God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels (14 page)

At certain moments it would seem to her that she had died, and then come back to life in the bus which continued to ride over the river bank along the Nile. She lifted her head to try and get a glimpse of the river, but the bodies around her obstructed the windows and doors and she could see only the roof of the bus pitch black as though covered with oven soot.

She did not realize that the bus had come to a stop except when she felt Zeinab tug at her hand and say, ‘We get down here, Aunt.'

She rested her hands on Zeinab's back and got down from the bus. Her face went very pale, and her eyes seemed to grow even blacker than usual, when she looked around and found
neither river, nor river banks, neither mud huts nor muddy lanes, but wide shining streets, huge buildings, cars that raced along one after the other, and trams from which arose a strange clanging, or shrieking noise. The people, too, were different. The women walked along on high heels, and their thighs and breasts were partly exposed by the tight fitting clothes they wore. Gentlemen crowded through the streets in such great numbers that it was difficult to tell how many of them there were. On either side were rows of shops and the movement in the streets was rapid, almost hectic and flowed along unceasingly accompanied by a high-pitched, hectic roar. She held on to Zeinab's hand tightly and pressed her body up as close to her as she could.

‘My head's whirling round, Zeinab,' she said. ‘Don't leave me. Hold on to my hand. I don't know whether it's my head that's going round all the time, or things around me.'

But Zeinab's head was also in a whirl. Her big black eyes kept looking at what went on around her with a growing amazement. The old man in turn started to lean on Zeinab, while the young woman held on to him tightly. The four of them stood there amidst the flow of passers-by, huddled together for support. Their mouths were gaping in astonishment, and their eyes darted here and there or went round and round with the same frenzied movement as the bustling crowds.

After a while they started to walk along in single
file close to a high wall, stepping warily over the ground, overcome
by
the feeling that as soon as one of their feet touched the ground it would be caught up in one of the churning wheels of the cars which raced up and down. Zeinab asked one of the passers-by where they could find the tram which would take them to El Sayeda. The man pointed to a column rising up from the ground and said, ‘Stand here until the tram comes.'

They stood where the man told them. It was a place full of people. When Zeinab looked up she could see long wires stretching overhead above the street. Opposite where they stood was a huge building, and behind the wires was a huge picture which showed a naked woman lying on her back with her legs open, and three men pointing their pistols at her.

She hid her face behind her shawl and said in a low voice, ‘Shame on them.'

The people getting on and off the tram kept pushing against one another on the small step which looked as though it could easily give way under the pressure. Zeinab hung on to an iron rail and pulled Zakeya up behind her. Then it was the turn of the young woman, followed by the old man who was hanging on carefully to his basket of figs. But just as he was opening a way for himself, the basket slipped from his shoulder and fell under the wheels of the tram. The old man jumped off after it. Someone screamed, then there were several screams. The figs rolled over the step and were scattered over the asphalt road, to be squashed under the shoes of the people walking along. The conductor quickly blew his whistle and the tram came to a halt.

Zakeya did not see what had happened. She could not tell whether the tram was moving or had come to a stop. She closed her eyes in an attempt to prevent her head from going round and round. When she opened her eyes again her body was shaking with the movement of the tram. Zeinab was sitting next to her, and in front of her was a small window through which she could see the street full of people walking up and down. She could also glimpse the tall buildings on one side. Many of them were covered with huge posters showing almost naked women, lying down, or sitting or standing with their legs apart. In front of them there were always gentlemen and they all carried pistols. She felt that something had happened in the tram, clasped Zeinab's hand tightly by the fingers and enquired, ‘What's the matter?'

‘The old man,' said Zeinab, ‘fell under the wheels of the tram and has gone to the Kasr El Aini Hospital instead of El Sayeda.'

Zakeya gestured with her hand as though pointing to something going on outside the window of the tram way up in the sky. ‘Only Allah is all-powerful, my child. Is the world here mad, or is it your Aunt Zakeya who has lost her mind?'

‘May Allah make you whole and keep your mind as good as it has always been. Thanks be to Allah you are all right, my Aunt, and Allah will make you even better after you have visited El Sayeda.'

‘Blessed you will always be, our lady,' murmured Zakeya.

XIII

The bodies of Zakeya and Zeinab seemed to become one with the compact mass of human flesh which flowed into El Sayeda Zeinab mosque filling it up and overflowing to the area around, the narrow streets which led to it, the main thoroughfare traversed by the trams that came and went and the big square to which it led. It was a mass composed of human bodies all wearing long
galabeyas
. The women could be distinguished from the men by the black shawls they wore over their heads. The myriad throng walked barefoot, their toes big and flat, their heels dark and cracked, the palms of their hands rough and horny with a groove made in the middle by the hoe, or the plough or the
tambour
.
^*
The faces were pale, and drawn, and thin, the eyes black and big, wide open with wonder, or half closed in a kind of stupor or daze, the mouths gaping in one big gasp which took in the air and kept it inside.

Zakeya held on tightly to Zeinab's hand, and she stuck so closely to her that she almost walked in her steps, afraid that the slightest distance between them, even if only a hair's breadth,
might lead to her getting lost in this mighty human ocean. But as they moved along somehow people managed to slip between them and in the flash of an eye Zakeya lost sight of Zeinab. Yet for some obscure reason she no longer felt afraid, or alone. Everything around her was now familiar, known, lived before. The
galabeyas
dropping down over people's bodies were like her
galabeya
, and the sweat of their bodies had the same odour as her sweat. The faces, the feet, the toes, the way they walked, and stared and spoke were things she shared in common with them. She was a part of this compact mass of human bodies, and it was like a part of her.

She was no longer afraid and her eyes ceased to search among the crowds for Zeinab. For all the faces she saw were like Zeinab's, and all the voices she heard reminded her of Zeinab's voice. Even the words, the way they pronounced them, their very intonation, the lifting of hands to the heavens, the single unchanging cry, ‘O God, come to our rescue, O God' chanted out in one voice, made her feel that all these people were Zeinab.

They were sick or blind. They were young or old. They were children or babes in arms. They were sheikhs of sects, or beggars or thieves. They were sorcerers, and fortune-tellers, people who made amulets or recited religious chants. They were saints of God, intermediaries to His Grace, guardians of the doors to Heaven. All of them like Zakeya and Zeinab raised the palms of their rough hands in one uniform movement to Allah on high and chanted in one voice, in one breath, ‘O God.'

Zeinab too had ceased looking for Zakeya. Her face was now only one of the innumerable faces, a drop in the human ocean, a single garment amongst a million robes, an invisible particle in the infinite universe, a pair of hands lifted to the heavens amidst a forest of hands fluttering in the wind, a voice joined to myriad voices in one prolonged, imploring chant, more like a wail of despair than anything else. ‘O God, come to our rescue.' The voice of Zakeya too pierced through her lips in a high-pitched shriek which rose from her inner depths, like the cry from a slaughtered neck, or the gasp of a wounded chest.

Zeinab's heart was beating wildly as she cried out ‘O God.' It seemed to leap against her ribs, and shake her small breasts under the bodice of her long robe. Her eyes shone with a mysterious gleam like moonlight on a dark, silent stream. She shivered every now and then with a strange fever hidden in her depths, and the blood rose to her face in a virginal flush as though this was the first time her heart had beaten for anyone.

So she cried out ‘O God' and with every cry she felt she came closer to Him, so that now He could hear her voice and feel her breath on Him. She, too, could hear His Voice and feel His Breath. Her body had become one with Him, and she shivered with a sudden fear which was more like a deep sorrow, with a feeling of relief more like deep pleasure. She wanted to weep, to shriek with joy, to close her eyes and abandon herself to Him, to savour to the end this feeling of relief, of a body no longer under tension, of a deep pleasure she had
never experienced before. But somehow deep inside her there remained a fearful sadness, an exhaustion, an anxiety which prevented her from sleeping, or even from just closing her eyes. So there she sat through the long hours with wide-open staring eyes, almost unaware of what went on around her.

But suddenly she heard someone call out her name, ‘Zeinab!' She realized at once that it was the voice of God. She had called out to Him all through the night and now He was calling out to her in turn. She whispered ‘O God' and He answered ‘Zeinab.' She moved towards the voice as though in a dream. She did not know whether she was walking on legs, or flying on wings. The compact mass of bodies around her, the myriad voices resounding in her ears fell back, and disappeared, leaving an empty space in which echoed one voice calling out ‘Zeinab.' She saw a face emerge in front of her from what might have been a thick mist, or a dense cloud of smoke. It was not the face of a man, nor that of a woman. It was not the face of a young child or of an old person. It was a face without sex or age, like that of Om Saber. Instead of the black shawl she wore, the head was covered in a huge white turban which reached down midway to the eyebrows concealing the dark pitted skin over the upper half of the forehead. The skin of the face also was blotched and pitted as though the old smallpox had left its marks. The eyes were small without lashes, or even lids. Just two dark holes staring unmovingly at Zeinab.

‘Are you Zeinab, daughter of Kafrawi?' the voice said.

She gasped out a frightened ‘Yes.' Deep inside her another voice asked, ‘How did he recognize me amidst all these people?' But another voice replied almost immediately, ‘Praise be to Allah, for He knows all things.'

‘Where is your aunt, Zakeya?' asked the man.

And the voice echoed inside her again. ‘He also knows that my aunt's name is Zakeya. It's amazing…'

She looked round trying to find out where her aunt had gone. She could see her nowhere. But after a short while she realized that Zakeya's hand was still tightly clasped around hers, and that her shivering body was pressed closely up against her. She could hear her muttering verses and words under her breath.

The man came close to Zakeya, put out his dark, gnarled hand to the neck of her
galabeya
, took hold of the amulet she was wearing between his fingers, and took it off her neck. He recited a few verses, paused for a moment, and then put it back around her neck. Zakeya followed what he was doing intently, with an expression of deep reverence in her eyes, as though she was about to kneel and prostrate herself at his feet. As soon as his hand was still, she bent over and pressed her lips to it with a passionate fervour, muttering to herself. The man abandoned his dark, gnarled hand to her, and turned to Zeinab.

‘Your aunt Zakeya is sick. She is sick because you have continued to disobey Allah, and she has encouraged you to do
that. But Allah is all merciful, and kind, and He will forgive both of you on condition that you obey, and do what He asks of you. He will cure her of all sickness, if He so will, blessed be His Name on high.'

They raised their hands to the heavens and chanted in one breath, ‘We thank, and praise Thee. For Thou art the generous and the bountiful one, O God.'

‘You are to spend the night in the bosom of El Sayeda,' said the man. ‘Then tomorrow before dawn you are to start out for Kafr El Teen. There bathe yourselves with clean water from the Nile, and while you wash continue to recite the testimony. Once dressed you should do your prayers. Start with the four ordained prostrations, then follow them with the four
Sunna
^*
prostrations. After that you are to repeat the holy verse of the
Seat
ten times. On the following day, before dawn, Zeinab is to take another bath with clean water from the Nile, meanwhile repeating the testimony three times. Then do her prayer at the crack of dawn. Once this is over she is to open the door of your house before sunrise, stand on the threshold facing its direction and recite the first verse of the Koran ten times. In front of her she will see a big iron gate.
She is to walk towards it, open it and walk in. She must never walk out of it again until the owner of the house orders her to do so. He is a noble and great man, born of a noble and great father, and he belongs to a good and devout family blessed by Allah and His Prophet. During this time Zakeya should lead the buffalo to the field, tie it to the water-wheel, take her hoe and work until the call to noon prayers. As soon as she hears it she should put down her hoe and pray the four ordained prostrations, followed by the four
Sunna
prostrations. After her prayers are over she must remain in the kneeling position and recite the opening verse of the Koran ten times, then raise her hands to the heavens, and repeat “Forgive me, O God” thirty times. As soon as she is over with this she is to get up, and wipe her face in the palms of her hand, and, God willing, she will find herself completely cured.'