The Wedding of Zein (6 page)

Mahjoub was so shocked that he muttered ‘There is no god but God and Mohammed is His Prophet,' and asked His forgiveness for having even heard something so terrible.

‘I tell you, the women raised hell, the whole house was in an uproar, and the young bride began screaming. All of a sudden I found that somebody'd struck me in the ankle with a knife. I tell you, I started running and didn't stop till I arrived back home.' Suddenly Zein sat upright, the expression on his face wholly serious and, directing his words at Mahjoub, said: ‘Listen, are you going to marry your daughter Alawiyya to me or aren't you?'

‘I promise the girl to you—right now before all these people here,' Mahjoub answered him in all seriousness, as though meaning what he said. ‘After you've reaped your wheat and gathered up your dates and sold them and brought the money, we'll make the wedding celebration.'

This promise satisfied Zein. For a while he remained silent with pursed lips, as though he had started to think about his future life with Alawiyya and the responsibility of taking on the cares of a wife and children. ‘That's it, then,' he said. ‘Bear witness, brothers—this man has given his word and he can't come along denying it tomorrow or the day after.' All those present—Ahmed Isma'il, Taher Rawwasi, Abdul Hafeez, Hamad Wad Rayyes, and Sa'eed the shopkeeper—stated that they were witnesses to the promise made by Mahjoub and that the marriage would, God permitting, take place.

The story of Zein's love for Alawiyya the daughter of Mahjoub is the latest of his romances. After a month or two he will tire of it and begin some new romance. For the present, though, he is completely taken up with her and she is ever-present in his mind. In the middle of the day you find him in the field, bent over his hoe, his face pouring with sweat, when he suddenly stops digging and cries out at the top of his voice, ‘I am slain by love in the courtyard of Mahjoub.' In neighbouring fields tens of people momentarily stop digging as they listen to Zein's cry. While the young men laugh, some of the older men, who are occasionally irritated by Zein's tomfoolery, mumble with annoyance, ‘What's that crazy boy gabbling about now?' When at sunset work in the field comes to an end and the people take themselves off to their houses, Zein walks home from the field amidst a large crowd of young men, boys and girls, all laughing merrily around him, as he struts about among them, striking a young man on the shoulder, pinching a girl's cheek, and making leaps into the air. Whenever he sees an acacia bush along the way he jumps over it and from time to time lets out shrieks at the top of his voice that resound through the village on which the sun has set. ‘Hear ye, you people of the village, O kinsfolk, I am slain by love in the courtyard of Mahjoub.'

Zein was first slain by love when he had still not attained manhood. He was thirteen or fourteen at the time and was as thin and emaciated as a dried-up stalk. Whatever people might say about Zein they acknowledged his impeccable taste, for he fell in love with none but the most beautiful girls, the best mannered and most pleasant of speech. Azza, daughter of the Omda, was fifteen years old and her beauty had suddenly unfolded in the same way as a young palm tree flourishes when, after thirsting, it is given water. Her skin was as gold as a field of wheat just before harvesting; her eyes were wide and black in a face of limpid beauty, her features delicate; her eye-lashes were long and when she slowly raised them one would experience a quickening of the heart. Zein was the first to draw the attention of the young men of the village to Azza's beauty. One day he suddenly raised his voice whilst amid a great gathering of men brought together by the Omda for the cultivation of his field, raised his hoarse, piercing voice as does the cock at the break of dawn: ‘Hear ye, O people of the village, O kinsfolk, Azza the Omda's daughter has slain herself a man. Zein is slain in the courtyard of the Omda.' The people were taken aback by such daring and the Omda turned round sharply towards Zein, instinctve anger rising within him. Suddenly, as though everyone had at one and the same instant become conscious of the laughable disparity between Zein's appearance, standing there as though he were a dried-up goat's skin, and between Azza the Omda's daughter, they all burst out laughing at one accord.

The anger died in the breast of the Omda, who was seated on a chair in the shade of a palm tree, red of eye and dusty of moustache, as he spurred the people on to work. He was a serious, awe-inspiring man who seldom laughed; however, on this occasion he gave a harsh explosive laugh at Zein's words. ‘Zein,' he shouted out at him, ‘if you go on working hard till evening we'll give you Azza in marriage,' and once again the people laughed, in deference to the Omda. Zein, however, remained silent, his face serious and preoccupied, unconscious of the increasing strength and frequency of the strokes of his hoe in the ground.

After that a month elapsed with Zein talking of nothing but his love for Azza and her father's promise that he would marry her. The Omda knew how to exploit Zein's emotions and gave him any number of arduous tasks which would have defeated the jinn themselves. So Zein the Lover would be seen bearing a yoke with tins of water on his back at high noon when the very stones groaned with the heat, hurrying to and fro as he watered the Omda's garden; or he would be found wielding an axe larger than himself and cutting down a tree or chopping up wood; or you'd come upon him earnestly engaged in gathering fodder for the Omda's donkeys, horses, and calves. And when, once a week, Azza smiled at him the whole world could hardly contain him for joy. Not a month passed, though, before it became known in the village that Azza had become engaged to her cousin, who worked as a Medical Assistant at Abu Usher.

Without fuss, without saying a word, Zein started on a new romance. One day the village awoke to his cries of: ‘I am slain among the people of the Koz.' His ‘Laila' this time was a young girl from among the bedouin who lived along the Nile in the north of the Sudan and came down from the lands of the Kababeesh and the Dar Hamar, and from the encampments of the Hawaweer and the Mereisab in Kordofan. At certain seasons water became scarce in their lands and they would journey down the Nile with their camels and sheep in search of watering for them. Sometimes years of drought, when the sky withheld rain, would bring them down and they would arrive in droves at the watering-places in the lands of the Shaigiya and the Bideeriya who lived along the Nile. Most of them remained only until things got better, when they would return whence they had come, though some of them, taking a liking to the settled life in the Nile valley, stayed on. The bedouin of the Koz were one such group. They continued to pitch their tents on the edge of the cultivated land, where they pastured their sheep and sold the milk, collected wood for fuel, and hired themselves out at low rates in the date-harvesting season. They did not intermarry with the local inhabitants, considering themselves to be pure Arabs. The village people, however, regarded them as uncouth bedouin.

Zein, though, broke down this barrier. Always on the move, spending all day long wandering through the area from end to end, his feet one day led him for no particular reason to the people of the Koz. He was roaming round the tents as though looking for something he'd lost, when a girl appeared and Zein, struck by her beauty, was rooted to the spot. The girl had heard of him, for his fame had reached even as far as the bedouin of the Koz, so she laughed and said jokingly, ‘Zein, will you marry me?' He was speechless for a while—in the thrall of the girl's beauty, he was now made spellbound by the magic of her words. Then and there he called out at the top of his voice, ‘O people, she has slain me.'

Many heads craned out from the doors of the houses and from between the flaps of tents. The girl's mother called out, ‘Haleema, what are you up to with that dervish?' And the girl's brothers rushed at Zein, who took to flight. But Haleema, the belle of the Koz, thereafter became the object of an infatuation that did not leave him till she was married. People got to hear about her and many of the wealthy men of the village, the eligible youths and notables, came to ask for her in marriage from her father. In the end she was married to the son of the Cadi.

The marriage of the Omda's daughter and that of Haleema were a turning-point in Zein's life, for the mothers of young girls woke up to his importance as a trumpet by which attention was drawn to their daughters. In a conservative society where girls are hidden away from young men, Zein became an emissary for Love, transporting its sweet fragrance from place to place. Love, first of all, would strike at his heart, then would be quickly transferred to the heart of another—just as though Zein were a broker, a salesman, or a postman. With his small mouse-like eyes lurking in their sunken sockets, Zein would look at a beautiful girl and would be overcome by something that was perhaps love. His innocent heart having succumbed to this love, his thin legs would carry him to the far corners of the village, running hither and thither like a bitch that has lost her pups, his tongue continually singing the girl's praises and calling out her name, so that ears were soon cocked and eyes on the look-out. Soon, too, some handsome young man's hand would stretch out to take that of the young girl. And when the wedding took place, if you looked around for Zein, you'd find him either working away at filling pitchers and large ewers with water, or standing bare-chested, axe in hand, in the middle of a courtyard cutting up firewood, or exchanging good-natured banter with the women in the kitchen, while from time to time they fed him with tit-bits and he'd burst out into that laugh of his, so like a donkey's braying. And then would begin another romance, and from each romance Zein would emerge unscatched and, to all appearances, unchanged: his laugh unaltered, his tomfoolery in no wise lessened, and his legs never weary of bearing his body to the outlying parts of the village.

Years of abundance replete with love were experienced by Zein. The young girls' mothers went out of their way to gain his affection, tempting him into their houses where they'd give him food to eat and tea and coffee to drink. On entering, a seat of honour would be spread out for him and breakfast or lunch served up in the best crockery, after which mint tea would be brought if it happened to be morning, or strong tea with milk if afternoon; after the tea he'd be served coffee with cinammon, cardamom, and ginger, be it morning or afternoon. No sooner did the women hear that Zein was in a nearby house than they'd flock to him, for they were amused by his raillery. Mothers would urge their daughters to go along and greet him, and lucky the one that gained a place in his heart and whose name was upon his lips when he went out, for such a girl was guaranteed a husband within a month or two. Perhaps Zein instinctively became aware of the importance of his new status and so began to play ‘hard to get' with the girls' mothers and would show hesitation before accepting an invitation to breakfast or lunch. Yet with all this, there was one girl in the district about whom Zein did not speak and with whom he never played the fool. She was a girl who would observe him from afar with beautiful, sullen eyes and whenever he saw her approaching he would fall silent and leave off his raillery and bufoonery. If he spotted her far off he would flee from her presence, leaving the road to her.

Zein's mother put it about that her son was one of God's saints, and this belief was strengthened by Zein's friendship with Haneen. Haneen was a pious man wholly dedicated to his religious devotions who, having stayed six months in the village praying and fasting, would then take up his pitcher and prayer-rug and wander about up in the desert, disappearing for six months and then returning. No one knew where he went, though people related strange stories concerning him, one swearing that he had seen him in Merowi at a particular time, while another swore he'd caught sight of him in Karma at that very same time, though a distance of six days' journey separates the two places. People stated that Haneen would meet up with a group of those itinerant holy men who wander about devoting themselves to the service of God. Haneen seldom talked to any of the villagers, and if asked where he went to for six months of the year would make no reply. No one knew what he ate or drank, for he carried no provisions on his long journeys. But there was in the village one person with whom Haneen was on friendly terms: Zein. When meeting him upon the road, he would embrace him, kiss him on the head and call him ‘The blessed one of God'. Zein, too, on seeing Haneen approach would leave off his horse-play and idle talk and would hasten up to embrace him. Haneen would not partake of food in any house but Zein's: off Zein would go to his mother and ask her to prepare them lunch, tea or coffee, and there Zein and Haneen would stay together for hours laughing and talking. The people of the village tried to learn from Zein the secret of the friendship between him and Haneen, but he would never say more than the words ‘Haneen is a man blessed of God'.

Zein had numerous friendships of this sort with persons whom the villagers regarded as abnormal, such as Deaf Ashmana, Mousa the Lame, and Bekheit who was born deformed with no upper lip and a paralysed left side. Zein was fond of such people; thus, if he were to see Ashmana approaching from the field bearing a heavy load of firewood on her head, he would carry it for her with a playful smile. So afraid of people was she that if she came face to face with anyone, man or woman, she became utterly panic-stricken, just as though they were wild beasts. Yet she enjoyed Zein's company and would give him her sad, almost soundless laugh that resembled the clucking of hens. And then there was Mousa whom people called not by name but ‘the Lame One', a man advanced in years, the mere sight of whom was enough to rend one's heart because of the great effort he had to make to walk, a man for whom life was an irksome and arduous road. He had been the slave of a well-to-do man in the village and when the government gave the slaves their freedom, Mousa had elected to stay on with his master, who had shown him great kindness, treating him like a son. At death the master's wealth had devolved upon a good-for-nothing son, who had dissipated it and driven Mousa out. Overtaken by old age, Mousa had found himself destitute, without a family or anyone to look after him. He therefore lived on the fringe of life in the village, just like the old stray dogs that howled in the waste plots of land at night and, harassed by boys, spent their days scavenging hither and thither for food. Zein, taking pity on the man, had built him a house of palm branches and provided him with a nanny goat in milk. In the morning he would go to enquire how he was and after sunset would come with his garment bulging with dates and other sorts of food, which he would lay before him. Occasionally he would bring along an ounce of tea, a pound of sugar, or a little coffee. If you asked Mousa about the friendship that existed between him and Zein he would say to you, his eyes brimming over with tears, ‘Zein—Zein's a good fellow'.