She was silent for a long moment before she said, ‘He is well.’
‘And Nefissa? And Zeinab?’
She hesitated for a moment, then in an almost inaudible voice said, ‘They are well. Do you wish to eat something? You probably haven’t put anything in your mouth for days.’
She got up and went to fetch the basket of bread, a piece of old cheese, and salted pickles. Then walking towards the door she said, ‘I will go to buy you a piece of sesame sweet from the shop of Haj Ismail.’
He realized she was hiding something from him and looked at her with an increased anxiety. ‘I do not want to eat. Come, sit here and tell me what’s been happening. You’re hiding something. You’re not the same as when I left you.’
Her eyes avoided his, staring at something in the dark. She was silent for some time, then he heard her whisper, ‘Nefissa has run away.’
There was another long silence as heavy and as oppressive as the surrounding darkness lying over the village. Once again her lips parted to let out the same whisper. ‘And Kafrawi is in gaol.’
This time she closed her lips as though she intended never to open them again. After a long moment she heard him ask in a low voice which rose from somewhere hidden deep in the dark, ‘And Zeinab?’
His voice wavered when he pronounced her name, wavered with a hesitation, with wanting to ask and fearing the answer, with wanting to know and afraid of what would be revealed. A strange feeling had come over him the moment he saw her face, a feeling that something terrible had happened while he was far away. Kafrawi was his uncle, and Nefissa his cousin. But Zeinab had always meant something different to him. Every time he heard her voice calling out to her Aunt Zakeya something within him quivered. When their eyes met he would feel his legs go weak under him, as though his muscles had tired suddenly and needed rest. He longed to lay his head on her breast and close his eyes. If he got a glimpse of her bare legs as she sat with his mother in front of the oven, he would be seized with a strong desire to carry her away from under the watchful eyes to where he could close a door on her and hold her in his arms.
His mother could feel what was going on in him, sense his voice tremble when he called out to Zeinab, notice how his eyes searched for the girl when she was out in the fields. She could feel him burn with an obscure desire when he heard her voice before she came into the house, and watched the warm blood slowly suffuse his dark face when the girl squatted down beside her.
One night when he lay close to her on the mat she heard a stifled groan. She whispered in the dark, ‘What’s wrong with you, Galal?’
‘I want Zeinab my cousin,’ he replied without opening his eyes.
‘We will marry her to you, my son, when you come back from the army,’ she said, patting him on the head like a child.
But now Zakeya stayed silent. He raised his bowed head and looked at her in the dark, and although he could not see her face, he sensed her eyes staring at the iron gate which rose up in the night some distance away from their house.
He asked her again, this time trying hard to conceal the trembling in his voice. ‘And Zeinab? What did she do once her father and her sister were no longer in the house?’
‘She started to work in the Mayor’s house.’
He could not prevent his voice from trembling as he asked, ‘What does she do?’
‘She washes, and sweeps and cleans the house.’
His whole body started to shiver as he asked again, ‘And where does she spend the night?’
‘She spends it here with me, my son. She’s asleep now, on top of the oven.’
He swallowed quickly. The shiver in his body gradually subsided. He rested his hands on the floor, then paused for a moment before getting up. ‘Have you got a clean galabeya for me, mother?’
‘Yes my son. We’ve kept the new galabeya you had made before leaving for the army.’
He felt as though he was coming back to life. ‘Heat me some water. I want to take a bath,’ he said.
XVII
As soon as the Chief of the Village Guard entered the room where the Mayor was sitting he realized at once why he had sent for him. Since the day when Galal had married Zeinab, Sheikh Zahran had been expecting this moment to come. He had voiced his fears to Haj Ismail but the village barber tried to set his mind at rest. ‘Don’t worry, Sheikh Zahran. Galal has come back from the war a broken man, and he won’t dare defy the Mayor. As a matter of fact, he should feel proud that his wife is working for the most important man in our village.’
‘You don’t know Galal as well as I know him,’ said Sheikh Zahran. ‘He’s one of those stupid men who wax jealous over their wives. And ever since the girl was a child, he’s been in love with her.’
‘Since he’s stupid, he won’t be assailed by doubts about anything. It’s only intelligent people who wonder about things,’ commented Haj Ismail.
‘But he’s refused to send his wife to the Mayor’s house,’ said Sheikh Zahran.
‘Stupid people like him prefer to eat dry bread and salt, rather than send their wives to work as servants in a house. They think a servant’s work is shameful.’
‘But this is not just any house! It’s the Mayor’s house,’ objected Sheikh Zahran.
‘Stupid people don’t differentiate between houses, Sheikh Zahran. To them a house is a house.’
‘What do we do if he stops Zeinab from going?’
‘Don’t start worrying right from now,’ said the village barber. ‘Maybe the Mayor will have had enough of her by then, and won’t want her to go to him any more. You know he gets bored very quickly, and none of these girls has lasted with him very long.’
But the fears of Sheikh Zahran proved to be justified, and the day came when the Mayor said to him, in a voice which brooked no discussion, ‘Go, and come back with Zeinab.’
So Sheikh Zahran and Haj Ismail sat in front of the shop smoking the water-jar pipe while they pondered over the problem.
‘You don’t know Galal like I do,’ kept repeating Sheikh Zahran. ‘It’s true he’s an idiot just like the rest of these village men in Kafr El Teen. But we can’t be sure that he hasn’t learnt a few things since he joined the army, and went to Misr. Don’t forget he’s lived with soldiers all these years. I doubt if he can be fooled with amulets any more. We have to think of something else from now on.’
‘Men in this village are cowards, but they have no shame. Put fear in his heart, Sheikh Zahran. You know how to do that.’
‘That’s true. But with men like Galal, I prefer to do things without using force. You don’t know him well enough. He’s not like Kafrawi, and for all you know, he could start creating a lot of problems in the village. Things are getting worse, and people have started to open their eyes much more than before. Prices are rising all the time and the peasants owe more and more taxes to the government. The Mayor is no longer as popular as he was at one time.’
‘But you’ve tried convincing him before and failed,’ said Haj Ismail. ‘Now you have no choice but to use a bit of force.’
Sheikh Zahran was silent for a long time as though lost in thought. Haj Ismail waited patiently for a while, but then, unable to contain himself any more, he asked, ‘What are you thinking of, Sheikh Zahran?’
‘I’m thinking of the easiest way. I don’t want to use force,’ answered Sheikh Zahran.
Haj Ismail looked at him for a long moment before he said in a quiet voice, ‘Are you afraid of Galal, Sheikh Zahran?’
The Chief of the Village Guard twirled his whiskers. ‘Galal does not frighten me. But somehow this time I feel that something’s going to happen. I don’t know exactly what, but my mind is not at rest. People have changed, Haj Ismail. The people who at one time could not look me in the eye, now look at me straight in the face, and no longer bow their heads to the ground when I pass by. Just yesterday, one of the villagers refused to pay his taxes and shouted, “We work all the year round and all we end up with are debts to the government.” I never used to hea
r this kind of talk from any of them before. The peasants are getting more and more hungry. All they have to eat is some dry bread and wormy salted cheese. And hunger makes a man blind. It makes him see no one, neither ruler nor God. Hunger breeds heretics, Haj Ismail.’
‘They’ve always been hungry. There’s nothing new in that, and the villagers have always lived on dry bread and salted cheese with worms. They’ve never known anything else.’ He fell silent for a moment, and then resumed as though an idea had occurred to him. ‘Sheikh Zahran, instead of trying to frighten him, have you thought of trying to tempt him with something really worthwhile? Zakeya and Galal are up to their ears in debt and you are the one who is supposed to collect the taxes they owe to the government. If you suggest to Galal that you might be prepared to be lenient, it could go a long way to making him less obstinate.’
‘You have no idea all the things I’ve attempted with Galal since I found out he’d married Zeinab,’ said Sheikh Zahran. ‘If I could have stopped the marriage, I would have, but I learnt about it after everything was over. Since then I knew the day would come when the Mayor would send for me to bring Zeinab back, I tried to convince Galal that there was no need for him to stop her from going to the Mayor’s house, but he told me that it was she who had refused to go back.’
‘Who of the two do you think is refusing?’ asked Haj Ismail.
‘Most probably it’s his influence, since she continued to work for the Mayor until she got married,’ answered Sheikh Zahran.
‘She must really love him. Or perhaps she feels it’s a sin to go to the Mayor’s house now that she’s married.’
‘In any case,’ said Sheikh Zahran, ‘it’s clear that the presence of Galal at her side is an encouragement for her to refuse.’
‘Then what did you do after that?’
‘After that,’ said Sheikh Zahran, ‘I tried what you suggested before. I told him we could reduce the taxes he has to pay to the government, but he didn’t seem to be interested at all. Now I have no other alternative but to use my authority.’
‘But what can you do?’
‘He will either pay his debts immediately or else we will confiscate his land.’
‘But the land is life to a peasant,’ said Haj Ismail. ‘If you confiscate it, it’s like taking their life. Besides, you might find yourself in a corner if you apply this only to Galal. All the peasants owe taxes to the government so why only him? You had better think of something else, Sheikh Zahran.’
Sheikh Zahran did not proffer any answer. The only way out he could now see was to get rid of Galal in one way or another. He had got rid of Kafrawi by arranging things in such a way that he was accused of a crime and ended in gaol. He continued to scratch his wits in order to find a solution.
Haj Ismail could not hear the questions that were being asked in Sheikh Zahran’s mind, but one look at his face was enough to tell him the direction in which his thoughts were moving. They both lapsed into a long silence. All that could be heard was the gurgling sound of the water-jar pipe, or the noise which Haj Ismail made when he cleared his nose and his throat every now and then. The dark night had by now enveloped Kafr El Teen in its heavy cloak, and the air hardly moved over the surface of the river. The sombre mud huts and the winding lanes seemed to sink into a silence as still and profound as the silence of death, as the end of all movement.
XVIII
Zakeya was sitting as still as usual on the dusty threshold of her house, her black eyes watching the lane, and the iron gate with its iron bars, when she heard the noise of many voices, and saw a group of men enter through the doorway, preceded by the Chief of the Village Guard. His voice rang out in the small yard, ‘Search the house!’
Before she had time to ask what they wanted, or to understand what was going on, the men had started to move around the small mud hut searching everywhere, behind the doors, on top of the oven, and up on the roof, and in every gap or hole, no matter how small. She stood watching them with an almost dazed look in her wide open eyes. After a while a man appeared carrying a small bundle. He walked up to the Chief of the Village Guard and said, ‘We’ve found it, Sheikh Zahran. He had hidden it on top of the oven.’
The Chief of the Village Guard shouted at the top of his voice, ‘The thief! Arrest him immediately. Where is your son, Zakeya?’
‘He’s in the fields,’ she said in a frightened voice. ‘What do you want of him? What has he done?’
‘Your son Galal is a big thief, Zakeya. He stole this from the Mayor’s house,’ said Sheikh Zahran, holding out the small bundle. ‘Look!’ he added, opening it. ‘It’s full of silver coins.’
She was seized with a feeling of bewilderment soon overcome by her increasing terror at the sight of hundreds of silver coins flashing in the light of the kerosene lamps. But she cried out defiantly, ‘My son does not steal, Sheikh Zahran, and he’s never been to the Mayor’s house.’
Sheikh Zahran’s lips twisted into a sneer, which he followed with an ironic, snorting laugh. ‘You know nothing about your son, or else you’re just pretending that you don’t know what he has done. Are you sure he said nothing to you about this bundle?’
‘No, Sheikh Zahran,’ she answered quickly. ‘I know nothing. And my son Galal is certainly not the one who stole these coins.’
The Chief of the Village Guard gave another prolonged snort and asked, ‘Then, pray tell me, who stole them, Zakeya, and who hid them on top of your oven. A spirit?’
She slapped her face several times with both her hands and cried out, ‘Never, never. My son Galal is not a thief. You will not take him away from us as you did with Kafrawi.’
But they took him. Galal could not understand what was happening. He was taken straight from the field to the police station, in the same galabeya he was wearing as he worked. From that moment onwards they kept moving him from one room to another and asking him questions all the time. He walked as though in a dream and from the look in his eyes it was clear that he could not make out a thing of what was going on around him. He felt he was living in a nightmare. He did not know what to answer when they questioned him and all he would say was, ‘I don’t know anything. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know anything about this bundle. I’ve never been to the Mayor’s house.’
But then they brought the witnesses. One of them was the Chief of the Village Guard in person. There was a witness to say that he had seen him running out of a back door in the Mayor’s house. There was a second witness who was sure he had been carrying something which looked like a small bundle. Still a third one maintained that he had called out to him at the time when he had been seen, but instead of answering, he had continued to run until he disappeared through a door opposite the Mayor’s house. The Chief of the Village Guard was the last of the witnesses to speak. He said that he had always held Galal in high esteem as a soldier who had done his duty defending the land of his forefathers, and always felt that he could trust him and have confidence in him. But faced with the things which had been brought to his notice, he had been obliged to search the house in which Galal lived. Then after a short pause he added that this was the first time Galal had stolen. He could not understand what had driven him to do so except perhaps that he owed the government a lot of arrears in taxes, and was obliged to pay at least a part of the debt, otherwise the government authorities would have taken the measures that are normal in such cases.
It was clear that the Chief of the Village Guard knew exactly what to say when dealing with the police. He was well versed in their language and they too understood what he was trying to say.
As soon as he was finished the magistrate turned to Galal and asked, ‘Have you got anything to say for yourself?’
‘I know nothing about this bundle,’ he repeated for the hundredth time. The sweat poured from his brow and he looked around him in a daze. ‘I never entered the Mayor’s house,’ he added.
But they sent him off to gaol. He found himself in a narrow room crowded with other people,
and he could hardly breathe, or move. When his eyes got accustomed to the absence of light he began to look around. He could see the sallow faces tanned to the hue of dark leather. The eyes were black and large, and they looked at him with the expression of men who have resigned themselves to their fate, and given up fighting a long time ago. For a moment he felt he had seen the face of his uncle Kafrawi. He whispered, ‘Uncle Kafrawi?’
But a voice answered in the dark, ‘Who’s Kafrawi, my son?’
XIX
When they came to take Galal away, Zeinab held on to his arm and shrieked, ‘Don’t take my husband away from me. Take me with him.’ But the rough strong hands of the men pushed her aside and Galal was driven away in the small van.
She said not one word for three days, nor did she go to the fields, nor lead the buffalo by the rope tied around its neck, as it plodded behind her. She did not even go to the river to fill the earthenware jar with water, or cook, or bake bread. She just sat beside her Aunt Zakeya on the dusty threshold of her house, her eyes silently following the way the van had taken when it carried Galal off to gaol.
On the third day she stood up, went to the stable, took out the buffalo, and left the house leading it behind her. She returned without the buffalo, but between her breasts she was hiding a small handkerchief knotted around a few coins. When she arrived she squatted down beside her Aunt Zakeya without saying anything.
On the fourth day at the crack of dawn she stood up again and went out alone. She continued to walk until she reached the place where the bus stopped. She took it to Bab El Hadeed and then asked a passer-by where she could find the gaol. Along the way she kept asking different people until she reached a station. There she took a train and when she got down walked again until she found herself standing in front of the huge prison door. But the man at the gate told her that visits were forbidden without written permission.
God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels Page 15
