by Tayeb Salih
Those women of Flanders
Await the lost,
Await the lost who never will leave the harbour
They await the lost whom the train never will bring
To the embrace of those women with dead faces,
They await the lost, who lie dead in the trenches the barricade and the mud
In the darkness of night
This is Charing Cross Station, the hour’s past one,
There was a faint light,
There was a great pain.
After that he gave a deep sigh, still holding the glass between his hands, his eyes wandering off into the horizon within himself.
I tell you that had the ground suddenly split open and revealed an afreet standing before me, his eyes shooting out flames, I would not have been more terrified. All of a sudden there came to me the ghastly nightmarish feeling that we — the men grouped together in that room — were not a reality but merely some illusion. Leaping up, I stood above the man and shouted at him: ‘What’s this you’re saying? What’s this you’re saying?’ He gave me an icy look — I don’t know how to describe it, though it was perhaps a mixture of contempt and annoyance. Pushing me violently aside, he jumped to his feet and went out of the room with firm tread, his head held high as though he were something mechanical. Mahjoub, busy laughing with the rest of the people in the gathering, did not notice what had occurred.
On the next day I went to him in his field. I found him busy digging up the ground round a lemon tree. He was wearing dirty khaki shorts and a rough cotton shirt that came down to his knees; there were smudges of mud on his face. He greeted me as usual with great politeness and said, ‘Some of the branches of this tree produce lemons, others oranges.’
‘What an extraordinary thing? I said, deliberately speaking in English.
He looked at me in astonishment and said, ‘What?’ When I repeated the phrase he laughed and said, ‘Has your long stay in England made you forget Arabic or do you reckon we’ve become anglicized?’
‘But last night,’ I said to him, ‘you recited poetry in English.’
His silence irritated me. ‘It’s clear you’re someone other than the person you claim to be,’ I said to him. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you told me the truth?’ He gave no sign of being affected by the threat implicit in my words but continued to dig round the tree.
‘I don’t know what I said or what I did last night,’ he said when he had finished digging, as he brushed the mud from his hands without looking at me. ‘The words of a drunken man should not be taken too seriously. If I said anything, it was the ramblings of a sleep-talker or the ravings of someone in a fever. It had no significance. I am this person before you, as known to everyone in the village. I am nothing other than that — I have nothing to hide.’
I went home, my head buzzing with thoughts, convinced that some story lay behind Mustafa, something he did not want to divulge. Had my ears betrayed me the night before? The English poetry he had recited was real enough. I had neither been drunk, nor yet asleep. The image of him sitting in that chair, legs spread out and the glass held in both hands, was clear and unequivocable. Should I speak to my father? Should I tell Mahjoub? Perhaps the man had killed someone somewhere and had fled from prison? Perhaps he — but what secrets are there in this village? Perhaps he had lost his memory? It is said that some people are stricken by amnesia following an accident. Finally I decided to give him two or three days and if he did not provide me with the truth, then I would tackle him about it.
I did not have long to wait, for Mustafa came to see me that very same evening. On finding my father and brother with me, he said that he wanted to speak to me alone. I got up and we walked off together.
‘Will you come to my house tomorrow evening?’ he said to me. ‘Id like to talk to you.’
When I returned my father asked me, ‘What’s Mustafa want?’ I told him he wanted me to explain a contract for the ownership of some land he had in Khartoum.
Just before sunset I went to him and found him alone, seated in front of a pot of tea. He offered me some but I refused for I was impatient to hear the story; he must surely have decided to tell the truth. He offered me a cigarette, which I accepted.
I scrutinized his face as he slowly blew out the smoke; it appeared calm and strong. I dismissed the idea that he was a killer — the use of violence leaves a mark on the face that the eye cannot miss. As for his having lost his memory this was a possibility Finally; as Mustafa began to talk, I saw the mocking phantom around his eyes, more distinct than ever before, something as perceptible as a flash of lightning.
‘I shall say things to you I’ve said to no one before. I found no reason for doing so until now I have decided to do so lest your imagination run away with you — since you have studied poetry.’ He laughed so as to soften the edge of scorn that was evident in his voice.
‘I was afraid you’d go and talk to the others, that you’d tell them I wasn’t the man I claimed, which would — would cause a certain amount of embarrassment to them and to me. I thus have one request to make of you — that you promise me on your honour, that you swear to me, you won’t divulge to a soul anything of what I’m going to tell you tonight.’
He gave me a searching look and I said to him: ‘That depends upon what you say to me. How can I promise when I know nothing about you?’
‘I swear to you,’ he said, ‘that nothing of what I shall tell you will affect my presence in this village. I’m a man in full possession of my faculties, peaceful, and wanting only good for this village and its people.’
I will not conceal from you the fact that I hesitated. But the moment was charged with potentialities and my curiosity was boundless. The long and short of it was that I promised on oath, at which Mustafa pushed a bundle of papers towards me, indicating that I should look at them. I opened a sheet of paper and found it to be his birth certificate: Mustafa Sa’eed, born in Khartoum 16 August 1898, father Sa’eed Othman (deceased), mother Fatima Abdussadek. After that I opened his passport: the name, date and place of birth were the same as in the birth certificate. The profession was given as ‘Student’. The date of issue of the passport was 1916 in Cairo and it had been renewed in London in 1926. There was also another passport, a British one, issued in London in 1929. Turning over the pages, I found it was much stamped: French, German, Chinese and Danish. All this whetted my imagination in an extraordinary manner. I could not go on turning over the pages of the passport. Neither was I particularly interested in looking at the other papers. My face must have been charged with expectancy when I looked at him.
Mustafa went on blowing out smoke from his cigarette for a while. Then he said:
‘It’s a long story, but I won’t tell you everything. Some details won’t be of great interest to you, while others… As you see, I was born in Khartoum and grew up without a father, he having died several months before I was born. He did none the less leave us something with which to meet our needs — he used to trade in camels. I had no brothers or sisters, so life was not difficult for my mother and me. When I think back, I see her clearly with her thin lips resolutely closed, with something on her face like a mask, I don’t know — a thick mask, as though her face were the surface of the sea. Do you understand? It possessed not a single colour but a multitude, appearing and disappearing and intermingling. We had no relatives. She and I acted as relatives to each other. It was as if she were some stranger on the road with whom circumstances had chanced to bring me. Perhaps it was I who was an odd creature, or maybe it was my mother who was odd — I don’t know. We used not to talk much. I used to have — you may be surprised — a warm feeling of being free, that there was not a human being, by father or mother, to tie me down as a tent peg to a particular spot, a particular domain. I would read and sleep, go out and come in, play outside the house, loaf around the streets, and there would be no one to order me about. Yet I had felt from childhood that I — that I was different — I mean that I was not like ot
her children of my age: I wasn’t affected by anything, I didn’t cry when hit, wasn’t glad if the teacher praised me in class, didn’t suffer from the things the rest did. I was like something rounded, made of rubber: you throw it in the water and it doesn’t get wet, you throw it on the ground and it bounces back. That was the time when we first had schools. I remember now that people were not keen about them and so the government would send its officials to scour the villages and tribal communities, while the people would hide their sons — they thought of schools as being a great evil that had come to them with the armies of occupation. I was playing with some boys outside our house when along came a man dressed in uniform riding a horse. He came to a stop above us. The other boys ran away and I stayed on, looking at the horse and the man on it. He asked me my name and I told him. “How old are you?” he said. "I don’t know" I said. "Do you want to study at a school?” "What’s school?" I said to him. “A nice stone building in the middle of a large garden on the banks of the Nile. The bell rings and you go into class with the other pupils — you learn reading and writing and arithmetic.” “Will I wear a turban like that?” I said to the man, indicating the dome-like object on his head. The man laughed. “This isn’t a turban,” he said. “It’s a hat.” He dismounted and placed it on my head and the whole of my face disappeared inside it. “When you grow up,” the man said, “and leave school and become an official in the government, you’ll wear a hat like this.” “I’ll go to school,” I said to the man. He seated me behind him on the horse and took me to just such a place as he had described, made of stone, on the banks of the Nile, surrounded by trees and flowers. We went in to see a bearded man wearing a jibba, who stood up, patted me on the head and said: "But where’s your father?” When I told him my father was dead, he said to me: “Who’s your guardian?” “I want to go to school,” I said to him. The man looked at me kindly; then entered my name in a register. They asked me how old I was and I said I didn’t know; and suddenly the bell rang and I fled from them and entered one of the rooms. Then the two men came along and led me off to another room, where they sat me down on a chair among other boys. At noon, when I returned to my mother, she asked me where I’d been and I told her what had happened. For a moment she glanced at me curiously as though she wanted to hug me to her, for I saw that her face had momentarily lit up, that her eyes were bright and her lips had softened as though she wished to smile or to say something. But she did not say anything. This was a turning-point in my life. It was the first decision I had taken of my own free will.
‘I don’t ask you to believe what I tell you. You are entitled to wonder and to doubt — you’re free. These events happened a long time ago. They ate, as you’ll now see, of no value. I mention them to you because they spring to mind, because certain incidents recall certain other ones.
‘At any rate I devoted myself with the whole of my being to that new life. Soon I discovered in my brain a wonderful ability to learn by heart, to grasp and comprehend. On reading a book it would lodge itself solidly in my brain. No sooner had I set my mind to a problem in arithmetic than its intricacies opened up to me, melted away in my hands as though they were a piece of salt I had placed in water. I learnt to write in two weeks, after which I surged forward, nothing stopping me. My mind was like a sharp knife, cutting with cold effectiveness. I paid no attention to the astonishment of the teachers, the admiration or envy of my schoolmates. The teachers regarded me as a prodigy and the pupils began seeking my friendship, but I was busy with this wonderful machine with which I had been endowed. I was cold as a field of ice, nothing in the world could shake me.
‘I covered the first stage in two years and in the intermediate school I discovered other mysteries, amongst which was the English language. My brain continued on, biting and cutting like the teeth of a plough. Words and sentences formed themselves before me as though they were mathematical equations; algebra and geometry as though they were verses of poetry. I viewed the vast world in the geography lessons as though it were a chess board. The intermediate was the furthest stage of education one could reach in those days. After three years the headmaster — who was an Englishman — said to me, "This country hasn’t got the scope for that brain of yours, so take yourself off. Go to Egypt or Lebanon or England. We have nothing further to give you." I immediately said to him: “I want to go to Cairo.” He later facilitated my departure and arranged a free place for me at a secondary school in Cairo, with a scholarship from the government. This is a fact in my life: the way chance has placed in my path people who gave me a helping hand at every stage, people for whom I had no feelings of gratitude; I used to take their help as though it were some duty they were performing for me.
‘When the headmaster informed me that everything had been arranged for my departure to Cairo, I went to talk to my mother. Once again she gave me that strange look. Her lips parted momentarily as though she wanted to smile, then she shut them and her face reverted to its usual state: a thick mask, or rather a series of masks. Then she disappeared for a while and brought back her purse, which she placed in my hand.
“Had your father lived,” she said to me, "he would not have chosen for you differently from what you have chosen for yourself Do as you wish, depart or stay it’s up to you. It’s your life and you’re free to do with it as you will. In this purse is some money which will come in useful.” That was our farewell: no tears, no kisses, no fuss. Two human beings had walked along a part of the road together, then each had gone his way. This was in fact the last thing she said to me, for I did not see her again. After long years and numerous experiences, I remembered that moment and I wept. At the time, though, I felt nothing whatsoever. I packed up my belongings in a small suitcase and took the train. No one waved to me and I spilled no tears at parting from anyone. The train journeyed off into the desert and for a while I thought of the town I had left behind me; it was like some mountain on which I had pitched my tent and in the morning I had taken up the pegs, saddled my camel and continued my travels. While we were in Wadi Halfa I thought about Cairo, my brain picturing it as another mountain, larger in size, on which I would spend a night or two, after which I would continue the journey to yet another destination.
‘I remember that in the train I sat opposite a man wearing clerical garb and with a large golden cross round his neck. The man smiled at me and spoke in English, in which I answered. I remember well that amazement expressed itself on his face, his eyes opening wide directly he heard my voice. He examined my face closely then said: “How old are you?" I told him I was fifteen, though actually I was twelve, but I was afraid he might not take me seriously “Where are you going?” said the man. “I’m going to a secondary school in Cairo." “Alone?” he said. "Yes," I said. Again he gave me a long searching look. Before he spoke I said, “I like traveling alone. What’s there to be afraid of?” At this he uttered a sentence to which at the time I did not pay much attention. Then, with a large smile lighting up his face, he said: "You speak English with astonishing fluency."
‘When I arrived in Cairo I found Mr Robinson and his wife awaiting me, Mr Stockwell (the headmaster in Khartoum) having informed them I was coming. The man shook me by the hand and said, “How are you, Mr Sa’eed?" “Very well thank you, Mr Robinson," I told him. Then the man introduced me to his wife, and all of a sudden I felt the woman’s arms embracing me and her lips on my cheek. At that moment, as I stood on the station platform amidst a welter of sounds and sensations, with the woman’s arms round my neck, her mouth on my cheek, the smell of her body — a strange, European smell — tickling my nose, her breast touching my chest, I felt — I, a boy of twelve — a vague sexual yearning I had never previously experienced. I felt as though Cairo, that large mountain to which my camel had carried me, was a European woman just like Mrs Robinson, its arms embracing me, its perfume and the odour of its body filling my nostrils. In my mind her eyes were the colour of Cairo: grey—green, turning at night to a twinkling like that of a firefly. “Mr S
a’eed, you’re a person quite devoid of a sense of fun,” Mrs Robinson used to say to me and it was true that I never used to laugh. "Can’t you ever forget your intellect?" she would say laughing, and on the day they sentenced me at the Old Bailey to seven years’ imprisonment, I found no bosom except hers on which to rest my head. "Don’t cry dear child,” she had said to me, patting my head. They had no children. Mr Robinson knew Arabic well and was interested in Islamic thought and architecture, and it was with them that I visited Cairo’s mosques, its museums and antiquities. The district of Cairo they loved best was al-Azhar. When our feet wearied of walking about we’d take ourselves off to a cafe close by the al-Azhar Mosque where we would drink tamarind juice and Mr Robinson would recite the poetry of al-Ma’arri. At that time I was wrapped up in myself and paid no attention to the love they showered on me. Mrs Robinson was a buxom woman and with a bronze complexion that harmonized with Cairo, as though she were a picture tastefully chosen to go with the colour of the walls in a room. I would look at the hair of her armpits and would have a sensation of panic. Perhaps she knew I desired her. But she was sweet, the sweetest woman I’ve known; she used to laugh gaily and was as tender to me as a mother to her own son.
‘They were on the quayside when the ship set sail with me from Alexandria. I saw her far-away waving to me with her handkerchief then drying her tears with it, her husband at her side, his hands on his hips; even at that distance I could almost see the limpid blueness of his eyes. However I was not sad. My sole concern was to reach London, another mountain, larger than Cairo, where I knew not how many nights I would stay. Though I was then fifteen, I looked nearer twenty for I was as taut and firm-looking as an inflated waterskin. Behind me was a story of spectacular success at school, my sole weapon being that sharp knife inside my skull, while within my breast was a hard, cold feeling — as if it had been cast in rock. And when the sea swallowed up the shore and the waves heaved under the ship and the blue horizon encircled us, I immediately felt an overwhelming intimacy with the sea. I knew this green, infinite giant, as though it were roving back and forth within my ribs. The whole of the journey I savoured that feeling of being nowhere, alone, before and behind me either eternity or nothingness. The surface of the sea when calm is another mirage, ever changing and shifting, like the mask on my mother’s face. Here, too, was a desert laid out in blue-green, calling me, calling me. The mysterious call led me to the coast of Dover, to London and tragedy.
