Her pride stirred the memory of his father in his mind, so he stopped going to the editorial hall of the Renaissance magazine and stopped ghostwriting for Mageeda al-Khartiti. He continued writing for the Thawra newspaper. His name became known and people were keen to read his articles. In a short while he was placed in charge of the artistic page in the newspaper.
Zakariah al-Khartiti sat in his usual chair at the breakfast table, his right hand holding the coffee cup and his left holding the paper. He stared hard at his new photograph inside the frame at the top of his column. It stretched on the page from top to bottom. His signature at the end came as an illegible scrawl next to his email address with his name @yahoo.com. During the time he was a member of a leftist party, his column was placed to the left of the page. When he was awarded the official state prize, it moved to the center. But with the rise of free market forces, religious men, and businessmen, it moved to the right. Many establishments carried his name, including a mosque, a charity organization for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and another for the care of orphaned children, an international publishing and printing company, and a satellite channel broadcasting movies and interviews about science and religion, as well as about religious dialogue.
In front of him sat his wife, Bodour, in her usual chair, sipping her tea and glancing briefly at his column. Reading his column was boring, for she knew his written and unwritten words, the words appearing on the page and those lurking behind the lines. For how many years had she read his column every day? Twenty? Thirty? A hundred? She couldn’t distinguish one day from another since her wedding. She knew his column as intimately as she knew his phallus. As soon as she looked at either, she felt sick in the stomach. She wished to reach for the scissors in order to cut off his column and pin it on the wall next to all the other columns by Mahmoud al-Feqqi, the editor-in-chief, and other writers, and next to the photographs of the head of state and the first lady.
Her husband was jealous of Mahmoud al-Feqqi’s column. He noticed her reaction when she read al-Feqqi’s column and read his own. Although Mahmoud al-Feqqi was nothing but a colleague, practically a stranger to her, she read his column before she read her husband’s. It was possible for a woman to have several colleagues, but she had just the one husband, and a husband was like God Almighty, who would not allow the presence of a partner. If a woman took two husbands, she would be arrested and placed in solitary confinement. She would earn the title of whore, fornicator, or fallen woman.
As he read his column aloud to her as usual, he was overtaken by a great sense of joy. His voice streamed to her hearing in spite of the cotton swabs she used to stop her ears. Her eyelids stood half open, and she fell into a coma-like state:
Our country is going through a very dangerous phase. The city of Cairo, dear readers, is no longer the city we have known. Every day we hear of new events referred to as regrettable. These are serious events predicting an imminent explosion. We fear the outbreak of riots by the rabble and the hungry street children. We anticipate a rebellion by the women aping Western women in flagrant defiance of our deep-rooted ethical values, our age-old traditions, and God’s laws laid down in our great religion. God has given men the right to have four wives, according to the true verses of the Qur’an, which state that a man may have two, three or four wives. This is God’s law and human beings have no right to object to this ruling. God also ordained that children be named after their fathers, which makes it clear that a child’s affiliation must be to his father. This is God’s command. Only infidels, unbelievers and renegades will challenge His commands. A new feminist organization is now calling for giving the mother’s name to the child with an unknown father. This organization defies the precepts of religion. It is paid by the West, dear readers, for the purpose of destroying Islam. This organization calls for moral disintegration, and for the same kind of sexual freedom enjoyed by women in the West, where diseases abound such as AIDS, gonorrhoea, illegitimate children, communism, prostitution and atheism.
Islam, my dear readers, is the true religion and it suits humanity everywhere and at any time. Its perfection leads us to uphold its precepts everywhere and throughout all ages. We have no right as human beings to change any of the rulings laid down in the Qur’an or in the teachings of the Prophet, may God’s peace be upon him. In the Qur’an God says: “This day have I perfected for you your religion and completed my favour on you and chosen for you Islam as a religion.” The Qur’an explains everything. We have to keep our religion and hold on to its precepts. We have to keep our faith in God, in the hereafter, in God’s messengers and prophets, and in the three divine religions. We have to perform prayers, fasting, and pilgrimage to the holy places. These are the basic principles that protect our social texture and save us from wrongdoing and delinquency. They will control our excesses and prevent instincts, lusts and Devilish temptations from superseding the word of God and from violating Qur’anic and ethical laws.
I therefore call for the banning of this dangerous organization, because it is made up of women of dubious character who encourage apostasy and the violation of Islamic principles. This organization threatens the peace of our country, which regards Islamic law as the only source of legislation. And Islamic law does not allow sexual freedom for women, for morality and virtue are far more important than freedom.
Signed: Zakariah al-Khartiti
Zakariah al-Khartiti finished reading his long column. His wife was struggling to open her half-closed eyelids. She stared at him slyly, wishing to scream in his face and shower him with insults: “You corrupt, degraded child rapist, you’re defending morality?”
Bodour held the tea cup in her left hand, and in her right she had the white cheese knife with which she was cutting a cucumber. The knife in her hand reached for her husband’s column in the paper as though to tear it to pieces. But it retreated a little, then came forward a step or two, aiming to cut into her husband’s chest covered with a few grey hairs. The knife descended little by little from the chest to the belly, and from thence to the pubic area with its sparse hairs. It quivered in her short white fingers, almost reaching the tip of his small, shrunken phallus. She wished to cut off both his column and his phallus at one stroke, for the two seemed to her to be one and the same thing. They were like the hazy finger appearing from beyond the clouds, belonging to either God or Satan, which came to her in her dreams when she was a child of eight. It crept over her neck and belly as she lay in bed. It moved like a hard nail from her head to the sole of her left foot. She knew it was Satan’s finger because it came from the left side. God’s finger, in contrast, came from the right side. The knife recoiled in her quivering hand, hesitating between going forward and retreating. The tea cup fell from her fingers and crashed loudly on the floor. Her husband lifted his eyes from the newspaper and glared at her angrily.
“That’s a very expensive cup. I paid a hundred and twenty pounds for that.”
He stared at her short, trembling fingers. They were incapable of holding the pen or writing a worthwhile article. She dreamed of writing a novel, but she slept most of the time. She did absolutely nothing except go to the psychiatrist and swallow Valium.
Bodour moved her heavy body from the seat. She stood on her bare feet and walked like a sleepwalker. A splinter of the broken cup cut through the skin of her left foot. She extended her right foot so that another splinter might cut through its skin. She experienced a mysterious kind of painful pleasure as she watched her blood flow on the white tiles of the floor. Something in the bright red color of the blood woke her from her slumber and brought her back to reality. She stepped with her two feet on the splinters on the floor. They felt like nails, so she walked and walked on them, feeling a mixture of pleasure and pain. The pain merged with pleasure, the fantasy with fact, the present with the past and the future. She saw Nessim’s face as he walked beside her during the great demonstration, his large eyes sparkling.
He wrapped his arms around her and whispered in he
r ear, “If we have a girl, we will call her Zeina, and if it’s a boy, we’ll call him Zein. Our child will change this world and the next, and will put an end to injustice, poverty, and disease.”
She bent down with her short, plump body and touched the blood spots on the tiled floor. She stared hard at the drops of spilt blood and felt a burning in her finger when she touched it. It seemed to her to be a hot tongue of flame that was teeming with life and energy. Its color changed with the movement of the earth around the sun and turned into a bluish black flame burning in the darkness of the night. It was like the eyes of cats staring at you, or the gazing eyes of newborn babies left in the open air without any cover except the sky. A child was born on the pavement with large, bluish black pupils that had the light of day and the darkness of the night. She might have gone away without seeing the baby’s eyes. But the eyelids opened suddenly and the two gleaming pupils looked at her, piercing her heart like darts, cutting through the flesh and the bone, and reaching the grooves of her soul inside her heart of hearts.
Bodour took her car and went to see her psychiatrist who had become her only friend. She paid him a hundred and fifty pounds for half an hour, at the rate of five pounds a minute. If she stayed with him for ten minutes, she would pay fifty pounds. If he took her in his arms and the visit continued for an hour or an hour and a half, the payment would be larger because he would be working harder. He would be using not only his body and heart, but his words and conversation as well. The minute of conversation was worth five pounds, but the minute of platonic love was worth seven and a half. One minute of un-platonic love, in contrast, was worth ten. The psychiatrist didn’t feel any embarrassment when she placed a stack of banknotes in his hands.
“This is my profession, Bodour, like your literary criticism. Do you feel embarrassed to receive your salary every month? Do you feel embarrassed to be paid five hundred pounds for an article? I ease people’s suffering and alleviate the pains of the body, the heart, the mind, and the soul. There’s no difference between physical and spiritual pain. And why is spiritual love more sublime than bodily love? This is my profession and this is how I earn my living in a legitimate manner that God has made permissible for me.”
“He has made it permissible for you to have four wives, doctor, hasn’t He?”
“No, Bodour. I’m not one of those men. I have just one wife and I love her and am faithful to her. When I do these things in the clinic, I’m not being unfaithful to her. It’s just part of my job.”
“I don’t understand you, doctor.”
“Any profession follows a code of honor. And all professions are honorable as long as you don’t harm others. When I take you in my arms, I harm no one. At the same time I’m easing your pain and curing you of your sadness.”
“What is the difference, then, between psychiatry and prostitution?”
“Nothing. I have more respect for prostitutes than for husbands and wives who lie to one another. Lying is the only shameful act, in my view. My wife knows everything about me and I about her.”
“Don’t you believe in God, doctor?”
“God for me is sincerity and nothing else.”
“Don’t you believe that God has already decided our fate and has written it on our foreheads?”
The psychiatrist raised his palm to wipe his forehead and laughed. “If anything has been written on my forehead, I can wipe it clean and write what I want.”
“May God forgive us all, doctor. This is heresy.”
“Have you joined your cousin Ahmed al-Damhiri’s group then?”
“No, doctor. I don’t agree with his views. But I need God.”
“What do you need Him for?”
“Because He helps me stand up to those who oppress me and treat me unfairly.”
“Who’s treating you unfairly?”
“Everyone who has control over me, starting from the Dean of the Faculty at the university to my husband at home.”
“And what should God do to them?”
“It’s nothing, doctor. But ... But ...”
“But what, Doctor Bodour?”
“But God will burn them in hell in the next world.”
“No, no, Bodour. I think your psychological state is getting worse and not better. You were better a month ago. You need new electric shock sessions.”
“No, no, doctor, anything but electric shock therapy. I’m ready for anything, including apostasy, but don’t apply electricity to my brain, doctor.”
“Do you know what your problem is, Bodour?”
“Yes, doctor?”
“Your life has been too easy. Your parents deprived you of challenge.”
“Yes, I had everything. My parents deprived me of deprivation.”
“It’s not fair. God will never forgive them.”
“You mean you now believe in God?”
“It’s a slip of the tongue, Bodour. Excuse me, but your time is up. I have to close the clinic and go back to my wife and kids.”
The black cloud hung over the city from north to south, making the day indistinguishable from the night. Bodour al-Damhiri lay in bed, a faint ray of light falling on her closed eyelids. It crept over her face and neck, entered underneath her nightgown, and reached her upper abdomen. Hearing the sound of thunder, she awoke with a start. She had no idea what time it was. She called Nanny Zeinat, who came into the bedroom carrying a silver tray with a silver teapot and a silver spoon. Bodour smelled the tea and took a bite from the mouth-watering cake coated with sugar and a piece of jam with butter.
“Is it thunder or canon shots celebrating the feast, Zeinat?”
“No, Miss Bodour, these are the sounds of demonstrations.”
Bodour jumped to her small, fleshy feet. She placed them in her blue slippers topped with balls of white fur. She tottered to the window, followed by Zeinat wearing her white rubber shoes. Zeinat reached with her thin, dark hand to the window and opened it. The sound rushed inside the room along with the powerful winds, shaking the whole house. Thousands, millions of people, women, men, youngsters, children marched in lines, carrying placards, their cheers reaching the high heavens: “Down with the regime. Down with the king and the English”.
Bodour closed her eyes and her body was all a-tremble as the memories came back.
“Was it only a dream? Was it something that happened to another woman?”
Bodour was nineteen, marching steadily and strongly toward love and freedom. Love and freedom were embodied in one person who walked by her side during demonstrations. His name was Nessim, or Naim, or something else, for names changed with the passage of time. The cheers also changed. Instead of “Down with the king and the English”, the slogans became “Down with America and the president”, “Freedom or death” and “Long live free Egypt”.
The cheers rose higher and came closer to her. The voices of thousands of people on the street were shouting the slogans:
The cost of bread is higher,
Our homes are on fire.
Sugar and oil are dearer
And we’ve become cheaper.
The cheers thundered, rising and falling like the cascading rumble of a waterfall. Bodies fell on the ground, rose up again, and fell once more. She walked among them, kicking the earth, carried by the human stream that seemed to pour into the sea. A huge wave lifted her from the ground. The closer she was to the center, the more tightly squeezed she felt. She merged with the crowd and disappeared completely, only to be born again. She had become just a part of the whole and her voice melted into the voices of the crowd. She was overtaken by a strong sensation of pleasure akin to sex. Although she walked and walked and walked, she didn’t feel tired in the least. Her body was no longer short or plump, but tall and graceful, dancing with agility to the rhythm. Then silence descended as suddenly as the outbreak of thunder, and the streets were emptied of people. Police cars moved hurriedly everywhere, but she stood still, her back against the wall. He stood in front of her, his long, strong arms st
retched toward her. They stretched from his wide chest covered with a white vest made of cotton, and a red liquid the color of blood flowed toward her. She reached for his hand, but the distance grew larger and larger. He smiled to her from a distance before disappearing. She saw his back as he walked with his head held high. Children came to him from the alleys and narrow streets, surrounding him in a circle and chanting, “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!”
Bodour woke from her reveries to hear the voice of Zeinat offering her a cup of tea.
“Have your tea, Miss Bodour, before it gets cold.”
“I don’t feel like it, Nanny. I have no appetite.”
“Why do you look so pale, Miss Bodour?”
“I have a cold.”
“You must have gone on the demonstrations. This is too dangerous, Miss Bodour.”
“Please don’t tell Mum and Dad.”
“I would never do that.”
“Please don’t tell them, Nanny.”
“I would never tell, Miss Bodour. You’re very precious to me. But demonstrations are dangerous for you, Miss Bodour. The police took my son, Nessim. They took him in his underwear. They took a lot of youngsters, all poor people who have nobody to speak for them. They shot them dead.”
Zeinat swallowed her tears.
“Oh, son, are you dead or alive? Are they torturing you, like people say? If God existed, Miss Bodour, would this have happened? May God forgive me for my transgressions! Forgive me, oh Lord, for my torment is great, and have mercy on my son.”
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