City of the Sun (42 page)

She looked around for Lili and Fernando. The two had not seen one another since Lili’s bicycle accident three weeks ago and seemed blissfully happy to finally be together. The night was perfect for lovers. There was a full moon and the delicate scent of ripening mangoes filled the air. She imagined Lili kissing Fernando passionately behind one of the courtyard statues, and she searched for them on the terraced lawn. She couldn’t allow “an accident” to happen. A girl’s virginity was crucial in this community—perhaps not as extreme as among the Arabs, but still of enormous importance. She had been horrified to learn that the Arabs held off festivities on the wedding night until the bride’s mother-in-law waved a red-stained handkerchief in front of the guests, confirming that the bride, whose hymen had just been punctured, had been a virgin.

Even beyond her responsibility as chaperone this evening, Maya was not too sure about Fernando. Whenever she delivered Lili’s letters to him at the Heliopolis sporting club his aunts had always been there, hovering over him, bringing him juice, and mopping his brow between tennis matches. He would be a demanding husband. Lili should think long and hard before tying the knot.

After searching the outdoor area for them, she walked back inside and made her way toward the atrium where most of the festivities were taking place. The spectacle of people dancing to a calypso beat while surrounded by ancient stone sculptures was an incongruity that she thought would have horrified the pharaohs. She stood on the side, batting one of the countless red, white, and blue balloons that festooned the pillars lining the ground floor as she watched the dancers.

“
Rum and Coca-Cola
!” Lili cried, waving at Maya. With one foot still in a cast, the other firmly planted on the ground, she gyrated her hips wildly to the music, while Fernando held her by the arm.

Maya waved back, ashamed to have envisioned this girl giving her virginity away behind a statue. Maybe that was her own naughty fantasy.

“We should get going,” Maya shouted. “We don’t want to make your father wait.”

“Don’t be such a spoilsport,” Lili shouted back. “We still have time. Come join us.”

Maya shook her head. She didn’t have the heart for dancing. She stared up at the moon through the large skylight in the roof, which, like all windows and most display cases, was crisscrossed with adhesive tape to protect against shattering in the event of an air raid. “I’ll meet you out front in ten minutes,” she shouted to Lili and wandered away toward the ancient stones and lingered there, studying some ivory figures in a glass case.

She eavesdropped on a small group of men nearby. They were talking about the assault on King Farouk’s mistress. A man had jumped out of a car and smashed her nose with a pistol, breaking it and knocking out a few teeth before speeding off. The news had made the headlines in today’s papers, and one of the men was complaining that it overshadowed the really significant news that the military and consular offices in Alexandria had been burning their files.

Suddenly, a terrifying shrieking noise pierced the air and grew louder and shriller every second.

“Stuka bomber!” one of the men yelled.

A split second later an explosion shook the room, shattering windows and sending glasses, bottles, plates, trays, and food flying. The glass case Maya had been studying broke, despite its protective tape. A glass shard struck her foot, and she gasped as she saw blood oozing from her ankle. An orange and green fireball lit up the sky and the electricity flickered on and off.

“The British barracks must have been hit,” a man bawled.

“Rita!” someone yelled over the roar of the room.

Maya watched in horror as an elderly woman held her neck, a stream of blood leaking through her fingers, while everyone around her ran for their lives. Maya started to run toward her, but then the shrieking noise filled the air again—the unmistakable sound of an airplane diving—then another explosion. This one threw her backward as more glass broke amid the frenzied cries of frightened people. Sirens wailed. She instinctively covered her head with her arms and curled up into a ball.

Her ears told her the full story of the chaos around her: the trampling feet, the desperate calling of names, the shouts, gasps, moans, the prayers, sobbing, and agonizing cries repeated over and over again. Death had come, no doubt. At the thwack-thwack of antiaircraft batteries, Maya began to hyperventilate. She was back in Poitier, experiencing her first air raid. She’d hidden in the farmer’s shelter, a wooden construction with a corrugated iron roof dug deep into the earth that reeked of dank and mildew. She could smell that awful stench again and fought off a wave of nausea. She began to sob as she remembered the farmer’s wife, who’d sat across from her, crying, “Philippe, Philippe,” certain that something had happened to her youngest son—a mother’s intuition.

Maya snapped back to the present when she heard an authoritative
American voice shouting, “Everybody to the basement! To the mummy room! To the stairs! This way.” She looked up and saw a marine, arms outstretched to prevent people from going past him as they rushed toward the exit. Through the window she could see a tree ablaze in the courtyard. People were blindly running toward certain disaster. She felt a rush of adrenaline surge through her. No, it is not going to happen again. There will be no more deaths. In a flash she was on her feet, racing to the side of the marine to help him.

“To the basement! To the mummy room!” she yelled, echoing his words. “Where are the stairs?” she asked.

“To your right, but get out of the way, miss.”

Oblivious to her wounded foot and the orders of the marine, she shouted at people, blocking their way and forcing them toward the stairway. A wild-eyed woman with blood on her shirt became hysterical and fought her, but Maya shook her and slapped her face hard. “Down the stairs,” she shouted and shoved her.

Then she heard a cry, “Maya!” It was Mickey as he raced toward her. But another explosion sounded. The chandelier crashed down, leaving the room illuminated only by the dim lights of the sconces on the walls and sending people into even greater panic. Out the window, she saw the dotted red lines of antiaircraft shells bursting across the sky while a fire raged in the courtyard.

“Maya!” Mickey screamed again. As he got close the shrieking sound of another diving Stuka came right toward them, and he hurled himself at her.

Boom! Another explosion shattered the air. Water gushed and the ground shook. Maya feared the pillars would collapse. Mickey had been knocked to the floor, but didn’t seem hurt. “To the mummy room,” she screamed, her voice hoarse by now.

“You have to get out of here,” Mickey shouted, rising to his feet.

“Take her to the basement,” the exhausted marine yelled at him.

But Maya wouldn’t move and kept directing people toward the stairs as if in a trance.
No more deaths. No more deaths
.

Mickey grabbed her by the shoulders, but she shook herself free. When she saw him again, he was ushering a heavyset man toward the staircase. Then side by side, their arms outstretched, Maya, Mickey, and the marine formed a blockade, forcing people toward safety. After a while Maya saw that there were more marines in the room than civilians, and she let Mickey lead her to the stairway.

They flew down the stairs. It was safer here. She didn’t want to think about what had happened to those who had fled into the open, nor did she want to think about the people around her, moaning and crying, each in their own private hell. Mickey and Maya crouched between two sarcophagi, and she focused her attention on the mummies, with their thick heads of false braided hair and painted white shells for eyes. But even that was too much. She shut her eyes tight and put her hands over her ears to block out the sounds.

Eventually, the shelling subsided and the antiaircraft guns were quiet.

“It’s over,” Mickey murmured as he gently removed her hands.

She started to shake uncontrollably and felt his arms envelop her. She let him cradle her, rocking her back and forth. “It will be all right,” he promised. “It will be all right.”

She didn’t know how long they stayed there, but when she opened her eyes, Joe, Lili, and Fernando were standing there. Fernando’s suit was torn, as was Lili’s dress, and Joe’s jacket was covered in dust, but miraculously they were all unscathed.

“Let’s go home,” Joe said, offering his hand.

Maya took it and never looked back.

CHAPTER 41

The spray of the shower stung Mickey’s cheek, surprising him, for he hadn’t noticed any wounds on his face. He’d seen some blood on his hands from a few cuts and thought he’d gotten off easy from the raid. Perhaps he should have stayed longer at the scene of the bombing and continued to help, but his legs were just too heavy to move. The events of the whole day and night had drained every last drop of energy from his body. And Maya was now gone for good. He had held her so tightly in the mummy room that her heartbeat felt like it was pounding inside his own chest. It was as if he had been staying alive for the two of them, but that had passed and she had vanished, leaving him empty, with an overwhelming sense of loss.

He lowered his head and let the water droplets strike his neck and then his upper back, hoping it would dissolve the solid knot of tension that had collected there. His ears still rang from the screech of the falling bombs and the deafening roar of the explosions. He closed his eyes and saw black dots swimming across his field of vision. He raised his head and faced the cascading water, his mouth half open, leaving it up to the water to cleanse him or drown him.

He heard a faint knock on the door. At 2:30 in the morning? He stepped away from the water and listened. Yes, someone was at the door. Was his shower disturbing a neighbor? He
quickly dried himself and donned his robe as he went to see. Looking through the peephole, he saw Hosni, his bawab.

“A visitor, sir,” Hosni said.

Suspicious, he looked again through the peephole. The bawab seemed alone. He was smiling. He trusted Hosni, and there was something in the way he pronounced the word “visitor” that signaled mischief rather than danger. He opened the door and Hosni stepped aside, revealing her.

“Maya!” he said, shocked.

She stared at him, the harsh light of the hallway exaggerating the redness of her eyes. Her lips quivered as she tried to stretch them into the semblance of a smile.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, his throat constricting.

She didn’t answer, her eyes fixed on him, her pupils fully dilated.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, scanning her up and down. She was no longer wearing the stylish white satin blouse he’d found so fetching. Instead she was dressed in a simple beige shirt over a black pleated skirt. Her high heels had been replaced by flats, and she wore no stockings. An ugly red wound was swelling on her ankle, but otherwise she seemed okay. He looked past her, down the hall. Had she come alone?

“Can I return to my post?” Hosni asked tentatively, looking from Mickey to Maya, not sure he’d done the right thing by breaking the rules and allowing a guest after midnight.

“Yes, of course,” Mickey said, shaking away his stupor and gesturing for Maya to come in. He fumbled for the living room light switch, but she had already stepped inside. The light from the bedroom cast shadows across her face.

“What’s going on?” he asked, noticing that her hair was a bit wet and tangled.

She moved forward and put a finger across her lips.

“Is everything okay with your family?”

“Shh,” she said as she drew closer. She slipped out of her shoes, her eyes fixed on him as she traced his lips with a finger. Then, on her tiptoes, she kissed him.

He stood paralyzed, unable to respond while she persisted, her tongue probing his mouth and her hands reaching around the back of his neck. He responded this time, gently exploring her tongue with his own.

“I’m so sorry. Please forgive me,” she whispered between breaths.

He tilted her chin and made her look at him. The cool, cruel expression he had seen on her face when she told him she didn’t want to see him anymore was nowhere to be found. She looked pained now.

“Please forgive me,” she repeated, her eyes pleading for pardon. “I didn’t mean a word of what I said. There isn’t a second that goes by that I don’t think about you. Not a second,” she sighed.

Her words soaked into him like warm sunshine, and he knew that they were true—he had felt it in her touch and kiss, but his mind was still struggling to absorb the fact that she was really here. He felt her breath, breezy and sweet on his face. It was real. He pulled her toward him, wanting to obliterate all trace of physical distance between them, and kissed her. She looped her arms around his neck tightly, and he slid his hand down her back. She wasn’t wearing a brassiere and the thought of her free breasts enflamed him. The kisses swiftly became more and more passionate. They didn’t know what not to kiss—every inch of each other’s face was fair game—two dams bursting.

“I thought I was never going to see you again,” he said.