Zeina

by Nawal El Saadawi

  Nanny Zeinat marched with the demonstrators. Tall and slender in her gabardine gown and white rubber shoes, she joined the housemaids walking in the last lines of the demonstration. But the protestors were dispersed by the water hoses, the tear gas, and the loudspeakers shouting above the din of bullets. Some bodies fell. Some blood flowed. Armored vehicles moved over the blood, snatching a number of young people. Smoke and dust filled the sky.

  Nanny Zeinat continued walking until the night descended. They took her son and he never came back. She had no idea who took him from her, the police or God. She raised her eyes to heaven, entreating God concealed behind black clouds, “Oh God! Did you take him or did the government?”

  She trembled, fearing God’s punishment. Faith returned to her with a shudder. The dust filled her nostrils and mouth. He was her only son and her only hope, the apple of her eye and her life. He was tall and graceful, and his stride was long and steady. Light shone in his large eyes as he looked into hers and smiled, “The revolution is definitely coming, Mother! Look, the whole population is rebelling, even the kids on the streets, the cats and the dogs.”

  Nanny Zeinat hadn’t been able to sleep at night since her son’s disappearance. Wearing her gown and her rubber shoes, she would go out in the darkness to look for him, her eyes searching earth and sky, raking the rubbish bins and the boxes thrown randomly on the streets. She might rest awhile on a broken wooden bench on the Nile front and follow a column of ants or beetles marching toward a rubbish heap. She’d stare at children competing with little kittens over a crust of bread, their buttocks bare. A small child limped as he raced a limping dog. He had lost his leg when he was run over by a speeding car in the dark.

  Nanny Zeinat came back to her room in the basement and filled a black plastic bag with leftovers of food. The basement was the dumping ground for all the rubbish abandoned by the residents of the building. This was where they disposed of unwanted items: old clothes, food leftovers, broken chairs, tattered mattresses smelling of urine, and old worn blankets that had become wafer-thin.

  Nanny Zeinat filled the black plastic bag after wiping the dust off the bread crusts and wrapped the pieces of meat in an old newspaper carrying, she saw, the picture of the president, the minister, or a columnist above his column. The eyes were effaced by the dust and mud, or perforated by a fish bone or the remains of a rib bone.

  With her hand, she wiped the dust and the mud off the newspaper and used it to wrap a crust of bread, a piece of meat or cake, the remnants of feast cakes, a slice of cheese, a few green or black olives, some pickled lemons, or half a cucumber.

  Nanny Zeinat went out at night carrying the black bag. She sat on the wooden bench, surrounded by children, cats and dogs. She opened her bag on the pavement, her eyes staring at them as they devoured the food, their eyes gleaming with happiness. Their happiness reminded her of the sparkle in her son’s eyes when she placed in front of him a glass of milk or an egg fried in butter.

  On her way back through the darkness to her room, she tripped over a small, swaddled object. It wasn’t a child, or a dog or a cat run over and killed by a speeding car, which she often found on the road or the pavement. She bent down and picked up the object with her long, slender fingers. She shook it several times to make sure it was already dead, to carry it in her arms away from the road, to place it on the side of the pavement or to dig a hole for it between the asphalt of the street and the earth along the bank of the Nile.

  The swaddled object was warm. Hot blood ran in its veins, and Nanny Zeinat felt the warmth as she carried it in her arms. Its pulse throbbed against her breasts. She trembled and stopped in her tracks. Uncovering the face, she was struck by the large eyes radiating light. Uncovering the legs held firmly together, she couldn’t find the little phallus of her son. Instead, there was the feminine slit. She raised her eyes to God, saying, “It’s all the same, God. A girl is like a boy. I thank you, God, for everything, both good and bad.”

  Her image had never left my memory since childhood: her erect bearing, her head held high, her large sparkling pupils, and her long, slender fingers moving with the speed of lightning over the keys of the piano. I wished I was like her, even if they called me the child of sin.

  On the walls of the school toilets we wrote her name in chalk: Zeina Bint Zeinat.

  She wrote it on the blackboard in front of us without a trace of shame, as though she were proud of her mother, Zeinat. We were all ashamed of saying the names of our mothers aloud. We couldn’t write them in our copybooks, let alone on the blackboard. My mother was not a housemaid like her mother, for she was a distinguished professor and her name was Bodour al-Damhiri, the wife of the great writer, Zakariah al-Khartiti. I wrote his name next to mine on the blackboard: Mageeda Zakariah al-Khartiti.

  I told the girls that my father wrote a long column in the paper and owned a large farm in al-Mansoura. The girls looked at me admiringly. The principal and the teachers, both men and women, flattered me, except for Miss Mariam.

  She taught us music. She held up the fingers of Zeina Bint Zeinat for all the girls to see.

  “Look, girls, at these fingers! They’ve been created for music. She’s talented and unique, born to be a musician.”

  But the word “music” had a bad reputation. We heard a teacher say, “Music, like dancing and singing, is the work of the Devil. Singing is the job of whores and prostitutes, and not of girls from good families. If you fall asleep to the tunes of music and not to the sound of the recitation of the Qur’an, you’ll be thrown into hell, where you’ll burn forever.”

  A shiver ran through my body as I sat in class. A shudder overtook me from the tip of my head to the soles of my feet. Underneath my uniform I felt a line of urine trickling down to my left foot, soaking my socks and seeping into my black leather shoe. I pressed my thighs hard together to prevent the stench from escaping to the classroom and the girls.

  At night, ghosts chased me. God appeared to me in the shape of a gigantic man with a face all covered with hair, a moustache and beard, his eyes blazing red, his voice assailing me like a rod piercing my right ear. God always came from the right side, unlike Satan, who came from the left.

  When I was eight years of age, I confused God with Satan, for both appeared to me in the shape of a man with a hairy face, with a moustache and beard. His blazing eyes threatened me with punishment and his long, pointed finger almost pierced my eyes. I pushed him away from me as I lay fast asleep, but he wouldn’t go away. His long, strong finger remained pointed at me like a long and pointed iron pole, then descended from my eye to my neck, choking me. I opened my mouth to scream, but no voice came out. His finger descended from my neck to my breasts, and he thrust his sharp fingernail into my right breast if he was God and into the left breast if he was Satan. My breasts were two little nascent blossoms, each with a round black nipple. The finger pressed so hard that I screamed. The man placed his large palm over my mouth to stop the sound, then the finger descended to my belly and then to the smooth, hairless pubic area underneath. It slid over it and went into the folds of the flesh to get to the hidden heart of things.

  At the age of seven, my father taught me to pray. So I sat between God’s hands asking for forgiveness, because I thought I was the sinful party, not God or Satan. My father used to say that our dreams revealed our sinful desires, so he asked me to pray before going to bed. One night he heard me talk in my sleep. I was trying with all my might to repulse the finger chasing me. I screamed at the intruder and levelled at him the foulest insults I had heard from the children on the streets.

  When I was nineteen, I went to see a psychiatrist, an old schoolmate of my father’s. I told him about my dreams but didn’t utter a word about God or Satan until he drugged me. I lay on the couch, drifting between consciousness and oblivion.

  I heard the psychiatrist say, “Tell me all, Mageeda. Don’t be afraid!”

  “I am afraid, doctor!”

  “Afraid of what?”

&nb
sp; “Of God.”

  “Why do you fear Him, Mageeda?”

  Her tongue loosened a little and her voice began to come out, sounding hoarse, stifled, quivering.

  “I insult Him in my sleep.”

  “What do you say to Him, Mageeda?”

  “Horrible insults, like those of street children.”

  “Such as?”

  “Like ‘son of a ...’”

  Her voice stopped before she uttered the word. Her scared eyes widened as she tried to avoid looking in the direction of the doctor.

  “Speak, Mageeda. Don’t be afraid!”

  “I’m scared of being thrown into the fires, doctor.”

  “Which fires, Mageeda?”

  “Hell fires.”

  The psychiatrist looked at her with compassion. Though nineteen, she looked like a child, with her short, plump body lying on the couch, her fair, smooth complexion, and her tender, white fingers.

  When he reached out for her hands, her five fingers clutched his finger like a newborn baby holding its mother’s finger.

  She held his finger in her hand and her five fingers were like pincers grasping it.

  “Listen, Mageeda. There’s no such a thing as hell fires.”

  Her eyes widened and the eyelids opened to reveal two small black pupils moving erratically. The whiteness intensified.

  The psychiatrist understood the meaning of the movement. When the pupils of the eyes hid underneath the eyelids, fear was at its most intense and a human being turned into a little mouse.

  “Don’t worry, Mageeda. I’m here with you!”

  Her little hands were ice-cold. He stroked them with his large, warm palms, whispering tenderly in her ears, “Don’t be afraid, Mageeda. I’m with you!”

  He talked to her like a mother speaking to her child.

  She laid her head on his chest, feeling it was her mother’s. She wrapped her arms around him, half naked, “I’m in love with you, doctor. Take me in your arms, doctor.”

  Mageeda opened her eyes. Waking up, she could hardly distinguish the real from the unreal. The day before, she had walked in her father’s funeral procession, but in the morning she saw him eating his breakfast and drinking his white coffee, her mother sitting in front of him drinking her tea. They each buried their faces in the paper, saying nothing. Silence hung heavily over the house like death.

  “Good morning, Mum!”

  “Good morning, Mageeda!”

  “Good morning, Dad!”

  “Good morning, Mageeda!”

  Then silence returned, heavier than before. Mageeda got dressed, opened the door, and slammed it shut behind her.

  On the couch in front of the psychiatrist, she took off her clothes and lay naked. She reached out to him, wishing to die in his arms, wanting to experience the height of pleasure before dying.

  The psychiatrist encircled her with his arms, stroking her soft hair and shoulders. His hand descended to her naked breast, which throbbed beneath his hands.

  He said to himself, having sex with patients isn’t really one of the principles of psychiatry, but it may be a method of treatment.

  It was also a method he liked, for this female body exploding with desire was like the thirsty soil yearning for a drop of water. It wasn’t like his wife’s body, which was a cold, frigid mass, unmoved by anything, even if he were to prick her with a needle or to plunge a red-hot rod into her belly.

  After Mageeda was gone, his conscience began to prick him, chastising him for what he had done. He saw himself roasting in hell, for he had a firm belief since childhood that God was wrathful and revengeful, and would not forgive his numerous trespasses, his most serious offence being his doubt as to His existence. He was torn between doubt and faith.

  Increasing numbers of people were returning to the fold of religion, and religious currents were on the rise everywhere, in the West as much as in the East, among Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and all other religions, each religion more violently orthodox than the next. Sectarian wars carrying the banner of a deity were breaking out everywhere, each deity more bloodthirsty than the next. He tried to get rid of his faith, but to no avail. During the Great Feast, he left for his village, where his parents invited him to celebrate the occasion. As he was driving his light blue Mercedes along the Agricultural Road, it occurred to him that God might punish him for his doubts by killing him in a collision with a huge truck. Worse than death was the fear of becoming maimed, of losing an arm, a leg, or an eye.

  He had been studying the relationship between religion and psychological disorders. The deeper he delved in his exploration of religion, the more convinced he became that religion was dangerous. He couldn’t get rid of the thought of a vindictive God, for there was no one more implacable than He was. If he published his findings in a book, his name would certainly appear on the death list produced by the emir’s group, as well as another anonymous group working underground. In the past, the village was peaceful and had one mosque. The man calling for prayers had a sweet, melodious voice that tickled the ears. Now the village was full of mosques, one in every alley, every corner, and every pathway. Every minaret had a huge loudspeaker blaring out the calls to prayer five times a day. The noises were thunderous and the alleys were filled with young men wearing thick, black beards reaching down to their chests. All the females, old and young, wore scarves on their heads, while sheiks wore turbans and little boys wore caps. The thought occurred to him that God might not be interested at all in clothes, or might not even see them in the first place. And if God saw them, where was the problem? He asked himself why he was so obsessed with people’s clothes and why he persisted in gazing at women’s bodies.

  He stopped the car briefly in front of al-Khartiti’s house, which stood in the middle of a huge farm. Zakariah al-Khartiti was his schoolmate. While passing through the square where his primary school stood, he saw the picture of Zakariah al-Khartiti pasted on the wall. It was the same photograph that appeared at the top of his daily column in the morning paper. It announced a lecture by him entitled “Science and Faith” on the occasion of the Feast.

  He drove his car to his grandfather’s old house on Station Street. Next to the house was a new mosque with a minaret and a loudspeaker. At the end of the street stood the pub and the house of the gypsy singer, Khadouga. He used to visit her with his teenage friends to empty the Devilish secretions inside her plump body, each of them waiting for his turn in the hall, reading verses of the Qur’an or staring at the picture of a naked woman on the cover of a magazine. There was also the hashish, the opium, the drug injections and all the substances that obliterated minds and aroused desires, the local food restaurants of kushari, beef burgers, and shin stew, as well as all the other mouth-watering meals.

  Then he went to the mosque for feast day prayers. He kneeled and prayed together with the other worshippers, his forehead touching the straw mat on the floor, the dust and the fleas filling his nostrils. He banished the Devil standing to his left who told him that God wasn’t fooled by his prayers. He told him that God punished him for his doubts by making his favorite Zamalek Club lose the last match. The Devil knew he was a devoted fan of the Zamalek Club. So he chased the Devil away as if he were a fly, saying, “Shut up, Satan. God can’t be so empty-headed as to punish a club for one person who has doubts!”

  On his way back from the village, the psychiatrist realized that he was ill and in need of a psychiatrist himself to help him overcome the schism between his mind and heart, for his mind didn’t believe, while his heart did. There was no hope of a cure for him, doomed as he was to suffer from this split personality from childhood.

  Bodour crept out of bed in the darkness of the night and left her husband who lay snoring. His open mouth slanted toward the left side. His face looked toward the ceiling and his eyes were half closed. He seemed to be looking at her as she crept out of bed and tiptoed with her little white feet. Her movement was as slow as a duckling and she swayed from one foot
to another, hesitating between going forward and stopping. There were three men at least in her life. There was Mahmoud al-Feqqi and his column, which she considered to be outstanding, although his own column was far more popular and was even read by the president himself. The second man was the psychiatrist, his schoolmate, who wasn’t bright at all, had a low IQ, and chased girls. The third man was the secret of her life. She told nobody about him, least of all herself. Perhaps she told her friend, Safi, and Nanny Zeinat. Whenever these two women put their heads together there was always trouble.

  Zakariah al-Khartiti tossed and turned in his sleep. He changed from the prostrate position to the supine, burying his head in the pillow. His snoring turned to whimpering. In his ears, he could hear his father’s voice saying that women were the Devil’s allies and that cleanliness was a godly trait, while dirt was a womanly trait. He quoted the words of the ancient poet, Ibn al-Muqaffa’, who said, “Prevent them from looking by keeping them secluded, because this is better for you than living in a state of doubt. If you can, try to stop them knowing others.”

  But how could you, Zakariah al-Khartiti, prevent your wife from knowing others? As a distinguished professor, she went out on a daily basis to the university. She taught male students, and her professor colleagues, including the columnist Mahmoud al-Feqqi, looked at her with Devilish eyes. And she lay on the couch in front of the psychiatrist, who used the couch to cure himself of sexual starvation. He made love to all the women he fancied. God permitted him to have sex after he had obtained his PhD in psychiatry. He imagined himself a prophet, God’s messenger to cure the suffering women on earth. He locked up his wife at home, and when she went out of the house, she wore the veil. He was jealous of other men’s eyes. She swore on the Holy Book in front of him that she wouldn’t know any other man either during his lifetime or after his death, and would never get married again. He behaved as though he were a prophet sent and protected by God, as though it were he that was referred to in Verse 53 in al-Ahzab (The Clans): “Nor is it right for you that ye should annoy Allah’s Messenger, or that ye should marry his widows after him at any time.”