This was their conversation year in year out, each admitting that their marriage was a huge mistake, but neither trying to fix it.
On the table in front of them stood the tea and coffee pots, for Bodour drank tea in the morning while her husband drank coffee. He took the coffee with skimmed milk and ate fat-free cottage cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, watercress, and olive oil. They were now older and their cholesterol levels and blood pressure were higher. Zakariah played golf at the club with his journalist friends, while Bodour walked in the club with her friend, Safi, or with her daughter, Mageeda. Two or three times a week she walked around the golf course for forty minutes.
Sometimes a university colleague would join her. At other times, after finishing his game of golf, Mahmoud al-Feqqi would join her on her stroll and exchange talk and news about politics, literature, criticism, art, and culture.
Bodour sipped her tea and bit into a piece of toasted bread with white cheese blended with olive oil. She held the small, sharp knife to cut a slice of tomato. The knife glinted in the sun. Bodour looked at him, her white fingers trembling. Since she had gone to see the shrink, the tremor in her hand and her fears had increased. Would the knife creep and cut her own hand? Or would it cut her husband’s hand holding the paper? Or the other hand holding the white coffee?
The knife was moving as if of its own accord. Bodour might have been sleeping and dreaming and not sitting at the breakfast table. Since she had started writing her novel, the lines between reality and dream had become confused. The novel could have been the source of the ghosts chasing her, the voices she heard as she sat writing in her room, the shadows that moved over the walls, assuming human and non-human shapes. The knife rushed across the table and cut through the paper, through the frame of the photograph on top of the column. It penetrated the silk pyjamas and cut into her husband’s chest. Red blood flowed on the white pyjamas and the tablecloth. But Zakariah continued reading his column, never stopping, never taking his eyes off that picture. Hugely frustrated, the knife turned toward Bodour’s white hands. She felt its smooth, sharp edge move over her wrist, slowly cutting into her flesh, making a deep groove in it.
Bodour realized that it was Badreya holding the knife, for Badreya had the courage to commit murder without being found out by the police. She could conceal herself between the pages of the novel, or escape people’s eyes like a phantom or a moving shadow on the walls. Bodour’s husband peered at her as she cut the cheese with the knife, her fingers trembling, her face pale, her eyes downcast. She didn’t raise her eyes to him, fearing that the meeting of their eyes might tell him what was going on inside her mind. He might take the knife and plunge it into her chest before she did. She saw the buried desire in his eyes. In their hearts, the desire for murder was just as strong as that for sex. Her psychiatrist told her that human beings hadn’t evolved a great deal beyond the animal stage, as far as sex was concerned. The instinct for destruction and death went hand in hand with sexual lust. When a man desired a woman, he’d tell her that he loved her to death, and she would say that she’d die for him.
Her psychiatrist assured her that she loved her husband to death, and to the desire to kill him or kill herself. Those who committed suicide did so because they loved themselves to death.
While walking with her friend in the club, Safi said to her, “Your shrink needs a shrink to cure him of his neuroses, for most men are sick. They suffer from schizophrenia, especially those from the upper, educated classes. A man marries a colleague from the same educated class, a marriage of convenience, pure and simple, so that she might appear with him at parties and events. At night, he creeps out of her bed to the housemaid in the kitchen or the secretary in the office. He only lusts after low-born younger women. Such a woman would regard him as a great man, a rare, unparalleled genius, a god or a demi-god, as his mother saw him, for his mother regarded him as a paragon of beauty, even if he was as ugly as sin. From his childhood she would fill his ears with statements such as, ‘You’re smarter than all your mates. You’re unique, you are!’”
Safi, wrapping her head in a white scarf, pursed her lips and swallowed her bitter saliva. She was a Marxist until she left her Marxist husband. After marrying her Islamist husband, she wore the veil and published a book on women’s rights under Islam. Following her divorce from him, she married a liberal writer who asked her to take off the veil and stop ranting about religion. This was when she took off the scarf, wore an elegant turban sprinkled with pearls and published a book on literary criticism. But that husband abandoned her for a university student, with whom he lived without an official or an unofficial marriage contract. She discovered the relationship by chance, and her husband confessed to her that he was in love with the girl and she with him. He was free and so was the girl. Safi didn’t understand this kind of neo-freedom and decided to break it off.
“You’re much stronger than I am, Safi. Each and every day I dream of leaving Zakariah, but I don’t have the courage to do it.”
“You’re scared of loneliness, Bodour, aren’t you?”
“Don’t you feel lonely, Safi?”
“Loneliness is much nicer than a hateful companion. Like you, I feared loneliness and accepted humiliation. I was a prisoner to that fear until I came to know loneliness and found it to be beautiful and inspiring. We are born in fear and live and die in fear.”
“Aren’t you at all afraid, Safi?”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of death, for example?”
“Death, like loneliness, is an illusion, for we don’t feel death when we die. The dying person feels nothing. Imagine, Bodour, that we spend our whole life in fear of something we cannot feel?”
“Do you believe in life after death?”
“I used to believe in it, but I am now free from this illusion as well.”
“And believing in God, Safi?”
“I was a firm believer in God, Bodour, before I studied religion. I wanted to study religion in a profound manner, as a way of strengthening my faith. But the opposite, in fact, happened. The more I learned about God the less I believed.”
Bodour trembled as she walked beside her friend, Safi. Her eyes quivered and she raised them to the sky, fearing that God might shower curses on Safi. She feared that her friend might collapse on the ground, suffering from complete paralysis, or that her heretical tongue might become paralyzed.
“I used to believe, Bodour, in God’s three Holy Books, as the Qur’an instructs us. I gave religious talks at conferences and on the radio. I published articles on faith, piety, and the women’s veil. But something kept me awake at night. I used to get up in the middle of the night to perform ablution and prayers. I continued kneeling and praying. I kept my voice low in order not to wake my husband as I whispered the plea, ‘Oh God, forgive me for all my trespasses’, which I repeated countless times. I moved the rosary beads with my trembling fingers. I thought I was suffering from fever. But I was infected with doubt, and continued to be so until I delved deeper into the study of religions. The deeper I went, the less trembling I suffered from and the less faith I had. We inherit faith from our families, Bodour. Faith infiltrates the cells of our brains and our bodies from birth till death. You can’t get rid of it except through studying science, knowledge, and religion itself. This is a route fraught with perils. I’m opening my heart to you, Bodour, because you are my life-long friend. Please keep this a secret, or they might kill me. We live in a religious state that doesn’t allow freedom of thought, despite the incessant babble about freedom. The free, however, don’t talk about freedom. They live it. People who lack freedom, in contrast, talk about it all the time.”
With her head bent, Bodour listened to her friend. A shudder ran through her whole being and surges of hot blood gushed up to her head then down to the soles of her feet. Something resembling Satan’s fingers of her childhood was working on the soles of her feet, tickling her left foot, for Satan always stood on the left side as people around her, at
home and outside of the home, had often confirmed.
“My husband used to tell me that religion was essential for ethics. Without religion, no ethical sense could exist. But I discovered that there was no connection between religion and ethics. My husband was an ultra pious man, but every day he lied to me. He’d tell me that he was going to a meeting or a conference, to see a minister or a deputy, but would go instead to see the other woman in her home or in the brothel. He said that a husband had the right to marry four women, in addition to the women slaves and the concubines. He was a member of the group which held the banner that ‘Islam is the Solution’ and called for the application of Shari’a law and the suspension of the constitution. He was a colleague of Ahmed al-Damhiri, the Islamist prince.”
Bodour shuddered to hear the name of Ahmed al-Damhiri, her cousin. His father was a sheikh who occupied the position of deputy or vice-deputy of al-Azhar. He inherited his father’s turban and his small square-shaped head, as well as his square chin underneath the thin lips, the upper thinner than the lower, which he pursed when he was engrossed in deep thought. Ahmed al-Damhiri became one of the neo-leaders and was addressed with the title of emir, or prince. A number of unemployed youngsters with university degrees and frustrated hopes surrounded him. As their prince, he led them into the fold of religion. He was small and thin, and his fingers were short, supple, and girl-like. His voice was soft and his body flabby. He was scared of cockroaches and rats. Deep down, he had little self-esteem, but he compensated for this sense of inferiority by being extremely vain and grandiose. He puffed out his chest and walked with his head held high. On his forehead was the dark mark of prayers, as big as a peanut. His thick black beard grew profusely down to his chest. His gown was snow-white and so was his turban. He greeted youngsters with a slight tilt of his head accompanied by a faint smile.
“My cousin, Ahmed al-Damhiri, has become a dangerous man, Safi. He was a spoiled child who got everything he wished for, whether by entreaty or cunning, by softness or violence. Ahmed al-Damhiri would kill to get what he wanted, and now he wants ...”
Bodour stopped before finishing her sentence.
“Ahmed al-Damhiri wants Zeina Bint Zeinat.”
“How did you know?”
“Everybody knows the story. Zeina Bint Zeinat has become a famous star and many men are after her. But nobody really deserves her. She’s truly talented. She’s her mother’s daughter, Nanny Zeinat, who suckled and nursed her!”
Safi looked Bodour hard in the eye, but Bodour turned away from her gaze. She glimpsed Zakariah al-Khartiti playing golf, bending his small, thin body in order to hit the ball, which flew for a short distance in the air then fell. He walked proudly toward it, holding his nose high like his colleague, Mahmoud al-Feqqi, and other great writers. Behind him ran a little boy dragging a cart laden with golf equipment. Beside him walked Mahmoud al-Feqqi, tall and graceful, with wide, self-confident steps that were similar to his words on paper. But his back was more handsome than his face, and his eyes were dull and lustreless, the pupils small and colorless.
Bodour was never attracted to Mahmoud al-Feqqi. But when she saw him from the back, she would be overcome by memories, as though she was a different woman, a woman who was not Bodour but perhaps Badreya. Badreya was nineteen when she joined the great demonstrations. Next to her walked Nessim, with his graceful, erect bearing. His large eyes radiating a bluish black lustre that was similar to the color of the night or the sea reflecting the rays of the sun.
“Zakariah al-Khartiti is jealous of Mahmoud al-Feqqi. He believes I’m in love with him.”
“But you’re in love with your shrink ...”
“He’s in love with me. It’s a one-sided love, Safi!”
“But the opposite is true, Bodour!”
The conversation drifted to love and men. Safi had more experience in this area than her friend, for she had known a greater number of men: colleagues, friends, and lovers. She told Bodour, “I’m looking for the man who deserves me. But such a man is not born yet, and perhaps never will be!”
She laughed, tossing her head back. Her thick black hair was cropped short after she had gotten rid of the veil and the turban along with the husbands. She was slightly taller and less plump than Bodour. Her stride was also longer. She stared at things steadily and hard. Her lips were thin, and she would often wet her lower lip with the tip of her tongue as she talked.
“As a matter of fact, men don’t attract me. In my adolescence, I was in love with a woman. Now, at this advanced stage of my life, my adolescence is coming back to me. To be frank with you, Bodour, I’m attracted to women. I sometimes catch myself feeling hopelessly in love with a woman. One day, I dreamt of embracing Zeina Bint Zeinat. Imagine!”
“An innocent embrace, to be sure, a sisterly or a motherly embrace!”
“There’s no innocent embrace, Bodour!”
Safi laughed aloud, a laugh that the golfers almost heard. Bodour joined in her laughter, which eased the burden on her heart a little, the mysterious load of vague childhood fears.
“Yes, Bodour, laugh as much as you can, for life isn’t eternal. We only live once and must therefore live to the full. Let me tell you a joke about the stupidity of men ...”
Safi laughed heartily before she embarked on telling the joke, her head tossing in the air along with her short, cropped hair.
“There was this man who was bent on marrying a young woman who was a one hundred per cent virgin, a woman who hadn’t known any man in her entire life. Every time he planned to propose to a woman, he’d subject her to a test. He would ask her, as he dropped his trousers and uncovered his penis, “What is this, little girl?” The girl naturally said it was a penis. So the man would pull up his trousers and leave, telling himself that he couldn’t possibly marry a girl who knew about men. He repeated the test with every young woman he proposed to, but they all naturally failed the test. After several years of tests, one young woman passed, for when he uncovered his penis and asked her what it was, she told him it was a whistle.
The man was over the moon and congratulated himself on finding a woman who had never seen a man’s penis before. “Eureka, Eureka!” he said to himself.
After thirty years of marriage and a dozen children, as they sat one starry evening on the balcony, it occurred to him to ask her a question. Pointing at his penis, he said, ‘But how is it, darling, that you didn’t know that this was a penis?’ His wife burst out, saying loudly, ‘Do you call that a penis? A penis is as long as my arm here.’”
Bodour and Safi burst out laughing. They laughed so hard and so long that the tears poured from their eyes. Each wiped her eyes with aromatic tissue, as Safi said, “That’s men’s stupidity for you, dear. Shall we go to the theater this evening to hear Zeina Bint Zeinat sing? She’s singing a new song tonight for the first time. You know, she writes her lyrics and her music herself. A truly talented artist! Umm Kulthum used the lyrics and music of others, but Zeina Bint Zeinat is a musician and a poet, and has a lovely voice to boot. I wish I had a daughter like her!”
“I too wish I had a daughter like her!”
“You have your Mageeda, may God protect her, a great writer. Her articles in the Renaissance magazine are widely read.”
Safi stressed “widely read”, for she didn’t like the writing of Mageeda al-Khartiti. She imitated her father’s style of writing and her mother’s literary criticism.
“Mageeda is her father’s daughter, Safi. She looks exactly like him when he was young. I sometimes feel she is his daughter and not mine. I wish I had a daughter who took after me.”
Badreya whispered to the pages of the novel “I wish I had a daughter who looked like Nessim.”
In the dead of night, Bodour embraced her pen. A conversation took place involving her, Badreya, and Nessim, as well as the other characters of the novel. But the conversation sometimes came to a halt, the pen ran dry and the light emanating from his bluish dark eyes was extinguished. His tall, lean body w
as as hard as a spear, and his head towered high above a rock-solid neck. They hit him on the head with the butt of a rifle and slapped him on the face. But he still stood tall, unflinching. He didn’t bat an eyelid and not a single muscle twitched in his face. As they dragged him to the armored vehicle parked outside the basement flat, blood trickled down from his nose and mouth, flowing onto the white vest that revealed the black hairs of his chest and his ribs, gradually coloring it red. Redness tumbled down to his white Egyptian cotton trousers. The smell of cotton filled his nostrils along with the odors of blood, dust, and the black clay of the earth, where little green shrubs sprouted, carrying white buds. He was a child of eight when he sang along with the other village children, running all over the green expanse sparkling 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!”
On the pavement, the children sang that song. Zeina Bint Zeinat played the tune for them, tapping on the asphalt with her long, slender fingers. It wasn’t the same old tune, and nor was it the cotton song about the little white buds dotting the green expanse. Green spaces had shrunk, and the shrubs and the buds had withered. Children’s faces had also shrivelled, for they no longer had land, homes, or families. They walked miles in the darkness of the night with their bare little feet. Born on the asphalt of the streets, they survived by scavenging the rubbish heaps alongside the stray cats and dogs. The passengers of lavish cars, locking the doors and drawing the curtains, peered at them with contempt and tried to keep them at bay. They closed their windows for fear of contracting diseases, and felt their pockets to make sure their wallets were still there.
The children would stomp with their chapped feet on the ground, encircling Zeina Bint Zeinat as though she were their mother. They would sing along with her and dance to the rhythm of her music. Passers-by would stop to see the spectacle, a complete band of children who exchanged roles and crude instruments: drums, tamborines, flutes, and lutes. Their voices would rise with the rising crescendo of the music, their cracked heels kicking the ground. The singing would turn into cheers produced by thousands of voices saying, “Down with injustice, long live freedom”. Human bodies blocked the streets, for there were laid-off workers of shut-down factories, unemployed and unhopeful university graduates, widows, divorced women, bereaved mothers, government employees with heads bent low, oppressed housewives, housemaids, shoe-polishers, and nannies.
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