Again Teta sighed. But just as he was drawing away to ask about the father, the girl in the keyhole laughed. Though muffled by the door it was a deep laugh, and her whole body rocked. She was pointing at something outside the window, raising her arm from the shoulder like a little girl unused to the size of her limbs, and all at once her sad sloping face was changed totally, relieved of gravity by sudden joy. The mother snapped and batted a hand.
Then something odd happened. For one peculiar second, the girl turned her head and looked directly at Midhat. A straight gaze like an arrow aimed at the keyhole, those two sad eyes very large and very black. Midhat jerked away from the door.
“Tamam?” Teta whispered.
He took a moment. He nodded to his feet, rubbing his knees.
“Yalla, go,” said Teta.
Tiptoeing into the kitchen he heard his grandmother announce: “I’m sorry I was so long.” The door shut on her voice. “Maids! They drive you crazy, maids.”
He walked to the bedroom, resumed his position on the bed, and opened his book. The words crawled over the pages. He did not know how much time had passed before Teta entered the room and sat by his feet. She was a little red in the face.
“So.” She fixed him. “What did you think, habibi?”
“I think she is beautiful.”
“Beautiful enough? Um Dawud told me her mother wants her to marry their cousin, Yasser Hammad. It’s not the end, they aren’t engaged. We can still do something. I have a few ideas.”
“Who is her father?”
“Haj Nimr. A scholar, and the mayor last year. They have land in Zawata. He is one of the hospital founders, like your father. And she is beautiful. Very beautiful. Queen of Nablus, they call her. They say she is a little proud, but … I think she is an excellent match. I think her mother is … ya‘ni, it’s a good family. But, you know, I can’t do this to every Nabulsiyyeh, invite her mother for coffee and put you by the keyhole. Habibi don’t look so sour.”
“You really think I can marry into the Hammad family?”
“Kamal is a good family, Midhat.”
“Teta …”
“Your father’s trade is doing well. I don’t see why you can’t marry who you like, you are a rich trader—or you will be. We can do it. You want us to try? You want to marry this one?”
“Teta.”
“I’m just trying to make the best choice for you. This Fatima is very beautiful, and she plays the oud very well.”
“But how do I … I can’t marry someone I don’t know.”
“How would you know a woman before you married her? Ya sitti, you marry, then you get to know the girl. Hala’ just think about it. If you want to marry her, we’ll try to make arrangements.”
“I will think about it.”
“Baba says you will marry this year. It’s this girl, or we pick someone else for you. There are plenty of Kamal girls of marrying age. And you, you are very, ya‘ni, very desirable. You are a doctor, you are handsome, you are rich. I think we can be ambitious.”
Midhat had been in Nablus for three weeks now. At night he had at first tried to will himself into unconsciousness, before he realised that whole hours could pass while he was still locked in the tedious purgatory between sleep and waking. Sometimes he lit a paraffin lamp, opened a book, and muttered French verses to himself like incantations. And there were other tricks, such as pretending to himself he was only temporarily shutting his eyes and would continue reading shortly, and at times this worked and he duped his mind into sleep with the pages of his book resting on each cheek, and when he woke found the leaves sadly crumpled and the gas lamp flame guttering beside him. But more often, even if his brain slipped into the first zone of unconsciousness, that soft membrane in which sounds were muffled and his breathing slowed—some rogue thought could easily drift into his ear and set his heart going again, and all at once he would be drearily awake. A thought of Jeannette reading his letter; an imagined expression of sorrow, or regret. At these times he yearned for a whisky. He might rise from the mattress and walk around the room, and if the sky was clear, observe the pockmarked face of the moon between the thick walls of his window. Sometimes he caught dawn blanching the peak of Jabal al-Sheikh, or in rare cases of bliss would lie back and fall asleep without knowing, without dreaming, and open his eyes to find the light had started without him.
His brain, deprived at night, was too elastic in the daytime, and interactions that should have been ordinary became incoherent. As he sat in the market and checked the accounting book, he seemed to be looking at the gridded page from underwater, and the inked digits stirred as if rippled by a breeze. But when evening fell, the exhaustion always pushed through to a new plane of being, and the lamps stayed on in his mind and would not let him rest.
That night he lay back and fixed his mind on the Hammad girl, her sad eyes surrounded by the remnants of keyhole dust. He twisted in the covers. His stomach was disturbed and an odd tightness in his intestines articulated itself every so often into flatulence. The previous night, or was it the night before, he had been woken by painful hiccoughs, and after reaching the toilet in time to vomit returned and lay back on the mattress with a mouth full of acid. Tonight the cramp was further down. It occurred to him that he might have to see a physician if all this persisted. Fatima Hammad. Fatima Hammad would hardly marry such a weakling.
And yet, by some miracle, that night he did not even need to think of sleep. Sleep stole upon him while his thoughts were elsewhere, blending images, blurring the shapes of women into categories of pain. Those he had harmed: Jeannette, his mother. Those who had harmed him: Layla, Jeannette. And now, Fatima Hammad, her minuscule features perfectly focused by the keyhole lens. When the muezzin called, Midhat shifted on his pillow in the cold light, bewildered at how the night had passed. He crawled out of bed severely nauseated and prostrated himself in the direction of Mecca.
“In the mornings we check the register,” said Hisham.
The air was mild for November, and the market was alive with dust and a jangle of glass and rocks under wheels, and voices calling out numbers and the names of objects. Bohemian crystalware shone between glass nargila pipes, and with every drive of wind the German violins swayed and twisted from the wires attached to their tuning pegs. In the display at the front of the Kamal store the embroidered jackets also rotated, blocking and unblocking the columns of light that fell from the apertures in the khan roof as they turned their shoulders and backs. The rear of the shop, where Midhat sat with Hisham, was icy with shade.
“It is not so difficult. But sometimes we leave notes in the evening for things that must be written up the next day, so you must check, here, and see if the accounts are correct … heyk … and yes, we see the account was one digit off. That is the type of thing we check for. Next we check the orders that are in process, make sure the tailor is here, as-salamu alaykum ya mu‘allim, ya‘tik al-afieh, fine, Butrus is here. Now, the orders in process are listed on this side of the page … Midhat? Are you awake?”
“Na‘am, Hisham. Sorry. You were saying. The tailor is here.”
“Yes, and then we check the orders, we ask him how they are progressing. We’ll do that in a moment. We have … not very many orders at present. But when Eid comes people always buy, it doesn’t matter how hard the time is. And if there’s a wedding, as you know. Hala’ every transaction is recorded, and we mark here if they have paid or not. And the date, always put the date. Hala’ on this page are the debts. And the interest is there … heyk, we calculate by how many days we’ve had the debt. See? Now, you do this calculation, I will ask how the order is going.”