He whispered, expelling a hot breath into her ear.
‘Who are you?’
She remained motionless, her ear still below his mouth, and gave no response. She pretended to be asleep; she hid her head in the thick hair on his chest. When she felt the large fingers raising the garment from her body, she held her breath. Her chest no longer rose or fell. She had turned into a corpse.
But in the morning, the slanting sun fell on her eyes. She saw the lank form beside her, noted its thin and crooked shape. His shoulders were uneven, resembling hers; his fingers were swollen and festered from washing dishes, like hers, and the fingernails were just as black. She knew at once that it was her own body, so she hugged him with all her strength, and pressed her chest to his, and felt the outlines of the leather wallet just beneath her left breast. She was hungry, so she slipped the wallet from his pocket quickly, before anyone could see her.
She hid behind a wall and opened the wallet. She saw her portrait: encased in the black tarha, she resembled her mother on the night of her wedding. She found a directive in her father’s handwriting, reminding him to wash away the disgrace, and four pounds and a bariza*.
The bariza bought her a meal, and with two pounds she purchased a mini-dress (the sort of shrunken dress popular in those days among chaste and virtuous wives, since the only parts of their sacrosanct bodies exposed by such garments were the arms, shoulders, bosom and thighs). With the remaining two pounds she bought a pair of open-toed shoes with spike heels. (The emergence of open-toed shoes in that era was aimed at revealing the blood-red nail varnish worn by women; but these shoes had backs so that the cracks in women’s feet resulting from domestic service would be hidden.)
Hamida walked down the street, teetering on her high heels, her arms, thighs and throat bare, her dress cut low to reveal her breasts. She had come to resemble her mistress, and although she walked right by the shawish (the widespread term for policemen in those days) he did not arrest her. In fact, as she passed before him undeterred, he lowered his head, and kept his eyes on the ground. (This was called ‘averting the glance’ and was practised before matrons of unblemished reputation. He had learnt the manoeuvre during his years of training.)
Holding her head aloft, she moved on with swaying, tottering steps. She swung her bare shoulders, the left one appearing to be higher than the right. Her left breast was higher than her right breast (due to the swollen wallet concealed beneath her left breast) and her buttocks, one higher than the other, shook as she continued on her way.
She drew a few steps away from the policeman and ran her hand over the wallet. Its leather had the soft feel of saliva trickling over one’s fingers after eating a sugared pancake. A stream of warm blood was moving from her left breast to her belly and on to her thighs and feet, and then ascending to her head, ears and nose, and falling once again to her heart, following its normal, repeating circuit and sending into the motionless cells a new impulse that gave her a pleasurable sensation.
She worked her jaws, and chewed the pleasure until it melted into her saliva and she swallowed both. The pleasure mingled with her blood and circled from head to foot, from feet to head. Her head began to spin, and she leant back against a lamp-post. Her lids drooped, so that the street grew dark and the sky turned black and moonless. The circular blue light fell over her face, and she recognized it at once. (Her master always painted the headlamps of his car blue to avoid being seen or recognized by anyone during his nightly rovings.) He opened his door and got out, walked round and opened the door for her, waited until she was seated, shut the door and circled round the car again, reached his own door, opened it, sat down, and shut the door. (Her master had been trained in this circular motion in the Faculty of Arts and Protocol.*)
Her spike heels were plunged into thick carpeting, soft as dough, and her shoes came off, revealing her cracked heels. She hid them under the silken coverlet. Her body had settled into a horizontal position on something soft – softer than dough – and she relaxed the muscles in her buttocks, which her long period of standing behind the lamp-post had strained. Her body began to sink into the dough: feet, legs, thighs, chest, all the way to the neck. Only her head remained visible, sticking up over the surface.
Her head began to sink gradually: chin, mouth, nose. Her eyes dilated with terror as she realized she could get no air. And terror is an organic being, composed of flesh and blood. It was personified before her now in the shape of a strange, misshapen creature with the head of a human being and the body of an ape. Its head was bare, shaven to sleekness, its chest a forest of hair, its buttocks as bare and smooth as its head, the skin on its backside showing the same transparent blood-redness as the face. The creature had reddish lips, parted to show a long, sharp tongue, just like a white blade with a hard metallic edge, at its tip a darkened hole in which death was lying in wait.
She screamed – her suppressed, inaudible scream – and dropped her eyelids over the terror. But it crept into her throat (through the lachrymal canal which connects eye and ear) and sat there, rolling up into a lump. She tightened the muscles of her throat and spat as forcefully as she could, so that thin threads poured fountainlike from her mouth, nose and ears.
Her master laughed with a childlike delight that propelled his fleshy cheeks upwards so that his eyes were squeezed completely shut. She realized that he would fall asleep in a moment. (The royal salute had rung out, announcing the end of the jamboree.) As his snoring filled the air, she undid the golden buttons on his chest and lifted out the heavy leather wallet that had been pressing against his chest.
Opening the door quietly, she got out and made her way – slowly and assuredly – to her own car, which she unlocked with a gleaming silver key like the one her mistress had had. The car slipped over the soft asphalt like a graceful skiff gliding through the water. She passed alongside the policeman, his stance as erect as the lamp-post. He quivered (as if an electric shock had shot through him) and raised his right index finger to touch his left ear (a sacred movement in those days which symbolized love of country).
She stuck her head outside the car window. The moonlight fell on her face. The road was empty except for the lamp-posts, standing erect along both sides of the road. To the right, arms were raised high, and to the left, a finger was held to every ear.
She recognized the black stains on the finger, and whispered: ‘Hamido!’ But Hamido heard nothing, and remained stiffly upright, his head raised to the sky and one black finger to his ear. (Those travelling abroad used to see this memorial to the unknown soldier erected at the entrance to every capital city.)
Hamida stretched out her hand and grabbed his. His fingers were like hers, and the lines on his palm resembled hers. In a rush of sympathy – for their lot was a shared one – she tried to bend his arm downwards. But the stone arm, raised wearily, would not move. She raised her eyes and noticed that the wide ebony eyes shone with a real tear, a childlike one. The tear fell on to her cheek, still hot, and crept into the corner of her mouth and under her tongue, bitter to the taste. She swallowed it. Another hot tear fell on to her cheek and ran into her nose, just as bitter, so she swallowed it. Grief began to attack her from all sides, through every pore and orifice, pouring into her nose, mouth and ears like a soft powder. But the particles were sharp, like pieces of splintered glass, and they ripped apart the thin membranes that lay at the back of her nose, mouth and bronchial passages. She coughed silently, and from her chest oozed a white fluid that ran through a long narrow channel connecting heart to throat to nose to ears to eyes. She was ejecting mucous from her eyes, and spitting tears from her nose and mouth and ears, white substances jetted through with hairlike streaks of blood.
She raised her face to the moonlight, which had become intensely white and devoid of blood streaks. Her features were strange; in fact, it was their contradictory nature that attracted attention. The chin was small, rounded and soft like that of a child, while the forehead protruded, rough and wrinkled like an o
ld person’s brow. The lips were virginal, parted in a deprivation not to be satisfied – like the lips of chaste wives. The cheeks bulged with a sharp and insatiable gluttony – like the cheeks of respectable husbands. The nose was straight and upturned in self-pride, with the insolence of criminals and those outside the law, while the ears were small, submissive and motionless, like those of government employees. The eyes were black and wide, bearing a primitive and shameless look, uplifted and steady, not averting their glance as the eyes of modest women do, as they gaze downwards, bashful and ashamed of their impertinent thoughts.
Strange features they were, and utterly contradictory. Even stranger, the contradictory nature of the features harmonized with the features themselves, in a balanced and familiar manner. In fact, the harmony and balance were so remarkable as to attain a degree of appeal whose very unfamiliarity captured attention. It was as if these features marked not one face but two or three or four, or as if the face was not even a face but something else.
This was a something else that stirs up confusion and bewilderment, and anxiety, and indeed even anger. Naturally, a person grows angry if, looking into the face of another, he sees not the other person’s soul but rather his private parts. And, naturally too, one’s anger intensifies if the form of these private parts is unfamiliar or unnatural. For it is in the nature of things that private parts have a shape which inspires shame and offends honour – as well as carrying the odour of filth (not unlike the smell of sweat, urine, or any of the body’s other poisonous discharges). But for them to have a sweet scent is strange indeed, for this indicates that the body is retaining its sweat and poisons. Very soon its insides will become putrid and give off the odour of filth. The face, though, will remain clean and white, adorned by features that demonstrate nobility as well as ancient and respectable family origins (and other such refined characteristics, as delineated clearly in the faces of noble people – the likes of her master).
Her master’s face turned in her direction as she stood in the moonlight. Her dark and wide-open eyes returned his long gaze, not averting or dropping their gaze. He was so angry that he wanted to spit in her face. But he had grown so accustomed to concealing and suppressing his anger that it could no longer motivate any facial movement, except for a sudden contraction of one small muscle at the angle of his nose, which pulled his lips apart in what would seem – to the naked eye – to be a smile.
Since she had no other appointment, she climbed into the car. They passed along the facade of his chief residence in Zamalek*. She saw her mistress gazing down from the high, heavily ornamented window. Although her head was the size of a pinhead (because of the great elevation) he could see her. Hiding his face with his right hand, he stepped on the accelerator and the car shot off before anyone could spot him. He drove slowly along Nile Street and crossed the bridge; now he was entering the quarter of Bulaq,* where he had his secondary residence. (Every respectable husband at that time had a secondary residence in addition to the main one, and the number of his secondary residences increased in proportion to his rise in position.)
He stripped off his clothes promptly (as is the habit of those involved in important matters), then raised his foot and placed it on the edge of the bed, his other foot remaining on the floor. (He had been trained to stand on one leg during his years of public service.) By coincidence, at this very moment she turned towards him; she found not the killing tool but rather the old, closed-up wound. One might have expected her to register surprise, but apparently she had seen nothing to disconcert her, for she swung her head back towards the wall indifferently. There, inside a gilt frame, she saw her mistress in military garb. Her mistress’s eyes were settled upon the naked heap, and she followed its movements with the sedate, even grim, look of a magistrate, all the while snapping photos from every angle. (NB These pictures have been preserved in the archives of the Bureau of Intelligence.)
Thus, Hamida’s face became well-known indeed. Whenever she peered from the car window, necks were craned in her direction – though heads were lowered, of course. Her face was plastered on walls, and erected at every street corner. That was where she used to stand and wait, and sometimes, when the waiting seemed to stretch out endlessly, she would look up and see her picture hanging there, lips parted in an expansive smile, while from the corner of her mouth, a long, white thread of warm saliva ran upwards to the edge of her nose and then edged towards the space between nose and eye.
With the palm of her hand, she would wipe the moisture off her face and then wipe her hand on the wall. There, sketched on the wall, would appear the palm and five human fingers. As the night breezes blew over it and the sun rose on it, the hand would dry out, turning into black stains the colour of old blood.
The sun’s rays fell over Hamido’s eyes as he slept upright beside the wall. He opened his eyes and saw the palm and black, extended fingers. Her fingers were like his, and the lines on her palm resembled those on his. His lips parted, calling out: ‘Hamida!’ He pulled the killing tool up, from alongside his thigh, but just then he caught a glimpse of the shining silver key dangling between her fingers, and realized that she was his lady mistress. He hid the implement in his pocket in the blink of an eye, let it hang loosely behind his thigh, and stood in his place erect, the muscles of his back taut and his right arm raised, his eyelids relaxed and dropping over his eyes like a curtain.
When the sound of the car had grown distant, he opened his eyes to see its tapered back bisecting the darkness which then swallowed it. He relaxed his back muscles, let his arm fall, and felt at ease. He filled his chest with the night air, and tried to remember what he looked like as a child – the shape of his features when he smiled or laughed – but he could recall nothing. There was no childhood to remember, no smile, no laughter.
He heard his own heavy footfall on the ground: right, left, right, left. Lub dub lub dub. Slow, regular beats, interposed by periods of silence as black as death. He coughed and spat out a lump of blood-tinged saliva. The bamboo switch fell onto his back; its sting told him he was naked and had not yet died. He lost his sense of optimism and spat again. Hearing the commanding tones of that familiar voice, he pulled the implement from its black sheath, and sighted carefully on the point midway between the two eyes. The harsh voice shouted,
‘Fire!’
He fired.
The tall, crooked body dropped; a long thread of blood streamed from a hole exactly at the midpoint of the knobby protrusion on the centre brow. The blood cut across the figure’s eyes, cheeks, nose and lips, to circle his small, rounded, child-like chin.
He was not one child, but rather thousands or millions of children, whose bodies had tumbled onto the asphalt. Every child’s face was marked by a long thread of blood that ran from eyes to nose to mouth and the reverse. The sun fell over the asphalt, the sky turned a pure blue, and the gods came into sight, massed together, sitting in rows, one leg over the other, smoking from a waterpipe.
Hamido stretched out his leg; it collided with another leg. He extended his arm; it bumped against another. He was drowning in a sea of dead bodies. He began to swim, using both arms and legs, through the vast ocean. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath, and turned around to find out where he was or who had brought him here. He remembered nothing except that he had been a child, and that a strong fist had pushed him in the back and hurled him into the sea. He saw the hand sketched on the wall: a large palm like his father’s but with fingers that were swollen and cracked like his mother’s. His lips parted; he shouted ‘Mama!’ His mother’s black eyes looked at him, the black tarha covering her head and neck, shoulders and belly.
She was standing not far away, her tall frame motionless, the rise of her chest firm and still next to his head. He put his head on her chest, and buried his nose between her breasts. But his mother’s strong hand pushed him away, causing him to glance up in her direction. There he saw his father’s wide eyes, the red streaks gleaming like thin snakes over the whites, an
d he heard his father’s coarse voice.
‘Only blood washes away shame.’
He approached his father, staring steadily into his eyes. The red streaks over the large whites trembled. (A person takes fright if he sees an open eye gazing at him unblinkingly, for such a stare means that the eye is examining him thoroughly to see him as he really is.)
His father backed away, and, with just one step to the rear, the lamplight fell squarely on to his face. He brought one big palm upwards to hide his face, but the light exposed his tall, large body as he stood there, blocking the door. He blew at the wisp of light, and it went out. The darkness now became so dense that it was impossible to distinguish the floor from the walls, or the walls from the ceiling. His large, bare foot stumbled on the slight rise of the threshold. But he regained his balance, and sprang forward panther-like on tensile feet. He moved on, slowly and cautiously, stepping over something which looked very much like the backless leather slippers worn by men in the countryside.
Hamido shrieked, his voice childlike; but his body was not that of a child. His hand plunged into his pocket, which was as long as a sheath, and drew out the hard metal implement. He determined the spot halfway between the white circles, over which the red threads glistened, and sighted. He held his breath, and shut his eyes, and pulled the trigger.
He opened his eyes and saw the tall, bowed body stretched out in the sun, its dilated eyes turned upward and its right arm dangling to the side, grasping something. Hamido opened the fingers, and the penny fell into his palm. He closed his hand over it, and went to the shop to buy tobacco. He bought a sweet and put it in his mouth. He turned to go back, but the shopkeeper asked him for the penny. He opened his closed hand and found nothing. The shopkeeper snatched up his stick and set off behind Hamido at a run.
God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels Page 36