The old woman sighed. ‘People here know him. But over there, no one knows who he is. If Galal was here he would have gone with him. Galal knows the people there, and he could have helped him. But Galal is not here. He used to lend a helping hand to everyone, even to strangers, so you can imagine what it would have been like with his uncle Kafrawi.’
‘May Allah come to his aid.’
‘My child, Allah alone is not enough.’
Zeinab opened her big black eyes wide, and looked at her with amazement. ‘God Almighty have mercy on us. God is great and helps everyone. Aunt, why don’t you get up, do your ablutions, and pray God to help us.’
Zakeya raised her hands in a gesture of rebuttal. ‘I have not ceased praying and begging God to help us. And yet every day our misery becomes greater, and we are afflicted with a new suffering.’
Her voice was not angry. It was distant, and calm, and as cold as ice. Zeinab’s eyes opened even wider with astonishment. She was gazing up at the heavens with a strange expression in her eyes. Zeinab was seized with a dark shiver that made the hair on her body stand up. Her hands were shaking as she took hold of Zakeya’s hand and held it between them.
‘What’s the matter, Aunt?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Your hand is as cold as ice.’
Zakeya did not answer. She continued to stare into space with her wide open black eyes. Zeinab’s hand was still shaking as she held her shoulder and pressed it.
‘What’s the matter, Aunt? Please tell me what’s the matter with you,’ she implored.
But Zakeya still continued to stare in front of her in silence like a statue. The girl was seized with terror. She clapped her hands to her face in agony and screamed, ‘My Aunt Zakeya. O God, something has happened to my Aunt Zakeya.’
Almost immediately the yard of the house was filled with the dark forms of people. They crowded through the dusty entrance of the house, and filled up the yard and the lane outside, coming between Zakeya and the huge iron gate on which she had fixed her eyes. But she could still see the big iron bars moving towards her as she lay on her belly over the ground. They came closer and closer like long iron legs which would crush her at any moment. She licked the dust with her tongue, and a sticky wetness streamed from her mouth, her nose and her eyes on to the ground. She screamed as loudly as she could to make sure that her mother would hear her, and snatch her up quickly from under the long legs of the buffalo that looked as though they would walk over her at any moment. And her mother arrived just in the nick of time to save her from being crushed. It was a strange dream which had visited her many times in her sleep. Other nights she would dream that she was standing on a hill. Suddenly her body fell from on high into the river and started to drown. But she swam with all her might, although she did not know how, and managed to reach the river bank. She was about to lift herself out of the water on to the ground when she found herself in front of a huge iron gate. She was lying on a mat with her husband Abdel Moneim on one side and her son Galal on the other. She opened her eyes to the sound of their breathing. From behind the iron bars of a window she could see a man pushing a hand cart filled up with calves’ feet and heads, and entrails. Blood kept dripping from the cart on to the dust. The stranger’s eyes were fixed on her as he came nearer. His long arm stretched out and tried to pull off the anklet she wore around her leg. When he was close enough she could see that his eyes were those of Om Saber who now leant over her and tried to push one thigh away from the other. Then she pulled out a razor blade from somewhere and proceeded to cut her neck. She tried to scream, but her voice would not come out. Then she tried to run, but her feet were nailed to the ground. When she turned her head, she could see her son Galal sleeping beside her. She tried to put her arm around him but he seemed to move out of reach, and suddenly a hand caught hold of her on the other side. She looked round to find her husband fast asleep, but he got up at once, and started to hit her on her head, and chest. Then he kicked her in her belly which was pregnant with child. She tried to scream again, but her voice did not come out and when she looked at him he had come very close and was busy tearing her galabeya down the front till her body was exposed. She could feel his fingers around her breast, feel them creep down to her belly and between her thighs. His heavy body bore down upon her with all its strength, pressing harder and harder down on her flesh, so that the ground beneath her began to shake. When she opened her eyes again the face of her husband Abdel Moneim had disappeared and in its place, right in front of her was the face of her brother Kafrawi. She screamed out as loudly as she could but no one seemed to hear her voice. Kafrawi hid his face in the mat and wept bitterly. She stretched out her hand to him and lifted his head, but when she looked at his face, it was the face of her son Galal. She wiped the tears in his eyes with the palm of her hand, then washed his nose and mouth with water from the earthenware jar held up by the iron stand in the corner of the room. Around him formed a pool of water and liquid stools but after a short while the ground had started to become dry, but the dryness crept up to her son’s body. It shrank rapidly before her eyes, and became the size of a small rabbit, so she dug a hole and buried him in the ground. Just at that moment her husband came back from the fields, and because he could not find his son anywhere he started to beat her again. For it was like that. Every time a son of hers died he would strike out at her blindly, and beat her up with anything he could lay his hands on. And the same thing would happen whenever she gave birth to a daughter. She had given birth to ten sons and six daughters – but the only child who had lived to grow up was Galal. All the others had died at different ages, for life was like that. One never knew when a child would die.
She looked around at the circle of staring eyes, and said in a low voice, ‘Galal is the only one that grew up to live. But now he has gone and will not return. Kafrawi also is gone, and Nefissa. The house is empty, and Zeinab is young. And I am too old to be of much use. There is no longer anyone to look after the buffalo, and tend to the crops.’
She heard a chorus of voices say in one breath, ‘God is great, Zakeya. Pray to Him that He send them back to you safely,’ and without looking at them she replied, ‘Many a time have I prayed to God, called upon Him, beseeched Him to have mercy on us, but He never seemed to hear me, or to respond.’
And the voices cried out as though with one voice, ‘Have mercy on her for what she has said, O God. Have mercy on us. Thou alone art all-powerful. Without Thee we are helpless, and without strength.’
X
Zakeya still squatted on the ground, in the same place. She would close her eyes, then open them, then close them again. If she closed her eyes she could see the huge door, or the window with its iron bars, and the man behind it pushing a cartful of calves’ feet and heads, and entrails dripping with blood. He tried to pull her by the foot, then by the leg and slaughter her with a big knife. She would open her eyes in terror, and look at the faces gathered around her. The only faces she could recognize were those of her niece Zeinab, and Om Saber, as she sat cross-legged on the ground in front of a tin pot placed over the kerosene stove. White clouds of steam smelling of incense rose up in the air, mingling with the babble of voices and of words she could not make out. She could see the gestures, and the movements of the men and women gathered around, but could not figure out what they were doing there. A group of women were circling around the steaming pot as though dancing. Their breasts and their buttocks shook up and down to the powerful beat of a drum, and the long tresses of their loose hair whirled round and round. Their mouths gaped open as they repeated the slow chant: ‘O thou Sheikh whom the spirits obey, let him who carries the evil spirit within him be rid of it at once.’ A group of men were shaking and shivering to the beat of the drums. They wore white turbans with a long tail that hung down behind their backs.
Om Saber kept coming and going between the crowd of men and women, her body draped in a long melaya.* Her body was short and skinny with flat breasts, but her buttocks were big and shook violently a
s she whirled amidst the throngs of dancing people. From the front she looked like a man, but seen from the back she looked like a woman. Her quick, energetic movements gave an impression of youth, but her face was wizened and old. When dancing with the men she moved her body and slapped them on the hips in exactly the same way as she did with the women. She danced and laughed, then the next moment slapped her face with her hands and shrieked in agony. When she told dirty stories it was with the same voice as she recited verses of the Koran, or incantations. No one thought badly of what she did. For the villagers of Kafr El Teen she was Om Saber, the daya, neither man nor woman, but an asexual being without a family, or relatives or offspring. She lived in a dark mud hut adjoining the hut of Nafoussa the dancer. It was located behind a piece of waste land, near the mosque. No one knew when she had arrived in the village, where she came from, or when she had been born. People did not even imagine she would die, for they always saw her on the move from morning till night, going from house to house, helping the women in labour, circumcising the girls or piercing holes in their ears, sprinkling salt in the house the week after a child had been born, consoling wives on the fortieth day after their husbands had died, in fact participating in every occasion for festivity or mourning. At weddings she would lead the yoo yoos,* paint the feet of girls and women with red henna, and on the wedding night she would tear the virgin’s hymen with her finger, or conceal the fact that it was already torn by spraying the white towel on which the virgin’s blood was supposed to pour with the blood of a rabbit or a hen. But when it was a time for mourning her suffering knew no bounds. She would slap her face with both hands repeatedly, scream out in agony, chant a hymn of sadness to the deceased, and wash the body if she was a female. She was always busy solving the problems of girls and women, carrying out abortions with a stalk of mouloukheya,† throttling the new-born baby if necessary, or leaving it to die by not tying the umbilical cord with a silk thread so that it bled to death.
All the inhabitants of Kafr El Teen knew her well. She was a part of every household, and no household could survive without her. She brought couples together in lawful matrimony, arranged marriages, found suitable husbands for the girls, and prospective brides for the men, protected the good name of families and the chastity of young females, and helped to conceal whatever could sully their honour, or cause a scandal, or result in a catastrophe, or be looked upon as a sign of disloyalty between husbands and wives. She treated sick people with popular remedies, participated in the rites of zar,* danced and sang, slaughtered animals and sprayed their blood, burnt incense, and discovered the hiding places in which people had concealed things. And when it so happened that she was not engaged in any of these activities, she would carry a huge basket on her head and go around the houses selling handkerchiefs, incense, chewing gum and snuff, or telling fortunes, and reading the future in people’s cups.
The sweat was pouring out of Zakeya’s face as she lay prostrate on the ground, or when she squatted or stood up. She moved from one position to the other in a kind of stupor so that she could not tell in which position she was at a particular moment. All around bodies shivered, and shook, and swayed, falling to the ground and standing up again. Sweat welled out from every pore of their skin. She could tell the women from the way their breasts and their buttocks were shaking, and the men from the movement of the dark whiskers and long beards around their faces.
The sweat continued to pour out of her body in an endless stream. She kept lifting her hand to wipe it away from her brow and face, but each time her hand came away stained a deep red. For Om Saber repeatedly filled her cupped hands with the blood of a cock which she had slaughtered herself, and sprayed it over Zakeya’s face and body. One of the men dipped his hand into the blood and took turns at spraying her with it. She felt his hand slip through the neck of her galabeya, and cover her breasts with wet sticky blood. After this many hands crowded in on her body, touching or pinching or squeezing parts of it and spraying more blood until she was soaking in it all over. At one moment a heavy hand moved up between her legs and covered the parts between the thighs with blood. She could not tell whether it was the hand of a woman or a man, but it pinched her roughly. She clapped her hands over her face and emitted a series of shrieks as though she had lost control of herself. She could hear the people around her chanting madly, ‘O thou Sheikh whom the spirits obey, let him who bears the evil spirit within him come out with it at once.’ The screaming and wailing was mingled in her ears with the beating of drums, and the stamping of feet. Everything seemed to merge into one, sweat and blood, man and woman, features of one face with features of the other, so that nothing was any longer distinguishable. She could no longer tell Om Saber’s features from those of Sheikh Metwalli or the difference between Zeinab and Nafoussa the dancer. Zeinab’s body seemed to have become taller, its curves were more pronounced, and it swayed and reeled like the body of Nafoussa the dancer. Her hair was undone, and its tresses swung freely in the air in exactly the same way as Nafoussa’s hair had gone wild around her head. It looked longer than it had ever looked before, and jutted out in every direction. She tossed it in front of her with a sudden bending of the head, so that it covered her pointed breasts, then threw it back with an upswing of her head, and let its lower ends leap over the moving curves of her hips. Her galabeya had split from its tail up to her waist, and when she stamped with her foot it swung open revealing the smooth skin of her thighs and legs. Every time she struck the ground with her foot, the material rent, and the split crept higher up. Now through the opening one could see her breast, the lines of her belly, the frenzy of her dancing flesh. The bodies around her swayed, and reeled, and fell, only to stand up again. The men and the women now joined in one circle which went round and round. In the middle of the circle danced Nafoussa and Sheikh Metwalli. Each time he moved his hand, or his knee, or his foot he would touch her thigh, or her belly, or her breast. She would catch hold of her long hair, pull it with all her strength, and scream at the top of her voice, ‘O thou Sheikh whom the spirits obey, let him who carries the evil spirit be rid of it at once.’ Sheikh Metwalli and everyone else would join in the same chant, screaming as wildly and as loudly as they could.
It seemed to Zakeya as though her body was now moving of its own accord, or obeying a will of its own. She saw her feet walk towards the circle of people who were dancing. Her body pushed its way through among the other bodies, and started to move with them, to shake and reel in the same way. The woollen thread with which she tied her hair slipped off, and her hair floated down over her face like some black cloud. She felt a hand touch her breast, and the strong fingers sink into the flesh with a pain that was more sharp than the bite of a snake. She opened her mouth wide and started to scream and to wail in a continuous high-pitched lament, as though mourning the suffering of a whole lifetime suppressed in her body from the very first moment of her life when her father struck her mother on the head because she had not borne him the son he expected. It was a wail that went back, far back, to many a moment of pain in her life. To the times when she ran behind the donkey and the hot earth burnt the soles of her feet. To the times when she learnt to eat the salted pickles and green peppers which the peasants consume with their bread, and felt something like a slow fire deep down inside the walls of her belly. To the time when Om Saber forced her thighs apart and with her razor cut off a piece of her flesh. To the time when she developed two breasts which the menfolk would pinch when there was nobody around to prevent them. To the time when her spouse Abdel Moneim would beat her with his stick, then climb on her and bear down on her chest with all his weight. To the time when she bore him children and bled, then buried them one after the other with the dead. To the time when Galal put on his army uniform and never came back, and the time when Nefissa ran away, and the children’s chorus rang out as they sang ‘Nefissa and Elwau.’ To the time when the car came to the village carrying the gentlemen from town and the dog, then took Kafrawi with them and left.
Her wail went back and back to such times and others she could not forget like a lament which has no end, and sees no end to all the pain in life. It seemed to be as long as the length of her life, as long as the long hours of her days and nights. It went on and on as she tugged at her hair with all her might, tore her garment to shreds, and dug her nails into the flesh of her body as though she wanted to tear herself apart. It went on and on as Om Saber continued to fill her cupped hands with the blood of the slaughtered cock, and spray it over her face, and her neck, and over her body at the front and the back.
‘Scream, Zakeya!’ she cried out. ‘Chase the evil spirit out of your body. Scream as loud and as long as you can.’
Now they were all screaming at the top of their voices. Zakeya and Om Saber, Nafoussa and Zeinab, Sheikh Metwalli and all the men and women of Kafr El Teen who were gathered around. Their voices joined in a high-pitched wail, as long as the length of their lives, reaching back to those moments in time when they had been born, and beaten and bitten and burnt under the soles of their feet, and in the walls of their stomach, since the bitterness flowed with their bile, and death snatched their sons and their daughters, one after the other in a line.
_________
* A long wrap of black silk worn around the body.
* A prolonged trilling sound meant to express joy.
† A vegetable used to make a thick, green, garlicky soup. The long, resilient stalk is used in the villages to induce abortions by pushing it into the neck of the uterus.
* A form of exorcism to rid a person (usually a woman) of an evil spirit by means of a frenzied dance accompanied by incantations and verses of the Koran.
XI
But the devil refused to leave Zakeya’s body. It continued to dwell within her, to ride on her back, and jump on her chest. She gasped as though out of breath when she sat up, watched him snuggle up against her chest and look at her with the eyes of Galal. She would pull out her breast from the neck of her galabeya and try to put her black nipple between his lips. but as soon as she tried to do that the face changed to that of her husband Abdel Moneim. She pushed it back with her hand, but when it looked at her with reproach in its eyes, the features were no longer the same as they had been a moment ago. Now it was Kafrawi’s eyes that stared back at her, and filled her heart with a dark panic. A few moments later he had fled behind a door, or a window with iron bars only to return pushing a hand cart in which were piled calves’ feet and heads dripping with blood. She could feel her body shrink into her galabeya, and would spit* quickly into its neck then call out to her niece Zeinab. Her eyes kept turning this way and that with a frightened look. When the girl arrived she would say to her, ‘Zeinab, my child, do not leave me alone. I am frightened. The devils are looking at me from behind the bars of the window.’
God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels Page 9
