Sheikh Hamzawi rested his hand on the wall and slowly got to his feet. The rosary swayed from side to side in his hand as he repeated ‘May His name be praised.’ He put on his caftan and his jiba,* and adjusted the turban on his head, all the time whispering under his breath. His thin body seemed to bow under a heavy weight as he shuffled towards the door of the house. He heard Fatheya moan in a low voice. He could not understand what was wrong with her these days. She was not the same. She did not even get angry with him as she used to do at one time, and spent most of her day in the house lying down. She no longer insisted on visiting her aunt, perhaps because each time he got into a temper and tried to stop her from going out. The wife of Sheikh Hamzawi, as he had explained to her father, was not like the wives of other men. Her husband was responsible for upholding the teachings of Allah, and keeping the morals and piety of the village intact. The wife of a man like that was not supposed to be seen by just anyone. Her body had to be concealed even from her closest relatives, except for her face and the palms of her hands. She was expected to live in his house surrounded by all due care and respect, never to be seen elsewhere except twice in her life. The first time when she moved from her father’s to her husband’s house. And the second when she left her husband’s house for the grave allotted to her in the burial grounds. Apart from that …
The father shook his head in pious agreement and said, ‘Sheikh Hamzawi, you are indeed the most respected and esteemed of all men,’ then he gave his consent.
But Fatheya hid herself above the oven and refused to answer anyone, despite all the efforts expended to make her more reasonable.
‘God is going to save you from the withering sun in the fields, from the dirt and the dung, from your diet of dry bread and salted pickles. Instead you will spend your days resting in the shade, eating white bread and meat. You will become the spouse of Sheikh Hamzawi, the man who devotes himself to the worship of God, to serving his mosque, the man who leads the people of the village in prayer, and lives a life of piety,’ said Haj Ismail at the top of his voice, as though he wanted everyone within hearing distance to know what was going on.
But Fatheya continued to hide on top of the oven and refused to answer.
Haj Ismail looked round at her father and inquired in angry tones, ‘Now what do we do, Masoud?’
‘You can see, Haj Ismail, the girl is refusing.’
‘Do you mean that in your household it’s the girl who decides what should be done?’
‘But what can I do?’ asked the father looking perplexed.
‘What do you do?’ exclaimed Haj Ismail, now looking furious. ‘Is that a question for a man to ask? Beat her, my brother, beat her once and twice and thrice. Do you not know that girls and women are only convinced if they receive a good hiding?’
Masoud remained silent for a moment, then he called out, ‘Fatheya, come here at once.’
But there was no answer, so he climbed up on to the top of the oven, pulled her out by her hair, and beat her several times until she came down. Then he handed her over to Haj Ismail and the same day she married the pious old Sheikh.
Sheikh Hamzawi grasped his stick firmly in his hand, and opened the door of his house. Fatheya strained her ears to catch the tapping sound of his stick through the wall as he walked on its outer side. She knew the sound well. It had continued to echo in her ears ever since the night of her betrothal. It pierced through the thick shawl wrapped around her body and head as she rode the donkey to Sheikh Hamzawi’s house. She could hear its tap, tap, tap as he walked along the lane by her side. Her father wore a new galabeya and Om Saber, the daya,* was clad in a long, black dress. She could not see the old woman for the folds of the shawl were worn tightly round her head. She could not see anything.
But she felt. She felt the burning pain left by the woman’s finger as it probed up between her thighs looking for blood. And she felt the warm gush and the sticky wet. She did not see the clean white towel stained red, nor the wound the woman’s nail had made in her flesh. But she felt her virgin colours had bled, for in her ears resounded the beat of the drums, the shrieks of joy and the high-pitched trilling of the women.
She moved her hand in under the shawl and wiped the sweat from her nose and eyes, but it continued to pour out from the roots of her hair down over her face and her neck to her chest and her back. Underneath her, on the back of the donkey its rough coat was becoming wetter and wetter. The spine of the donkey pressed up between her thighs. She could feel it hard against the wound which was still bleeding inside. With every step, with every beat of the tabla,* the back of the donkey rose and fell, and its thin spine moved up and down to rub on her wounds, causing her a sharp pain every time, and making her lips open in a noiseless cry. The warm blood trickled out mixing with the sweat which poured down from her body, and the rough coat of the donkey felt soaking wet between her thighs.
When they arrived in front of the house which belonged to the pious and God-fearing man who had become her spouse, they took her down from the donkey, but she was unable to stand on her feet, and collapsed into the arms of those who stood around, to be carried into the house like a sack of cotton.
She realized she had left the streets and was now in the house from the dank, putrid smell of the air inside. Since she was sure that the odour of godliness and moral uprightness smelt good and was pleasant to respire, she realized her nose was to blame for making the atmosphere around her smell like a latrine which was never washed down. She did not know exactly what it was that was wrong with her, but ever since her childhood she had felt there was something impure about her, that something in her body was unclean and bad. Then one day Om Saber came to their house, and she was told that the old woman was going to cut the bad, unclean part off. She was overcome by a feeling of overwhelming happiness. She was only six years old at the time.
After having done what she was supposed to do, Om Saber went away leaving a small wound between her thighs. It continued to bleed for several days. But even after it healed she was still left with something unclean in her body which used to bleed for several days at a time. Each time she had her periods the people around her would have a changed expression in their eyes when they looked at her, or they would avoid her as though there was something corrupt or bad about her.
Later, when she married Sheikh Hamzawi, he too would shy away from her whenever she had her periods, and treat her as though she was a leper. If his hand inadvertently touched her shoulder, or her arm, he would exhort Allah to protect him from the evil Satan. Then he would go to the water closet, wash himself five times and do his ablutions again if he had already done them. In addition she was not allowed to read the Koran or to listen to it being read or recited. But once her periods were over, and she had taken a bath, and cleansed herself thoroughly, he allowed her to pray, and to recite passages from the Koran.
Every night before she went to bed Sheikh Hamzawi made her sit on a carpet opposite him, and showed her how to pray. She did not understand what the words he recited meant, they were difficult words and she kept asking him to explain their meaning to her. But he used to respond in a very discouraging and rough way, insisting that the words of Allah and the rituals of prayer were supposed to be learnt by heart and not understood. So Fatheya tried to memorize them as best she could. The instructions of Sheikh Hamzawi kept echoing in her ears.
‘Prayer is built on certain well defined movements of the body, namely: kneeling, prostrating yourself twice each time you kneel, and then sitting up with your feet under the body to recite the testimonial. In addition, there are certain conditions which must be strictly adhered to. In males the body must be covered from the waist downwards to a point below the knees. In females, the whole body should be covered with the exception of the palms of the hands, and the face. At the beginning of the prayer you must stand upright with the face looking straight in front of you, and the feet kept straight on the ground. In the case of males the hands should be lifted and held in line with
the ears when declaiming the All Powerfulness and Almightiness of Allah. In females the hands should be held in line with the shoulder bone. The next movement in males is to put the right hand over the left hand and cover the belly below the waist with both the hands, whereas in females the hands are to be placed over the chest.
‘Whenever you kneel or prostrate yourself you must do it completely. When you kneel repeat, “I praise thee O Almighty God” three times. And when you prostrate yourself repeat, “I praise thee O highest of all gods” three times. Your prayers become null and void if you say anything extraneous to the words of the prayer, or laugh or soil your cleanliness after ablutions in any way, particularly if you let out wind from the back passage.’
So every evening Fatheya would sit on the prayer carpet and repeat the same ritual. Then she would recite the holy verse of ‘The Seat’, and perhaps other verses. Her lids would feel heavy, and quite often she fell asleep while kneeling. In her ears echoed the words of Allah and between her thighs crept the hand of Sheikh Hamzawi. She abandoned herself to sleep as though abandoning herself to a man, opening her thighs wide apart and dropping into a deep oblivion right in the middle of the prayer offered to God.
With her ear stuck to the wall, Fatheya followed the tapping noise made by Sheikh Hamzawi’s stick as he moved along the lane. She could detect the sound of his foot if it collided with anything on the ground. His eyesight was weak and his stick or his foot seemed always to be colliding with something, or getting entangled in it. It could be a dead rabbit, or a dead cat, or a stone, or a pebble which he would strike away from the door with a sweep of his stick. Sometimes his foot got entangled in his caftan as he stepped over the threshold of his house, making him falter, or his shoe would land on a clod of manure, or the droppings which a dog had left in front of the door since the night before. The rosary would sway furiously in his hand as he heaped curses over dogs and people alike.
But this time his foot collided with a body that was neither that of a dead rabbit, nor of a dead cat. It was moving, and alive, and also much bigger. He was seized with fright thinking it could be a spirit, or an elf of the night. But a moment later he heard a faint moaning, and when he looked down at the ground despite his dimmed eyesight, he could discern what looked like a rosy face, two eyes with tears at the fringes of the closed lashes, and an open mouth with lips which trembled slightly, as it breathed in air with a gasping sound.
For a moment he stood stock still not daring to move. Could it be that Allah had responded to his prayers? Had the amulet of Haj Ismail at last produced its magic effect? This child seemed as though it had fallen from the night sky right in front of his door, just as Christ had come down from on high to where the Virgin Mary had lain down to rest under a tree.
His lips opened to emit a faint choking sound. Nothing was beyond the power of Allah, praised be His name, and clamoured to the high heavens. He continued to stand as still as a statue. His long, narrow face looked even longer than usual, but now it started to show up more distinctly as the pale light of dawn touched it. His eyes were slightly misty, and over one of them was a white spot which shone mysteriously. The yellow beads of his rosary were worn away where his fingers had rubbed against them during the endless hours of a lifetime spent in worship and prayer. But now, maybe for the first time during his waking hours, the beads had ceased to go round.
At that precise moment of the new day the Chief of the Village Guard had ended his night vigil and was on his way home. He came upon the figure of Sheikh Hamzawi standing motionless in front of his door. He had never seen him standing like that before, nor ever seen his face look so long and drawn. It was as though he now had two faces. The upper one was that of Sheikh Hamzawi, whereas the lower face bore no resemblance to him at all, nor to any other face he had seen in Kafr El Teen, nor for that matter, in the whole wide world, although he had not seen much of what was outside Kafr El Teen. It resembled neither the face of a human being, nor that of a spirit. For all he knew it could have been the face of a devil, or that of a saint, or even the face of God himself, except that he knew not what the face of God looked like, since it was not a face that he had seen.
He halted suddenly, and stood there as though turned to stone. His eyes were fixed on the strange ghostlike form the like of which he had never set his eyes on before. For it was not like man, or saint, or devil, or any other of the many creations of God. He saw it bend and lift something that lay at its feet. He felt his fingers close tightly around the huge stick he carried around with the instinctive movement of the village guard. He was on the point of lifting it high up in the air to bring it down with all his might on the head bending low over the ground. But at that very moment he caught sight of a rosy face with traces of tears peeping through the closed eyes, and he heard Sheikh Hamzawi’s voice intone, ‘Without God we are indeed hapless for without Him we can do nothing.’
‘What is this, Sheikh Hamzawi?’ exclaimed the Chief of the Village Guard in a loud voice.
‘An angel from heaven,’ muttered Sheikh Hamzawi.
‘And why could it not be a devil, son of a devil?’ said the Chief of the Village Guard.
Still almost unaware of what was going on, Sheikh Hamzawi replied, ‘It’s a gift from Allah.’
Before he had time to finish his sentence, Fatheya had poked her head through the door. ‘Say not what you are saying, Sheikh Zahran,’ she said in a voice full of anger. ‘It is a gift, a blessing from Allah. Only that which is sinful should be condemned.’
She stretched out her arms and rapidly snatched the child from Sheikh Hamzawi who was still standing in the same place, looking as though he did not know what was going on. She closed the door holding the child closely to her bosom. She could feel her breasts tingle as the blood flowed through them, like tiny ants moving deeply in her flesh. She pulled her breast out through the open neck of her garment and pressed the nipple, letting white drops of milk ooze out of the little dark opening. She wrapped her shawl carefully around the head of the baby, before slipping her nipple into its greedy, gasping mouth.
_________
* Garment worn over a caftan, made of thicker, darker material.
* Local midwife.
* A long, conical drum.
V
The voice of Sheikh Hamzawi soared into the air as the almost invisible glimmer of dawn crept through the sky. It floated over the low mud huts, pierced through the dark walls, dropped down into the narrow winding lanes blocked with scattered mounds of manure, to reach the ears of the Chief of the Village Guard who was now sitting in his house. But this time he had not undressed as he was in the habit of doing the moment he got back from his long night vigil. Nor did he ask his wife to bring him something to eat. He did not even take off his leather boots with the usual quick movement followed by two successive kicks which sent them flying into a corner of the room, as though he was ridding himself of a heavy chain wound around his feet.
He reclined on the mat, his eyes wide open, staring at nothing, his boots securely attached round his ankles. His fingers kept pulling at his long thick whiskers as he was wont to do when he had come upon a dead body lying in some field, or on the river bank, but did not yet know who was the killer, or when a crime had been committed behind his back without his knowing right from the start how the whole thing had been planned.
When the voice of Sheikh Hamzawi went through the village to where he sat, he turned his head and looked at his wife. His lips parted slightly as though he was about to tell her that something important had happened in Kafr El Teen that night. But his wife was quicker to it this time. ‘Nefissa, Kafrawi’s daughter, has run away,’ she said, pronouncing the sentence quickly, almost in one breath, with a jerk of her hand which resembled the kick her husband gave with his foot when he wanted to rid himself of his heavy boots. The news had been whispered to her by one of her neighbours the night before. She spent the long, dark hours tossing and turning on her bed. It seemed to weigh down on her chest with
a palpable mass of its own. It oppressed her, and yet carried with it an obscure pleasure, like being pregnant and waiting for the dawn in eager anticipation, for the moment when she could shift this weight to someone else, and enjoy the thrill of telling her man the news that Nefissa had fled before he was told about it by anyone apart from herself.
The name Nefissa rang with a strange sound in the ears of Sheikh Zahran. The image of a small, rosy face with closed eyes and still wet tears around the lids floated in space. For a moment the closed lids opened wide, and he looked into the girl’s big black eyes – as they stared straight ahead at something on the distant horizon. His fingers let go of his whiskers, and he gave a sudden gasp like a drowning man when he comes to the surface. His voice rang out.
‘Nefissa?’
‘Yes, Nefissa,’ she said.
Fatheya still sat huddled up close to the wall, with the baby held close to her chest. Its head was swathed in her dark veil, and its lips suckled at the nipple of her breast. If she had not kept her ear to the wall she might not have heard it vibrate with the name Nefissa. She gave a sudden gasp of relief like a drowning woman who unexpectedly finds herself at the surface.
‘Nefissa?’
The name Nefissa echoed in the dark rooms, pierced through the walls of mud, crept through the lanes blocked with piles of manure, rose into the air over the low irregular roofs covered in cakes of dung and cotton sticks, higher and higher over the minaret of the mosque and the crescent at its top. Before long it was pounding at the high brick walls and the iron door of the Mayor’s house. It resounded in his ears like the summons to prayer tolled out five times a day by Sheikh Hamzawi from the highest point in the village of Kafr El Teen, lying like some dark fungus by the waters of the Nile.
Seated next to the Mayor was his youngest son Tariq. He had just entered college and had come down to the village for his holidays. As he listened to her story his eyes shone with the glint which can be seen in the eyes of a youth barely nineteen when he thinks of a woman’s body, with the relief which can come from images and words when the act itself is forbidden. His voice was husky when he said, ‘Last week in college we discovered a child in the water closet. And the week before we caught a couple kissing in an empty lecture room. Now here in Kafr El Teen a girl gives birth to her child, abandons it in front of the house of the village Sheikh, and runs away. Girls have no morals these days, father.’
God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels Page 5
