That Other Me

For my Mother

Maryam Ali Gargash

The Diamond of the Family

Tok, tok, tok, tok, tok.

There are women standing on the other side of my bedroom door, taking turns knocking. There are seven of them, and each is more beautiful than the last. I can tell what they look like—fine-nosed and fair—even though the door is closed. Their accents are flawless, but I know they are not Emiratis.

Tok, tok, tok.
I grin at their impatience and wait a moment before inviting them in. “Enter!”

I am young, with not a gray hair on my head. I listen to their light footsteps over the thick carpet. Even though my eyes remain shut, I can see everything. They form a circle around my bed, which sits in the middle of the room. Their gowns float around them, their silhouettes flashing bare when the light hits them from behind.

Yes, there is light, too: hundreds of lines, beaming through tiny holes in the wall. A shaft catches a rising knee; another illuminates a twisting shoulder as an arm twirls. “Come!” I demand, feeling the hairs on my body rise. And when they do, I start grabbing at them.
There!
Her hair is soft, and she bends out of the way.
There!
I snatch the air as another one spins away like a wheel. They are so fast, but I don't stop lifting my arms toward the ring of dancing women who loom over me.

Blocking the light, they reach down to caress me. But instead of rapture, I'm filled with horror: they fix their long fingers around my neck. Bold, cold, they squeeze. I am a writhing worm as I struggle to break away, and once I realize it's useless I cry out with a force that shakes the length of me. But there is no sound. I yell again. “
Arree!
” This time it's as shrill as a whistle, and I don't stop until I'm up and on my knees, sweating and shivering on the bed.

I am awake and staring at the face of a child, who holds a bucket in one hand and a rag in the other. My rattled wits are reflected in her tiny eyes. And no wonder! My
wizar
, the checkered cotton wrap I sleep in, has crept up and twisted around my neck. My chest, tummy and all that hangs below are exposed in full view of this girl, who stands frozen in place at the foot of my bed, unable to look away from my sprouting forest of hair. I hurry to hide my nakedness with a pillow, too stunned to ask who she is or what she is doing in my room.

Tok, tok, tok.
It's the sound of a hammer breaking cement, and it triggers sharp pain along the length of my forehead. The noise comes from downstairs, not from behind the door, which now opens. My wife, Aisha, rushes in and orders the girl out, admonishing her for having entered the room while I was asleep. “New maid,” she says to me. “She doesn't know the ways of the house yet.” Her eyes round. “What happened to you?”

I fumble to untangle my wizar, puzzled at the two thick knots. How is that possible? How much did I struggle in my dream? “Can't I wake up peacefully in this house?” I grumble. My throat is parched, and I cough before continuing. “Can't I wake up to silence and privacy?” The curtains are just short of being fully drawn. Only a sliver of white light beams through, but it's enough to drill a hole through my
head, just like the bright-green numbers of the electronic calendar on the bedside table—15:01:1995. I search for the aspirin in the drawer.

“I know, I know,” says my wife, handing me a bottle of water. “But it's an emergency.” She waits for me to swallow the two pills before continuing. “I had to send a driver to Hor Al-Anz to fetch the plumber. He called to tell me that the plumber is away, visiting relatives in Ajman. I tell him, ‘Can't you think for yourself?' ” She taps her head. “But it seems he can't. So I ordered him to drive out to Ajman.”

I slide off the bed and tighten the wizar around my waist. My eyes burn. I want to splash cold water on my face. As I hobble to the bathroom Aisha follows me, continuing her account of the morning's household incident.

“No one expected the pipe to burst. It just did, and the dining room is flooded. I hope the carpets won't be completely ruined. We've spread them outside in the sun to dry. I don't know how long . . .”

My wife utters each detail with relish, as if I care about any of it. I close the bathroom door, but her voice travels through the thick teak wood, crisp and anxious. “. . . Persian carpets. We couldn't hang them, of course: too heavy with all that water. So we spread them over the garden benches, and . . .”

These domestic accounts and complaints are tedious, and fueled by the incompetence of an army of servants. Who killed the purple-flowered bougainvillea by giving it too much water, and the potted gardenias by exposing them to too much sun? Was it our Pakistani gardener or the landscaping company that comes twice a week to maintain the garden? And yesterday's fish, which was fried until the flesh turned rubbery instead of being steamed in the Chinese way, as was instructed. Which of our two cooks was responsible? Was it the Muslim Bengali or the Christian Indian? The cooks, bickering, each pointed his finger at the other. Who can tell with those two? They hold their views on the best way to chop onions or boil rice with the same vehemence as they do their political and religious beliefs.

“The drivers didn't help carry the carpets out. Of course, one of them was getting the plumber. But the other one—well, he conveniently disappeared.”

My eyes are red. I lean over the sink and let out a loud belch.

“Once I find him, he'll make an excuse, probably tell me that he went to pray, even though there's still another hour before the muezzin's call for the midday prayer.”

She is chattier than usual today. It exhausts me to have to listen to her. The sooner I get ready, the sooner I can leave the house. I turn on the tap. It gurgles and spits air.

“. . . Because we turned the water off.”

My tongue feels like a piece of leather. There's the plumber's hammer again, a drill boring through my skull. When will the medicine work? I pull open the bathroom door.

“Of course, lunch won't be affected. There is water in the outside kitchen. But that pipe, that pipe . . .”

“I want to wash my face,” I say in a hoarse voice.

Without delay Aisha stops her prattle and hurries to fetch the bottle of water, three-quarters full, from the bedside table. I watch her with a scowl on my face: her willowy build, with only a slight broadening of the hips—a finger's width added, I think, with each of her eight deliveries. I guzzle down enough of the water to relieve my parched throat and, without bothering to lean over the sink, splash the rest over my head.

My wife does not fetch a washcloth as the water slides along the sides of my face and down my torso. Through the gaps of her burka, she narrows her sharp black eyes at the puddle that forms at my feet. I wait, but she says nothing about the mess. She calls the maid, and when no one answers, she tightens her
shayla
, the black head cover, around her head and rushes out of the room.

There's my face in the mirror, swollen and tinged a sickly green, as if I'd been poisoned. It's not the first time. More and more often, this
is how it looks the morning after a long night at the Neely—that's the code name for the deep-blue, three-bedroom apartment where I drink (privately, of course) with my friends. Situated a few streets off the main road in Al-Qusais, it has a balcony that overlooks an empty plot of land. Few cars pass there at night because it's in an industrial area, packed with warehouses and printing facilities. This suits us well, but we park our cars out of sight anyway, in the basement garage.

“Finally,” I mutter as another new maid enters, carrying two plastic buckets of water. She strains under the weight but, surprisingly, manages to place them in the bathtub without spilling a drop. I bend over, and cry out as soon as I scoop a handful. “Where did you get this water? It's as hot as boiling stew.”

She opens her mouth, but no words come out. Aisha rushes in and, with a few well-chosen questions, extracts the necessary information. This second new maid has boiled the water because she was given to understand that everything in this house has to be hygienic. That's why she pulled bottled water from the fridge and poured it into a huge pot. That's why she boiled it before bringing it up.

“Stupid, stupid girl,” Aisha admonishes her. She tightens her lips and raises her hand as if to strike, but pulls the maid's ear instead. “Now, run down and get some more bottles from the fridge. Quickly!”

“No can, madam. Fee-neesh.” Her singsong voice prompts my wife to pull her other ear.

“I'll make you fee-neesh! Go down. Bring ice. You know ice?”

“Yes, yes, ices.” She darts out of the bathroom.

“Now, that first tiny maid comes from some jungle,” Aisha says, “but this one who just delivered the buckets is from Manila—at least, that's what is written in her papers.” The pain in my head turns sharp and I press my temples to numb it. My wife doesn't seem to notice. She continues her soliloquy. “Being from a big city like that, she should know the basics.” She dips her index finger in the water to check the temperature and pulls it out abruptly, cocking her head as if surprised
that I was telling the truth. “I'm certain it's those recruitment offices,” she continues. “They must forge all the details.” I could easily shut her up with one harsh reproach, but the thought fatigues me, and besides, I don't think there's enough saliva in my mouth to speak. So I call up one last bit of patience and herd her out of the bathroom. I'm about to close the door when the ice arrives. The cubes lose shape as soon as the maid empties them into the buckets.

Finally, after Aisha quickly checks whether I need anything more, they leave me alone. I climb into the bathtub and hunker down, pinning my knees to the sides for balance. I scoop water into a plastic jug and pour it over my head several times. The temperature is bearable, and I can hear the birds outside because the plumber has stopped smashing the wall. As I soap my body, I begin to feel better. I am working up a lather when I realize I need to calculate how much water I'll need to wash it off. “A quarter of a bucketful,” I predict out loud, and guffaw. Here is one of the richest men in Dubai, crouched on his heels like a coolie, stingy with his water, as he takes his bath out of a bucket.