God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels

by Nawal El Saadawi

  He shaded his eyes with his hands and leant his head back against a lamp-post. He couldn’t fight the drowsiness which was overwhelming him, and he dozed off standing up. A muted sound awakened him. Glancing around, he noticed that the boulevard, submerged in the evening gloom, was now calm and empty of people and vehicles. His sharp eyes bored into the darkness, and he caught sight of a spectre running in the distance, its feet bare, its long galabeya not loose enough to hide the visible swelling over the stomach.

  ‘Hamida!’ He gasped her name out, sending a rush of pent-up breath through his barely parted lips, then took off over the asphalt, his left hand raised protectively before him, slashing at the darkness, and his right hand plunged into his pocket, fingering the sharp hardness of the knife-blade. The spectre stopped in a darkened corner. With slow, wary footsteps, Hamido drew nearer, until there was no more than a single stride between them. He heard the rough voice, coming in a whisper that was more like a hiss.

  ‘Only blood washes out shame.’

  He pulled the weapon from his pocket and hid it behind his back. Suddenly, a moving searchlight exposed the darkened corner, and he saw his mother’s face beneath the black tarha. He screamed; the sound rang out in the night and the light came to a stop on his face. Someone drew near; in the darkness he couldn’t see the figure’s eyes. But he could see eyes on the shoulders and over the chest – two rows of eyes, round and staring, giving off a yellowish light.

  His lips formed their question, but a large, coarse palm landed on his temple, followed by a second slap across the other temple. He lifted his arm to resist the blows, but it was arrested by five tightly encircling fingers. He brought his other arm upwards instinctively protecting himself, when there loomed in the air a cudgel-like wooden arm that came down on his head.

  Hamido opened his eyes to a violent headache. Probing his head, amidst the hair he stumbled on the wound, already crusted over with dry blood. He scratched at the scab until it fell, landing beside a huge pair of boots rising to high leather tops, surrounded by a trouser-fold of heavy cloth. The legs seemed awesomely long; he realized they stretched up eventually into a stocky chest. Down the front and across the shoulders were fixed two rows of round yellow buttons which reflected a faint lamplight.

  The enormous boot trod on the clot of dried blood, trampling it brutally underfoot. With the thud of the boot on the floor, there rose in the air a harsh voice.

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Hamido.’

  The sharp razor passed across the skin of his head: his thick hair tumbled into a pail, along with his galabeya. The sun of early morning was slanting in, and he saw the shadow of a tall, broad-shouldered person following him across the floor. The shadow came to a stop. He moved; it moved. He struck the floor with his foot and heard a strange metallic sound, not one that he had ever heard his own, bare, foot make. He looked at his feet, and there he saw the enormous, heavy boots, rising into high leather tops. He saw trousers of heavy cloth. Inside trousers and boots were his very own, actual, skinny legs, which extended upwards into a broad squarish chest, bolted with a row of brass buttons, and then into broad shoulders padded with cotton, or perhaps with straw.

  In his new boots, he paced the ground, taking slow, timorous steps. Inside each boot rested a small, bony foot, clenched and compressed under the thick leather, its toes thin and white, bloodless and motionless, dead or nearly so, the entire foot absolutely still inside the boot. It was the boots which gave movement to those feet, lifting and lowering them, carrying them over the ground step by step. With every step over the asphalt, the iron-studded soles produced a dull thud, metallic and slow, like the sound made by the hoof of a sickly calf as it is driven to the slaughterhouse.

  He stopped; so did the black shadow, sketched so meticulously on the ground. The utter smoothness of his shaven head reflected the sun, and his eyes were no more than holes emitting a penetrating light. His neck muscles were stretched taut and his back muscles tensed; beneath the tight wall of his abdomen lay a distended emaciated stomach, fed only on black smoke, black saliva, and an end of dry bread, baked to hardness, which he dipped in treacle and ate with a slice of onion, or a bit of pickle which stung like a bitter cucumber, to balance out the sweet taste of the treacle. Then he would neutralize the bitterness with black smoke, sucked in through nose, mouth and gullet to fill his chest and create pressure on his stomach until he could belch like one whose belly is full.

  A thin whip stung him on the nape of his neck; his feet moved automatically over the ground. Right foot first, then left foot – iron cleats thudding against asphalt with a regular beat, like the hour striking or the heart beating, lub dub lub dub. Left right left right.

  ‘Halt!’ The strong, harsh voice resounded through the air. The boots on his feet collided against each other noisily. His legs and thighs came together tightly, muscles contracted. His right hand plunged into his pocket and came to rest over the killing tool, its hardness extending along his thigh and ending in a tapered and punctured metal head.

  ‘Attention!’ shouted that grating voice.

  The fingers of his right hand closed around the implement – four fingers only, the thumb moving away to rest alone over the hammer. He had one eye trained on the fixed point halfway between the open eyes.

  His mouth dropped open and he began to pant. But a strong hand slapped him across the stomach, and the harsh voice pierced his ear.

  ‘Close your mouth. Hold your breath.’

  He obeyed. The rough, commanding voice sounded.

  ‘Only blood washes out shame!’

  And he pulled the trigger.

  He heard a loud report, a sound he had never heard before, and saw a body fall to the ground. From beneath it ran a red stream which he recognized at once as ewe’s blood. For today was the feast-day, and here he was, still upright, his stance unchanged, staring at the pair of open eyes, still and lidless eyes, fixed in a cold, dead stare, eyes that had dilated with terror. The terror shifted to him; beneath the full galabeya his thin legs began to shake, and he ran to bury his head in his mother’s bosom and weep.

  He rubbed his face against his mother’s chest, wiping away his tears. He looked up. There were his father’s eyes, covered with the tiny red capillaries. There were the brass buttons over the chest and shoulders, with their own unique gleam, and the hoarse voice, with its frightening, peremptory harshness.

  ‘Crying like a woman, hunh?’

  And Hamido returned to his position in the rank. He stood erect, his eyes reflecting the redness of the sun directly overhead – for their blackness had fled, beneath the lid, under the shade, to a secure and moist place. The asphalt blazed, and seemed to melt in the heavy heat. He felt that the heels of his boots were digging into the asphalt, in the way that they would bore into the soft, muddy ground.

  Hamido stopped for a second to pull up his boot tops. Lagging one step behind his row, he felt the stinging blow of the whip on his nape, and bounded forward to get in line. But instead he tripped and fell on his face.

  His boots slipped off just as he was toppling over. The burning air thrust its way into his chest in the shape of a spoken word, uttered in a voice that he realized was his own. He became aware that it was his own body, and no one else’s, that had fallen to the ground, and that the regular beats pounding on his inner ear were in fact issuing from his own chest. He felt proud of his ability to distinguish his body from that of the ewe.

  Pride showed in his eyes, although his face was still to the ground. Spittle flew from the coarse mouth, coming to rest on the back of his head. And it was followed immediately by a familiar curse – an epithet pertaining to female genitalia – and then by a fierce kick with the blunt toe of a heavy boot, which landed in his back, directly over his kidney.

  This sort of kick with the hard snout of a boot did not carry the same force every time, though, for I used to see Hamido clambering to his feet afterwards and running to join his rank. But today was the feast-day.
And the big chief – his master – was to attend the celebrations in person, not through a delegate, as he usually did. Naturally, any mistake whatsoever – even a slight misstep – would be unforgivable. On this particular day, a slip of the foot was not a mere slip of the foot, but rather was immediately transformed into something else, something far more serious. A misstep would distort the rank. And when one rank gets out of order, naturally the others become misshapen too. And this spells disaster right through.

  Thus, everything went awry, becoming blurred and jumbled before Hamido’s eyes. This was due not only to a deficiency in his powers of observation, but also to a lack of time. For, on such an important day as this, time is limited indeed, and the pace of life quickens to become a series of gasps. No one is able to breathe naturally, for everyone must gasp for breath if things are to remain as they should.

  Like everyone else, then, Hamido panted, and as he did so a certain eye caught sight of him. Somewhere in the vicinity, there is always an eye which takes notice of whatever is going on. Observing things, staring with uninhibited intrusiveness into the lives – or deaths – of others, it gives the living no space to enjoy life, nor the dead respite in which to enjoy death. Hamido brought his legs together with a rather shy and fumbling movement (for meanwhile he had acquired a certain amount of diffidence), clearing the way for the procession of vehicles. But since time was so short, his right leg had no time to draw back as it should have, quickly; extended into the road, barefoot, his stiff toes quivering visibly, there it was in full sight of everyone.

  Baffled, the procession stopped before this unprecedented and never-to-be-repeated scene. For the history books make no mention of any such incident of this type. Yet perhaps this is not so surprising, for what is recorded as history and what actually occurs in real life are two different things. And in this particular case, what actually occurred was so momentous that it deserved to find a place in history. But, being what it is, history does not open its pages to the recording of momentous events – especially if their hero is Hamido.

  Hamido did not feel that he was a hero, despite the crowd which gathered around him: for in no time, an overwhelming number of people had collected. The empty spaces between buildings filled up with bodies; heads obstructed doors and windows; people left their offices and bureaus, and locked their shops, crowding into tightly compressed rows to enjoy the spectacle. I don’t think anyone lagged behind – whether little or big, male or female, upper class or lower class – for all wanted to amuse themselves. To seek pleasure is, after all, a universal pastime, and legitimate on condition that it takes place in secret.

  Hamido was still on the ground, in the same position, his eyes closed; for death, of course, has its effects. Even so, he saw lots and lots of men around him (for the vision of the dead is sharper than that of the living). He knew they were men by their shaved heads, the rubbery tubing and brass buttons on their uniforms, and of course by the hard killing tools hanging down alongside their thighs.

  He tried to open his mouth to defend himself, to tell his story, beginning it with the day his mother gave birth to him. But the big chief – his master – was present, and in his presence time is restricted. There isn’t time enough for anyone. In any case, it is in the nature of things that the judgement must be issued first, and signed or imprinted with the thumbprint or sign of the accused to show that he is aware of its contents. Furthermore, the accused must follow the directives spelled out in the ruling. Only after all of this has been done will there be sufficient time for anything else – such as an appeal in which the condemned can claim innocence.

  Thus, with all due promptness, Hamido’s sentence was issued. In fact, it filled up an entire page of the official register. The law specified that Hamido must read the police report before putting his signature or thumbprint to it, for this would indicate his compliance with the contents. The words were unclear and not easy to read though, for the handwriting was poor and the report had been written in great haste. Hamido had difficulty making out the script, especially since he had not learnt to read or write, but he was able to pick out a word or two in each line. It amazed him that the police had shown such an ability to transform him from an unknown soldier into a hero – even if his heroism was so far outside the norms governing these things that wiggling his bare toes in his big chief s face had come to be considered, in his case, as a gesture of rebellion. Hamido was no longer able to contain or conceal his pride, and he began wiggling his toes, with slow and dignified movements that were full of an almost regal self-esteem.

  All those present raised their hands to applaud – including the big chief, his master, who was in the front row. (The movements of the big chief, like the movement of history, cannot afford to ignore the masses.) And when his arms swung upward to applaud, the sandwich stuffed with ewe’s meat, which he had concealed under his arm, fell to the ground. A lame child who was crawling among the crowded rows of people, carrying small sacks of toasted seeds for sale, snatched the sandwich away immediately.

  Hamido smiled, even though he understood nothing of what was happening around him. The scene had not been intentional; he could take no credit for it. Moreover, it had been imperfectly executed, showing a lack of experience, and deficient in the requisite cultural background and perusal of The Heritage. Hamido had not read the many volumes pertaining to our Cultural Heritage; specifically and most significantly, he had not studied the tales of platonic love, derived from the era when love was clean and pure and people were honourable, back in those days when their sex organs had not yet been created.

  But then Adam had committed The Great Crime (as Hamido’s mother had told him), and lo and behold, there appeared an ugly organ growing between his thighs. It was a divine revenge – a just one, according to Hamido’s mother. At this point in his musings, a question occurred to him that had never come to his mind before (perhaps because his body was now dead, and thus he could give his soul the right to think of sacred subjects). That question was the following: how had Adam committed the crime before this organ had been created for him?

  Hamido made an attempt to rid himself of this speculation, for thinking about such matters could only be considered an immoral practice, especially in the presence of the big chief, his master. Hamido stole a quick glance between his thighs, but did not find the member in question. Instead, and in its place, he found a small cleft which reminded him of the cleft he used to see on Hamida’s body. He thought there must be some mistake: perhaps the bodies of the dead had been confused, and in the final sorting they had given him a woman’s body. Mistakes are bound to occur in the final sorting: the civil servant who is responsible for the procedure has poor eyesight due to pulmonary tuberculosis. To make matters worse, he is the only one assigned to this task. (The budget doesn’t allow for any expansion in personnel.) This civil servant is charged with transferring names from the initial to the final sorting lists. But the letters of some names are similar, particularly as certain names given to females can be distinguished from male names only by the single-letter, feminine ending: Amin becomes Amina, Zuhayr turns into Zuhayra, Mufid goes to Mufida, and Hamido becomes Hamida. In other words, with a mere stroke of the pen, man becomes woman.

  Sometimes, Hamido loved being a woman, while at other times he resisted it strongly. For in those days women were charged with certain humiliating tasks normally performed by servants, like wiping a man’s shoes when he came out of the lavatory, or giving him a glass of water as he lay on his back belching out loud (and belching out loud was the prerogative solely of men) or washing out his smelly socks or his underpants, which were even smellier because of the urine and the short supply of soap and water.

  Hamido did try to rectify the situation. But this was not easy even in the best of circumstances, since he always had to establish that he was not a woman. Every time, they summoned the medical examiner, who would strip off Hamido’s soiled pants with grumbling displeasure and look between his thighs, insolently
. Sometimes, the examiner would not verify it simply by looking, but would insist on extending his elegant hand, with its carefully pruned nails, to examine the shrivelled and terror-stricken member. Measuring it from all angles with a finely calibrated plastic ruler, he would then take out his Parker fountain-pen and record the numbers in a notebook specifically designated for this purpose. He despatched these numbers inside an envelope sealed with red wax to the police’s Department of Citizen Identification and Documentation.

  Now, in this department reigned complete bedlam. Fingerprints were confused with footprints, and both with prints of other parts of the body. First and last digits were mixed up; portions of numbers were dropped and misplaced, while other portions were blotted out. This was due to the bad quality of the ink, for it was adulterated (corruption was widespread at that time: an entire bucket of water might well be added to a bottle of ink).

  As a result, and in this fashion, Hamido’s status remained undefined for quite a number of years, during which time no one would come to a decisive opinion, and no one would summon him for re-examination. He began to believe that the subject had been forgotten, that the incident might as well never have happened. He started to walk the streets confidently, even going into a barber’s shop one day to have his long beard shaved off. He sat down on the comfortable swivel chair, gave his feet a relaxed shake, drew out an old newspaper from the pile on the table, and riffled its pages indifferently. But no sooner had he turned to the last page than his eyes widened in surprise. There was his own picture, printed at the bottom of the page among those of female suspects. Prostitution was not prohibited in those times, so they arrested him and returned him to service.

  * * *

  At that time, Hamida had found her way to an honourable profession (for in those days, ‘honour’ meant domestic service). She learnt the first lesson which such service demands: that one must call females by the term ‘my mistress’ and address males as ‘my master’. She became aware that her master and mistress grew more satisfied with her the lower she hung her head when passing before them, and her upper half began to take on a permanent stoop. The house protected her from the street, and in the street a man lay in wait, never ceasing to pursue her.