Chapter NADINE HAIKAL EL AGAMY, ALEXANDRIA 2004
There was a child growing inside Nadine.
Hatem’s child. Hatem didn’t understand why she wouldn’t leave El Agamy to live with him in his quaint loft by the University of Cairo. “I have plenty of space for you and baby,” he had pleaded. “You won’t need to go back to the villa again.”
Nadine could never risk him learning the truth about her. About the Haikal family.
About the debts they owed.
Nadine turned in her bed, laying a palm over her flat belly. Soon, she’d begin to show. Her mother would be thrilled. A pregnant woman doesn’t raise suspicion when she enters a daycare or school grounds. They could fulfill their quota early this year.
The only appealing part of using her pregnancy to bring home more offerings was how angry Safa would be. Safa was too lazy, too vicious. She didn’t take the time to win the children’s trust the way Nadine always did.
Nadine knew what would happen when this child entered the world.
Her mother would lay the baby at the door.
They would watch it wriggle in its blanket, waiting to see if the orange light would leak under the door’s lip.
If the light would spread over the infant, sending the Haikal women to the ground, or if it would leave the baby alone.
“It rejected your brother,” Nadine’s mother had shared one afternoon.
Nonchalant. “We sent him off to live with my cousin in El Mansoura. The ones it rejects will never be strong enough to fulfill the debt. They only exist because of our strength. Their lives, their wealth, their comfort—it begins and ends here.”
For the longest time, Nadine hadn’t understood what that meant.
She’d always known she had relatives all around Masr and the rest of the world.
She’d been jealous of her brother, this mysterious sibling who had grown up without bloodying his hands in the Haikal family debt, but who unknowingly reaped all the benefits throughout his halcyon life.
It wasn’t until Safa turned sixteen and failed to bring any children to the door for a full year that the truth had exploded out of Mama.
“If we fail, it isn’t just us who pays the price. Every single member of Bamba’s bloodline—people you’ve never even met, their children and grandchildren—will die.”
Nadine studied the ceiling. This child would be half Hatem.
Half the man with smudged glasses and perpetual ink stains under his nails.
The man she thought she might love. But it would also be Nadine’s offspring.
A child born from the woman responsible for a third of the disappearances in western Alexandria.
Would it be worse for the child to be chosen and live out their life in the Haikal villa, wrapped in the luxury Bamba had secured with their lives? Or worse for them to be rejected and have their fate tossed into the hands of Haikals like Nadine and Safa?
Whatever happened, this child would not bear their burdens alone.
Nadine closed her eyes and dreamt about a curly-haired little girl with brown eyes and her father’s wide, open smile.