God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels (35 page)

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She opened her eyes and saw the wardrobe, the clothes-stand, the window and the ceiling with that jagged patch, and looked around bewildered. So she had not disappeared? This was her very same room, this her heavy head on the pillow and her body with its weight and density stretched out under the covers. This was the sound of shuffling feet approaching the room and this the brown, lined face looking in from the door. She saw the large eyes looking at her and heard the feeble voice say:

‘What's the matter, daughter? What's the matter, Fouada?' She shook her head, saying hoarsely:

‘Nothing, Mama, if only I were dead!'

‘Why, Fouada? Death is for old people like me. You used to hate even the mention of it.'

‘Farid,' she whispered.

‘What?' her mother exclaimed in alarm. ‘Is Farid dead?'

‘No, no! He's only away, he'll come back,' she said shuddering.

She hid her face under the cover, swallowing the strangely bitter and acrid taste in her mouth. Where had it come from? She began to remember. She had been standing in the desert staring into space, had felt Saati behind her. He had put his arm around her waist and his eyes came nearer, growing larger and more prominent. She had felt his cold lips press on her lips, and his large teeth against hers. Her nostrils filled with a strange metallic smell like that of rusted iron, and her mouth filled with bitter saliva.

Yes, she saw and felt, but not clearly, not surely. It was all slow-moving and distant – like a nightmare. She had tried to hit him but her arm would not lift.

She reached beneath the cover and felt her arm. It was there and she moved it to pull the handkerchief from under the pillow and spat into it repeatedly. But the hot bitterness clung inside her mouth and she felt she was about to vomit. She threw back the covers and went to the bathroom, but the desire to vomit had passed. Almost viciously she scrubbed her teeth with brush and paste, and gargled, but the bitterness burned in her throat and was slowly seeping down.

Her mother's slender hand was on her shoulder.

‘What happened to Farid?'

She raised her eyes. There was a strange look in her mother's eyes and she shuddered.

‘I don't know. I don't know. Leave me alone, Mama.'

She returned to her room and sat on the edge of the bed, clutching her head in her hands. The telephone rang and she jumped. It must be him. His mean, coarse voice would come down the line. He would surely come. Why didn't the earth spin off-balance and the telephone crash and break? But the earth turned without fail, and the telephone would neither crash nor break. His voice would surely come through the holes in the receiver just as the wind comes through holes in the door. He would come without fail. His bitterness would burn her throat and his nauseous smell fill her nostrils. Why not dress and run away?

She hauled up her heavy body and dressed. Her mother's eyes watched her in silence, a strange expression in them. Stumbling to the door she paused to look at her… She could stay with her – wanted to stay with her – but she opened the door and went out.

Mindlessly she dragged her body through the streets. Her head was quiet, but not calmly, naturally quiet, but with a kind of paralysis, tranquillized, as if her brain cells were stilled by drugs.

She let her feet go their own way without directions from the head. Why always the head? Why wasn't the mind in the
legs? The head does nothing more than be carried on the shoulders, then it rules and controls, while the legs do the work as well as carry the head, the shoulders and the whole body without ever being in control. Just as in life. Those who work and toil do not rule while the heads continue to be carried by necks, relishing the fruits and issuing controls.

Farid's words again. The tone of his voice, the movement of his hand, were still in her head. Why? When he was gone? How did his words, his movements, come to be creeping through her head once again?

She walked beside the flower garden. The scent of jasmine drifted to her. Farid's breath on her face with its smell, its warmth, and the touch of his lips on her neck returned. Her pale hand lifted – to touch his face – but it trembled in the air, then fell by her side.

The Nile was just as it always was, languid, eternal and infinite; its long, ruffled body, winding, languorous – like an aged whore, abandoned, content and without care. Fouada looked about her. Everything was abandoned, content, without care. And she? Couldn't she too be without care – carefree? Couldn't she become one of those mummified heads in the office? Couldn't she put her name to research she had not done like the smart, successful ones do?

Her eyes scanned the sky and earth. What had she wanted from the start? She hadn't wanted anything, hadn't wanted to succeed or shine. She had only felt, felt there was something
in her that was not in others. She would not simply live and die, and the world remain the same. She had felt something in her head, the conception of a unique idea, but how to give it birth? The idea was awake, alive and struggling, but it did not emerge, seeming as if imprisoned by a thick wall, thicker than the bones of her skull.

She was all feelings, but how else does anything new begin? How did any discoverer who changed science or history begin? Doesn't it all begin with feelings? And what are feelings? An obscure idea, a mysterious movement in the brain cells. Yes. Isn't the beginning always a mysterious movement in the brain cells? So why mock at her feelings? Why deny them? The first time she saw Saati, hadn't she felt that he was a thief? Had her feelings about the towering building and the long car betrayed her? Had the Supreme Board and the political council and the newspaper articles changed her first feelings? Despite everything, hadn't she continued to feel that he was a thief? Hadn't her brain cells picked up that invisible lie in the shiftiness of his bulging eyes? So why disregard her feelings?

She stood still for a moment and asked herself, had she ever before doubted her feelings? When had the doubt begun? When? She glanced around and caught sight of the door of the small restaurant and remembered. It was that night, that dark, gusty night when she entered the restaurant and saw the empty, uncovered table, the wind hitting it from all sides, like the buffeted stump of a tree.

Her feet approached the restaurant door apprehensively. Should she go in? What would she find? Perhaps, perhaps she would find him, perhaps he had come back. Her feet moved slowly, step by step towards the door. She paused to take a deep breath, then entered the long tree-lined passageway, knees quaking and heart pounding. She would come out of the passageway and look at the table and not find him. Better to go back right now. Yes, better to go back … yet there was a hope that he was there, sitting at the table, his back leaning slightly forward, his thick black hair, his ears always flushed, his gleaming brown eyes in which that strange thing moved, that thing she sensed without seeing, something which made him
him
, his individuality, his particular words, thoughts and smell, made him Farid and not one of a million other men.

She turned to go back, but her feet moved her forward, down to the end of the passageway, then turned to the left. She stood with head bowed for a moment, unable to look up. Then she raised her head and her eyes met a brick wall. The table, everything, had gone; all she saw was a short wall in the open air like those walls that are built around the dead.

She heard a soft voice behind her ask:

‘Do you want any fish?'

She turned to see a woman carrying a child. It was not a child, more a tiny skeleton, its small toothless jaws grasping a shrivelled breast that hung from the woman's chest like a strip of leather. The woman looked at her through half-closed, congested eyes and repeated in a weak voice:

‘Do you want any fish?'

Fouada swallowed the bitterness in her mouth and said absently:

‘There used to be a small restaurant here.'

‘Yes,' the woman replied, ‘but the owner lost his money and left the place.'

‘And who took it?' she asked.

‘The municipality,' the woman said.

‘Who built this wall?'

‘The municipality,' the woman replied.

Contemplating the wide open space, she asked:

‘What did they build it for?'

Tugging at a dry breast and putting it between the child's jaws, the woman answered:

‘My husband says the municipality built this wall to put its name on.'

The woman added:

‘Do you want any fish?'

She smiled weakly and said:

‘Not today. Perhaps I'll come back to buy another time.'

She left by the small door and walked down the street. There was no longer hope, no longer anything, only a brick wall, a short brick wall, good for nothing except the names of the dead.

No, there was only a wall. Was there nothing else? There was nothing. Everything had disappeared, as when a dream
fades. What was the difference between dream and reality? If he had left a small note in his handwriting she could have known, a piece of paper with letters on it could have made the difference between dream and reality, whereas she, with her head and arms and legs, she could not.

She shook her head angrily. It was as heavy as stone, as if it too had become a wall. Was there anything else? Anything apart from a blank wall that returned an echo, returned what it heard and what it read? Could it say anything of its own? Had it ever said anything new … that no one had ever said before? Did it not emit that uninterrupted, humming sound when all was silent?

The humming began in her head. Holding her head in her hands she sat on a stone wall. She stayed with head lowered for a second, then raised her weary eyes to the sky. Was it all a dream? Were her feelings an illusion? If her feelings lied, what was true? What could she believe? A name written on a wall? A name signed to a study? A word printed in a newspaper?

The sky … was it the highest wall of all? Silent like any other wall? Raising her hands in the air she said out loud:

‘Are you a wall? Why are you silent?'

A man walking in the street stared at her and approached, examined her with narrow, black eyes, then smiled a half-smile and said:

‘I'll pay you only one riyal. Your legs are too thin.'

She looked at him, alarmed, then dragged her heavy body off the wall and let her legs carry her unthinkingly home.

* * *

The door of the house was open, the living room was full of people. Faces she knew and those she didn't looked at her curiously. She heard a loud sound like a scream and saw a face that resembled her mother's, but unlined. It was her aunt Souad, with her fat body in a tight black dress, who yelled: ‘Fouada!'

She wrapped her short, fat arms around her. Many women surrounded her, screaming with one voice; the smell of scent rose from their black clothing. Half choking, she pushed the fat bodies away from her, shouting loudly:

‘Get away from me!'

The women withdrew, bewildered. With heavy steps, she went slowly to her mother's room. She was lying on her bed, her head and body covered. Fearfully she approached and cautiously put out a hand to draw back the cover. Her mother's head wrapped in a white headcloth appeared, her face lined, eyes closed, mouth pressed tight, small gold earrings in her ears. She was sleeping as she always did, except that no breathing was perceptible. Fouada searched her face. Her features were changing bit by bit, as though collapsing into her face and clinging to her bones, the blood draining away.

A shiver ran through her body. Her mother's face had become like that of a stone statue, radiating an eerie coldness.
She replaced the cover over the head, trembling. The screaming ran in her ears, uninterrupted and piercing. Dazed, she stumbled to her room, but it, too, was filled with faces she did not know.

She went into the living room. Strange eyes surrounded and encircled her. Screams echoed in her head. Without realizing, she walked towards the door, stood behind it for a moment, then rushed down the stairs and ran out into the street.

She didn't know where she was running, but simply ran, looking over her shoulder as if pursued by a ghost. She wanted to escape, to somewhere distant, where no one would see her. But he did not let her escape. He saw her running down the street, stopped the blue car, and ran after her. He caught her arm, saying:

‘Fouada, where are you running?'

Gasping, she stopped and saw his eyes bulging and quivering behind his glasses. In a bewildered voice, she said:

‘I don't know.'

‘I phoned you an hour ago,' he said, ‘and heard the news.'

Lowering his head, he added:

‘I came to offer you my condolences.'

She wheeled round, the screams still ringing in her ears, the strange staring eyes crowding her from every direction. Burying her face in her hands she broke into tears. Saati helped her to the car, which took them from street to street. On the horizon the sun's last rays were fading. Across the
sky, grey, tear-stained cloud-bodies were spreading. The car emerged into the open country and the desert glowed beneath the headlamps. She remembered her mother's face in the morning, waiting for her before she left the house. There had been a curious look in her eyes, a pleading look asking her to stay, but she had not seen that look as clearly she saw it now. Or had she seen it and consciously or unconsciously pretended not to? She had often pretended to ignore her silent looks, often pretended to ignore them. She had wanted to hurry and get out. Why had she hurried? Why did she go out? Where was she going? Why hadn't she stayed with her this last day? She had been alone, completely alone. Had she called out to her and she was not there to hear? Had she wanted some water and found no one to bring it? Why had she left her this day? Could this day ever return again?

The tears poured into her nose and throat and she opened her mouth for air, gasping, sobbing. The car had stopped. Saati sitting beside her was silent, looking at her long, pale face and staring fixedly into her green, distraught eyes. He put out his plump hand and took her trembling slender one.