“Even you say that? You are talking exactly like my wife. You both really irritate me. What can I do to convince you both that I accept the idea that my daughter has a boyfriend? Please believe, just once and forever, this fact: I am American. I have raised my daughter with American values. I have got rid of, for good, Eastern backwardness. I no longer make a connection between a person and their genitals.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“But that’s what your words meant.”
“I am sorry if I’ve upset you.”
“You don’t understand me, Salah. That’s all. I don’t interfere in Sarah’s personal life, but I don’t trust this creep with her, not for a single moment.”
“If Jeff is a bad person, Sarah will discover that one day. She’s entitled to have her own experiences, by herself.”
“But she’s become a different and unfathomable person. It seems to me sometimes that she’s another girl, not the Sarah that I carried in my arms as a baby. I really don’t understand her. Why is she treating me so cruelly? Why does any word I say provoke her? She will be very calm and nice and suddenly for no reason she’ll have these outbursts of rage. Besides, her face is pale and she’s in poor health.”
“This is the nature of youth: changes in feelings, going from one mood to the opposite mood. Even her cruelty with you is natural. Do you remember how you treated your father when you were a young man? At that age our desire for independence from our parents makes us cruel toward them. Her rudeness toward you does not mean that she no longer loves you. She’s just rebelling against the authority that you represent.”
They talked for a whole hour in which they repeated what they said in different ways. Then Ra’fat got up and said, “I have to go.”
“Do you have classes tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Okay then, sleep well, friend, and in the morning you’ll discover it’s a simple problem.”
Ra’fat left and Salah closed the door behind him then went up the stairs leading to the bedroom, trying not to make any noise, so as not to wake up Chris. He took off his silk robe and hung it on the clothes rack and sneaked quietly into bed next to her. There was a faint light from a small side lamp that Chris left on at night because she was afraid of the dark. He stared at the ceiling and saw the shadows as if they were ghosts prancing about. Suddenly he felt pity for Ra’fat. He understood him well. Ra’fat couldn’t stand the idea that his daughter was in love with another man. He was in the grips of deathly jealousy toward Jeff. That was the truth. Dostoevsky has written in one of his novels that every father in the world harbored deep-seated hatred for his daughter’s husband no matter how much he pretended otherwise. Ra’fat’s problem, however, was much more complicated: he couldn’t bear the idea of his daughter having a relationship outside marriage, for despite his harangues in defense of Western culture, he still had the mentality of the Eastern man which he attacked and mocked. Salah said to himself: Maybe I’m lucky I didn’t have any children. To be barren is better than to be in Ra’fat’s shoes right now. But Ra’fat’s problem is inherent in his own personality. Many Egyptians have fathered children in America and were able to maintain a balance between the two cultures. But Ra’fat despises his culture and yet carries it within him at the same time, which complicates matters. “Poor Ra’fat,” he whispered in English, then caught a glimpse of the alarm clock and was dismayed to find that it was one in the morning. He had only a few hours to sleep. He got under the covers, turned on his side, assumed a fetal position, covered his head with the pillow, closed his eyes, and started gradually to feel that comfortable darkness of sleep. But Chris, lying next to him, suddenly coughed and moved. There was something rigid about her movement that told him she was awake. He ignored her and tried to fall asleep, but she turned toward him and embraced him under the covers, and when she kissed him he could smell alcohol on her breath and whispered in alarm, “Have you had more to drink?”
She clung to him and began to embrace and kiss him, panting. He tried to speak, but she placed her hand gently on his lips, and her face in the soft light for the first time seemed to be burning. He felt her hand sneaking between his thighs as she whispered while bringing her lips close to his mouth, “I miss you.”
CHAPTER 7
Tariq stood on the alert, staring at Shaymaa as if he were a goalkeeper expecting the ball to strike from any direction, ready to catch it or deflect it in an instant. He was waiting for any word from her to refute and to mock. But she did something he did not expect: her features suddenly contracted, then she started to sob like a lost child, her whole body shaking. He looked at her not knowing what to do, and then said in a voice that sounded strange to his ears, “Enough, Doctor. It all ended well, thank God.”
“I am tired. I can’t take it anymore. Tomorrow I’ll withdraw from the scholarship and go back to Egypt.”
“Don’t be hasty.”
“I’ve made up my mind. It’s settled.”
“Remember that you’d be getting a doctorate from Illinois. Think how hard you’ve worked for this scholarship and how many of your colleagues in Tanta wish to be in your place.”
Shaymaa bowed her head, and it seemed to him that she’d calmed down a little, so he added, “Don’t give in to bad thoughts.”
“What should I do?”
“Get accustomed to your new life.”
“I tried and I failed.”
“Do you have any problems at school?”
“No, thank God.”
“What’s the problem
