Zeina

by Nawal El Saadawi

  The apartment door stood open, like the doors of clinics, undertakers’ offices, barbers’ and butchers’ shops, brokers, lawyers, foreign agents, private businesses, political party offices, businessmen, charity organizations dubbed non-governmental organizations, human rights’ and women’s rights associations, all inviting and enticing their victims to enter.

  On the door hung a shining brass plate carrying the doctor’s name and title, and opening times and prices. At the entrance stood a small reception office, behind which a man in a white coat sat. He noted down her name in a huge ledger, took a pile of pound notes from her, and gave her a number. She stared at him for a long time as she stood there, then sat in the waiting room, perusing the faces present. They were all women with pale, distraught faces, sitting silently, dejectedly, weighed down by worries and fears of the unknown. One of them had a white shawl wrapped around her head and sat murmuring sacred verses. A young woman with long black hair and wearing a miniskirt glanced at her quickly and turned away. Her face was heavily made up and her thick eyelashes blinked incessantly.

  The hour struck four. The male nurse led her toward a small door at the end of a long corridor. She felt that death lurked there, concealing itself behind the white coat.

  Since childhood, Badreya hated doctors, although she didn’t cry as Bodour did when the doctor gave her an injection. She would only grit her teeth and swallow her pain.

  She climbed onto the long shiny metal table, which stood next to a smaller table covered with a large number of sharp tools, such as scalpels, knives, needles, and steel rods. A huge pail full of congealed blood and little pieces of red meat stood on the tiled floor.

  Before he could tie her open legs to the two iron poles, she jumped up, shook off the shivering and trembling, got dressed quickly, and ran out into the street. She didn’t take back the money she had paid to the male nurse and she never looked behind her ...

  Bodour came to the end of the first chapter of her novel.

  Bodour asked herself, “Did Badreya have more courage and motherly tenderness than myself?”

  At night, Bodour cried for her stolen novel. She lost it in her sleep, together with the daughter she had carried in her womb. She lost her in a time and a place that she wasn’t fully conscious of. She lost her in the dream.

  In her sleep, she roamed the streets, alleys, and pavements, stopping at church and mosque doors, looking for her. Sometimes she tripped over a bundle covered with a soft pink woollen blanket. She would recognize the color and the smell, and would see the small, white fingers like hers, and the little face looking as bright and soft as a petal. Her complexion was similar to her own. The blood stains had dried on the face but the tears hadn’t, and the closed eyelids were wet with drops of rain.

  If the baby hadn’t opened her eyelids at that moment, nothing might have happened. Bodour might not have known that she was her child. And neither would she have known whether she had been pregnant with her in her wakefulness or sleep. She wouldn’t have got up from her warm bed in the middle of the night and roamed the streets searching for her, tearing her hair, striking her face, or stabbing herself with a knife in the chest.

  But the baby’s closed, swollen eyelids suddenly opened, realizing perhaps that her mother was going to leave her for good. The mother might have also realized at this point in time that she was leaving her child forever, that she would be tearing out her own liver, wrapping it, dripping with blood, in a soft, woollen blanket to protect it from the cold and the dust and the stones of the street. She rubbed her palms clean on the ground and tore out her liver from her chest, depositing it on the street and following the dark, endlessly long road.

  A mysterious force often woke Bodour in the middle of the night. She would feel a sharp pointed finger stabbing her shoulder blade, a foot kicking her in the belly, a razor blade moving over her wrist, or a fist rising high and falling to give her a powerful slap. She would get up from her sleep, her eyes wide open, imagining it was her husband, Zakariah al-Khartiti, who was slapping her, or Badreya rising from the heap of pages near the bed to punch her hard. Bodour wanted to raise her hand to deal an equally powerful blow, but her white hand was too heavy to lift. Her short, fat arms were glued to her sides, her heart incarcerated within the cage of her ribs, and her liver removed through the long gash on her right side. Since that long, deep cut had been made in her body, Bodour had lost the ability to resist. She had been more courageous as a child. At school, if one of her mates hit her, she returned the punch just as powerfully, if not more so. She walked among the girls with her head held high, and joined demonstrations, shouting against the government and occupation. Next to her walked Nessim, with his erect, graceful body and his large eyes reflecting the sunlight. His eyes changed color with the change of the light, turning dark blue during the night and light blue during the day.

  In the dream, Badreya said to Bodour, “You will have a child with the same eyes. You will look into these eyes and possess the universe.”

  If Bodour hadn’t opened her eyes and seen the dark blue pupils, she might have lived happily like other women. She might have built a happy home with Zakariah al-Khartiti. She might have become satisfied with her distinguished status at the university, her great critical works, her husband’s daily column in the Sphinx newspaper, and her daughter, Mageeda, who wrote for the Renaissance magazine. She might have revelled in the invitation cards coming to her through the mail, and the books and works sent to her by upcoming writers, both men and women, pleading for a word, a reference, a gesture.

  Bodour concealed the depths of her sorrows in the layers of her chubby face. Her secret was buried deep inside her. She feigned a bright smile, and every now and then gave a resounding laugh at nothing in particular. Her laugh came long and sharp, almost like a suppressed sob.

  Cattle experts have noted that if the mother cow gets the chance to look into the eyes of her newborn calf before it is taken away, she will suffer from chronic depression. They therefore recommend placing thick blindfolds on her eyes to stop her seeing her calf after she has given birth to it, to prevent her from meeting its eyes even once. This single look stays with the mother until the moment she dies. If this happened to cows, couldn’t it happen to a renowned critic like Bodour? Or to the heroine of a literary novel like Badreya?

  At night, Badreya touched her belly under the covers. She could feel the little heartbeats, the kicks of the tiny feet against the walls of her womb. She pressed with her hands to stop the sound and wrapped her fingers around the little neck to strangle it, wishing it were dead but at the same time hoping it might live to see the light of day. She was torn between two wills: God’s and Satan’s. God wished it dead because it was a bastard child, while Satan wanted it as lively and radiant as a star in the firmament.

  Bodour walked in the dark alleyways, dragged by Badreya like a cow being driven by a farmer. Her eyes didn’t see the road ahead of her, because she was either blindfolded or fast asleep. Or because she had left her destiny in the hands of Badreya, who urged her to rebel. Since childhood, she pushed her to go out on the streets, to play truant from school, to join demonstrations and to shout against God and the nation, against her father, mother and grandfather, against teachers, both male and female. It was Badreya who drove her to enter the basement room, to fall in love with Nessim. It was Badreya who wanted to have his child, a child that would inherit his gracefulness and his proud walk, a child that would become heir to his unwavering eyes, which turned dark blue at night and light blue in the daylight. She imagined him a different man called Naim, who was her first love before she got her period. It was Badreya who opened her eyelids to see the eyes before they disappeared into the darkness. She saw them for a split second, but she never stopped looking for them afterwards. After the whole universe had gone to sleep, she got dressed and went out, walking along the streets, looking into the eyes of little children, trying to find those pupils. A girl might be sleeping soundly on the pavement, her
eyes closed, her little feet charred, her dark complexion burnt by the heat of the sun and dotted with white and yellow spots as well as scars and bruises. Her lips would be open a little, like a baby’s mouth during sleep, smiling to her mother or her unknown father in the dream. She would open her eyes to find Badreya sitting next to her, handing her a loaf of bread fresh from the oven or a piece of cake before she got up and left. But these were not the same pupils, not the same eyes, and this was not the same glance engraved in the cells and grooves of the brain. It was not Zeina, daughter of Naim.

  The girl didn’t reach out to touch her, for she realized that she wasn’t her mother. She was an unknown woman, a woman perhaps belonging to a charity organization that helped street children or looked after people suffering from tuberculosis, leprosy, or AIDS. She might have been one of the women on the Childhood and Motherhood Council, or an employee at one of the political parties or at a human rights organization.

  The girl was too proud to extend her hand. She didn’t want the charity or pity of anyone, and didn’t crave a piece of bread or cake. What she wanted was to go to school and university like the other girls from good families. She wanted to have dignity, pride, a birth certificate, BA and PhD degrees.

  Badreya came back home totally exhausted, her head bent, looking almost like Bodour after marriage. Zakariah al-Khartiti was not her Prince Charming. He asked her father for her hand in marriage. This was the period after the revolution and the overthrow of the king. In the seats of power sat little kings wearing military uniforms, like her father, Captain al-Damhiri. His sister was married to the cousin of one of the revolutionary leaders. Al-Damhiri removed the military uniform and dressed in an elegant civilian suit. He was given a lavish office in the Foundation or Committee of Culture, Literature, Art, and the Press. Like other military personalities, he accumulated a number of posts and sat on several higher committees. One person might supervise a number of authorities, councils and committees. The name of any committee was always appended by the words “Permanent Higher”. Each one of the military personalities held a yellow rosary in his hand and went to Friday prayers to sit behind the first or second row. He imagined God to be always on his side in every step he took and that his “permanent higher” committee was inspired by God and was as permanent and everlasting as God Himself.

  Zakariah al-Khartiti was a young upcoming journalist. He had written a few articles in praise of the king, which he deleted from his memory after the revolution and started writing about the glory of the new regime. He later switched to writing about Arab Islamic socialism, which he contended was a very different kettle of fish from the socialism of Karl Marx, the “Jewish atheist”.

  He pressed with his pen on the words “Jewish atheist”, because one of these two epithets was enough to ruin the reputation of any human being, living or dead.

  In the morning, while the young Zakariah al-Khartiti was sipping his coffee, he looked at the photographs published on the first page of the newspaper. His dreams didn’t go so far as to imagine himself among the great writers on the front page. He turned the pages with his lean fingers, his narrow, sunken eyes, and looked at the faces on the second page. He saw the face of the great writer, al-Damhiri, who had turned from a military man to a great thinker, with opinions on literature, art, and culture. His photographs appeared inside a square frame on top of an item of news concerning him, an article he wrote or a clumsy poem he composed on political or amorous themes.

  One day, as he was reading the paper, he saw the picture of a girl with a chubby moon face and smooth, long hair falling about her shoulders. She had the sleepy eyes of a female dreaming of love. Her plump, white hands rested on the desk, and between her fingers was a small pencil resembling an eyebrow pencil. The caption underneath the picture read: “Young Critic, Bodour al-Damhiri”.

  The wound deep inside her womb had healed and she had banished his image from her memory: the face, the tall gait, the eyes, and the room with the tiled floor. According to the medical report, he had died of natural causes in prison. But he wasn’t the only one who died as a result of being beaten up in prison, shot by a stray bullet during demonstrations, or chased by a police squadron while trying to run away in the middle of the night. How many were they? How many trampled on the picture of the king, railed against British imperialism, raised their voices for a free, dignified Egypt and paved the way for the revolution? But as soon as the men in military uniforms were seated at the helm, they rewrote history. They became the heroes, while all the past martyrs were sent into oblivion, their blood congealing on the streets and in jails and detention camps, completely lost to the collective memory of the nation and banished from the textbooks of the national curriculum.

  Bodour’s wedding was a lavish affair, attended by the great dignitaries of the state and the distinguished names in the realm of literature, art, and the media. Zakariah al-Khartiti walked pompously in his groom’s suit, while Bodour wore a wedding dress made of white lace, her large bosom squeezed into a silk brassiere. Her chest heaved and fell with the strong, escalating beats of the tamborines. She panted as she sat staring at the profile of her bridegroom, with his triangular head, his eyes sunken underneath his large forehead, and his large aquiline nose. His black hair was thinning in the middle and his small feet were concealed by a pair of shiny pointed black shoes. His triangular chin looked almost like an acute angle.

  Her friend, Safaa al-Dhabi, held her little white hands in hers. Her fingers trembled and her palm was moist with sweat.

  “Courage, Bodour!”

  “May God help me, Safi!”

  “Yes, God is great!”

  The drumbeats sounded and the music played. A wedding song celebrating the bride and groom was sung. “Oh beautiful bride, fall in the arms of your lovely groom ...”

  The words “fall in” sounded in Bodour’s ears as “fallen”. She let out a sigh, a smile, and a little short nervous laugh, which sounded like a stifled sob. Safi gave her a side glance, suppressing her laughter.

  In the bedroom, before he took off her wedding gown, he whispered in her ear the words “I love you”. But she knew he was lying. She began to breathe more calmly and the beats within her chest slowed as Badreya’s voice came to her from below the pillow while she lay underneath him. A lie for a lie, and an eye for an eye, Bodour, as God has said.

  Bodour believed in the Holy Books, while Badreya, like her friend Naim, believed that the future of humanity lay in science and art, that the universe has been evolving over millions of years, and that Adam wasn’t created out of clay.

  Miss Mariam carried on looking for Zeina Bint Zeinat after she stopped coming to school. The image of her walking tall among the girls and sitting on the backless piano stool, her back straight and her thin, long fingers moving with the speed of light over the keys, was engraved in her memory. Her eyes were two blue volcanic stones, two dark blue flames that changed with the movement of the earth around the sun and with her mounting anger at one of the girls. When Miss Mariam smiled at her, she had a bright childish smile like the sunlight in the morning dispelling the night’s darkness. Miss Mariam lived in a two-bedroom apartment on a narrow street off Tahrir Road. Her Muslim mother, Fatima, had married the Christian Mikhail without an official marriage contract. Both Shari’a and civil law forbade the union of a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man. Fatima ran away from her family in Upper Egypt and Mikhail ran away from his in al-Beheira province. They met in Cairo during one of the anti-government demonstrations.

  Miss Mariam became a music teacher. Before he emigrated abroad, Mikhail had been an oud (lute) musician in a band. Her mother, Fatima, was shot dead by her Upper Egyptian father.

  On a cold, dark night, as Miss Mariam was walking along Nile Street, she saw a little girl lying on a long wooden bench inside a wooden shack, where street children slept in their ash-colored galabeyas. A huge cat with green eyes gleaming in the darkness lay near them, surrounded by her six little newborn kittens, clingi
ng to her for warmth. She licked the dirt and blood from their little bodies.

  Miss Mariam wore black leather shoes with thick, square heels. She stomped hard on the ground, one foot after the other, the sound ringing in the stillness of the night. On hearing the sound, the mother cat started to her feet. She encircled her six little kittens, her green eyes burning, and bared her teeth, ready to defend them. Like street children, street cats were always engaged in fights: against stray dogs, gangsters, drug traffickers, unemployed and unhopeful young people, farmers who had deserted their poor, barren land, workers laid off by bankrupt factories, prostitutes with nothing left for them to sell but their bodies, and wives living on the streets after their husbands had pronounced the words “You’re divorced” three times.

  Zeina Bint Zeinat was unique in that she was fortified against molestation and rape. No man could touch her, even when she was fast asleep. Her long pointed fingers would stick like nails into the neck of any man, and her strong, sharp teeth would cut into any part of his flesh like knives and would tear it out.

  During the day, she sat with other girls on the wooden benches or on the stone or iron fences along the Nile. She recited aloud to them a song she had written in her dream, which she knew by heart along with the music and the rhythm. She tapped with her toes, or with her fingers that were as hard as nails, on the wooden bench, on the iron fence, or on the asphalt of the street. She trod on rocks and digested stones, tapping the rhythm and singing along with the girls who danced in their tattered galabeyas and stomped with their little chapped feet on the ground. The clouds in their eyes vanished, revealing their true color: dark blue or green, like those of newborn kittens. Zeina Bint Zeinat watched over them like a mother, even though she was only a year or two older than they were. She looked as though she was a hundred years older, as though she hadn’t been born a baby but had grown tall inside the womb and come out into the world as a fully formed girl. She was so strong that whenever the world dealt her a blow, she retaliated with equally strong blows. But the child inside her survived and sang until the very end. Her heart beat hard within her chest whenever Miss Mariam or one of the girls on the street or at school smiled at her, and when she stood on stage.