The two shadows travelled slowly over the dusty track on the river bank. Her shadow was the same: tall, upright with the head rising straight above the neck. It moved as though advancing to attack. The second shadow too had not changed one bit. It slouched along, completely spent, its step resigned, its head still bent. They advanced over the river bank, two silent shadows in the deepening night. Nothing moved in the whole wide world around, nothing moaned or sighed or cried or even spoke. Only silence in the silent night spreading its cloak over the fields stretched out on the other side, over the waters of the Nile, over the sky above their heads, over everything on the ground.
Slowly the fields swung back behind them, and the huts emerged in front, small, dark, indistinct shadows huddling up for support or shelter against the river bank or perhaps afraid of sliding down into the dust-covered expanse of low land.
The two shadows descended the slope into the ditch, and got lost in the narrow twisting lanes, as they glided furtively along between the houses. They came to a stop in front of the big wooden door. Zakeya opened it with a push of her powerful fist and it gave way with a heavy creaking sound. She dropped the rope by which she held the buffalo. It ambled in through the open door and went on towards the stable. She watched it go in for a moment, then squatted in the entrance to the house with her back up against the wall and her eyes facing the open door, so that she could see the part of the lane which lay beyond it.
She sat immobile, her eyes staring into the darkness as though fixed on something she perceived in front of her. Perhaps what had caught her attention was nothing but a mound of manure piled up near the entrance to her house, or the stools of a child, lying on the ground, where it had squatted to relieve itself near the wall, or an army of ants swarming around the body of a dead beetle, or one of the black iron columns in the huge door on the opposite side of the lane.
The darkness was all pervading, almost impenetrable, but she continued to stare into the night until a moment came when she felt a stabbing pain in her head. She pulled the shawl even more tightly around it, but after a while the pain travelled down to her stomach. She put out her hand and fumbled in the dark for the flat, straw basket containing the week’s store of food. She pulled it up to her side, parted her tightly closed lips and began to feed little pieces of dry bread, dry cheese and salted pickles into her mouth.
Her lids were heavy with an exhaustion which was overwhelming. She dozed off for short moments, her head resting on her knees. She could no longer see anything in the total darkness, even when her eyes were wide open. Kafrawi slipped in through the big wooden door and squatted down beside her. She was looking straight at him as he came up, so he thought she had seen him. But although wide awake she had not really seen the man he has become. His body shrinks before her eyes to that of a small boy, and now she is looking at him through her child’s eyes, as she crawls on her belly over the dust-covered yard of their house, panting breathlessly, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth. The dust gets into her eyes, and nose and mouth. She sits up and starts rubbing her little fists into her eyes. The next moment she stops rubbing her eyes, and sits with her hands in her lap looking around, but suddenly she sees four black hoofs moving over the ground towards her. One of the hoofs rises slowly up into the air. She can see its dark forbidding underside like the surface of a big hammer ready to drop with all its might on her head. A shiver goes through her, and she screams out loud. Two strong arms reach out to her and lift her from the ground. The feel of her mother’s arms around her, the warmth of her breast, and the smell of her flesh are reassuring and her screams subside.
She could no longer remember her mother’s face; the features had faded away in her mind. Only the smell of her body remained alive. Something about it reminded her of the smell of dough, or of yeast. And whenever this smell was in the air around her, a strong feeling of happiness came over her. Her face would soften and grow tender for a short moment, but an instant later it would become as harsh, and as resolute, as it had been throughout her life.
When she learnt to stand on her legs, and walk, they allowed her to go to the fields with Kafrawi. He walked in front leading the buffalo by a rope tied round its neck, while she brought up the rear driving the donkey with its load of manure. Her brother remained silent all the way. She never heard his voice except when he urged the buffalo on with the cry ‘Shee, shee’ or tried to make the donkey move faster by shouting ‘Haa, haa’ at it.
She remembered seeing her father standing in the fields, but could not recall his face. All that remained of him in her memory was a pair of long, thin, spindly legs, with protruding knees, a galabeya with its tail lifted and tied around his waist, a huge hoe held tightly in his big hands, as it rose and fell with a regular thud, and the sombre, heavy creaking of the water-wheel. The wheeze of the water-wheel would continue to go round and round inside her. At certain moments she could feel it stop suddenly, make her turn towards the buffalo and cry out ‘Shee, shee’, but the animal would not budge. It stood there motionless. The black head perfectly still, the black eyes staring at her fixedly.
Zakeya was about to repeat ‘Shee, shee’ when she realized the face was not that of the buffalo, but Kafrawi’s. He resembled her a great deal. His features were carved like hers, his eyes large, black and also full of anger, but it was a different kind of anger, mingling in their depths with despair, and expressing a profound humiliation.
He remained seated by her side, his lips tightly closed, his back pressed up against the mud wall, his eyes staring into the darkness of the lane, reaching across to the bars in the huge iron door facing them some distance away. He turned towards her and parting his lips slightly spoke in a harsh whisper.
‘The girl has disappeared, Zakeya. She is gone.’
‘Gone!?’ she asked in anguish.
‘Yes, gone. There is no trace of her in the whole village.’
He sounded desperate. She stared at him out of her large, black eyes. He held her stare, but there was a profound hopelessness in the way he looked back at her.
‘Nefissa is nowhere to be found in Kafr El Teen, Zakeya,’ he said. ‘She’s vanished completely. She will never return.’
He held his head in his hands and added, this time almost in a wail, ‘She’s lost, Zakeya. Oh, my God.’
Zakeya looked away from him, and fixed her eyes on the lane, then whispered in a mechanical way, her voice full of sadness, ‘We’ve lost her the same as we lost Galal.’
He lifted his face and murmured, ‘Galal is not lost, Zakeya. He will return to you soon.’
‘Every day you say the same thing, Kafrawi. You know that Galal is dead and you’re trying to convince me that he’s not.’
‘No one has told us that he is dead.’
‘Many of them died, Kafrawi, so why not him?’
‘But many have come back. Be patient and pray Allah, that he may send him back safely to us.’
‘I’ve prayed so many times, so many times,’ she said in a choking voice.
‘Pray again, Zakeya. Pray to Allah that he may return safely, and Nefissa too. Where could the girl have gone? Where?’
Their voices like the successive gasps of two people in pain ceased abruptly. Silence descended upon them, a silence heavier than the thick cloak of darkness around them. Their eyes continued to stare fixedly into the limitless night, and neither of them moved. They sat on, side by side, as immobile as the mud huts buried in the dark.
_________
* An ankle-length gown or robe which is cut to hang loosely; it is worn traditionally by both men and women, although the style, colours and cloth differ.
II
The big iron door swung open slowly, and the Mayor of Kafr El Teen stepped out into the lane. He was tall with big, hefty shoulders and a broad, almost square face. Its upper half had come to him from his mother: smooth silky hair, and deep blue eyes which stared out from under a prominent, high forehead. The lower half came from the upper reaches of the countr
y in the south, and had been handed down to him by his father: thick, jet black whiskers overhung by a coarse nose, below which the lips were soft and fleshy, suggesting lust rather than sensuality. His eyes had a haughty, almost arrogant quality, like those of an English gentleman accustomed to command. When he spoke his voice was hoarse, and unrefined, like that of an Upper Egyptian peasant. But its hoarseness was endowed with a mellow, humble quality that belied any hint of the aggression often found in the voices of men cowed by years of oppression in former colonies like Egypt and India.
He moved with a slow step, his long, dark cloak falling to the ground. Behind him followed the Chief of the Village Guard and the Sheikh of the mosque. As they came out they could see two shadows squatting in the dark across the lane. The faces were invisible but the three men knew that it was Kafrawi and his sister, Zakeya, for they were in the habit of sitting there, side by side, for long hours without exchanging a single word. When there was only one shadow instead of two, it meant that Kafrawi had stayed behind in the fields, where he would labour until sunrise.
At this hour they were in the habit of going to the nearby mosque for evening prayers. Once back, they would install themselves on the terrace of the mayor’s house overlooking the river, or saunter down to the shop owned by Haj Ismail, the village barber. There they sat smoking and chatting as each one in turn drew in a puff from the long, cane stem of the water-jar pipe.
But this time the Mayor refused to smoke the water-jar pipe. Instead he extracted a cigar from his side pocket, bit off the end, lit it with a match, and started to smoke while the others watched. Haj Ismail could tell from the way the Mayor frowned that he was not in a good mood. So he disappeared into his shop and a moment later came back, sidled up close to him, and tried to slip a small piece of hashish into the palm of his hand, but the Mayor pushed it away and said, ‘No, no. Not tonight.’
‘But why, your highness?’ enquired Haj Ismail.
‘Did you not hear the news?’
‘What news, your highness?’
‘The news about the government.’
‘Which government, your highness?’
‘Haj Ismail! How many governments do you think we have?’
‘A good number.’
‘Nonsense! We have only one government, and you know that very well.’
‘Which government do you have in mind, the government of Misr* or the government of Kafr El Teen?’
‘The government of Misr, of course.’
‘Where do we come in then?’
The Chief of the Village Guard laughed out loud and exclaimed, ‘Who would dare deny that we’re just as much of a government ourselves?’
It was Sheikh Hamzawi’s turn to laugh. His tobacco-stained teeth could be seen protruding from his big mouth, and the yellow-beaded rosary swayed from side to side as he slipped it furiously through his fingers.
But the Mayor did not join in the laughter. He closed his thick lips tightly around his cigar, and his blue eyes gazed into the distance over the long ribbon of the river water and the wide expanses of cultivated land, now invisible in the darkness. In his mind he could see them stretching out between the two villages of Kafr El Teen and El Rawla. When he used to visit the area with his mother during the summer months, he never imagined that some day he would settle down in Kafr El Teen. He loved the city life of Cairo. The lamps shining on the dark surface of the tarmac roads. The coloured lights of the riverside casinos reflected in the flowing waters of the Nile. The nightclubs thronged with people eating and drinking as they sat around the tables, the women dancing, their bodies moving, their perfume and soft laughter going through him.
At the time he was still a college student. But unlike his elder brother he hated lectures, and lecture rooms, hated the talk about knowledge, and his future. Above all, he hated listening to his brother discoursing about politics and political groupings.
As they sat there plunged in silence, Haj Ismail suddenly remembered the morning newspaper he had left in the shop on the wooden table next to the weighing machine. He disappeared inside again and returned carrying it folded up in his hand. He opened it out under the kerosene lamp, and started to read the headlines on the front page, but his attention was drawn away from them by the picture of a man. It stood out clearly in the middle of the page. The features were familiar and it did not take him long to realize that he was looking at the elder brother of the Mayor. He tried to read what was written below, but the print was too small, and he could not make out what it said. He hesitated for a moment, then moving closer to the Mayor whispered in his ear in as low a voice as possible.
‘Has the news you mentioned got something to do with your brother?’
After a brief silence the Mayor said, ‘Yes.’
This time Haj Ismail’s question expressed concern. ‘Has some misfortune befallen him?’
There was a note of pride in the Mayor’s voice as he replied, ‘No, on the contrary.’
Haj Ismail was so excited he could barely contain himself. ‘Does your highness mean to say that he’s been elevated to a higher post?’
The Mayor blew out a dense cloud of smoke. ‘Yes, exactly, Haj Ismail.’
Haj Ismail clapped his hands together with glee, then looked around at the others and said, ‘Our friends, then we must drink sherbet to celebrate the occasion.’
A flutter went round the men seated in front of the shop. The newspaper quickly changed hands going from one to the other. Haj Ismail left them and came back carrying a bottle of sherbet and empty cups.
But the Mayor seemed to be lost in his thoughts. All day he had kept wondering why the moment he had seen his brother’s picture in the newspaper a feeling of inadequacy and depression had come over him. He knew this feeling well. It was always accompanied by a bitterness of the mouth, a dryness of the throat which turned into a burning sensation as it moved down to his chest, followed by an obscure and yet sharp pain which radiated outwards from his stomach.
He was a small boy when this feeling first started to come over him. He remembered how he used to run to the bathroom and vomit all the food in his stomach. Then he would stand there examining himself in the mirror above the washbasin. His face was deathly pale, his lips almost yellow, and the gleam which shone in his eyes was gone. They looked dull, apathetic, resigned, as though some cloud had descended upon them and snuffed out their liveliness.
He would wash his mouth several times to dispel the remaining taste of bitterness which lingered behind. When he raised his head to look into the mirror, it was his brother’s face that appeared before him. He contemplated the rosy cheeks, the gleam of victory in the eyes. In his ears rang the exultant tones of the voice he knew so well. ‘I succeed in everything I undertake. But you have been a failure all the time.’
He would spit out the water in his mouth on to the face smiling calmly at him from the mirror. Then lift his neck, square his shoulders, and addressing it in a loud voice say, ‘I am a thousand times better than you.’
Anyone seeing him as he walked out of the bathroom door would imagine that of the two he was no doubt the more successful. His lips had regained their rosy colour, and his eyes were shining brightly. The bitter taste in his mouth had gone, and once more his merry laughter rang out, as he romped around mischievously, teasing his mother who sat in her armchair knitting, trying to pull at the tip of the thread and make the woollen skein roll out. Her haughty blue eyes would flash with an angry light and the curt sentence pronounced with an English accent would sting his pride. ‘Your brother is much better than you are.’
Sometimes she would set aside her needles, reach out for the folded newspaper lying on the table next to her, and pointing to a name printed in small letters on one of the pages inside, would say, ‘Your brother has passed his examinations brilliantly, whereas you…’
He would stop laughing immediately, as though something had seized him by the throat and was choking him, then swallow several times without responding. And just
as suddenly he would realize that he was not really happy, that he had been forcing himself into a merry mood. This feeling of being superior to his brother was just a disguise. The truth was so overwhelming that it shook him to the marrow of his bones. It seemed to exude from every pore in his body with the cold, sticky sweat that now ran under his clothes. It crept into his mouth and nose, reviving the taste of bitterness once more, dropped down with it to his chest, then through a small hole into his belly. He would run back to the bathroom and vomit repeatedly until there was nothing left for him to vomit.
Haj Ismail was sipping his second round of sherbet from the copper cup when he noticed the Mayor spit on the ground scornfully, then he straightened his back, lifted his head, and his eyes travelled slowly over them with a haughty stare. His look seemed to say, ‘Compared to me, you people are just nobodies. I am from a noble family. My mother is English, and my brother is one of the people who rule this country.’
Haj Ismail cringed as he sat on the bench, as though trying to make himself so small that he could avoid the eyes of the Mayor. He had been on the verge of joking with him, of telling him the latest stories, but immediately thought better of it. His eyes kept shifting backwards and forwards between the picture of the Mayor’s elder brother sitting in the midst of the most important people in the country, his features expressing a haughty arrogance and the small shop with its old, cracked shelves, covered in dust, and the few rusty tins standing dejectedly on them. He tried to tear himself away from the comparison only to find himself lost in the contemplation of the Mayor’s expensive cloak, while his hand kept fingering the coarse fabric of his own galabeya.
God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels Page 2
