He watched her thoughtfully with his clear blue eyes, his face looking relaxed and healthy, just as though he were carefully weighing a priceless ornament. Her thick black hair hung in two plaits over her back. She had a fine, oval face tanned by the sun and her timidity was so stimulating, it excited him. Her full lips were a natural red, and slightly moist like a flower in the morning dew. Her breasts were round, firm, upturned with the sharp outlines of healthy flesh. They rose and fell in continuous movement as though impelled by the racing heart which hid behind them. Her eyes were large and black with a trace of tears like a child who has taken fright.
He came close to her and said with a smile on his lips, ‘Are you crying, Zeinab?’
She bent her head and answered in a barely audible whisper, ‘It fell out of my hand. Forgive me, master.’
She wiped her tears away with her hand. He felt the blood surge up in his body and moved closer, stretching out his hand and tenderly wiping away the remaining tears.
‘Do not be afraid, Zeinab,’ he said in a low voice. ‘The cup, and the owner of the cup, are all yours.’
He was about to take her in his arms but thought better of it. She might only become more frightened if he did that. It was better if he waited until she had become accustomed to her new surroundings, and all the things she was seeing for the first time.
During that time Zakeya had taken the buffalo to the field, tied it to the water-wheel, and started to dig deep into the ground with her hoe. She kept straining her ears to catch a sound even vaguely resembling the midday call to prayer. When the voice of Sheikh Hamzawi finally rang out, the disc of the sun was right over her head, burning down on it, and the sweat poured in a continuous flow, welling out from the roots of her hair, down her neck, and over her back, and her chest. She could feel it trickling down between her thighs and wondered whether it was sweat, or the urine she could no longer keep in her bladder. As soon as the call to prayer died out, she threw her hoe aside, and went to a nearby stream. She washed her face and neck and did her ablutions, then stood on the edge of the stream to pray, kneeling down and prostrating herself with a fervent devotion. She did the four ordained prostrations and followed them with the four Sunna prostrations. With her prayers over she remained kneeling, and recited the first verse of the Koran ten times. After that she raised her hands to the heavens and repeated, ‘O God, forgive me,’ thirty times. She paused for a moment before wiping her face in her hands. Immediately she experienced a strange feeling of relief, very much like a strong desire to sleep. Her lids grew heavy and in a moment she fell into a deep sleep beside the stream.
No matter how burning hot the noonday sun became it could never penetrate through the thick, solid concrete walls of the Mayor’s house. Nevertheless the Mayor felt waves of burning heat running through his body as though he were naked under a white hot sun. He was still wearing his pink silk pyjamas, and sat in the armchair reading his morning newspaper. He glimpsed his brother’s picture on one of the pages; quickly turned it over and started to read the news about celebrities and society people. Thus he learnt that Touha the dancer had been divorced, that Noussa the actress was marrying for the fourth time, and that Abdel Rahman, the singer, had entered the hospital to have his appendix removed. He turned over the page to read the sports news, but the pages got stuck, and he found himself looking at his brother’s picture again, so he ran over the lines and read that there had been a cabinet change, and that his brother had become an even more important minister. He clicked his tongue in derision. No one knew him better than he did, for he was his brother. And no one knew how stupid a man he was, so slow of understanding, but a real mule for work ‘just like a buffalo which goes round and round in a water-wheel with its eyes blindfolded’, he thought.
He let the paper fall from his hand and closed his eyes, but suddenly remembered that he wanted to telephone his wife, and ask her how his younger son had fared in the examinations. His hand was about to reach out to the telephone when he heard the sound of water being poured in the bathroom. It reminded him that Zeinab had come to his house at dawn, and that meanwhile she had swept and cleaned the house, so that now all that remained for her to do was the bathroom. A thought flashed through his mind. ‘Why not go to the bathroom and have a try?’ But he drove it away. Somehow he felt that Zeinab was not like her sister Nefissa who was simple and easy-going, and had not instilled in him the same caution and hesitation he felt in the presence of Zeinab. He could not understand why with Zeinab he was so cautious and hesitant, even afraid. Yes, afraid. Perhaps because she was Nefissa’s sister. True, Nefissa’s story had remained a secret, but who knew? Maybe this time things would not be concealed so easily. He tried to chase away his fears. Who could find out the things that had happened? He was above suspicion, above the law, even above the moral rules which governed ordinary people’s behaviour. Nobody in Kafr El Teen would dare suspect him. They could have doubts about Allah, but about him… It was impossible.
But now he remembered that there were three men in Kafr El Teen who knew almost everything about him. The Chief of the Village Guard, the Sheikh of the mosque, and the village barber. Without them he could not rule Kafr El Teen. They were his instruments, his aides and his means for administering the affairs of the village. But they knew his secrets. They could be trusted to keep them, although deep down inside he felt that they were not to be trusted with anything. If he closed his eyes for a single second they would play a trick on him, or get out of him whatever they could. But he had his eyes wide open, and he knew how to convince them that he could hear them breathe as they slept, and that if any one of them even so much as thought of playing tricks, of wagging his tail, he would cut it off for him, and cut his head off with it, too.
He swallowed two or three times in quick succession. His mouth was bitter and he felt like spitting, like ridding himself of the hatred which for ever weighed down on him. He loathed the three men, and despised them. What made it even worse was the realization that he needed them, that he could not do without them. That was why he was obliged to spend some of his nights talking and joking and laughing with them, and even to convince himself not only that they were his friends, but perhaps his only friends.
He got up from his comfortable armchair, walked to the bathroom and spat into the wash basin, then gargled with water several times trying to rid his mouth of the bitter taste. He looked in the mirror and his eyes fastened themselves on the reflection of Zeinab scrubbing the bath tub so that it shone as clean as alabaster. Her long galabeya was wet, and had stuck to her body revealing her breasts and thighs. It was as though she was naked before his eyes. He felt the warm blood rush to his belly and he could no longer take his eyes off her young body.
Zeinab lifted her head bent over the bath and stood upright. She caught the blue eyes of the Mayor fastened on her with a strange look, and stepped back in a movement of fear, shrinking up against the wall as though seeking protection. But her foot slipped on the smooth wet tiles, and in a moment she was lying full length on the floor.
Before she had time to rest her hands on it for support and get up, his arm was already round her waist helping her to rise. The tips of his fingers brushed against her breast, and he felt his hand tremble as it moved stealthily around its smooth contour until it was cupped in his palm.
She gave a half-throttled shriek, part pain at the hard pressure of his hand around her breast sensitive with youth and inexperience, part fright running through her body with an icy shiver, and part pleasure, a strange new pleasure almost akin to an ecstasy, the ecstasy of salvation, of being free of the heavy load which had been weighing down on her heart. Now she could leave herself in the hands of God, deliver her body and soul to Him, fulfil her vow, and savour the relief of having done so.
His hand moved up her legs, lifted the wet garment over her thighs. She heard his voice, hoarse, its tone low and tense with desire whispering in her ear, ‘Take off your galabeya, Zeinab, otherwise you will catch cold
.’
His hands were now sliding up her thighs to her belly as he tried to lift her garment higher. But it was wet and stuck to her flesh. He pulled on it so hard that it split with a rending sound. She gasped, ‘My galabeya! It’s my only galabeya!’
He tore the remaining folds from around her body, held her tight, whispering in her ear, ‘I will buy you a thousand galabeyas.’
He stretched out his hand, opened the tap and a shower of warm water poured down over her naked body. With his own hands he washed off the dust and dirt of the day’s work, his hands diligent over her hair, her shoulders, her belly, and thighs and breasts.
He dried her in a soft towel smelling of jasmine, the way a mother would dry her child. She let him carry her to the bed, still and silent. Then he took her in his arms.
XV
Just before the crow of the cock rose into the air, Sheikh Hamzawi opened his eyes. In fact his eyes had probably been open for some time taking in the scene which he saw every day, and wondered at with a wonder that was not pure, and unadulterated and innocent but shot through and through with doubt, with a gnawing, aching, never-ending doubt. Yet the doubt itself had a strange quality about it, for most of the time, it was not really doubt, but a deep unshakeable certitude almost bordering on faith that what he saw before his eyes was an indisputable truth, like the truth of the existence of God.
The thin, long finger of dawn crept through a crack in the window and touched the face of Fatheya with an obscure gleam of light. It fell on the half of her face to his side, dim, grey, ashen-like. Her eyes were slightly open as though she were seeing even in her sleep. Her nose rose in sharp lines, and her lips were tightly closed together as though she feared that something might pass through them while she slept. The grey light of dawn revealed her smooth white neck. It ran down to a smooth white breast welling out where he had unbuttoned her garment over the chest. The child held on to it with its hands, and its lips, and its tightly clenched jaws. She hugged the little body closely in the curve of her arm, with a hold which was tense, as though she feared that some force would tear him away.
Sheikh Hamzawi’s look remained fastened to the side of the face he could see with a feeling somewhere between surprise and bewilderment. Was this side of her face so different from the side which the light had not yet reached, and where he would find the features of her face which he knew? What was the difference between the two? He was sure that the features revealed by the light of the dawn were not those of his wife Fatheya. In fact they did not resemble her at all. The nose was her nose, the mouth was her mouth, the neck her neck, the breast was her breast, everything was hers, and yet something had changed, something important but undefinable. He did not doubt for a moment that the woman lying by his side was Fatheya, and that this woman was his wife. He was absolutely sure of this truth, as sure of it as he was of the existence of Allah. And this certitude added to his bewilderment.
Anyone seeing his face at this particular moment would have realized that the man was no longer sure about anything. His eyes were wide open in a fixed stare but near them a small muscle seemed to twitch. The light of dawn pierced through the window and fell on his face. It looked deathly pale and there was a long shadow below it so that the one face looked like two faces. The upper face was his real face, the one which everyone in Kafr El Teen knew. But below it was another face which no one knew, or would ever know because no such face had ever been seen in Kafr El Teen before. It was not the face of a human being, nor that of a spirit. It could have been the face of an angel or a devil, or even the face of Allah, if anyone had seen it before and could recognize Allah’s face when he saw it.
Yet as he lay there, Sheikh Hamzawi was feeling further away from God than he had ever felt before. There were moments when he was very close to Allah, and particularly during the Friday midday prayer when all the men of the village, including the Mayor, would stand behind him, perfectly still, unable to move an arm, or a hand, or a finger, unable to move their lips, or whisper a verse from the Koran until he had done so himself.
At such moments he would feel much closer to Allah than any other man amongst them, be it the Mayor himself. A fine shiver would traverse his body, like the fine thrill of pleasure or of that rare happiness which he had known only as a child on those occasions when he used to throw stones at the other children and watch them run away in fright. During the prayer he would deliberately take his time before standing up, or sitting, or kneeling. Now and again he would shoot a quick backward glance, and observe the Mayor and the rows of men assembled behind him, reverently waiting for the slightest movement of his head, or his hand or even his little finger.
Nevertheless, no matter how much he took his time, or even slowed down the prayer, it would still be over in a matter of minutes, and the men would disperse from around him. Some of them might even tread on his foot as they rushed hurriedly behind the Mayor, carrying an appeal or a complaint of some sort written on a sheet of white paper with the required excise duty stamps stuck in the corner. Under his breath he would curse the ‘band of impious rascals’ who had no respect for God, and were so busy running after the transient panoply of the earth instead of thinking of the life hereafter. He walked back to his home, a lonely figure, stick tapping on the ground, his yellow-beaded rosary swaying between his trembling fingers. His fingers would tremble even more nervously as soon as he spotted his wife Fatheya. He would call out to her, asking for something in a loud throaty voice calculated to sound more throaty and virile than usual, then cough and clear his chest several times to ensure that the neighbours would realize that Fatheya’s husband, the man of the household, was back.
‘You’ve become deaf and blind since that accursed child came to our house. He occupies your whole life, and you care about nothing else despite the fact that he is a child born in sin. I held out a merciful hand to him, but sometimes I wish I had left him to die out there. Ever since the accursed creature, fruit of fornication and sin, has come into our house one misfortune after another has befallen us. People blame me for taking him in, their tongues keep wagging and I have lost the respect I used to enjoy in Kafr El Teen. Even my friends have abandoned me, and the Mayor no longer invites me to spend an evening with him. He has advised me several times to send him to a home for illegitimate children. I’ve promised to do it, but you refuse all the time. I can’t understand why you are so attached to this miserable child.’
His voice would tail off as soon as he had asked this question. He did not understand why she should be so enamoured of the child. As soon as he had thrown the question at her, the rosary would begin to tremble even more violently between his fingers, as though he in fact knew the reason, but would not admit it. But it was a knowing devoid of certitude, a kind of obscure suspicion of knowing what one knew without at the same time being sure of it. The knowing and the doubt went through his body with a deep shiver, as though an icy shaft of wind was dropping down from the crack in the window together with the light of dawn. He could see Fatheya’s face, her neck, and the smooth round breast to which the child held so tightly. And the question would start to steal up to him again and crawl over him like the cold, smooth belly of a snake. ‘How was her breast giving milk if she had not been pregnant with the child, nor given birth to it?’ He had not been the first one to ask this question. He had heard it from somebody else. He could not remember who it was that had asked him. In fact, he was sure it had been a question. Now he thought of it he could recall that it had been just a passing remark pronounced with a whisper. The whisper had made it feel like a sharp knife stabbed into his heart. ‘Is Fatheya suckling the child?’ He tried to deny that she was suckling it, for he had not seen the child at her breast. Every morning she used to buy buffalo milk for it. But the whispering voice insisted, sure of what it said, with a sureness which brooked no denial.
Sheikh Hamzawi’s ears caught the whisper every time he walked along one of the lanes and passed by a group of people. He could see their hea
ds come closer and hear it when it started. He would solemnly pronounce the usual greeting, ‘Peace be with you.’ Some of them did not even answer. When he passed in front of the shop of Haj Ismail where the Mayor would be seated, surrounded by the Chief of the Village Guard, the village barber and other men, his voice would resound as he said, ‘Peace be with you.’ There would be a short silence before the answer came back in a low, cold, inconsequential tone, ‘And peace be with you.’ The voice which answered was not that of the Mayor, nor the village barber. It was some other man who answered. No one among those who were seated invited him to join them. He would return home, walking with his head bowed to the ground to find Fatheya hugging the child. A strong urge to wrench it out of her arms, and throw it out of the window seized him, but each time he would restrict himself to glaring in the direction of the child as though facing a rival so formidable that he did not know how to tackle him.
One night he remained awake until Fatheya fell asleep. He crept on his toes to where the child was lying by her side, and tried to lift it, but although she was fast asleep she held her arms tightly around it. The child as usual was clamped to her breast. She felt him pulling at it and shrieked, ‘Shame on you, Sheikh Hamzawi. You are a man of God. He’s a small, innocent child.’
‘I do not want a child born in sin to remain in my house.’
‘Then I will leave the house with him,’ she said.
‘You are not his mother, and you shall not leave with him.’ His voice trembled as he spoke.
‘I will not abandon him to the care of anyone else. People have no mercy in their hearts and he’s an innocent child who has done no wrong.’
God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels Page 12