The kitchen was her life. More specifically, her life was the humid square patch in front of the basin, her small hands plunged in the water running from the tap, day and night, summer and winter. Her black eyes faced the wall, gazing from beneath a crust of dried tears that was dissolved from time to time by a blazing look, sharp as a sword, that pierced the wall and passed through into the dining room. That expression penetrated all the way to the round dining table surrounded by nine mouths, opening and shutting upon bulging jowls, jaws grinding, teeth clacking like the cogs of a mill-wheel.
In the basin, stacks of empty plates collect, covered by a film of congealed fat; the garbage pail is filled to the brim with untouched leftovers, while the sink drain becomes clogged with the half-chewed leavings.
At midnight, after mopping the kitchen floor, she crams a chunk of bread into her mouth, and gnaws on a bit of skin or a piece of bone that holds remnants of marrow. She settles herself, wet galabeya and all, on the wooden bench behind the kitchen door, her swollen, reddened fingers still oozing a yellow fluid with the warmth of blood. Her ears track the aggressive male hissing that emanates from the bedroom, followed by a submissive female moaning and the creaking of wooden bed joints.
As she sleeps, the fatigue drains from her body, the pain in her hands and feet abates, and her breathing settles into an intimate peacefulness through which glide familiar images that have lain dormant in some dark interior. A spent wisp of light still dances through those recesses, casting a faint glow that gives the walls the appearance of mud-brick, with its interspersed gleam of yellow straw. The walls climb to the round, window-like aperture and drop to a floor covering which looks very much like that familiar straw matting. On one edge lies her mother, the black tarha wrapping her head, one hand pillowing her temple. On the nearer edge sleeps Hamida, lids half-dropped: the eyes of a child who has fallen asleep to the tones of a frightening bedtime tale. Her lips are half open over tiny, translucent teeth which have sprouted recently in place of baby teeth. Her breaths have the sweet, childlike smell given off faintly by closed blossoms just before the dew falls and dawn arrives. Beneath the full-cut galabeya her breasts show like two tiny buds that have emerged just moments before, to be compressed suddenly under the large hand, flat as an axe blade, which has begun to creep stealthily underneath the galabeya, raising it from the small legs and thighs. Everything becomes compounded into a single object, a single heavy stick in the shopkeeper’s hand, striking blow after blow, over her head and chest and then between her thighs. And she screams voicelessly, and she cries alone in the night in stifled sobs, and swallows her tears before dawn. Early in the morning, before anyone has awakened, she spits her tears into the lavatory, straightens up resolutely, and peers into the mirror at her tear-washed eyes, raised questioningly.
But no one answers her questions. No one responds to her slightly stooped back, her festering, swollen fingers, the cracked soles of her bare feet ascending the service stairs. The servants’ stairs spiral crookedly; at every twisting bend is a dark crevice wide enough to hold a secret crime, and a garbage bin that has overflowed, filling the floor with flies and tiny cockroaches which crawl under the bottoms of doors into the elegant, well-appointed flats.
Yet an observer would see no marks of servitude upon Hamida as she climbs or descends those stairs. And what are the emblems of servitude? Tears have rinsed her eyes clean, and her gaze is directed upward: and nothing matters but the eyes. Everything else may well be ulcerous and oozing pus; Hamida may well be sunk up to the knees in garbage – animal leavings, for her masters are among the carnivorous, and dead flesh carries a smell more putrid than that of dead vegetation. Hamida stamps the odour underfoot, and holds her head high, and comprehends what no one else seems to understand.
What Hamida realizes is that one’s garbage increases as one’s position in society rises. It is in the nature of things that the stomach which consumes more from its upper orifice expels more from below. And naturally, as her master’s stomach is indisputably the largest stomach around, his refuse is the most abundant. The servants lug it to the bins, and armoured vehicles cart it off to a distant spot in the desert, where it collects in the shape of a high pyramid, to be gazed upon by bedazzled tourists.
Small pyramids of garbage mark every street corner, visited from time to time by rats, stray dogs, and small cats whose round, gleaming eyes gaze upwards as if they are children, and whose paws – festering like Hamida’s fingers – search swiftly and nimbly for a piece of bread and something to soak it in which has not yet gone rotten.
Clasped around something, Hamida’s fingers emerged from the refuse bin. She opened her hand to see what it was, but a sudden light fell over her palm, and she ducked behind the wall. The light followed her, casting a long shadow across the floor: a close-shaven head, shoulders broad and outlined by a row of yellow buttons. Recognizing him at once, she gasped loudly, and opened her eyes to the rough voice of her master.
‘Hamida!’ She saw the ewe coming through the door, driven by the butcher, and realized that today was the feast-day commemorating her mistress’s death.
Her gaze met the ewe’s eyes. The ewe planted all four legs firmly on the floor and refused to move. Hamida stared into the black spheres surrounded by pure white. Blanketing the whiteness was an unexpected gleam that moved over the surface of the eyes, glittering, like a large, immobile tear which neither evaporates nor falls. Her eyes widened in surprise, with the consternation of one who has raised her head suddenly, only to see her own eyes in a mirror which had not been there before.
The butcher tugged the ewe by means of a short rope wound around her neck. The ewe followed him, but twisted her neck to the rear so that she still faced in Hamida’s direction. The butcher’s large, coarse fingers closed round the neck. The ewe’s small hooves, front and back, lashed out at him. Four strong hands came out and pulled her forelegs and hindlegs apart. Now she lay stretched out on her back, her wide black eyes open in terror, searching in the eyes around her for her mother’s eyes. Not far away, her mother stood motionless, eyes calm and steady, lashes unmoving, the black tarha quiescent over her head, shoulders and chest.
A long, slender muscle extending the length of the small, lean thigh trembled, and the tremor moved to the top of the thigh. It perched there, on the obtuse angle, looking like a child’s open, panting mouth, its lips soft and rosy, dewy with a transparent saliva akin to children’s tears, revealing beneath them the red hue of blood. The delicate tongue began to tremble, like the tongue of a little bird being slaughtered.
She raised panicky black eyes once again to search for her mother’s eyes amongst those crowding around her. Her mother looked at her with alien eyes, with a look cold as a knife-blade. She shifted her eyes to the ceiling, averting them from the blade, but the knife was coming ever nearer, little by little, until a lightning-quick movement split her in half.
Hamida did not feel the pain. Her eyes remained dry, and she abandoned herself to the dirt floor, lying there passively, while from beneath her thighs came a long ribbon of blood, its dark red hue glistening in the sunshine. Ants appeared from nowhere to accumulate thickly over the blood-ribbon curved and inanimate like the back of a dead snake. She blew at the ants to scatter them, and sneezed as the dust penetrated her nose, ejecting the tears which had congealed in her throat. She reached out and covered the ants in dirt. Now that the blood had been buried, the previously level patch of floor was slightly mounded, like a grave. She pressed the sole of her foot over the protruding gravesite, trampled the uneven floor with both feet, paced over it with all her reclaimed strength. At the bend in the wall she twisted to look behind her. Finding no one there, she raised the galabeya from her legs. The familiar appendage was not there; in its place she found a small cleft, which looked just like that old, closed-up wound.
The familiar roughness of that voice reached her ears. ‘Hami-i-ida.’
Hurriedly, she lowered her gown, hoisted the full water bucket
and poured it over the ewe, cleansing her neck of the congealed blood. She hosed water into the ewe’s slit gullet, and the spray gushed from her mouth and nose like a fountain. The seven children laughed in delight: for today was the feast, the ewe had been slaughtered, and the utensils, serving dishes and plates lay ready on the table.
The dinner hour arrived, and everyone sat down to eat; everyone, that is, except the mother, who had died in the bedroom, and Hamida, who was still hoisting the bucket, pouring water onto the dead body, filling her small palm with shampoo and rubbing it into the thick coat, inserting her small finger to wash the large ear. She raised the closed lids and washed the eyes, and then the nostrils. She cleaned the mouth and neck, the black hair under the ewe’s legs, and her underbelly.
She washed the animal’s thighs carefully, from below and above and in between. Her eyes wide in surprise: the space between was smooth and sealed shut, showing no appendage. At the uppermost part lay a long cleft that looked like an old wound.
Her trembling fingers moved down to the hind legs; she pushed the loofa into the cloven hooves, to which remnants of soil still clung: black and clayey soil, streaked with yellow lines, like the straw with which animal pens in the village are strewn.
She heard the same harsh, commanding tones, coming from outside the door this time.
‘Don’t waste your time on the hooves, we’ll give them to the butcher as alms.’
She grabbed the morning newspaper from the top of the bookcase and wrapped the hooves in it. On the front page she noticed a photograph. A crowd of round, fleshy faces filled the picture, and in the middle she recognized her master’s features. They were sitting in a circle. The plates before them were full, piled high, pyramid-like; gleaming knives were plunging downwards methodically over the pyramids, which dwindled regularly and very rapidly until they had disappeared and only crumbs remained on the plates.
She thought the pyramids had faded away. However, when she scrutinized the newspaper with great care, she found them unchanged: piled high, tall, and tapering to sharp points. But now they were in another part of the picture, in another position between table and chairs, rising from below on two thighs to ascend as far as the obtuse triangle at the base of the ribs, directly under the heart.
Hamida’s fingers slid over the smooth, slippery heart. The knife in her hand trembled as she cut the great artery and split open the heart so she could wash it from inside. How often she had done this with the hearts of chickens, rabbits and geese – but the ewe’s heart was much larger, and still very warm, its muscles yet pulsing, sending its hidden, trembling oscillation through her fingers. The trembling moved into her arm, and then into her chest and all the way to her heart, which was beating more rapidly now.
From inside the split heart fell a deep-red clot of blood, which slipped over the marble edge of the basin and fell onto her foot. As she stooped to remove the clot, her eyes were caught by a long, thin, red ribbon that ran along her calf. She thought it was an artery, but in fact it was moving downwards over her skin rather than beneath. She touched it with her fingertip, and brought her finger to her eyes: it was wet with real blood.
As she straightened up, her alarmed eyes met her mother’s: eyes empty of fright, cool as a brackish lake, silent as the grave, staring fixedly at her with the gaze of the dead. The lids dropped over the deceased eyes; the cover dropped over the head and body. She heard her mother’s faint voice coming from afar, as if from beneath the ground.
‘You’ve come of age, Hamida.’
Her mother handed her a pair of knickers made of brown calico. Hamida put them on under her galabeya once and for the last time, for as it happened she did not remove them with her own hands. Rather they were stripped off by other hands, by coarse and flattened fingers that bore a strange odour permeated by the scent of tobacco. Hamida knew the smell of tobacco: she used to buy it from the shop for her father or brother, or one of her uncles, or some other man from the family. It made her sneeze and cough whenever she brought it close to her nose.
When she coughed, the corners of her mouth would puff out like those of her father, and she would imitate his rough voice, and stand in the large entrance area of the house, just as he did, throwing her head back conceitedly as he did, inflating her jowls and placing her right hand firmly on her hip.
Were one to catch a glimpse of her at that moment, one would think her Hamido. She herself used to believe she was Hamido. She would stride over the ground firmly, hitch up her galabeya over her thin hard legs, and run towards the boys, shouting ‘I’m Hamido.’ They would play cops and robbers, or the train game, each of them grabbing the hem of the next, and taking off across the ground, whistling.
The whistle grows loud in the night. Hamida’s small body shakes as she stands near the train. The darkness grows dense behind her, taking the shape of a large hand pushing her forcefully in the back, propelling her forward. Hamida darts off in the darkness, but almost immediately the darkness splits to reveal ten yellow eyes gleaming like brass buttons, and a sharp white blade hanging concealed alongside the long legs. She wraps her black tarha around her head and shoulders, chest and belly, and slips off in the evening blackness as if she herself is a piece of the night. But the legs run behind her, carrying their sharp blade, and the large feet advance with a sound that reverberates like the clash of iron against iron.
* * *
Hamido was still in the service. In the heel of his shoe was embedded an iron cleat which struck the asphalt slowly and heavily, like the hoof of a mule afflicted with sunstroke. The sun was afire: for it was an August noon in Cairo. Hamido’s head, shaven utterly bald, seemed to attract the flaming red disc, for it clung to his pate. His eyes and nose had been reduced to boreholes that flung out the fire accumulated inside his skull. Ears, mouth, anus – all the orifices of his body shot out the red fire in hot, tiny lumps, congealed to hardness like old, clotted blood.
As he stared at the round, red disc, it turned into two red discs, inside each one a gleaming black sphere, like the pupil of an eye, surrounded by a circle of pure white, as children’s eyes are. He stared at the pair of eyes: recognizing their particular shine, he shouted. ‘Hamida!’ He pulled the rigid implement upward from next to his thigh and aimed it exactly at the fixed point, halfway between the two eyes. He heard his father’s rough voice.
‘Fire.’
He fired.
The body fell, smeared with blood, the eyes open and fixed, gazing skyward. The gods had crowded the skies, seating themselves, one leg crossed over the other. Their upper legs dangled from amongst the clouds (and thus were visible to the naked eye) swinging with a regular horizontal movement, like that of a clock pendulum. The sun had disappeared and night fell; the music came on – the national anthem, in celebration of the victory. Palms were raised in applause, bearing the dead body upwards. The nose of the deceased brushed against the sole of a foot – belonging to one of the deities – and smelled the familiar odour emitted by feet whose owners do not wash them. The dead person averted his nose from the gods; the clamorous shouts ascended, and the black sheath split to reveal the badge of martyrdom in the battlefield of honour.
The dead person extended his hand, which was soiled with stains gone black (since the blood had dried) to receive the badge. Another hand – a clean, carefully manicured one – shot out and snatched the medal away. The dead person brandished his arm, sketching his anger in the air; the darkness was filled with searchlights, bulging from their sockets, their yellow glow spherical, looking like brass buttons.
Hamido’s lips parted in bewilderment. His dead body fell among long legs, between which hung the hard killing tools; his bare foot was crushed beneath the high, heavy boots with their tall uppers. The ground became doughlike, and his other foot plunged in. Then his legs sank in – up to the knees, halfway up his thighs, as far as the top of his thighs, to the middle of his belly. Little by little, he was sinking as far as the middle of his chest. The earth’s grip closed
around his neck, and his head went limp over the ground. He found the earth warm and tender, just like his mother’s chest, so he buried his head between her breasts and managed to insert his nose under the left breast: his favourite, old, safe place. But his mother distanced him with her strong hand, as forceful as his father’s. He lifted his head and saw his father’s large hand, its long fingers grasping the badge, his wide, black eyes with their tiny red veins stared straight at Hamido. Hamido reached out; despite the dense crowd which constricted space and movement, his hand remained suspended in the air. Eyes stared at his bloodstained fingers, and no one shook his hand. (In those days, people scorned the slain and respected the slayer.)
Hamido was not a killer. It was he who had determined the point halfway between the two eyes and sighted, and he who had pulled the trigger, and he who had killed. But he slayed without becoming a slayer. For the slayer it is who carries the shame, yet whose own hands remain unsullied.
This shame was not Hamido’s shame, though. All he had to do was to wash it away. (The distribution of special areas of expertise was one of the marks of progress, and so some managed shame and disgrace while others took care of the washing procedure.)
He pours the water from the bucket and washes everything carefully: hair, head, arms, legs, folds of skin around the hooves. He hears the imperious voice, coming from somewhere inside the house:
‘Take the hooves – that’s your share.’
God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels Page 33
