A novel by

Sherine Khalil

Part I Mona

Chapter One

The soul never ages, only the body, which slowly and reluctantly surrenders to the assault of time. The years roll by like a stealthy thief, silently stealing away life’s energy. Your body begins to have a mind of its own, and ceases to obey the signals your brain sends. Your limbs don’t respond nimbly like before, and your heart beats uncontrollably at the most inconvenient times. Even my dreams are not as vivid as before, and I find it hard to remember them. All that and the soul looks on, puzzled at these unexpected changes, while the fire is still there. The heart that is weaker is still stirred by beauty, and the stiff limbs still yearn to take flight.

I would be fine if it wasn’t for the afternoons. Heavy-headed I take a siesta; the afternoon tradition of taking a nap, people in warm countries are accustomed to. When I wake up, a strange feeling overcomes me, as if there is no such thing as time. Everything is in this moment, my wasted life and uncertain future all blend into the fading sun, and my hour is near. So near that it paralyses me and steals the breath from my lungs.

My son comes in with a cup of green tea, and things start to look up. A reality check, or is this the illusion? The beautiful illusion of life, and the only reality is impending death?

“What’s wrong, ‘o sleepy one’,” he says as he enters holding my mug of comfort with both hands, moving slowly so as not to spill the steaming beverage. He always addresses me in theatrical terms. It’s a personal joke between us that we enjoy.

He puts the mug carefully on a coaster on the nightstand by my bed, and smiles triumphantly at the accomplished task of a fourteen year-old.

“What’s that in your hand?” he asks with a broad smile on his face.

“What?” I ask. I look at my hand and realize that the piece of paper was still there, I had dozed off and woken up with the thing crumbled in my palm.

“It’s a telegram,” I answer.

“What’s a telegram?”

“Exactly,” I say looking at it wearily. Who sends telegrams these days anyway? I know the answer to that, but I daren’t think it. It is too terrifying to acknowledge.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Seif protests.

“The postman brought it,” I explain. I remember the look on the man’s face as he handed me the piece of paper.

“ I hope that the news is kheir,” he had asked with genuine concern.

“In sh’ Allah,” I had answered and tipped him for his kindness. And here was my son asking me what the paper was and how I’d managed to fall asleep without opening it?

“Who is it from?” Seif persisted.

“Someone with no access to the internet or the telephone.”

“Is that possible?” Seif asked incredulously.

“It’s possible.”

“Aren’t you going to read it?”

I looked at my hand and began unfolding the crumbled piece of paper. I smooth it out with care, as if smoothing a valuable laundry item. The black print is bold and clear, burning a permanent image on my retina.

KHADEJA MISSING FOR 6 DAYS. PLEASE SEND HELP. JOSH

In the tradition of telegrams this was the perfect one, worthy of a nomination for the Booker Prize of telegrams. Short, to the point, no superfluous wording, and alarming.

‘Who the hell is Josh?’ is the first question that comes to my mind as I lie in bed still holding the crumbled telegram. How did he get my address, and why is he contacting me? Khadeja is missing, could I, thousands of miles away, really be any help to her? Then it dawns on me, the fact that she is missing. My beloved twin sister. A cold sweat begins to form on my brow, mingling with the steam of the hot tea in my hand.

Normally I would stay in bed until I had finished my cup of tea. But instead I get up and start dashing around the house like a mad woman. Where is it? Why can’t I find anything? Or remember where I put stuff? I go through the inevitable act of rummaging through all the drawers in the house where I keep my papers.

The last time I had any information on her whereabouts was last month. I had opened the local newspaper and read that Khadeja Wakil, the world-renowned film director was filming a documentary on the Tuareg for the National Geographic.

I remember that I had smiled when I read the news. I knew about her secret obsession with the North African tribe, and I also knew the reason, or rather I guessed it. The Tuareg are the only people in the Muslim world where the men are veiled, cover their faces, and women aren’t. It was a fascination for Khadeja, and that fascination took her one step further towards filming them.

My twin sister, “Khadeja” is not my identical twin. We both were conceived in the same womb, yet I inherited the dark Egyptian complexion, and she was blue-eyed and fair like our mother. As I was ten minutes older, I always felt a sort of responsibility towards her, and I was always the reasonable and obedient one. Seeing that I assumed the paternal role, Khadeja was free to be reckless and spontaneous. She always left the thinking and worrying to me, and many times I’d have to take the rap for both of us, but mostly for her. Later she would make it up to me by being extra sweet and do me some kind of service, like styling my hair or lending me her best blouse. I was the buffer in our family, forever protecting her, mostly from herself, and she was my reward.

The summer of ‘93 was when we graduated from high school. We both had excellent grades. While I didn’t have any preferences and agreed to go to the Faculty of Medicine, as was my father’s wish, Khadeja had her mind bent on the film academy. She had taken Father’s feminist views one step further, where she confronted him and decided to follow her dream of becoming a director. Not that father had anything against her becoming a director, but as all Egyptians, he considered wasting good marks on an academy that would have settled for less, a crime. Such is the Egyptian mentality. You chose your college according to your grades and not your preferences. Top grades made you eligible for Medicine and Engineering, and with it social prestige, which is about all. What with unemployment, and the increasing number of medical graduates and decreasing salaries - unless you were the offspring of a superstar doctor, or became one of the staff yourself, due to your own extremely hard work, as you had to compete with nepotism - your prospects would be quite dim, and your salary dimmer. We’d hear of the five-figure salary doctors received in the West and wonder if they were from another planet, or maybe it was we who were from another planet.

The film academy it was, and never had I seen Khadeja happier. She was growing and maturing, and hardly needed my protection anymore. She had crossed over, become her own woman, and life was a treasure trove just waiting to be opened.

I on the other hand, struggled. Although Medicine turned out to be quite interesting, I resented it, as it was thrust upon me by my father. And my complaining colleagues didn’t help either.

Constant complaining is at the core of the Egyptian psyche. The majority of Egyptians are religious, and pray five times a day. And although the first thing they say in prayer is Alhamdo l’ Allah (thanks to Allah), rarely do they publicly seem satisfied or count their blessings. Being happy is a definite means of attracting the evil eye, and then misfortune befalls you. So Egyptians find it safer to complain, of everything, from the government and education to the quality of the bread. Not that the complaints are unjustified, but if all that energy were put into something positive, our country would have had most of her problems solved.

So there I was, in the top faculty any Egyptian girl could dream of, and yet I let the blackness get to me, kindled by my blaming my father for being in this situation. Also another emotion crept over me, one I didn’t dare to acknowledge. In fact it was a mixture of uncomfortable emotions towards my beloved Khadeja. She was gradually slipping from my fingers, and my protective hold over her was getting weaker. I began to feel that she didn’t need me any longer, and the fact that she was happy made me resent her even more.

I wanted her to have my personal vision of the future. It included a loving husband, children, a happy family, and a career. It didn’t matter what the career was, as long as I was successful and was going places. The perfect future for an upper middle-class educated girl.

Khadeja on the other hand knew exactly what she wanted, and it didn’t involve romance of any kind. Her mind was set on being the first Egyptian woman to become an international film director, and nothing was going to stand in her way of fulfilling her dream.

Now her dream had taken her too far. She was lost. My beloved sister. And I had absolutely no clue where to begin to look.

“Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.” The dawn call to prayer cut through the night’s silence like a steel sword. Normally Josh would curse and venture to resume his sleep, but this morning he was up before the call of prayer. Although the ’adhan’ in the Moroccan desert village was performed without a microphone, it still managed to wake Josh up every single dawn, since he had arrived five days ago.

Josh had been to nearly every Islamic country, and in each one the sound of the adhan was different. He was fascinated by the haunting guttural call to prayer. In some countries it was more nasal than others. Some were melodious like the calls in the Cairo mosques, others were a simple extended tuneless call. But all had one thing in common, the words were the same, “Come forth to prayer, come forth to goodness.” Maybe one day he’d make a film about the different calls to prayer, and their musical background. But today that wasn’t the reason why he woke up so early before the sun peeped from behind the Atlas mountains. He stumbled out of bed and staggered to the veranda and sat strategically on the bamboo chair. The cold mountain air nipped at his bare arms, and he rubbed them to keep warm. His eyes scanned the desert horizon in the grey light that preceded the dawn.

“Where the hell was she?”

Was the dust picking up northward, her car? No. It was just a solitary gust of wind, stirring his hopes up like it did the dust. But like the dust, his hopes fell down again to the ground.

“Curse her!” Why did she never listen to him? He told her to wait, that they should go together, but no, she had to do things her own way. She was so damn opinionated, and that, he had to admit in spite of his anger, was her charm.

If she had just listened to him this one time. But it was too late for ifs, and now all he could do was wait every day for the sun to rise in the East hoping for some sign of her, or her Jeep.

If Joshua Walters - top photographer for the National Geographic - had been in another state of mind he would have reveled in the scenery before him, and got out his camera to record that moment. The rich ochre mountains illuminated into existence by the rising sun. The rays painted a golden line on the upper border of the rigid rock face, as if the sun was sending its rays as an ambassador to announce the inevitable arrival of the fiery ball that made life possible on this planet.

To Josh, Khadeja was the sun. Her presence in his life was as absolute as the rising of the sun every morning and its setting at dusk. Not that he took her for granted, like most people who fail to recognize the daily miracle of sunrise. No, he worshiped her like the sun worshippers, she was his whole existence.

Now searching the horizon, and waiting for her arrival, it was hard for him to grasp that the sun was still rising and she was absent.

She had stolen his heart from the first moment they had met. They had both been working for the National Geographic in two opposite poles of the world. He was covering the musical scene in New Orleans when his boss phoned him and informed him about this new job assignment. A famous Egyptian director who made documentaries on desert life wanted to make a film on the Tuareg of the Western Sahara. He had seen her work before on the Basharia tribe of Egypt, and was looking forward to working with a promising director. However he hadn’t been prepared for the blonde beauty he saw at the Casablanca hotel where they had held their first meeting. It was hard to think of her as Egyptian. She had guessed what he was thinking from the expression on his face.

“I’m half Egyptian, my mother is British,” she had said extending her hand.

He took her small hand embarrassed, but retaliated jokingly, “Well that does explain it.”

“Tell that to my twin. She’s my exact opposite. She looks Egyptian.”

He laughed and in a few minutes, they had opened up to each other as if they were old friends.

It was a magical moment for Joshua Walters. One of the few magical moments he could recall in his twenty seven years. Like when he played the guitar on stage for the first time. His love for music was his passion. His job as a photographer was his skill and profession. The irony of it was that he was skilled at something he was not passionate about, and was passionate at something he couldn’t excel in. Being just ‘good’ at music was enough, it gave him pleasure and satisfaction to play. Whereas his photography gained lots of praise, as it came natural to him. He had the gift, but it meant to him a job, a way of earning a living.

Only when he met Khadeja, he knew why he had taken up photography. His whole life was building up to the moment when he saw her in the hotel lobby of the Casablanca hotel. They were surrounded by executives and other crew members, and tourists. But the universe seemed empty except for the both of them. And now that she was missing, even breathing was painful, let alone trying to think of what to do.

Josh looked at the Saharan town around him. It was as desolate as the desert. Bare, yet picturesque adobe houses huddled closely together, all covered in uniform beige, the colour of sand. A bedouin wearing a colourful robe stepped over the rocky terrain, dragging his donkey. A couple of young women shuffled along, pulling their veils over their faces, carrying empty water cans.

He pondered what his next move would be. His cellular had no signal. He thought against using the hotel phone. He didn’t want to announce that Khadeja was missing, not yet. She could be all right and any negative propaganda could be detrimental to her career. This assignment was desired by many a colleague back home and many resented the fact that it was given to a woman, let alone an Egyptian. ‘Was foul play possible?’ Josh thought. ’Anything is possible in this day and age, freakin’ anything.”

Frustrated, he cast his gaze once more on the desert town, expecting an answer to his dilemma to present itself somehow. Something caught his eye. It was one of the buildings. It was different from the others, although the difference was slight. There was something on the wall like a sign of some sort. He rushed back into the room and fetched the binoculars from his equipment bag. Back on the terrace, he aimed the binoculars at the building and focused them to get a clear vision of the sign on the wall. It was a metal plaque with Arabic writing on it which he couldn’t decipher. There was also a picture of a bird, and the bird had something in its beak. Zooming in closer, Josh could just barely recognize the object in the beak. It was an envelope. A post office! Things were looking up. But what good was a post office if he had no address? Then he remembered that Khadeja had left her personal luggage. It was best that he took it with him on the plane, to save room in the jeep for the equipment.

Josh dragged the bag out of the closet where it laid waiting for its owner, and heaved it on to the bed. He unzipped it and plunged his hand between the folds of clothes. His finger touched a lacy item of lingerie and his heart sank. He knew that this was a violation of the code of trust and professionalism between them, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

“This isn’t doing any good,” he exclaimed. “I’ll just have empty the contents like this.”

Josh turned the bag upside down and shook it empty. The clothes rained down on the bed. Pinks and mauves. Black and white and fiery red. ’Where did she think she was going?’ he thought to himself, ’the Ritz?’

The sight of the pile of ruffled clothes on the bed brought tears to his eyes. He sat on the edge of the bed, and attempted to squeeze the teardrops back. But to his dismay, they had already jumped to his cheeks, and he wiped them away quickly with the back of his hand. Although there was no one around to witness his tears, it was against his nature to show any weakness, even if to his own self.

He lowered his hand and it rested on the empty bag resting on his lap. As the hand hit the bag it produced a sound of crumbling paper. Josh looked at the bag and realized that he hadn’t inspected the side pocket. He unzipped it hastily and drew out a bunch of papers. Bills, Kleenex, notes with Khadeja’s scribbled handwriting, and an envelope addressed to Khadeja. His heart pounded fast as he flipped the envelope to the back where the sender’s address was written. It read:

Mona Wakil

5 Zahra street

Zamalek, Cairo

Chapter 3

The sun beat mercilessly on her back, on the spot of bare skin where her blouse was torn. The burning sensation was enough to bring her back to her senses. She was lying on the ground in a strange position, with the left side of her face immersed in the sand that was getting warmer by the second. She tried to open her eyes despite the film of sand that covered her eyelids and face. The sand filled her mouth, and nose. With her eyes open she could make out the shape of the jeep that had turned on its side. Mercifully she had been thrown away clear of the jeep. Now all she had to do was get up, but her limbs would not obey what her brain was telling them to do. The first thought that entered her mind was ’paralysis’, but no, there was definitely stiffness and pain that grew stronger and stronger as she tried to move her legs. When the pain reached an excruciating level, she screamed out into the vast emptiness of the desert. Back in civilization, she would have longed for a chance to scream like that, but here in the desert, it escaped her lungs unexpected and uninvited, with nobody around to hear.

This time however, she wished there was someone around to hear her scream. She had travelled in the desert enough to know that the odds were all against her surviving this situation. They say that on the brink of death your life flashes in front of you. All she could remember was Mona her beloved twin, and that day when everything changed for them both forever.

“You shouldn’t say these things,” Mona had said to her.

Khadeja looked back at her sister in an expression that said that she should do the same.

“Father loves you and wants what’s best for you,” Mona pleaded, “and remember? We were going to be together, the same college, the same career, even get married on the same day.”

“I’ve made my mind up and I know what’s best for me. I’m going to the film academy and that’s the end of that.”

But no, she was sure that she had made the right decision. She had defied convention and tradition and had followed her dreams. She had lived the life she had always dreamed of, casting family ties to the wind. But it wasn’t all sunshine and roses, it was hard work too. And this project with the National Geographic was a dream come true. This was it. At least until she hit that stone and the jeep flipped over.

Khadeja strained her head upward towards a dark object lying on the sand ten metres away from her. To her dismay she saw that it was the filming equipment half buried in the sand. But between her and the equipment lay something more vital than dispensable material objects, it was her water flask, her only key to survival. It would buy herself a little more time in this desolate place. Then a flash of memory stirred in her brain. She was drinking when it happened that’s why she didn’t see the rock jutting out of the sand. Or had she already taken a sip and returned the cap on securely? The difference between the two options was like the difference between life and death, and there was only one way to find out.

It took all the strength she had in her broken body to crawl towards the flask, digging her arms into the hot burning sand, and lifting herself against her elbows to push herself forward . The heat of the sand seemed to distract her nerves from the pain that was in her body. ’Isn’t that a medical phenomenon?’ she wondered. Something her sister had told her about treating pain through stimulating the skin that is supplied by the same nerve root. It was the basis of tribal medicine, where internal ailments were cured by branding and scarring the skin. However, her skin got used to the heat and ceased to have a masking effect on the pain, which grew stronger as she dragged herself a few metres more towards the water flask. There was still half a metre left between her and her survival. To her it was the longest distance she had ever made. As she reached the flask and turned the mouth towards her, she saw to her relief that it was securely tight. She yanked it open with a powerful twist of her wrist, strained to place it against her lips, and let the cool water flow into her mouth, and down the side of her face and neck.

“Al hamdolillah,” she mumbled from her lips. Her bloodied fingers managed to screw the cap back on the flask, just before she passed out.

Six days. Can anyone survive in the desert for six days. How should I know? I’ve never been to the desert. I only see it from the car on our way to Alexandria. Even now, the desert road is no longer desert. It’s a continuous row of cultivated farms and banana fields, irrigated by spray, and droplet. They say we learnt it from the Israelis, and before that the only irrigation Egypt knew was the flooding technique. Of course before the High Dam, the Nile did flood the land once a year bringing with its waters rich black silt from the Highlands of Ethiopia. But now progress has set in and the farmers are building on farm land, slowly eroding the Nile Delta, while enterprisers are cultivating desert land.

But the farms along the desert road to Alexandria are just a single file hugging to the life line of the road. For millennia Egyptians have done the same with the Nile and kept close to the water’s edge for survival.

In some places in Aswan the desert reaches to the shores of the Nile only a brisk walk away, but no one ventures to take that walk. The desert is bare, unfruitful, and full of unknown dangers. No, the Egyptians chose to look towards the water and not away.

Only the adventurous have jumped that border and took off into the desert. And Khadeja was one of them. And now she is missing. Six days. Every day that passes is a threat, that is if she’s still alive. ’Curse you,’ I scold myself. ‘How can you even think that?’ I’ll do all in my power to find her, even if I have to go and look for her myself.’

But to do that I have to cross an obstacle far more terrifying than barren lands with no water. I have to face Mahmoud.

“Khadeja is missing,” I say to him after watching him have his breakfast. It was always the right time to start a conversation, after he had had his belly full.

“Missing how?” He always answered a question with a question. His talents were wasted on engineering. He should have been a detective, or maybe a lawyer.

“Missing,” I said with exasperation. “Is there any way to be missing?”

He glared at me, not believing my tone of voice.

“There hasn’t been any news from her for nearly a week now. She’s in Morocco,” I added in a genuinely concerned voice, to calm things down.

“Go get my cigarettes, the ashtray and open the window,” he ordered.

It didn’t matter to him what I was saying, he had to have his routine. First breakfast, then smoking, then getting ready for work. I obeyed and went and fetched the packet of Marlborough Lights. The opening of the window was for me and our son. He knew how much I hated smoking, so he always insisted on opening the window. As if a window opened will free the house from the stench of the Marlborough Light fumes.

He lit the cigarette and looked down. Most of our conversations were spent looking at the carpet, sofa, window, but never into each others’ eyes.

I waited for him to exhale the smoke before I said, “I’m going to try and find out what happened.”

“And how are you going to do that?” His voice was beginning to rise.

“I’ll go to the National Geographic office here in Cairo, if there is one. And I’ll go to the Moroccan Embassy.”

“And do you expect to find her there?” He was asking another of his impossible questions. Questions to intimidate me rather than find a solution to the situation at hand.

I took a deep breath, which was all I could do to prevent me from having a fit. God he knew how to get on my nerves!

“I don’t know what else to do,” I say in a calm restrain, trying to control my voice. “It’s all I can do. Any information is good. I just can’t sit around here doing nothing when my sister could be out there dying in some arid desert.”

“What about your duties here? Are you going to leave the house in a mess and go gallivanting around the town?” His voice now was just below screaming level. He had a bellowing voice that could make grown men cry.

Here it comes, the rest of the lecture.

“And do you think that your sister would do the same for you?”

Unfortunately he was right, Khadeja always put herself first, and it was her ambition that placed her in this situation in the first place.

“Serves her right any way,” he continued the shouting. “What is she doing going around deserts? She has lost her mind.”

“It’s her job,” I said meekly. This was the part when I started to hate myself for being so weak.

“Well your job is to tend to your home. Let her colleagues worry about her. You can’t do anything anyway.”

I kept silent which seemed to calm him down. I was thinking about the telegram, but I daren’t tell him about it. It would just lead to another torrent of unanswerable questions.

‘I suppose I could always phone,’ I consoled myself staring into blank space. I got up and went to do the beds. Today there would be no goodbye kiss for my husband as he left the house.

***