“This is what you need, Bodour. You’ve got to forget. Forgetfulness is the target of the treatment.”
“But forgetfulness is dangerous, doctor. The novel is now gone from my head. I can’t remember anything. Without my memory I can’t write a novel.”
“Your health, Bodour, is more important than your novel. To hell with the novel, Bodour.”
“The novel is more important than my life, doctor. To hell with my life.”
“To hell with everything except your health, Bodour.”
The doctor’s voice came to her while she was asleep or absorbed in writing. It was pain, she realized, that drove her to write. But it was also pain that stopped her from writing.
She opened her eyes with great difficulty and saw her husband sleeping beside her, his snoring as regular as a ticking clock. She extended her hand from under the cover, hit the clock and threw it off the bedside table to the floor. Her husband, woken by the sound, screamed at her, “What did you break the clock for?”
“Because I can’t break your neck.”
This last statement didn’t come out of her mouth as an audible sound but was expressed in silent letters written in black ink on the blank page. Badreya’s angry eyes peered at her from the pages. But the anger concealed disdain, for Badreya couldn’t understand this woman called Bodour al-Damhiri. She couldn’t comprehend the fear lurking in her heart since childhood, the terror that she lived with throughout her youth and maturity. Terror paralyzed her mind and made her unable to write. But why was she so terrified? Was it God or the Devil? Or was it her husband, their deputy on earth?
From her primary school days, Badreya was more courageous than Bodour and never hesitated to speak her mind.
“Why did God create Muslims and Copts? Why do Copts confess their sins to the priest if God already knows everything that goes on in their hearts? Why do women stand behind men in church? Why is silence imposed on them? Why do Muslims pray five times a day and not three or four? Why does a man marry four wives and a woman marries only one husband? Why do men get female nymphs in paradise, while women do not get male nymphs? Why is having a father’s name an honor and having a mother’s name a disgrace?”
Badreya read in the Qur’an that paradise lay at the feet of mothers. She wondered, how can paradise lie at the feet of mothers when their names bring disgrace to their children?
Badreya was more intelligent than Bodour, and her writing was more beautiful. She also learned poetry much faster and solved mathematical problems more efficiently. But Bodour was always awarded the prize of excellence, while she never received any. Badreya was angry with the teacher and argued with him aloud, providing evidence to prove that her marks were higher than Bodour’s.
The teacher lost patience and said to Badreya, “I’ll give you the prize when hell freezes over! Or perhaps when you bring me the dust of paradise.”
He was being funny, knowing she couldn’t perform miracles.
The next day Badreya brought him a plastic box filled with dust and told him, “Here’s the dust of paradise.”
The teacher opened the box and saw the dust inside it.
“Where did you get the dust from?”
“After my mother walked on the ground, I collected the dust with my hands and put it in the box.”
“Who said that it was the dust of paradise?”
“You did, Mr Mohamed. You told us in class that paradise lay at the feet of mothers.”
Despite her obvious intelligence, Badreya didn’t get the prize. The teacher accused her of using God’s words disdainfully. School prizes like those awarded by the state in literature and science were not given on account of intelligence or efficiency, but on account of family connections.
Zeina Bint Zeinat heard this story from Miss Mariam, who told the girls that the most important thing was excellence and not family connections. She told them that a mother’s name was a source of honor for girls and boys because paradise lay at the feet of mothers.
“God stands for justice, beauty, love, and freedom. There’s no difference between a boy and a girl, a Muslim and a Copt, a poor and a rich person. Truth is a virtue and lying is a vice. Those who lie to others only lie to themselves. Nobody kills another without killing a part of himself.”
Zeina Bint Zeinat went to Miss Mariam’s home to practise music and singing for three hours every day. She had her dinner with Miss Mariam before she went back home to her mother Zeinat.
Miss Mariam filled her bag with sweets, music books, poetry collections and novels, telling her, “Listen, Zeina. You’re talented and you have the patience to practise for long hours to boot. Genius is patience. You’re a lucky girl because you’ve known pain and you’ve known happiness, and one can’t achieve happiness without having experienced pain. Be proud of your mother and your name Zeina Bint Zeinat. There’s more honor in a mother’s name than in a father’s, because a father often gives up his children for a passing sexual whim, but a mother never abandons her children unless she is psychologically ill or mentally deranged.”
The pen quivered in Bodour’s fingers and she stopped writing. Was she psychologically ill? Did she lose her mind? How did she abandon her newborn baby on the pavement and go home to sleep in her bed? Was it more motherly to kill a child to avoid scandal or leave it alive on the pavement? What would Zeina Bint Zeinat say if she confessed to her that she was her daughter? What would people say?
Bodour turned around perplexed, Badreya’s voice talking to her from the depths of her being.
“Go to her! Confess to her! Take her in your arms and hold her close to you. Weep hot tears on her chest and ask her for forgiveness. Say to her ‘Forgive me, my child, forgive me!’ and Zeina Bint Zeinat will forgive you, because she has a warm heart. Instead of having one mother she will have two, in addition to the third, Miss Mariam.”
Bodour chased that phantom. She drove away Badreya’s voice and image when the stifled voice inside said to her, “Death is better than scandal, Badreya. What’s the point of confessing the truth after all these years? Zeina Bint Zeinat no longer needs this confession. Zeina doesn’t need you, Bodour, in her life, but you, Bodour, need her now. You’re trying to compensate for your failures, both in writing and in life. You’re trying to cure yourself of sadness and depression. But it’s pointless, utterly pointless. You should have done it a long time ago. The time is past and you can’t turn the clock back.”
Badreya’s voice came to her: “It is never too late, Bodour. The clock can go back. Read a little in the new science of cosmology and you realize that time will go back with the change of the movement of the planets and the earth around the sun. You will become youthful once again, Bodour. This will be possible in the future. The universe wasn’t created in six days, and woman wasn’t created out of Adam’s rib, for Adam was born from a woman’s womb. The future lies in the human mind and not in superstition.”
On his way to Zeina, Ahmed al-Damhiri was in a state of deep anxiety, trepidation, elation, lust, caution, and fear. He wanted to go forward but at the same time something held him back. He was moving toward paradise and all its nymphs, but at the same time he was trying to keep away from the flames of hell fire. With his hand he touched the killing machine in his back pocket, above the right buttock, and the contact with the hard metal gave him some confidence and courage. But when his hand slipped further and touched the little piece of flesh underneath the pubic area, his confidence and courage vanished. Since his childhood, this piece of soft flesh afforded him nothing but humiliation, and always let him down at the important moments when his heart was ablaze with desire. At those moments, his body became limp, and his little masculine machine didn’t get an erection except in the company of a woman he neither loved nor respected, a woman he never dreamed about, a slave girl or a prostitute, who would lie underneath him in total submission, offering him her body like a piece of flesh without a mind. Deep in his heart, he feared a woman’s mind. He wanted a woman who offered him her
body in return for a sum of money, or a car or a flat he’d bought for her. He would take her under the covers and enter through her as through an open hole, without any effort, anxiety, or fear of the consequences, whether they were worldly or otherworldly consequences. But he feared Zeina Bint Zeinat. The more he looked into her eyes, the more fearful of her he became. The more he feared her, the stronger his desires grew. He feared those two wide eyes, reddish in color, and those two bluish black pupils looking out of a mysterious well inside her soul.
As he sat on the plush seats of the black limousine driven by Mahmoud, the chauffeur, heading for her house in a distant slum, a voice emerging from the depths of his soul spoke to him. The driver’s narrow sunken eyes peered at him through the front mirror of the car. But Ahmed al-Damhiri turned his eyes away. With his eyes closed and his body relaxed, he listened to the voice whispering to him, which sounded like the voice of God that spoke to him in his sleep: “You, Ahmed al-Damhiri, are never satisfied or contented. I’ve given you everything, in this world and the next. A huge palace is reserved for you in heaven and all the nymphs you can wish for. In this world you have all the good things of life: money, children, positions, women, palaces, servants, guards ...”
“Yes, God, it’s true. I’ve got all that and I’m truly thankful for your many gifts, but ...”
“But what, Ahmed al-Damhiri? What more can you possibly want?”
“I want her, oh Lord! I want that woman, Zeina Bint Zeinat! I want those eyes blazing with the blue black flame, burning with the desire to challenge and violate your laws, oh Lord, and the laws of nature, and the laws of private property, and the laws of the free market. This woman is depriving me of my freedom to possess her. Something in her is beyond possession and therefore beyond your will. How did you create her with such extraordinary beauty that violates all rules? I’m about to go out of my mind. I’ve lost my ability to distinguish between virtue and vice, between good and evil!
“Her powerful femininity, oh Lord, is almost masculine, paradoxical, elusive. It entices me to possess what I cannot possibly have. All my attempts at possessing her have produced the opposite results, exposing my weakness and my failure. Why did you create her like this, oh Lord? She would not succumb to me even if I offered her all I had. I’ve written many messages to her, but she answered none. I confessed to her that I was in love with her, a pure spiritual love. I told her that I would give her myself and everything I owned. But she never answered me. What should I do, oh God, Lord of the world? You bear witness to my torment. Your unsleeping eyes can see me sleepless in bed and on the psychiatrist’s couch. You can see me cry and stifle my moans all night.”
Ahmed al-Damhiri looked up toward the sky, his eyes penetrating the tinted glass of the car window, which revealed to him everything outside but kept him invisible to prying eyes. He saw God hiding behind a black cloud. But the heavenly eyes couldn’t penetrate the tinted glass, the bullet-proof glass imported from the lands of the infidels. It was proof against the eyes of foes and friends, proof against all the prying eyes on earth or in heaven, hiding behind masks. Even God’s eyes couldn’t penetrate it because it was made in the lands of infidels, the allies of the Devil. Nobody challenged God’s will except the Devil.
He relaxed on the soft seat, imagining that God’s eyes would not see him, that they couldn’t pierce through the bullet-proof glass. But he soon remembered that he was only fooling himself, because God’s eyes were stronger than bullets and infidels. They could penetrate steel, for God was almighty and omnipotent. Whatever He willed He did. So why did He not order this woman to submit to him, the emir, the man God had chosen and no one else? Why wasn’t God with him on this mission as He was on all the previous missions with other women?
Zeina Bint Zeinat waved to him as she danced and sang. Her voice and image took hold of his mind which whispered, “Nobody owns this woman, but on the contrary she’s the one who possesses others.”
He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to sleep, to being possessed by her. He felt a strange kind of pleasure in surrendering to something more powerful than himself. He wanted to be rid of suffering and pain, the pain of resistance, the burden of leading others, the load on the shoulders of rulers and emirs. He saw himself in her arms, feeling out of breath and whispering voicelessly in her ear, “Come on top of me, take me, and possess me, my adored love!”
He shuddered, opening his eyes. The word “adored” escaped with his hot breath. He did not hear it with his own ears but felt it as a pang in his throat. It was like a huge non-human hand blocking his nose and mouth. It was God’s hand suffocating him, and His voice shaking his whole being.
“You unbelieving infidel! Don’t you know that I forgive all sins except the sin of worshipping other deities than me? I forgive you all your crimes and your acts of embezzlement and rape of women and children, but I cannot forgive you when you worship another than me, let alone a female!”
Ahmed al-Damhiri almost shouted to Mahmoud the driver, “Take me back home. Don’t take me to her.”
But his voice didn’t come out. He fidgeted on the seat, moving from one buttock to the other. This woman deserves to die because her existence threatens mine. It threatens my faith in the one and only God. I mustn’t go to her. I must finish her off. Yes, this should be the only goal of my visit, before she destroys me and all the other believing men. My sacred mission is to kill her before she gets the chance to destroy God’s religion.
He smiled to himself, comforted by the thought of the nobility of his mission. The car found its way to her house in the distant slum, which was located at the borderline between the homeland and the land of the homeless, between reason and insanity, between God and Satan. The car went along dusty roads, alleys and pathways that were blocked with rubbish and sewage water. It passed by children playing in the mud with cats and dogs, cemeteries inhabited by the living, and dead people walking with sad, pallid faces. There were the sounds of drumbeats, lutes, tamborines, and finger cymbals clacking in the hands of belly dancers at weddings. The dancers’ soft bodies reeled and turned in dancing costumes that revealed their bellies and thighs. Their voices rose high in song, and colored beads vibrated on their wobbly breasts. Bullets were fired in the air in celebration of the bride and groom. Smoke drifted from censers reproducing the shape of Satan burning. Supplications rose from minarets, calling “God is great! May He keep and preserve us from the evil eye!” Ululations came out of women’s throats sounding like the wailing and howling at funerals.
Children surrounded the black Mercedes, their bottoms bare. One child produced a healthy fountain from his little penis directed at the car. A girl threw a ball of mud at the back window. A flock of children, cats, and dogs ran after the car, shouting and screaming, flinging rubbish at it.
“Where’s Zeina Bint Zeinat’s house, kids?”
This was the voice of Mahmoud the chauffeur, his head sticking out of the window.
The children answered him all in the same breath, “Zeina Bint Zeinat is at the theater. She has a big, big concert. It’s her mother’s birthday and we’re all invited. But who are you? And who’s the man sitting behind you? He looks like a big minister, a big, big thief ...”
The children laughed, chanted and danced, shouting, “This is the idiot, the idiot, the idiot ...”
“Shut up, bastards, sons of bitches. This is his Excellency the Emir ...”
Insults poured out of the driver’s mouth. He cursed their whoring, fornicating mothers and drove his car amid their bodies that were blocking the alley, almost running them over. But they were the offspring of the street and they had been run over time and again. If they were raped and trampled by adults, they would still get up and go. Although their bones and bodies were as hard as steel, their spirits were as ethereal and tender as those of other children, and they laughed and cried almost at anything.
It was the birthday of her mother, Zeinat. Decorations were placed on houses and cemeteries, and lights wer
e placed around the theater. The large hall was filled with men, women and children, all clapping and cheering “Encore, Zeina, encore!”
How many times did they ask for an encore? Countless times, for she didn’t stop singing, dancing and playing music, and they kept clapping and cheering, while she continued to stand on stage and take only brief breaks. All the time her eyes looked ahead at the faces in the auditorium. There were men in elegant suits and women wearing heavy make-up, colors and jewellery. The pupils of her eyes looked as black as the night, surrounded by a blue circle that gleamed in the sunlight. Her eyes had the power to penetrate masks and see beyond the medals and decorations on the chest. No barriers or fears stopped her eyes from getting straight to the heart of things. Perhaps that was the secret of their magnetic power, for they produced an electric current. Her voice was both joyous and sad, and so were her songs. When she talked to people she dissipated their tedium and their deep sorrows. They laughed with her when she cracked sarcastic jokes about things. Her words and music were biting, uncovering phoniness and exposing inconsistencies. Nobody could predict what she might say or do next. But people sought her, nonetheless, because without her the whole universe would fall into silence and darkness, in spite of the glaring lights and blaring sounds.
He saw her sitting with some women and men at the end of the show. Ahmed al-Damhiri took a cautious, hesitant step toward them. He joined the group and sat with them, listening to her, staring at her, looking her straight in the eye. But it was all useless. Zeina Bint Zeinat did not see him. His face was featureless, indistinguishable from the others. Her eyes moved around but never noticed him. It was as if he didn’t exist. He wanted to draw her attention and remembered a statement he had read in a book which said, “Speak so that I may see you.”
Zeina Page 19
