Zeina

by Nawal El Saadawi

  Al-Khartiti senior had dreamed of being a great writer like Taha Hussein, with his books widespread in libraries, universities, and homes, something along the lines of Taha Hussein’s book on pre-Islamic literature or poetry or whatever it was, for al-Khartiti never read that book. He only heard about it through the conversations of the men sitting in the barber’s shop, their eyes gleaming with admiration whenever the name of Taha Hussein was mentioned.

  “A great man!”

  “The bravest in the land!”

  “They accused him of apostasy.”

  “Ignorant cowards!”

  “This is a marvellous book!”

  “Do you think he’s really an apostate?”

  “Never! Taha Hussein is a believer, no doubt, a man who studied at al-Azhar!”

  “The Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar is the biggest apostate of all!”

  “But this can’t be!”

  “He delivered his sermon every Friday in the mosque praying to God to save the king! What a hypocrite!”

  “Malicious lies and hypocrisy are worse than apostasy.”

  “You’re right there.”

  When Zakariah al-Khartiti was at primary school, he heard his classmates saying that his father, al-Khartiti senior, had published a book similar to Taha Hussein’s. His picture appeared in the papers together with the cover of the book entitled Taha Hussein: Leader of Thought in Egypt.

  Successive generations of young critics learned this easy trick. They would use the name of a celebrity in the titles of their books to attract attention. In their books they would write some critical articles about the famous personality, filling pages on a writer they probably hardly read.

  Unwittingly, al-Khartiti senior made the ultimate blunder, for his book on Taha Hussein was banned. The authorities, including al-Azhar, confiscated it, and the newspapers wrote that al-Khartiti’s book supported Taha Hussein’s atheistic ideas.

  The father used to take his son, Zakariah, to the barber’s shop, the café, and the club, in order to train him from this early age to sit with adults and listen to their conversations about politics, literature, and philosophy. The son inherited his father’s childish dream of becoming a great thinker or writer, of having his framed photograph in the papers along with other celebrities.

  On the day of the investigation, the father took his son to the court hearing. He wanted his son to witness his greatness, to see him surrounded by lights and cameras. Journalists chased him in front of the court, each carrying a pen with which he noted whatever words he uttered. Even before the words came out of his mouth they were picked up by the tip of the journalists’ pens, as though by a magnet picking up bits and pieces of precious metal. Al-Khartiti senior strutted among them like a peacock, holding his head high and casting furtive glances at his son, Zakariah. He would bide his time to give journalists ample chance to congregate around him and give his son the opportunity to witness the whole scene. He wanted the story to become engraved in his son’s mind, so that he would later pass it on to his own son, and the great episode would thus be recorded in the annals of history.

  Zakariah walked holding his father’s hand. He held his small triangular head high and his ears picked a few scattered words hanging in the air.

  “My dear sir, your book is wonderful, but I have a question. Are you with Taha Hussein or against him?”

  “But if you read the book, sir, you would know the answer! It seems you haven’t read the book, like all journalists.”

  “I swear to God I read it from cover to cover, but I couldn’t figure out where you stood exactly.”

  A journalist shoved his colleague and took his place in front of al-Khartiti. He promptly asked him, “Do you believe that the court will give a verdict of innocence, sir? The book is great and filled with faith. I haven’t read a single word of atheism in it.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Do you think Taha Hussein is a believer or an atheist, may God forbid?”

  “Please go read my book and you will know.”

  Al-Khartiti senior purposely answered the journalist with a loud, harsh voice. He wanted his son to witness his authoritative tone and his ability to rebuke the journalists. But his father, like other great writers, lost interest in the limelight. Although the lights of fame pursued him, he shunned them and preferred to wear dark glasses to prevent people from discovering his identity.

  Al-Khartiti senior wore dark glasses that looked like Taha Hussein’s. But unlike Taha Hussein, who was tall and upright, he was short and diminutive.

  The cross-examination continued for a long time inside the closed room at court. In the end, the prosecutor asked the great writer, “Do you believe in God, sir?”

  “Is this question a part of the legal investigation? I don’t have any legal background, but I know that this is a question that only God can ask us on the Day of Judgment.”

  “This is a perfectly legal question, sir. Our country is a state based on Islam, God’s great religion. Please answer the question with a yes or a no.”

  “Would you repeat the question, please?”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “What exactly do you mean by God?”

  The father glanced at his son, sitting, all ears, in the corner of the room and trying to catch every single word and syllable, his small body shaking in his chair whenever the prosecutor shouted at his father. He had never heard anybody raise their voice to his father, for there was no power higher than his. But the prosecutor’s voice rose higher than his father’s, especially when he received elusive answers. Al-Khartiti senior tried to avoid giving straightforward answers, for he did not wish to be defeated in front of his son. So he sometimes raised his voice and shouted with an arrogant, authoritative voice at the prosecutor.

  He wanted to embarrass him by asking him, “What exactly do you mean by God?”, to uncover his ignorance, to implicate him in a vague answer, and to prove to his son that he was capable of confrontation and challenge.

  The prosecutor thought for a moment, during which time al-Khartiti regained his composure and authority. He turned his head toward his son, smiling proudly, assuring him that his father always won in the end. No one could vanquish him, not even the law or the government.

  The prosecutor lifted his head and shouted angrily, “You are the defendant here, sir. You have no right to ask questions. You just have to answer with a yes or a no. Do you believe in God?”

  Al-Khartiti senior looked down in silence, a muscle twitching underneath his left eye. Since childhood, this muscle had twitched every time his father or a teacher at school shouted at him.

  With downcast eyes, Al-Khartiti senior gave the one-word answer that the prosecutor had demanded. “Yes,” he said.

  On the way home, the father walked in silence with his head lowered. He didn’t exchange a single word with his son. When his wife opened the door to them, she asked him, “What did you do?”

  He exploded angrily at her, venting his pent-up rage at the prosecutor and all those who had upset him since the moment he was born. He shook his hand in her face, his finger almost gouging her eyes, “Can’t you wait a little, woman, until I’ve caught my breath?”

  She left him standing in the lounge and went into her room, closing the door behind her. He sat in a chair, panting a little, although he was never short of breath, even after climbing ten floors. It was as if he had suddenly aged, his face turning long and pale and ashen. His son sat in the corner of the lounge looking at him but trying to avoid meeting his eyes. Al-Khartiti senior sat silently with his shoulders hunched forward. His hair was thinning and the shiny bald spot on his head gleamed in the light. He looked the spitting image of his father in the photograph hung on the wall with a black ribbon around it.

  “Get me a glass of water, son.”

  As he sipped the water, he looked at his son with narrow, sunken eyes. A reluctant tear floated in the corner of one, neither falling nor evaporating. He looked into the eyes of his
son and swallowed the tear with the sip of water and spoke in the voice of a wounded lion.

  “During the investigation Taha Hussein retracted and declared that he was a believer. Your father, son, is not more courageous than Taha Hussein.”

  Zakariah reiterated his father’s statement whenever his wife accused him of cowardice. Her critical eye would scrutinize him whenever he disclaimed or changed his earlier views under the pressure of his editor-in-chief, the minister, or someone higher up. He would retract, adopt their opinions and use them in his daily column. He would imbue the words of the president with an aura of sanctity or of profound philosophy. He would present them as inspirational ideas that no thinker or philosopher had ever come upon before.

  Bodour would go over his column with her critical eye, pulling a long face. He would pull a longer face and respond to her critical attitude by being more harshly critical.

  “Your husband isn’t more courageous than Taha Hussein, but what about your own courage, ma’am?”

  “I’ve never pretended to be brave, Zakariah. I’ve been a coward all my life.”

  To herself she would add, the strongest evidence of my cowardice is the fact that I married you.

  She was always asking herself why she married Zakariah al-Khartiti. His name was derived from a word meaning “rhinoceros”. He had a pear-shaped head and his eyes were narrow and sunken like those of rats.

  She struck her chest with her hands, asking herself why she married that man.

  She remembered that she was going through a bad patch. Her psychiatrist prescribed sleeping pills, tranquilizers, and anti-depressants, but all to no avail.

  The psychiatrist asked her about her childhood. “Anything bad happen to you when you were a child, Bodour?”

  “Nothing at all, doctor. I had a happy childhood.”

  She lay on the couch in the psychiatrist’s room and he kindly patted her white hands.

  “Try to remember, Bodour!”

  An unwilling tear sparkled in the corner of her eye, brought on by his one kind gesture. She wanted to reach out to touch his hand, to lay her head on his chest and cry. He looked sharply at her, the look of a serious psychiatrist who wouldn’t allow his patients to fall in love with him, particularly the type of women who were ready to fall in love with him as soon as he patted them tenderly. They were women deprived of love and tenderness, women who were akin to the thirsty soil yearning for a drop of rain.

  “Try to remember any important incident from your childhood.”

  “A painful incident, doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like what?”

  “A rape, for example?”

  “Never happened.”

  The psychiatrist’s ears detected the secret quiver in her voice, the extraordinary speed of the response, and the denial, the red flush spreading over her face and the imperceptible tremor of her white fingers, a tremor that was only apparent to the trained eye.

  “Was he a stranger or a member of the family?”

  “What do you mean, doctor?”

  “Do you mean you don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “How old were you, Bodour?”

  The doctor kept on, asking different questions. He was trained to use this method to extract information from his patients. It was similar to police cross-examinations that aimed at extorting confessions from prisoners. The psychiatrist gave her an injection of some light sedative or handed her a glass of Omar El-Khayyam wine or some scotch diluted with water. He stroked her with his tender hands, smiled at her with his bottle-green eyes, and whispered in her ear, “Close your eyes, Bodour. Try to get some sleep.”

  “Sleep?”

  “I mean relax a little, Dr Bodour. Let your mind go a bit and let your memories loose.”

  Bodour closed her eyes and her tense muscles relaxed. The leather belt surrounding her mind loosened and the crust of the brain melted under the impact of the flow of hot blood whose chemistry changed with the soft waves of the drug. The heart was unburdened and a dreamy smile appeared on her face, followed by a frown, which in turn disappeared. Her face relaxed as she surrendered to the warm current.

  She whispered, “They stole her from me, doctor!”

  “Who is she?”

  “The novel, doctor ...”

  “Are you a critic or a novelist?”

  “All my life I’ve hated criticism and never wanted to be a critic. Literary criticism is a parasitic profession and the critics are parasites, living on other creatures like tapeworms. They live off talented, self-sufficient writers. As critics, we have an inferiority complex because we are all failed writers, compensating for our failure by criticizing the work of others. Literary criticism is like shoe-shining, for we shine the shoes of others ...”

  “Is this the reason why you wrote a novel?”

  “Yes, I had to prove to the world that I could write a novel, that I was a great writer and not a worthless critic.”

  “I would love to read the novel, Bodour. Bring it along next time.”

  “I don’t have the novel, doctor.”

  “Where is it then?”

  “Thieves ...”

  “What thieves?”

  “Those who stole it.”

  “Stole what?”

  “The baby, doctor.”

  “What?”

  “I mean the baby novel ...”

  The doctor was at a loss concerning Bodour’s case, for he couldn’t get to the source of her pain, and was unable to decide whether it resided in her mind or her body. Her conscious mind was in control of her past memories and stopped them from surfacing. Her unconscious mind was a chain of accumulated fears, one layered on top of another, one generation after another, starting from her mother and going back thousands of years to her ancestral grandmothers and the vilification of Eve and the original sin.

  “Yes, doctor, I’m a coward. How can I be more courageous than Taha Hussein? The strongest evidence of my cowardice is the fact that I married.”

  “All women say that, Bodour! They always have regrets, and regret is a dangerous thing, for it causes depression. Your husband is a great man, a celebrity. I read his column every morning. Zakariah al-Khartiti’s column is the best in the paper.”

  She looked at him sceptically. Hypocrisy had become the hallmark of the age. It was an epidemic that infected all, including doctors. There was no remedy for it except a revolution or a volcano erupting from the earth.

  Her short, stout body trembled on the couch. Deep in her heart, she yearned for the revolution. She longed to be nineteen once again, joining demonstrations, shouting, “Down with injustice and long live freedom”. At her side walked Nessim, tall and graceful, his eyes gleaming. He held her in his arms, whispering in her ear, “We’ll have a baby who will change the world.”

  Bodour didn’t read her husband’s column, and she didn’t listen when he told her of his glories either, or of the fan letters he received from male and female readers, from ministers, and even from the president himself. The president congratulated him on his column when he met him once during Friday prayers. He stood in the second row, right behind the president. He heard the president reading verses from the Qur’an, heard his breath as he kneeled before God, and the creaking of his bones as his forehead touched the floor. He was exultant as he told the story to his wife, as though the president had awarded him an honorary medal or a great prize.

  At the breakfast table, he never tired of looking at his photograph above his column. He would steal a glance at the column of his colleague, Mahmoud al-Feqqi. He’d follow his wife’s eyes as she read the column. Bodour stopped for a while at al-Feqqi’s column, reading it from beginning to end.

  Her husband said sarcastically, “You seem to be a great fan of his column!”

  “The truth is, his column is truly excellent.”

  “Better than mine?”

  “I haven’t read yours yet, Zakariah.”

  “You read his be
fore mine?”

  “Yes, Zakariah!”

  “You mean his column is better than mine?”

  She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He seemed draped in the yellow color of jealousy, and his voice rang in her ears as if saying, “My phallus is better than his”. Columns, rods, and pillars were often used interchangeably with the word “penis” or “phallus”.

  “What are you laughing at, Bodour?”

  “I’m not laughing at anything, Zakariah!”

  “I know what you’re laughing at. I know you consider me mediocre and you’ve never liked my writing. From the day we got married, I’ve never seen an admiring look in your eyes for what I write. All your life, you’ve admired al-Feqqi’s column, and he has always admired you. You should have married him. I don’t understand why you married me!”

  “And you! Why did you marry me?”

  “A mistake, my dear! Youth and inexperience!”

  “Yes, that’s right! A mistake, Zakariah!”

  “A life-long mistake!”