Zeina

by Nawal El Saadawi

  In the morning, she would wake up and regain control of her conscious mind. She would ask herself why the Devil always stood to the left of people during prayers, urging them to defy God. She would argue with herself that communists were heretics because they always stood on the left side.

  A secret pleasure passed from the sole of her foot up through her leg, reaching her thigh, belly, and chest. Her breasts were two small buds that protruded slightly and were immensely painful when the Devil’s fingers pressed on them.

  During her childhood, she thought of the Devil as a pure spirit without a corporeal presence, the same as God. But after she had grown up, she realized that the Devil possessed a finger, perhaps even a body, along with all the other organs, including the sinful part which he used in challenging God’s commandments.

  At eleven, she saw the Devil’s face for the first time. As a child, she was always afraid of opening her eyes while asleep. When she was a little older, she became more curious and wished to see the features of the Devil: his nose, head, forehead, ears, and mouth. She sometimes felt the Devil’s breath on the nape of her neck while she lay prostrate. But she never had the courage to open her eyes to see him.

  At the age of eleven, she was stunned to realize that Satan had a moustache and a beard just like elderly men. He looked very much like her paternal and maternal grandfathers, and the old man next door, and the elderly man in the movie “Love Among the Elders”, which she had seen in the cinema the year before.

  She fell into a state of drowsiness as Satan tickled the sole of her foot. She feigned sleep so as to allow him to continue his flirtatious act. But by keeping this event a closely guarded secret from her parents, she became Satan’s partner in sin. She would bury her head in the pillow, stop her breath and pretend to be dead, thus encouraging him with her feigned death to continue, reaching the focal point buried in the folds of the flesh, deep inside the womb of existence. As she lay in a deathly state, a sensation of pleasure that was free from any sense of guilt would pervade her whole being.

  One night, Satan didn’t come as usual. He remained absent for a long time. Bodour imagined that God had punished him with death. But she heard from her mother and father that he had gone to London for a prostate operation. The word prostate sounded uncannily feminine to her ear, and she had no idea where this feminine-sounding part might be located on Satan’s body. She wondered why God should insert a feminine organ in a male body. In any case, Satan never came back from London, having perhaps died there. So Bodour drove him out of her dreams, whether during her sleep or her wakeful moments. At eleven, Satan was gone completely from her memory. He survived, however, in the sole of her left foot, tickling her until she fell asleep and telling her the tale of Clever Hassan and the Ogress. In the morning, when she performed ablution and prayers, Satan no longer stood on her left side. She developed into a chaste young woman who was cleansed of all sinfulness.

  Bodour had already obtained her BA degree by the time of the great demonstrations. She was a model young woman whose whole life was consumed by the love of God and the nation. Only her heart felt overburdened, for it still carried the imprint of Satan’s finger on her body. What a burden it was for her heart to keep God, the nation, and Satan all in the same space!

  On the day of the great demonstrations, she found herself squeezed between the bodies of thousands of women and men, young and old. The masses poured forth from the alleys and the boulevards, from Bulaq, Maadi, and Helwan. They were a mix of workers, government employees, farmers, and school and college students of both sexes. With bare, chapped feet, or wearing slippers, sandals, or shiny leather shoes of the best quality, the crowds marched at a single pace.

  Bodour walked along with them, stomping on the ground with her leather shoes, energized by the strength of the thousands, or perhaps the millions, who screamed in one breath, “Down with the king, long live free Egypt”. The word “free” stuck in her throat like a pang. Although she was moving with the crowds, she felt herself enchained. In vain, she moved her arms and legs to liberate herself from the chains. She cried out, but her stifled screams dissolved in the general noise. Her tears merged with her sweat, and her dress stuck to her body underneath her blue jumper. Next to her walked Nessim. His tall body was gracefully erect, and he trod strongly and steadily on the ground, his blue eyes looking straight ahead. Not once did he look in her direction, although she kept furtively glancing at him. His profile showed his proud pointed nose and his pursed lips. He wore a grey jumper that was tatty at the elbows and made of coarse wool. The white collar of his shirt was creased and his old shoes dusty. The soles of his shoes had a piece of iron like a horseshoe. In her dreams, his thick frizzy hair brushed her fine, smooth face.

  Bodour was hugely attracted to men who were masculine and rough, men who wore their lives on their sleeves for the sake of God and the homeland. These men were very different from her cousin, Ahmed, who was scared of cockroaches, mice, and the frogs leaping in the garden, whose fingers were short and fat like hers and whose build was as short as that of his father and of his uncle, General Ahmed al-Damhiri. He inherited their square-shaped head and the square chin underneath thin lips, the upper thinner than the lower. He pursed his lips whenever he fell into deep thought, a gesture he inherited from his father and his grandfather, Sheikh al-Damhiri, who was the deputy or the vice deputy of the great al-Azhar Mosque.

  Bodour met Nessim while in her freshman year at university. From the first moment their eyes met, something trembled deep inside her. He wasn’t her colleague in the Faculty of Arts, but he came to university on the days demonstrations were to take place. When she saw him from afar, her heart fluttered wildly against her ribs. Her short figure swayed and swung over her pointed heels. She pressed with her hand on the strap of her bag slung over her shoulder, holding on to it to regain her balance. He often passed her without looking or smiling at her the way the other colleagues did. He sometimes nodded in greeting but continued on his way without looking back. She peered at his straight back, his taut muscles, and his lean body. She admired the way his arms moved in harmony with his legs and the way his tall, spear-like figure cut the air as he walked.

  For two years she saw him in her dreams. In the third, when she saw him at one of the meetings, she initiated the conversation. The seat next to him was empty. She smiled at him and sat next to him saying, “Good morning, Nessim.” They met again inside the university or in the Orman Garden nearby, and sat on a wooden bench talking and exchanging revolutionary books. Bodour was at heart drawn to the idea of rebellion. She revolted against everything in her life, including her own parents, uncles, and grandparents, perhaps God and Satan as well. Since the age of seven, her fear of God bordered on hatred, but she never had the courage to admit her fantasies or dreams to herself. Ever since her childhood, she had been committing many sinful acts in her sleep.

  She studied Nessim’s profile as she walked side by side with him during demonstrations. The harsh, acute contours of his face looked as though they were carved out of stone. His nose was so pointed that it seemed to cleave the air, and his tall thin body seemed to be made of something other than flesh. As he walked, he carried his body as though it were weightless.

  From the moment the Devil’s finger started stroking her, Bodour wished to be free of the weight of her body, the load of plump flesh that she carried each and every day on her arms, chest, belly, legs, and the soles of her feet. She dreamed of a force that would lift this weight off her shoulders. She dreamed of two strong arms reaching down from heaven to crush her body until the flesh dissolved and vanished completely.

  After the demonstration ended and the crowds dispersed, she continued walking beside him, wishing she could walk on and on with him until the end of her days. She wanted him to carry her in his arms and march ahead until the moment of death. They walked silently, side by side, through one street after another, until Nessim stopped in front of the basement of a huge building. He stood there fo
r a moment, silent and thoughtful. Then, raising his eyes to her face, he spoke, his voice slightly hoarse and the blue irises of his eyes sparkling with what seemed like choked tears. His words were fitful and broken as he said, “I don’t know what I should say, Bodour! But I feel ... I feel you ... I have strong feelings like you ... but you come from a different class, Bodour ... I live here in this basement flat ...”

  All this happened many years earlier when Bodour was twenty and was still dreaming of love and revolution. She later obtained her BA from the Faculty of Arts, although she disliked literature and criticism. She only loved and wanted Nessim, dreamed of him and couldn’t imagine life without him. She would have preferred a life in the basement flat to her life with her parents in the large fancy villa in Garden City.

  Bodour couldn’t recall what she told him as they stood in front of his basement room. Did she tell him that she loved him? She might have said it, although her voice was completely silent. The words might have come out of her mouth like warm soundless vapor.

  She stood there hesitantly, one hand resting on the cracked wooden door and the other holding on to the strap of the bag slung over her shoulder. She pulled at it as if to keep her balance and resist the earth’s gravity which dragged her down.

  He was equally hesitant and quiet. The air was also still. Nothing in fact moved except her breath, while he seemed to have stopped breathing completely and stood there transfixed, almost like a statue.

  She couldn’t remember how long it was they stood there, near the closed door. He didn’t produce the key to open the door although it lay there in his pocket. His arm didn’t move, and nor did any other part of his body.

  What was he waiting for? Did he expect her to turn and head home? Or raise her hand and slap him on the face before going away? In her eyes, he saw an imprisoned tear that neither fell nor disappeared. Were these the suppressed tears of a young woman feeling mortified, having offered herself to a man only to be rejected by him? Was she a young woman reaching out for help from another human being, but receiving only rejection?

  He finally took the key from his pocket and opened the door, and she followed him like a sleepwalker. She stood with her back against the wall, hoping its hardness might provide her with support and strength. But its coldness sent a shiver through her overheated body, and an unnameable fear overtook her whole being.

  He held her little white hand in his large palm, and she fell into his arms like a ripe fruit dropping from the tree, or Newton’s apple pulled down by the force of the earth’s gravity.

  Bodour was familiar to some extent with the physics of Newton and Einstein, was aware of the theories of relativity and Marxism, and was well read in literature and criticism. Nessim on his part was greatly interested in science and philosophy. He didn’t believe in the story of Adam or the apple that Eve tempted him with, unlike Bodour who still held on to what her parents and teachers at school had always told her.

  The mattress on the tiled floor was covered with books, papers and pamphlets. Lining the walls were wooden shelves holding books, magazines, and folders. In the corner stood a bamboo chair on which was spread a washed white shirt. A square iron latticed window opened out onto the asphalt street.

  Then the room and all its contents disappeared. As he drew her close to his chest and kissed her hair and eyes, time and place vanished completely. The dream which had been visiting her every night came back to her, although the pleasure she experienced in the dream was much more intense than in reality, for the Nessim of her fantasies was more daring, and much more forceful in invading her body. In the dream, his body seemed harder than a spear that cut through the universe to reach the ultimate point. Reality always seemed pale in comparison with the stark beauty of fantasy.

  When Bodour came to, she saw the tiled floor and the latticed window with the iron bars. She could hear the sound of Nessim’s breath as he lay sound asleep beside her. It was almost like she could hear the sound of her father’s snores, and the Adam’s apple on his throat was like her father’s too. Nessim’s muscles were now sagging, passive and unchallenging, like her own muscles and her mother’s.

  She got dressed in a hurry, slung the bag strap over her shoulder and tiptoed toward the door. But she heard him calling her, “Bodour?”

  She turned. He came toward her with his tall, upright gait, the firmness of his muscles restored and his eyes radiating a blue light bordering on blackness. She felt that she was looking into the depths of the sea or the skies at night.

  It was not yet dawn. She wanted to throw herself on his chest and cry, for there had always been a vague sadness inside her since childhood. In his arms, grief vanished and was replaced by an overwhelming sense of joy that shook her whole being and removed all the deep-rooted pains and sorrows. But in her head there was a tiny cell, like a little needle, that reminded her of her father, her grandfather, the family honor, God, Satan, and the blazing fires awaiting her after death.

  “Bodour?”

  “Yes, Nessim.”

  “Shall we go to the Ma’zoun, the marriage registrar, to get married in the morning?”

  “Oh my God!”

  Her chest heaved with the quickening of her heartbeats. The word “Ma’zoun” had a terrifying, vague, and elusive ring that had absolutely no connection with love. Could she possibly get married in the morning?

  Her father was lying in bed sipping his tea, reading the papers, yawning and stretching his limbs, fully at ease and confident that his innocent, virgin daughter was sleeping in her bed or taking a bath in preparation for going to university.

  “Is the Ma’zoun necessary?”

  “Of course, Bodour. No marriage is valid without the Ma’zoun ... and then ...”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. He closed his lips and gave her a protectively paternal look, although she was barely two years his junior. But he felt a hundred years older, for she had never known poverty or hunger and never slept on the pavement. She hadn’t worked as a child apprentice at a mechanic’s shop or gotten kicked by the master mechanic in the stomach. She had never been beaten up at a police station, and nor had she seen her mother die of grief or bleed with every breath she took, or witnessed her father drown in prison.

  “I’m older than you, Bodour, and I know how hard life can be. You’re a nice girl and I fear for you if ...”

  He stopped at “if” because he wanted to say, “If you became pregnant outside marriage, your father, General Ahmed al-Damhiri, might kill you!” He gave her a sunny smile. The light in his eyes intensified, and he enveloped her in his arms, whispering, “If we could just have a child who is as beautiful as you are!”

  She closed her eyes with her head resting on his chest and fell to dreaming. Could she possibly have a boy or a girl who looked like Nessim? A child with the same tall, graceful figure, the sparkling eyes, the lively, rebellious spirit, the defiance and the hardness?

  Before the light of dawn appeared, she was shaken out of her reveries by the sounds of police car sirens. Armored vehicles roamed the streets, rifle butts knocked on doors, torch lights fell on the pale, emaciated faces of poor workers and college students who were being pursued by the security police in factories, schools, or universities, because their photographs appeared on the records of the Ministry of the Interior.

  Bodour didn’t know how she found herself lying in the safety of her own bed. She closed her eyes under the covers as the warmth slowly engulfed her. The latest events infiltrated her dream as she fell asleep. In the dream, she walked with the demonstrators. Beside her were the two gleaming eyes radiating light like two stars in the darkness of the night. Under the covers, her hands felt her body. Within the folds of the flesh, the dream became a palpable reality, and the fantasy turned into a concrete fact she could touch with her own hands. His voice reached her ears like light waves, “If it’s a boy, we’ll call him Zein, after my father.” Bodour whispered, “And if it’s a girl, we’ll call her Zeina, after my grandmother.”r />
  In the dream, she saw her grandmother’s ghost coming into her room. She was a graceful woman with sparkling eyes. Bodour called her Nana Zizi. When she was eight years old, her grandmother, who was still alive then, sat next to her bed and told her bedtime stories. She also told her the sad story of her life, and how she had wished to become a famous singer, for she loved singing, dancing and writing poetry. But her father took her out of school at the age of fourteen. They dressed her in a white wedding gown, and after the drumbeats and the festivities, she found herself alone, locked in a bedroom with a strange, rough-looking man who was short and hunch-backed. He wore a thick, black moustache on his upper lip.

  While Bodour lay warmly in her bed dreaming of her grandmother, an armored vehicle stopped in front of the splintered wooden door of the basement of the tall building. Five police officers carrying rifles surrounded Nessim and flashed a bright light in his face. The pupils of his eyes blazed with bluish black anger. His tall, lean body seemed as hard as a spear, and his head was held high above his firm, sturdy neck. One of the police officers hit him on the head with the butt of his rifle, while another slapped him on the cheek. He stood upright, nevertheless. Not a single muscle in his face moved, and he didn’t bat an eyelid.

  One of the police officers grew so angry that he spat in his face and punched him below the ribs, at that point of both pleasure and pain, the source of life and love.

  When they dragged him to the armored vehicle outside, his nose and mouth were bleeding, dripping over his white vest which revealed the black hairs covering his chest. The blood streamed to his white Egyptian cotton pants. The smell of cotton merged in his nostrils with the smell of blood, dust and the fertile black soil, where green shrubs grew, carrying spots of white buds. He was eight years old when he sang with the other village children, running all over the green expanse dotted with white buds, “You’ve come to bring us light, oh Nile cotton, how lovely you are! Come on, girls of the Nile, collect the matchless cotton, God’s gift!”