Zeina

by Nawal El Saadawi

  She had no friend at school except Mageeda al-Khartiti, who sometimes invited her to her large house in Garden City. There they played together in the big garden around the house. They also played the piano together in the large lounge, although Mageeda’s plump fingers were extraordinarily slow. She was as short as her father, and when she walked she swayed like a duckling, very much like her mother.

  A large room built of red brick stood in the back garden. On its walls grew little bougainvillea shrubs that reached the roof with their various colors: purple, white, yellow, and crimson red. The inside walls of the room were lined with bookshelves up to the ceiling. In the corner, next to the window, stood a large desk. On it there were many items: a big electric lamp, piles of papers, clippings from magazines and newspapers, and handwritten articles by Zakariah al-Khartiti. He sometimes came to this room in search of peace and quiet, when he wished to be away from the house and his wife, Bodour, and her friends with their high-pitched voices, especially her bosom friend, Safaa al-Dhabi. These two were inseparable, whether at university or at home. Bodour would read her critical articles aloud to Safaa before they were published. They would argue for hours on end until night-time. Safaa would then take her handbag and leave.

  But before she left, Bodour would call out to her, “Forgot to tell you, Safi ...”

  “Yes, Bodour?”

  They would stand and talk on the marble staircase, laughing every now and then. Zakariah al-Khartiti could recognize his wife’s laugh from among a thousand, a soft elongated laugh that trailed into an intermittent gasp which sounded like suppressed sobs. He couldn’t bear that laugh and often slapped her on the face in bed to stop her laughing. And if she cried, he slapped her, for her tears were identical to her laughter as he lay on top of her. She never raised her hand to slap him back. She’d look down and suppress the tears or the laughter, stifling the urge to raise her hand and bring it down on his face. She wouldn’t slap him or hit him, and she wouldn’t tell him what she thought of him. If he told her that he loved her, her lips might open to produce the stifled words buried deep inside her, but only a stream of voiceless hot air would come out.

  Her husband never slapped her while her father was still alive. He only married her because she was the daughter of the great al-Damhiri, whose photograph appeared next to those of the eminent personalities of the state and whose image flashed on television screens. He travelled around in a stretch limousine driven by a dark-skinned man in a soldier’s uniform. He lived in a villa overlooking the Nile, with a study lined with books on literature, art, politics, history, philosophy, and religion. With a single line, he could transform an unknown, upcoming journalist into a great writer or an editor-in-chief.

  In the large garden surrounding the house, Mageeda played hide-and-seek with Zeina Bint Zeinat. Mageeda would hide behind a tree, underneath a car parked in the garage, or in the storeroom behind the big wooden or cardboard boxes, where her mother stored the books and novels she received by post. She usually stacked them on the floor next to her desk, along with the newspapers and magazines she had finished reading. When Nanny cleaned the room, she’d carry the books and novels, still in the packages carrying name, address and postage stamps, in a huge black plastic bag, and would take them across the great hall, down the marble staircase to the garden. She would pass along the stone pathways in between the flower basins, arriving at the long corridor standing between the iron fence and the trees. She would follow the pathway round the house until she reached the back garden, sometimes stopping briefly to catch her breath or to peep inside the master’s room. She would glimpse him through the glass window sitting at his desk, reading in the light of an electric lamp, writing his daily column, or just staring into emptiness with his eyes fixed upward as though waiting for inspiration from heaven.

  Mageeda didn’t hide in her father’s room. Only once did she enter that room while her father was engrossed in writing. He raised his head from the paper and shouted angrily, “Get out of here! Never come in here again. Nobody should enter this room, is that clear?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  Zeina Bint Zeinat was capable of finding and catching Mageeda in any hiding place in the garden. Her large eyes sparkled with a blue, green, or red flame, reflecting the colors of the flowers. They revealed to her all the hiding places as though they could emit light rays. Her body was light and agile. She was like a white butterfly in her Egyptian cotton dress running among the trees. Her mother Zeinat used to buy three meters of cotton from the al-Mahallah al-Kubra outlet on Tahrir Street for her. Miss Mariam paid for the material, the black leather shoes, and the white ribbon in her frizzy hair that stood like black wires.

  A girl with this kind of hair was the object of people’s scorn, for girls from good families had long smooth hair falling softly down their backs. Their hair submitted easily to the movement of the gentle breeze and the fingers of their husbands after marriage.

  Zeina Bint Zeinat had no family. Her father died while she was still in the womb. She inherited from him the tough, stubborn “gene”, the upright gait and the robust head. She inherited the hair which stood like iron spikes protecting the head from blows, and her large pupils which had the black and blue colors of earth and sea. The pupils of her eyes rolled in their spheres like the earth around the sun, and were surrounded by the clear white color of the waves underneath the sunlight or the mountaintops rising high beyond the sea.

  Through the wall of the womb she heard her mother shouting against injustice and hailing freedom. She heard the irregular whimpers and suppressed sobs, the sound of the whip lashing in the air and falling on living flesh, dripping with blood. Rifle butts kicked him below the stomach, between the firm thighs, on the tip of the male organ they call “the rod” in prison. The prison warden, with his narrow sunken eyes, glanced at the prisoner’s penis. His eyes were filled with envy and admiration, since envy and admiration often went hand in hand. The prison warden’s was tiny, thin and curved, with hardly any blood flowing through it. The little blood that flowed there was yellowish, anaemic, and full of the fear of God and of his superiors. If it had an erection, it would totter and reel, hesitating between going forward and refraining. It stayed shrunk in the marital bed and never had any action except when stimulated by a young jailed prostitute. He lied to his wife that he went to see a doctor about his sexual incompetence. He crept from her bed at night to visit prostitutes after swallowing the blue Viagra pill.

  Admiration and envy were directed at the prisoner’s proud head. Even when crushed under blows, it remained erect, looking up to the sky, challenging both the sky and the superiors. At night, the prison warden dreamed of striking the prisoner’s neck with his sword, removing the proud head and installing it on his own wobbly neck. But this was an impossible dream, for the prisoner’s head could never replace the jailer’s.

  Mageeda and Zeina Bint Zeinat played hide-and-seek in the large garden. Whenever Mageeda disappeared, Zeina managed to find her and to take hold of her arm, pulling her and screaming with joy “Got you, Mageeda!”

  Roles changed during the course of the game, for Mageeda would become the hunter, and Zeina Bint Zeinat would hide. When Mageeda untied the blindfolds covering her eyes, she would look around for Zeina. She would look behind the boxes in the storeroom and underneath the cars parked in the garage. She would inspect the holes in the ground between the trees and the flower basins.

  But Mageeda never managed even once to catch Zeina Bint Zeinat, for the latter was born and bred on the streets. She was experienced in hiding from the eyes of deities and Devils. Satan’s watchful eyes couldn’t find her and God’s sleepless eyes dozed off when Zeina Bint Zeinat disappeared in the darkness.

  Only once did Satan’s eyes glimpse her as she ran between the flower basins. He reached out with his long, firm arms, which were as hard as steel, and caught her by the hand. He pulled her into the back room in the garden. In one instant, as she ran and sprinted among the flowers like a
white butterfly and the air lifted the hem of her white dress, baring her legs, Satan’s eyes fell on the soft thighs exposed to the wind. His eyes moved upward from the legs to the smooth body, until they rested on the soft pubic area where no hair yet grew.

  Zeina Bint Zeinat was nine then, a schoolgirl. Miss Mariam held her fingers high for all the other girls to see, saying, “These fingers are created for music. Zeina Bint Zeinat will become a great musician one day!”

  Ashamed of her short, stout body, Mageeda shrank in her chair. Her plump fingers couldn’t move smoothly or quickly over the keys of the piano. Her neck, like her short plump body, sagged under the weight of her head when she walked.

  Mageeda’s little heart was filled with a combination of admiration and envy. Although Zeina was Mageeda’s senior by one year only, she seemed to be a hundred years older, for she seemed to have known life and death, God and Satan, and was no longer scared of them.

  Mageeda’s heart, in contrast, was filled with fear, for she was terrified of the everlasting fires of hell after death, and of her father’s fist when it rose high and fell on her face or her mother’s. She suffered the blow, like her mother, without uttering a word or shedding a tear. She couldn’t lift her hand high and bring it down on his face, for her hands were plump and slow like her mother’s. She’d look down in shame, as her mother did as she walked.

  On that Friday, Bodour went to visit her only friend, Safi, accompanied by her daughter, Mageeda. Safi lived alone in a small apartment on al-Agouza Street. In her early youth, Safi was married to a Marxist university colleague. She abandoned God and the Prophet for the sake of love. Her husband vowed undying loyalty and fidelity. But he broke his vows to her, for she caught him with the young housemaid in her apartment. He told her that men were polygamous by nature and that change was a constant and unchanging natural principle. Infidelity for him was the residue of feudalism and private property. A wife didn’t own her husband because human beings were free, and freedom was the highest ethical value, only paralleled by love. After her divorce, Safi got married to a man who believed in God and the Prophet, a man who held a yellow rosary in his hand. On his forehead was the dark prayer mark gained from frequently lying prostrate with his forehead touching the ground in obedience to God. When he vowed love and fidelity, Safi gave up Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. She wore a scarf round her head to hide her hair. She was married to him according to God’s law and following the Prophet’s example. Two years later, as she was walking along a street at the other end of town, she read the name of her husband on one of the houses. The exact name was engraved on a brass plate nailed to the door.

  She hesitated for a moment. Before ringing the bell, she told herself that full names were identical in many records, including election lists and police registers. An innocent man could be detained because he had the same name as a criminal, or a dead man might even rise from his grave to cast his vote for the president.

  She rang the bell three times before the door was opened. At the door stood her husband, in the flesh and with the dark prayer mark on his forehead. He wore white pyjamas adorned with pink flowers. His trousers were loose and unbuttoned and his penis peeped through the opening. She couldn’t mistake it. Her nostrils were still filled with his odor from the night before. She raised her hand high in the air and was about to bring it down on his cheek when a little girl appeared from behind him, pulling at his hand and yelling “Dad!” He pushed the girl inside and said to her, as he lifted his face toward the sky, “You believe in God and the Prophet, Safi. God’s law gives me the right to marry another woman. The law of the land gives me the same right. Go to court if you wish!”

  It was Friday when Zakariah al-Khartiti left the villa in Garden City and headed to the mosque on the adjacent street. Mosques proliferated on streets, pavements, and alleys. Tiny mosques sometimes sprouted inside houses, in courtyards, or in entrances. A little minaret might emerge from a wall, and a loudspeaker might be attached by nails to it to turn the structure into a mosque for men to go for Friday prayers and listen to the imam’s sermon.

  It was a warm spring morning. The warmth of the sun seeped through the body after the chill of winter. Zakariah al-Khartiti had abandoned the heavy woollen suits and the scarves around the neck. He wore instead a silk suit over an open shirt without a tie. The soft breeze tickled his short, fat neck and moved to his hairy chest whose little black hairs grew thinner year after year.

  After reaching the age of sixty, the black hairs on Zakariah al-Khartiti’s chest and head became interspersed with white hairs. He had a large bald spot in the middle of his head which gleamed gold in the brightness of spring. His narrow, sunken eyes had a sly look about them. Whenever his eyes fell on the column of his newspaper colleague, he’d turn his face away.

  No street or alley was devoid of a newspaper kiosk or a pavement covered with magazines and newspapers, especially the distinguished daily Sphinx, which was everywhere. It was displayed in kiosks at the corners of streets and squares, and spread on the pavements near mosques, churches, schools, law courts, nightclubs, theaters, and cinemas. On its front page the picture of the president loomed large. Laid out on the street around the paper were charms, the Qur’an, rosaries, censers, Ramadan fasting schedules, prayer times, photographs of candidates for parliament, the consultative council, presidential elections, or village and city councils. There were also pictures of theater, cinema, and television stars. All the photographs were placed side by side: the photographs of the Great Imam with his turban, beard and moustache, and the rising star, Zizi, who took the torch of dancing and singing from her mother, Zozo.

  Zakariah al-Khartiti moved the beads of the rosary with his short, lean fingers. He felt relaxed after finishing writing his daily column and after his wife and daughter had gone out. He was particularly relieved to see the back of his wife. Her observant eyes, like God’s, knew his infidelities before they even happened. She detected them before they even became an idea in his brain cells or a passing shiver down the hidden member beneath his belly, when his eyes fell on the thighs of a little girl jumping on the street or an adolescent girl wearing a miniskirt.

  After prayers, Zakariah al-Khartiti was relieved of the weight of his conscience. He used to visit Mecca on an annual basis to wash clean his numerous sins. In the mosque he whispered to the man squatting next to him, “Good God, brother! God shows His mercy to human beings. Man by nature is sinful, but God is merciful nonetheless. If it hadn’t been for prayers, fasting, and pilgrimage, we wouldn’t have been able to bear the weight of our guilt, we would have died of a guilty conscience!”

  “Very true, brother! God forgives all sins except the sin of worshipping other gods besides Him. Even adultery may be forgiven as long as we worship Him alone.”

  “But this adultery subject is controversial. We haven’t been introduced, brother, have we?”

  “I’m one of God’s worshippers, a small employee at the government archives. And you, sir?”

  “I’m Zakariah al-Khartiti.”

  “What do you do?”

  Zakariah al-Khartiti felt a pang in his throat. He had imagined that everybody knew who he was. He thought everyone read his daily column in the paper, saw his picture inside the square frame on the pages of magazines, or recognized his face on television screens during interviews and discussions.

  “Don’t you read the papers, brother?”

  “Not really, sir. I used to read them when I was younger and I believed every word they published. As I grew older, I came to realize that they were all liars, beginning with our own president to the American, British, and French presidents. Even my son lies to me, and so do my wife and daughter. But my wife is the greatest liar of all. She covered her head with a scarf and is pretending to be a saint. All the women have put on scarves to cheat us, sir, or what do you think?”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean by ‘what’?”

  “It means there are people who fear God an
d the fires of hell, doesn’t it?”

  “Right or what?”

  “What!”

  A laugh escaped the two at the same moment. It sounded like a jarring note in the middle of the murmurs of holy verses in the mosque. It rang shamefully inappropriate as the heads were bent in holy fear and the foreheads touched the floor in total submission.

  “Tell me, sir, does God really exist?”

  “Of course, sir. May He forgive us for all our trespasses!”

  “My son is an intelligent boy and he has read many books. He tells me that the science of the cosmos proves that God doesn’t exist!”

  “Your son is an ignoramus, a half-literate human being. Lower your voice so that no one hears you. Concentrate on prayers, for God exists, no doubt. Let your son read my daily column in the daily Sphinx so that he can unite science with religion.”

  “Do you write in newspapers, sir? Are you a journalist?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Then you are a liar as well?”

  Another laugh escaped, this time not from the lips of Zakariah al-Khartiti. He pouted his lips, got up slowly and rubbed his back. He left the mosque, walking slowly, his thin legs curved a little and his back arched somewhat. He tottered as he walked, vacillating between misery and joy, between virtue and vice, between religious belief and science. He was no different from the words of his column, swinging like a pendulum between the government and the opposition, between sincerity and lies. His column had the title “Honoring Our Pledge”. He borrowed some of his terms from Karl Marx and others from the verses of the Holy Books, quoting freely from the Qur’an, the Bible and the president’s speeches. His readers were puzzled about what he was trying to say. Was he for the war or against it? For peace or against it? For faith or for apostasy? Bodour, his wife, called him the mercury man, while her friend, Safi, described him as the mirage that ignorant eyes mistook for water.