seemed to be in an acute condition of arousal, as if they wanted to enjoy sex before the effect of the drug wore off or as if, somehow, inexplicably, they felt as if they were being observed and so they deliberately showed off their passion to the hilt. Jeff kept biting her breasts and licking them and sucking her nipples until she pushed him gently and he lay on his back. At that moment they seemed to be moving according to a well-established, mutually agreeable rhythm. She bent over him and reached out, undid his zipper, took out his organ and stared at it lustfully. She licked it several times then began to suck it delightedly. Ra’fat found himself rushing unaware toward the door. He rang the bell hard and nonstop. He pounded on the door and kicked it as hard as he could. A long interval passed, then he heard footsteps approaching. The outside light was turned on, then the door opened and Sarah appeared, having put on a silk robe over the nightgown. She looked at him with frightened eyes, as if in disbelief. She opened her mouth to say something, but he didn’t give her a chance: he slapped her hard on the face then kicked her in the belly. She screamed at the top of her voice as his own thundered while he stormed into the house, “You junkie whore! I’m going to kill you!”
Chapter 18
Shaymaa banged the tray down hard on the table. Some bits of Umm Ali scattered out of the plate. She looked at Tariq combatively and said, agitated, “How dare you permit yourself to touch me?”
His face turned completely pale and he mumbled in a soft voice, “I’m sorry.”
“Listen, Tariq, if you think I’m an easy girl, you are mistaken. If you misbehave again you will never see me again. Do you understand?”
He remained silent and bowed his head, as if he were a naughty child who had broken a very expensive vase. He took his leave and she followed him with a reprimanding look until he closed the door behind him. Her body kept shaking as she still felt his hand touching hers and his hot breath on her face. His sudden move had shocked her, so it had taken her a moment to figure out what had happened and to quickly move away from him, but that moment also sent her into new territory in which she had never been before, a secret area filled with delicious and titillating sensations that she had known only stealthily in her forbidden dreams. That immediately brought to her mind her mother’s warnings as if they were air raid sirens. She recalled the stern words she had heard a thousand times since her first monthly period took her by surprise during geography class in her first year in preparatory school: “Men, Shaymaa, only want a woman’s body. They would do anything to get it. They seduce girls with sweet talk, selling them the illusion of love until they have their way with them. Your body is your honor, Shaymaa, and your father’s honor. Your body is the whole family’s dignity. If you are lax with it we will spend the rest of our lives humiliated, in shame. Your body is a trust that God Almighty has placed in your hands to preserve, sound and pure, until you hand it over to the man who marries you in accordance with God’s commandments and the Prophet’s way. Know, Shaymaa, that a man never marries a woman who yields any part of her body to him. A man has no respect for an easy woman and he can never trust her with his honor and his children.”
After Shaymaa recalled these principles she had grown up with, she felt content that she had stopped Tariq in his tracks. After a while she thought more calmly: even though he had made a monstrous mistake by trying to embrace her, he, on the other hand, has declared his love for her, which meant that he respected her and wanted to marry her.
She sat down to study, determined to give it her all. She said to herself, Our love should give us an added impetus to work hard and get the degree, so we can go back to Egypt and marry. When she finished studying, she went to the bathroom, where she performed her ablution. She performed the obligatory night prayer and the recommended extra prayers. Then she turned off the light and went to bed in the dark. She kept staring at the dark and then something happened that surprised her: she recalled what Tariq had done and did not disapprove of it and was not angry with him for it. To the contrary, she was swept by an overpowering affection for him. He was in love with her and wanted to embrace her as all lovers did. That was all. Could she have exaggerated her anger? Once again her mother’s harsh warnings came back to her mind, but for the first time in her life, she found herself rethinking them.
If what her mother was saying was true, then a girl who was lax with her body, even just a little bit, could never marry. But she knew many stories proving the opposite of that. She knew girls who had given men liberally of their bodies and yet ended up with excellent marriages. Her friend Radwa, instructor in the pathology department in Tanta Medical School, became her professor’s mistress, and their illicit relationship was the talk of the whole school for a long time. In the end the professor divorced his wife, the mother of his children, and married Radwa and had children with her. What about her neighbor in Tanta, Lubna? Did she not go out with several young men and tell her in person about physical relations with them? Kisses and hugs and more, things that Shaymaa could not even imagine. What had happened in the end? Was Lubna’s reputation sullied and her life ruined? Was she cursed and despised forever? On the contrary, she married Tamir, son of the millionaire Farag al-Bahtimi, owner of the famous candy factories. And Tamir was now madly in love with her and wouldn’t refuse her anything. That same Lubna whose body was handled freely by young men was now living like a princess in a palace-like villa on the outskirts of Tanta, a happy wife and mother of two children. And why should she go far for examples? How about she herself? Hadn’t she lived chastely? Hadn’t she reached her thirties untouched by a man? All her life she had acted properly and had not permitted anyone at school to go beyond the bounds of collegiality; even her professors she had treated with much reserve. Her reputation at school and in the neighborhood was unblemished. So why wasn’t she married yet? Why hadn’t suitors beaten a path to her door for the sake of her superior morals?
All these instances disproved what her mother said. Was her mother exaggerating or was she talking about the morals of a bygone era? Couldn’t a girl’s permissiveness (within limits) with the man she loved be a clever way to entice him to marry her? Wasn’t it possible that if he kissed and hugged her that he would get more attached to her? Despite her medical study she knew nothing about men’s feelings. Wasn’t it possible that a man’s love for a woman made him, against his own will, think about her body? Besides, if every relationship outside marriage was a horribly shameful and forbidden sin and those committing it were unequivocally cursed, then why didn’t God damn those Americans, most of whom lived in sin? Those young men and women that she saw on weekends at train stops and parks, exchanging passionate kisses publicly and sometimes going even further, doing openly what she would be ashamed to do with the husband she had lawfully married in a closed room. Why didn’t God’s wrath befall such wanton sinners?
The months that Shaymaa had spent in Chicago made her think about her life differently. She began to have doubts about the established principles that she grew up holding to be sacred. Was God going to judge us Muslims one way and judge Americans another way? Those Americans were committing all the great sins: they fornicate, gamble, drink liquor, and engage in all kinds of deviant acts, but God Almighty didn’t seem to be angry with them; instead of punishing them for their sins, he was giving them so much wealth, knowledge, and power that they had become the greatest and strongest country in the world. Why does God punish us Muslims when we commit sins, while going easy on the Americans?
“I take refuge in God away from Satan who deserves to be stoned. I ask God for forgiveness and I repent,” she repeated, being frightened at where her thoughts had gone. She turned on her side and pressed the pillow against her head to stop the flow of thoughts, but when she closed her eyes, a final, deep-rooted fact revealed itself to her: Tariq loved her and respected her and he meant her no harm. He wanted to embrace her to express his feelings, no more and no less. The whole episode did not justify her behavior toward him. She had been cruel to him. She was now remembering his beloved pale face as he mumbled his apology in shame. She fell asleep feeling profound sympathy for him. The first thing she did when she got up in the morning was to call him. He sounded awkward, as if he expected her to chide him again, but she started talking lightheartedly to prove to him that she had forgotten the matter. They planned their day as usual and the week passed uneventfully, except that their relationship became more intimate, as if what had happened had brought them closer. A new feeling came into play in their relationship: whenever their bodies got close to each other, even for a moment, unintentionally, a great tension arose between them, whereupon they got confused and stammered and her face turned red, as if he had suddenly opened the door while she was naked. When Saturday came around they started to plan to spend it together as usual. Tariq said, “Let’s go to the movies and then I’ll treat you to dinner at the pizza place I discovered. What do you think?”
She didn’t seem thrilled and said, “Frankly, it’s cold outside and I am tired of taking the L. Listen, we’ll have
