Mariam’s insides twist each time she looks at Dina, slouched in the yellow armchair in their living room. Her face is pale, her hair tied in a tight bun. She answers when she is spoken to, she smiles even, but she looks dejected.                 

‘We’re not telling her father, of course,’ Mariam’s aunt Hoda says. ‘Luckily none of the bruises are anywhere he can see.’

Mariam can predict her aunt’s next words before she actually says them: ‘You know he’s from the south. Do you have any idea what his family over there would do in a situation like this?’

From the south, from the south, from the south. Hoda carries her husband’s Upper Egyptian upbringing like a shield and wields it like a weapon.

‘When are you getting the test done?’ Hanaa asks. She is sitting next to her sister on the couch, her entire face overshadowed by the deep frown creasing her forehead.

‘As soon as we possibly can,’ Hoda replies. ‘Will you call Dr Hassan for us?’

‘Of course,’ Hanaa says. ‘And I’ll come with you when you go.’

Dina looks like she’s about to say something, but then her face falls back into its earlier resignation.

Mariam knows that if it weren’t for her late father’s contacts, among whom is the trusted family gynaecologist, Hoda would have kept this a secret even from her mother.

Hanaa asks her sister and niece what they’d like to drink, and although they say they don’t want anything she insists she will make tea. Hoda follows her into the kitchen, and Mariam finds herself alone with Dina, with no idea what to say.

‘Are you still in pain?’ she hesitantly asks.

‘A little,’ her cousin replies, ‘but it’s getting better.’

There had been no bleeding, Dina said earlier. She had been assaulted but she had not been raped. And yet they’re making her submit to a test. To be sure ‘everything is alright’, as Hoda phrased it. Mariam doesn’t know whether Dina’s a virgin, but if she were in her place, she now thinks—under the threat of her family finding out that she wasn’t—she would say she had been raped. To them, that would be better than knowing she had sinned willingly.

She looks at the girl across from her, thin and frail in sweatpants and a t-shirt, and wishes they were friends. She wishes she could hug her, not half-heartedly, and tell her how sorry she is.

‘Is work going well?’ she asks instead.

‘I’ve been on leave since…’

‘Right, of course,’ Mariam interjects.

A small silence ensues, and she finds herself recalling the summer she read The Nightingale’s Prayer for the first time. She was twelve or so, no match for the dense language or the layered narrative, riddled with symbols. For years she didn’t understand what Hanady had done, or what had been done to her. A similar feeling grips her now. Something akin to the inadequacy of a child faced with a highly complicated text.

‘Can I ask you something?’

Dina nods.

‘Why don’t you say no? You’re an adult, you make your own money…’ Mariam trails off. She swallows then she continues: ‘You’re not powerless. You don’t have to allow this.’

For a moment, Dina stares at her, her face inscrutable. ‘You honestly think I haven’t tried?’

Then she rolls her eyes: ‘Listen, Mariam. I’m a normal person, and I want a normal life. I want to get married and I want to have kids and I want to live in a compound in the suburbs and go out for brunch with my friends, and they aren’t bohemians who feel at home in sketchy downtown bars. I have no interest in making statements.’

Mariam is taken aback. ‘But what does…’

Dina interrupts, her voice sharper, the blood finding its way back to her face: ‘Of course I said no. And I can keep saying no. But it will only make them think I have something to hide. And then things will escalate, and I’ll probably have to move out, and they’ll never talk to me again. And what kind of life would that be, in a place like this? If my own family doesn’t have my back, what’s the point? Why should I believe there’ll be more kindness out there than what they’ve shown me?’

Mariam lowers her gaze to the floor as Dina takes a deep, serrated breath.

‘Can I go out for a smoke?’ she asks, gesturing towards the balcony.

‘Sure,’ Mariam says, relieved.

Dina takes out a pack of Davidoff Slims and a lighter from her purse. She gives Mariam a weak smile, then walks out through the glass doors.

Mariam sighs. She wonders if she should follow her, but she knows it’s because she wants a cigarette, not to comfort her cousin. What comfort has she to bring her? Her own skin feels like a badly applied coat of paint against the walls of her body. 

She can hear Dina humming in the balcony, the tune carried on the evening breeze. A sudden memory finds shape and colour in her head: a teenaged Dina standing at the mirror, brushing her long and lustrous black tresses while she, still a child, sits cross-legged on a big, pink bed, watching her cousin in adoration. The memory gains sound, and she can almost hear the lilt of Dina’s voice singing as she starts to braid her hair. She can swear that on that distant night she spent at her aunt Hoda’s, mesmerized by her older cousin’s beauty, Dina was singing the same song she now hums. But in her memory, it is light and bouncing with promise, while now it quivers with pain. 

Mariam takes a step toward the balcony, but then she turns around and heads for the kitchen instead. As she approaches, she can hear Hoda speaking in hushed tones, her voice flat and heavy, ‘… and of course she doesn’t want to have the test, she’s been crying for days…’

When Mariam enters, she’s continuing: ‘… but there’s no other way, God knows it’s been hard enough finding her a husband already!’

Hanaa is pouring hot water from the kettle onto the tea bags in the mugs while her aunt scans the shelf for the sugar jar. When she realizes Mariam is there, she looks at her blankly, then puts the jar on the counter and saunters out without a word.