‘I work here in my father’s house, Sheikh Zahran, and I work in the fields all day,’ she answered in a sobbing voice from her hiding place above the oven. ‘I am not lazy, but I do not want to go to the Mayor’s house.’
The Chief of the Village Guard abandoned his efforts to make her come down and said, ‘You people are free to do what you like. It looks as though you are fated not to enjoy all the good which Allah wants to bestow on you. There are hundreds of girls who would jump at a chance to work in the Mayor’s house. But he chose your daughter, Kafrawi, because he believes you are a good, honest man worthy of his confidence. What will he say now when he hears you have refused his offer?’
‘I am all for accepting, Sheikh Zahran, but as you can see it’s the girl who refuses,’ answered Kafrawi.
‘Then it’s the girl who decides what is done in this household, Kafrawi,’ exclaimed Sheikh Zahran heatedly.
‘No, it’s I who decide. But what can I do if she can’t see sense?’
‘What can you do?! Is that a question for a man to ask?’ responded Sheikh Zahran, even more heatedly. ‘Beat her. Don’t you know that girls and women never do what they’re told unless you beat them?’
So Kafrawi called out to her in a firm voice, ‘You, Nefissa, come down here at once.’
But Nefissa showed no signs of doing what he told her, so he clambered to the top of the oven, struck her several times, and tugged at her hair until she was obliged to come down. He handed her over to Sheikh Zahran in silence.
To her ears came the sound of wooden wheels turning slowly over the ground. When she turned round she saw a cart pulled by an old tired donkey coming up the track towards her. The donkey suddenly lifted its head and brayed in a long, drawn-out gasping lament. The cart passed in front of her where she sat on the ground. She looked into the eyes of the donkey and saw tears. The man on the seat of the cart was staring at her, so she lifted her shawl to cover her face. His features did not look like anyone she had seen in Kafr El Teen, so she felt more at ease. She called out to him from where she sat on the ground. ‘Uncle, please take me with you to Al Ramla,’ then stood up on her feet.
The man eyed her where she stood upright on the bank of the river. He noticed her belly was big, and a faint suspicion crept through his mind. But she looked him straight in the face, and her eyes expressed so much anger, and so much pride that his suspicions were allayed. Her movements were slow as though she was spent out, but she held her body upright. His voice sounded gruff when he spoke.
‘Get in.’
She rested her arms on the edge of the cart and with a powerful pull lifted herself up to the seat. She sat close to him, her eyes on the road stretched out before them and said nothing. After a short while he gave her belly a quick sidelong glance, then asked, ‘Going to your husband in Al Ramla?’
Her eyes did not blink as she said, ‘No.’
He was silent for a moment before coming back to the charge again.
‘Did you leave your husband behind in Kafr El Teen?’
She kept her eyes on the road and still without blinking said, ‘No.’
His looks were becoming more direct. He examined her big, rough hands resting calmly on her lap. The wrists were bare of bracelets. The daughter of some poor peasant, he thought, who is used to digging the ground, and ploughing. Yet when she looked him in the face he saw something he had never noticed before in the eyes of women who belonged to poor peasant families. It was not just anger, nor was it just pride. It was something more powerful than either of them. He suddenly remembered that when still a child he had once climbed up the fence of the Mayor’s house. He found himself looking straight into the eyes of the Mayor’s daughter. At that moment the stick of the Chief of the Village Guard landed on his shoulders, and he clambered down as fast as he could. Throughout his childhood years he had dreamed of looking into her eyes. He never understood why this desire had taken such a hold on him. He never spoke to anyone about it. It sounded so strange, so mad, so utterly unheard of that he did not dare voice it aloud.
He turned his head and looked at her. Their eyes met and held each other with a steady stare. She neither blinked nor looked away, as any of the girls from Kafr El Teen or Al Ramla would have done in her place. There was an expression in her eyes he could not define. Anger or defiance or maybe both together. So he shifted his gaze to the road, shook the reins over the donkey’s back and thought, ‘She does not look like someone who has escaped. Nor does she look as though she is afraid.’
His eyes kept wandering back to where she sat. He could see her bare feet covered with cakes of mud which were now drying. He asked again, ‘Have you come far?’
With her eyes still fastened on the road she said, ‘Yes.’
Still unsatisfied he queried, ‘Walking all night?’
‘Yes.’
He was silent for some time. He found it difficult to imagine this young woman walking alone through the night over long dusty roads, or cutting through fields where foxes and wolves and brigands lay hidden. But he said nothing for a while, fixing his attention on the road which stretched ahead of them. Then, as though he had turned the matter over in his mind before speaking again, he commented in a low voice, ‘The night is dangerous.’
He pronounced the words in a strange, deliberate way as a man would do if he wanted to frighten her, and see the lids of her wide-open eyes tremble in fear. But she continued to stare at the horizon, watching where they were going with unblinking eyes.
‘Night is safer than day, uncle,’ she said.
He was silent again. The features of his face remained perfectly still like a child whom someone has struck with a stick just a moment ago, but who refuses to show he is hurt, or to burst into tears. He felt a pressure on his chest, like a strong desire to weep kept back for years, ever since the day when the Chief of the Village Guard had whipped him with his cane. If she had turned to him at this moment and smiled, he would have rested his head on her breast, and wept like a child. Or if he had seen the slightest quiver in her eyes when he gazed into them as the cart started to rock from side to side he might have enjoyed a sense of relief for a while. But she did not quiver and she did not smile. She did not even turn to look at him as though she had forgotten his presence by her side. Even at the rare moments when she did, he felt she was thinking of something else, so important, so big that by comparison he remained as of little consequence as the droppings of a fly. He dipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out a plug of molassed tobacco, or maybe it was a piece of hashish, or opium. He put it in his mouth. His saliva tasted bitter and he swallowed several times, then started to cough violently as though trying to overcome an age-long feeling of humiliation he carried deep down inside him. He bent his head with the deep sadness of a man who has just realized that the only real feeling he has known is this sense of humiliation that he carries around with him, day after day, and night after night.
He closed his lips tightly, and whipped the old donkey several times with the long stick he held in his hand, just as the Chief of the Village Guard would do with the child of poor parents caught playing after school. Now he felt in a hurry to reach Al Ramla, and to be rid of this irksome young woman as soon as he could.
The wooden cart advanced slowly over the winding road, swaying from side to side so much that it looked as though at any moment a wheel might come off. She could hear the donkey gasping and choking as it went along. His breathing sounded slow and monotonous like a clock, like the bumping of the wooden cart wheels as they turned round and round, and the pulse beating under her ribs and inside her belly as though it too was on the verge of breaking down.
She watched the sun rise up into the sky. She watched the fields swing slowly behind, and the compact mass of mud huts emerge from the ground and huddle up against the bank of the river like a mound of earth piled up on one side. Gradually women carrying water jars came in sight as they walked along the river bank moving towards her in a leisurely line. She began t
o hear a buzzing noise filling the air, for the children had awakened and the flies swarmed through the alleys and over the houses. Long queues of buffalo and cows plodded along raising clouds of dust, and groups of men and women walked by their side. They carried hoes on their shoulders and kept yawning all the time as though the thought that another day was about to start made them wearier than ever.
For a moment it seemed to her that she was back where she had started out, back in Kafr El Teen. She lifted her veil to hide her face but the man sitting beside her spoke to her in a hoarse, ugly voice which said, ‘Get down.’
‘Is this Al Ramla, uncle?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said without looking at her.
She rested her arms on the wooden cart and started to get down. It leaned suddenly on one side under the weight of her body and straightened up again when her feet reached the ground. The cart regained its balance and he felt it become light, moving more easily over the ground. His heart was beating steadily and he would feel that now it was much lighter than it was before, as though rid of the load which had been weighing it down. He heard her footsteps tread heavily over the ground and whipped the donkey with his stick several times. The cart resumed its slow progress, trundling along over the dusty road. He was on the verge of turning round to take a last look at her, but changed his mind. He fastened his eyes on the distant horizon and whipped the donkey again. It stumbled forwards gasping for breath as it dragged the cart behind it, and the wheels started to turn once more with their slow, monotonous, bumping sound.
Nefissa saw the cart shaking and swaying from side to side, the man’s back was thin, and his bones stuck out, and when she looked at him from behind she was reminded of her father. After a while the cart disappeared carrying the man out of sight, but the sound of the wheels crunching over the ground continued to mingle in her ears with the hoarse gasping of the donkey as it breathed in and out. Every now and then these sounds were drowned in a rasping cough like the cough which shook her father every time he inhaled deeply from his water-jar pipe as he sat smoking in the yard of their house.
When she arrived at the mosque she turned to the right and after a short distance was confronted by an area of waste ground which Om Saber had described to her. At the furthest end was a small house built of mud, with a big wooden door. Over the door was a wooden knocker, and close by she noticed the water pump. She worked the pump and drank the water which flowed over the palm of her hand, then walked up to the door. She lifted the knocker several times, allowing it to drop lightly, and heard a woman’s voice respond in a long, drawn-out vulgar call like that of Nafoussa, the dancer in Kafr El Teen.
‘Who is at the door?’
‘It’s me,’ answered Nefissa in what was little more than a whisper.
The long, drawn-out vulgar call resounded loudly once more. ‘Who are you?’
‘It’s me… Nefissa,’ she said.
‘Nefissa who?’ the woman insisted.
She wiped a drop of sweat which was trickling down her nose and said, ‘Aunt, Om Saber sent me to you, Aunt Nafoussa.’
There was a silence. She could hear the pounding of her heart, and the whisper of her breath as she faced the door. Then it swung open by itself, as though moved by an invisible devil.
She stood there as still as a statue. But when she stepped across the threshold she realized that her whole body was shivering.
IV
Just before she heard the first cock crow in the dark silence, Fatheya opened her eyes. Or perhaps she did not realize that her eyes had already been open for some time. She could see her husband lying on his back with his mouth open, snoring with a deep choking noise. His breath smelt heavily of tobacco, and his chest kept up a wheezing sound as though phlegm had been collecting in it all night.
She nudged him in the shoulder with her fist to wake him up, but he turned over and gave his back to her, muttering unintelligible words in his slumber. The crow of the cock rang out in the silence once more. This time she hit him with her knuckles sharply on the shoulder.
‘Sheikh Hamzawi, the cock has awakened and called out to prayer, and you are still snoring away,’ she said irritably.
Sheikh Hamzawi opened his eyes but closed his lips tightly as though he had decided not to respond to her verbal and manual attacks on him, already starting at this early hour of the day. He got up without a word. His wife, Fatheya, was not like his previous wives. None of them would ever have dared to look him straight in the face, or to say anything inappropriate to him, or compare him to any other man in Kafr El Teen, let alone to a cock which had crowed a few moments earlier, and which she had had the impudence to insinuate was better than he.
But he no longer cared how she behaved, even if it went as far as putting the cock on an equal level with him. What mattered was that he had succeeded in forcing her to marry him against her will, and obliging her to live with him all these years even though Haj Ismail’s potions and amulets had been totally ineffective in restoring or even patching up his virility.
The first time he had seen her, he was seated as usual in front of Haj Ismail’s shop. He glimpsed her supple body as she walked along the river bank carrying an earthenware jar on her head. Turning to Haj Ismail, he had whispered, ‘That girl over there. Who’s she?’
‘Fatheya, the daughter of Masoud,’ answered Haj Ismail. ‘Her father is that poor man then. No doubt he would be happy to have me as a member of the family?’
‘Do you mean that you want to marry her, Sheikh Hamzawi?’
‘Why not? I have been married three times and still have no son. I must have a son before I die.’
‘But she is young enough to be one of your grandchildren,’ said Haj Ismail. ‘Besides, how do you know that she will not remain childless like your previous wives?’
Sheikh Hamzawi bowed his head to the ground in silence, but the rosary beads continued to run uninterruptedly through his fingers, impelled by a mechanism of their own. Haj Ismail eyed him with a knowing smile. He burst into a laugh, cut it short abruptly and said, ‘It looks as though the girl has turned your head for you, Sheikh Hamzawi.’
Sheikh Hamzawi smiled quietly and looked at the village barber with a gleam in his eyes. ‘Verily the look of her revives my spirit. I’ve always longed for the kind of female she is.’
‘Talking of females, female she certainly is. Her eyes seethe with desire. But do you think you can keep her under control, Sheikh Hamzawi? Do you think a man of your age can take her on?’
‘I can satisfy not only her, but her father if necessary,’ retorted Sheikh Hamzawi. ‘It’s only what you have in your pocket that counts where a man is concerned.’
‘What will you do if the years go by and she does not give you a son?’ enquired Haj Ismail.
‘Allah is great, Haj Ismail. I am going through difficult times, but they will soon be over. God will breathe his spirit into me, and give me strength.’
Haj Ismail laughed out loudly. ‘Those are the kind of things you can say to other people, but not to me, Sheikh Hamzawi. You haven’t stopped complaining to me about your condition. How can Allah give you strength? Are you insinuating that God will…?’
Sheikh Hamzawi cut him short quickly. ‘Allah can infuse life into dead bones, Haj Ismail. Besides you yourself told me that I can be cured.’
‘But you have not been listening to my advice, nor have you followed the treatment I prescribed to you. You’ve been lending an attentive ear to what the doctors say, and paying through your eyes for their medicines. I told you, doctors know nothing and their prescriptions are useless. But you did not believe me. And now what is the result? You’ve wasted your money and you’re not one step ahead of where you were. Say so, if I’m wrong.’
‘Yes, yes, Haj Ismail, but one cannot learn except at a high price. Now I know all doctors are ignorant cheats, and that the only real doctor in the village is you. From now on I refuse to be treated by anyone else. But you must marry me to Fatheya, the daughter of Mas
oud. If you do that, Allah will reward you generously, because you will have done a service to the man who preserves the holy mosque and defends the teachings of God in this village.’
Haj Ismail burst into hilarious laughter. ‘Both I and my children would have died of hunger long ago if we had waited until Allah rewards us.’
‘Of course I will pay you, and handsomely. You know me well,’ Sheikh Hamzawi said quickly.
‘I know you are a generous man, and that you are the descendant of a generous family. But most important of all, you are the man who preserves the faith in this village and watches over our morals. Therefore you must leave the matter in the hands of Allah, and not worry about it any further. I will see to it. You can depend on that. Just follow what I told you to do before. Make constant use of warm water, and salt, and lemon. Burn your incense every night leaving none of it to the following morning, then take the rosary between your fingers and recite a thanksgiving to Allah ninety-nine times. After that, curse your first wife thirty-three times, for were you not fully potent when you married her, Sheikh Hamzawi?’
Sheikh Hamzawi answered in a voice that rang with despair, ‘I was as strong as a horse.’
‘She managed to cast a spell on you, and I know who prepared the amulet for her. He is not from Kafr El Teen, but I know the secret of his spell, and how to destroy it. The most important thing for you now is to follow my advice, and Allah will bestow his blessings upon you.’
Sheikh Hamzawi lowered his voice to a barely audible whisper and asked, ‘When will I spend the betrothal night with Fatheya?’
‘Soon, very soon, if Allah wills.’
‘What about my having a son, Haj Ismail? I suppose it is impossible?’
‘Nothing is impossible if Allah wills that it should not be so. You are a man of God and should know that well. How can you forget that Allah is all powerful?’
The rosary beads ran quickly between the fingers of Sheikh Hamzawi and he gasped, ‘May His name be praised. May His name be praised.’
God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels Page 4
