White Masks Read Online Free Page B

. . do you know what other men do? They go after cabaret girls. No, this is good. Still, my dear, you just pray the Good Lord to have mercy on him, and don’t burden him with anything.”
    I understood Imm ’Imad to be saying that Khalil was . . . But no! There was no doubting his manliness! That’s not at all the case, I told her. She carried right on, as if she’d been expecting me to say that.
    â€œDon’t you worry my dear, it’s a phase, just a little phase, it’ll pass, with the Good Lord’s help. Now, you be good to him, and don’t you worry.”

    I felt confused as I left her house, thinking maybe she hadn’t understood. I called Nada, my daughter, and went to see her to tell her about it. She and her husband came around that evening, but as much as Nadeem tried, Khalil wouldn’t speak to him. He had loathed his son-in-law ever since Ahmad had gone, and how likely was he to answer Nadeem when he wasn’t even talking to me, his wife! All the same, Nadeem knocked at the door for the longest time, he really tried, and after expressing his astonishment, he said he’d come over with the doctor the following day.
    The next day came, and the doctor with it. I described Khalil’s symptoms to him, and we tried to get Khalil to let him in, without success. I begged the doctor to return in the morning, when Khalil normally opened the door to go to the bathroom, but this made him very angry.
    â€œI’m not your servant,” he snapped. “And in any case, your husband is having a nervous breakdown.”
    Then he started asking me all sorts of questions to which I didn’t know the answers. He asked me about his situation at work, about our relationship and our financial circumstances. The truth is, I didn’t answer him honestly, how could I! Telling him about such private matters, when I hardly knew him! In any case, the doctor handed me some pills to give him - to “calm his nerves,” as he put it - and he left.
    I tried to persuade Khalil to take the pills but he just ignored me. All he would have was a little bread and some water. Oh, God, what was I to do. Nothing was helping . . . well, almost nothing . . . I have to admit, the doctor did write a sick report so that my husband wouldn’t lose his job - what on earth would he do, if he no longer worked at the PTT? So we thanked our lucky stars, and thanked the doctor for his trouble.

    To this day, I don’t know how the story got out and made the rounds of the neighborhood. Maybe it was Imm ’Imad, or maybe even our daughter; whoever it was, I don’t know. But I discovered that everybody was talking about my husband and his condition. Many people thought that he had cancer - God forbid - and that I wouldn’t take him to the hospital because, the rumor was, I didn’t want to spend the money! Shame on them for thinking that I would scrimp and save where Abu Ahmad was concerned! Shame, shame!
    Then, one day, Sitt Khadijah appeared. You know, the famous Sitt Khadijah, the one everyone’s heard about - she makes amulets and summons spirits, and can talk to djinns and demons. It turned out that she’d come at Imm ’Imad’s insistence.
    â€œIt’s only because Imm ’Imad has such a place in my heart that I’ve come, dear,” she said, adding that she didn’t usually go to the homes of the afflicted. I told her I regarded Imm ’Imad very highly and expressed my profound gratitude to them both. She read my fortune in some coffee grounds and told me I had a long journey ahead. Naturally, I didn’t believe her: how would someone like me ever get to go on a journey?
    Then she drew up her legs beneath her and sat cross-legged on the sofa, like this, and started making strange sniffing noises, as if she could smell something. I asked her if something was wrong. No, she said, nothing. Then she pulled out some dried twigs from under her