by Fadia Faqir
Aziza knew that Jamalat came from a family of gypsies whose skill as professional pickpockets and thieves had been passed down the generations. The men of the family practised their trade in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, particularly during the pilgrimage season when the crowds provided an excellent source of income. Jamalat and her sister, who had no mother, lived where Jamalat’s stealing took her – in the city of Tanta to be exact – especially during the festival of Saint Badawi when the crowds were at their height and everyone flocked to join in the festivities, providing ample opportunity for stealing.
However it was not stealing which finally led to Jamalat’s arrest but a matter involving her sister who was about three years younger than her. She was more beautiful than Jamalat but was mentally retarded. She had suffered brain damage during a difficult birth, after which her mother died. She had softer hair than her elder sister and sweet, honey-coloured eyes, which attracted the attention of a young man who made advances to her. He had noticed that the two sisters lived on their own in a furnished apartment, a situation not considered socially acceptable, because of the way Egyptian cinema focused on the reputation of the inhabitants of these flats as being generally immoral and because of their connection to the world of oil money which had caused an increase in rental transactions as well as the related shady dealings which offended the law and religion. The problem arose because this simple-minded sister with her buxom body was more attracted to dairy products and sweets than she was to the young man; she was oblivious to the fact she was being pursued and he was totally unaware that she was simple-minded. Jamalat, who was alert to this, was afraid that one day this man would take advantage of her sister and that she would be faced with the added burden of having to feed three mouths instead of two. Her sister was a cross she had to bear day and night; she always accompanied her if she went out and, if she left her alone, she had to make sure that the windows were firmly secured and the front door double locked from the outside to prevent the foolish girl from letting someone in. Despite all these precautions, when Jamalat went out she was always apprehensive that her sister might expose herself to danger in her absence – that she would fiddle with a sharp tool or set fire to the house unintentionally.
Jamalat tried hard to encourage her sister to fend for herself and coached her in elementary stealing and simple methods of picking pockets. But this only compounded the problem. One day, she hurled the corn cob she was eating at the chest of an old man who was passing by, demanding that he empty his pockets of any money and hand it over to her. But for the fact that the old man thought it was the prank of a harmless young girl her action might have created no end of problems.
Jamalat warned the young man, who worked as an assistant in a hairdresser’s shop on the ground floor of the block, that if he interfered with her sister she would give him such a beating that he would be no good to anyone. After begging him to keep away and to mind his own business, she was surprised one day to find the young man knocking on their door. When she opened up to insist that he should stop his foolish behaviour, which had reached the stage where he followed them to their front door, far from leaving and apologizing he pushed past her and forced his way inside. Before answering the door Jamalat had been ironing a red silk blouse, stolen from one of the most famous shops in the city, she unplugged the hot iron and hurled it at the young man. According to the doctors in the public hospital it had landed with full force on his head, causing severe concussion.
Aziza thought that Lula the hairdresser might have put Jamalat up to these new plans to become a prostitute, because Lula was a professional procuress who organized many networks of prostitutes, an activity which frequently landed her in prison. Amongst her victims were female university students, civil servants and middle class women. But Aziza pushed such thoughts from her mind because Jamalat loathed Lula and was always mocking her because she had found out that she preferred women to men. Everytime Lula had passed Jamalat standing in the prison courtyard she used to move up close to her without any good reason, and was eager to touch her in a peculiar way. In the beginning, Jamalat put this down to a display of friendship which made her happy because no one else showed her any sympathy or consideration. However, one day she went to wash in the prison bathroom; the water only trickled from the tap because about a month previously the stopcock had started leaking, so Jamalat asked Lula if she would fetch her a bucket of water. When she let her in to bring the water, Lula offered to massage her back with a loofah and soap. Once Lula started doing this it became clear to Jamalat that her real intention went beyond simply helping her to wash the parts of her body which were difficult to reach. Lula started breathing heavily as she praised the contours of Jamalat’s body, which really was beautiful, despite being slightly on the plump side. Jamalat repelled these advances, needing no further proof of their immoral and shameful nature, but this did not deter Lula from spreading details of the episode to everyone in the prison, especially those who loved this sort of gossip like the old hags in the ward for the weak and of course Umm Ragab who spied for the authorities. The spreading of this slander was certainly to Lula’s advantage, in that Saniya Matar, the most renowned drug dealer in the prison, sentenced to life for importing drugs by air from abroad, lapped up the news with the greatest glee and promptly included Lula in her list of favourites. However Jamalat continued to drip venom on Lula, poisoning the procuress’s life. Lula felt angry and impotent in the face of this assault, and if she was unable to respond it was not through good manners or a virtuous tongue – neither her tongue nor the rest of her had ever been virtuous – but because, despite all the abuse and harsh words, she had really fallen in love with the young girl to the point of being unable to sleep.
At this point Aziza could not fathom what lay behind Jamalat’s decision to change her way of life or what convinced her that it was the right thing to do because Aziza had not yet been introduced to Huda, the newest inmate of the scabies ward, who had arrived at the prison a week before. She was only sixteen years old, which made her the youngest woman in the whole prison, and she already had two babies. Despite her youth, it was she who had been able to convince Jamalat to pursue a new career which, Huda could testify from her own short but extensive experience of life, would be more lucrative.
Huda had landed in the gutter of depravity along a twisted path, which she never would have imagined possible. It had all started a few years back when she accompanied her mother to a police station for the first time, not because she was guilty of any crime but because her mother wanted to inform the police that one of her fourteen hens, which she had kept from the time they were chicks until they laid, had been killed. Huda’s mother had accused a neighbour of the crime. The neighbour lived in a shack next to hers in one of the city suburbs which, over a few years, had swelled to resemble several large country towns. During the dispute with the tyrannical neighbour her mother received a direct blow with a large brick that ruptured her eye. A visit to the Government hospital followed, the purpose of which one might have guessed, was to get the eye examined. But not a bit of it, the real purpose of her mother’s visit was to convince the extremely reluctant doctor on duty to issue a statement about the death of the assassinated hen, confirming that it had been killed by strangulation. She would then present this evidence to the police who could take the necessary steps against her neighbour.
The doctor failed to make Huda’s mother understand that it was not his job to write medical reports on hens and when he offered to write a report certifying the serious damage she had suffered to her ruptured eye, she walked out in the belief that he was simply the stooge of a government which never got to the bottom of any problem. So she made for the police station and, once inside the door, met a distinguished staff sergeant who was not the least interested in the mother’s lost eye, nor in the hen, the victim of this perfidious act, which was lying motionless, wrapped in part of the woman’s long black scarf. All he was concerned with was sizing up the white, ten
der-skinned body of the young girl who was standing, clinging onto her mother and anxiously following what was going on around her. He brought them a cold drink – a most unusual thing to happen in a police station – and the mother became convinced that revenge would be meted out to her criminal enemy. He then asked her details about her daughter and after barely quarter of an hour had offered to marry the self same young girl standing beside her.
This momentous surprise made the mother forget about the eye she had lost, the wretched hen and the cruel neighbour. She had never in her wildest dreams imagined that she would become linked in any way to someone connected to the Government, especially someone so senior. It did not take long to agree to his proposal to marry her daughter, and her eyes gazed with amazement at the coloured badges fixed on his lapel which proved he was a staff sergeant and not a junior policeman without ribbons. She believed that destiny had crossed her path to pluck her from her utterly miserable life to better things. The man was generous and had made a serious offer, promising her a bridal dower of thirty pounds and the same value in clothes. He would include all the small necessities for a bride with a gold bracelet from Jamal, the jeweller, whose speciality was gold-plated copper jewellery, carrying the official hallmark, a guarantee particularly prized by poor peasants who were seldom able to afford such things.
Two months later the staff sergeant married the girl who was not yet thirteen years old. He managed to get round the legal age required for a girl to marry by purchasing a birth certificate for two pounds from a private doctor who also specialized in illegal medical activities like abortion and repairing the ruptured hymen of girls about to get married. Despite his conviction that the girl was under age, the official authorized to perform marriages agreed to write the contract. He was statisfied that the birth certificate, albeit forged, would deter any suspicious colleagues from causing trouble.
Only a year had gone by when Huda gave birth to a beautiful boy by the very same staff sergeant. The child was almost her double and by the time another year had passed there was a baby sister suckling beside him. However, her mother had become a chronic drug addict and passed on the addiction to her second child who was fretful and never stopped crying. Her addiction went back to the early days of their marriage when there wasn’t a night when her husband returned without heroin or hashish which he usually obtained in raids on drug dealers or which the pushers in the quarter presented him with, to keep him sweet and to buy his silence. As time passed, the husband came home less and less and eventually abandoned his young family for another woman whom he met during his varied work. Huda had then to face life on her own, and to look for a means of supporting herself and her two children and, above all, of finding a way to meet the demands of a system accustomed to a daily intake of drugs. Necessity led her to reconsider her position and she took up the oldest and easiest profession in the world.
Jamalat was not in the scabies ward like Huda but because of their friendship she came to spend a major part of her time there. This was unlike most of the prisoners who avoided any contact with those who lived in that ward for fear of infection from the scabies brigade. Because of their poverty these sufferers were unable to buy even a piece of the cheapest soap to wash themselves or their clothes, and had to make do with the tiny piece issued to them by the prison authorities. The full ration of soap which they should have received was lost in the pockets of the contractors and petty prison officials so most of these young bodies became a rich pasture on which the microscopic bugs could graze and settle permanently. It was Huda’s zest for life, her good nature and her endless facility to crack jokes that attracted Jamalat to her as well as the dancing and singing sessions which they both joined in with the rest of the girls on the ward. Huda tried very hard, albeit unsuccessfully, to imitate the voice of Farid El-Atrash, whom she adored, but was still the unrivalled star of the concerts in the scabies ward, despite her youth. Everyone felt bound to obey her orders, particularly the rotas for sleeping places and cleaning tasks – although the latter were extremely limited due to the almost complete lack of cleaning materials. During the day Huda also saw to the collection of old bits of paper and rags from the prison courtyard which were burnt at night in an unsuccessful attempt to get rid of the mosquitoes. These mosquitoes vied with the awful scabie bugs in sucking the blood of the prisoners; the smoke rising from the fire was insufficient to deter the mosquitoes and merely caused chest complaints.
Aziza lit up a cigarette, and thought sadly: if Jamalat becomes one of those who sell their bodies to any man who can pay, how many men will taste the nectar of this tender body seated before me? Aziza thought of the old men, the tall men, the short men and those with huge paunches and teeth, discoloured and rotten through drug-taking, who might squeeze the last bloom of youth from Jamalat’s body and would completely destroy her spirit reducing her to a human rag, worn out from over-use. She asked herself why it was ordained that a beautiful young girl like her should have to put up with all this ugliness and why her life, which had hardly started, should take such a course which could only lead to a dead end. Why shouldn’t Jamalat find a man who was as good as her, to whom she could give herself body and soul and who would give her everything a man can give a woman? Her thoughts raced ahead, imagining what would happen if Jamalat were to do what she was thinking of. She would then undoubtedly become another Lula, an experienced procuress not content with selling her own body but also engaged in selling the bodies of others.
This line of thought not only made Aziza sad but extremely angry as well. She lifted her head and fixed her eyes on the iron bars of the window and let out a cry of protest directed towards an undefined and supreme force which she considered responsible for all that had happened and would happen in the future to this decent, lovely girl with her pure heart and childlike innocence. All the while she peered upwards at a chink of blue sky, cloaked by dark grey clouds, sadly saying: “Can you hear? Can you see? Things have gone too far to be ignored any longer.” Then she continued with a note of defiance in her voice:
“Very well, and on my mother’s soul, this girl will come up with us, God willing, and she will sit right next to me. The first step must be to give her a hot bath with fenugreek soap to guard against infection and to ensure she is beautiful and lovely for the journey.”
At that moment, Jamalat, who had been busy scratching the infection between her fingers, became aware that Aziza was talking. She turned to where she was standing in the corner of the room and poured the tea into two glasses on a tray; she had delayed pouring it out until it had turned a dark ruby-red colour. Then turning to Aziza she addressed her in a puzzled way, calling her by the special name she used when she was in a good mood:
“Did you say something, moonbeam?”
5
Mercy before Justice
As Mahrousa, the prison warder, lifted her head from a plate of honey, Safiyya the heroin addict began to massage the warder’s face to stop the honey from dripping. After removing the hair and fine down growing round the chin, cheeks and bridge of her nose with some plaited thread, she washed it in water without soap. Having removed these blemishes she was well pleased with the softness and glow on Mahrousa’s face.
Mahrousa smiled at the thought of her face after this treatment and, in a hoarse voice, she began to sing a joyous wedding song, remembered from the days of her youth some thirty years ago. Then she said, sighing sadly: “You know my dear Safiyya, when I was in the full flush of my youth my skin was so beautiful and smooth that a love bird could have picked up a crumb from it!”
“Amazing!” replied Safiyya, adding, “Worry and sadness is enough to wreck anyone in this life – even someone as beautiful as Badr alBandour – and you have certainly had your fair share of ups and downs, may God help you.”
Mahrousa pursed her lips and her face looked even more swollen than usual after the plucking. She sighed deeply and began a wellknown mournful song: “The book of my life, my love … la, la la.”
<
br /> Then she stopped singing and began to speak,
“You know, if anyone else had gone through what I have and experienced life in the way I have, they would probably have committed suicide and died an unbeliever. By God, such is their right but, thank God, my heart is as pure as the white scarf wrapped around your head, Safiyya, and I have sought nothing but good for people. God rewards everyone according to his merits.”
Safiyya agreed, saying, “You are right …God awards you your just deserts.” Safiyya reminded her of the incident involving the murderess, Samiha who stole a bit of a broken fenugreek bottle from the prison hospital and hid it amongst her things. She intended to use it as a weapon during the endless battles with the other prisoners and was caught out by Mahrousa quite by chance. Safiyya praised her good heart because if any other prison warder had discovered such an offence the prisoner would have been in deep trouble with the prison authorities who would have imposed a heavy punishment. What’s more, if Samiha had used this dangerous weapon, the authorities could have had a tragedy on their hands. Mahrousa was satisfied that slapping her across her ugly face was enough to put the fear of God into anyone, and sufficient to make Samiha mend her evil ways. Mahrousa swore by her mother in heaven that if Samiha engaged in any further activities which went against the prison rules there would be no alternative but to bind her hands and feet and pinch her with two dry date pits on the tender area of her thighs. This treatment, which was immensely painful and left the soft areas of skin severely bruised, was the very same deterrent that Mahrousa had often employed against her daughters if they did something serious which deserved a harsher punishment than the more usual slap.