God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels (10 page)

He emerged over the top of the river bank. The light of the moon shone down on him revealing a head which looked big compared with the body. His small eyes were buried in a swollen face, and his thick lips protruded under a thin nose. His lower lip hung down towards his chin, revealing its inner smooth belly, and his saliva drooled continuously over it on to the long beard.

If the children of the village had spotted him at this moment, they would have followed behind him shouting out in unison, ‘Here goes the idiot.' One of them might even have thrown a stone at him, or pulled him by the edge of his
galabeya
. But he would have continued to walk, paying no attention to them, with the saliva streaming down from his mouth on to his chest, as he moved on, panting and limping like a stray dog. People would meet him moving through the lanes, his wet eyes
gazing at the houses and the passers-by with a dull, unseeing look, his thick lips open and drooling the spit of his mouth as he went along. At the end of each day he could be seen sitting near the cemetery at the far end of the river bank, scratching his head and his body, or holding the lice between his fingers before he cracked them under his nails.

If one of the village women passed him by, she would throw him half a loaf of bread, or a corn cob, or a mulberry fruit, aiming it at his open lap. Sometimes she would touch him and say, ‘Give me your blessings, Sheikh Metwalli.' Then he would stop scratching, or cracking his lice for a moment, stretch out his hand to her, and take hold of whatever part of her body his fingers happened to touch whether it be her shoulder, her hand, her leg, or any other part, squeeze it, and mutter a few unintelligible words as the white flow of saliva meandered down over his black beard.

It was said that a woman afflicted with paralysis had touched him and been cured, and that he had helped a blind man to regain his sight. He had been chosen by God, knew about sickness, and could penetrate the secrets of the future. Allah had bestowed his powers on him since Allah chose the weakest of all His creatures for His purposes. And so they called him Sheikh Metwalli.

But Haj Ismail, the village barber, chose to describe him as ‘the possessed one'; Sheikh Zahran, the Chief of the Village Guard, named him ‘the lousy one'; and the children addressed
him as ‘Metwalli the idiot.' As far as he was concerned, he was Metwalli, the son of Sheikh Osman, who used to recite verses of the Koran over the souls of the deceased buried in the cemetery. But Sheikh Osman was now dead, and all he had bequeathed him was his torn caftan, his turban, a bread basket empty of bread, and an old Koran with half its cover torn off.

Now he was advancing with much less of a limp than he put on when people were around. His eyes had a steady gaze which no one had seen in them before, and every now and then he turned round cautiously. His lower lip no longer hung down over his chin, and the saliva had ceased to flow out of his mouth. Any of the inhabitants of the village seeing him at this moment would not have recognized him.

He was moving towards the body where it lay on the river bank, covered with a cloak. Within a short distance of it, he dropped on his belly and started to crawl over the ground. Reaching the feet, he lifted the cloak, poked his head in underneath, and drew his body slowly up over the legs and thighs.

If the Chief of the Village Guard had happened to open his eyes at that moment, he would not have noticed any change. The cloak still covered the body in the same way. There might have been a very slight movement which rose and fell like some imperceptible wave, but it seemed to be more like a movement of the air than of anything else. Besides no other possibility would have occurred to the Chief of the Village Guard, nor to any man or woman of blood and flesh, or even to one of the
devilish spirits that roam around in many places, especially those chosen by the living for the dead. For after all, what was lying on the river bank was no more than a body from which all life had fled, and who apart from the worms which burrow into everything could be interested in the dead?

But Metwalli had lived among the dead year after year, like any worm. Every day he would squat in his usual place at the far end of the village, on the river bank, waiting until the sun had dropped into some deep recess. Then he stood up, descended the slope of the river bank with his limping gait, and walked slowly in the direction of the cemetery to seek his bed among the dead. But once arrived there, before lying down to rest, he wandered between the rows of graves, bending down every now and then to pick up a piece of pastry or bread left by some relative of one of the dead. Even after he had eaten, he remained awake for some time, as though turning something over in his mind before he slept. Then suddenly he stood up again, and walked straight to one of the graves, guided in the dark by a certain smell which he knew so well that he could distinguish it even at a distance, and even if surrounded by other smells. It was the smell of new buried flesh, of warm blood and cells which still lived although the body was dead.

He dug the ground feverishly with his strong wiry
fingers, as sharp and as cutting as those of a cat, searching for a piece of meat buried in the ground. With hands trained by this oft-repeated exercise he tore away the shroud of white cloth,
rolled it up tightly into a spherical mass, and buried it in a hole dug in the ground. He covered it with earth and left it until he would return to dig it up in the early hours of the next morning while people
still slept.

Once over with this task, he turned his attention to the still warm body of the dead. If it was that of a female, he would crawl over it until his face was near the chin. But if the body was male, he turned it over on its face, then crawled over it until the lower part of his belly pressed down on the buttocks from behind.

In the morning Metwalli would disappear from Kafr El Teen. No one troubled to look for him, or to wonder where he could be. But some distance away at Ramla or Bauhout he sat on the pavement of a crowded street, right in the middle of the weekly market bargaining over the sale of some yards of dusty white sheeting which no one knew had served a few hours earlier as a shroud for some dead body buried quite recently in the cemetery of Kafr El Teen.

_________

^*
Eid:
Festival following the Ramadan fast.
Hejaz
:
Mecca.

VIII

The car entered the village preceded by its high-pitched horn, and followed by a storm of dust, a swarm of children and some stray dogs. Out of it stepped some gentlemen, one of whom was followed by a male nurse carrying a bag, and the second by a policeman holding back a dog which kept tugging at its leash. A group of men were busy walking up and down trying to push the people standing around as far back as they could, or lashing out at the buttocks of the children with their canes.

The whole village of Kafr El Teen had gathered on the bank of the river. The men wore
galabeyas
and each held a stick. The women had wrapped themselves in black shawls. The children were surrounded by clouds of flies, and exhibited bare buttocks and running noses. Everyone was there. Only three people were missing. Zakeya sat squatting as usual in the dusty entrance to her house, with Zeinab beside her. Both were silent, their angry, almost defiant eyes gazing into the lane.

Kafrawi also sat squatting but much further away on the outskirts of the village trying to hide between the maize stalks in a field. From his hiding place he could hear voices coming closer, preceded by the yapping, barking and whining of the
dog. He realized that they must have found out where he was hiding, so he stepped out of the maize field and clambered up the bank of the river. Some of the children spotted him and cried out, ‘Kafrawi, Kafrawi!', then started to run after him but he ran faster and arrived at the edge of the river. Before the dog tugging furiously at its leash with the policeman running behind it, had time to pounce on him he had thrown himself into the water. He did not know why he was running away, or where he was going.

He was just putting as much distance as he could between himself and something he feared, just going without knowing where to go. He did not know what had happened to him since the moment when he had been lying with the buffalo, until the moment when his body struck cold water.

He heard a splashing in the water and realized that someone was swimming rapidly towards him, getting closer and closer. He lunged out with his arms and legs, straining his sight to see the other shore as though there he would find safety and security. He had forgotten that on the other shore were the orange orchards owned by the Mayor of Kafr El Teen.

On the river bank were gathered the inhabitants of Kafr El Teen. They stood slightly in the background, and in front of them was a group composed of the officer with his dog, the Chief of the Village Guard, some of the village guards, and a few district policemen. Their eyes followed the two bodies swimming in the river, with the zeal of spectators watching
a race, and wondering who of the two would be the winner. When the distance between the two swimmers increased the villagers would experience a secret feeling of joy, for they were hoping that Kafrawi would manage to escape, and that the policeman would fail to catch up with him. Instinctively they felt Kafrawi was not a killer, or a criminal. They hated the policeman and his dogs, hated all policemen, all officers, all representatives of authority and the government. It was the hidden ancient hatred of peasants for their government. They knew that in some way or another they had always been the victims, always been exploited, even if most of the time they could not understand how it was happening.

The officer was watching the scene with a cold detachment, looking at his wrist watch every now and then as though he had an important appointment, and wanted to be over with this mission as quickly as possible. The dog also did not seem to care much about what was happening. It was lying on the river bank enjoying the sunshine, the green fields and the expanses of water as though long deprived of a chance to enjoy such natural beauty. The only person who seemed nervous was the Chief of the Village Guard. Every time the distance between the two swimmers decreased, he would shout out encouragingly, ‘Well done, Bayumi!'

His voice echoed in the ears of Bayumi like a clarion call, making him lunge out with his arms and legs more vigorously. Why this was so he could not himself understand. He had been
assigned the task of capturing this animal, and that was all. Further than that his mind refused to go. From the moment when the order ‘Arrest him' had resounded in his ears, he had launched himself in pursuit of the man like a projectile fired from a gun.

Kafrawi's naked body stepped out of the water and leapt on to the shore threading its way through the trees of the orchard. Bayumi followed close behind, his body also naked except for the pair of baggy singlets which he still wore. He was tall, with wiry muscles, and his face, too, looked hard and narrow with sharp features which remained as rigid as cardboard. It was the face of a policeman expressing neither joy nor sadness, fear nor hope, a face without feeling carrying an expressionless expression which says nothing at all. A face without features like the palm of a hand from which you can glean no feeling or thought, because they have been suppressed for so long that nothing is left any more, or a face made of bronze, or copper like the knocker which hangs on doors, and is used to alert people in the house that there is someone outside who wants to intrude just when they feel most cosy and warm. His body too was hard and copper-like, with arms and legs which ran or swam or walked with a steady, swinging, untiring movement, so unchanging, so enduring that it could hardly be human, hardly come from a body of flesh and blood and bone, but only from a robot with metal limbs and joints.

Kafrawi saw him as he hid behind a tree. His body shook with a strange fear as though he had seen something which was neither man nor devil, neither live nor dead, some evil spirit which was not human despite its human form.

He felt this fear sweep over him like a wave of icy cold water. He could no longer follow his body, understand what it was doing, know whether it was hiding behind the orange trees or threading its way between them. For tracking him down was the frightening shadow, moving at a machine-like pace neither fast nor slow, like the hands of a clock moving steadily towards the hour of execution, so that when the steely fingers closed around his arm he felt his time had come and quietly whispered, ‘Verily I do witness that there is no other God than Allah.' Then everything went black and he could no longer hear or see anything. The dark was so stock still that it seemed as though his life had come to a sudden end, and now was the moment ordained for him to go.

When he came to again, and began to hear and see once more, his eyes looked around him in great astonishment. He was squatting in a huge room crowded with people, and they kept throwing glances towards him. In front of him were three men sitting behind something high which looked like a table.

One of the three men was gesturing with his hand angrily, and fixing him with his eyes, in a menacing way. He looked around again trying to understand what was happening. Suddenly he felt a pointed finger jab into his shoulder like
a nail, and a thin sharp voice pierced his ear. ‘Have you not heard? Why don't you answer?'

Kafrawi opened his mouth and asked, ‘Is someone speaking to me?'

The thin, sharp voice cut through the air again. ‘Yes, are you asleep? Wake up, and answer His Excellency's questions.'

Kafrawi could not figure out who His Excellency could be, nor could he understand where he now was. He was certainly no longer in Kafr El Teen. He could be in another village, or even in another world. He wondered how they had carried him to this place, and how he had got here.

Suddenly he heard an angry voice say to him, ‘What's your name?'

He answered, ‘Kafrawi.'