In the Eye of the Sun by Soueif Ahdaf

Author:Soueif, Ahdaf [Soueif, Ahdaf]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2012-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

Later, as Saif reads and she, not feeling like going straight to bed, sits in the armchair by the window, she thinks of him. Is he thinking about her now? And if he is, what does he imagine she is doing, here, in her room, with his friend: her husband? She looks at Saif. He had not minded at all. Of course, there was nothing to mind – as far as anyone could see. They’d danced just that once and gone back to the table and Saif had looked up and said, ‘Had enough, Princess?’ and they had sat down and refused to get up again until it was time to leave. But there was a time when he would have minded. A time when even her just wearing a lowcut dress was guaranteed to make him miserable and beastly. But then she would have minded too. But she still minds. Even if she is no longer jealous of Danielle she is jealous of Didi Hashim. Didi Hashim – she thinks the name again and waits for the familiar pang that is sure to accompany it. It comes, but it is insubstantial and passing like a shadow. She calls it back and probes it: Didi Hashim who had deflowered herself astride him on a Queen Anne chair in her father’s library; she imagines the scene in the darkened room and does not feel the sharp stab that used to make her spring up and stop imagining. She waits, but it does not come. She jabs at it, willing it to sting her: Didi leans forward, eyes closed, neck arching to be kissed. Saif takes off his glasses and feels for a nearby surface to put them on. His hand finds a mahogany winetable and his knuckles scrape against a crystal ashtray as he puts the glasses down. He bends his head and puts his open lips to her neck. His hand comes round and slips under Didi’s skirt to caress her smooth, braced bottom. Nothing. Nothing at all. They might as well be a Rodin statue.

Saif turns the page and looks up and into her eyes.

‘What are you staring at, Princess?’

Asya shakes her head quickly. ‘I’m not. Not really. I was just – thinking.’

‘Ah.’

He turns back to his magazine and she turns to the window. She is no longer jealous of Didi Hashim.

Across the road the old walls of Cluny are bathed in golden floodlights. When they had first checked into the hotel Saif had not yet arrived and she had gone up to her room and opened the window and seen these mellow square buildings – and she had not waited to unpack but had walked straight out again. In the clear spring day she had crossed the Boulevard Saint-Germain and wandered for a while through the ancient rooms of the abbey. Then, in one great hall, she had come upon the tapestries. She had not even known that they were here. It was as though somebody had prepared

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