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respect for tradition and piety prevented her from misbehaving like other children. Like her uncle’s daughters and her sister, Gamila, her education ended with Qur’an school, and, like them too, she applied herself to cooking, sewing, and other household chores and assumed her place in the customary queue for a suitable man when still very young. Her cousin Hamid was probably the most suitable one in the family, but Ata al-Murakibi’s family seized him for themselves, sounding alarm bells for Surur Effendi and his wife, Zaynab Hanem. They had been through a similar experience once before when hoping to marry Gamila to Amer.
    “Didn’t you think of Bahiga before you gave Hamid to Mahmud al-Murakibi?” Surur asked his brother.
    “We are poor men at God’s door, Surur. We have to examine our birds to find their feathers! Your daughter Gamila, praise God, will not wait long,” Amr replied.
    Surur’s feelings toward his older brother and the rest of the family thus alternated between love and bitterness. He unleashed his tongue on his relatives like a merciless dagger, which ultimately lowered his ranking in their affections below that of his brother, Amr. The futile platitudes Amr offered a second time round exasperated Zaynab. She retained her outwardcool but nevertheless announced bitterly, “I know what is behind all this!”
    “My brother is deeply conscious of his lowly place before our wealthy relatives,” said Surur. “He is always eager to strengthen his ties with the family’s richer branches.”
    “Don’t forget either that Radia, ally of the jinn and black magic, is jealous of me and sparing with her kindness.”
    Bahiga was unconcerned by the loss of Hamid—she disliked his coarseness and vulgar manner anyway. At the same time, she observed with disgust the scandalous mischief her sister, Gamila, was carrying on with her cousin Qasim. Her sister was sixteen years old and her cousin was twelve, or perhaps a little over. What was it she sometimes caught them doing on the roof and under the stairs? Good morals repelled it and religion cautioned against it. But she kept it secret for fear of the consequences. Then, after Gamila was engaged to be married and had become sensible, she found it was her turn to think about Qasim. However, she was not reckless and foolish like her sister. Her heart beat with tender love, locked in a cage behind steel bars of shame and tradition. The boy noticed her and read the silent summons in her clear eyes. He complied, overflowing with desire and hoping to continue with her the games interrupted by Gamila’s disappearance. He found a loving heart, but an iron will. He hovered around her like a madman until her mother declared, “You’re the same age so he is not right for you.”
    She did not protest, but nor did she agree.
    “He has a long way ahead of him. Don’t forget his mother,” Sitt Zaynab continued.
    Bahiga felt wretched. When the young man suffered his tragedy and was presumed lost she was completely drowned in misery. She had no choice but to resume her place in the queue for a suitable man. But the wait stretched out inexplicably until tongues in the family consigned her to the same basket as her aunt Rashwana’s daughter, Dananir. She was a pretty girl and aparagon of good morals so what kept the suitors away? The waiting and heartache dragged on and on until her uncle Amr, her father, Surur, and her mother, Zaynab, had all passed away.
    In 1941 she was alone in the old house next door to her uncle’s in Bayt al-Qadi with only the maid, Umm Sayyid. Her brother Labib‘s work kept him away from Cairo and he would only visit as a guest. Despair gnawed away at her night and day as she approached thirty; she had nothing in the world except a share of her father’s pension. Then suddenly—as if by revelation—Shaykh Qasim awoke to her once more and said to his mother, “I want to marry Bahiga!” Radia interpreted the request as a miracle, a decree