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Sharif was nothing to look at.

He was far too thin and too tall for his frame. His wire-rimmed glasses were always crooked, the lenses so filthy that he was constantly pulling them off in order to see better. Tight curls crowned his head, and in order to subdue them, he cut his own hair. Tiny barbs of hair stuck out every which way, and he was given to patting at his head in order to smooth them down. Dark half-moons underscored black, restless eyes.

She watched him ambling across the campus and toward their bench.

He stood shyly before the trio of girls. “Good afternoon,” he said.

“Good afternoon,” they replied in chorus. Huda saw Larinne and Nuha exchanging glances, but she pretended not to notice.

Sharif looked to Huda expectantly.

“I have your notes right here,” she said, pulling the sheaf of papers out of her notebook.
         
He smiled gratefully. “Bless you,” he said. “Did he cover a lot of material?”
         
Huda shook her head. “Not so much, but it’s all going to be on the test. And there are some difficult equations midway through.”
         
Sharif nodded. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said, his black eyes smiling even if his lips did not.
         
She blushed despite herself. “No thanks are necessary,” she mumbled.
         
He excused himself then, saying he was late for work. She watched as he walked away clutching the stack of papers she had photocopied from her own notebook.
         
Larinne waved a hand in front of her line of vision. “Hello?”

Huda looked at her. “What?”

The two girls laughed, imitating her. “What?”
         
“What are you daydreaming about?” Nuha demanded.

Huda sighed. “Nothing.”

Larinne pressed the backs of her long fingers against Huda’s forehead. “Nothing is right. Are you crazy or just sick? They don’t get any poorer than that one.”

“I hear he has six sisters,” said Nuha.

Larinne was nodding. “And his father is dead.”

Huda was silent, realizing that she didn’t like having him discussed by her friends. She pulled her lips into a casual smile. “He’s nice, that’s all.”

Larinne grinned. “You had better hope that’s all, because it will never happen. He has to work two jobs just to take care of his family. By the time he gets all his sisters married off and can start saving for himself, he’ll be sixty.”

Huda shrugged. “I have nothing against older men.”

“Darling, you’ll be dead by then,” said Nuha, tightening the pin at her chin and standing up. “How long has he been taking your notes, anyway?”

“About three weeks,” said Huda, also rising from the bench. “He doesn’t have time to actually sit through the lecture.”

Nuha winked at Larinne. “Sharif never asked me to write notes for him,” she said.

“I have better handwriting,” said Huda, ending the conversation, even though her friends continued smirking as they gathered their notebooks.

The last lectures of the day were letting out, and the campus of Cairo University was thick with students. The three threaded their way through the crowds, out of the main entrance to the Faculty of Commerce, and onto Abd al-Salam Arif Street.

Larinne vanished into the crammed minibus that would deliver her to Hadaiq al-Quba, and Huda and Nuha were left to walk arm in arm down to Dokki Street toward home.

They greeted the Dokki Street beggar woman who occupied the busy corner. Her shabby gelabiyya was stained and torn, and she leaned heavily on a grimy little girl. The child would run between her grandmother and the cars paused at the stoplight. She would motion at the crippled old lady, whose left leg ended in a rag-swathed stump that dangled just below her uneven hem. Drivers would hand the girl a half-pound note, or wave her on to the next car. The pair had been at this corner only a few weeks; Huda had seen them, a fixture at the Gelaa Bridge, only two months ago.

They had given the beggar money at the beginning of her Dokki Street sojourn. Now the stooped woman would always give them blessings for free, shaking her gnarled hands at them as they passed. May God make you beautiful brides! May He give you long lives!

“Do you love him?” Nuha asked when they’d passed the beggars.

Huda laughed. “Can we talk about something else, please?”

Nuha nodded, and fell silent a moment before saying, “Okay. A suitor is coming tonight.”

Huda stared at her friend, wide-eyed. “You didn’t tell me before.”

“I was hoping I could forget it.”

“Is it someone you know?”

Nuha shifted her satchel from one shoulder to the other, then took Huda’s arm again. “No. An engineer,” she said. “A friend of my cousin Anwar’s.”

“And the apartment?” asked Huda.

“In Maadi,” Nuha answered.

Huda considered this. “Maadi’s good,” she said.

Nuha shook her head. “Not the good part of Maadi.”

“Oh,” said Huda. They walked on, letting the rush of traffic fill their silence.

Nuha said at last, “I hear he’s handsome.”

Huda smiled at her, taking in her smooth olive skin and warm chestnut eyes. The lavender headscarf did nothing to conceal Nuha’s quiet radiance. “He’d be lucky to have you,” she said, squeezing her friend’s arm. “What are you going to wear?”

They talked awhile of skirts and blouses and shades of lipstick, until they came to the corner where Nuha departed for home.

“What time?” asked Huda.

“Eight o’clock.”

“You’ll call me and let me know?”

“You call me,” Nuha said. “If I’m stuck talking to him and I want an excuse to leave the room, you’ll be it.”

Huda continued her walk past the underpass florist and across the teeming Dokki Square, past the grocer and the row of jewelry shops. She hesitated a moment before a window jammed with gold bangles and slinking chains of varying thickness. She stared a moment at the shebka that caught her eye --- a large red velvet box displaying a necklace of thick gold braid studded with pearls, dangling pearl earrings, a matching bracelet, and a large pearl ring. In the center of the box sat the thin gold band.

“So when are you coming back with the groom?” Hatim Wassouf, the jeweler, appeared, leaning on the peeling door frame, wiping his hands on a smooth cloth. A bushy mustache topped a wide smile.

Huda jumped, startled and mortified with embarrassment.

“I was...”

Hatim arched his eyebrows. “Yes?”

“The bracelets, I... My mother’s birthday...”

Hatim laughed loudly as Huda hurriedly continued her path toward home. “We’ll be waiting!” he called after her. “Just bring over the lucky man. We’ll find you a shebka to meet his budget, big or small! A shebka to make a mother proud!”

Huda shrunk in on herself, cheeks blazing. She felt that all eyes on the street were riveted on her. She passed through the open-air market on Sulayman Gohar Street, and practically ran the remaining few paces to her house.

Her chest was heaving as she closed the door behind her. The apartment was dark, caught suspended between afternoon and evening, and she knew her father must be sleeping in the shuttered living room. A pool of light spilled out of the kitchen onto the curling linoleum of the hallway. She found her mother standing over the small stove, browning rice in clarified butter as a chicken simmered in the deep pot.

Karima looked up and, still holding the wooden spoon, accepted Huda’s kisses.

“What’s the news from the university?”

Huda opened the refrigerator and leaned in, searching for the rice pudding she’d made last night. “Nuha has a suitor coming tonight.”

Karima turned to look at her daughter. “Someone she knows?”

Huda shook her head, sinking onto the foam-leaking vinyl-covered chair at the kitchen table.

Karima nodded and turned back to her cooking. As though reminded, she said suddenly, “Your aunt Amar knows a young man at work. She says he’s a great catch.”

“Mama ---”

“I said to her, when Huda’s friends start getting engaged, she’ll be ready. But they all just want to play now. Playing at university.”

Huda said nothing.

“I was already married at your age, you know,” Karima said, adding the rest of the rice to the browned portion and dumping a few cups of water on top of that.

“I know, Mama.”

Karima lowered the gas flame beneath the rice pot and covered it. She came to sit opposite Huda, wiping her face with the rolled-up sleeve of her thin cotton gelabiyya.

Huda looked at her mother, swallowed hard, then said, “There’s a boy I like at school.”

Karima narrowed her eyes. “What kind of boy?”

Huda shrugged. “A good boy.”

“From a respectable family?”

“Very.”

“You’ve talked with him?”

“He copies from my lecture notes.”

Karima narrowed her eyes. “You’ve met him away from school?”

Huda glared at her mother. “Of course not.”

Karima sighed in relief, and Huda looked away, furious at the suggestion.

“Has he talked to you of marriage?” Karima asked finally.

“No. And he won’t.”

Her mother watched her carefully, sipping at her water glass. “Why?”

“Because he doesn’t have a millime.”

Karima harrumphed. “That story?”

“He works two jobs to support his mother and sisters. His father’s dead.”

Karima regarded her daughter steadily. “Exactly what do you want me to do, Huda?”

“I want you not to talk about suitors for a while.”

Her mother rubbed her hands across her eyes. “Until when? When you’re old and wrinkled?”

Huda placed a spoonful of the pudding in her mouth, thinking. “Until I know his intentions,” she said at last. “That’s fair, isn’t it?”

Karima sighed again, staring unseeingly at the seeping cracks that skated along the length and width of the weary kitchen walls. “For now,” she answered.

* * *

Nuha’s voice was choked with rage as she whispered into the telephone, “He’s handsome, all right. A beautiful fat man.”

Huda pressed the receiver closer to her ear. “Tell me.”

“Fat. Fat. Fat like someone who eats whole jars of samna. Even Mama was surprised.”

“But is he nice?”

Nuha practically spat into the phone, “Fat people have to be nice.”

Huda sucked in her stomach reflexively. “Maybe he’s fat from loneliness. He’ll lose weight once he wins your heart.”

“No, I already told Mama no.”

“She won’t mind?”

Nuha was silent a moment, considering. “She really liked his qualifications. His family has money, even if he’s just starting out. And his car is brand-new. It’s parked downstairs. A Hyundai. Red.”

Huda pictured Nuha riding in a red Hyundai next to an oozingly fat man.

“What’s next?” she asked.

“We’ll wait and see who shows up the next time. It has to get better, right?”

* * *

The next morning, Huda sat before her vanity table, staring at herself. Her face was round; her lips were full and precisely shaped and sat under a nose that took up more space on her face than she would have liked. She had just finished taming her eyebrows into two high arches. They floated now over cocoa-colored eyes that, properly lined, could catch someone’s attention.

She rubbed her hand thoughtfully across her cheeks and chin, then fluffed at her hair. Her hair was long and coarse, but she had curled it with the curling iron so that it framed her face in gentle waves. She tilted her head slightly, left then right.

She stood surveying her wide curves, resolving again to go with Larinne to the gym. Adjusting her vertical-striped blouse --- it made her appear thinner --- she decided she looked full-figured and sensuous rather than all-out plump.

Her mother paused at Huda’s door on her way out to work. “Dressing up for school today?” she asked.

Huda smiled at her mother, caught.

“Marriage is a matter of Fate, you know,” Karima said.

Huda nodded. “I know. I’m trying to encourage Fate.”

Nuha was waiting, as she waited each morning, a few steps beyond Radwan’s Shawerma Shop. She noticed the extra measures immediately.

“The eye makeup looks good,” she observed, reaching a hand to adjust a lock of Huda’s hair. “The hair looks beautiful. I always wondered why you wear it braided instead of loose
like this. It frames your face nicely.”

“I hate my hair,” said Huda, starting toward school.

“Every female hates her hair,” said Nuha.

If Sharif noticed the difference, he did not give any indication. Nor did he give Huda extra attention on the next day, or the next.

“He’s shy,” said Nuha.

“He’s broke,” insisted Larinne.

“He doesn’t know you like him. If he knew, he’d have the courage to speak up.”

Huda laughed. “So now I’m supposed to go and tell him how I feel? That’s too much.”

But something of a plan was hatched. Sharif had gotten into the habit of approaching Huda when the other two were present. One day, as soon as he appeared, Larinne and Nuha suddenly remembered a vital and pressing meeting with their section leader.

Sharif stood awkwardly in front of the bench, his eyes following the girls’ retreating figures.

Nervousness nearly silenced Huda completely, but she fought for the words.

“Would you like to sit?” she asked finally.

He stared at the ground for a moment, then his head bobbed up and down. He sat as far from her on the bench as possible without being on the ground.

Huda shifted uncomfortably, imagining the eyes of passersby drawing conclusions from such a scene.

“How is your work?” she began, her voice uncertain.

“Which one?”

She shrugged, smiling. “Both?”

He nodded briefly, staunchly. “Work is all right. Al-hamdu lillah.” He did not say anything at all for a while, then began, “Huda, I ---”

“Yes?” She looked at him directly for the first time that morning.

He blinked and looked away. “I don’t know how to thank you for the notes. I wouldn’t be able to pass without them.”

She smiled, and took to staring at the fingernails of her tightly clasped hands.

Silence engulfed them, and Huda was about to stand and make her excuses before they became the object of gossip.

Sharif noticed that she had begun fidgeting. “Huda, I need you to know that I ---”

She froze, the fingernails of her left hand digging deeply into her right.

“I would ask for your hand in a second, if only I had something to offer you.” The words came out in a soft rush, and he exhaled audibly after completing the sentence. His eyes were still focused on the patch of cement in front of his shoes.

“I would accept.” She gazed at him, willing him to look at her.

He turned his face to hers, and their eyes met. His eyes were black pearls, and she felt something within herself slacken, a ridge of tension swept away by a warm wave.

But too soon Huda saw a frown work its way from his mind onto his skin, knitting itself above his uneven eyebrows.

He tore his eyes from hers. “But I don’t even bother hoping for this. I have nothing. I just needed you to know it. I just --- I just wanted you to know.”

She nodded slowly, and watched helplessly as he stood up, gathering his notebooks and the pen that had fallen to the ground. She was desperate to say something, anything to keep him from walking away.

His gait was quick and crooked as he made for the crowded street.

Excerpted from The View from Garden City © Copyright 2012 by Carolyn Baugh. Reprinted with permission by Forge Books. All rights reserved.

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