Golden Chariot

by Fadia Faqir

  The nightwatchman’s dream to see his intelligent daughter qualify as a doctor was never fulfilled because immediately after she obtained her secondary school diploma he died of cancer of the bladder, induced by chronic bilharzia. This made Bahiga even more determined to carry out her secret pledge to her father to be top of her year. Each year, on the anniversary of his death, she visited his grave with her mother and sister and would renew her pledge to him by reciting the opening verse of the Qur’an followed by the verse beginning “Say after me! There is only one God”. As she placed green palm leaves and yellow daisies on his grave, she shed tears over his memory, promising him greater achievement in the coming academic year, despite the superhuman efforts she had already made, reminiscent of a soldier standing resolutely before the oncoming enemy, and despite the drain her studies had on the family’s diminished resources. She was also faced with the problem of her inferior social status which became obvious when she was no longer able to conceal her poverty by wearing school uniform. There was no way she could keep pace with the girls and boys from the middle and upper classes who went around the campus, showing off the latest fashions. But despite all the psychological suffering this caused, she was able to hold her own by making herself simple clothes which were in good taste, taking ideas from some of the current magazines, especially Eve, the only women’s magazine Bahiga could afford with the few piasters set aside from her meagre allowance. On one occasion she sent a letter to the magazine asking them how to get rid of the permanent dark circles under her eyes but she received no response because her letter went astray. Thus Bahiga continued to steer the ship of life against the strong waves and strove to fulfil the dream of her buried father.

  If Bahiga was first in medicine, she was last in love. During the three years she spent at university she was approached by one of her fellow students whom she liked enough to agree to rendezvous outside the university campus. They would meet at the zoo or aquarium, along the banks of the Nile or anywhere else where they could snatch a few moments of love, which involved no more than the cost of a bus or train fare and the price of imported drinks like Coca Cola or Pepsi which they drank with fuul and falafel sandwiches. During that beautiful time Bahiga made a real effort to look as lovely as possible whenever she met her beloved, her husband-to-be. She tried a face mask made out of cornstarch and salt in an attempt to get rid of the pimples and to reduce the greasiness of her skin, and she spent an extremely restless night in hair rollers and pins to ensure that her hair would be beautiful for the following morning. At the time she believed she would fulfil her dreams; she only had two more years before graduating when she would undoubtedly be appointed one of the ‘crew’ of the teaching faculty. She was bound to graduate top, as usual, even though she had not benefited from the lessons which professors offered their rich students on the quiet in return for an exorbitant sum which their parents paid willingly from ‘petrol cash’, money plundered from the Government and the public sector, or from wheeler-dealing. Although she didn’t anticipate a successful career for her beloved, since he had only scraped through his exams, she still considered him a suitable marriage partner, not least because he came from a slightly higher social class than she did. His father was one of the many officials in the government tax department whose salary barely met the needs of his large family while his mother helped make ends meet by contributing to the family income from the money she earned as a dressmaker. Financial circumstances dictated that Bahiga would have to gradually build the edifice of married life with her beloved, like a marital enclosure, joining their sticks together piece by piece, through the shared sweat and toil of their brows. More significantly, because he was a doctor like her, she would avoid the problems which might occur if she married a man who was less educated than her.

  After two years, filled with hopes, dreams and burning passion, she discovered that she was clutching at straws. Her beloved husband, whom she considered vital to the imminent fulfilment of her dreams, let her down and found a new companion. He threw her over for another girl against whom Bahiga would fall at the first blow in the contest of female beauty whose father owned one of the famous shoes shops in the city and with whose money she rubbed the lamp of magic beauty. This enabled her to transform her coarse lack-lustre hair into strands of golden silk which framed a face covered in preparations by Max Factor, Helena Rubenstein, Yardley and Lancôme and others from the worldwide range of beauty manufacturers, no doubt contributing to their continued success. She had so much money that she could select a different outfit from her large wardrobe to wear each day she went to the faculty. More significantly, the girl who snatched away the joy of Bahiga’s heart, granted him something that Bahiga never did because she wanted to preserve the proof of her virtue and modesty until the appointed hour, that of the wedding night. She also lost what she believed she clutched firmly in her left hand: she discovered that even though she had moved successfully through the primary, secondary stages and even through the years of her university studies, the priority of those about to embark on their careers was precisely calculated. Throughout Nasser’s era, the tyrants of medicine had an old slogan beginning with three ‘C’s’: a country estate, a car and a clinic, all of which were considered the ultimate aims of every successful doctor. Following the period of the opendoor economic policy, this slogan was expanded to the point where they would own luxurious hospitals where any patient unable to afford to pay the exorbitant fees in advance would be left to die on the doorstep. These tyrants would never allow the likes of Bahiga Abdel Haqq, daughter of a nightwatchman in a drugs company, to participate in the holiest of holies and join the teaching faculty which had become a factory for shining stars of medicine, attracted to petro-money from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and commissions on deals. These same tyrants flew the extraordinarily gifted surgeon Magdi Yacoub to London, thus confirming the old saying: “There is no esteem for a prophet in his own country”. They also unseated Bahiga from the throne of her dreams to face the bitter reality of our society. She was given only ‘good’ as a grade after they penalized her in the oral exams. She was in such a nervous state after losing her beloved that she could only stutter instead of answering their questions. Her confidence was not helped by the fact that her hair was scraped back in a bun and she was not looking well-groomed while the panel facing her wore suits and magnificent ties. The smoke from their pipes and foreign cigarettes mingled with the smell of well-known brands of after-shave, brought back from the capitals of the First World.

  In this way Bahiga Abdel Haqq joined the thousands of doctors consigned to oblivion in the hospitals run by the Ministry of Health which, more than anyone, was in need of a cure for its chronic illness and inability to help a sick society which debilitated its people.

  In the years that followed her graduation, Bahiga awakened to the reality of her humble status as a doctor which the state had valued at no more than one hundred and twenty Egyptian pounds. This barely covered the cost of one or two pieces of clothing necessary for work or four pairs of shoes which only lasted two or three months, possibly stretching to another month if she took them to be repaired instead of buying new ones. To be more precise, at that time her doctor’s salary was no more than the price an upper middle class woman would pay to have her empty head tinted. This class was on the way to extinction in the shadow of new social changes in which learning was no longer valued. The West had smashed such aspirations after the fall of Nasser when the cherished memories of the Day of Celebration also fell from the collective consciousness. On this special day the brightest students in schools, institutes and universities had been honoured by Nasser, not only in his role as President of the Republic but also in his capacity as loyal leader who stood for the hopes of all the Arab peoples living between the Gulf of black oil and the Atlantic Ocean, where the poor of Morocco, a country squatting on the edge of the sea, are even deprived of the vegetation gathered from the forest to provide their basic subsistence.

 
Despite the years of hardship and toil, using her bare hands to move rocks which stood in her way, Bahiga could only mark time and was unable to move up the ladder. Her constant questioning of the reality of her existence and the absurdity of her social position finally drove her to a mild form of madness. She struggled with the conflict which arose from being respected but not valued. Naturally no one noticed Bahiga’s mild schizophrenia because millions of other people suffered from the same complaint. She always dealt with patients and the medical team under her at work with the sobriety and earnestness required. Sometimes her manner was rather brusque: she would scold the nurses and was harsh with patients who didn’t follow her instructions. But as soon as she left the hospital and went home, she would feel inadequate and inferior, particularly when she saw the smart cars racing through the streets of the city, driven by elegant, well-groomed women who looked like film stars. She felt worse when she window-shopped and saw that many of the goods she needed were so highly priced. As soon as she got home she would forget about the person she was at work and adapt completely to the humble shabby furnishings and the same simple food, served by her mother – a way of life which had hardly changed since she was a child.

  The real cause of Bahiga’s schizophrenia was the desire to find her place in the small pyramid she carried secretly inside her, just like everyone else, which acts as the gauge by which the individual defines his identity, seeking the esteem and respect of all those above him in the pyramid and scorning all those beneath him. The predilection that Egyptians have held since ancient times for these small, secret pyramids might explain why Egypt has the most complex and odious system of honorific terms and courtesy titles. The disparity inherent in her position in the pyramid caused Bahiga considerable confusion: she was one person during working hours and another for the rest of the day. Constant inflation and a low salary meant that her quality of life was hardly better than it was during the days she was struggling as a student. She eventually came to the conclusion that the question of marriage had become extremely problematic because despite the fact that she was quite presentable, if not exciting as far as men were concerned, it would be difficult to meet someone suitable as long as she worked for the Ministry of Health. In the government hospital, which was the extent of her social environment, she was surrounded by a number of men who were either already married because they were old or men whose ambitions revolved solely around their life in the Ministry. The cleverest doctors did not linger in the Ministry of Health but found alternative jobs in the private sector where they could earn a reasonable income, or to the public sector where they specialized, thereby increasing their opportunities. The young men on small salaries didn’t even contemplate marriage, being content with fleeting emotional intrigues with the nurses in the hospital or with the type of women who understood the conditions of such games – a type Bahiga Abdel Haqq would never be.

  Bahiga’s problems were not helped by her family circumstances. Some of her elder brothers and her two elder sisters had not been educated. The result was predictable for the girls: one of them married a sewage worker and the other married with great difficulty because she was crippled by polio which she contracted before the government campaigns for inoculation had become widespread. The man married her because he was a widower with three children and worked parttime as a clerk filling in documents for illiterate people outside the courts. The brother, who was closest to her in age, finally obtained his secondary school certificate after failing repeatedly because he preferred to play ‘sock ball’ in the street instead of memorizing the reasons for the French campaign in Egypt. When he had reached these elevated heights, according to him at any rate, he volunteered for the army, escaping the unemployment that would certainly follow if he completed his education. Besides, he enjoyed the distinction of joining one of the professions which had authority. The other brother suffered from Down’s Syndrome and lived until he was nineteen when God took him away, but he was only a minor consideration in the general problem of Bahiga’s marriage which became more pronounced and complicated each day. Doctors, and those from the same social group who wanted to get married, did not consider Bahiga an attractive proposition. Rather the reverse because her lowly family background put them off; what, after all, was the attraction in a girl who had neither money nor beauty and whose family had no status? In one of his famous sayings the Prophet says: “Marry a woman for four reasons: for her money, her beauty, her pedigree and her piety; if you succeed with piety then your hands will be blessed.” These were not times in which people were attracted by pious women unless they were from one of the Islamic fundamentalist organizations and Bahiga would never get a second look from a member of one of them because she didn’t wear the veil. Nor was she excessively zealous in religious matters despite the fact that she always prayed and, during her years of studying, had always considered praying an important inspiration towards achieving her desired objective.

  Some of Bahiga’s relations and neighbours who were sympathetic to her predicament tried to provide her with suitors but the men who moved in their circles fell far short of her hopes and social ambitions. Some of them had only obtained the intermediary diploma and had lowly government jobs while others had very little education, despite a high income. One such hopeful suitor was a dealer in household appliances who had not progressed beyond the primary stage; he could hardly read and write, despite completing four years of school, which meant that when completing official documents, especially tax forms, he had to use a copper signet ring instead of signing his name.

  On one occasion, Bahiga almost married the owner of a pharmacy in her quarter. His wife had recently died leaving him with four children, but she turned his proposal down when she discovered that his eldest child was almost the same age as her.

  Bahiga then abandoned hope of ever getting married and pinned her hopes instead on working in one of the ‘petrol countries’ like so many did at that time. She saw this as a chance to realize her dream, still unfulfilled, to climb up the social ladder. She would then be able to attract men and have a wedding in which money was no object, an impossibility if she married one of her colleagues at the hospital who had limited means like herself.

  However, instead of moving to a country with Volvos and Mercedes, where people travelled in aeroplanes to all corners of the world as if they were riding around in buses, Bahiga was moved to a place which she probably never thought existed on the map: this was the women’s prison which was to house her in one of its cells.

  Before this Bahiga was working in one of the small clinics which had sprung up, especially around the unplanned built-up areas on the outskirts of central Cairo and its old suburbs. They had spread like a cancer to accommodate the endless stream of migrants from the rural areas who came to the city in search of better living conditions. She started working there after the Ministry of Health instructed her to specialize as an anaesthetist. Her work at the clinic was over and above her regular morning work in the Ministry, and it earned her a modest income in return for performing the occasional minor operation when she was needed. The extra income enabled her to survive the month without continuing to borrow from her two sisters and their husbands, whom she would repay each month as soon as she received her salary.

  However, unfortunately, she gave a fatal overdose of anaesthetic to a young child undergoing an operation. The parents of the dead child sued the owner of the clinic as well as Bahiga and both were found guilty of grievous bodily harm, causing the death of the child. Bahiga ended up with a three-year prison sentence while the doctor was fined several thousand pounds.

  Bahiga spent many lonely, painful years in prison and was constantly dispirited by her inability to adapt to a world so totally alien to her and more dreadful than she could ever have imagined. When Bahiga was moved to a new ward she was introduced to “Madame Zaynab”, the name all the prisoners, and even some of the warders, insisted on using for Zaynab Mansur. Zaynab Mansur was respected and was given sp
ecial consideration by everyone in the prison, first and foremost because she was extremely beautiful. She had a low, gentle voice and languid eyes which people never tired of gazing at because they were so large and clear, the colour of pale almonds, and which harmonized with the colour of her white skin and her black hair, cut short to her neck, leaving a few wispy strands over her forehead and her ears. There was another reason behind the special treatment she received in prison and her immunity from the harassment other prisoners suffered from the prison authorities. Zaynab came from a well-established aristocratic family, some of whom held influential positions in the state machine. She was also a rich woman which made her popular with many of the prisoners who performed services for her like sweeping, polishing and cleaning the area allotted to her in the ward. They also washed her clothes and prepared food for her. Her unfailing humility and tolerance endeared her to everyone and her good sense made her particularly sought after as a mediator in disputes which broke out between the prisoners. She gave good advice and used her influential relations outside the prison to help solve some of the problems enountered by the prisoners inside.

  Zaynab Mansur came to prison after killing her brother-in-law, her children’s uncle. She murdered him with the ease and simplicity that could only be rivalled by a professional killer. People found it impossible to imagine that this beautiful, petite woman, as fragile as fine crystal, was capable of such a thing; they never knew how cool and collected Zaynab Mansur had been and that she could have done it a second, third or even a fourth time were she ever to be placed in a similar situation again.

  Before this event Zaynab had led a charmed life full of joy and affection like the heroines in movies, with the exception of Egyptian movies naturally, as they would only make the comparison demeaning. Zaynab was the only daughter of a feudal lord of great standing, descended from a Mamluk family, mixed with Egyptian blood through the prestigious marriage of one of the male members of the family to the daughter of a Sheikh from al-Azhar, in the days when this great institution was both the religious and secular authority in the country. Her father lost his money after the 1952 Revolution when new agricultural reforms were introduced, dispossessing the large landowners. He then went into scrap metal until he became one of the biggest dealers in Egypt.