God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels (39 page)

She screamed, but no voice came out. A large, flat hand clapped down over her mouth and nose, stifling her. She became aware that a large body smelling of tobacco was pressing down onto her: this wasn't a dream, she realized. Although her eyes were nearly closed, she could make out the features of the face clearly enough to recognize their resemblance to those of her father or brother, one of her uncles or cousins, or another man – any man.

Like all children, when Hamida woke up each morning her mind was clear of the previous night's dreams. Sparrowlike,
she would hop up from the mat and run to her mother with the happy cries of a child who greets the new day with a well-rested body and an empty stomach, eager for even a morsel of bread baked to such hardness that it can crack baby teeth, or a single gulp of milk straight from an udder, or a lump of old, fermented cheese scraped from the bottom of the clay jar.

That morning was no different from any other. But this dream had not been laid to rest, forgotten. Harsh fingers had left red and blue marks on her arms and legs, and she could still feel a pain between her thighs, while the aroma of tobacco clung to her skin.

Thinking it a fever, her mother bound Hamida's head in a kerchief and left her to lie on the mat. Hamida slept the entire day and through the night. She awoke the next morning believing the dream forgotten, as if it had evaporated in the air or been lost in the past, in fact as if it had never been. She jumped up from the mat with her usual energy, except that she felt a slight heaviness in her legs which soon disappeared as she dressed for school and scampered off with the other children.

I could always distinguish Hamida from the rest, for her school pinafore was made of a coarsely woven, faded cream-coloured calico. Moreover, on the back was a stain that had been red a few days before, for as she sat in class, a spot of blood had seeped through her knickers. Her mother, who was always warning her to be ready for this event, had shown her how to put the rough cotton towel carefully between her
thighs, for she was no longer a little girl. How often she had heard her mother's comment: ‘I was your age when I got married – and my breasts weren't even showing yet.'

Whenever Hamida twisted around and saw the stain on the pinafore, she could feel the embarrassment beading her small, even forehead like sweat. She would dash home to take off the pinafore, replacing it with her
galabeya
. Squatting by the metal basin, she would wash out the garment, for it was her only school pinafore. Then she would hang it out on the line, in the sun, so that it would be dry before the next morning.

One day the pinafore became tight. Only with difficulty did she squeeze her body into it, especially from the front, over her belly. Bearing a strange expression that Hamida had never seen before, her mother's eyes came to rest on her belly. It was such a sombre, frightening look that it sent a light shiver through her small body. Her mother's large fingers closed around Hamida's skinny arm.

‘Take off your pinafore!'

Hamida obeyed. She put on her
galabeya
, and huddled by the wall, finding a sunny patch in which to sit. Usually, her mother called her to lend a hand with the kneading or baking, or the cooking, or sweeping the house. Or her father, or one of her uncles, sent her to the shop to buy tobacco. One of her aunts might hand over a still-nursing baby, to be cared for until she returned from working in the field. Or the neighbour would sing out from her rooftop, asking Hamida to fill her
earthenware jar from the river. Her brother, or an uncle, would toss his dirty socks and pants at her for laundering. At sunset, the girls and boys of the neighbourhood would crowd around her. They would all scurry down to the street and play hide-and-seek, or cops and robbers, or ‘the snake's gone, gone', or ‘a grain of salt', or ‘Hamida had a baby'.

But today, nothing of the sort happened. They left her alone, sitting in the sunshine. She couldn't find any way to pass the time except to stare at the path of the sun's disc across the sky. When it set, after a stretch of time, she remained there, sitting stolidly in the darkness, her small body trembling. She sensed something out of the ordinary, but didn't know what. Something dreadful was happening around her, in the darkness, in the dead silence, and in the eyes, everyone's eyes. Not even the chickens who were always about, crowding and pushing to get near her, approached as they normally did. The big black tomcat who usually came up to rub himself against her stopped at a distance and stared at her, his dilated eyes apprehensive, his long, sharply tapered ears held rigid.

Hamida's head drooped over her knees. She dozed off for a moment, or perhaps it was several hours later that she came to, suddenly conscious of long fingers taking hold of her arm. Alarmed, Hamida started, and would have screamed had it not been that her mother's hand was suddenly clapped over her mouth. Her mother's faint voice sounded more like a hiss:

‘Come on, follow me, on your tiptoes.'

As there was no moon, and the half-light that just precedes the dawn had not yet appeared, the night was dark. The entire village was asleep, still and silent in that moment falling between the last hour of the night and the beginnings of day, just before the dawn call to prayer. Her mother's large, bare feet almost ran over the dusty ground, with Hamida following so closely behind that she could almost touch the hem of her mother's gown.

She was just meaning to open her mouth to ask the question in her mind when her mother came to a halt at a squat wall which separated the main country road from the railroad. Hamida knew this wall: she often hid behind it when playing hide-and-seek. Her mother handed her a familiar-looking rectangle of black cloth: it was a
tarha
.

Hamida settled the
tarha
over her head so that it hung down over her body, covering her neck, shoulders, chest, back and belly. Now she looked just like one of the village women. As her mouth formed its question, the train whistle sent a shiver through her mother's body. A harsh tremor shook the ground beneath the woman's feet, and just as harshly her large fist plunged forward suddenly, pushing into her daughter's back, pushing Hamida towards the train. Again, her whispering voice was lowered almost to a hiss:

‘The train doesn't wait for anyone. Go on, run away!'

Hamida leapt towards the approaching train, but then stopped to turn around momentarily. She saw her mother,
standing exactly in the same place, as if rooted to the spot, impassive and motionless. The black
tarha
which enveloped her mother's head, shoulders and bosom was utterly still. Her chest showed not the slightest rise or fall, nor did any part of her show the tiniest movement. Even her eyelashes were frozen in place; she looked like a statue, a real one carved from stone.

The train was now coming into the station: a massive black head emitting smoke. The strong beam of its one large eye exposed the station. It also exposed Hamida, as she stood there out in the open. Hastily, she took cover behind a post. The train slowed, its cars colliding against each other, its iron wheels screeching against the iron rails, producing such a loud and brazen sound as it came to a stop that Hamida thought the noise must have awakened everyone in the village. She rushed towards the train, pulling the edges of the
tarha
around her face to disguise herself as best she could.

She extended one small foot towards the steps leading up into the train. She had never ridden in a train before. There was a gap between platform and stairs, and her leg fell short. She pulled back her foot and glanced around in panic. She feared the train would start moving before she could manage to climb on. Seeing a throng of men and women boarding the forward carriage, she hurried over to stand behind them. She watched closely as, one after another, they ascended the steps. Every single one of them, she could see, took hold of an iron handle beside the doorway before placing a foot on the first
step. She hadn't noticed that handle before. Hamida stuck out her right arm, clutched the handle as tightly as she could, pulled her body forward until her foot reached the step, and disappeared inside the carriage.

She sat down on the first seat that met her eyes, noticing that it was next to a window. As the train began to move slowly, she peered outside. She poked her head further out of the window. Her neck stiffened as she saw her mother, still standing in the same spot, impassive and motionless, everything frozen in place:
tarha
, head, chest, eyelashes, everything.

On the point of calling out, Hamida reminded herself that it was no longer her mother whom she could see, but rather the statue of the peasant woman that had stood at the entrance to the village for many years – how many she did not know. She could not remember a time when she had not seen it there. It must have been there forever; it must have been there even before she was born.

Her head still outside the window, she regained her breath in a few gasps. It was the first time she had experienced the feel of tears on her face or their taste in her mouth. But she did not move, not even to wipe off her tears on the sleeve or hem of her
galabeya
. She let them run down her face, and when they reached the inner corner of her mouth she licked them off without visibly moving a single facial muscle. She didn't make a sound or flicker an eyelid; not even her eyelashes trembled. Everything had gone pitch black. The train dissolved into the
blackness and blended into the night, like a drop melting into the depths of the sea.

* * *

As Hamida's train pulled away, Hamido was still lying inert on the reed mat. Although his eyes were closed in sleep, he could see his father's eyes in the faint light. His father stood tall and straight, like the trunk of a eucalyptus tree which has sent its roots deep into the earth.

An oppressive chill ran through Hamido's small body, numbing his arms and legs as if he were caught in a troublesome dream. He lay motionless, his steady gaze directed at that tall, impassive phantom. Somehow, he knew that something serious had happened, or soon would. He held his breath and vanished completely under the grimy, blackened coverlet, his small fingers pulling it taut around his head. His right ear, atop the hard pillow, trembled in time to the beating of his heart, which seemed to issue from his head rather than his chest.

At any moment he expected those long fingers to reach out and strip off the bedcover, exposing his head. The wide-open eyes would settle their gaze on his, filling his eyes with whatever it was that was so ominous. But the coverlet remained in place, pulled tightly over his head. In the silence he could hear his own heartbeat resound in the room. And despite the darkness, he could see the movement of his chest, so slight as to be almost invisible, like the ever-so-delicate
stirring of treetops on a still and moonless night, unrelieved by a single breath of moving air, when the darkness, like his grimy bedcover, has wrapped itself over sky and earth, in that brief moment hidden on the boundary of night and day, before the threads of dawn begin to appear and the darkness creeps away. The gloom lifts slowly, like a huge fish swimming in an endless ocean where lie the village's small mud huts, huddled together in the depths like a huge heap of black dung.

When Hamido opened his eyes, daylight already filled the room. What he had seen was nothing but a dream; he was absolutely sure of it. He jumped up from the mat and ran out into the street. His friends, children of the neighbouring families, were playing as usual in the narrow lane extending along and between the mud-brick façades. Each child held fast to the hem of the next one's
galabeya
, forming a dancing, whistling, train. Then they would break apart and play hide-and-seek, concealing themselves behind the dung heaps, inside the animal pens, behind a large earthenware water jar inside one of the houses, or inside the mouth of an oven.

He saw Hamida amongst the children, running for cover behind a pile of dung. She squatted so that her head would not show above the mound. But he could see her white thighs, and between them a thin strip of rough brown calico. Even though she attempted to hide her crop of soft black hair in the dust so that no one would see her, Hamido spotted her at once. This
time, he was the seeker, so he bounded off at a run, his bare feet stirring up a whirlwind of dustas he headed towards her.

He fixed his eyes on the dung heap, pretending not to see her. He advanced on tiptoe, slowly, cautiously, and swerved as if to conceal himself behind the heap. Then he sprang – a single jump, a panther's leap – and grabbed her by the hair. His other hand shot out with lightning speed and he let it rest on her thigh for a few moments. Then his small, stiff fingers pulled at her knickers, but Hamida kicked and butted him, as she did whenever the seeker caught her. She managed to free herself of his grasp, and ran to hide behind another dung heap.

Hamida was not the only one to play hide-and-seek, for all the village children joined in the game. When any of the girls ran to hide, and squatted to conceal themselves, their small white thighs were bared and their cheap, dirty knickers showed, looking like thin black strips between their thighs. The seeker – whoever it was – would grab at the strip, trying to pull the knickers down. But the girl knew how to aim a practised kick, with one or both feet. The seeker would not give in either, but would fight her with the same methods. A battle in miniature would ensue, an almost imperceptible skirmish, for the dung heap concealed the pair of small bodies. But four tender little feet could be seen, jutting out from behind the pile, the girl's foot indistinguishable from the boy's: in childhood, feet – like faces – are sexless, especially if the feet are bare, for only shoes define their gender.

Her kick propelled Hamido backwards, and he toppled over on to his behind. He recovered quickly, though, and so did she; as he got to his feet, he caught sight of her face. It wasn't Hamida. His eyes swept the area, peering at all the children in turn. He ran to the house to search for her – in the animal pen, in the mouth of the oven, behind the water jar, under the mat. He came out of the house at a run, looking for her – behind the dung heaps, behind the tree trunk, shimmying up the date-palm, under the embankment of the village's irrigation canal. Daytime slipped away, night began to fall, and still he had found no trace of her.