The Others (9 page)

The two security women were actually rather pleasant and more or less cooperative. We passed through an initial period of lying in wait and extreme caution, and still we could not make out any fixed aim or specified task that was theirs. The students tried frequently and energetically to pick a quarrel with Malik and Ridwan, as Dai had named them, but they got nowhere with their attempts to put these two up on trial. The women would respond that they did not know the reason they had been summoned for this duty, and that all they were required to do was to patrol the college and look closely at anything that seemed suspicious or any clear transgression of college regulations. In fact, there was only one rule: no moving about. On the basis of this restraint, there was nothing that might logically escape surveillance or grilling. Why did you bring a block of halvah sweets into the college? one of us might well be asked. Or, where was the justification for two girls sitting in a spot that was not easily visible to everyone? The two of them rarely waited for any response, though. They were satisfied to issue a clear order to go somewhere else, or to do something else, depending on the situation. I deduced this from the little amount of contact I had with them.

Shelving the lecture and sending messages instead was pleasant. I could understand (me, such a self-disciplined person most of the time) why some students would spend whole lecture periods in the companionship of their telephones. So I finished up with, Do u have a lecture?

No, am free d rest of d day, wanna meet?

Grrreeeaat idea. I hv class 11 to 12. I’ll blow t off & c u.

U dn’t hv loads of absents in t?

No way. I’ve gt 13 hrs max 2 b absent & I hvn’t tkn more thn 2.

I’ll pass by. Ur lecture’s where.

No, I’ll find u at d Arts Lib. U cn walk wth me in d rain & buy me a Baskin.

Jst dn’t 4get my croissant.

Finally the lecture was over, though I had not listened to even ten words of it. I began getting really impatient. At this point, my tendency to always go for the seats furthest to the back of the hall was an irritation, for I could sign the attendance roster only after a hundred or so students had their turns. The wait was a pain, and my whole head was with Dai. I waved at Salma, who was sitting in the first row. I made a sign asking her, Did you sign for me? She answered with a gesture I was accustomed to seeing. The others had snatched the book away before she could write my name. Five minutes passed with me parked sullenly against the wall before I was able to sign and get out.

Those who played these parts infuriated me, whether here at college or before, at school. I viewed such roles—perhaps falsely—as academic put-ons, which some girls seemed to slip into at school. These sorts of students wormed themselves into a niche beneath an imaginary banner declaring their servility, and they enjoyed special favor and esteem. Because I am not one to believe in passing everyone’s actions through the gates of good intention, I was always vigilant toward such girls. I might never excel at making accurate distinctions, but at least I wouldn’t swallow their sour and their sweet without even recognizing the taste.

Ten minutes past eleven, and I finally managed to get to my date with Dai. I’d prepared a good strong excuse for her—let me call it a clamorous excuse, completely unrefined, totally street, just as she always loved me to be! I paced back and forth alongside the steps to the theater, which was immediately adjacent to the Arts Library. I had chosen the spot deliberately and carefully, for it was our first time to meet in such a public and visible place as campus. Since everyone knew Dai as a classmate, it was tricky for me, in front of any of my friends, to come up with a believable reason for my absence from class and my spending time alone with this Dai, who was no more than a classmate. Naturally, I could come up with some sort of false pretext at a moment’s notice, even a perfectly crafted lie that would fool anyone. But I didn’t like to give Dai any more reason than necessary to focus on the idea that our relationship could be prolonged only by keeping it secret, and that it was better for it to remain like that, and that furthermore I was so wary about this that I would even lie to guarantee it. The spot here, next to the Arts Faculty Library, offered a territory distant from everyone.

If a satellite photo of our college existed, it would show what looks like two little colonies almost as close together as they could possibly be but sharing almost nothing—two communities, with two cafeterias, two libraries and two campus bookstores. Even the kiosks for photocopying, computer printing and binding were strictly regulated: one was for the sciences, and you were not allowed to have anything related to the arts curricula printed there, and vice versa. Over here, a density of blue skirts, and over there, black skirts. We maintained this sharp separation even though the two divisions lay beneath the roofing of a single internal courtyard common to all of the buildings. Of course, it was not impossible to see a co-mingling of the two somewhere or other, but this mixing mostly remained a potential held within the strict limits of expectation, and subject to counting. What were the odds that I would meet one of the twenty girls I knew over there, amongst nearly four thousand? There was not even a statistically significant chance of it.

The notion of two sharply distinguished settlements could apply to other kinds of difference, and everyone knew which was center and which was periphery. Which group do you belong to? Which School of Islamic Law do you follow? Of what sect are you a member? And what region do you come from? If someone scrutinized our lecture halls really closely, that person would see the section to the right as belonging to our group and the other section as belonging to the other groups (or maybe the other way around). Naturally, to say
our group
and
the other group
is more graceful than calling us by the warring cartoon characters, Shanakil and Sanafir. Shi‘is and Sunnis!

Rarely did anyone here take up the opportunity of being in one place for four school years as a chance to foster a relationship less governed than usual by these criteria of belonging, less restricted by borders, less marked by divisions. This was the state of things when we arrived, and it was extremely difficult for us to even attempt to change it. Change is a frightening act, and in an official site such as this, it might well set off a harmful reaction with a likely adverse impact on someone’s future. Always there was a concealed, furtive sentiment that being here, and going on being here, were dependent on several conditions, though they were never made explicit. We must remain totally mute, for even a single slanderous rumor about one of us—that she was participating in sectarian mayhem, perhaps—was enough to cause her admissions file to be thrown in her face and for her to be expelled without any possibility of readmission. The very fact that we were accepted for admission here was considered by some people as a handout to an undeserving recipient, too much generosity to those who were closest to being misguided and astray, those who were the object of God’s wrath.

Because we were the minority—and in truth we were never a minority in the college, only in the nation—the possibility of someone else, someone from the other side, being admitted to any of our groups, organized or not, small or large, was an alien idea regarded with utter suspicion. By the very nature of the fear we had imbibed, and on the strength of the preconceived and ready-made ideas with which we had all been injected, both we and the others tended to be on our guard, always self-protective and defensive. It was always possible that any attempt to enter the other’s territory might well be veritable trespassing with no good faith behind it. Our chances at entering into their groups were greater, given the protection of their numbers and the indisputable fact that any one of us would always be the weaker element in any comparison. But I had not witnessed any effective attempts at this, and this was my fourth year. Such things most often happened when the person trying to enter the group had already been isolated from her difference, and so could be more easily incorporated as one of the many look-alike postage stamps, emptying this new candidate of her content, not to mention peeling off the distinguishing outer shell. And so there was no real coexistence, no assimilation that you could count on, not even a preliminary and primitive acceptance from one toward the other, no recognition of the naturalness of difference or of the varying things we had to offer by virtue of who we were.

Another ten minutes passed and Dai still had not come. I found my own justification for her lateness in my certainty that it was an instant punishment for my own tardiness. I called her phone, punching
five
on my quick dial numbers, and the recorded voice staggered me.
The number you have requested is not available right now
. I headed for the spot where she customarily left her
abaya
bag, to be ready when she would leave the grounds and have to put on her
abaya
over her clothes. But I did not find her, nor did I see any of the familiar faces that I usually saw in her company. I left the croissant in her bag as proof that I had been there. I began to worry. I am a person who does not need huge and convincing reasons in order to start worrying. Anxiety is a fact of existence for me, a true characteristic of my self, a sharp-edged and vicious presence that keeps me from being able to successfully apply any of the instructions found in Dale Carnegie’s
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
. Or perhaps it is not so much a fact as it is a counter-fact, nothing more than my reaction to my limited and circumscribed choices.

My anxiety mutated into a particular kind of tenseness, co-mingled with a sharp feeling of irritation. It was the sort of irritation that leaves you unable to engage with anyone about anything. You want no exchange of words, not even a passing question about what time it is; this tension leaves you annoyed even by things that have nothing at all to do with you and which would not in themselves annoy you at any other time: a girl slipping her hand around the waist of another, someone wearing gray contact lenses, the sound of a naughty and boisterous laugh, the vending machine you’re standing next to that sells hot chocolate and is out of order so that every time someone comes by and puts her money in, she asks you, So, it’s not working, right? And you answer her with some stupid line like, How would I know,
ya anisa
, whether it is working or not? Have all four thousand students in this place disappeared so that you have to come and direct this question only to me? And by the way, this friendly smile of yours is really irritating, so you might as well keep it just for yourself!

Forty minutes had passed since the time we had agreed on, and nothing had come of our arrangement to meet. This futile waiting was laying a trap for me, in an open area where more and more people were pushing in, not just because the prayer space was here, but also because of the rain which since yesterday had not let up its ferocious and ubiquitous washing. I retraced my steps to my locker. When I saw an edge of paper lodged carefully into the slit, I was suddenly happy. It was as though there had been no logical reasons for our appointment to fall from Dai’s agenda by error or oversight, and now the very existence of the paper, even though I had not retrieved or opened it yet, was a summary of all the reasons that might exist for it.

I drew it out carefully from its cage. I sniffed Dai’s fragrance on it, a deep and earthy scent: a potent batter of soil and sugar. How can you describe a person’s fragrance? How can you release it? Preserve it in a secure vault in the memory? Hide it away, protected from decay and forgetting and desire for the fullness of others? Dai’s fragrance is a story in itself. I always took care when kissing her that I breathed in the odor of her throat, the place where I sensed the concentrated essence of her fragrance was located, deeply embedded within her, pure, uncontaminated by any admixture of other essences. The very air is incapable of altering the fragrance of Dai. Like me, the air can only breathe her in and feel deliriously stimulated.

I pried open her letter with shaking fingers. My heart always trembles when it is facing first things and first times, when it is in front of freshness, when first times move in to occupy their proper expanse of memory and mind, yet to be pushed back into second place, never mind sink into oblivion. I love the sensation that something is forming, that what surrounds me is entering each stage of its genesis and growing, proliferating. I am possessed by a maternal love for these things I have, and it does not matter to me whether they come in premature form or at full term. In my relationship with Dai, I am always on the alert, my gaze steady and my mind welcoming the possibility of being dazzled with the very simplicity of what is happening and how small and slight it all is, with scenes as they are just beginning to take shape. I love the way that every encounter takes on the nature of the specific and fundamental difference between two people—like in hetero couples—to make them able in all of their difference for one to wrap itself around the other.

My eyes breezed across the words rapidly without taking in their meaning for a second or two. With its many flourishes, the slanted script captivated me. The full stops between her words were large, ripe circles, the way they always were in Arabic before typefaces, while the word edges were soft and yielding, without any ragged breaks, slants following slants, the forming of words that are exactly what they are and no other, as if they say, Turn to me. With difficulty, I stole my eye away from her first word and went on reading.

My love …

You are reading this letter from me because I was not able to come. I am writing in a hurry. I am sorry, I left you waiting. I was afraid I would change my mind and relent. It is hard to look directly at you and tell you what I intend to say. Forget me. As if nothing ever happened. I am not worth it. Forgive me. I am very sorry.

Goodbye,

Your Dai.

Sometimes—like right then, for example—I really need someone who will explain to me what I am supposed to do. As a human being, what am I supposed to feel? What reaction should I release signs of across my face for others to see? Shall I cry? Laugh? Tear this piece of paper into tiny pieces? Curse Dai? If only someone would give me a little guidance, I would take charge on my own of crafting all the rest of my reactions.