Naguine

Robert Taylor was an old black man that I used to talk to when I did volunteer work at the VA hospital in Ann Arbor. He was retired from GMC Hydromatic in Ypsilanti, Michigan, but he had come up to Michigan from the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s. Because he was still relatively healthy, he enjoyed a certain status among the retired vets, who were mostly in poor health, and he flirted with the nurses, who were mostly female. He also played an old, beat-up acoustic guitar that couldn't keep a tune; the g-string always kept slipping out of tune. But we both played the guitar and liked the blues, so we had something in common.

Now, you probably think that this is one of those stories where an old bluesman teaches a young neophyte a thing or two about the blues, but the truth was that Mr. Taylor's style was very raw and very primitive, and his singing voice sounded like it was being filtred through a speaker that had been cut up with a razor blade. Or maybe it sounded like what a chicken breast would sound like being beaten by a butcher's block to stretch it out (that is, if the chicken were still alive). In other words, most people today probably would have thought that he neither sang nor played very well. However, rather than run out of the room, holding my ears, I politely waited until he was finished with his song, and then I showed him what I could do. He admitted afterwards, "I ain't got nuthin' on you, son!"

Then one day, he told me the story of his life:

I was standing at the crossroads, trying to flag a ride with my guitar in hand, when a band of gypsies rode by and said, "Hey, we're having a party tonight! Why don't you party with us?"

Now, I ain't never seen no band of gypsies before, and I's a little worried. I mean, they all looked like they was pirates or something, and I had never seen wagons like what they had. The wooden wheels of their wagons was carved up with all kinds of swirls and squiggles that I ain't never seen on no wagon before or since. But I was never one to pass up a chance to party, even with a band of gypsies, so I takes their ride and they takes me back to their camp.

Now, they music ain't nothing like I has ever heard before. Today, I would say it sound like Spanish flamingo music. When a Mexican guy at work played his guitar many years later, he got insulted when I aksed if he was a gypsy, but they music sounded like Spanish flamingo too. But the songs that they sung ain't in no American that I has ever heard sung before. They probably ain't in no Spanish neither. I thought maybe it 'cause they drunk or something, 'cause we was drunk by the end of the evening.

Then, after midnight, a gypsy girl offered herself to me. Even though I drunk, she so pretty I couldn't say no. She spent the night with me by the light of the gypsy campfire, and when we was done doing our thing, we falled asleep in each other's arms, almost like we married or something. But when I wakes up the next morning, I finds myself holding a guitar! I couldn't believe it! It wasn't my guitar, so I thinks the gypsy girl musta turned herself into a guitar while I's asleep.

Since I woked up before the gypsies, I switched guitars. I left the gypsies' camp with the guitar I found in my arms that morning and left them my guitar. I thought it was a good deal, but my life ain't been the same since.

The night after I left the gypsies, my guitar turn into a woman at midnight. I couldn't believe it! But this time, I wasn't drunk like the night before. As a matter of fact, I had nothing to drink, but they she was, standing in front of me wiffout no clothes on!

Now you might think that us black folks is black, but this girl's skin was almost as black as mine, and her long dark hair was as black as the muddy Mississippi, overflowing down her back like Old Man River himself when he floods. I loves her hair! And her eyes, they almost as black as two coals. Except when she angry, then they red. If you woulda seen me walking up and down Main Street of my town whiff her, you'd a thunk we a black couple. I didn't have to worry 'bout no white folks lynching me, but she sho' talk funny! When I aks her to cook me breakfast in the morning, she say to me, "You must be avare that I turn back into guitar vhen the sun come up. I can't cook you no breakfast."

Not that we call each other by name too much, at least in the beginning, but when I aks her for her name, she tell me, "My name is Naguine."

Never heard no name like Naguine before. Must be a gypsy name.

Eventually, one thing lead to another. That's to say, Naguine was eventually in the family way. After that, she didn't turn into no guitar at dawn no more but stayed a woman. That meant she could cook me breakfast in the morning if she want, but the first time she cook me breakfast, I think she trying to poison me. Gypsy food ain't nothing like what black folks eat! It also mean she could give me some loving any time of the day, but after a few months of being pregnant, she didn't want to give me no loving no more. "You have two good hands," she say. "Or you can go find somebody else."

Now a man ain't supposed to hit a lady, 'specially when she pregnant, but they was times when I wants to hit her upside the head. But Naguine ain't no ordinary woman. She worshipped some kind of devil. Way as black folks mostly believe in the Lord and accept Jesus Christ as their saviour, Naguine prayed to a statue of some woman with six arms. But only when she thought I's asleep. And she could turn herself into a snake. Sometimes, she even bit me too.

I must admit, they was a time or two when I tries to kill her. Both times, she turn to a snake and bit me. One time, I tore up the whole house trying to chop her up with a hatchet. The furniture was all kindling, and the dishes was all broke up on the floor. They was pans everywhere too, because I's throwing them at her. The babies was all scared too, crying, "Turn back, mama! Turn back! Turn back before daddy kill you!"

Then I has her cornered, and I shout, "I gots you now, you snake woman!"

But then she turn to a woman again and says, all dignified: "I could turn into a venomous snake, you know. Be thankful I didn't have venom."

After that, Naguine didn't turn herself into a snake no more, except when she felt like eating a mouse. She used to eat some strange things! She could turn into other animals, too. One time, she turn into a giant bull fog and swallowed a sparrow whole down by the creek. I couldn't believe it! Another time, she turn into a pelican. She also turn into a manitee when we was living in Florida, but she got run over by somebody in a boat and had a bad scar on her leg.

Then I gets to thinking, What if she wants to turn into an alligator and eat me? When you'se living with a witchy woman, you never know. She have mood swings, you know, so she couldn't always help herself.

But she always gave me good loving. That's why we have lots of babies. Most of our babies was like me, unable to change themselves into snakes and frogs, but we has one daughter that can walk on water. Among her peoples, only womans can walk on water but not mans. I seen a couple of her sisters walking across the bayous or across the Florida Everglades at night or early in the morning round dawn. With lanterns in they hands, they look just like what the Cajuns call "foo foolettes," or "will-o-the-wisps," from a distance. It's a pretty sight, but they was strange peoples! They come to visit us 'cause they's always travelling, way as we stay put in one place, 'cept when I gots to go look for a job. We could never visit them 'cause they's always moving. They's thiefs and fortune tellers, you know, only one step head of the law.

Then, one day after the War, Naguine says to me, "I have heard from my family that the automobile plants in Detroit are hiring. Maybe you should see about finding a job in Detroit."

That was Naguine's way of telling me to get a job. Seeing that I's a veteran just come back from the War, they's no work for black folks like me down South, 'cept picking cotton or grinding sugar cane, so I followed the Mississippi River up north. They's hiring in Detroit, but they only want me as a janitor 'cause I's black. I wants to work on the assembly line or run a machine, but I's willing to take any job I could get. I spend forty-four years working at Hydromatic, from 1946 to 1990. Eventually, I becomes a machinist 'cause I wents to school and learns everything I could 'bout running machines. I retired as a tool and dye maker. Though I talks like a black man from down South, I don't read and write like one. I read newspapers every day.

Two or three years after I got hired, I bought a house on Grove Avenue in Ypsilanti, where all the black folks live, and Naguine came up from Florida with the kids. In 1970, we sold the house on Grove and bought another one on Warner Avenue in Ypsilanti Township in what was a mixed neighbourhood. After that, Naguine start going to the church at the corner of Wallace Boulevard and Michigan Avenue and got saved. She stop turning herself into animals after that and live the life of a good Christian woman, at least as far as I know.

Then, after I retire, she got cancer and die. My daughter a nurse, so Naguine die at home in a hospital bed in the living room. And what do you think happen when Naguine die? She turn back into a guitar right before everybody's eyes! But when I tries to play her, I finds I can't play a lick. It be so many years since I play my guitar that I forgets everything I knowed before I got married. This guitar that I play, this be Naguine. I starting to get back what I knowed before, but I sho' ain't no Elmo James…


Now, I wasn't going to tell an old man that his guitar couldn't possibly have been a real live woman, because I have always believed in being respectful towards the elderly, so I decided to just humour him. Besides, it was a good story, and I was able to kill some time just listening to him.

Then, as I was about to leave to go back to work, Mr. Taylor had some visitors. About ten or twenty people who looked like Roma crowded into his little private room, speaking all at once in a language that I had never heard before. They sounded like they were from India, except that they were dressed like gypsies, with the men in white puffed sleeve shirts and the women in long and billowy multi-coloured skirts. Most of them were as dusky as the silt that formed the Mississippi Delta, with black hair and ebony eyes to match, though some of the children had light brown hair and lighter skin. Most of them had rotten teeth, however, though one of the younger woman, a very beautiful young woman, had shiny white teeth to rival the pearly Gates of Heaven.

One of the men took Mr. Taylor's guitar and started playing what sounded like Spanish flamenco music while some of the women danced and beat their tambourines. I couldn't believe it! I wondered if there wasn't some veracity to the fantastic story that Mr. Taylor had told me, but then I shook my head and said to myself, "Nah, can't be! People can't change their shape at will." Or can they?

Mr. Taylor and his gypsy relations had to take their party outside, because some of the other clients at the retirement home complained about the noise. They partied from the afternoon until about eight o'clock at night, when visiting hours were over.

After that, I looked at Mr. Taylor's badly out-of-tune guitar in a different light.

Lalla Ghazal

When I met Lalla Ghazal, she was a belly dancer in Cairo, and a very successful one, making money like water. She was also a recording artist with some success throughout the Arab world; people even bought her CDs. Though Lalla Ghazal was sunburnt like the women of Egypt, with kohl-lined black-brown eyes and long, ashen hair that flowed like the Nile down her back, she was, in fact a French-Canadian who had converted to Islam while living in Morocco with her boyfriend. Therefore, she spoke and sang with a Moroccan accent, because she had lived in Morocco long enough to learn to speak Arabic. But it wasn't Lalla Ghazal's accent that enchanted me so much as her soft and low voice, as well as her ebony eyes lined with kohl, dimpled cheeks, and smile with white teeth. As well, I liked her glasses with the small black frames; they made her look smart, intellectual.

Of course, Lalla Ghazal's dance style wasn't pure shaqs raqi, the style of the Egyptian countryside, but what was considered a "gypsy" style. She could pirouette in high heels like a ballerina and kick her long legs high in the air like a Rockette. In her native Montreal, she admitted later, her experience had been limited to dancing around the pole at centre stage in gentlemen's clubs, but she had a natural aptitude for dance; there was no style of dance that she couldn't master from the time that she first took ballet lessons as a little girl, she believed. As well, she had a stage presence and a natural charisma off stage; that was why I fell in love with her.

When I saw her sit down to talk with a gentleman at a table in the front row at the night club, I couldn't resist the urge to go up and try to talk to her. I had to do it! When Lalla Ghazal first saw me approach from the corner of her eye, she stopped talking with the gentleman that she was talking to for a moment to acknowledge me, and then continued talking to the gentleman. However, she looked up at me again, smiled, and then bade the other gentleman salaam aleikum. She stood up, exchanged kisses on the cheek with the gentleman, and then turned her attention to me. "Salaam aleikum," the dancer said, smiling again. "You are?..."

She extended her hand as I stammered, "Dawud, Dawud al-Khuriyati."

It was by talking with her that I noticed her foreign accent. However, she told me that she was originally from Canada, from Montreal, not Morocco. "My boyfriend, John, and I converted to Islam while we were in living in Marrakech," she said, "but he's living in Canada with our daughter now. I doubt that he's a practising Muslim now..."

I found her to be very open, very frank, about her sexuality. Though she would have hotly denied that she was morally loose, she admitted later that she had been a prostitute in the past, and that her daughter was born out of wedlock. She believed that she understood the Middle East, she said. She understood that people in the Arab world considered dancers like her to be whores, prostitutes, but she said that she didn't care what people thought.

When she saw me looking at all the jewelry hanging from her costume, rings and pearls, diamonds and rubies, silver and gold, as well as the sequins hanging down from her top, she smiled at me and said in her soft, mezzo soprano voice: "These are all from men who would have liked to have been my lover. I adore sex, monsieur! However, it should be the expression of love and intimacy between two people who love each other. It's also how we bring babies into the world…"

Lalla Ghazal talked with me until it was time for her to go back on stage for the second half of her performance. When we stood up, we embraced and kissed each other on the cheeks. Before we let go of each other, however, she touched the tip of her tongue to the back of my neck. Then she smiled at me slyly and said, "I like your taste, monsieur…"

I would always remember her smile, I thought to myself. I would always remember her glasses, which she wore even on stage. I would always remember the dimples and her squared Gallic jaw that positively identified her as French. Her beauty was like that of Catherine Deneuve, the French actress of the 1970s, or Nefertiti, the ancient Egyptian queen. She was from that race of beautiful women that have walked the earth since the dawn of civilization, women who all probably have the same genome as Nefertiti.

However, it was some months before Lalla Ghazal and I became lovers. Like others before me, I tried to woo her with gifts: rings and pearls, diamonds and rubies, gold and silver. While she dutifully wore whatever I gave her on her body or on her costume whenever she performed, she wasn't willing to pay for these gifts with her body. However, she remained friendly, and we often talked between sets whenever she performed. "I want love and respect, monsieur," she warned me. "I am not for sale and I am not a prostitute…"

Later, when I asked her about the silver cross around her neck, one that had two horizontal bars instead of one, she said, "It's the Cross of Lorraine. This one was made in France about 1750. I got it from my boyfriend, the man that wanted to marry me. I could never give it up because he received it from his mother after she died. Because it belonged to his mother, it's sacred to me, though I'm a Muslim rather than a Christian."

After that, I gave up trying to lure her with jewelry. Each night, she wore a small fortune in jewelry on her costume, so what was another diamond ring or a pearl necklace to her? However, I did buy her a sapphire ring for her birthday, which was the 25th of September.

Then, she said, at a later date, in an offhand remark, that she had had problems with cocaine in the past. "I loved cocaine!" she exclaimed, rapturously. "There was a time when I would have done anything for it. Yes, I even dated a certain gentleman for cocaine. Therefore, I'm an addict. All things are good, monsieur, but not all things are good for me. However, there are still times when I think that sobriety is overrated…"

That was the angle that I was looking for. It was with cocaine that I lured her into my hotel room. The moment that I whispered into her ear that I had a few grams, her eyes lit up; she was immediately intrigued. Then I saw the look of dread on her face as her resistance rapidly crumbled, like she knew that she was standing at an abyss, like she was contemplating a pact with the devil. However, something told me that she was also ready to take the plunge. Since I had some on me, I whispered into her ear, "Let's go up to my room and party, my gazelle…"

This was the siren whisper that lured her up to my room: cocaine. For six glorious months— no, one year — she was mine. In bed, she blew hot and fiery like a fierce desert sirocco. Once she was under the influence of the demon white powder, there was nothing that she wouldn't do for it. No act was too disgusting or too degrading; nothing was beneath her. And when she cried out loud in ecstasy for the first time with me, clawing her breasts with her fingernails while on top of me, I understood why people in rural Egypt still practiced female circumcision: to prevent the sexual vagabondage of women like her.

Most definitely, my beautiful Lalla Ghazal was as experienced in her craft as any other woman of the night. Without a doubt, she was among the most damned of the damned, despite her beauty and elegance, because there was nothing that she wouldn't or couldn't do in bed. But alas, it wasn't me who was her master, but the cocaine: she was doing it for the cocaine.

However, I did try to help her musical career. Though she was a star of sorts, she was in need of constant reassurance. I constantly had to tell her that she was beautiful and that she was very talented. My compliments were sincere. Though I am only an amateur lute player, I accompanied her on my lute on a few of songs that we recorded up in our hotel room of a four-track tape machine. One of them, "Sabra," even became a minor hit in Egypt.

In this song, a woman called Sabra (which means "desert flower" in Arabic) is tempted by the devil to betray her betrothed, Jibral, just before their wedding night. However, Jibral stops them just in time and then forgives Sabra for her infidelity.

When I asked her how she came up with the idea for a song like that, she merely shrugged her shoulders and replied, "It's based on a campfire story that I heard as a child in Canada."

Though she spoke fluent Arabic, though she considered herself a Muslim, her native country was something that she always carried with her in her heart.

Let me say that it wasn't all sex and passion between us. Many times, we went on picnics in the Valley of the Pyramids. As well, we spent many nights walking hand in hand along the Nile. I think that she felt the same sense of magic and mystery that I felt when she looked out at this very artery that has made Egyptian civilization possible up to this very day.

However, we eventually began to fight. For instance, I was deeply offended when she suddenly jumped out of bed in the morning at the sound of the muezzin calling everybody to prayer to do her ablutions in the nude. I may not be a good Muslim, but it hardly seemed fitting for a woman to stand, bow, and prostrate herself while facing Mecca dressed like Eve. For one thing, she hardly had the innocence of Eve, being a dancer all her life. Though she called herself a Muslim, she was from that class of fallen women who entertained men on earth rather than a houri who fed men grapes (and their bodies) in paradise. However much she thought that she loved me, she was a prostitute; she was impure, fitna.

One thing that Lalla Ghazal didn't seem to understand about Islam, at least at the time, is that a man and woman must be clean before they present themselves to God for prayer. Before the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer early in the morning, believers must bathe and perform certain purification rituals if they have had sex the night before. As well, they should never make love with their heads facing Mecca, and it is better that they separate afterwards rather than sleep together. Love and intimacy between a man and a woman can distract them in their relationship with God.

Lalla Ghazal gave in to me that time. That's to say, she apologized and made sure that she was decent the next time that she heard the call of the muezzin in the morning, but it was the first of many fights.

We fought because of the cocaine. Over many months, I spent thousands of piasters trying to feed Lalla Ghazal's cravings and my own. Since I was a civil servant with the Ministry of Antiquities making good money, nearly always in line for a promotion, I thought that I could afford it, but the consequences were nearly catastrophic sometimes. There was the constant paranoia. Several times, Lalla Ghazal was convinced that there were Muslim clerics hiding in our room, or that the police were about to arrest us at any moment for possession of the powder that she loved so well. She once seized a knife brought up by room service and thrust it into the elastic band of her sheer dancing skirt because she thought that she heard a mob of angry Muslims marching down the street to stone us for adultery. It goes without saying that Lalla Ghazal liked to play with knives. On more than a few occasions, she threatened me and even tried to kill me once, only I was always able to disarm her.

Of course, I became addicted, too. That's to say, I started to behave strangely as well as Lalla Ghazal. In my drug-induced paranoia, I sometimes suspected her of cheating on me and became violent. On more than one occasion, I struck her, suspecting that she was hiding a lover in our hotel room. Once, after I searched everywhere, in the closets and in the shower stall and still couldn't find him, I tried to beat it out of her. That was when she picked up the knife and tried to stab me with it. Once I disarmed her, however, we made wild and passionate love underneath the mirror on the ceiling in the bedroom, even though her shoulder was badly dislocated. But the sex was always better under the influence of cocaine: it was our magic love dust.

Maybe it isn't strange to say that we got married. We spent the last few months of our relationship with my parents in an older section of Cairo, near Al-Zukariyah Street. Though Lalla Ghazal had spent some months in a harem in Morocco as a guest of a family there, she did not take to life in a harem in Cairo at all. The reason was quite simple: once she moved in with my family, she became the lowest-ranking female in the household, behind my mother, my father's two sisters, and each of my three sisters. She resented the fact that I had to kiss my mother goodbye first when I went to work, then my aunts and my sisters, and her last. She was hurt when I had to buy presents for all the women in the household on her birthday, and the red silk scarf that she wanted so much ended up going to my aunt Sayida. What's more, she believed, not without justification, that my mother deliberately tried to keep us apart as often as possible. My mother would have even liked for me to take a second wife, if it was within my means, in order to prevent any intimacy between me and Lalla Ghazal.

Relations between a man and his wife, in my mother's mind, were solely for reproduction, not an expression of love or intimacy like Lalla Ghazal had thought. Though I could only go upstairs to see my wife with my father's permission, in reality, that permission passed down to my mother. Sometimes, she wouldn't let me see my wife at all. "A wife is fitna, Dawud," my mother said to me. "She's a temptation, a distraction from your duties to God and to other believers."

Lalla Ghazal and I lived separate lives after we were married. Men and women in Egypt seldom even go out together. Every Friday, when I went to mosque with my father and my brothers, Lalla Ghazal desperately wanted to go out with me at first, but the women on Al-Zukariyah Street understood that they were expected to stay home even from the mosque, except on certain days of the year, like the eids at the end of Ramadan, and other feast days.

When women do go to mosque, it is usually with other women. That's because the umma, the community of believers, is really a community of men; the women have traditionally just stayed home, though more women in Egypt go to mosque now and even have prayer groups led by women.

Lalla Ghazal could never accept the fact that the most important woman in an Arab man's life was his mother, not his wife. That's because you only have one mother, while a Muslim man, according to the Qur'an, can have up to four wives at a time, and marry and divorce as often as he pleases (though the wise man has only one wife and refrains from divorce, except when it can't be avoided).

Eventually, Lalla Ghazal and my mother quarrelled openly. It is customary that none of the women leave the room at a family gathering until the oldest woman there is ready to leave. Because Lalla Ghazal was pregnant, but not yet visibly so, she retired to her room early because she wasn't feeling well, without asking permission from my mother or my father. We couldn’t believe it, because the whole family had gathered in the living room to listen to the great Um Khalthum perform on the radio, as was customary on Thursday nights in Cairo back then, when she was still alive. We all felt insulted.

The next morning, my mother demanded an apology. When Lalla Ghazal explained that she only left because she wasn't feeling well, not out of any disrespect, my mother refused to accept her apology. Then my mother thrust out her hand and ordered her to kiss it in front of all the other women, both front and back. When Lalla Ghazal refused, it was open warfare between them. Up until then, Lalla Ghazal had grudgingly kissed my mother's hand twice a day, on the front and back, once in the morning and once at night, like all the other women of the household, but now she wouldn't kiss my mother's hand at all.

Just to give you an idea of just how much power my mother had, it was up to my mother to decide how much everybody ate every day. Of course, the men got bigger portions of meat than the women, with the oldest male (my father) getting first choice and so on down the line. Among the women, the oldest female of the household (my mother) decided how much each woman and each child got to eat. In my father's household, Lalla Ghazal was the last to be considered. Once Lalla Ghazal and my mother were quarrelling, Lalla Ghazal barely received enough food to sustain her, even though it eventually became evident that she was pregnant. My mother might have dreaded being accused of starving a pregnant woman to death, but she probably wouldn't have minded if Lalla Ghazal had lost the baby. Therefore, she allotted to Lalla Ghazal what she thought was the bare minimum necessary to sustain her.

Most of the females in the household tried to stay out of the quarrel between Lalla Ghazal and my mother. My youngest sister, Amina, out of a sense of compassion, secretly saved some of her food to give to my wife, who was most grateful. However, Amina refused to oppose our mother openly, and my aunt Sayida, my father's oldest sister, took special delight in tormenting Lalla Ghazal. (Both of my aunts, Sayida and Malika, lived with my father because they were divorced.) Two or three times, Sayida spat in Lalla Ghazal's food in front of all the women before she served it to her. Lalla Ghazal refused to eat it the first couple of times, but after the third time, she pretended not to notice and ate what was given to her. That was when Amina started saving some of her food for Lalla Ghazal.

Please bear in mind: I never saw any of this myself, because the men and the women did nearly everything separately in our household, including eating separately. However, I had some understanding of what went on. Word got around even in our household, so I can't say that I didn't know. My father knew as well, but he left all matters concerning the women to my mother. "Your mother is the Grand-Vizier," he used to say. "I am merely the Sultan."

Though Lalla Ghazal loved cocaine more than life itself, she resolutely gave it up once she was aware that she was pregnant. Besides, she had few opportunities to indulge her passion anyway, once she was living in my father's house. However, I could not say the same thing about myself. As Lalla Ghazal grew heavy with child, I stewed my liver with alcohol and fed my nose with cocaine night after night. On a meagre civil servant's salary, I thought that I could afford it. The fact that I kept getting promotions only seemed to confirm my belief that I had my habit under control, but I soon went deeply into debt. I would come close to losing my job with the Ministry of Antiquities, which would have been a terrible disgrace before the entire family.

Then one morning, my older brother Ramzi woke me up out of a terrible hangover to hand me a letter; it was from Lalla Ghazal. It read:

"My dear former husband, by the time you read this letter, I will be out of the country, I promise you. That's because you beat me after you came home drunk last night. I spent much of last night in emergency because you gave me a concussion and caused me to lose the baby. That's right, I lost the baby. Between you beating me and your mother trying to starve me, what chance did the baby really have? You should try spending time in a Third World emergency room; it isn't a lot of fun. They were treating a man who had to have a tapeworm removed, but he was given priority over me. They only treated me at all because your brother pretended to be my husband and gave the doctor permission to treat me. In the West, it is considered natural for men to leave their mothers and cling to their wives, but you love your mother more than you love me. So cling to your mother then. Allah akbar. God is great. Lalla Ghazal."

However, I could remember nothing of the night before. It was as if the part of that day between dusk and dawn never existed. Then I looked at the four photographs underneath the letter. They were all photos of Lalla Ghazal with bruises on her face that hadn't been there before I went out that night and got drunk. The photo that still remains in my mind is the one of Lalla Ghazal with the white of her left eye all red from the broken capillaries, and the bruise under her eye. That image will be with me always, even when I appear before God on the Day of Judgment. While the Qur'an permits a man to chastise his wife with force, if necessary, he may not beat her in a drunken rage.

"I couldn't have done that!" I sobbed after I saw the photos. "I love her!"

Ramzi looked at me gravely and said, "For a brief moment, Dawud, you hated her, and that moment was all it took."

Even though I doubted that I would ever find her, I searched every hospital in Cairo, but to no avail. Then I searched the night clubs of Cairo, also to no avail. Eventually, I had to conclude that Lalla Ghazal had left the country for good. She had either returned to Canada, I thought, or she was dancing somewhere else in the Middle East, like in Morocco or somewhere on the Persian Gulf. Very likely, she no longer called herself Lalla Ghazal but went by her old name, which I didn't know, so that I couldn't find her. Quite possibly, she had even renounced Islam in her heart because of me.

Belly dancers can make lots of money doing bachelor parties, you know, particularly in the oil sheikdoms. Lalla Ghazal once confided in me that she often made as much as a hundred thousand dollars U.S. at bachelor parties. She also danced at hen parties for women about to be married, but she never made as much money and the women always expected a better performance. She seldom danced before both sexes, she said, because on the rare occasions where the sexes mingled, the dancers were usually transvestites. "Male dancers are almost always gay," she said to me knowingly.

Eventually, I had to divorce her when it became evident that she wasn't coming back. Then I received a letter from her some months later, postmarked Istanbul. "I'm doing well, thank you," it read. "But don't try to write back. I will be in Beirut or Sidon by the time you read this. Then I am returning to Canada to be with my daughter and her father. Allah akbar. God is great. Lalla Ghazal."

Then she added in a post script, "Everything happens for a reason, I suppose."

When I showed the post card to my mother, she merely said, "You're better off without her, Dawud. She was fitna, a distraction."

Maybe my mother was right.

Yuri

Reiko had had severe psychiatric problems for the last twenty years of her life before she committed suicide at the age of fifty-four, having been in and out of hospitals during that time. She ran a hot bath, slashed open her wrists, and bled to death.

Since she started having these problems around the time that Japan went into its economic tailspin at the start of the 1990s, people assumed that she was anxious about the uncertainty that the difficult times entailed for middle-class people like her and her husband and daughter; you just couldn't be certain about anything anymore.

However, the causes of Reiko's malaise were far more private. Twenty-years before her death, her twelve-year-old daughter, Sachiko, brought home a friend from school named Midori. There was something about this girl that impressed Reiko very much. She was very tall, probably five centimetres taller than her daughter. Unlike her daughter, who was very pretty, Midori was only average in appearance, but this girl had not internalized the shyness and anxiety that adolescent girls in Japan around her age already started to internalize. Rather, she seemed centred, self-confident, even brazenly self-confident. She smiled often and spoke in a calm, low voice, often making eye-contact rather than bowing her head low when in the presence of authority figures.

When Sachiko introduced Midori to her mother, Midori made the ceremonious bow fitting to the social rank of someone like Reiko, but Midori gazed into Reiko's eyes afterwards and held her gaze for what seemed like several seconds. Then Midori smiled a secret little smile and bowed again. Reiko found it very disconcerting.

Sachiko and Midori went into the living room of the small apartments to do some studying while Reiko went back to preparing dinner. About twenty minutes later, Sachiko came back into the kitchen with Midori to ask if her friend could stay for dinner.

Reiko felt somewhat put out with the prospects of having to cook for another person, but she decided to let Midori stay for dinner, since it was likely that her husband wouldn't be home for dinner anyway.

It seemed that her husband was never home for dinner anymore. The last time that Sachiko had seen her father, a few weeks earlier, Reiko had to arrange an appointment with her husband's secretary beforehand.

While making dinner, Reiko began to muse about her daughter's friend. She visualized herself at a hidden cove somewhere by the ocean as she heard Midori call her name.

Then, as she stood before the kitchen sink to wash off a long knife in some soapy water, she felt somebody put her arms around her from behind. The girl kissed her gently on the cheek, and then she rested her head head on her shoulder and sighed with contentment.

Reiko was surprised by this display of affection. Thinking that it was her daughter standing behind her, Reiko dropped the knife into the sink, turned around, and saw Midori instead. She couldn't believe it!

Reiko was about to speak when Midori silenced her with a kiss. For some minutes, or so it seemed, the girl aggressively probed her mouth with her lips and mouth before thrusting her tongue into her mouth.

It seemed that Reiko was about to give into the girl's advances when she felt a hand on her breast. That was when Reiko seized control of the situation and ordered the girl to stop. Silently, the girl obeyed. Midori merely bowed her head without shame and went back to the living room. However, Midori stopped at the entrance to the living room and turned around and smiled knowingly at Reiko before entering the living room.

For some minutes, Reiko stood at the centre of the kitchen, visibly shaken, trying to collect herself. Then, as if still in a daze, she went to the kitchen sink and thrust her arm into the water. The water in the sink immediately turned a blood red as her arm jumped out of the water as if of it's own accord.

As Reiko held her arm, she had what the Zen Buddhists call a sartori experience; she felt completely outside of herself. It was like it wasn't her holding onto her arm at all but somebody else. Only when she realized that she was bleeding profusely did she call for help.

Both Sachiko and Midori came running into the kitchen, where they saw Reiko holding her arm, unable to stop the bleeding. When it was apparent that Sachiko didn't know what to do, Reiko shouted at her to call for an ambulance. While Sachiko telephoned for the ambulance, Midori tightly wrapped a dish towel tightly around Reiko's lower arm as a tourniquet, before calmly telling the woman to lie down on the kitchen floor.

When Sachiko came back into the kitchen, Midori told her to get a pillow from the sofa in the living room for Reiko's head while she applied a wet dish rag as a compress to Reiko's forehead, which was now clammy from shock.

The ambulance crew found Reiko lying on the kitchen floor with Midori alternatingly stroking her hand or her forehead to keep her calm while Sachiko sobbed uncontrollably.

Of course, Reiko survived that suicide attempt (if suicide had subconsciously been her intention), but there were other attempts at suicide before she eventually succeeded.

Through all of this, her husband was usually as remote as the Japanese emperor: seldom seen, though his existence was dutifully acknowledged and respected. He was always spoken of in reverent tones, almost like he was divine, though he was away on a business trip to South America when Reiko successfully committed suicide.

They found Reiko's body in the bathtub, blue and discoloured, having been lifeless for some days. The water looked like a sheet of red ice, with blood spattered on the tiled walls of the bathtub enclosure behind her.

They say that people who die like Reiko experience a relatively painless death, once the endorphins start to kick in, but the police and crew from the mortuary couldn't have told from her features because she had been dead for too long. It was one of those suicides where a neighbour calls the police when he or she smells something rotten coming from underneath the door to the apartment.