The lamp-post stretched so far into the sky that it seemed stuck fast to the moon. The moonlight fell onto Hamida, turning her face, arms and legs white as she stood concealed behind the lamp-post. Her entire body shone pale, smooth and hairless. Only the roots of her plucked body hair protruded, becoming rigid with a shiver that spread across her skin.
She extended a white hand and touched her skin. Only her body could give her reassurance, for nothing outside it was reliable or secure: the world beyond consisted of strange bodies harboured in corners, behind walls and doors, in the darkened bends of streets, everywhere. Although the angles might seem smooth and innocuous from the outside, as if nothing lay within, when the sides of the triangle parted and the legs drew apart, the killing tool would emerge, clearly visible, hard and erect.
Hamida screamed, but the sound that emerged did not have the familiar timbre of a cry of fright or a plea for help. As a matter of fact, Hamida was not asking for anyone’s help, since she knew that the road was empty of people. She was well aware that its windows and doors were shut and its lights extinguished. It was an area devoid of sounds, of voices, of everything.
No, it was not a scream for help, but it was sharp and long, going on and on as if it were in fact millions of screams coming together, welded into a single scream as endless as the night, and bonded in place with millions of the black particles from which the darkness and silence are made.
Nor was it a scream of alarm or fear. Hamida had no fear of the dark, or of silence, or even of death, for she was part of the darkness and her voice was the silence. And death has lived with her. She has borne it like a second body clinging to hers, like a second person, dead and living inside her. It occupies the emptiness within, enfolding its arms and legs, stretching itself out, its scent spreading outwards through her eyes and ears, from her nose and mouth, wafting from every opening in her body. At night, when the gloom intensifies and solitude weighs heavier, she reaches out and feels him beside her, clinging to her; in her embrace his breaths mingle with hers, the heat of his body indistinguishable from her warmth.
Hamida planted her hand on her back, and a feeling of safety came over her. Were one to see her warm, soft, gently curved body from the rear, one would mistake her for a child. But as she turns around and her eyes grow visible, one sees unmistakeably that she is old. The faces of the elderly, like those of children, are sexless, but her growing belly, expanding with the live embryo, identifies her as a woman. One would be at a loss to determine her age, for Hamida is ageless. Such is the status of children born in defiance of the government employee who determines birth dates. They live untouched by the government, unaffected by history, unmarked by time and place. They do not pass through the stages of childhood, youth and old age as do ordinary human beings. They live on, beyond old age, notwithstanding the government employee who records dates of death. Like the gods, they are spared the boundaries of time, and they live forever, sharing a single, extended existence unmarked by developmental stages.
Born as adults, they grow old without experiencing childhood or adolescence, and then move suddenly from old age to infancy, or from childhood to adolescence. They pass by in a single fleeting second, faster than the eye can see, for the human eye cannot fathom their essence. Such creatures appear as child, youth and old person at one and the same time and place. Sometimes they walk the roads when already dead, and when their smell is virtually unbearable. Yet the human eye remains incapable of distinguishing them from the living. Even wrinkles hold little significance in such cases, because they appear not as wrinkles but rather as the natural laughter lines which show on a child’s face when it laughs forcefully but inaudibly.
Hamida was still standing behind the lamp-post, her face swollen, round and white as flour beneath the light, her wrinkles concealed by powder, and her cracked lips – chapped by hunger – glazed with a bloody, red crust. Her chest protruded from the opening of a torn gown, and her belly jutted out below. Her cracked heels were visible inside backless, slipper-like shoes. Her hair, as thick and black as a piece of the night, covered her head and chest, encasing her entire body in blackness. From within the blackness her white neck arched out, like a healthy tree trunk showing above the forest horizon, signalling that its roots are sunken deep into the moist ground.
An observer would think her a woman of the night, even though she was not a woman and the time was not night. The sun was directly overhead, at the exact midpoint between the eyes. Hamida was staring at the blazing red disc, unblinkingly, without the slightest twitch of a facial muscle, staring with all the patience she could summon. She saw him clearly at the centre of the circle, like a rainbow: long, thin and stooped, passing before her eyes with his characteristically slow gait, one shoulder higher than the other, one leg longer than the other – the frame of a lame man. She recognized him immediately and almost shouted out ’Hamido’. But she feared that her hiding place behind the lamp-post would thus be revealed, that he would recognize her swollen belly and pull out the killing tool.
She clamped her lips together and held her breath. But he smelled her anyway, for her odour was strong and penetrating, like that of the dead. He came to a stop, and stuck his long, thin hand behind the lamp-post, but it found nothing to grasp. ‘Hamida.’ The barely audible voice was familiar, an imitation of her own voice, in fact. He bent his trunk into a skilfully crafted imitation of her shape – for there had been great progress in craftsmanship, industry and technology. So skilful was his portrayal, that Hamida was confused into thinking the voice was actually hers and mistaking the body as her own. She emerged from behind the lamp-post confidently, walking out with head bent, as usual. But as she lifted her head, her gaze clashed with the yellow eyes. So terrified was she by this surprise that she saw double. Then the four eyes multiplied with lightning speed, until yellow eyes surrounded her: ten marching down the chest and five along each shoulder, giving off a brassy yellow light.
The metallic voice bounced across the asphalt like the clanging of iron against iron.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Hamida.’ Her voice was barely audible.
The razor-blade moved over her head, her soft, thick hair fell into the pail. The razor dropped to her body, and passed over her skin, uprooting the hair. When it reached the pit of her lower stomach, moving through the patch of black hair it stumbled upon the tiny white bud that looked like a newborn bird. It plucked the bud from its roots, leaving in its place a deep wound in the flesh, like the scabbed-over cleft. (In those times, this surgical operation was called ‘purification’; its goal was to ‘purify’ the human being by removing any remaining sexual organs.)
Hamida lay on the cement floor, surrounded by four cement walls, her arms and legs rigid and bound together into a single bundle. Between her thighs hung the iron padlock of a hard metal belt. (This has entered history as the chastity belt.) Its chain clanked dully against the cement floor whenever she moved a limb.
Beneath her, a pool of blood seeped through the cracks in the floor. The walls were splashed with blood in the shape of human fingers: old, black blood, like spots, millions of them, stains left by every age and race and sex: children, men, women, old folks, white, black, yellow, red. Everyone had a particular stain, an individual one shaped like the imprint of a hand.
Hamida stuck a small fingertip into the cleft; it came out wet with blood. She wiped it on the wall, imprinting her mark on the cement, like a personal signature. (Illiterate people – the likes of Hamida – all seal official documents this way.) Black, bloodstained fingers reached out to imprint their seal on the documents – millions of documents, bearing millions of seals, all black, their lines crooked and spidery like the legs of cockroaches, or flies, or locusts. Millions of insects, diffusing over the earth, night and day, on to bridges and city walls, at the bend of every street, behind every house and every wall, inside every crevice in the earth, their bare and shaven heads poking out across the surface of the ground while t
heir skinny, bowed bodies remain inside the fissures. Their insides are hollowed out, empty of internal organs, devoid of livers, hearts, stomachs, intestines. The vast, empty cavity becomes a secret storage place packed tight with hatred. (In those days, only this spot was beyond the reach of the security apparatus. More recently, the military have made great advances; in the field of medicine, for example, they have invented x-ray equipment which reveals foreign bodies inside a human being, and an electronic speculum which is placed in the anus to reveal the contents of the internal cavity.)
X-rays fell upon her swollen belly, showing the cavity full to the brim with hatred, layer upon layer upon layer, millions of fine layers, like thin sheets of near-transparent metal massed on top of each other to form a solid bulk of hard metal. The doctor probed at her with his soft, carefully manicured fingers and let out a shout.
‘Gunpowder!’ The pickaxes rained down, breaking apart the earth, turning over the soil, inverting the very fissures they had made. They stumbled on the gunpowder stores, one and all. (History has celebrated the victory of x-rays over cancerous protrusions in the body.)
But cancer is a sly disease, more cunning than history, and the tumour continued to grow deep inside the earth. When Hamida placed her hand beneath the womb, she felt the tumour, warm to her hand, giving off the heat of her body, and was reassured. She sniffed the familiar fragrance on her fingers – a scent reminiscent of the dung heap, the garbage bin or the lump of dead flesh. She breathed it in fully: for it was the odour of her life.
Hamido turned his head in her direction, attracted by the odour they shared. Conceivably, he could have distanced himself and fled, but instead he approached her, by virtue of their shared lot. He halted beside the corpse, unrolling his tall frame and sketching the long, thin, crooked outline of his shadow on the asphalt. The white blade hung visibly alongside his thigh, its black, blood-like stains in evidence. He filled his chest with the night air, and realized that he had been born motherless, that his paternal grandfather had been a soldier in the army of Muhammad Ali* and that he had been slain in prison.
He knew suddenly – and as if it were an ancient verity as certain as death – that prison was his destiny. He offered no resistance, but let his body go limp in the iron grip. During the years of captivity, he had been drilled in the principle that relaxing the body lessens the strain it must undergo. Indeed, the tension had drained from his opened pores, from his eyes and ears and nose and anus. Now, nothing would seem quite as brutal, whether it was the beating, or the feeling of his body puffing up, or the branding by fire (at least, prior to the discovery of electricity).
His body falls limply to the ground, and he stretches out as fully as he is able. From beneath him stream thin trails of blood that slip into the crevices in the ground. The walls bear black stains that look like blood, every one in the shape of five fingers and a palm. Millions of stains, left by every age, every race, every sex: children, men, women, old people, white and black, yellow and red. And every one has his own particular, distinguishable stain.
Hamido rose from the floor, supporting himself against the wall, and imprinted his mark on the cement like a personal signature. (Those convicted – the likes of Hamido – seal police reports this way.) Black, bloodstained fingers reach out to imprint their seal on the police reports – millions of reports, stacked and heaped like corpses on Judgement Day (before the discovery of buses made such a crush of bodies an everyday occurrence). These bodies were aligned horizontally and arranged side by side in alternate directions – head next to rear and rear next to head – and so closely packed that they covered every inch of floor and ceiling. They were tightly compressed and so congealed together that no air could possibly penetrate, and no one could stretch out an arm or leg.
Hamido closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and moaned. The others followed his example, and millions of voices rose in the gloomy vastness, manufacturing the silence of night. The silence was so dense and heavy that it created a pressure on his ears, causing him to open his eyes. A pair of feet, the soles badly cracked, were almost touching his face. He recognized them at once and whispered, imitating her voice: ‘Hamida.’ But she did not answer: she was dead, her body sprawled on the ground, her face to the sky, the white moonlight falling upon it to give it the round and swollen aspect of an inflated bladder.
She opened her mouth and moaned (due to the pressure of urine). Millions of moans rose in the dawn and created the national dirge (which they used to call the national anthem).
Hearing the anthem, Hamido realized that morning had come. He dragged his legs out from under the iron girdle and walked to the latrine – the only place in the world where he felt optimistic. From behind the wall, he would exchange a few words with others, while his lower half would send out a thread of urine, as thin and bowed as his frame, its odour as piercing as his. At this, he would feel suddenly and surprisingly mirthful; observing the yellow threads of water around him, glistening in the light like victory arches, he would let out a great roar of laughter.
The loud guffaws would ring out from the latrine, millions of them, for the numbers increased day after day. And in those days, all equipment was susceptible to breakdown, except that of reproduction and the wireless, of course. The sound would spread as any sound does, and at the same speed (by means of one of the instruments available at the time), to enter the large pair of ears like a sharp pebble. A clean, manicured finger would poke itself into those ears, and the sharp pebble would fall into his chubby, fleshy palm. Gazing steadily at the designated civil servant, he would inquire:
‘Are they laughing?’
The civil servant would lower his eyes, as civil servants usually did in the presence of the big chief, Hamido’s master:
‘No, milord, they’re just urinating.’
Hamido was still standing in the latrine. The thread of water had not yet expended itself when he saw the civil servant coming to carry out an inspection. He felt afraid; and fear, like death, is an organic being, composed of flesh and blood. He sensed the blood draining from his head, limbs and internal organs, seeping downwards to collect at the pit of his stomach, in a single point that swelled to become as distended as his bladder. The civil servant still stood before him, legs planted apart insolently, eyes fixed steadily on him with the courage of civil servants in the absence of their master, mouth open to show ulcerous gums, afflicted with pyorrhoea (like his master’s gums).
He felt a sharp pain low in his belly. He turned around. They were tightening their grip, and bodies were pressing in on him from every side, leaving no open space, yielding no room at all. The only empty space he could see was the ulcerous open mouth, so he aimed the ribbon of water at it and emptied all the fear from his body.
Hamido opened his eyes. He could feel the pool beneath him, its warmth like that of his body and its piercing smell akin to that of his life. He realized that he was still alive and was quite hungry. He reached out, extending his hand into the shallow bowl. Millions of small black insects swarmed out, buzzing around him gleefully, some flying, others scuttling, still others crawling. A few clung to the ceiling and perched on the walls; others disappeared inside the cracks, and one alighted on his open palm.
He looked between its legs. Seeing there the old, scabbed-over wound, he knew it was a female, and that she was dead. He clapped his other palm over her, and she died again. He cracked her dead extremities and the recorder picked up the sound. (A tape recorder of the latest model, the size of a chickpea, had been fixed inside one of his body parts.) He cracked the toes of his own right foot with pride and self-esteem. His passage through history had significance, and this was why, when lenses were trained on the state’s employees, he saw terror shading their eyes. For any movement they made would enter history instantaneously – even a mere cracking of a knuckle (due to the brittleness of one’s joints after the age of forty) or a finger raised to brush away a fly that has perched on one’s nose.
He gave his toes
an innovative, creative shake. In spite of everything, he loved authenticity and originality, and despised imitation. What an accumulation of imitative, inauthentic, ape-like movements history has recorded! Identical faces, identical fingers and toes, one imitation after another, one imitation over and over again. An accumulation that grows ever vaster, higher and higher, just like a pile of manure. Every day the cow lies down, and every dawn his mother collects the dung, dumping it in a sunny place. By the next day it is dry, and on its way to becoming firmly rooted in history.
Finally, the treacle appeared, a congealed mass at the bottom of the bowl, which settled at the base of his stomach like a lump of tar. He chewed at a bit of onion, offsetting the sour taste of the bitter cucumber. He lit a wad of tobacco and filled his chest and stomach with smoke. Now he felt something akin to fullness, and belched in a loud voice that intimated self-confidence. (At that time, only males experienced this.)
Hamida heard the sound, and in it she recognized the smell of tobacco. After all, she used to buy tobacco from the shop for her father or brother or uncle or some other man from the family. The shopkeeper would hand her a sweet, which she would pop into her mouth, hiding it under her tongue. When he demanded the penny from her, she would open her hand and find nothing; she would open her eyes and find the lamp, like a wisp of light, flaring up only to die out at a single gust of wind. And darkness would fill the door, like a tall, huge body, solidly dark except for two round holes at the top of the head from which pierced a red light, the colour of the pre-dawn.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered, in a frightened, nearly inaudible voice.
He answered in the same tones. ‘Hamido.’
She closed her eyes so that he would not recognize them; she let his long arms enfold her, and his hot breaths warm her. It was winter, and her ears, so soft and small, were like shells of ice.
God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels Page 35