She waited at the bus stop, but when the 613 to the Ministry came, she stood still and stared at it. As it moved off, she realized that she ought to be on it and ran after it, but couldn’t catch it. She went back to the stop, feeling a sense of relief. She would not go to the Ministry today. All her leave had been used, but what would happen if she didn’t go today … would it change anything in the world? Not even her death or flesh-and-blood absence from the world would change anything, so how important would be her absence from the Ministry today? One blank space in the old attendance register with its tattered cover.
The world around her brightened at the thought. She looked at the people contemptuously as they ran panting for the buses, blindly hurling themselves onto them. Why were these fools running? Did any one of them know how they slept last night? Did any one of them know that if they fell under the wheels and died or if the whole bus overturned with them and everyone inside and was submerged in the Nile, did they know that this would mean nothing to the world?
Another bus stopped in front of her. There were some empty seats, so she got on and sat down beside an old man. He was holding yellow prayer beads between his trembling fingers, softly muttering ‘Oh Protector! Oh Protector! Lord protect us! Lord protect us!’ from time to time peering from the windows up at the sky through encrusted, lashless eyes. It seemed to Fouada that some catastrophe had just that minute befallen the man so she smiled at him gently to console him, but he took fright and cowered into his seat away from her, his thin body pressing up against the window. ‘How much fear there is in the world!’ she said to herself and turned away.
On the other side, a young woman stood beside her. The bus was now packed with standing passengers. A waft of perfume came from the woman, on her face that familiar layer of powder, on her lips that blood-red coating. Her body was slim and so short that her stomach bumped against Fouada’s shoulder as she sat, but her buttocks were round and prominent behind her.
For no reason, Fouada suddenly jumped up. The woman squeezed into the seat in her place, huffing in irritation. Fouada pushed her way through the bodies, then hurled herself from the bus before it pulled away from the stop, her feet landing on the ground. She almost fell over but managed to stay upright and, looking up to see where she was, found herself in front of the rust-covered railings of the Ministry.
Like a bucketful of cold water in her face she realized where she was, remembering that she had intended not to go to the Ministry. But unknowingly her feet had brought her along her usual daily path, like a donkey before whom the door of the barn opens and who emerges alone and automatically into the field. And since it is automatic, it is very natural, like a baby emerging from its mother’s womb.
She looked up at the gloomy building and saw it bulging out of the open courtyard, like her mother’s stomach. Long wide cracks spread over its dark brown surface like stretch marks. She caught a strange smell, like the one she smelled in hospital maternity wards or in stale toilets. As she stumbled forward, the feeling of nausea intensified and she knew she was approaching her office.
* * *
The head of department was angry. He spoke loudly, saliva sprayed from his lips and a drop landed on her cheek. She left it there and did not wipe it off with her handkerchief, pretending to be unaware of it.
‘You left your office before time yesterday, three and a half hours early!’ she heard him say.
The word ‘yesterday’ resonated in her ear and without thinking she repeated:
‘Yesterday?’
The director’s thick lips curled in disdain and his shiny bald head nodded as he shouted:
‘Yes, yesterday, or have you forgotten?’ As if talking to herself, she said:
‘No, I haven’t forgotten, but I thought that it happened…’ She swallowed the rest of the sentence ‘…a week or two ago.’
He continued speaking loudly, but she was not listening. She was wondering about the way people spend their time, how feelings of time do not always correspond to the number of hours or minutes that pass. Can the steady and continuous movement of the hands of a clock inside that limited, small circle be an accurate measure of time? How is it possible to measure something invisible and unlimited by something visible and limited? How do we measure something we don’t see or feel or touch or taste or smell or hear? How do we measure something non-existent with something existent?
A thought occurred to her which she believed no one else had ever had. She felt a secret joy, the signs of which she hid from the head of department. She didn’t know why or how she opened her mouth but suddenly she said to him:
‘I’ve been working in this research department for six years now, and I believe I have the right to carry out research from today.’
As if she had delivered an insult, the director’s bald head turned red and, sitting at his desk, he looked like an ape standing on its head, its behind in the air.
‘Why are you smiling like that?’
She tightened her lips so as not to answer him, but instead blurted out:
‘You may have the right to dock me for the time I was absent, but you have no right to ask me why I am smiling!’
She imagined that he would get even angrier and his voice get even louder, but he suddenly fell silent as if stunned by her unusual ability to answer back. His silence encouraged her to pretend to be angry and, raising her voice, she said:
‘I do not accept that anyone, no matter who, should trample on my rights, and I know how to defend them!’
The redness of his bald head faded to a pale yellow, making it look like a melon.
‘What rights of yours have I trampled on?’ he exclaimed in astonishment.
Waving a hand in the air, she shouted:
‘You trampled on two important rights … first when you asked me why I was smiling, and second when you finished the question with the words ‘like that’. The first right is my right to smile, and the second right is my absolute right to choose how I smile.’
His deep-set eyes widened, creasing the cushions of flesh around them, and he gasped in utter amazement:
‘What is it you’re saying, miss?’
Fouada was shaken by an inexplicable anger and without thinking snapped:
‘And who told you I was a miss?’
His eyes widened still further.
‘Well, aren’t you?’ he said.
Fouada thumped the desk with her fist and shouted:
‘How dare you ask me such a question. What gives you the right? The regulations…?’
How had the scene changed so fast, so that now she, Fouada, was the angry one and had appropriated the right to be so? The head of department was now more afraid of her than surprised, and that fierce look with which he fixed his subordinates had vanished from his eyes to be replaced by a tame, almost respectful one, much like the one he gave the undersecretary and his immediate superiors. She heard him say in what would have been a gentle voice, had he practised the words over a number of years:
‘It seems you’re tired today. You’re not yourself. I apologize if something I said offended you.’
He put his papers under his arm and left the room. She stared at his back as he went through the door. It was bent like an old man’s, but not bent with age, rather with that premature curvature that afflicts civil servants from so much bowing and bending.
Leaving the Ministry that day, immediately she had left the rusty iron railings behind, Fouada told herself ‘I will never go back to that dingy tomb.’ She didn’t pay much heed to the phrase for she had said it every day for the last six years. She set off for the bus stop to make her way home, but when she reached it her feet carried on walking down the street. She didn’t know where she was going, just went on, aimlessly. She looked at the people striding quickly, purposefully and with determination towards a definite and conscious goal. She wondered at how they could achieve such a miracle, and at the utter ease with which they moved their legs. She spun around not knowing which dir
ection to take and experienced herself as alone, inside a closed circle. No one turned with her, no one was with her, no one at all.
She raised her head and, with a start, saw the tall buildings with placards fixed to the walls. She suddenly remembered that she had come to a decision sitting at her desk that morning, a final, an irreversible decision. Yes, she would rent a small apartment and turn it into her own chemical laboratory. She drew herself up and stamped her foot forcefully. Yes, that was her decision and that was her intention, and neither of them would she relinquish.
Finding herself in Qasr al-Nil Street she strolled along it examining the buildings. From time to time, she stopped to ask a caretaker if there was a vacant apartment. At the Opera end of the street, she crossed over and retraced her steps, scrutinizing the buildings on the other side.
One caretaker she asked peered at her with his dark face and bloodshot eyes, then asked:
‘Have you got a thousand pounds with you?’
‘What for?’ she said.
‘There’s an apartment going vacant at the beginning of the month, but the owner wants to sell the furniture to whoever rents it.’
‘Is the furniture in the apartment?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Can I see it?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
She followed him into the lobby of the building. He went to the lift, pressed number 12 with a finger, long and thin, like a black pencil with a white tip. Going up, she asked:
‘How many rooms are there in the apartment?’
‘Two,’ he replied.
‘And the rent?’
‘It used to be six pounds a month.’
‘Who’s the owner?’
‘An important business man,’ he answered.
‘Does he live in it?’ she inquired.
‘No, it used to be his office.’
The lift stopped on the twelfth floor. The caretaker went towards a large brown door bearing a small brass plate with the number 129 on it. Opening the door he went in, she following behind, into a small living room with a wide sofa whose seat sagged almost to the floor, two big, old chairs and a shabby wooden table. In the first room she saw a broad, blue, iron bed, a large chair and a clothes-stand. Entering the other room, she thought there might be a desk, but saw another bed, a wardrobe and a mirror. Turning to the caretaker, she asked:
‘Where’s the desk?’
His bluish lips curled back to show their moist red underside and he said gruffly:
‘Don’t know. I’m only the caretaker.’
Fouada wandered through the apartment and went to the window. From its towering height, the apartment overlooked the heart of Cairo. She could make out the main streets and the squares, the bridges and forks of the Nile. Fouada had never been up so high and Cairo seemed to her smaller than she had thought. The crowd that used to swallow her up, the buses that could crush her, the network of long, wide streets in which she could get lost – all now were remote, unreal, no longer a great city, but an anthill, crawling and scurrying without purpose, without significance.
She was strangely delighted by this diminution of everything while she remained the same size and weight, standing by the window; perhaps was even larger and heavier compared to what she could see below?
She was aroused by the voice of the caretaker saying: ‘Do you like the apartment, lady?’
She turned to him and dreamily replied:
‘Yes.’
Glancing at the iron bed, she said:
‘But can’t the deposit be reduced? This furniture isn’t worth more than…’
The caretaker whispered in her ear:
‘It’s not worth anything, but these days the apartment … this apartment won’t go for less than thirty or forty pounds a month.’
‘That’s true,’ she said, ‘but even if I put myself on the market I couldn’t find a thousand pounds.’
The dark face smiled, revealing surprisingly white teeth.
‘You’re worth your weight in gold!’ he said.
This flattery pleased Fouada hugely in a way she hadn’t felt for a long time and she smiled broadly saying:
‘Thank you, uncle…’
‘Othman,’ the caretaker said.
‘Thank you, Uncle Othman.’
They went back down in the lift. She shook the caretaker’s hand, thanked him and was about to leave when he said:
‘What do you want to rent an apartment for, lady? To live in?’
‘No,’ replied Fouada, ‘it will be a chemistry laboratory.’
‘Chemistry?’ he exclaimed.
‘Yes, chemistry.’
Again he smiled broadly and, as if he now understood, said: ‘Ah, yes, yes, chemistry. A good apartment for it.’
‘It’s very good,’ Fouada said ‘but…’
The caretaker brought his lips close to her ear.
‘You can come to an understanding with the owner. He might lower it to six hundred. You’re the first one I’ve told this to, but you’re a good person and deserve the best.’
‘Six hundred?’ Fouada said to herself. Could her mother give her six hundred? Uncertain, she looked at the caretaker.
‘I can fix you an appointment with the owner if you like,’ he said.
She opened her mouth to refuse, but instead said:
‘Okay.’
‘Tomorrow’s Friday. He comes here every Friday to check the building.’
Smiling proudly, he added:
‘He owns the whole building.’
‘When will he be here? What time?’ she asked.
‘About ten in the morning,’ he replied.
‘I’ll come at half past ten, but you must tell him that I don’t have six hundred at the moment.’
‘Pay what you have and the rest in instalments,’ said the caretaker. ‘I can fix it for you, he won’t be too hard.’
With his mouth close to her ear again, he whispered:
‘The apartment’s been empty for seven months but you mustn’t say you know this or he’ll know that it was me who told you. You’re the first one I’ve told this to, but you’re a good person and deserve the best.’
Fouada smiled and said:
‘Thank you, Uncle Othman. I’ll repay you for this favour.
His answering smile was full of expectation.
* * *
Fouada arrived home before dark. Her mother was sitting in the living room wrapped in wool blankets. Om Ali, the cook, was with her. As soon as she heard Fouada enter, Om Ali got up, exclaiming:
‘Thank goodness you’ve come.’
She enveloped her shrivelled body in a black wrap and tucked her small purse under her arm in readiness to go home. Fouada saw her mother’s large eyes; a transparent shroud of pale yellow discoloured the whites. The tip of her nose was red as if she had caught a cold. She heard her say weakly:
‘I’ve been worrying about you all day. Why didn’t you phone?’
Sitting down at the table, Fouada said:
‘There wasn’t a phone nearby, Mama.’
‘Why? Where have you been all this time?’ her mother asked. Putting a spoonful of rice with tomato sauce into her mouth, she said:
‘I was wandering the streets.’
Astonished, her mother exclaimed:
‘Wandering the streets? Why?’
Swallowing her food she said:
‘I was searching for a great discovery.’
Surprise creased her mother’s face:
‘What did you say?’
Fouada smiled, chewing a piece of grilled meat:
‘Have you already forgotten your old prayer?’
And hunching her shoulders in imitation of her mother preparing to make a supplication and in her accent Fouada proclaimed:
‘May the Lord help you, Fouada my daughter, to make a great discovery in chemistry!’
Her mother’s parched lips parted in a feeble smile and she said:
‘How much I want that for yo
u, my daughter.’
Feeling happy, Fouada selected a slice of tomato sprinkled with green pepper and said:
‘It seems that your prayer may be answered.’
Her mother’s happy beam etched her wrinkles deeper:
‘Why? Have they given you a rise in the Ministry? Or a promotion?’
The Ministry! Why did she have to mention it? Couldn’t she at least have waited until she’d finished eating? Fouada felt the pleasure of eating disappear and that chronic pain began to creep into her stomach accompanied by a dry nausea that would not move. Without replying, she got up to wash her hands but again heard her mother say:
‘Make me happy, daughter. Have you been promoted?’
Fouada returned from the bathroom and stood in front of her mother.
‘What’s the use of a rise or promotion, Mama?’ she said. ‘What’s the use of the whole Ministry? You imagine the Ministry’s something great, but it’s only an old building on the verge of collapse. You imagine that when I leave here early every morning and come back every afternoon I’ve done some work at the Ministry, but you won’t believe it if I tell you that I haven’t done a thing, nothing at all, except write my name in the attendance register!’
Her mother stared at her with wide, jaundiced eyes and said sadly:
‘But why don’t you do anything? They won’t be pleased with you for that and you won’t get promoted.’
Fouada swallowed hard and said:
‘Promotion! Promotion is given according to your birth certificate, according to the flexibility of your back!’
‘The flexibility of your back?’ her mother said in surprise. ‘Are you in chemical research or in the sports department?’
Fouada laughed briefly, then put her fingers on her mother’s mouth and said:
‘Don’t say research, it’s a sensitive word!’
‘Why?’ her mother asked.
‘Nothing, I was just teasing. What I mean is that I’m going to set up a chemistry laboratory.’
Fouada sat down beside her mother and eagerly explained what it would mean for her to have her own laboratory. She would carry out analyses for people and make a lot of money. Apart from this, she would do chemical research there and might discover something important to change the world. After this enthusiastic introduction, Fouada had to broach the tedious matter of finance, of asking her mother for money. Her mother had been listening closely and happily to everything Fouada was saying until the hints of requests for money. She understood that unmistakable tone in Fouada’s voice that ultimately meant she was asking for something.
God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels Page 20
