by Fadia Faqir
During this period Zaynab attracted a great deal of attention at social gatherings and in the noisy Cairo night clubs. She lead the way in fashion with magnificent clothes bought from the most famous Parisian designers, and which were more splendid than those of the models themselves. She created sensational stories about the passionate intrigues she was involved in which she circulated at evening gatherings, moving from one story to another with skill that could only be matched by Scheherezade herself when she narrated the Thousand and One Nights. The wretched youths at these gatherings did not usually feature in the stories themselves since they had no chance of ever getting near this alluring woman. Then just as iron can only be dented with iron, the beautiful Zaynab fell passionately in love with the handsome pilot of the plane flying her on one of her many trips to the West. He was an expert seducer of women, but never sought to enlarge his circle of victims because his job satisfied him and he had no desire to play the role of movie stars like Omar Sharif and Abdel Halim Hafez.
The handsome pilot was no less prosperous and noble than Zaynab, being descended from a family of Iranian origin which had settled in Cairo about two hundred years before and become famous carpet makers. After free secondary education was introduced, there was great competition to get into university and his mediocre results were not high enough to qualify him. He insisted on training as a pilot instead and joined a private flying school in which he soon gained promotion. Not long after his airborne meeting with Zaynab, he fathered two boys, both born by Caesarean. The law of genetics ensured that both boys turned out well: they inherited their mother’s wonderful eyes, their father’s long body and the best of their other features. However fate was to put an end to the young loving couple’s chapter of happiness: Zaynab’s husband was killed in a tragic air crash and a new chapter opened in Zaynab Mansur’s life. Her husband had intended to give up flying and go into commerce instead so that he could be close to his family but the terrible accident wrecked their future plans. Not only was the life of this family turned upside down and the light extinguished in Zaynab’s life but a strange and radical change took place in her personality which convinced everyone who knew her before that she had become a completely different woman. She lost her elegance, stopped wearing make-up and rarely went out, wearing the simplest of clothes which did nothing to show off her beauty. Then she reduced the times she mixed with people to the minimum and stopped the social activities she had pursued even after she married her pilot, now dead. In this way she became a model Egyptian widow and, except for rare occasions, she cut herself off like a hermit to bring up her children, smothering them with affection and care because they were now fatherless.
Zaynab was happy with her new existence in which her silent grief, which tormented her with beautiful memories of the past, became her constant companion. Her calm new life could have proceeded without disruption were it not for the only brother of her dead husband who had no intention of leaving Zaynab in peace to devote herself to the upbringing of her two boys. When he began to interfere in her affairs, it was not out of concern for the future happiness of his two nephews, but because he wanted to get hold of the considerable wealth they had inherited from their father. The latter had amassed his fortune from bringing back goods from all the corners of the world that his work had taken him. There was tight control over such imports from the West under Nasser’s stringent economic policy so they were sold illegally in small shops, scattered in the high-class suburbs of the city, by small traders who made large profits. This illicit trade formed the base of a much wider trade boom when restrictions with the West were lifted under Sadat.
Each time the uncle tried to impose his unofficial guardianship on the small family Zaynab lay in ambush, ready to foil his plans. She refused all his offers to invest the boys’ money, as well as his plans to buy real estate and apartments to let out furnished because she was always suspicious of his intentions and felt that he would get her into trouble. When these plans failed he tried to win her affection, and even proposed to her. She naturally refused and was genuinely astonished at the audacity of this latest move since he was well aware of the enormous place her husband occupied in her heart. She never imagined he was the kind of person who would devalue such sentiments of love and affection. When he failed to gain custody of the two boys by using tactics as crafty as Dimna and Baydaba the philosopher, characters known for their cunning from a famous book of Arabic fables, he was consumed with hatred for his sister-in-law and turned his mind to finding some legal means of achieving his aim. He had been humiliated when she turned down his proposal, telling him that a thousand men couldn’t take the place of her beloved husband. He began to spread rumours about her, attacking her reputation and honour, but this didn’t bother her because she knew that in time people would realize they were unsubstantiated; she brought some of her relatives round to her side who threatened to cut off his tongue unless he stopped spreading these rumours immediately. Then a hellish idea took root in his mind while he was watching an Egyptian film by Yahya Shahin, who borrowed the plot from Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights. He would outmanoeuvre his brother’s widow and put himself forward as legal guardian to the two boys instead of her parents who were both dead.
Ever since she was small, Zaynab Mansur had been crazy about cats, perhaps because it was also her mother’s passion. Zaynab grew up in her father’s large house in Munira which, at the time, was one of the most beautiful, select districts of Cairo. It was not unusual to find her mother lavishing the same affection on a cat or two that she would give to a child. She would often lie on her bed, reading a paper or magazine, with a great big cat perched on her chest, purring happily against her face. Perhaps this is how Zaynab became fond of these beautiful vain creatures which always manage to gain the upper hand over their master or mistress, making them pander to their every whim. For whatever reason, the young Zaynab still had lots of cats when she was living in her father’s house before she married, and a young maid from amongst the retinue of servants was instructed by her wealthy father to devote herself exclusively to looking after the cats.
After Zaynab married she virtually abandoned this hobby because, as a young wife madly in love, she wanted to devote herself wholeheartedly to her husband – with the exception of one black Persian cat with long fur. As soon as her sons were born, the whole idea of cats went right out of her mind.
When her husband died and the two boys were over infancy, Zaynab was left feeling bored in the large, two-storied house in Masr Jadida. At this point she resumed her old hobby of raising cats, helped by the boys who were just as keen. The house was soon inhabited by fifteen living creatures, which apart from the family included a dozen cats of different shapes, colours and sizes. Each one had its own name and particular place to sleep in and they led a wholesome, healthy life as well as being pampered with silk or velvet ribbons and bells. Zaynab bought beautiful pieces of cloth to make coats for the cats in anticipation of the cold winter days and nights and designed them to allow freedom of movement for their supple bodies. This necessitated an additional outlay over and above what was spent on their food and little toys and the cats were in a state of perpetual joy and excitement. Although the money spent on the cats was minimal in proportion to the income of this wealthy family, when viewed through the critical eyes of the uncle, who was spying on every detail of his dead brother’s family, this way of carrying on was nothing short of lunacy.
Zaynab then developed an enthusiasm for zar ceremonies which the uncle, who was extremely practically minded and kept any kind of involvement with spirituality to a minimum, considered abnormal behaviour. These ceremonies she attended were a vociferous form of ritual occasion, a new craze that spread like a disease amongst working class women and spread to the upper classes after the fad of loose fitting gallabiyas and wooden clogs and the mass viewing of tawdry sex films disappeared following the disaster of the 1967 war. Zaynab not only participated in the zar ceremonies but allowed
them to take place in her large house, throwing herself into the frenzied dancing and gyrating her body which had given up any other kind of activity. Apart from one or two men playing African-style instruments which beat out the popular rhythm this kind of ritual was usually reserved for women. The male instrumentalists were normally regarded to be above suspicion as far as sexual virtue or modesty were concerned but the uncle objected to these rituals which went on late into the night. A great deal of money would be spent on one party – as much as on a dozen cats – in order to supply the necessary, sometimes impossible, conditions, imposed by the experts organizing these ceremonies and those supervising its rituals. They might demand a pair of goats which had to be pure white except for a black blaze on the head or a brown spot on the tail; sometimes they required birds and animals which were difficult to get hold of in a country which is situated on the Tropic of Cancer and not on the Equator. One time they asked the widow to bring an Indian parrot with red and yellow feathers and place its cage on the window ledge in the room where the zar would take place. It could then join in with a running commentary all night, repeating sections of the frenzied, magical songs being chanted. Zaynab paid an exorbitant price for the parrot which she bought from the zoo at Giza after asking one of her relations, appointed as a senior director of this zoo a year before, to intercede on her behalf.
In a session held to discuss the uncle’s request for custody, the court was not convinced by his point of view, nor by the evidence put across by his shrewd lawyer, who tried with all means possible to prove the mother’s madness. The judge turned down his offer to present a video of her dancing, which showed her reeling like a drunkard in one of the zar ceremonies; he had been invited to a formal lunch by one of the most eminent doctors in the city and wanted to finish quickly because he felt hunger pangs in his stomach. The judges were also of the opinion that the uncle had a weak case and rejected his evidence. Zaynab’s attitude to cats and the zar ceremonies was not so extraordinary as to merit being called abnormal in a society where superstitions abounded; many people kept to their traditional beliefs which went back even further than primitive Africa and the Middle Ages to several thousand years before Christ. Then the widow’s lawyer, who was no less smart than the litigant’s lawyer, managed to sway the judges in her favour after he persuaded the court that her interest in pets was a phenomenon of modern civilization and progress. He supported his argument with several cuttings he had taken from local and foreign newspapers about people who were so fond of pets that they had bequeathed all their wealth to their favourite cat or dog. He stated how in Paris, the capital of culture and enlightenment, he had witnessed with his own eyes – and here it must be said that he was lying – immaculate rubbish collectors assigned to clear dog faeces left on the streets while the children in the poor quarters of the city evacuated their bowels against the walls and under the windows without anyone noticing. Then he turned to the question of zar ceremonies and commended them as a means of psychological therapy which had been developed through the ingenuity of the people. They had discovered the important role the zar played in releasing their mental and physical frustrations before having access to the specialized methods for dealing with such problems, developed through academic research. He underlined the necessity to take all branches of traditional medicine seriously in order to confront the fierce imperialist invasion which had come to a head in the defeat of 1967 and which not only targeted the freedom and resources of the country but also its culture and heritage. The court listened to his extended rhetorical speech which Zaynab noticed was full of exaggeration and repetition, darting from one thing to another and mixing everything up. Then the judge gave a surprise decision: in the first part of his verdict he overturned the charge of insanity, but it didn’t console Zaynab as it might have done because he went on to grant custody of the boys to their uncle. The judge decided that even if her mental faculties were in good order, as confirmed by the medical report in her file, she was undoubtedly a spendthrift who was not to be trusted with her sons’ assets, cash and investments and given that the uncle was a businessman he was better qualified to have custody. The uncle had convinced the judge of his business acumen by securing, through an intermediary, the short term contract for a flat in a splendid apartment block in Nasr city.
Shortly after the verdict, Zaynab Mansur stood at the door of the courtroom, looking at the new guardian of her children with complete calm and composure. He left the chamber where the verdict had just been read and appeared at the door at which point Zaynab took out her husband’s licensed gun, which she had loaded the night before with three bullets, and aimed it at the uncle’s chest. His mocking, vengeful smile suddenly became contorted into an expression of intense pain which made him grit his teeth. Zaynab felt her spirits lift after the long period of psychological trauma she had suffered since the uncle first took legal proceedings against her. She had even felt relief when the verdict went against her because the action she was about to take would place her in the position of victor rather than vanquished. She had never, for a single day, been one to submit in the way someone delicate and pampered might do, but always triumphed at whatever cost, as princess of her own destiny, making her own life choices just as Zenobia Palmeira did in ancient times.
Thanks to the lawyer’s commendable judicial efforts and her powers of influence, Zaynab was sentenced to only seven years. She was extremely grateful to get off so lightly.
Zaynab entrusted everything concerning money and property to her cousin on her maternal side who was like a sister to her and a second mother to her two boys. The boys also inherited the murdered uncle’s estate because he had never married and had no other heirs.
In prison, Zaynab found the young doctor, Bahiga, very charming and from the time she first joined the ward she had a great deal of respect for her. After a while, Zaynab discovered that Bahiga fulfilled a long-held wish in the world of friendship, not only inside prison but in the world outside as well. Zaynab had never experienced the happiness which can come from true friendship between two women, because throughout her life men had stood in the way. Being beautiful, she was solely preoccupied with the interest they showed in her and in how she was always the object of their gaze and admiration. Of course she knew many women but she never got to know a woman intimately in the way that she knew Bahiga Abdel Haqq in prison. From the time they first struck up a friendship together and began to share many aspects of their daily lives, Bahiga became a substitute for the family Zaynab had lost, and Zaynab became the sole source of comfort in Bahiga’s desolate life. Bahiga had never experienced the intimacy she shared with Zaynab and had never felt able to confide her innermost anxieties and pain to any woman before. Bahiga dazzled Zaynab with her skill in performing amazing tricks with paper, making birds, pitchers and exquisite brides out of paper remnants which she came across by chance in prison. There were also other entertaining tricks which she did with matchsticks and small pieces of macaroni and Zaynab joined in these games which were like mathematical problems and complicated riddles. Zaynab did Bahiga a great favour by teaching her French which she had never learned because she was part of a generation which, not unnaturally, scorned foreign languages as a reaction to long years of British colonialism and European monopoly over the country. This generation, which was influenced by nationalist feelings and exalted their own language above any other, is the same generation which demonstrated how the memory of nations can fade in certain eras. It quickly threw its own children into the bosom of foreign education, in the hope that they would catch the train of civilization which they had missed and in so doing neglected Arabic, the mistress of all languages, forgetting the fact that even though the Indians master the English language better than the Japanese, it is the Japanese who are economically more advanced.
It was Bahiga who introduced Aziza to Zaynab and related her story after a strong relationship had built up between them. Aziza valued Bahiga’s excellent advice about her severe and pa
inful haemorrhoids. Her inactive life and the lack of any suitable food containing roughage were not conducive to regular motions so that her condition had become chronic. Aziza, through her slightly mad perspective, credited Bahiga with many qualities: her education, her refinement, her straightforward way of dealing with any situation which differed from the deceitful tactics employed by all the other women she knew. She behaved in a dignified, straight manner without being self-indulgent and trivial. For that reason, while her gaze wandered into the distance on a clear moonlit night to rest on the wispy outline of the tall trees which she could see from her cell window, she decided to include Bahiga and her friend Zaynab in the golden chariot with the winged horses, ascending to heaven. The overriding factors which influenced her decision were first that she would undoubtedly need a skilful doctor like Bahiga to cope with any problem which might arise with the passengers selected for the journey; second she would need a sensitive, refined woman like Zaynab to teach the other wretched women the elements of good manners and etiquette because she had long disapproved of the coarse behaviour and obscene speech which most of the prisoners adopted amongst themselves. For those reasons, and while she was sitting sipping her water as if it were wine, savouring the last puff of her cigarette, she gazed at the wisps of the tree again and said, “I have good news for you Bahiga. Tomorrow when you come up with us I have a well-equipped clinic for you with everything you need.” Then she added:
