Zeina

by Nawal El Saadawi

  Mageeda al-Khartiti didn’t write her article on Thursday, and she didn’t go to the office that day either. Thursday was the day she went to the club to play golf with her father. The golf course was the place where great writers and intellectuals met. They were mostly men and a few well-known women writers and critics. Golf or croquet was their new passion. They would walk in the heat of the sun and the open air, followed by a pale, sunburnt boy with a face filled with white spots and black freckles, looking like a street child and dragging a bag full of clubs and balls. The woman would hold the club in her plump hand. Her nails would be painted red, violet or orange, according to the dictates of fashion. She would bend with her stocky figure over the ball and hit it with ultra feminine tenderness. The ball would fly over the distance of one or two meters then fall on the green, which looked as carefully trimmed as Zakariah al-Khartiti’s well-shaved face.

  The editor-in-chief was playing golf one day when he told Mageeda, “Listen, Mageeda. I want you to write an article on the achievements of the first lady for the upcoming Women’s Day.”

  Whenever the magazine was preparing a new issue for International Women’s Day, or perhaps the birthday of the president or the first lady, the editor-in-chief would take this opportunity to renew his allegiance and declare his loyalty to the powers that be. Editors competed with one another to curry favour with those powers, and their imagination soared to great heights to create projects that never materialized and achievements hitherto unknown. They would congregate in their tens or hundreds in the large editorial hall on the first floor, exchanging seats as though they were playing musical chairs. Although they were usually referred to as junior editors, some of them were already past their prime. They were appointed as temporary workers or unpaid interns, because they had no connections in the higher echelons of power to raise them from lowly to senior positions, a promotion needing a written or spoken presidential ruling or ministerial decree.

  Mageeda al-Khartiti hired one of those junior editors to write her article for her. She paid him a hundred and sixty pounds a month in return for four articles, at forty each. She received a monthly salary of eight thousand pounds, at the rate of two thousand pounds per article.

  On her desk were four telephone lines: the red one for the president, the green for her office manager, the white for her private secretary, and the black for the editorial hall on the first floor.

  Mageeda reached with her chubby white hand for the black telephone and called the young poverty-stricken writer of the article.

  “Please come to my office right away, Mohamed.”

  She didn’t address him as Mr Mohamed, as she did with senior editors, and nor did she ask him whether he was free to come up to her office right away or not. She knew that he would come to her as soon as she asked him, for he was at her beck and call all the time. She gave him a monthly salary of a hundred and sixty pounds, which he badly needed to feed his children and his sick mother, and to buy some new books and novels.

  With his lean figure and pale face, Mohamed went up to the top floor, using the the senior editors’ fancy elevator, which moved up as softly as the morning breeze. Mohamed walked with his dusty shoes on the Persian carpets covering the corridor floors. The walls were decorated with artistic paintings and photographs of ministers, kings and presidents. The picture of the editor-in-chief looked out from a golden frame next to the pictures of al-Manfalouti, Taha Hussein, William Shakespeare, and Bernard Shaw. He probably hoped that his presence in this distinguished company might confer greatness on him.

  Mohamed was out of breath when he stood in front of the door. A shining gold plate on the door carried the engraved name of Mageeda al-Khartiti in letters taking the shape of a sun disc. Mageeda was not in the habit of coming to her office very often, sometimes only once a month to collect her salary. But she never missed a meeting with the president and the first lady, a presidential event or a cultural or literary festival sponsored by the editor-in-chief.

  Before going into her office, Mohamed was stopped by her office manager, who asked him his name and the purpose of the meeting. The manager told him that she was not available because she was at an important meeting with the editor-in-chief.

  “But she called me just a minute ago about an urgent matter concerning her article, sir!”

  “I apologize! She has just come back from the meeting. Please go in, Mr Mohamed.”

  Mohamed entered the lavish office, the heels of his worn shoes sinking in the thick Persian carpet, which felt as soft as flesh. Behind the huge desk sat Mageeda al-Khartiti, diminutive and plump. Her head hardly showed above the glass surface of her desk. On the wall behind her were the pictures of the head of state and the first lady in large gold frames. The president’s half smile, which revealed his teeth, was a cross between a cordial beam and a military grin. The first lady’s wide feminine smile revealed her full teeth. Underneath the two pictures stood a smaller picture of the minister, and underneath it, still smaller, was the picture of the editor-in-chief. As the eyes looking at the collection moved downward, the picture sizes decreased and the gold frames became thinner and turned into other metals like silver, copper, or tin.

  Mageeda al-Khartiti didn’t offer Mohamed a drink, although she was drinking her coffee in a gilt cup and had a full glass of water filled with ice cubes. The air conditioner produced a soft noise resembling the faint rustling of wind. Between her thick red lips was an expensive black Havana cigar of the type smoked by her father, as well as by the editor-in-chief, and the great authors and journalists who had their own daily or weekly columns. As soon as any of them was awarded a title or appointed to a prominent position, the black cigar was sure to appear between his lips, the prayer mark on his forehead and the yellow rosary in his hand. If he believed in Christ and the Bible, the prayer mark would still appear, even though he didn’t prostrate in prayers. Holding the rosary in his hand, he would move it with his fingers without mentioning God’s name or reciting verses of the Qur’an. He would declare that he was a Coptic Christian but that his culture was Islamic. He would go to the mosque on Friday without performing ablution to pray behind the president or the minister, mentioning God’s name and reading the Islamic testimony or the Opening while moving his lips only slightly. He would close his eyes, muttering and mumbling without producing any sounds except for the hot breath coming from his radiant lips.

  Mageeda’s little head appeared from behind her fancy desk, with her chubby face, her sagging skin, and her sallow complexion. It was this pallor that distinguished great writers, whether men or women, young or old. The pen in her hand was as grey and colorless as the dusty, ashen words writers like her used in their articles and columns. Those writers seemed to write with an invisible ink that no one could read, for no one understood whether they were supporters or opponents of the regime. They concealed themselves behind a film of cigar smoke like a god disappearing behind the clouds.

  She wore a green suit made of pure natural silk. Around her neck she wore a transparent red scarf tied like a flower underneath her pointed chin. Her little white fingers were childlike, but the look in her eyes was sad and old. The white skin of her hands was covered in red spots. Noticing him staring at them, she hid her hands in her pockets.

  “I have inflammation of the skin, Mohamed, a type of allergy to the newspaper print. One of the hazards of the writing profession. You are an excellent journalist, Mohamed. Your pen can help in the issue dedicated to the achievements of the first lady, and of the president of course. You surely know that the whole country cannot do without his guidance. Shall I order a cup of coffee for you, Mohamed?”

  “No, thank you very much, ma’am.”

  “Why are you standing, Mohamed? Please have a seat.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Shall I order you a lemonade?”

  “Thank you, ma’am, but the fact is I have a stomach ulcer and cannot drink anything outside my home.”

  “What ulcer
, Mohamed? We all suffer from ulcers in various parts of our bodies, and not just the stomach. This is one of the hazards of our profession as journalists and literary men and women ...”

  She emphasized “literary men and women” as though forcing herself into their congregation. Her father had dreamed that she would become a literary figure of the stature of the eminent writer May Ziada. Early in her career she wrote a short story that nobody read except her father and mother.

  The red telephone line rang and she was busy talking for a long time. Throughout the conversation, she produced soft intermittent laughs. She sighed and gasped, and her body shook ecstatically behind the desk. Mohamed was still standing in front of her, not wishing to sit down. He wanted to apologize for not agreeing to write the article and leave. He wanted to break the glass surface of the desk with his fist. Boiling inside him was an anger that had been suppressed since childhood, now emerging in the form of an ulcer.

  When the phone call was over, she turned to him as if just noticing his presence for the first time.

  He said to her in a low voice, “Please excuse me, ma’am, I have a doctor’s appointment to have my stomach x-rayed.”

  “Have a seat, Mohamed. I need the article very soon. I want it to appear in the achievements issue. You realize, of course, that her achievements are numerous in every field. Choose whatever you like. You have free reign. But you have to deliver the article before the end of the week. Now, come on, write something nice for us like you did before. What ulcer are you talking about, Mohamed? It’s just a psychological disorder resulting from an ulcer in the brain.”

  Mageeda gave a sharp, high-pitched laugh that sounded like her father’s. She moved her head backward as she chuckled, the way her father did with younger writers.

  “I’m just joking, Mohamed. I know you have a good head on your shoulders.”

  After Mohamed was gone, Mageeda pursed her lips and fell into a long silence. She heard a voice coming from deep in her soul whispering, “The ulcer is in your brain and in the brains of your father, the editor-in-chief, the minister, the president and the first lady.”

  She looked at her watch and jumped to her feet.

  “Oh my God! I almost forgot the doctor’s appointment!”

  In a few minutes, Mageeda al-Khartiti was driving her white Mercedes to the psychiatrist’s, where she would stretch on the couch.

  Ahmed al-Damhiri stared at Zeina Bint Zeinat, who was radiant on stage, playing music, singing, and dancing. He sat in the back row, hiding behind dark glasses. He wore a large white turban on his head and a kaftan with a wide, gold sash underneath a loose velvet overcoat. Around him were his armed guards in civilian clothes, each carrying a silent gun. From the first time he heard her singing, he couldn’t stop listening to her. Her voice had the power to traverse the distance between his mind and his heart in seconds. It penetrated his soul in the twinkling of an eye, breaking the barriers standing between his body and mind and making him whole once again. As he sat looking at her, he became a foetus inside the womb of his mother. Opening his eyes from a deep slumber, he found himself surrounded by darkness, his heart beating regularly in his ears and a melody coming from far off. He rubbed his eyes, which were wavering between sleep and wakefulness, unable to decide where the sound was coming from.

  “Whose voice was it? Where did it come from?”

  He had no idea how long he was in this state. Was it a minute, an hour, a year or a life time? He couldn’t really tell. Then the voice came once again, deliciously familiar to his ears, like heartbeats that were so close that he could feel their rhythm from his head to the soles of his feet. The voice rose and fell, then rose and fell again. It rose to a high pitch with the rhythm once more, then disappeared. It tickled his ears with a softness that was similar to his mother’s breasts. He seemed to have heard the tune a thousand or a million times since he was in the womb, surrounded by warm water, listening to his mother’s heartbeats which came at a regular, expected pace or at a fast, disturbed rate. The heartbeats followed the cadence of the music, nonetheless, and carried the fragrance of his mother’s hair and her voice whispering “Ahmed, darling”.

  The large hall was full to overflowing with men, women, youngsters, and children. Next to him sat a young mother holding her baby. The baby stopped crying when Zeina began to sing, his eyes fixed on her face, his ears attentive to her voice. He followed her closely as she moved across the stage. His head shook with the rhythm of the music and his little body swam in his mother’s embrace as he had done in her womb.

  Research has shown that the foetus can hear sounds inside the womb and outside it. As soon as it is a hundred and forty days old, it is able to recognize the voice of its mother when she sings and when she cries. It hears her heartbeats, her breaths and the pulse of the blood inside her veins. It hears conversations between its father and mother, though without understanding their meaning. It can, however, distinguish between beautiful melodies and off-key tunes. Its ears become trained to listening either to music and the tunes of love and happiness, or to the sound of slapping, kicking and moaning.

  Ahmed al-Damhiri didn’t know what exactly attracted him to Zeina, or what shook his entire being when he listened to her voice. He had no idea why her eyes restored his lost and buried memories, or where all the recollections came back from. With the music came his mother’s voice when she sang to him before he slept, and the smell of her milk filling his nostrils. At the end of the show, after the lights had dimmed and the audience had left, he remained in his seat, staring at the darkness and the emptiness.

  Zeina Bint Zeinat became a phantom chasing him day and night. Her voice streamed into his ears in his sleep like the voice of God or the Devil. He began to believe that music came from the Devil and not from God. Her music took away his equilibrium and his faith in God. His body became as light as a feather, a body without flesh or bone, a body of pure spirit. He flew as freely and happily as pure spirits unshackled by the body. It was as if he was dying and his soul was rising to heaven. Then he woke up to find himself among the living. Death and resurrection, then death and resurrection, ad infinitum ...

  Miss Mariam called her the Egyptian Mozart. She introduced her before every show saying, “This is Zeina Bint Zeinat. She’s our Egyptian Mozart. But Mozart lived with his father, the great composer, who trained him to play music three hours a day from the age of two. When Mozart was eight years old, he composed his first symphony. His genius wasn’t just talent or inherited genes, but long arduous hours of training amounting to ten thousand hours between the ages of two and eight. Genius requires long hours of hard work. But when industry is combined with natural talent, it becomes extraordinary, unstoppable.”

  From the moment Miss Mariam saw Zeina for the first time at primary school, she was certain that this girl had an extraordinary talent. Zeina learned tunes by heart on first hearing them. She was self-confident to the degree of vanity, as though she was the daughter of a god in heaven and not a child born on the street.

  Zeina Bint Zeinat sang her song, which began with the following lines:

  I came from this earth and to it I return.

  I have not descended from space.

  I am not the daughter of gods or Devils,

  I am Zeina, and my mother is Zeinat,

  My mother is dearer to me than the sky.

  Her words were simple and spontaneous, like breathing in and breathing out. It had no rhyme or meter, but only the cadence of her voice which resounded in the large hall, strange to the point of familiarity and familiar to the point of strangeness, like the dusk born out of darkness and the sun falling into the night.

  Ahmed al-Damhiri came out of the coma of ecstasy. The word “sky” struck a jarring note in his ears and his hypnotized mind was alerted.

  “Why does this woman challenge heaven? What does she mean by her poor servant mother is dearer to her than the sky?”

  But the moment of epiphany soon vanished when Zeina Bint Zeinat
began to sing:

  I am neither Mozart nor Umm Kulthum.

  I am the daughter of the earth and the street,

  I am the offspring of error and sin,

  I am the child of honor and virtue.

  Since childhood I’ve had countless blows,

  Since childhood I’ve had countless falls,

  But every time

  I manage to get up again and sing again,

  And play music and play and play,

  And dance and dance and dance,

  Get up and dance and dance,

  Then write a love song with a new cadence.

  All eyes in the hall stared at her, and the ears were attentive to her simple words that were as free of embellishment as a face without make-up. Her unique face knew no compromises and did not solicit admiration. It didn’t consciously draw attention to itself, and yet it attracted eyes with its mysterious power.

  Her face seemed empty except for the two large eyes, the black eyes that burned with a blue light and blazed like a piece of the sun. Her eyes penetrated barriers and masks. They penetrated the surface and plumbed the depths, seeing what others could not see.

  Ahmed al-Damhiri fidgeted in his seat, his short plump body moving from one side to the other. He stretched his short legs under the chair in front of him and his foot hit the foot of the man sitting in front of him.

  The man turned to him whispering, “Yes, dear sir. Do you need anything?”