by Fadia Faqir
After Safiyya had been married for five years, she gave birth to twin boys whom she was crazy about despite the fact that they were extremely skinny and their heads were squashed in at the back. She considered them the greatest of earth’s creations and now that she had a family to care for she felt a sense of belonging for the first time. After she had lost her real father she had spent a miserable childhood with her stepfather, finally running away from home when she was fourteen. She had left her country village in the Delta, and travelled to Cairo only to end up wandering aimlessly about the streets, day after day, begging for sustenance. This went on until she caught the eye of the owner of a scalding house who noticed her loitering near his shop in the souk. She began to work with him, cleaning the stomachs of cattle and sheep, washing away the filth by immersing them in boiling water. When she had finished this first task she had to clean the aluminium cups and plates used for serving sopped bread, meat and broth to the customers. In return for this work Safiyya was given food and a place in the kitchen to rest her head late at night.
The truth was that Safiyya was lucky since she had escaped the trials experienced by other youngsters on the run in a city as hellish as Cairo. This luck was not due to divine intervention nor to any lack of wolves waiting to trap an unsuspecting female who crossed their path in the city, but was rather the result of a natural immunity: Safiyya only had one eye. She had lost her other eye a long time ago when she tried to escape a violent thrashing from her stepfather for breaking the long-necked bottle of his water-pipe while carrying it to him for his midday smoke. At that moment her mother had been busy making a woollen skull cap for her husband, embellishing it with a zig-zag, wave-like design used by the ancient Egyptians and meant to represent the River Nile. In order to escape the rage of her stepfather, the wretched child ran to hide in her mother’s lap, falling onto the steel sewing needle which sank into her eye and tore it out. After that she had one eye which she could see with and the other which was glass. This was provided by her stepfather who was decent enough to feel responsible for the little girl’s accident. Although he really hated and disliked having anything to do with the child, he had never intended to hurt her in a way which could lead to her losing the sight of an eye. Safiyya’s glass eye was not the only natural immunity she possessed against being raped; she was extremely weak and skinny and her lack of any experience in matters feminine was extremely off-putting. When she was fourteen she looked about eight; she was short, virtually flat-chested with a tiny head and a chin which looked as if it came straight out of her shoulders. Perhaps this explains why, when she asked for a train ticket from the Delta to Cairo the man let her off, sitting quietly, as she was, next to an old peasant, gazing with her one eye at the countryside rolling past her with its villages, and fields full of cotton and vegetables. Even the first incident she faced, which could at a stretch be described as ‘rape’, concerned a boy who was years younger than her and in no way mature. At noon one day during the al-Fitr festival at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, she went to the cinema decked out in a new shift of velvet winceyette, with brightly-coloured rabbits, geese and cocks printed on it. This had been presented by the owner of the scalding house who also chose some fabric shoes with rubber soles and bows, in a colour which would not show the dirt. These shoes were of the kind marketed throughout the city by the Italian factories which had sprung up all over the place and had eventually been nationalized. He also gave Safiyya the princely sum of ten piasters, as a special bonus to spend over the three-day festival. She thanked him profusely and grasped both his plump hands, planting copious kisses on them. She bought some falafel, and some fuul with tahina to mix together – a combination which was almost musical in its harmony. As she was finishing it off, she walked along gazing at the shops and stalls, and some red plastic earings caught her eye; she immediately fell for them and bought them for two piasters. The film showing at the cinema featured a singer and a famous belly dancer; the movement of the dancer’s bare stomach and chest as well as the rest of her body called for the greatest skill, particularly below the waist. As she watched Safiyya felt a hand grope across to her chest and fondle her breasts; the pleasure she felt as it reached the tips of her little nipples kept her quiet, and she imagined herself as Alice in Wonderland as she watched the film with her single eye. The long hand which stretched towards her from the next door seat, continued to grope her, jumping to another area of her little body, arousing feelings of pleasure she had never experienced before.
Events moved on when the lights were suddenly turned on at the start of a short interval, the idea of which was to enable the usher to sell fizzy drinks, peanuts and sunflower seeds to the audience. When Safiyya looked round there was no one on the seat next to her. The boy had made off in a hurry, perhaps because he was embarrassed when the lights came on or possibly because he had quickly glanced at her face and noticed the glass eye. She gave up hope of his returning and bought herself a Pepsi because she felt so thirsty.
As time passed Safiyya turned into a Cairene girl; her eyes were opened to the marvels and excitement of life in a metropolis which was like many cities rolled into one. When her boss sent her on errands for himself or other traders in the souk, she took advantage of these occasions away from the scalding house. She wandered about the streets, lingering in front of the window displays of the large stores and watching upper class women who whiled away their mornings shopping, avidly purchasing goods to stave off boredom. At this moment in her life, Safiyya’s ultimate dream was to obtain some red shoes with high heels, a dream she was able to realize two months later thanks, not entirely to luck, but because she was sharp and light-fingered. While she was passing by a shoe mender’s she noticed two small red shoes lying, one on top of the other, next to a pile of shoes waiting to be mended. She was so taken with them that she dreamed that very night of her stepfather who kissed the shoes and stroked her face with them before slipping her feet into them. The next day the image of the red shoes remained vividly before her, and she thought up a mischievous plan which would help her achieve what she wanted. She took one of her employer’s shoes after he had removed it to perform the evening prayer, and when he wasn’t looking, sliced off the sole with a sharp knife. When he had finished his praying, adding two extra prostrations to ask God for righteousness and success, he slipped his foot into the shoe only to discover that there was nothing between his toes and the floor except his wine-red socks. This infuriated him and he started to curse the shoe industry and the swindlers who owned it, swearing that he would never buy another shoe from the shop where he had bought this one. Safiyya, meanwhile, tried to calm him down and rushed off with the shoe to the shoe menders, promising him that she would return only when the shoe was restored to its former condition and that it was pointless giving himself high blood pressure and getting himself in a state.
She returned an hour later with three shoes rather than one, including the red pair she had coveted and even dreamed of. She had worked hard to convince the shoe mender of the urgency of mending her employer’s shoe by duping him into believing that she worked as a servant for some important official and his wife who mistreated her, and would undoubtedly hit her if she didn’t return quickly. The man felt sorry for her when he heard the story of what her stepfather had done to her and saw her glass eye and was moved by the pathetic way she begged him to help. So he sent her off to buy him some fried aubergines and potatoes for lunch and when he had finished eating she brought him a glass of tea from the nearby café which he drank while mending the shoe. As soon as he finished restoring the shoe to its former glory the man went to the lavatory above the shop to relieve himself and this gave Safiyya the perfect opportunity to grab hold of the red shoes. She quickly snatched the single shoe he had just finished mending, as well as the red shoes, and flew like a little sparrow out of the shop and back to the scalding house.
When she returned she discovered that the heels of the red shoes were still broken but
their acquisition nevertheless marked a glorious new stage in her dreary existence which before had been empty of any kindness and joy. She was so poor that she was unable to buy anything she wanted and this train of thought awakened her for the first time to an important truth: the owner of the scalding house who had rescued her from misery and who, until now, she had considered heaven sent, was in fact exploiting her terribly. She worked daily from six in the morning until after nightfall without a break, except for a short pause after lunch. In return for this she received just enough to avoid starvation – a little piece of sheep’s trotter or sheep’s head, with a plate of rice to which some broth had been added. This meagre ration sometimes forced her to eat the leftovers from customers’ plates, although it was only seldom that they left any food. In addition to this she was given a glass or two of tea daily and stole any other food she was able to, like fruit which she took when delivering some to her employer’s wife. She longed to have her hair styled and to fasten it with a band of coloured pearls, to put on red lipstick to match her red shoes like the city women did. When she saw them, anger and exasperation welled up inside her against the owner of the scalding house who was exploiting her and thwarting her plans. She then came to an important conclusion: as far as she was concerned, stealing in this city was not only feasible and extremely simple but essential if you wanted to live your life as many people walking the streets did.
After this episode and well beyond, the importance of the scalding house diminished in Safiyya’s eyes – or rather the one which was not made of glass – and it became just a matter of time before she left. The call of the city beckoned, offering her untold joys on condition that she made use of her wits and her light-fingered touch; thus she became one of its villains who lived by thieving as long as circumstances permitted.
While Safiyya remained at the scalding house she could only steal small items which were easy to hide. Soon after the episode of the red shoes – which were of little cash value – she managed to collect a large number of cheap earrings, hair combs, hairpins and men’s and women’s socks which she stole from pedlars displaying their cheap goods on the pavements. After a period she discovered that there were rich pickings to be made from lovers who went to the cinema, especially those who came out of the nine o’clock performance, still intoxicated by the passionate scenes they had watched, identifying with the hero or beautiful heroine in the film. The ardent kisses they stole from each other in the dark were still on their lips and it was easy for Safiyya to rob them of the fine chiffon scarves which dangled ostentatiously from the elegant handbags or key rings which hung from the trouser pockets of flash young men. The fact that she was so tiny made the chances of catching her much smaller.
One black day, which she would never forget, she unwittingly fell into the clutches of the police and, to that day, she had never regretted anything so much as the carelessness and recklessness which led her to make such a mistake. It was about three months after she had reached puberty and she was walking along the streets of the city, exhausted. She was suffering from her period which made every bone of her body ache as if she were about to fall apart, when she caught sight of a woman with a huge behind like most Egyptian women have, accompanied by a little girl about six years old. The child was wearing a gold chain around her neck with a blue-jewelled pendant. They were wandering about looking at children’s clothes when they suddenly stopped in front of a shop window. The mother was busy examining the goods on display with a view to choosing something for her child when Safiyya stretched out her hand from behind to reach for the clasp of the necklace resting on the girl’s neck, and tried to open it. However, the little girl noticed immediately and screamed, at which point her mother turned round, roughly grabbed hold of Safiyya’s hand and called for help from passers-by.
By a stroke of bad luck the woman was the daughter of a senior police officer and so Safiyya was singled out for a harsh beating. She was handed over to police officers experienced in techniques of torture which do not leave traces that could be used as evidence by government doctors investigating allegations of brutality. When they had completed their business, which lasted almost an hour, Safiyya felt that her left eye must surely have suffered the same damage that had been inflicted on her right eye all those years ago. The next day she came before the prosecuting authorities who referred her case to the courts. She received a year’s prison sentence, the first of many, which was to mark the beginning of a long-drawn out association between Safiyya and prison, her new companion for life.
It seemed as if fate had lain in wait for Safiyya, in the same way that it maintains its grip on all human affairs, despite the efforts individuals make to control their destiny and live in uninterrupted peace and contentment. There are some people whose future is mapped out for them from the moment they are born; Safiyya’s life had never gone smoothly. Even when she found happiness with her sons and her husband, a pillar of strength who was happier caring for the children and doing the housework than working in a job outside, she was forced to leave them. The competence and love with which he cared for the children left Safiyya free to pursue her vital task bringing in the family income. She provided them with everything they needed and was determined to fulfil the dream she shared with her husband to send the boys to university – a dream held by thousands of the poor after Nasser announced free education for all. Safiyya and her husband believed that higher education was the only way to become respected in society – a hope they cherished more than any other for their children. For this reason Safiyya worked ceaselessly to provide her boys with the same material advantages enjoyed by more privileged families; she was keen that their clothes should be smart and their house clean and full of all the modern equipment which reflected breeding and refinement so that her two boys could compete on equal terms with their friends. She bought everything regardless of cost or whether it was practical or necessary, such as a gas igniter, insect repellents and air fresheners in aerosol cans. She bought various different kinds of shampoo, an electric hair-dryer, as well as major electrical appliances like a washing machine, refrigerator, cooker, television and a video. With almost tragic ease, and driven by the expectations of her happy family caught up in a consumer society which craves the latest of everything, Safiyya entered the world of Tafida, the biggest drug dealer in the notorious “red route district”.
Tafida considered Safiyya a rare type in her wide trading network, a precisely-tuned organization which escaped raids from the police. The latter were extremely well acquainted with Tafida’s activities but, because she ran her organization so skilfully, they were unable to gather sufficient evidence to convict her; besides, many of those who were paid to watch her used their eyes to watch for her as well. Tafida benefited greatly from Safiyya’s wide network of connections and acquaintances which she had built up through her frequent comings and goings to people’s houses and was still able to cultivate without arousing any suspicion. She undertook the difficult task of distributing the drugs in return for a much greater sum than she had earned from trading in fabric and other little goods. Her financial circumstances improved substantially so that she was able to buy a shop for her husband and two sons. This became an outlet for selling trashy American videos full of violence and karate, as well as Egyptian films which were useless. By a stroke of ill fate, the owner of the glass eye happened to come under the scrutiny of the police while she was distributing some heroin to one of Tafida’s drug pushers who lived in a city suburb. The police happened to be raiding the same apartment block where the dealer was living to arrest a member of one of the Islamic groups. They combed through the block searching for bombs, explosives and various incendiary devices used by such groups against the authorities. The police left no stone unturned as they conducted their search with enthusiasm and precision in an apartment block which was considered a prime example of the demise of Cairo’s architectural heritage. This block resembled a shoe box standing on its end, with openings and windows,
and painted in colours devoid of any sense of taste or beauty making the front of the building look like a slice of sickly confectionary. It was a testimony to the absence of any conscience on the part of municipal workers and local mayors when they carried out such building projects, as well as the monopoly of the dealers in cement and reinforced iron and the rogues who called themselves builders or architects in the construction sector. It was Safiyya’s bad luck that the police searched the fine chamois handbag; she had been carrying it under her arm in a manner not entirely in keeping with a woman who had a glass eye and a body which wasn’t much bigger than the bag. They ordered her to open it and found pouches full of powdered drugs waiting for them, lying pressed together under a piece of coloured material, men’s socks and silk ties, all imported through the free port at Port Said.
