God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels (33 page)

‘In Doqi…' she replied and gave him the street and house number.

The car crossed Qasr al-Nil Bridge. She saw the Cairo Tower standing erect in the dark like some huge alien creature, its flickering red eyes spinning round and round in its head. Watching the flickering balls circling around she felt dizzy and saw a double tower, with two revolving heads. She rubbed her eyes and the second tower vanished, leaving only one with one spinning head. Then the second one reappeared. Again she rubbed her eyes to make it disappear, but it remained. From the corner of her eye, she glanced at Saati and saw him with two heads. She trembled and hid her face in her hands.

‘You're tired,' she heard his voice say.

Raising her head, she replied:

‘I have a headache.'

She looked out of the window. The darkness was intense and all she could see now was a mass of blackness. Suddenly, there came into her mind something she had read about a man who used to chase women, take them to a dark and remote
place and murder them. She glanced furtively at Saati – his bulging eyes fixed ahead, his thick and fleshy neck resting on the back of the seat, his thin, pointed knees … When he turned towards her, she looked out of the window. The houses were dark and shuttered. No light appeared in the windows, nobody walked in the street.

Why had she got into the car with him? Who was he? She didn't know him, knew nothing about him. Was she awake or having a bad dream? She dug her nails into her thighs to make sure she was there.

The car seemed to have stopped. She trembled and edged over to the door. She heard Saati's voice say:

‘Is this the house?'

Looking out of the window, she saw her house and exclaimed in relief:

‘Yes, that's it!'

She opened the car door and jumped out. He also got out and walked to the front door with her. The staircase was dark.

‘You're tired,' he said to her, ‘and the stairs are dark. Shall I see you to the door of your apartment?'

‘No, no, thank you,' she replied quickly. ‘I'll go up by myself.'

He held out a podgy hand, saying:

‘Shall I see you tomorrow?'

‘I don't know, don't know,' she replied agitated. ‘I might not go out tomorrow.'

His eyes glinted in the dark and he said:

‘You're tired. I'll phone you tomorrow.' Smiling, he went on:

‘Don't wear yourself out with chemical research!'

She climbed the stairs, her legs quaking, imagining that he was coming up after her. Many crimes happened on darkened staircases. She reached the door of the apartment panting, took out her key, her fingers shaking as she searched for the keyhole. She opened the door, went in and quickly closed it behind her. She heard her mother's regular breathing and felt calmer, but she still shivered with cold. She put on some thick woollen clothes and tucked herself into bed, her teeth chattering. Then she closed her eyes and lost consciousness.

* * *

In the morning, she awoke to hear her mother's voice saying something but what it was she didn't know. She saw her mother's eyes looking down at her anxiously and tried to lift her head from the pillow … it was too heavy … inside it something solid pressed and crushed against the bones of her skull, reverberating, like the sound of a machine, of clanging metal. She looked around the room, saw the wardrobe, the window, the clothes-stand, and the telephone on the shelf. She opened her mouth to speak but was silenced by a sharp pain in her throat. Her mother's lined face drew closer and she heard her say:

‘Do you want the telephone?'

She shook her head.

‘No, no,' she said hoarsely. ‘Take it away, into the living room. I don't want it here.'

Her mother picked up the phone and held it to her chest as if it were a dead, black cat. Fouada heard her go into the living room, then return.

She buried her head under the covers, hearing her mother say:

‘I heard you coughing in the night. Have you caught a cold?'

From under the covers, she replied:

‘It seems like it, Mama.'

She moved her parched tongue in her mouth and felt a bitter taste slip down into her stomach. She wanted to spit it out and pulled a handkerchief from under the pillow, coughed and tried to clear her blocked nose. Something hard, like a pebble, scratched her throat; she sneezed and coughed but the pebble would not be dislodged. With each breath, it settled further down inside her chest.

Her mother said something and she replied ‘yes' without knowing what it was and heard the feet shuffle out of the room. She made a small gap between the bed and the covers to let in air, but that let in a narrow shaft of light as well and she saw her hand under her head, a watch around the wrist. She glimpsed the figure the small hand pointed to and remembered the Ministry. She closed up the gap and night returned.

Yes, let the night return and stay. Let the light around her dim and let there never be day. What use was day, that endless cycle from home to the Ministry, from the Ministry to the laboratory and from the laboratory to home? What was the point of it all? What was the point of going around in circles? Of moving the muscles of the arms and legs? Of activating the digestion and blood circulation? She remembered Saati saying: ‘What are you searching for? What is it you want that can't be found in this world?' She didn't want anything from this world, wanted nothing from it, not even money. What would she do with it anyway? What did a woman do with money in this world? Buy expensive dresses? But of what use were expensive dresses? She didn't remember one of her dresses, didn't remember Farid looking even once at them. She had never felt that her clothes had a value except to cover parts of her body.

And what beside dresses? What did a woman do with money in this world other than buy dresses? Buy jewellery and face powder? That white powder with which women cover their faces, to hide those blood vessels that run through living skin? What is left of living skin after its blood colour is blotted out? Only dull, dead skin, chalky white, etiolated.

What else besides powder and dresses and jewels? What did a woman want from the world? Going to the cinema? Visiting women friends? Gossip and jealousy and the pursuit of marriage?

But she didn't want any of these. She didn't buy make-up, didn't go to the cinema, had no women friends and did not pursue marriage. So what was she seeking?

She pressed her head into the pillow and clenched her teeth in frustration. What do I want? What do I want? Why don't I want those things that other women want? Aren't I a woman like them?

Lifting the cover from her face a little she saw her slender fingers and nails, just like her mother's. She touched her skin and body, the skin and body of her mother. She really was a woman, so why didn't she want what other women wanted. Why?

Yes, why, why? She didn't know. Was chemistry the reason? But was she the only woman to have studied chemistry? Was Madame Curie the reason? But was she the only woman to have heard of Madame Curie? Was it the chemistry teacher? But where was the chemistry teacher? She knew nothing about her, had heard nothing of her since leaving school. Did her life depend on a word spoken by some obscure woman? Was it her mother? But did her mother know anything about the wide world outside the four walls of the house? Was it Farid? But where was Farid? Who was he? She didn't know anyone who knew him, didn't know where he was, didn't know even if he had ever really existed. Maybe he was an illusion, a dream? He was absent and as long as he was absent, how could she distinguish dream from reality? If he had only left a note in
his handwriting she could have been sure. Yes, with a piece of paper, she would have known, whilst with her head, arms and legs she could know nothing. Neither her body nor her head could know anything. Everything inside her head had been reduced to a meaningless, muffled clangour. Everything inside her had been catalysed into a dull, continuous hum, like that perceived when everything is silent.

Yes, there was complete silence deep within that body outstretched and incapacitated beneath the covers, silence and only silence. It was incapable of saying anything. The words that came out of its lips were not its own words but simply the random echoes of words heard before; the words of others, words that Farid, her mother, the chemistry teacher had spoken, or words she had read in a book. Yes, it repeated only what it had heard and read and, like a wall, could only voice echoes.

Her body under the covers was heavy and inert – like a stone – she was hot and sweated profusely. A warm, viscous substance poured from her nose. She pulled a handkerchief from under the pillow and blew her nose hard. It dripped like a worn-out tap. She was not a clean, dry wall, but an oozing, dripping wall – with a noxious, involuntary wetness.

She kicked the cover from her body, wanting to kick off her arms, legs and whole body, but it adhered, clung to her, remained attached to her, lying on top of her – an oppressive weight and obscene wetness, like the body of another person, a stranger.

A stranger, with all the strangeness of some person she might encounter in the street, the strangeness of the caretaker, of Saati. She shuddered. Yes, an utter stranger who swallowed food, not knowing what happened to it. Sometimes she heard a noise in her stomach, like the mewing of a cat, as if she didn't know what was happening there, where all that quantity of food went. Like a mill, it turned and turned and pulverized solid things. There was only that turning and the pulverizing and nothing else. Nothing else.

What else could there be? That illusion which beckoned through the mist? Test tubes from whose mouths a new gas danced? What could a new gas do? A new hydrogen bomb? A rocket with a new nuclear head? What did the world lack? A new means of killing?

Why the killing? Was there nothing else of use? Something to eliminate hunger? Disease? Suffering? Oppression? Exploitation? Yes, yes, here was the wall, echoing words it had heard from Farid. What do you know about hunger? About disease? What do you know about suffering or oppression? What about exploitation? What do you know about them and about that which you talk of to people whilst not even living with people? You look at them from a distance, study their movements and houses as if they were moving images on a blank screen. Have you ever been hungry? Have you ever seen a hungry person? That woman begging on the pavement of the Ministry, a young child in her lap, did you even see her?
Did you look into her eyes? Wasn't it only her sun-beaten back you saw and didn't you envy her?

Do you know anything of this? Why then persist in this illusion? Don't you eat and drink and urinate and sleep like others? Why aren't you like others? Why?

Yes, why, why? Why aren't you like others, calmly accepting life as it is? Why not take life as it comes? Even these words are not yours. Didn't you hear this very same question from Saati yesterday in the laboratory? Do you store up all the words inside you? Even Saati's words? How stupid you are! Can't you say one word of your own?

Fouada awoke to the sound of her mother's voice. She saw her standing beside her, holding a glass of tea in her thin, veined hand. She stared at her long, slender, wrinkled fingers. Her own were as long and slender as her mother's and would become as wrinkled as hers with gnarled joints, like dry twigs. She looked up and saw her lined face, her dry lips parted, the same gap, the same teeth. Let the same lines cover her face too. Let her own legs become incapable of moving quickly, and her feet shuffle like hers.

She reached out weakly and took the glass of tea. Her mother sat on the edge of the bed looking at her. Why was she silent? Why didn't she say anything? Why didn't she raise her hand to the sky and repeat her old supplication? But the dream was gone, the illusion lost. She had not given birth to a natural wonder. Who had told her that she would? Why her in
particular? Why her womb in particular? Millions of wombs gave birth every day so what had put this illusion in her head? Maybe she had inherited the illusion from her own mother, just as Fouada had inherited it from her. Some woman in the family must have imagined her womb to be different, must have begun it all. Someone had begun it, there always had to be someone.

She heard her mother say:

‘What's wrong, Fouada? Why don't you speak?'

Her voice was so sad she wanted to cry, but she held back the tears and opened her mouth to say:

‘I've got a bad headache.'

‘Shall I get you an aspirin?' her mother asked.

‘Yes,' she nodded.

As her mother went back into the living room the telephone rang. Fouada jumped out of bed, shaking. Was it Saati? She stood in the doorway looking at the phone. Her mother went over to answer it, but she shouted:

‘Don't answer it, Mama! There's someone I don't want to talk to…'

But then, suddenly, she thought it might be Farid and rushed to the telephone. She lifted the receiver and gasped: ‘Hello.' The oily voice of Saati came to her and she slumped into a chair, flaccid and lifeless.

PART THREE

Fouada left the Ministry and walked alongside the rusty iron railings. Her head was heavy and her heart convulsed, inside it that hard, perpetual lump. She saw the woman sitting on the pavement, holding her child to her chest, empty hand reaching out. The street was noisy and crowded but no one noticed the outstretched arm. One pushed her aside to clear his path, another trod on her in his hurry. She heard the child crying as she passed by and saw that small skeleton with sunken eyes, prominent cheeks and a small pouting mouth trying in vain to suck a piece of brown wrinkled skin that hung from the woman's chest.

She put her hand in her pocket to take out a piastre, but kept it inside her pocket. She raised her eyes to the street. Long cars followed one after the other, within each a shiny head that reflected the light and a fleshy neck that resembled Saati's.

She took out the piastre and held it in her hand for a moment. What good was a piastre? Would it clothe the bones of that small skeleton in flesh? Would it cause the milk to flow from that shrivelled flap of skin? She chewed her lips. What could she do? A chemical discovery to eliminate hunger? A new gas for millions to breathe instead of food?