by Tayeb Salih
Zein comprised a group all on his own. He used to spend the greater part of the time with the Mahjoub ‘gang’—in fact he was actually one of the major responsibilities imposed upon it. They were careful to keep him out of trouble, and if he did get himself into a fix it was they who would come to his rescue. They knew more about him than his own mother did, and they kept a watchful eye on him from afar, for they had a great affection for him and he for them. Yet on the question of the Imam he made up a camp all on his own. He treated him with rudeness and if he met him approaching from afar he would leave the road clear for him. The Imam was perhaps the only person Zein hated; his mere presence at a gathering was enough to spoil Zein’s peace of mind and start him cursing and shouting. The Imam would react to Zein’s outbursts with dignity, sometimes saying that people had spoiled Zein by treating him as someone unusual and that to regard him as a holy person was a lot of rubbish, that if only he had been brought up properly he would have grown up as normal as anyone else. Who knows, though, perhaps he too felt uneasy within himself when Zein gave him one of his glaring looks, for everyone knew that Zein was a favourite of Haneen and that Haneen was a holy man who would not frequent the company of someone unless he had perceived in him a glimmering of spiritual light.
Matters, however, became sadly confused during ‘the year of Haneen’, for Seif ad-Din’s ‘treachery’ or his ‘repentance’— according to the camp you belonged to—had weakened one group and lent strength to another. Seif ad-Din had been the hero of ‘the Oasis’, its stalwart leader. When he changed over to the camp of ‘the sensible and the pious’, terror struck into the hearts of his old friends. For one thing, having inherited money, it was he who generally paid for the drinks, and he was a useful curtain behind which to hide when making merry, the village being more concerned about him than them. Some of them, having seen in him a true symbol of the spirit of unrestraint and revolt, suddenly had the ground collapse under their feet. Seif ad-Din, furthermore, exploited his knowledge of their inner secrets and so became their most dangerous adversary. The Imam’s power was greatly strengthened by Seif ad-Din. ‘The Oasis’ had always been his chief concern, regarding it as he did as a symbol of evil and corruption, seldom delivering a sermon without mentioning it. Now that Seif ad-Din had returned to the straight and narrow path, the Imam’s sermons grew increasingly savage and his attacks increasingly strong. Seif ad-Din was the example he gave every time of how Good was in the end victorious. The Imam paid no heed to the fact that Haneen, who represented the mystical side of the spiritual world—a side he did not recognize—was the direct cause of Seif ad-Din’s repentance. The middle camp, Mahjoub’s group, was not greatly affected, for they regarded ‘the Oasis’ in exactly the same way as the Imam did—as an inevitable evil—and were not greatly concerned that some of the young men of the village were drinking, so long as this did not have an affect on the natural course of life. They only interfered if they heard that a young man who had got drunk had attacked some local woman or man. In such a case they resorted to their own special methods which differed from those of the Imam. In their support of the rest of the people in attempting to destroy ‘the Oasis’, they did not regard their work in the same way as the Imam did; an attempt to make Good victorious over Evil. Rather their view was that the disappearance of ‘the Oasis’ was a matter of expediency and that they were better off without it.
The fact was that the Imam was overjoyed about Seif ad-Din. He began mentioning him in his sermons, speaking as though addressing him personally, and they could be seen going in and out of the mosque together. Once, seeing Seif ad-Din and the Imam walking together arm in arm, Ahmed Isma’il said to Mahjoub: ‘Badawi’s son has switched his allegiance from the slave-girls to the Imam.’
The Imam had his own views about Zein’s marriage to Ni’ma daughter of Hajj Ibrahim.
Mahjoub entered Sa’eed’s shop and placed a coin on the table. Sa’eed picked it up in silence, took down a packet of Players’ cigarettes and put it, together with the change, in Mahjoub’s hand. Mahjoub lit a cigarette, took two or three pulls, then raised his face to the sky and gazed at it intently, though without emotion, as though it were a piece of sandy land unsuitable for cultivation. ‘The Pleiades are out,’ he said listlessly: ‘time for cultivating the millet.’ Sa’eed remained engrossed in taking out packets from boxes and placing them on the shelf. After that Mahjoub moved away and sat down opposite the shop—not on the bench but on the sand, their favourite spot where the light from the lamp touched them with the tip of its tongue. Sometimes, when they were plunged in laughter, the light and shadow danced above their heads as though they were immersed in a sea in which they floated and dipped. After that came Ahmed Isma’il, shuffling along in his usual way; he threw himself down on his back on the sand near Mahjoub without speaking. Then came Abdul Hafeez and Hamad Wad Rayyis; they were laughing and did not greet their friend, and he did not ask them what they were laughing about. That was something else about this little group; each somehow knew, without enquiring, what went on in the mind of the other. Having spat on the ground, Mahjoub said, ‘Are you still carrying on about Sa’eed the Idiot?’
Ahmed Isma’il, turning round on to his stomach, said as though addressing the sand: ‘The woman must want to divorce him.’
Abdul Hafeez said jovially that Sa’eed the Idiot’s wife had come to him in the fields and told him tearfully that she wanted to divorce Sa’eed. On enquiring the reason, she told him that Sa’eed had spoken cruelly to her the previous night; he had told her she was ‘a stinking old hag’—just like that—because she didn’t use perfume or make-up like other women. When she had answered back he had slapped her on the face and said: ‘Off with you and take some lessons from the Headmaster’s daughters.’
Meanwhile Taher Rawwasi had arrived and seated himself quietly in the patch of sand where the light did not reach. He laughed and said, ‘The cheeky fellow has perhaps asked the Headmaster to let him marry one of his daughters.’
Abdul Hafeez said that he had set the woman’s mind at rest, sending her back home and telling her he would be along to talk to Sa’eed. He had in fact gone to him at midday. When, though, he had come to the door of the house he had found it locked. From within he had heard the gay, happy laughter of Sa’eed and his wife; he had heard Sa’eed saying to her, as though biting her ear: ‘Cry, little sister, come along, cry,’ at which they had laughed, each in his own manner. Ahmed Isma’il burst into loud laughter, giving out a roar that came from between his chest and his stomach. Mahjoub laughed inside his mouth, making a little clucking noise with his tongue. Abdul Hafeez laughed like a child; Hamad Wad Rayyis did so with the whole of his body, especially his feet, while Taher Rawwasi held his head in both hands when he laughed. Sa’eed, in his shop, gave his harsh laugh which resembled the sound of a saw on wood. ‘The wicked fellow!’ said Mahjoub. ‘How does he manage it in this heat?’
And so their conversation rambled on, a desultory conversation interspersed with periods of silence. Their silences, however, were not so much gaps in the conversation as extensions of it. One of them had only to utter a fragmentary phrase such as ‘He’s got no brains’ for the others to say, ‘A man with nothing to do always sits in judgment on others,’ to which yet another would add, ‘We told you ages ago to remove him from the committee and you said “no”,’ to which the answer would be, ‘Please God, this will be his last year.’
A stranger would not know what they were talking about. It was their manner of talking: they talked as though they were thinking aloud, as though their minds moved in harmony, as though in some way or other they were one large mind. Their conversation would go on monotonously like this, then one of them would by chance say a sentence or mention some incident that would fire the imagination of them all at the same time. Suddenly they would be charged with life, like a bundle of straw that has caught fire. The one reclining on his back would sit up straight, another would clasp his hands round his knees, the one s
itting far off would draw nearer, and Sa’eed would emerge from his shop. They would then come closer together, as though towards that point, that something in the centre, to which they all strive. Mahjoub leans forward, Ahmed Isma’il’s hands are plunged into the sand, and Wad Rayyis presses his against his neck. It is at times like this that you see them all together, between light and darkness, as though they are drowning in a sea. Sometimes they grow agitated in their conversation and quarrel, the words issuing out of their mouths like pieces of rock, their sentences broken up, all speaking at one and the same time in raised voices. On such occasions a stranger would think them an uncouth bunch. For this reason opinions differ concerning them, according to the moments at which people have seen them. Some of the villagers regard them as taciturn people because they happened upon them in circumstances when their conversation was confined to ‘Ah’ and ‘Oh’ and ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ Others would say of them that they laughed with the abandon of children because it happened that they had come across them on an occasion when they were guffawing with laughter. Mousa al-Baseer, however, swears that when he accompanied Mahjoub to the market—a distance of two hours by donkey—he didn’t utter a single word. People would keep away when the group was ‘in session’, for at such times they sensed that its members preferred not to have a stranger in their midst.
Though seeming to behave in a uniform fashion, you would, if closely associated with them for a time, realize the differences that made each one of them a separate individual. Ahmed Isma’il, because of his youth, was the one most disposed to gaiety and did not worry about getting drunk on special occasions; he was also the best dancer at wedding feasts. Abdul Hafeez was the most polite to people who did not think along the same lines as ‘the gang’—as they called themselves and were so known. It was he who would inform them that so-and-so’s son had married and that so-and-so’s father had died, that so-and-so (an inhabitant of a quarter far from their own) had returned from a journey, so that they could go—usually as a group—to offer congratulations or condolences. Occasionally he would attend prayers at the mosque, a fact he would attempt to hide from the others. Taher Rawwasi was the most hot-tempered of them, the quickest to seize hold of his stick or draw his knife in times of trouble. Sa’eed was the best at arguing with government officials and was nicknamed ‘the attorney’. Hamad Wad Rayyis had a sensitive ear for scandal, which he would collect from the farthest corners of the village and recount to them at suitable moments during their gatherings; it was he whom they generally deputed to deal with women’s problems in the village. Mahjoub was the craftiest and most astute; like a rock buried under the sands against which one strikes if one digs too deeply, his stolidness showed itself in times of real emergency, when he would take over the captaincy of the ship, he giving the orders and they carrying them out. Once when a new Commissioner came to the district, they met up with him on one or two occasions, talked to him, argued with him; they then came to the conclusion among themselves that he was not suitable. After a month things came to a head with the Commissioner saying to some people that ‘Mahjoub’s gang’ was controlling everything in the village: they were members of the hospital committee and the schools’ committees, and the agricultural project committee was entirely made up of them. They heard that the Commissioner had said: ‘Aren’t there any men in the village apart from that lot?’ On discussing the matter among themselves they were disposed to submit to the inevitable, and some of them offered to resign from membership of the various committees. However, ‘Everybody is to stay put,’ said Mahjoub, and no more than another month went by before the Commissioner was transferred. How was this accomplished? Mahjoub has special methods of his own in extreme situations.
They were laughing, when they heard Zein swearing at the top of his voice: ‘The good-for-nothing, the he-donkey.’ As he came up to where they were he remained for a while standing above them, his legs wide apart, his hands on his waist. The whole top half of him was in light and they noticed that his eyes were more bloodshot than usual.
‘What are you looming over us like that for?’ said Taher Rawwasi. ‘Either sit down or push off.’
‘Zein must be drunk tonight,’ said Ahmed Isma’il.
‘Sit down and have a smoke,’ said Abdul Hafeez.
‘They said you were in the Omda’s house tonight,’ said Hamad Wad Rayyis. ‘What were you after? They’ve married off the girl, so what’s the point?’
Zein took the cigarette offered to him by Abdul Hafeez and sat down in silence, blowing into it angrily. ‘Not like that, you scallywag,’ Taher Rawwasi said to him with a laugh. ‘Making yourself out so sophisticated and you don’t know how to smoke a cigarette. Draw it in—that’s it. Just as though you were sucking at it.’
Zein succeeded in drawing the smoke into his mouth and then puffing out a large cloud. For an instant it remained motionless, then melted away into tiny trails of smoke, some making towards the light, others mingling with the blackness of the night on the dark side.
One of the Koz bedouin approached the shop and Sa’eed went up to him. They heard him saying to Sa’eed: ‘Five pounds of sugar and half a pound of tea.’
‘Those bedouin,’ said Ahmed Isma’il, ‘spend all their money on sugar and tea.’
Here Zein shouted at Sa’eed: ‘Have the women make some strong tea with milk—freshly brewed.’
‘Certainly, boss,’ Sa’eed said to him. ‘We’ll make you some freshly brewed tea with milk.’ Then he called out from a window that linked up the shop with the house behind it; ‘Make some strong tea with milk at once for the boss.’
Zein was elated and said, ‘I’m the manliest chap in this place, aren’t I?’
‘Of course,’ Taher said to him.
‘Then why did that he-donkey of a man go off to my uncle and say that Zein wasn’t a man for matrimony?’
‘The clever lad’s getting all posh-sounding,’ said Mahjoub. ‘Where did you learn all this highfalutin stuff from—“not a man for matrimony,” indeed?’
Said Wad Rayyis: ‘The Imam’s jealous of you—he wants the woman for himself.’
‘Is she my cousin or isn’t she? He should go off and find himself a cousin of his own,’ said Zein.
‘The wedding ceremony’s next Thursday,’ Mahjoub told him firmly. ‘After that there’ll be no more fooling about and dancing and talking nonsense. Do you hear or don’t you?’
Zein was silent.
‘Who was it told you?’ Taher Rawwasi asked him.
‘She herself spoke to me,’ said Zein.
Mahjoub had stretched his legs out on the sand and was propping himself up with his arms. When he heard this his body gave a shudder as though he’d been stung and he sat bolt upright. ‘She herself spoke to you?’
‘She came to me early in the morning at home and said to me in front of my mother: ‘On Thursday they’ll marry me to you. You and I will be man and wife. We’ll live together and be together”.’
‘She’s certainly a woman to fill the eye all right,’ said Mahjoub with boundless admiration, his voice raised in enthusiasm. ‘I’ll divorce if there’s another girl like that.’ Sa’eed came along with the tea and Mahjoub said to him: ‘Did you hear that? The girl went off herself and told him.’