God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels (3 page)

‘No one has told us that he is dead.'

‘Many of them died, Kafrawi, so why not him?'

‘But many have come back. Be patient and pray Allah, that he may send him back safely to us.'

‘I've prayed so many times, so many times,' she said in a choking voice.

‘Pray again, Zakeya. Pray to Allah that he may return safely, and Nefissa too. Where could the girl have gone? Where?'

Their voices like the successive gasps of two people in pain ceased abruptly. Silence descended upon them, a silence heavier than the thick cloak of darkness around them. Their eyes continued to stare fixedly into the limitless night, and neither of them moved. They sat on, side by side, as immobile as the mud huts buried in the dark.

_________

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An ankle-length gown or robe which is cut to hang loosely; it is worn traditionally by both men and women, although the style, colours and cloth differ.

II

The big iron door swung open slowly, and the Mayor of Kafr El Teen stepped out into the lane. He was tall with big, hefty shoulders and a broad, almost square face. Its upper half had come to him from his mother: smooth silky hair, and deep blue eyes which stared out from under a prominent, high forehead. The lower half came from the upper reaches of the country in the south, and had been handed down to him by his father: thick, jet black whiskers overhung by a coarse nose, below which the lips were soft and fleshy, suggesting lust rather than sensuality. His eyes had a haughty, almost arrogant quality, like those of an English gentleman accustomed to command. When he spoke his voice was hoarse, and unrefined, like that of an Upper Egyptian peasant. But its hoarseness was endowed with a mellow, humble quality that belied any hint of the aggression often found in the voices of men cowed by years of oppression in former colonies like Egypt and India.

He moved with a slow step, his long, dark cloak falling to the ground. Behind him followed the Chief of the Village Guard and the Sheikh of the mosque. As they came out they could see two shadows squatting in the dark across the lane.
The faces were invisible but the three men knew that it was Kafrawi and his sister, Zakeya, for they were in the habit of sitting there, side by side, for long hours without exchanging a single word. When there was only one shadow instead of two, it meant that Kafrawi had stayed behind in the fields, where he would labour until sunrise.

At this hour they were in the habit of going to the nearby mosque for evening prayers. Once back, they would install themselves on the terrace of the mayor's house overlooking the river, or saunter down to the shop owned by Haj Ismail, the village barber. There they sat smoking and chatting as each one in turn drew in a puff from the long, cane stem of the water-jar pipe.

But this time the Mayor refused to smoke the water-jar pipe. Instead he extracted a cigar from his side pocket, bit off the end, lit it with a match, and started to smoke while the others watched. Haj Ismail could tell from the way the Mayor frowned that he was not in a good mood. So he disappeared into his shop and a moment later came back, sidled up close to him, and tried to slip a small piece of hashish into the palm of his hand, but the Mayor pushed it away and said, ‘No, no. Not tonight.'

‘But why, your highness?' enquired Haj Ismail.

‘Did you not hear the news?'

‘What news, your highness?'

‘The news about the government.'

‘Which government, your highness?'

‘Haj Ismail! How many governments do you think we have?'

‘A good number.'

‘Nonsense! We have only one government, and you know that very well.'

‘Which government do you have in mind, the government of Misr
^*
or the government of Kafr El Teen?'

‘The government of Misr, of course.'

‘Where do we come in then?'

The Chief of the Village Guard laughed out loud and exclaimed, ‘Who would dare deny that we're just as much of a government ourselves?'

It was Sheikh Hamzawi's turn to laugh. His tobacco-stained teeth could be seen protruding from his big mouth, and the yellow-beaded rosary swayed from side to side as he slipped it furiously through his fingers.

But the Mayor did not join in the laughter. He closed his thick lips tightly around his cigar, and his blue eyes gazed into the distance over the long ribbon of the river water and the wide expanses of cultivated land, now invisible in the darkness. In his mind he could see them stretching out between the two villages of Kafr El Teen and El Rawla. When he used to visit the area with his mother during the summer months, he never imagined that some day he would settle down in Kafr El Teen. He loved the city life of Cairo. The lamps shining on the
dark surface of the tarmac roads. The coloured lights of the riverside casinos reflected in the flowing waters of the Nile. The nightclubs thronged with people eating and drinking as they sat around the tables, the women dancing, their bodies moving, their perfume and soft laughter going through him.

At the time he was still a college student. But unlike his elder brother he hated lectures, and lecture rooms, hated the talk about knowledge, and his future. Above all, he hated listening to his brother discoursing about politics and political groupings.

As they sat there plunged in silence, Haj Ismail suddenly remembered the morning newspaper he had left in the shop on the wooden table next to the weighing machine. He disappeared inside again and returned carrying it folded up in his hand. He opened it out under the kerosene lamp, and started to read the headlines on the front page, but his attention was drawn away from them by the picture of a man. It stood out clearly in the middle of the page. The features were familiar and it did not take him long to realize that he was looking at the elder brother of the Mayor. He tried to read what was written below, but the print was too small, and he could not make out what it said. He hesitated for a moment, then moving closer to the Mayor whispered in his ear in as low a voice as possible.

‘Has the news you mentioned got something to do with your brother?'

After a brief silence the Mayor said, ‘Yes.'

This time Haj Ismail's question expressed concern. ‘Has some misfortune befallen him?'

There was a note of pride in the Mayor's voice as he replied, ‘No, on the contrary.'

Haj Ismail was so excited he could barely contain himself. ‘Does your highness mean to say that he's been elevated to a higher post?'

The Mayor blew out a dense cloud of smoke. ‘Yes, exactly, Haj Ismail.'

Haj Ismail clapped his hands together with glee, then looked around at the others and said, ‘Our friends, then we must drink sherbet to celebrate the occasion.'

A flutter went round the men seated in front of the shop. The newspaper quickly changed hands going from one to the other. Haj Ismail left them and came back carrying a bottle of sherbet and empty cups.

But the Mayor seemed to be lost in his thoughts. All day he had kept wondering why the moment he had seen his brother's picture in the newspaper a feeling of inadequacy and depression had come over him. He knew this feeling well. It was always accompanied by a bitterness of the mouth, a dryness of the throat which turned into a burning sensation as it moved down to his chest, followed by an obscure and yet sharp pain which radiated outwards from his stomach.

He was a small boy when this feeling first started to come over him. He remembered how he used to run to the
bathroom and vomit all the food in his stomach. Then he would stand there examining himself in the mirror above the washbasin. His face was deathly pale, his lips almost yellow, and the gleam which shone in his eyes was gone. They looked dull, apathetic, resigned, as though some cloud had descended upon them and snuffed out their liveliness.

He would wash his mouth several times to dispel the remaining taste of bitterness which lingered behind. When he raised his head to look into the mirror, it was his brother's face that appeared before him. He contemplated the rosy cheeks, the gleam of victory in the eyes. In his ears rang the exultant tones of the voice he knew so well. ‘I succeed in everything I undertake. But you have been a failure all the time.'

He would spit out the water in his mouth on to the face smiling calmly at him from the mirror. Then lift his neck, square his shoulders, and addressing it in a loud voice say, ‘I am a thousand times better than you.'

Anyone seeing him as he walked out of the bathroom door would imagine that of the two he was no doubt the more successful. His lips had regained their rosy colour, and his eyes were shining brightly. The bitter taste in his mouth had gone, and once more his merry laughter rang out, as he romped around mischievously, teasing his mother who sat in her armchair knitting, trying to pull at the tip of the thread and make the woollen skein roll out. Her haughty blue eyes would flash with an angry light and the curt sentence pronounced
with an English accent would sting his pride. ‘Your brother is much better than you are.'

Sometimes she would set aside her needles, reach out for the folded newspaper lying on the table next to her, and pointing to a name printed in small letters on one of the pages inside, would say, ‘Your brother has passed his examinations brilliantly, whereas you…'

He would stop laughing immediately, as though something had seized him by the throat and was choking him, then swallow several times without responding. And just as suddenly he would realize that he was not really happy, that he had been forcing himself into a merry mood. This feeling of being superior to his brother was just a disguise. The truth was so overwhelming that it shook him to the marrow of his bones. It seemed to exude from every pore in his body with the cold, sticky sweat that now ran under his clothes. It crept into his mouth and nose, reviving the taste of bitterness once more, dropped down with it to his chest, then through a small hole into his belly. He would run back to the bathroom and vomit repeatedly until there was nothing left for him to vomit.

Haj Ismail was sipping his second round of sherbet from the copper cup when he noticed the Mayor spit on the ground scornfully, then he straightened his back, lifted his head, and his eyes travelled slowly over them with a haughty stare. His look seemed to say, ‘Compared to me, you people are just
nobodies. I am from a noble family. My mother is English, and my brother is one of the people who rule this country.'

Haj Ismail cringed as he sat on the bench, as though trying to make himself so small that he could avoid the eyes of the Mayor. He had been on the verge of joking with him, of telling him the latest stories, but immediately thought better of it. His eyes kept shifting backwards and forwards between the picture of the Mayor's elder brother sitting in the midst of the most important people in the country, his features expressing a haughty arrogance and the small shop with its old, cracked shelves, covered in dust, and the few rusty tins standing dejectedly on them. He tried to tear himself away from the comparison only to find himself lost in the contemplation of the Mayor's expensive cloak, while his hand kept fingering the coarse fabric of his own
galabeya
.

The Mayor's eyes caught Haj Ismail in the act of lifting his cup of sherbet to his lips and draining it in one quick gulp, as though it was a purge of castor oil. He burst out laughing, slapped him jocularly on the knee and said, ‘You peasants drink sherbet the way we swallow medicine.'

Now that the Mayor was joking with him so familiarly, the feeling of inferiority, of being of no consequence, which had invaded Haj Ismail a few moments before was largely dispelled. Was not the Mayor cracking jokes with him? Was this not a good enough reason to feel his self-confidence restored, to feel that the social gap between them was narrowing? He felt
pleased. Now it was an appropriate moment for him to start laughing, to pick up the thread of merriment where the Mayor had left off, and thus encourage him to go on in the same vein.

‘We peasants cannot tell the sweet flavour of sherbet from the bitter taste of medicine,' he said jestingly.

The Mayor was silent for a moment as though turning the words Haj Ismail had spoken over in his head. He began to feel uneasy. They kept echoing in his cars again and again. Supposing the Mayor misconstrued what he had said?

‘Your highness, what I meant is that everything tastes bitter to the mouth of a peasant,' he added hastily in an attempt to set things right.

The Mayor maintained his silence. Decidedly, something was wrong. Haj Ismail was now almost sure that he had not been careful enough about what he had said. This time the Mayor could take his last words to be an insinuation that peasants had a hard life, which of course was not at all true. This in its turn might lead directly or indirectly to an even more dangerous conclusion, namely that in the view of Haj Ismail the government was not telling the truth when it repeatedly expressed its concern for the welfare of the peasants, and the protection of their rights. Since the Mayor was the representative of government in Kafr El Teen, such a view could also be taken to mean that as the responsible official he was using his position to exploit the peasants, and to spend the money he squeezed out of them on his
extravagant way of living, and his extravagant tastes in food, tobacco, wine and women.

His mind was now in a whirl. He cursed his own stupidity. ‘Instead of painting her lashes with kohl, he had blinded her eyes.'
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The best thing to do was to make himself as invisible as he could. But just at that moment he caught a glint in the Mayor's eyes. They were looking in the direction of the river and he turned to see what had caught his attention. High up on the river bank a girl was walking. She held herself upright, balancing the earthenware jar on her head. Her tall figure swayed from side to side, and her large black eyes were raised and carried that expression of pride he had seen so often in the women of Kafrawi's household.