that this is a question of personal nature and answer it as truthfully as your honour will permit. Have you been able to resist?”
“Of course not!”, interrupts Jinniya, “Or have you ever seen a person whose heart was able to resist the power of beauty? Of all things irresistible, the beauty in the eyes of a young magician is the most difficult one to resist.”
Al Majhoul throws her a look that makes Mentuhopti think twice about interfering in the discussion. “Your sentiments are those of a cat who hasn’t seen a male in centuries.”
“But my sentiments”, throws in a fearless Aysha, “are those of a poor and innocent young creature who hasn’t seen a male ever. So I believed every lie he told me and I fell into the trap he set for me, for my heart ill-advised me and my mind didn’t know any better. He opened his hand, and there were the stars of heaven in it. I ate of them, and their taste was that of Turkish honey. He raised his right arm until it extended into space and forced the moon down from the skies, so I could walk and dance on it. (With a sweet, dreamy smile) It tickled my feet, you know. He was a magician of first rank, I told you. He used the wind and the tides to pull me toward him. He was the hunter that preyed on my heart, and the falcon he sent out to catch it was love. Can a blade of grass withstand the storm that breaks it? Once the fortress has fallen to the enemy, who is there to defend it? Oh, I fell”, she says with all her force, “I was robbed of my most precious possession, the only one I ever held, and destroyed. But God is my judge and yours, and I tell you: My destruction was the greatest happiness I have known. Do not despise me, for I have grown up dignified.”
“Ya Salaam!”, exclaim Jinniya and Mentuhopti in one breath.
“Ah!”, sighs Al Majhoul, “Had you only resisted! I would have travelled in your company more comfortably.”
But Aysha’s story is not finished.
“Every step a person takes”, she continues with surprising wisdom, “leaves a trace in the sand.”
“No, my poor sister,” Mentuhopti exclaims, “you don’t mean to say that---”
“Yes”, Aysha responds, “This is what happened. After a few months I spent in his company my belly started to expand and I began to feel an appetite for strange things. In the beginning I thought it was the food or the cigars he taught me to smoke.”
“No!”, interrupts Al Majhoul, “A child out of wedlock is one thing, but a woman smoking cigars like a man is quite another. How could you ever allow him to put those ideas into your mind?!”
Mentuhopti and Jinniya unanimously protest against his way of treating poor little Aysha. Jinniya goes as far as to call him a reactionary and Mentuhopti openly questions whether he is still the man she fell for.
Al Majhoul insists that he is a traditionalist, but never has he been a man of reactionary disposition nor was he ever going to become one but conventions must never be violated because the human civilisation needs a set of social prejudices to form its foundation. Even though he is not aware of any surah of the Quran saying a woman was not allowed to smoke -makruh- cigars -this as a concession to his beloved Mentuhopti-, yet, there was none either to support that she was allowed to.
Aysha addresses him with a sad smile: “My beautiful magician used to tell me that man and woman are equal, and he took me everywhere he went, even to the coffee shops, where I drank my tea and smoked in the company of men. He commanded the languages of the West and used them to silence the shopkeepers’ resistance. He spoke of progress and renewal and threw his money about. In the end, we were welcome guests everywhere and I felt like the Queen of America, as a figure of speech, but when he found out about my pregnancy, he ran away and left me alone with my belly. ‘A woman is a woman’, he said, ‘and there is never any way out. But I can’t waste my beauty on a woman with a swollen belly.’
He went away to find and abandon another and his last words were ‘Maktoub.’
You understand that ours wasn’t a recognised marriage and I had no claim with regard to him or his name in any form or in any spelling whatsoever. My father has regarded me as a dead person ever since and he was looking for me in order to translate the metaphor into reality so he could finally accomplish what he had failed to bring to a successful conclusion when I was born. Now, at long last, he was able to prove to Allah that he had acted in anticipation of the shame I would bring upon him and that it had been wrong to save me. After each good deal, his anger relents but after each bad one its flame is rekindled. Thus I needed to promote the matters of his business from my hidden corner so as to save my life, and this has kept him at bay. Being the clever man he is, he appreciated the advantages of the situation. But now, with him having cheated half Cairo but growing too old for expanding to new and unknown places, his radius of action grows narrower by the day and times grow bad with the same speed, which means that the only thing I can do to help myself and my sweet little daughter survive is take action, and that in near time.”
“This is what it is”, states Al Majhoul, “I now understand the reason for your altruism. Now that we have seen each other clearly we can travel in each other's company without second thoughts.”
He thinks for a moment and then asks her: “Where is your daughter?”
“She is with a friend and waits for me to collect her.”
“Collect her”, says Al Majhoul, “and bring her here. Tomorrow we shall bring the matter with your father to an end and start off immediately, all together, as soon as the flying rug is in our hand.”
The moon, infected with subversion, delays her appearance and begins to grow uncontrollable.
