Zeina (16 page)

One day his schoolmates took him into the toilets and removed his trousers and pants. With a ruler, they measured the length of his phallus in millimetres. They hit him on the nape of the neck, telling him scornfully, “This is just a whistle!”

On the walls of the toilet, they wrote in chalk: Ahmed al-Damhiri has a whistle.

Safaa al-Dhabi lay on the couch, her eyes rolling, her lips quivering, her facial muscles twitching as though an electric current had gone through her head.

The psychiatrist sat beside her. He injected her intravenously with a tranquilizer, stroked her shoulders with soft, tender hands, and whispered in her ears with motherly kindness, “The crisis is over, Safi. A small nervous breakdown, nothing to worry about!”

The psychiatrist’s laugh sounded metallic in the closed, half-lit room. The silk, transparent curtains on the window gave the place a dreamlike atmosphere that was half-way between night and day, sleep and wakefulness, consciousness and unconsciousness.

Safaa al-Dhabi opened her eyes and heard the echo of the dry, unfeeling metallic laugh. It reminded her of the sound of typing on a computer placed on a wooden or copper board. For a moment she mistook it for the laughter of her Marxist or Islamist husband. She often confused the two, and the other men in her life, who seemed to have the same laugh.

She spoke in a hoarse angry voice. “What are you laughing at, man?”

“I’m happy you got through the crisis, thank God for that!” “

What crisis?”

She was astonished to see the doctor in his white coat while she lay on the couch drenched in sweat, and next to her on the floor was a large pail smelling of vomit. Her head was heavy and her tongue heavier. Her limbs felt as though they were filled with sacks of sand and she could hardly move them.

“What happened, doctor?”

“A slight nervous breakdown, which is now over, thank God!”

“Please, doctor, stop repeating this phrase.”

“Which phrase?”

“Thank God!”

“Oh my God! You don’t want to thank God?”

“Thank Him for what exactly?”

“That He saved you from death.”

“You were the one who saved me, doctor, and not He!”

“So, have you already forgotten God, Safi? Only half an hour ago, you said absolutely nothing except ‘please God, please God’!”

“True, that was half an hour ago, but what time do you make it now?”

“Half past six.”

“Morning or evening?”

She closed her eyes and fell into oblivion. With the tips of his fingers, he opened her eyelids, felt her pulse and wiped her forehead with a piece of cotton cloth soaked in pure alcohol.

“It’s six o’clock in the evening, Safaa.”

Her eyes opened, revealing two black, terrified pupils. The whites of the eyes were reddish and yellow. She raised her bosom, preparing to get up.

“Oh my God! I had an important appointment at five.”

“The most important thing now is your health, there’s nothing more important!”

“Money is more important than health, doctor, and the money is gone now!”

“Health brings money, Safi!”

“And money brings health. My money’s gone, doctor. How can I pay you? How can I pay the rent? The food, cabs and cigarettes?”

“You’re a university professor and you have a good salary.”

“That was in the past, doctor, before the days of democracy and the blessed open-door policy ...”

“Are you then an advocate of iron curtains and dictatorship, Safi?”

“All my money, doctor, is lost in that cursed Islamic bank. They’re all thieves, those who advocate Islam and open-door policies. They’re no better than their socialist predecessors.”

“An educated university professor like you, how could you put your money in one of these money investment companies?”

“They told me that usury was forbidden but that the interests of the money investment companies were permissible. And it was true, God blessed the money and I used to take twenty per cent interest. But it is all gone, the money and the interest, everything!”

Safaa al-Dhabi struck her cheeks and wailed like a woman at a funeral. She wept without tears, a dry, truncated, intermittent whimper. She closed her eyes and opened them again, swaying between drowsiness and wakefulness. But when she was conscious again, she went on with her broken talk about past and present.

“The greatest catastrophe in life, doctor, is to lose your money, your life’s work in one instant. I’ve never had a nervous breakdown before, never, never, never. I’ve been through a lot of hardships in this horrible life of mine, but never had a nervous breakdown before. When I discovered that my husband was betraying me, I told him to go to hell, and never looked back.”

“Which husband was that, Safi? The Marxist or the Islamist?”

“Can’t really remember which one, doctor, for they were similar in every way. Secrecy was their established practise, both in politics and in sexual affairs. In their infidelity, lies, and evasiveness, they were identical. They were also similar in their concealment of corruption and their use of pompous words in the service of God or Karl Marx. But the Marxist was more cautious than the Islamist, because Marxists are used to secrecy and underground activities, while the Islamists are stupid and transparent. My Marxist husband was so cautious that he lived with me for nine long years and cheated on me every day without my knowledge. This continued until a friend of mine phoned me and told me that my husband had a flat on Ramsis Street. I took the address from her, grabbed a cab, and climbed the stairs to the third floor because there was no lift in the building. I was out of breath standing in front of the door. I rang the bell and it was like I said, ‘Open Sesame’, because the door opened and there he was right in front of me, my Marxist husband in the flesh. How could I mistake him? I’ve lived with him for nine years. He was wearing colorful silk pyjamas and his face turned as pale as death. Behind him stood a child aged three or four, I’m not sure, perhaps even five. The child shook his father’s hand, asking ‘Who’s this woman, Dad?’

“Another woman might have had a nervous breakdown, but not me! I stared him straight in the eye and said, ‘Are you a man of principles, you? How could you do that?’

“Do you know what he said, doctor?”

“What did he say to you, Safi?”

“He said, ‘How dare you spy on me? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, respectable university professor that you are?’ So I chucked him out of my life like a shoe, doctor. No nervous breakdown or anything of the sort. But nine years, of course, is no laughing matter, doctor. At times I woke up in the middle of the night and reached out across the large bed to find it empty. I had insomnia for two years and couldn’t sleep without sleeping pills. When I did sleep I was attacked by nightmares, doctor!”

“What kind of nightmares?”

“I saw myself holding a knife and going out on the street, sleepwalking. I looked for a cab but couldn’t find one, so I walked and walked until I got to Ramsis Street. I climbed the stairs to the third floor, for there was no lift in the building, and rang the bell. He opened the door dressed in his colorful silk pyjamas, his trousers and pants unbuttoned. I dug the knife into his stomach, into his member which he used to betray me. I cut it to pieces and wrapped it in a newspaper and went back home inhaling the fresh air of the Nile.”

Safaa al-Dhabi closed her eyes, looking extremely exhausted. The psychiatrist held her hand in his and whispered in her ear, “You’re a great woman, Safi, a professor with a mind. Any woman with a mind cannot find the man who deserves her. All the men are made of tinsel. They’re all sick liars and hypocrites. I’m one of them. You’re a great professor with a name, publications, and a position. Money will come and go, and men will come and go like everything else. Nothing stays except your mind, work, writing and health.”

“But my money, doctor? My life’s work? My heart is broken over my money, I’m hurting. Please, doctor, hold my hand, I want to get up and stand on my own feet.”

The psychiatrist helped her get up. She tottered a little and was on the point of falling when he caught her in his arms. She found herself burying her face in his chest and crying. She sobbed as she encircled him with her arms. But her legs gave way and she fell on the couch, dragging him with her. Her semi-conscious body quivered and something inside her trembled, a deeply buried desire stirring, an overwhelming pleasure that she had never felt before. It was the sensation that no man could give her. She wanted so much to experience this pleasure, but her mind was semi-conscious and her feverish lips moved over his chest, neck and lips. But his lips were cold, neutral, without any warmth. He neither encouraged nor repulsed her, but left himself in her arms, his body underneath hers. He let her unbutton his trousers and allowed her to take him the way a man takes a woman.

Before she left the clinic, he held her hand in his and gave her a kiss of gratitude on the cheek.

“Thank you, Safi.”

“For what, doctor?”

“I don’t know!”

“On the contrary, I thank you, doctor!”

“For what, Safi?”

“For the first time in my life, I feel relaxed as if ... as if ... I had been carrying a heavy load, I don’t know why. But the load is gone and my body feels as light as a feather. I feel I have the strength to move mountains.”

Bodour al-Damhiri looked for her novel in all the drawers of her desk. It was lost before it was finished, evaporating in the air as if it had never existed. Nobody knew where it was except her husband, Zakariah al-Khartiti. He stared at her enviously when she wrote, for he was jealous of her mind and the words she put down on the page. She never read what she wrote to him, and never asked him for his opinion. Her self-confidence, he felt, bordered on arrogance. He wanted to break this arrogance. He pouted his lips whenever he read one of her articles in the magazine and volunteered his opinion: “Your article, Bodour, would have been better if ...”

She didn’t even lift her eyes from her papers, paying no attention to what he said.

“Can’t you hear me, Bodour?”

“I can, Zakariah!”

“Don’t you want to hear my opinion on your article?”

“I know your opinion.”

“What do you mean you know my opinion?”

“I know all your ideas, Zakariah! I’ve known them for the past hundred years. Since the day we got married, I’ve been listening to your opinions, every day I’ve been hearing them. Only an ass can mistake them, and I’m not one!”

He read out his column to her more than once, each time asking her for her opinion. But she would involuntarily doze off while he read. Repetitiveness was boring and it underlined the bankruptcy of his mind, even when it was a feature of one of the books of God. This last statement was not hers, but Badreya’s, the heroine of her stolen novel. Her husband no doubt stole it, for he called Badreya a woman lacking in reason and faith because she was making anti-religious statements. The miracle of God’s three books was really beyond her deficient reason.

“Badreya is an imaginary character in a novel, Zakariah! You treat her as though she were flesh and blood!”

He pouted his lips and the large Havana cigar shook as it stayed unlit or partially lit between them in the manner of the editor-in-chief, or of Mahmoud al-Feqqi or the other columnists. As soon as a journalist had his own daily column, he would start appearing with the cigar between his lips, which he pouted if he did not like other columns. He didn’t in fact like any column except his own, and neither did he like any photograph except his. He would gaze at it admiringly while fiddling with his ear or nose, or scratching the hair on his chest, underneath his belly or in his armpits.

Zakariah al-Khartiti’s gait as he walked was in the manner of other great writers. Like them, he leaned more heavily on the left than on the right, as though he was suffering from a slight limp. It was casual, nonchalant, coquettish. He raised his left shoulder, as well as his left buttock, a little higher than his right. He walked with the unlit cigar in his mouth, his eyes riveted on the ceiling and totally lost in deep thought. But in the presence of the president or the minister, he would walk straight, get rid of the cigar in his mouth, and remove the frown on his face and the lost look in his eyes. He would stand upright, all his five senses in total readiness: seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting. Even the sixth sense would become equally alert, in addition to the seventh sense, which was owned only by those people who were close to the corridors of power, money, and arms. This latter sense was born out of the sense of smell, for the great writer sometimes smelled death coming to take the life of the editor-in-chief and leaving his chair empty.

Zakariah al-Khartiti was getting ready to write his daily column about the Feast. He sat for a long time holding the pen in hand, rummaging around in his brain for an idea, and browsing through the newspapers lying in front of him. He was looking for a phrase or an idea written in another column that he might lift. He would change it and edit it in such a way as to make it totally different from the original.

What could Zakariah al-Khartiti possibly write concerning the Feast?

The Feast was a happy time in his childhood, for, like other children, he enjoyed the sight of the slaughter of the sheep. He woke up at dawn to the sound of the butcher calling out “Butcher, butcher”.