The Wedding of Zein (5 page)

I heard a low whistling sound and saw that my grandfather had fallen asleep. Then I noticed that Masood had not changed his stance, except that he had placed a stalk in his mouth and was munching at it like someone surfeited with food who doesn't know what to do with the mouthful he still has.

Suddenly my grandfather woke up, jumped to his feet and walked towards the sacks of dates. He was followed by Hussein the merchant, Mousa the owner of the field next to ours, and the two strangers. I glanced at Masood and saw that he was making his way towards us with extreme slowness, like a man who wants to retreat but whose feet insist on going forward. They formed a circle round the sacks of dates and began examining them, some taking a date or two to eat. My grandfather gave me a fistful, which I began munching. I saw Masood filling the palms of both hands with dates and bringing them up close to his nose, then returning them.

Then I saw them dividing up the sacks between them. Hussein the merchant took ten; each of the strangers took five. Mousa the owner of the field next to ours on the eastern side took five, and my grandfather took five. Understanding nothing, I looked at Masood and saw that his eyes were darting about to left and right like two mice that have lost their way home.

‘You're still fifty pounds in debt to me,' said my grandfather to Masood. ‘We'll talk about it later.'

Hussein called his assistants and they brought along donkeys, the two strangers produced camels, and the sacks of dates were loaded on to them. One of the donkeys let out a braying which set the camels frothing at the mouth and complaining noisily. I felt myself drawing close to Masood, felt my hand stretch out towards him as though I wanted to touch the hem of his garment. I heard him make a noise in his throat like the rasping of a lamb being slaughtered. For some unknown reason, I experienced a sharp sensation of pain in my chest.

I ran off into the distance. Hearing my grandfather call after me, I hesitated a little, then continued on my way. I felt at that moment that I hated him. Quickening my pace, it was as though I carried within me a secret I wanted to rid myself of. I reached the river bank near the bend it made behind the wood of acacia trees. Then, without knowing why, I put my finger into my throat and spewed up the dates I'd eaten.

‘Have you heard the news? Zein is getting married,' said Haleema, the seller of milk, to Amna, who had as usual called before sunrise, as she measured her out a piastre's worth.

The jug all but fell from Amna's hands and Haleema, profiting by her preoccupation, gave her short measure.

At noon the courtyard of the Intermediate School was quiet and deserted, the students having gone to their classes. From afar there appeared a young boy hurrying along breathlessly, the end of his outer garment tucked under his arm, till he came to a stop in front of the door of ‘the second year,' the Headmaster's form.

‘You ass of a boy, what's made you so late?'

A look of cunning flashed momentarily in Tureifi's eyes,

‘Sir, have you heard the news?'

‘News about what, you animal of a boy?'

The Headmaster's anger, however, did not shake the boy's composure. Checking his laughter, he said: ‘They're marrying off Zein the day after tomorrow.'

The Headmaster's lower jaw dropped in astonishment and Tureifi escaped punishment.

And in the market Abdul Samad advanced towards Sheikh Ali's shop, his face flushed, leaving it in no doubt that he was in an angry frame of mind. There was a debt owing to him from Sheikh Ali, the tobacco dealer, which the latter had put off paying for a whole month. He was determined to have it settled that very day by hook or by crook.

‘Ali, do you really think you'll do me out of my money, or what is it you've got in mind?'

‘Hajj Abdul Samad, just put your trust in God and sit down and have a cup of coffee with us.'

‘To hell with your coffee. Get up and open this safe of yours and give me my money. If you're determined not to pay, just say so.'

Sheikh Ali spat the quid of tobacco from his mouth.

‘Come along and sit down and I'll tell you a bit of news.'

‘I've not got the time, neither for you nor for your bit of news. I know well enough that you're trying to fool me and talk me out of my money.'

‘I swear your money's here safe and sound. Come along and sit down and I'll tell you the story of Zein's marriage.'

‘Whose marriage did you say?'

‘Zein's marriage.'

Abdul Samad seated himself and, placing both hands on top of his head, remainded silent for a while. Sheikh Ali regarded him, elated at the effect he had produced. Eventually Abdul Samad found his tongue.

‘Ah, there's no god but God and Mohammed is the Prophet of God. By the Prophet himself, Sheikh Ali, what sort of story's that?'

Abdul Samad did not settle his debt that day.

By midday every one's tongue was wagging with the news. Zein himself was at the well in the centre of the village, filling the women's pitchers for them and indulging in his usual antics. The children gathered round him and began chanting, ‘Zein's getting married—Zein's getting married,' while he hurled stones at them, tugged at a girl's dress, prodded a woman in her middle, or pinched another's thigh; children laughed, the women shrieked and laughed, and above all this laughter could be heard the laugh that had become part of the village ever since Zein was born.

At first, as is well known, children meet life with screams. With Zein, however, it is recounted—and the authorities for this are his mother and the women who attended his birth—that no sooner did he come into this world than he burst out laughing. And so it was throughout his life.

He had grown up with only two teeth in his mouth, one in his upper jaw and one in the lower. His mother, though, says that his mouth was once filled with pearly white teeth, but that when he was six she took him one day to visit some relatives of hers; at sunset, passing by a deserted ruin rumoured to be haunted, Zein had suddenly become nailed to the ground and had begun shivering as with a fever. Then he let out a scream. After that he took to his bed for several days, and on recovering from his illness it was found that all his teeth had fallen out—except for one in his upper jaw and one in the lower.

Zein had an elongated face with prominent bones to his cheeks, his jaw, and under the eyes. His forehead was rounded and jutted out; his eyes were small and permanently bloodshot, their sockets deeply set in his face like two caverns. His face was completely hairless, with neither eyebrows nor eyelashes, and on attaining manhood no hair had sprouted on his chin or upper lip.

This face of his was supported by a long neck (among the nicknames given to Zein by the children was ‘the giraffe') which stood on two powerful shoulders that straddled the rest of the body, forming a triangle. The two long arms were like those of a monkey, the hands coarse with extended fingers ending in long, sharp nails (Zein never pared them). His chest was concave, his back slightly hunched, while his legs were long and spindly like those of a crane. His feet were splayed and bore the traces of ancient scars (Zein disliked wearing shoes), and he remembered the story behind each one of them.

For example, the story of a long scar on his right foot extending from the back of the ankle to the opening between the first and second toes, Zein recounted as follows: ‘Now this scar, men, has a story to it.'

And Mahjoub would egg him on with the words, ‘And what story would this be, you good-for-nothing? Did you go off to steal and they give you a hiding with a thorn tree branch?'

This would have a splendid effect on Zein, who would fall over backwards, legs raised high in the air and hands beating the ground, while continuing to give vent to that strange and singular laughter that resembled a donkey's braying. Infected by him, everyone else would burst into loud reverberating guffaws. Collecting himself, Zein would wipe the tears away with his cuff and say: ‘Yea—yea—so I did go off to steal—'

Mahjoub would again egg him on: ‘And what did you go off to steal, you scoundrel? Perhaps you said to yourself you'd look around for something to eat.' And Zein, wiping his hands across his face, would once again break into laughter, and those present would presume that he had come by that particular scar entering some house to steal food, for he was well-known for his insatiable greed. At wedding feasts, when the trays of food were brought in and the people formed themselves into circles around them, each group tried to avoid having Zein sitting with them, as he would dispose of everything in the dish in a flash, leaving nothing for anyone else.

‘Do you remember what you did at Sa'eed's wedding?' Abdul Hafeez said to him.

‘Certainly I do,' Zein answered with a guffaw. ‘By God, I would have eaten up the lot right down to the last little bit if Isma'il's son, God damn him, hadn't caught me.' Zein had been entrusted with transporting the food at Sa'eed's wedding and had walked back and forth between the
diwan
, where the men were congregated, and the kitchen at the back of the house, where the women were doing the cooking. On the way from the kitchen to the
diwan
Zein dawdled along, eating the choicest bits from the dish he was carrying, so that on arrival it was all but empty. He did this three times before Ahmed Isma'il noticed what was happening and followed him. Halfway to the
diwan
Zein stopped and lifted the lid off a dish filled with fried chicken. No sooner had he taken hold of a chicken and brought it to his mouth than Ahmed Isma'il pounced upon him and gave him a sound beating.

‘Come along,' Mahjoub again asked him, ‘why don't you tell us what you went off to steal, you rogue?'

When Zein noticed that the people around him were all agog to hear, he sat up straight, placed his arms between his knees and said: ‘Last summer, at the time of the harvesting of the millet, I was kept late at the water-wheel. The moon was atwinkle as I tossed my shawl across my shoulder and came up homewards. I tell you, when I reached the patch of sand by the edge of the village I heard the sounds of joyful ululation.

‘Yes, that's quite right,' Mahjoub interrupted him. ‘That was Bakri's wedding.'

Zein continued: ‘And so I told myself I'd go along and see what it was all about. Now it seems that the Talha people were having a wedding and when I got there I found that things had really hotted up—a proper hullabaloo with drums and ululations. The first thing I did was to go off and look to see if I could find something to eat—'

The gathering burst into laughter, for it was what they had expected. ‘The women in the kitchen gave me some bits of meat to eat and something bitter to drink.'

‘That must have been arak, you good-for-nothing,' said Mahjoub.

‘No, it wasn't arak,' said Zein. ‘Do you think I don't know what arak is? I'm telling you, man, this thing I drank really flew to my head. Afterwards I slipped out of the kitchen and went into a room where I found a group of women and the smell of perfumes and scented ointments. May I divorce if the very smell didn't intoxicate me.'

Abdul Hafeez laughed. ‘And where is the woman you'd be divorcing?'

Zein paid no attention to this but continued enthusiastically with the story. ‘And right in the middle I found the bride—a sweet little chit of a girl, all beautiful-smelling from the smoke bath and finely dressed.' Zein became silent at this point and turned his small eyes on the faces of those present, his mouth agape, his two teeth jutting out.

Mahjoub, unable to contain himself, egged him on to complete the story. ‘And what did you do then?'

‘Then—I jumped on the bride.' Having said which he leapt up like a frog. Everyone broke into an uproar and Zein exploded into laughter and threw himself down on his stomach, kicking up his legs in the air. Then he turned over on to his back and said, still choking with laughter: ‘I took hold of the little girl and bit her on the mouth.'