The Shipwrecked (20 page)

Wearing a thick pair of black socks, an overcoat, and her headdress, she stepped out, ready to face the outside world. Seven years was about the length of time since she had walked the streets on her own, now she couldn't make up her mind whether to catch a cab or take the bus. Most of her outings were limited to shopping for staples in the neighborhood or taking her daughter to the nearby school. Her husband bought the newspapers and magazines on his way to work. In the past seven years she hadn't had any reason to think about public transportation. On Fridays, her husband's beige-colored Renault,
as if programmed, would take them to their in-laws and bring them back home at night. It even seemed to know which set of in-laws to visit each alternate Friday. On the way back, her daughter would fall sleep on her lap. Sometimes she herself dozed off after the car traversed the bridge.

“Last night we were watching videos at my mother-in-law's until past eleven,” she would report to a friend over the phone. “It was an old movie. My husband loves old movies. We asked if we could borrow the video, but they said no.”

“Oh, really!”

But better than any movies, she liked to watch the windows of the houses alongside the bridge. At night, when they were crossing the bridge, she would put on her spectacles and peer through each window as her husband drove past them. There was something in each window that made it different from others. Before they got to the bridge on their Friday outings, she hardly looked out the windows of the car. Nevertheless she knew every moment where they were. She was not interested in the clothing stores, which she found boring. But she was fascinated by green grocers and fruit stalls. She had to suppress an urge to make her husband stop the car to buy fresh fruits and vegetables in large quantities. She didn't like bakeries and confectioner's shops either, especially the silly conical hats they supplied with birthday cakes. Their daughter always insisted on them for her birthdays and her husband always
obliged. She always made sure she wore one for her birthday photograph. By now they had seven of those hats at home. She had made up her mind to leave them behind in case they had to move.

Anyway, most shops were closed on Fridays, but the windows of houses were always there. Even if the lights were out in some of them, she could imagine what was going on inside. With or without people behind the windows, she had a sense of the atmosphere that permeated the darkened spaces. If the lights were out, it meant that dishes had been washed and were drying in the strainer, or that they hadn't yet been brought back from the dinner table. She would catch glimpses of men in pajama bottoms and women with their hair in buns behind their heads, just standing there. Before she could see what they were doing, the car would pass the window. It was like thumbing rapidly through a photo album. Just the attempt to guess the nature of the human interactions through a fleeting glimpse of the people seen in the window excited her. After they crossed the bridge, she would close her eyes and reflect on the succession of impressions she had seen through those windows.

Some windows revealed living rooms. She was struck with the uniformity in their furnishings. The windows were treated with delicate, transparent sheers. A sofa and matching armchairs were arranged around an oblong coffee table over which hung a chandelier of modest size. There was always something of ornamental nature in
the middle of the coffee table—a crystal vase, an artificial flower arrangement, or an antique china bowl, she guessed. Every room had a large framed tableau or print on the wall directly above the sofa. Again, she could only guess what they depicted: a bunch of multicolored flowers in a bowl with some blooms strewn around it, or a stormy seascape with a schooner in the foreground leaning at a precarious angle, or a woman with long, wavy tresses seated on a highly ornate armchair. Or it could be the same tableau she had over the sofa in her own living room, representing a country house in a snowstorm. Once she had thought of taking it off the wall altogether, but she found that without it the room looked strangely bare and uninviting. Without it, she felt out of place watching TV, reading newspapers, helping her daughter with homework, cleaning vegetables for dinner, sipping on a cup of tea, or even dialing a number on the phone. In due course, the picture went back on the wall.

Along the bridge, there was one window she found more intriguing than others. It opened to a fairly large kitchen with metal cabinetry painted lime green and a dinette set in the middle. An old woman, always wearing a cardigan, regardless of season, would be sitting on chair knitting. She was always in the kitchen whether they were on their way to or from their in-laws'. Sometimes she was on her customary chair and knitting; she might be looking for something in the cabinets, or cooking something over the stove, or just moving aimlessly around the kitchen.
If she was not actually knitting, the skeins and needles would be still be visible in a heap on the table.

In some windows at various times she could see young girls in different outfits and hairdos talking to someone not readily visible. In other windows she saw adolescent boys leaning out of the window surveying the traffic on the bridge.

All in all, crossing the bridge, especially at night, was a pleasant experience. The good thing was that the bridge had a long span, and her husband, sensing that she enjoyed her pastime, drove more slowly when they crossed it. Now she was on her own and wondered in what way her impressions would be affected if she crossed the bridge in a taxi or on a bus.

AFTER SOME HESITATION
, she decided to take a cab. Everything had changed since then; using the buses required a skill that she had lost after seven years. In those days, she knew all the routes and bus numbers, and managed her commute so that she could do some studying and preparation on the bus. There were some passengers so regular that their presence or absence would tell her if she was late or early. On the bus she would scrutinize the faces of the passengers or make a note of what they read. Sometimes, when she had nothing to read or prepare for class, she would steal glances at what the passenger next to her was reading. Most passengers resented this practice. They
would either close their books or reposition themselves so she wouldn't be able to see what they were reading.

“How dumb! So what if I know what they read?” she would think to herself.

Sometimes a passenger would write a phone number on the margin of his reading material and tip it over so she could see it.

“How vain! He thinks I am in love with him!”

She would then turn her head away and divert her eyes to other passengers until the bus arrived at the campus, her destination.

The campus was crowded with faces and people, although in class she had to keep her gaze on her instructor's face—which she subjected to a series of assessments: If the nose were a little less prominent . . . His eyes are too closely set and his hairline recedes too far . . . His lips are too thin, clashing with his bushy eyebrows . . . He must have had a better complexion as a young man . . . concluding with a complex hypothetical exchange of facial features involving professors of literature, linguistics, philology, literary translation, and deconstructive theory. If all this could be done, then everything would be fine.

Even at her wedding she got bored looking at her own face next to the groom's reflected in the mirror as the cleric recited the marriage vows. She felt better after the ceremony when a lot more people and faces showed up for the reception. At the end of the night, after everybody had left
and the lights had been turned off, she had a lot of faces in her mind to keep her busy till morning.

Now that she got into the cab, she positioned herself in the backseat so as to be able to see her face in the rear-view mirror. She was pleased that her eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth looked good together and individually, although her face could not be considered strikingly beautiful and could stand some improvement by makeup.

She thought of what lay ahead: she would present her punched ID card to the official in charge, as per instructions in the newspaper, and finally receive her degree, which had been languishing in the Ministry of Higher Education because her field of study had been suspended. On the way back she would buy some dill weed and, once home, using the broad beans her mother had bought, she would prepare a delicious rice dish and offer it to the family ceremoniously as “my graduation banquet!”

To reward herself for her efforts, she would stay in bed until noon the next day. In three days it would be Friday, when they would drive across the bridge.

At the entrance to the building she produced the ID card from her handbag and showed it to the security guard before putting on her glasses. She saw a long line of women already formed on one side of the long corridor. She took her place at the end of it. An equally long line of men stretched on the other side, and a young man joined it almost at the same time as she joined the women's. She looked at her wrist to see what time it was and found that
she had left her watch at home. She would be out of there by noon, at maximum, she thought. Soon she started feeling bored. To amuse herself she looked probingly at the faces of the women ahead of her in the line.

It occurred to her that looks had generally improved since seven years ago. She took off her glasses and put them back in the handbag. She wouldn't need them until she got to Room 374. Besides, that was where everybody was going. But there was no movement in the line. She thought of analyzing faces again as a diversion. So she put the glasses back on and surveyed the crowd, and noticed that it was becoming thicker by the minute. Both lines for women and men had almost doubled in length since her arrival. A familiar face caught her eye. It was the man who had come at the same time as she. He was at the same position in the men's line as she was in women's. “It doesn't matter what I look like,” she thought to herself. “He's probably already married and has children.”

By now, her boredom had intensified and an incipient headache was setting in. She thought of getting some fruit juice to drink. She looked at the three or four women ahead and behind her in the line and tried to memorize what they looked like. Two of them were positively good-looking, and a couple looked too young to have graduated seven years previously. She caught snatches of their conversation.

“Three hundred dollars a month. Indian Embassy.”

“Better than being cooped up at home.”

“My husband doesn't want me to work. We don't need the money anyway.”

“No, I'm not married. I do some translation at home.”

“We started a translation bureau—with some classmates. Instead of bachelors we got associate degrees.”

“We opened up a fitness gym.”

“I went to England and took a cosmetics course. Pays better than translation.”

“Oh, yes. I saw your article in the paper. It was interesting.”

She turned to the woman in front of her wearing heavy makeup and asked her to save her place in the line, “I have a terrible headache. I'm going to get something to drink and be right back. Thanks a lot.” The woman nodded reassuringly.

She put the glasses back in her handbag and headed for the exit. She remembered a juice bar at the top of the street she and her classmates used to frequent in the old days. It was still there. She ordered a glass of carrot juice and drank it slowly. When she returned to take her place in the line she was astounded to see that the lines had now extended out of the building and to the corner of the street. People were rushing from all sides to join them. There was no more space for parking and the cacophony of car horns was deafening. She hastened to enter the building.

“Hey, lady. End of the line!” the people shouted as if in a chorus.

“But I have been inside, I swear. I just got out to get . . .”

Her plea was drowned in shouts of protest.

Nevertheless, she pushed her way past the guard into the building. Ignoring the screams of objection from the crowd inside the foyer, she found the two women before and after her in the line. The makeup seemed to have been washed away from the face of the women in front. They both looked pale and seemed to ignore her. When she tried to take her place between them, they started yelling at her.

“Outside! End of the line!”

This seemed to galvanize everybody in the line. They started repeating the injunction like a refrain in a chorus.

The situation was threatening. She felt everyone staring at her and retreated to the exit and went back to the street. By now the lines had gone around the block and half-way down the next street. People, both men and women, were rushing to join their respective lines. Shopkeepers were closing their shops and taxi drivers and bus conductors were actually abandoning their vehicles and hurrying to stand in the line. She had no choice but to go back to the end of the line. To distract herself from her predicament, she began examining faces in the crowd, imagining them with different noses, eyes, and lips. She noticed that slowly but perceptively color was draining from all faces. She felt the headache returning, but she knew she should not leave the line to seek relief. She put on her glasses to see faces
farther away, hoping to take her mind off her headache. But looking at the sea of faces stretching interminably intensified her headache, and standing in line for hours made her feel nauseous. She thought she would vomit if she did not leave the line. She looked at the woman in front of her, the one whose aquiline nose she had replaced with a more delicately shaped nose of another woman with unplucked eyebrows.