She sat in the chair and finally saw him pull up the sheet and fall asleep. His snoring gradually grew louder and she realized that a husband’s snores are like a father’s. She tiptoed out into the street. When she saw the red morning glow she realized that it was now the ‘day after’. Scandal awaited the whole family: her father would come looking for blood, her mother would inspect the sheets and nightdresses, and members of the family would be all over the newlyweds’ house searching in vain for the family’s nonexistent honour.
She strode confidently along the street in her white blouse and black trousers, taking long, quick steps like an athlete. She wore flat-heeled shoes; her short black hair fell over her ears and the nape of her neck. Her eyes were dark as she looked up. Her sharp upturned nose cut the world in two mercilessly and without hesitation. Her lips were pursed in determination and anger. When she reached Qasr al-Aini street she knew where she was going.
She saw one of the female students getting off the tram, and she hid behind a wall. She watched the groups of students getting off the bus and tram and walking towards the college. When the street emptied and the college had swallowed up the students, she left her hiding place and walked around the college fence. Through the iron railings she saw the door of the dissecting room. The door next to it still bore a white label with her name on it. She could see students’ heads moving behind the windows of lecture halls and the dissecting room.
‘Bahiah Shaheen!’
The voice rang out behind her and she jumped. One of her fellow students stood before her. She remembered his name. It was Raouf Qadri.
‘How’s college?’ he asked.
‘I never went back.’
‘So they’ve kicked you out too?’
‘Why, who was kicked out?’
‘Four so far. And I’m the fifth.’
‘I was kicked out too, but by a different authority.’
He laughed. ‘Well, there are all kinds of authorities, but kicked out is kicked out.’
‘What about Dr Fawzi?’ she asked.
‘He’s in the hospital as usual.’
She crossed the small bridge between the old and new hospitals. Through railings she saw the decorated boat and the couple waving to the woman standing on the palace balcony.
A big black car drove by. It looked like a police car. It was followed by an ambulance which, with its deafening siren, fought its way through the crowds standing in front of the hospital. There were queues of pale-faced men, women in black gallabiahs, children with bulging eyes, orange peddlers with their animal-drawn carts. Cats and dogs scampered among the piles of rubbish.
She entered the grounds of the spacious new hospital. Cars belonging to college lecturers and doctors were lined up like great ships moored in a port or aircraft waiting on a runway. Their curved tops shone like steel under the sun’s rays. Their bonnets were sharp and pointed like gun muzzles, their rear ends long and soft like snake tails. She stamped her foot hard on the ground, as if she were stamping on all those soft tails and sharp pointed heads, on all lecturers and doctors with their great shiny cars, bulging stomachs and flabby bottoms, their comfortable leather seats, their names hanging from signs in squares and streets, the diplomas they flaunted and the smell of blood and patients’ sweat oozing from the paper money lining their fat pockets.
She headed towards the out-patients’ department and saw Dr Fawzi’s head bobbing over the queue of bodies as skinny as skeletons. People leaned on each other for support. Thin, crooked legs unbent and straightened up. A head held itself erect with difficulty. Eyes were hollow, mouths open and panting, and a vile corpse-like smell filled the air.
She fought her way through the crowds to reach Dr Fawzi — although ‘fought her way’ is perhaps the wrong expression, for no sooner had she touched a body than it would stagger, lean against the wall or fall onto another. Yellow eyes strained towards her, seeing her as if from behind a cloud or from another world. In a daze, they realized they were standing in a queue.
Dr Fawzi was sitting at the head of the queue, his metal stethoscope hanging round his neck like a gallows rope. With his pen he wrote the names of mixtures. Sweat poured from his forehead as his voice rang out above the panting breaths, rattling throats and rasping coughs: ‘Breathe in! Hold your breath! Say ah . . . ! Say one, two, three, four! Stretch out your hand! Stretch out your leg! Pull yourself together!’
When Dr Fawzi saw her standing there he left his seat and came up to her smiling. ‘Hello, Bahiah’, he said. ‘I wanted to get in touch with you to see if you were all right, but I didn’t have your address. Are you all right?’
‘No’, she said softly.
Their eyes met in a long moment of silence. ‘How’s Saleem?’ she asked.
‘They’ve moved him from Misr prison to Torrah prison.’
‘Any visitors allowed?’
‘No, not even his mother.’
‘I heard they’ve released some of the students.’
‘That may be true . . . but no one like Saleem will be released now.’
‘When, then?’
‘No one knows. It might be years.’
‘Years?’ she shouted.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so’, he said sadly. ‘Nobody knows how long.’
She shook his hand with frightened fingers and ran out into the street. She saw people going to work or going home as if nothing important had happened. The most momentous possible thing had happened and no one knew or cared. She wandered the streets aimlessly. When she reached the college fence she looked up at the windows and saw the students’ heads as they bent over the corpses. They looked just like they did on any other day, as if nothing had happened. She growled in anger and stamped the ground. How ugly ordinary life was after a great event!
How awful that life went on heedlessly! The sky remained suspended on high, the earth stretched out below; the clouds moved with their usual nonchalance and people walked in the streets with their usual indifference. Would such frivolity never cease? Again she stamped her foot. Why wouldn’t this indifferent motion stop its grinding cycle? Why wouldn’t people stop for a moment, wake up and see the iron chains around their necks?
‘Bahiah!’
She jumped as she heard the voice behind her.
A face peered out of a big black car like a police vehicle. She recognized the face immediately. Dr Alawi. He got out, came up to her and said eagerly, ‘Bahiah! Where’ve you been all this time?’
She was silent. He took her hand and pulled her to the car. ‘Come with me!’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you!’
It was noon. The sun shone brightly through the car window, she could feel its heat on her arm. ‘Nobody knows’, she said to herself. ‘It could be years.’ She looked out at the sky, aimlessly. An undefined, unknown time, like the length of our lives. We do not know when we will die, and we think, naively, that such a day will never come. Or still more naively, we feel it coming at any and every moment — this limitless, infinite tragedy that we shoulder like an eternal burden.
The tragedy would have been easier to bear had she been told that Saleem would be out in five, ten or even twenty years. Then she might have been able to cope. Waiting for a definite period of time is bearable, when we know when it will end and it can be precisely defined. But to live in the grip of parallel lines that never meet, to be trapped between two jaws never knowing when they will snap shut: this is our tragedy, the secret of the sadness that envelops our joys and the indifferent merriment that surrounds our grief. We know that we are fooling ourselves, that we are gripped by a will not our own, and that this other will must destroy us in the end, though we never know when.
Now, as the car raced along, Bahiah felt gripped by fate: one wrong movement of the car and she would be a crushed corpse. But when she looked at him she realized that she lay in the grip not of fate but of those big hands grasping the steering wheel. One false move by those hands would be enough to destroy both her and the car.
A str
ange feeling of indifference came over her. The car swerved suddenly and almost collided with another, but she was not afraid. True indifference comes when one realizes the futility of one’s intentional life and untimed death, the futility of living indefinitely in chains. True indifference comes when one knows that death may come at any moment — why not this one rather than another?
She heard Dr Alawi’s voice. ‘I’d like to have lunch with you today. Is it all right?’
His politeness and hesitancy surprised her. Had he said, ‘I’d like to throw you into the Nile. Is that all right?’ she would have agreed straightaway, but he was only inviting her to lunch. That seemed insignificant compared with an invitation to die, so she said passively, ‘All right.’
They drove along a shady tree-lined road. She knew only a few parts of Cairo and she felt she was now somewhere she had never been before, but she asked no questions. She silently enjoyed that comfortable feeling of indifference. She heard him say, ‘Why have you left college?’
She answered sarcastically, ‘They married me off.’
He laughed and took her hand. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘No’, she said. ‘No kidding. They married me off.’
His eyes widened in feigned astonishment. ‘And what have you done about it?’
‘I ran away’, she said quietly.
He laughed again. ‘You’ll be dragged off to the House of Obedience.’
She laughed and turned her face to the sun. When he saw her black raised eyes, her upturned nose and her pursed lips, he asked, ‘How are you going to live?’
She shook her short tousled hair and said, ‘I’ll work and manage somehow.’
‘They’ll look for you everywhere.’
‘They’ll never find me’, she said confidently.
‘It’s not easy to hide in a city like Cairo. There are eyes everywhere. All the authorities are against you.’
She glanced cautiously at the street and looked at him searchingly.
‘And you’re against me too, aren’t you?’
He smiled, ‘I might have been against you, but I love you.’
The words sounded strange. She almost asked ‘What does that mean?’ but she pursed her lips in silence. The car stopped at a small house ringed by a garden. He took a key from his pocket and opened the door. She found herself in a large room with coloured wallpaper, pink curtains. A statue of a naked black woman stood over the fireplace, and on the wall hung a painting of another nude woman. She looked around in surprise and he smiled, saying, ‘I slave all day at the college, the hospital and the clinic just for a few moments of happiness in this hide-out.’
He took off his jacket and the banknotes in the inside pocket smelt like the hospital — a mixture of blood and sweat and sick, panting breaths. She looked away and he handed her a glass, saying, ‘This is an Egyptian wine called Omar Khayyam. The best wine in the world. What do you think?’
‘I have no idea’, she replied listlessly. ‘I’ve never tasted wine before, Egyptian or foreign.’
He looked at her sad black eyes. ‘I have a philosophy of life’, he said. ‘To live from day to day. I never think about yesterday or tomorrow. You should do the same, starting now.’
‘I have a different philosophy’, she said quietly.
He laughed out loud. ‘A beautiful woman needs no philosophy.’
She did not laugh. He stretched out his hand, took hers and kissed it. ‘Bahiah, I love you! Don’t you know what love means?’
‘No’, she answered clearly.
His hands caressed her and he pressed her to his chest. She felt the quick beat of his heart. He held both her wrists in one hand and started to undress her with the other. She kicked at him strongly and he fell. As he picked himself up, he stared at her in astonishment. She was even more surprised than he was. He sat on a chair near the fireplace. ‘It seems I’ve made a mistake’, he said. ‘I thought you were in love with me.’
‘Where on earth did you get that idea?’ she answered in amazement.
‘I understand women’, he said in his lecturer’s tone.
‘With what brain?’
He pointed to his head and smiled. ‘Man has only one brain, in his head. Didn’t I teach you that in the dissecting room?’
‘The dissecting room is one thing, the truth is another’, she replied scornfully.
‘What is the truth?’
‘That a man’s brain is not in his head.’
‘Where then?’
‘Between his legs’, she answered boldly.
He put on his jacket, saying, ‘You’re not normal, girl.’
‘You’re a perfectly normal man’, she said smiling.
She strode out proudly. ‘Not normal.’ And what do they consider a normal girl? One with beaten eyes who walks with closely-bound legs, obedient and submissive, with amputated sexual organs? One who drips with perfumed powders and paints, saturated day and night with sad songs and sex films? One who knows romantic stories by heart and can’t really experience anything? The virtuous and pure virgin preoccupied with removing body hair and enticing men?
She walked along with her quick, long strides, looking left and right, inspecting people’s faces. The street was full of them. Their faces, their movements, their voices were all similar. When she looked at their eyes she did not see them. She felt she was drowning with no one to see or recognize her and that her face was becoming like that of Aliah, Zakiah, Najiah or Yvonne.
Absent-mindedly, she ran in the direction of al-Muqattam street. Her eyes searched earth, trees and sky for those eyes that were capable of seeing her, for the thin face with the intense features burdened by people’s cares. ‘Saleem!’ she shouted. But the mountain swallowed her voice and its echo. ‘Saleem!’ she cried out still louder. No one answered, but she did not turn back.
She knew he was there, like the sky, the air, the sun, the moon and the stars. He was part of the universe. She breathed him every minute, she felt his touch on her body as she walked, sat or slept. When she gazed at the sky she saw his eyes in its blueness. She saw his nose in every high, pointed arch. With each step she took she heard his footsteps. She almost turned to see him but stopped herself. She knew he was not there, that the sky was empty of him, that the earth was devoid of people, and that the universe was hollow like an empty box whose air has been sucked out by a magic pump.
‘Bahiah!’ His voice rang out behind her and she started, but no one was there. She pulled herself together. In that determined gesture, she realized that she would go to him, she would devote her life to going to him, and nothing could stand between them, not death, bullets, blood, the sharp lancet cutting into flesh, the high iron door, the lock.
She took long, fast strides as if she knew where she was going, but soon she stopped. She did not know where to go. When she looked around she saw her father’s head through the window of a taxi. Beside him was her uncle and someone else, a strange head that she seemed to glimpse through thick fog. Suddenly she remembered her wedding night. Panting, she hid behind a wall. The taxi drove on and was swallowed up by the traffic. She came out and walked on with her straight, strong legs. She knew the sound of her footsteps, one after the other, as she stamped the ground in defiance. She would lift one foot high and bring it down hard as if penetrating the earth and defying the whole world around her. She would kick anyone who approached her and gouge out the eyes of anyone who dared to touch her or even to stir the air around her. With her lancet she would rip open the belly of anyone who stood in her way. Yes, she would kill him. She was capable of committing murder. In fact, nothing but the crime of murder could extinguish the fire now burning within her.
It was three o’clock in the morning, just before dawn. Darkness ruled the narrow mud streets. The old houses leaned against each other for support like the skeletons of sick bodies. The breaths of the Dirassah neighbourhood, with its small overcrowded rooms, steamed out through the windows, carrying the dust of the mountain and the smell of s
weat, onion, lentils and rice, and fried fish. This area, a hive of activity in the daytime, was now fast asleep, the sleep of exhausted bodies so similar to death. Now and then a dog barked, a baby cried, or a cat miaowed, breaking the silence.
But life was in full swing in the basement of the old house. The small printing press covered the white paper with black characters. When one sheet was fully printed the machine would spin and a fresh sheet would be sucked in, soon to be filled with black lines and replaced in turn by a new sheet of paper. The three thin faces were pale and exhausted. Six staring eyes followed the circular movement of the paper. One pair of dark eyes looked up in a familiar way. They were intensely black. The nose was sharp and upturned, dividing the world in two. The lips were pursed in determination and anger.
‘Bahiah!’ The voice rang in her ear. She looked around to see Raouf stuffing the papers into the leather bag, and Fawzi hiding the printing press in a hole in the floor and replacing the floorboards. The small wooden door creaked in the silence and the three people slipped out, one after the other. No one would have recognized her: their features looked alike in the dark. Her legs were sinewy inside her trousers and a bulging leather bag dangled from her right hand.
In the small square Raouf turned right and was swallowed up by the dark street. Fawzi headed for the main square. Bahiah strode towards the waiting bus, her chest heaving, her breath coming in gasps. She clutched the bulging leather bag to her chest, cradling it like a mother cuddling her baby. She would get off at the next stop. She knew where to go. She knew where to take the blazing words.
‘People of Egypt! Awake! Throw open your windows, open your eyes and see the chains coiled around your necks! Open your minds and see that the sweat of your brows is being plundered. Your crops are stolen, your flesh devoured until you are left only skin and bones, queueing skeletons each leaning on the other. Your breath is torn by fits of coughing and blood pours from a deep wound in your chest.’
Two Women in One Page 9