Hayat

BLANK CANVAS

Amany sat on the ledge on the roof of her family's villa, staring out over the New Cairo landscape. With the evening call to prayer marking the sunset, she gazed out over her neighbors' rooftops dotted with the day's wash, teenagers sneaking a cigarette unknown to the watchful eyes of their parents, and the occasional unfinished roofs of nearby buildings. The rising evening wind was a brief relief from the mid-spring April heat that lingered following dusk. Following her daily tasks of preparing food for her husband, cleaning the rooms of the second floor they occupied, and managing the family finances, this was her respite from the drone of mundane. These rooftop excursions were a new routine for her and were a source of comfort from her daily labor. However, these excursions occurred more and more often as she became dissatisfied with her marriage to her husband, Hany. Hany came from an average Egyptian family and worked as a manager in a local advertising firm that designed most of the advertisements that dotted Ring Road. He was constantly consumed in his work and his mobile phone demanded his attention late into the night as he received calls and e-mails from his team and assistant related to work. His focus was his work and his work only, which left little time to pay attention to Amany.

The evening began as it always had. Returning to their apartment from her perch on the roof as she saw her husband's car enter the compound, Amany set the table with homemade hawawshi, tahina, fried potatoes, and a small plate of pickled vegetables. It was the same as usual. Hany entered the apartment already engrossed in a conversation with his assistant regarding a difficult client and immediately turned on the television to watch football as he conversed and ate his dinner. After ending his work call, Hany felt that there was an unease affecting his wife. She sat at the table, slouched over her food, and remained eerily quiet.

'Ya habibty, what's wrong?' he inquired.

'Nothing,' she replied sullenly as she took another bite of hawawshi. Without swallowing, she quickly retreated to the kitchen to brew her husband's post-lunch coffee. But when she returned to the dining room, she appeared to be even more distressed and nearly dropped the kanaka on her husband as she was pouring the hot coffee into their cups. He probed her again what was wrong, this time with more irritation in his tone as he used the tablecloth to wipe coffee from his shirt. Amany relented and whispered back that she wanted to talk with him about something that was important to her, her tone indicating discomfiture.

'Well, I hope it is nothing too bad,' he said as it took out his e-cigarette. She would most likely be asking for money for herself, asserting that the price of bread has gone up again and he, in his generosity, would oblige. There was no other subject that Amany would be embarrassed to talk about. After all, she's just a simple, stupid girl that he married 6 months ago following a lengthy engagement in the wake of pressure from his family as he was nearing 40 and still was single and unmarried. He cracked his knuckles, opened his pack of Heets and inserted one cigarette into the tobacco-heating device that never left his side, and took a long drag to prepare himself for the ensuing argument. Hany preemptively declared himself the victor and would make no concessions to giving his wife more money, not even a single piastre. As he exhaled a thick cloud of smoke from his nostrils, he rolled his eyes and clenched his teeth. 'Eyyhhh, out with it already!'

From deep inside her Amany drew the courage like a sword from its sheath to the tip of her tongue to utter what she wanted to say to him, but the courage that she quickly drew sheathed itself inside her. The voice that emerged from her throat was shaky and apprehensive.

'The truth is that I discovered that I...'

'PREGNANT?!'

Hany was on his feet, screaming, as if someone had impaled him with a hot knife through the abdomen. In a rage he swiped the kanaka from the table, slamming in into the wall mere inches from Amany's face. Words flowed from his mouth like a raging storm, surging from 'how could this be' to threatening to throw her off the roof of the villa. 'There's no possible way you can be pregnant. My pockets are empty and I'm sick of abortions. You can get out of this one yourself, ya sharmoota.'