Mahmoud the chauffeur extended his long arm toward Zeina and handed her the folded piece of paper, then disappeared between the rows of seats. Zeina Bint Zeinat put the paper inside her pocket without opening it. She was busy talking to people, laughing and throwing her head back. Her laugh was as melodious as music, and it was loud and hearty. She did everything passionately, ardently, with every atom of her being and every particle of her soul, body and mind. Her voice had never been heard in the whole universe before. Hers was the laugh of a woman who was in full possession of herself and wasn’t the plaything of anybody or anything else, a woman who was free of fate and destiny, a woman who stood outside earth and sky, outside time and space. Her laugh sounded strange and unfamiliar, like the dream of happiness or the impossible hope of love. It was like the mystery of life throbbing with sinfulness and virtue.
Ahmed al-Damhiri’s body quivered in his seat when he heard her laugh. It rescued him from the sorrows buried deep in his heart since childhood. It saved him from the pain that had dwelled in his soul since primary school, when children hit him on the nape of his neck and wrote his name in chalk on toilet walls. “Ahmed al-Damhiri has a whistle.”
Her laughter flowed into his ears as warmly as his mother’s milk. It lifted him high in the sky and allowed him to catch a piece of the sun and forget his pains and sorrows. He almost laughed aloud with her. He had almost forgotten how to laugh, until he heard her laughter. Her joy was contagious and he heard himself laugh as though for the first time in his life, except that his voice remained silent.
In one of his moments of black despair, he wrote to her another message. How many messages did he write? How many times did his driver, Mahmoud, approach her, extending his long arm to her with the folded paper? It might have been twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred or a thousand times!
Zeina Bint Zeinat didn’t open those messages. If she did, she only glanced over it quickly then threw it in the bin. She was familiar with this type of man. They thought they could possess her, that she was a whore, a slave girl or a concubine. They believed that no sooner did they beckon to her than she would rush to them, for they were men who possessed everything in this life and in the next. But she only had her voice, her songs and her music. All she wanted was to play music, and to sing and dance, until she died on stage.
Zeina Bint Zeinat was not strikingly beautiful. It was not beauty that attracted people’s eyes to her, but something else, something mysterious, something that radiated around her like waves of light, or rather waves of existence. She had a presence that was unique, and a charisma that filled space and time, obliterating everything else.
Ahmed al-Damhiri saw her presence in the eyes of others. Her image was reflected in them in such a way that they saw nobody else. In her presence, the whole place became vibrant and almost turned into a living organism. Waves of life moved in the air in what seemed like electric or magnetic waves. The magnetism of her eyes and voice was transmitted to everything around her. The stage was no longer a stage, but a piece of life itself, as she tapped rhythmically on it with her feet.
Zeina Bint Zeinat didn’t dress up for the evening. She didn’t wear shimmering outfits or sparkling jewellery. She wore a soft white dress made of Egyptian cotton. Her shoes, made of soft leather, were flat. Nothing about her appearance was extraordinary, but her plainness itself was extraordinary. It had the simplicity of the sun as it shone or set. Ahmed al-Damhiri’s eyes couldn’t stop staring at her, wanting to discover her secret, to unravel her mystery, and to tear her apart as he did that doll as a child.
In comparison, women around her seemed like dolls made of wax or clay, painted white, red, green or what have you, and decorated with rings, bracelets, and gold necklaces. They looked like marionettes whose strings were manipulated by other people holding them by the neck, the arm or the leg, and moving them in any direction they pleased.
In the dead of night, as Ahmed al-Damhiri lay sound asleep, he swallowed his dark desires and imagined Zeina sleeping with him in bed. She was completely naked and submissive to his desires, moaning with pleasure and pain, and screaming just like other women underneath his whistle.
He wasn’t overcome with sinful desires except while praying to God after eating and smoking something to alleviate his depression, or after swallowing the pill of happiness prescribed by the psychiatrist. As he prayed on the mat, the sinful desires slithered up to him like a snake, or like the serpent that lured Adam and Eve. It crept until it touched his full belly. It flowed with the blood that escaped from his head following a large meal and descended across the neck to the chest and then to the belly, and from thence it crept toward the pubic hair which used to be thicker in his youth. He continued to shave it off until it began to fall out of its own accord with age. The little member became engorged under the hair and stood erect after sniffing femaleness in the air. His brain turned cold and bloodless while his body blazed with sinfulness. As his forehead touched the ground, he implored God to keep the Devil and temptation away from him, but he only heard a hissing sound resembling Satan’s voice saying, “Come off it, man! She’s just a woman like any other, deficient in mind and religion, weak before her lusts. If aroused by a man, she would no doubt surrender. And God has made it permissible for you to have as many women as you wish, for you are the emir, God’s deputy on earth. Go to her tonight and empty the Devilish gland inside her so that you are free to devote yourself in the morning to your serious work. Tomorrow you will give the inaugural speech at the International Religious Dialogue Conference, in which you will lash out against unbelievers and renegades and all those who have no faith in God or the three divine books, the Qur’an, the Bible and the Torah, which have been sent to guide humanity and illuminate their paths. Go to her, man, and don’t hesitate or worry, for God is with you every step of the way. God will give you victory and no one but God can do that, for He is love and beauty. God is beautiful and loves everything that is beautiful, like beautiful music. A beautiful voice is a God-given gift, so why do you prohibit music, dancing and singing, man? Why do you blindly follow that blind Sheikh who cannot see beauty with his eyes? For this reason he bans statues and says whoever listens to music will never come within a hair’s breadth of paradise. He also says that a woman’s lovely voice will lead a man’s mind away from the worship of God, and her uncovered face will banish God from his heart. The problem then lies in the man’s mind and not in the woman’s voice. Lift your head high, man, and go to her. She’s a pious Muslim woman, very different from the frivolous Coptic woman who lured a young Muslim man and sparked off sectarian tensions between Muslims and Copts in Alexandria. These women ruin the country and cause poverty and religious conflict. Their cunning is great, as God points out in His glorious Book. But if they use cunning, God is much more cunning, man, and He will protect you from the cunning of any woman. God will make you victorious over your enemies and keep you on the right path, so don’t despair of God’s mercy. Take heart, man, and go to her. Take your personal body guard and your revolver in your pocket. Don’t go out of your house without the bodyguard and the revolver, for God tells us to take all necessary precautions. If you help yourself, God will help you. God will change nothing in the life of the community until they change it themselves.”
The Devil then whispered in his ear, “But what is God’s role then, if He does nothing until you have done it yourself, Ahmed al-Damhiri?”
As Ahmed al-Damhiri prayed to God, he tried to banish the Devil crouching on his left and whispering in his ear. The Devil kept arguing with him, saying that if God protected him, there would be no point then in having guards and revolvers. If the Qur’an, the Bible and the Torah came from God, why were there so many massacres among the followers of these religions? And ...
Ahmed al-Damhiri shook his fist in the face of the Devil, lifted his body from the prayer mat, went into the bathroom and peered at himself in the mirror above the sink. The more he examined his face, the less self-confident he becam
e. He didn’t like this face, least of all his nose and chin. The two lips stood idiotically apart. Could he possibly kiss her with those lips? He also had large yellowing teeth, and his mouth reeked of salted fish and garlic. He brushed his teeth with the new mint-flavoured toothpaste. He rinsed his mouth and gargled with a blue antiseptic mouthwash. He took a warm shower and rubbed his hairless chest, his hand descending to his belly to rub his muscles, and further down to the little shrivelled mouse between his thighs.
His wife saw him as she passed in front of the bathroom, because he never closed the door behind him, even when he was sitting on the toilet. He walked naked in front of her, belched loudly in her face, fiddled with his nose, and scratched his thighs in full view of her eyes. Embarrassment decreased as the years of marriage went by, until it disappeared completely along with desire. Touching his wife or seeing her naked didn’t produce a single tingle in his body. Her large and sagging breasts reached down to her belly and reminded him of his mother’s.
The smell of his expensive eau de cologne hit her nose as it wafted through the open bathroom door. She realized that he must be on his way to a night of passion with a new woman, and not to an Executive Council meeting at the headquarters of the group. But he had enough compassion for his wife not to tell her the truth, for he followed the great principle laid out in the verse telling believers to display their good sides to others. God alone knew what was lodged in the heart and could see one’s hidden intentions.
Bodour al-Damhiri tossed sleeplessly in bed, chased by the phantoms of her novel, particularly Badreya, the heroine. She was a strong, stubborn woman that had no god, superior or husband. She vowed never to have any relations with men after her first love, Naim, had been killed in prison following the great demonstrations. They killed him after he had deposited the seed of life inside her. Badreya was not a real woman of flesh and blood, but a spectre walking on the wall and penetrating closed doors and shut windows. She was a spirit that could soar high in the sky and descend to the bottom of the earth, penetrating surfaces and barriers to uncover concealed feelings and emotions. Her eyes stayed open like God’s eye, reading the unknown.
Badreya realized that Ahmed al-Damhiri was on his way to Zeina Bint Zeinat and was intent on raping her, or killing her if she resisted him. Badreya knew his track record since childhood and how religious faith came to him after doubts. She knew he swung between doubt and faith, between left and right, between the Devil and God. He was a Marxist atheist first, before turning into an obsessed Islamist. She had no idea, though, how he became a member of a secret, communist cell or how he later joined the underground religious group. She didn’t know how the prayer mark appeared on his forehead, or the rosary between his fingers. She didn’t know how much money he’d embezzled, how many women he’d raped, or how many people he’d killed. Badreya knew that he sought the protection of God and the Prophet. He shook the Qur’an and the guns in the face of those who disobeyed him. She heard him cry and moan on the couch of the psychiatrist, and his accelerating heartbeats reached her when his eyes fell on Zeina Bint Zeinat.
Badreya whispered in the ears of the sleeping Bodour, “Your cousin, Ahmed, will kill your daughter Zeina. Watch out, Bodour. Get out of bed and kill him before he kills her.”
Bodour tossed and turned in the wide bed, unable to sleep. She saw her husband lying asleep beside her, the sound of his snoring as regular and continuous as a ticking clock. His face was as pale as the faces of other columnists. It also had the ashen color of the smoke coming out of his nostrils when he puffed his cigar with his head lifted toward the sky. He reproached God for giving him less talent than others, particularly Mahmoud al-Feqqi. His wife read Mahmoud al-Feqqi’s column before she read his. She thought of him as a gifted writer and secretly stared at him as she strolled around the golf course. He was tall and graceful, and held the club with sturdy fingers. The fingers had the same strength as his words and the muscles of his phallus. He hit the ball with the power of forty horses, sending it high in the sky to fall far away where no eye could see it. His wife, Bodour, clapped for him, saying, “Bravo, Mahmoud. Bravo!”
She called him by his first name Mahmoud without any embarrassment, and he did the same with her. He read his column aloud to her before it was published, and she read a few pages of her secret novel aloud to him. She concealed the novel from her husband as though it were her last will and testament.
Zakariah al-Khartiti’s father died of testicular cancer. At the funeral, he sat beside his mother listening to the Qur’an. He was eight at the time. His mother, mourning his father, wept silently and uncontrollably. Death became connected in his mind with the recitation of the Qur’an, the huge number of visitors, the plates filled with food and the smell of smoke coming from roasted meat. The verses of the Qur’an recited in a soft melodious voice streamed into his ears with the mouth-watering smell of roast, whetting his appetite in the same way as during the fasting of Ramadan when he waited for the canon shot announcing the end of fasting. He felt guilty when he took a sip of water before the end of fasting or when he broke wind as he kneeled to pray.
His father’s will was a scandal that was more aggravating than his death itself, for it revealed that he had a secret wife, and two children by this marriage. Part of his inheritance went to the two of them, while the new wife shared the house with his mother. So his mother took off her mourning clothes and black scarf, and wore a colorful dress and put a red flower in her hair. She produced a hearty ululation celebrating his death. Although he loved his father when he was a child, this love decreased with the passage of years and with the increased knowledge of his father, whose true character became apparent only after his death. He started to hate his father the way his mother did. But he turned out to be a carbon copy of his father, both in appearance and character, in outward and secret behaviour, in political and sexual activities.
Zakariah al-Khartiti was fast asleep when Bodour crept out of bed and tiptoed to her study. The events of the novel were swarming in her head. A shiver ran through her body as though she had been infected with malaria. The muscles of her face contracted as if she was a psychiatric patient undergoing electric shock treatment, or a person being executed by the electric chair. The pen froze in her hand and would not move on the paper. Her mind had stopped functioning since she married Zakariah al-Khartiti. She married a man she did not love, and loved a dead man who lived only in her imagination or her dreams. Love did not exist except in the mind. It came in the shape of fragments of a dream or pages of a novel. From these scattered pages her imagination created another man who filled the blanks between the letters on the page. On the page the man she loved took shape and his features were drawn in ink, although those features belonged to a man she did not know. The less she knew the man, the more she loved him.
Her husband, Zakariah al-Khartiti, gave her a good morning kiss every day. They had their breakfast, lunch and dinner sitting at the same table every day. He talked to her in the insolently courteous manner characteristic of the upper classes.
“Could you possibly pass me the bread, please?”
She handed him the plate filled with toasted bread and he smiled at her saying “Thank you.”
She returned the smile, saying with the politeness of well-bred wives from good families, “You’re most welcome.”
He gave her a soft, polite glance that had the appearance of love. She returned his glance and her moving head looked like the head of a marionette, pulled by unseen strings from the top of the stage.
Her head was heavy with sleep as she sat holding her pen and writing her novel. She loved sleeping better than writing. Deep in her heart, she hated writing as much as she hated her husband, although she couldn’t tell this secret to anybody. She was awarded the state prize for writing and she carried the title of Distinguished Writer like her husband and her daughter, Mageeda al-Khartiti. She received the Model Mother Award on Mother’s Day, the Model Wife Award on Marriage Day, and the Firs
t Lady Companion on International Women’s Day. Her head fell like a log on the desk, producing a heavy thud, and her body was seized by successive shivers. She reached for the switch on the wall to cut off the electrical power. She whispered in a choking voice, “Please, doctor, I’ve had enough electric shocks. My brain has melted from the electricity, doctor, and my memory’s gone. I can’t remember a thing about my life.”
Zeina Page 18
