Ahmed al-Damhiri sprang out of bed drenched in sweat, feeling the pain in his left shoulder. A stubborn mosquito had bitten him. It had buzzed around his head before he fell asleep. He tried in vain to kill it but it evaded him and eluded his swatter, before disappearing into some corner beyond his reach. He sprayed it with insecticide, which had no effect. Insecticides had become inadequate in dealing with the new species of mosquitoes, which acquired heightened characteristics and challenged the will of God, like the new generation of loose girls. At the underground meeting of the group, the decision was taken to carry out God’s commandment without argument or question. The name of Zeina Bint Zeinat was added to the death list, which included other names violating religious principles and threatening public order. These were women and men poets who wrote against the regime and called for love, justice, and freedom. There were young students and workers who went on demonstrations, calling for the eradication of corruption, bribery, and neo-imperialism. They shouted against poverty, war, and the abuse of religion. More names were added to the death list with the rise of unemployment, the growth of slums, and the spread of drugs and rape crimes. There were three million children living on the streets. Fathers refused to acknowledge their children born after they had raped young girls on the pavement.
Bodour al-Damhiri sipped her black coffee as she always did before getting ready to write. She took a warm shower, washed her hair and head from the residues of literary criticism, and brushed her teeth with a refreshing toothpaste. For Bodour al-Damhiri, writing was a ritual which was akin to love or prayers. She looked up to the sky with her eyes half open, receiving inspiration, smacking her lips, enjoying the taste of the black coffee. Its bitterness felt strong and refreshing in her stomach, banishing the remnants of sadness and chronic depression. On her desk were the pages of her novel, smudged with stains of black and blue ink, yellowing drops of tears and red blood turning dark brown. There was the odor of sweat between the lines and beneath them. But she was prevented from writing by tiredness, intense sorrow, and a more intense kind of fear. She couldn’t tell the difference between truth and lies, fact and fiction. She stared at the dissolving lines between things, for faith melted into apostasy, ugliness and insolence into beauty and civility. Honesty and integrity had turned into theft, treason, and disgrace.
Faces looked at her from between the pages. She couldn’t distinguish her father’s face from the faces of her grandfather, uncle, and cousin, for all male faces became one, a double-sided face with a devil and a god on each side. The faces of women also merged into one: the tender-hearted and the killer, the pious and the atheist, the sincere and the unfaithful, the woman wrapping her head but at the same time baring her belly and wearing tight jeans around her taut buttocks like a tiger’s. Her hips shook as she took long strides. Her walk seemed rather crude and indecent to women of good families, and her voice rang high among their muffled, repressed voices.
She whispered in her ear as she stared scornfully at her novel, “You’re too mediocre to be a novelist, for you’re clean and innocent and virginal and incapable of creativity. You can’t write a novel, Bodour, until you have known evil and until you have drunk the cup of pleasures dry. You need to forget first of all about this world and the afterworld, about punishment and reward, about hell and heaven. Honesty and disgrace will become identical after you remove the mask from your face and see yourself naked. Only then will you realize that loneliness is far better than an obnoxious companion. Divorce, Bodour, is the solution. You need to free yourself from this abhorrent marriage.
“When injustice reigns, loneliness becomes the only civilized option, the warm motherly breasts. Lust and virtue are as inseparable as day and night. Virtuous women like you, Bodour, are obsessed with their desires, while lustful women only dream of chastity.
“Why did you leave your newborn baby on the pavement? Was it for Zakariah al-Khartiti, your husband, the man obsessed with his mutilated phallus which he uses to rape orphan children? The man obsessed with his column that nobody reads? How many years have you shared your bed with him and lain helplessly underneath him? Can you still dream of writing a novel? Are you dreaming of writing a novel without having to pay the price? The price of creativity? Freedom comes at a price, and so does courage. But when we pay the price, Bodour, our lives change for the better. Our souls soar high and become cleansed. The woman novelist never finds the man who deserves her. There is no tender heart to soothe her except her own. Her only companion is her pen. But the woman literary critic like you enjoys all the privileges of this life and the next, including having a great writer for a husband, the honor of belonging to a distinguished family, state prizes, a palace on earth and another in heaven. A woman novelist, Bodour, doesn’t taste happiness. And if she does, happiness will come from within her, from her writings. A woman novelist has no country, family, religion, native city, or tribe. Her homeland is the street, the open road without four walls. Her life is a journey into the unknown. You’ve inherited writing as you’ve inherited your religion. You’re driven by the desire to receive accolades and not by the desire to write. That’s why your novel has been as evasive and as slippery as an eel. A novel, Bodour, is like living fish swimming against the current, and is very different from the dead fish floating on the surface and moving with the current. A chaste woman like you, Bodour, is a dead fish floating with the current. And you still want to write a novel?”
Bodour shook her soft white hand in Badreya’s face, chasing her terrifying black spectre, raising her pen to gouge her eyes out and stop her voice. But Badreya had no eyes and no tongue. She was a roaming spirit, appearing at night on the walls like a phantom, peering like Satan’s finger from between the pages of the novel, like God’s finger, and as real as God and Satan. She was the great truth of her life. Bodour might doubt the existence of Satan or God, but Badreya was the only irrefutable truth in her life. She was authenticity itself, and everything else was untrue, unimportant, unnecessary, and unreal.
Bodour’s fingers quivered as she held the pen. It moved uncertainly on the blank page, and her scrawl was like a child’s. A question persisted in Bodour’s head: why should the most truthful things in our lives remain hidden? And if they happen to come out, they are stolen by those closest to us.
She lifted her head from the desk. Her husband, Zakariah al-Khartiti, was standing right in front of her in his white silk pyjamas, fiddling with the sparse white hairs on his chest and under his belly, and rubbing his eyes. His mouth reeked of dead fish as he opened it wide and yawned aloud.
Before he could ask her anything, she burst out, “Why do you swim with the dead fish, Zakariah?”
Their daughter, Mageeda al-Khartiti, was sound asleep in her room far away. Their loud voices pierced her ears as they quarrelled. She had been hearing their squabbles since childhood. The noise was faint at the beginning, then the volume rose gradually and she heard the sounds of slapping and smacking and kicking. She had no idea who dealt the blows or who received them. In the morning, they sat at the breakfast table, reading the papers and talking as if nothing had happened the night before. They exchanged talk, smiles, tea pots, the salt, the toasted bread basket, and the plates of butter, honey, and white cheese with olive oil.
Mageeda slammed the door shut behind her. She drove her car to her office at the Renaissance magazine. She ordered a cup of coffee and called the unknown writer, Mohamed, in the editorial hall.
“Where’s the article, Mohamed?”
“I wrote another article, about Zeina Bint Zeinat.”
“But censorship will never allow the publication of this article.”
“Why not, Miss Mageeda? She’s the greatest artist in the country, ma’am.”
“True, but censorship has forbidden anything to be written about her.”
“But this isn’t fair, ma’am.”
“Of course it’s not fair. Life is full of people suffering from unfairness, and they have God to protect them.”
“What kind of talk is this? Have you gone out of your mind to speak so heretically?”
“May God forgive me for all my trespasses, ma’am.”
“That’s better.”
“But this is unfair, ma’am. God cannot approve of unfairness.”
“God approves of unfairness every day of the week. If He didn’t, we wouldn’t have three million children living on the streets, fifty per cent of the Egyptian population living under the poverty line, or thousands and millions of people dying in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sudan, let alone the injustices everywhere in the world. God approves of unfairness!”
“Are you being sacrilegious here, ma’am?”
“Yes, Mohamed, I am. All this is enough to drive you to heresy. I can’t imagine how Zeina Bint Zeinat’s name came to be on the death list! She’s an honest soul who’s never harmed anyone. She was my schoolmate and friend from primary school. I know her well, a good girl like no other.”
“I must write about her then, ma’am. I have the article with me.”
“Publish it in one of the opposition papers, Mohamed. This magazine is a government publication, and, as you know, the government works with the emir and those groups. And everybody works for America and its allies. As journalists, we all want to earn our living, and the biggest liars are those with columns in that great government paper. My father, Zakariah al-Khartiti, is at the top of that list.”
Her voice quivered through the telephone, and the receiver shook in her plump white hand. Her facial muscles contracted nervously and her voice turned into a hoarse, stifled blubber.
It wasn’t the first time she’d had an outburst of this kind. Though still an unknown journalist, Mohamed was the closest person to Mageeda at the magazine. He wrote her articles and she confided in him, told him some of her miseries and gave vent to her pent-up feelings. They had a special friendship. She might have fallen in love with him had he not been poor and unknown. She might have considered him if he had some of Zeina Bint Zeinat’s pride and refused to hire his pen. Since childhood, Mageeda al-Khartiti had looked up to Zeina Bint Zeinat, comparing herself to her, wishing she possessed that proud head, the tall, graceful stature and the long, elegant fingers moving with the speed of lightning over the keys of the piano. She wished she didn’t have a father who scolded her if she was late, or slapped her on the face if she made a mistake. Sometimes he slapped her for no fault of her own but only as an outlet for his rage. Deep in her heart, she hated her father. She heard people speak ill of him. Her colleagues whispered among themselves about his corruptions and his conquests of girls and whores. She buried the secret deep in her soul and noted in her secret diary: the fiercest of men turn into tame animals in brothels.
A few days later, Mohamed, the unknown journalist, published an article about Zeina Bint Zeinat in the Thawra, the opposition paper.
The voice of her mother’s friend, Safaa al-Dhabi, came to her across the telephone line saying, “Great article, Mageeda. You must read it. And tell your mum to read it. But who’s this Mohamed Ahmed? He’s excellent. He also has courage and experience in literary criticism. Do you know him, Mageeda?”
“Yes, Auntie Safi. He’s my colleague at the magazine.”
“Give him my best regards, Mageeda. He deserves encouragement, and Zeina Bint Zeinat deserves a hundred articles like this. Write about her in your magazine, Mageeda. If I had a page or a column in any paper, I’d write about her. But you know that I’m banned from writing since the day I published my article on the first lady in an opposition paper.”
“Yes, Auntie Safi. But you know of course that censorship forbids articles on Zeina.”
“To hell with censorship! Don’t worry about it and never fear the government. It’s a corrupt government and it collaborates with imperialism. People are now fed up with everything, and revolution is on the way. It’s coming for sure. The hungry and the starving will go on the rampage inside, and invasion will come from outside. Those groups will then seize the reins of power. But the hungry will surely revolt ...”
The framed photograph of Zeina Bint Zeinat was published on the front page of the Thawra newspaper. The article by Mohamed Ahmed appeared on the third page. Eyes stopped at the photograph before the hands turned the pages. They stared for a long time at the magnetic light radiating from the pupils of her eyes. Even on paper she had an overpowering presence. Innocence and experience were united in those eyes, and wisdom and madness. The whole face was radiant, and her wild hair fell down as though it had never been combed before. Her face was free of make-up and color, and her elongated neck was swan-like and proud. The collar of her white dress was creased, as though she had dressed in a hurry and left without looking again in the mirror.
The article occupied half a page and was signed by Mohamed Ahmed:
Zeina Bint Zeinat is an exceptional artist par excellence. Her genius is revealed in the simplest movement she makes. As soon as she enters the auditorium or appears on stage, her presence annihilates everything else around her. Eyes never tire of looking at her. Her spirit lifts our souls to the high heavens. Her ingenious voice assumes a palpable shape in our ears. We can touch it and taste it like red wine, because it can remove distances between hearts. Her tunes throw light on the dark corners of our minds. We become intoxicated with the joy of knowledge and overwhelmed with an unparalleled kind of ecstasy.
Zeina Bint Zeinat has created her destiny with her own hand, for she does not admit of the presence of any other will than her own. Adverse conditions have not defeated her, for she creates her circumstances and not the other way around. She has said of herself, “I am the daughter of the streets and I am proud of my mother, Zeinat, the servant who took me from the pavement and nourished me with pride and confidence. Miss Mariam, my second mother, surrounded me with music, poetry and song. She filled my heart with joy, rhythm and harmony.”
What drove me to write about Zeina Bint Zeinat? It was her beauty, her voice, her rhythm, songs, and conversation. She exudes a magic that has no name. Because she is natural, she is in possession of the miracle of nature. She moves in a harmony that is akin to the movement of the earth around the sun, a movement in tune with the rebellions of slaves in history. She has emerged from the bottom and risen to the top, transforming an atrocious tragedy into a rich, joyful victory. She plays the right tune at the right time in this age of mediocrity. She uncovers veiled faces, exposes lies and falsehood, and discloses inconsistencies and disgraceful acts.
Was it to get rid of her that they put her name on the death list? Zeina Bint Zeinat, however, cannot be killed with gunshots, because her body is not made of flesh and bone, but of an ethereal substance that is not susceptible to bullets. Even when she dies, she will not disappear. Her star will rise higher in the firmament because true art challenges death. True artists do not die, because their hands have reached the tree of life after eating from the tree of knowledge. They have tasted the forbidden fruit and have become immortal like the gods.
Umm Kulthum, our great singer, had a tremendous sense of humour and irony. When she cracked a joke, she made the most important men laugh. Presidents, ministers, princes, as well as the person who was the target of her humour, laughed at her jokes. She sometimes even laughed at herself. Laughter takes off the edge and the venom of the criticism, because it purifies the spirit and invites tolerance and forgiveness.
Zeina Bint Zeinat is not just a star. She is a whole constellation. When I heard her laugh, my buried sorrows suddenly vanished. Her laugh rings in the air, revitalizing bodies and minds and saving souls from stagnancy. She is like the secret potion of happiness or love, well known yet mysterious, natural and unnatural at the same time.
When Zeina Bint Zeinat dances, everybody dances with her, men, women, youngsters, and children. The whole universe dances with her, the trees, the sun
, the moon, and the stars in the sky. Zeina Bint Zeinat possesses nothing except her art. She fears nothing, wants for nothing, and hopes for nothing. She is a free spirit. She has freed herself with her own hands. She has led a life harder than death and is no longer afraid of dying.
By Mohamed Ahmed
The journalist Mohamed Ahmed used to live in a basement room in one of the buildings. His name was known to no one. Suddenly his name was in circulation among people, and his friends and neighbors congratulated him on his article. His mother got up from her sick bed and hugged him. When he was eight years of age, his father died in prison following his participation in demonstrations. Mohamed therefore avoided protests. He had no regular salary or income, but worked in the editorial hall as an unsalaried intern. Mageeda al-Khartiti paid him a small salary in return for the articles he wrote for her. With this small sum, he bought medications and food for his mother, paid the rent for the room and bought himself the occasional shirt, pair of shoes, or book. He dreamed of being liberated from poverty and humiliation. He dreamed of reclaiming his pen and not hiring it to Mageeda al-Khartiti. After publishing his article on Zeina Bint Zeinat, her pride seemed to seep into his soul. When he saw her on stage, his soul was touched, and the voice of his father returned to him, saying, “Death is easier to bear than humiliation. Lift your head high, my son, and don’t be ashamed of poverty. Don’t let the difficulties of life beat you. Those who persist can never be vanquished. To struggle is to be free, even if the result is imprisonment.”
Zeina Page 21
