Golden Chariot

by Fadia Faqir

  Mahrousa’s heart wasn’t white like the prison scarf Safiyya was wearing, it was black like a cold wintry night overcast with clouds without a single shining star to lighten the gloom. The sun never rose in Mahrousa’s heart to erase the black hatred which had settled there over time. This hatred was directed against people, life, time and, above all else, her husband, because he as good as killed her when she was in her prime and left her to shoulder all the responsibilities after stealing everything she owned. This included the gold she received when she married and the only piece of jewellery she possessed, an eighteen carat gold ring with a small carnelian red stone. He also stole her household effects which she had collected bit by bit, sweating blood as a housemaid from sunrise until well beyond sunset to make a living for him and their children and for which she received nothing in return but a broken heart. This husband had not an ounce of mercy and even told her once that he hated her because she was ugly and misshapen – or rather she was the ugliest woman ever created on the face of this earth.

  Poor tormented Mahrousa was only too aware of this truth which her faithless husband had confronted her with. She admitted that she was ugly and deformed, with her wide face, snub nose and bulging frog-like eyes which were in no way mitigated by her dark, almost bluish, lack-lustre skin and her wide mouth poised above her huge ball-shaped chin. However, it was one thing for her to be aware of this truth and quite another to be told this by her husband and the father of her children – indeed by the person closest to her heart. The moment she heard it she suffered such pain that it consumed her soul and crushed her spirit. She knew that there was nothing that could be done and that she would never be beautiful because the way she looked was in the hands of fate, but she longed to be acceptable at least, with a normal face like other people. She continued to dye her hair with henna, becoming an expert; sometimes she would knead the henna in boiling water with the skins of black aubergine and golden red onions from the country; at other times she added camomile and black tea, diluted after boiling it for some time. She took equal pains to keep her body soft, using any beauty preparations she could get hold of. Sometimes she bought these and at other times she was given them by the women whose houses she cleaned. One thing she had a problem with was peeling nail varnish which was inevitable since the domestic work she did meant immersing her hands in water most of the time.

  What hurt Mahrousa most about her husband was that he never appreciated the extraordinary efforts she made to be beautiful; nor did he ever thank her for the financial contribution she made. No matter how tired she was, he insisted on having sex with her every night which resulted in half-a-dozen children – four girls and two boys. She never once heard a kind word from him and because he suffered from a lung complaint, she never felt able to refuse him intercourse. She waited on him hand and foot because she believed that illness and good health are in God’s hands and that He, in His wisdom, decides who is destined to have one or the other. So she continued to obey this cruel husband, believing it to be a divine obligation, tantamount to obedience to God. In this way she cared for him, providing half a litre of milk especially for him daily. She brought back the best food she could lay her hands on from the rich houses where she worked – the kind of food they could never afford to make at home – and fed him on it, stinting herself. Her husband was a labourer who teased out compacted cotton with a wire bow to use for the padding in upholstery. The dust which rose up from the cotton stuffing and the old mattresses began to affect his chest until his condition became chronic and he was forced to stop working. He then sat at home, a lump of living flesh with no work and nothing to do. Even then Mahrousa continued to spend her money on him, handing him cash so that he could sit in cafés like other men who were still earning their living and had not been struck down by illhealth. She wanted to spare him the anguish of feeling like a bird with a broken wing, debilitated by illness which had denied him his proper role as breadwinner for his family.

  But her husband met this kindness and thoughtfulness with rejection and cruelty. He upbraided her harshly for the smallest involuntary lapses which only happened through pressure of time or exhaustion: one evening she was so tired that she threw herself on the mattress and fell asleep after switching off the stove before the soured milk had had time to boil. As a result it curdled and when her husband discovered that it had gone off he swore at her using the most despicable words, even cursing her father and grandfather. But none of these abuses hurt her as much as the way he called her a body which had been dumped on him and wasn’t worth a penny in the market. After that he began to hit her and the children for the slightest thing, finally accusing her of immoral behaviour because she came home late from work. God knows that the only reason she stayed out late was to complete her work to perfection in order to earn the approval of her employers and avoid being sacked; working overtime also earned her more money to feed her family. Mahrousa endured these insults and accepted her destiny, which would protect and safeguard her, believing that it was better to be married than to live alone. However her anxiety increased when her husband changed his tactics and began to steal from her. One evening she came home exhausted from working late, having recently taken on cleaning the apartment of an important merchant. It had six rooms, an enormous fully-equipped kitchen full of gadgets and three bathrooms where she religiously cleaned and polished all the tiled surfaces. On her return she discovered that her husband had taken the television and sold it for a trifling sum. The television had provided the rare moments of happiness in her life when she snuggled up with her children at suppertime, to watch the plays and films. She would fall asleep on the sofa in front of the television, dreaming she was one of the blonde, white-skinned girls in the advertisements who wore such pretty dresses and whom the men raved about. So devastated was she by this blow that she lost her appetite; she had dreamed of owning a television for ages and finally bought one from a good lady whose husband had brought a large new television back from one of his trips abroad. It was a real bargain and she had been allowed to pay for it in instalments.

  After the saga of the television came the black day when, as far as Mahrousa was concerned, the sun never rose. On this day the washing machine disappeared. You can imagine the scale of the disaster if I tell you that she considered washing machines the greatest invention on earth. Her washing machine released her from the slavery of washing her family’s clothes; the value she placed on it and the reverence she showed towards it was obvious from the way she dried it carefully each time she used it and draped it with a beautiful coloured scarf, one of the occasional items she had been given by her employers.

  On that unhappy day she did not restrain herself as she had on the day her husband sold the television but faced him with the truth that he was always gambling at cards in the café with the rogues of the quarter. Then she cried bitterly over the demise of her beloved washing machine, just as any poor peasant mourns the death of his buffalo, the mainstay of his life. She cursed her bad luck and invoked her long departed mother to come to her aid and witness the calamity that had befallen her. This washing machine had been a windfall which Mahrousa believed could never be replaced; she had bought it one day from a rag and bone man doing his rounds. She guessed that the machine, which was as good as new, must have been stolen and after a lengthy discussion as to how much it was worth, who it was made by and so on, she ended up paying only thirty pounds for it from her hard-earned savings.

  After suffering many years of torment with her sick husband, the gambler and sadist, he deserted her and completely disappeared, but not before robbing her of her only piece of jewellery which, as far as she was concerned, was as valuable as King Solomon’s treasure and her only security against hard times. He stole the ring from her finger in the dead of night when she was stretched out like a corpse, fast asleep before the dawn of another exhausting day. She had come across the ring, which had a fake carnelian stone, quite by chance in the inside pocket of an old coat belonging
to a Greek lady she worked for. She had been presented with the coat when the lady was forced to leave quickly when in 1956 foreigners were expelled from the country.

  After he deserted her Mahrousa abandoned all hope of her errant husband ever returning. She was forced to move around from job to job because domestic work was no longer easy to find. The spread of electrical appliances and the tendency to choose practical furnishings enabled people to manage the daily chores on their own and dispense with servants.

  At first Mahrousa took up cooking kushari made from rice, noodles, lentils, fried onions and spicey sauce which she sold on the pavement. But as soon as she managed to get back on her feet and save a little money she was pursued by municipal officials, demanding protection money and fees which which she was forced to pay in order to get the necessary licence to ply her trade in peace. The pavements were the property of the Government who doled out licences to traders on a purely arbitrary basis. Mahrousa decided she had had enough of selling kushari after she discovered that the financial return was negligible; the taxes and bribes she was forced to pay exceeded her earnings and after she had paid off the wholesaler for the noodles, lentils and rice, which she bought on credit, at the end of the day she made no profit at all.

  After that she went into ‘manufacturing’, perhaps spurred on by the general trend of the ‘open-door’ economic policy which was meant to promote manufacturing but failed to build the factories to make the goods. The scale of Mahrousa’s industrial plans differed considerably. She started picking up any discarded paper she could find on the street, thrown out by import-export dealers, and used them to make clowns’ hats and paper fans. She fixed these onto sticks made from stripped palm branches, used to make cages, which had ended up on the rubbish dump in the market. She stuck the hats and fans onto the sticks with starch made from cooked rice then, in order to paint them, she boiled up left-over vegetables and scraps to make dyes which were brightly coloured to attract children. Then, in this attempt to stave off destitution, she roamed the markets and saints’ day festivals, selling her wares for a few pennies.

  During this critical period of her life, a neighbour enticed her to work with him in a Punch and Judy show. Her husky voice was projected from behind the curtain and she played the part of the mother-in-law who is always stirring up trouble and dissension between her daughter and hen-pecked husband. Apart from her main role she also sang some ditties which brought laughter and mockery from the audience. Mahrousa found this work easy and was happy because it did not sap her strength or undermine her health, which had recently deteriorated. Chronic rheumatism had spread to her joints despite the fact that her work-load, apart from the show, was light and only involved cooking and occasional washing for her employer.

  She was esctatic about her new role in the Punch and Judy show because it made her feel loved by people, especially children, who laughed uproariously and screamed when it was her turn to sing. At last she was accepted after feeling alienated for so long, and earning a wage was an additional bonus. Her work was eventful to say the least: one day the owner of a large café surprised her by inviting them to give a show for a circumcision party. This was to be on behalf of a prosperous man whose son had been born after seven daughters, produced by three different wives; only the last wife had enabled him to fulful his dream of producing the son from his loins who would succeed him and preserve his name for posterity.

  Mahrousa made her mark in her new role and even contributed new ideas of her own; to the delight of her audience she told riddles, usually during the intervals. By extending the performance she was also able to attract bigger crowds and thus earn more money. A typical riddle she asked them might be: “What crosses the sea without drowning?” – and by the sea she knew the people understood she was referring to the River Nile. It was common to use this terminology and indicated the reverence and affection felt for this great river. One of the more witty members of the audience might then give the answer: “A buffalo calf in its mother’s stomach because a buffalo can easily float in the Nile, even when pregnant”, at which point Mahrousa would ask the audience to applaud this intelligent response while Punch played one of Hasab Allah’s famous melodies by way of congratulation. Mahrousa would go on to deliver the second of four riddles which were the only ones she knew, asking her audience: “What hovers over a glass plate?” Then she got to the third riddle, which she considered the most difficult of all, which went like this: “A container within another container immersed in water; inside it are pearls and its outside is copper coloured. What is it?” At this stage the audience would inevitably give the wrong answer but Mahrousa gave them more time to think during which she would circulate, collecting money. Only when she returned to Punch would she tell them the answer which was: “A pomegranate”. Then she would throw out the last one which was: “Something which shines and glistens and hides between leaves.” Then she would join with Punch in the second part of the show which followed this interval.

  However, not long after, Mahrousa had to leave the work that she loved so much. She was astounded when the very man who played Punch, made it clear that he not only wanted to have sex with her but also wanted her to do it with other men. He was most insistent that she agree to both demands, planning to share with her the income she earned from prostitution in return for his protection and procurement of men for her.

  After she left the Punch and Judy group Mahrousa and her children went through dark times. She was forced to beg in the streets to stave off the hunger of six little mouths which were constantly open, demanding food. She found work with removal men and her hopes were raised only to be dashed when she injured the vertebrae in her lower back. As if this wasn’t enough, one night she was returning from her work in an apartment far out in one of the new suburbs of Masr Jadida, when she was raped by three soldiers, the same age as her eldest daughter. After gagging her and binding her with their army belts the gang raped her, leaving her in such a state that she would never know how she managed to get home. In the days that followed, Mahrousa rummaged around in dustbins for anything fit to eat. She got hold of some offal and discarded remains from a man who slaughtered and sold chickens which she stewed and gave to her children with bread. But God was to intervene and show mercy to this wretched woman. One happy day one of her husband’s relatives, who was working as a staff sergeant in the prisons, was unexpectedly transfered to the women’s prison. Having just heard that she had been abandoned by his relation and witnessed the misery and deprivation that she and her children had suffered, he went out and bought a tin of halawa made from the best ground sesame seed and syrup, some flat loaves of white bread and a packet of tea which he sat and shared with them. Then after slipping three pounds into Mahrousa’s hand, which were the only notes he had left in his pocket, he promised to try and find her a job which would give her a regular income and save her from begging on the streets. Hardly a month went by before Mahrousa was wearing the warder’s uniform, a blue-grey overall; she was appointed because the authorities were impressed by her hefty size and the forbidding look in her eye that gave her a stern appearance, both of which, in their view, qualified her for the new post.

  Despite the extraordinary experiences and suffering Mahrousa had already encountered in her life, her job opened her eyes to a world of human relationships wholly outside her previous experience; with the turnover of prisoners she was constantly exposed to new stories of tragedy. She became aware of the comforting truth that she wasn’t the only oppressed woman in the world as she had thought, nor was she alone in suffering from misfortune; there were many other women to whom fate had dealt a terrible blow and had robbed of happiness and mercy. In her new profession she was required to be firm, strict and authoritative which gradually gave her self-confidence and strength but this neither eliminated the blackness in her heart nor banished the bitterness from her soul. The lasting feelings of failure and the sense of an absence of justice in life which she harboured made her compassionate
in her dealings with the prisoners. She was sympathetic to their plight, and had reached the conclusion that mercy should always come before justice; there was no hope for the human race without mercy which, if allowed to surface in human relations, would go some way towards eradicating misery in life. For this reason she was honest with the prisoners and didn’t oppress or exploit them. She didn’t impose fines on them like some of the other warders nor did she expect them to render services for her without anything in return; even when Safiyya, the heroin addict, made her a crochet shawl she reciprocated by giving her a whole chicken which she had boiled herself at home and brought to the prison. She was also quite happy to accept presents from the prisoners on condition that they offer them freely and without expecting any special favour in return. On this basis she accepted the honey in which her face had been immersed a short time ago from a prisoner whose family owned a large number of hives in their village. Generally she would only stretch out her hand to accept something from the prisoners after satisfying herself that, weighed on the scales of justice, the gift had come through the door of love, mercy and compassion, all qualities necessary to survive the terrible life in prison.

  The reasons behind the special relationship between Mahrousa and Safiyya, nicknamed ‘Heroin Safiyya’ on account of her predeliction for this kind of drug, were different from those linking her to all the other prisoners. Time, above all else, had played a part in forging this relationship because Safiyya had served a longer time in prison than anyone else. More significantly, she was the most generous and experienced in prison affairs because she had spent most of her life there, arriving for the first time at the age of sixteen sentenced to a year for stealing. When she was nineteen she joined a gang of armed robbers and was sent down for six years with hard labour. When she got out she married one of her relations who was unemployed but had an apartment with a reception room and two bedrooms which he had inherited from his mother. This provided a haven of rest and shelter. At this stage she sold a gold watch which she had kept for herself, never owning up to the fact that it was stolen when she was arrested, and with the proceeds bought herself a cheap shirt from a textile merchant in al-Azhar street and plastic house slippers for almost nothing. She also purchased artificial necklaces, bracelets and earings to form a modest stock in trade which she resold to women on her rounds of the apartment blocks and houses. Gradually, trade increased thanks to her industry and the good use she made of her charm and experience to build her customers’ confidence in her. She expanded her activities into several new areas: for some of the women she made a lemon and sugar paste to remove body hair; she made blankets and head scarves out of crocheted wool; she blended oils for the skin and hair, having obtained the ingredients and formulae from perfume makers. Finally she began to offer a special service, preparing brides for their wedding night. Everything she offered was performed to perfection and she became greatly in demand. She reached the stage where she had many customers, none of whom knew anything about her criminal past, and her circumstances improved so greatly that she was able to live a pleasant existence of a kind she could have never dreamed of in her previous life.