God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels (20 page)

‘I'm thinking of the easiest way. I don't want to use force,' answered Sheikh Zahran.

Haj Ismail looked at him for a long moment before he said in a quiet voice, ‘Are you afraid of Galal, Sheikh Zahran?'

The Chief of the Village Guard twirled his whiskers. ‘Galal does not frighten me. But somehow this time I feel that something's going to happen. I don't know exactly what, but my mind is not at rest. People have changed, Haj Ismail. The people who at one time could not look me in the eye, now look at me straight in the face, and no longer bow their heads to the ground when I pass by. Just yesterday, one of the villagers refused to pay his taxes and shouted, “We work all the year
round and all we end up with are debts to the government.” I never used to hear this kind of talk from any of them before. The peasants are getting more and more hungry. All they have to eat is some dry bread and wormy salted cheese. And hunger makes a man blind. It makes him see no one, neither ruler nor God. Hunger breeds heretics, Haj Ismail.'

‘They've always been hungry. There's nothing new in that, and the villagers have always lived on dry bread and salted cheese with worms. They've never known anything else.' He fell silent for a moment, and then resumed as though an idea had occurred to him. ‘Sheikh Zahran, instead of trying to frighten him, have you thought of trying to tempt him with something really worthwhile? Zakeya and Galal are up to their ears in debt and you are the one who is supposed to collect the taxes they owe to the government. If you suggest to Galal that you might be prepared to be lenient, it could go a long way to making him less obstinate.'

‘You have no idea all the things I've attempted with Galal since I found out he'd married Zeinab,' said Sheikh Zahran. ‘If I could have stopped the marriage, I would have, but I learnt about it after everything was over. Since then I knew the day would come when the Mayor would send for me to bring Zeinab back, I tried to convince Galal that there was no need for him to stop her from going to the Mayor's house, but he told me that it was she who had refused to go back.'

‘Who of the two do you think is refusing?' asked Haj Ismail.

‘Most probably it's his influence, since she continued to work for the Mayor until she got married,' answered Sheikh Zahran.

‘She must really love him. Or perhaps she feels it's a sin to go to the Mayor's house now that she's married.'

‘In any case,' said Sheikh Zahran, ‘it's clear that the presence of Galal at her side is an encouragement for her to refuse.'

‘Then what did you do after that?'

‘After that,' said Sheikh Zahran, ‘I tried what you suggested before. I told him we could reduce the taxes he has to pay to the government, but he didn't seem to be interested at all. Now I have no other alternative but to use my authority.'

‘But what can you do?'

‘He will either pay his debts immediately or else we will confiscate his land.'

‘But the land is life to a peasant,' said Haj Ismail. ‘If you confiscate it, it's like taking their life. Besides, you might find yourself in a corner if you apply this only to Galal. All the peasants owe taxes to the government so why only him? You had better think of something else, Sheikh Zahran.'

Sheikh Zahran did not proffer any answer. The only way out he could now see was to get rid of Galal in one way or another. He had got rid of Kafrawi by arranging things in such a way that he was accused of a crime and ended in gaol. He continued to scratch his wits in order to find a solution.

Haj Ismail could not hear the questions that were being asked in Sheikh Zahran's mind, but one look at his face was enough to tell him the direction in which his thoughts were moving. They both lapsed into a long silence. All that could be heard was the gurgling sound of the water-jar pipe, or the noise which Haj Ismail made when he cleared his nose and his throat every now and then. The dark night had by now enveloped Kafr El Teen in its heavy cloak, and the air hardly moved over the surface of the river. The sombre mud huts and the winding lanes seemed to sink into a silence as still and profound as the silence of death, as the end of all movement.

XVIII

Zakeya was sitting as still as usual on the dusty threshold of her house, her black eyes watching the lane, and the iron gate with its iron bars, when she heard the noise of many voices, and saw a group of men enter through the doorway, preceded by the Chief of the Village Guard. His voice rang out in the small yard, ‘Search the house!'

Before she had time to ask what they wanted, or to understand what was going on, the men had started to move around the small mud hut searching everywhere, behind the doors, on top of the oven, and up on the roof, and in every gap or hole, no matter how small. She stood watching them with an almost dazed look in her wide open eyes. After a while a man appeared carrying a small bundle. He walked up to the Chief of the Village Guard and said, ‘We've found it, Sheikh Zahran. He had hidden it on top of the oven.'

The Chief of the Village Guard shouted at the top of his voice, ‘The thief! Arrest him immediately. Where is your son, Zakeya?'

‘He's in the fields,' she said in a frightened voice. ‘What do you want of him? What has he done?'

‘Your son Galal is a big thief, Zakeya. He stole this from the Mayor's house,' said Sheikh Zahran, holding out the small bundle. ‘Look!' he added, opening it. ‘It's full of silver coins.'

She was seized with a feeling of bewilderment soon overcome by her increasing terror at the sight of hundreds of silver coins flashing in the light of the kerosene lamps. But she cried out defiantly, ‘My son does not steal, Sheikh Zahran, and he's never been to the Mayor's house.'

Sheikh Zahran's lips twisted into a sneer, which he followed with an ironic, snorting laugh. ‘You know nothing about your son, or else you're just pretending that you don't know what he has done. Are you sure he said nothing to you about this bundle?'

‘No, Sheikh Zahran,' she answered quickly. ‘I know nothing. And my son Galal is certainly not the one who stole these coins.'

The Chief of the Village Guard gave another prolonged snort and asked, ‘Then, pray tell me, who stole them, Zakeya, and who hid them on top of your oven. A spirit?'

She slapped her face several times with both her hands and cried out, ‘Never, never. My son Galal is not a thief. You will not take him away from us as you did with Kafrawi.'

But they took him. Galal could not understand what was happening. He was taken straight from the field to the police station, in the same
galabeya
he was wearing as he worked. From that moment onwards they kept moving him from one
room to another and asking him questions all the time. He walked as though in a dream and from the look in his eyes it was clear that he could not make out a thing of what was going on around him. He felt he was living in a nightmare. He did not know what to answer when they questioned him and all he would say was, ‘I don't know anything. I don't know why I'm here. I don't know anything about this bundle. I've never been to the Mayor's house.'

But then they brought the witnesses. One of them was the Chief of the Village Guard in person. There was a witness to say that he had seen him running out of a back door in the Mayor's house. There was a second witness who was sure he had been carrying something which looked like a small bundle. Still a third one maintained that he had called out to him at the time when he had been seen, but instead of answering, he had continued to run until he disappeared through a door opposite the Mayor's house. The Chief of the Village Guard was the last of the witnesses to speak. He said that he had always held Galal in high esteem as a soldier who had done his duty defending the land of his forefathers, and always felt that he could trust him and have confidence in him. But faced with the things which had been brought to his notice, he had been obliged to search the house in which Galal lived. Then after a short pause he added that this was the first time Galal had stolen. He could not understand what had driven him to do so except perhaps that he owed the government a lot of
arrears in taxes, and was obliged to pay at least a part of the debt, otherwise the government authorities would have taken the measures that are normal in such cases.

It was clear that the Chief of the Village Guard knew exactly what to say when dealing with the police. He was well versed in their language and they too understood what he was trying to say.

As soon as he was finished the magistrate turned to Galal and asked, ‘Have you got anything to say for yourself?'

‘I know nothing about this bundle,' he repeated for the hundredth time. The sweat poured from his brow and he looked around him in a daze. ‘I never entered the Mayor's house,' he added.

But they sent him off to gaol. He found himself in a narrow room crowded with other people, and he could hardly breathe, or move. When his eyes got accustomed to the absence of light he began to look around. He could see the sallow faces tanned to the hue of dark leather. The eyes were black and large, and they looked at him with the expression of men who have resigned themselves to their fate, and given up fighting a long time ago. For a moment he felt he had seen the face of his uncle Kafrawi. He whispered, ‘Uncle Kafrawi?'

But a voice answered in the dark, ‘Who's Kafrawi, my son?'

XIX

When they came to take Galal away, Zeinab held on to his arm and shrieked, ‘Don't take my husband away from me. Take me with him.' But the rough strong hands of the men pushed her aside and Galal was driven away in the small van.

She said not one word for three days, nor did she go to the fields, nor lead the buffalo by the rope tied around its neck, as it plodded behind her. She did not even go to the river to fill the earthenware jar with water, or cook, or bake bread. She just sat beside her Aunt Zakeya on the dusty threshold of her house, her eyes silently following the way the van had taken when it carried Galal off to gaol.

On the third day she stood up, went to the stable, took out the buffalo, and left the house leading it behind her. She returned without the buffalo, but between her breasts she was hiding a small handkerchief knotted around a few coins. When she arrived she squatted down beside her Aunt Zakeya without saying anything.

On the fourth day at the crack of dawn she stood up again and went out alone. She continued to walk until she reached the place where the bus stopped. She took it to Bab
El Hadeed and then asked a passer-by where she could find the gaol. Along the way she kept asking different people until she reached a station. There she took a train and when she got down walked again until she found herself standing in front of the huge prison door. But the man at the gate told her that visits were forbidden without written permission.

She asked, ‘How do I get a permit to visit my husband in the gaol?'

The man explained, and after he had explained she walked back along the same way, took a train and managed to get back to Bab El Hadeed. There she found a tram which dropped her in front of a huge building full of people, and desks, and papers. She entered the building and was swallowed up with the other people. Inside she went from room to room until it was time to leave. And this went on for several days. She felt she was going round and round in an endless journey. After some time the money she had with her was finished. A kind man met her on the way out. He was one of those men who helped women in need to spend the night in the mosque of Al Sayeda. But instead of taking her to the mosque he took her to spend the night with him in his room.

After that no one in Kafr El Teen heard anything more about Zeinab.

XX

Since the day they had taken Galal away and Zeinab had gone after him, Zakeya continued to sit on the dusty ground of the entrance to her house without moving or saying a thing. Her eyes stared into the night with a terrible anger like the anger of some wild beast being hunted down. In her mind something was happening very slowly, something like thinking, like a tiny point of light appearing in a dark sky. At moments it would be there and at others it disappeared. She groped in her mind for this tiny star in the infinite night like someone searching for the tip of the thread in a tangled reel of cotton, but it always managed to escape her.

But the darkness of her mind was no longer the same. It had changed. Nor was her mind the same mind it had been before. Something had started to move in it, a tiny flitting thing. And a question kept whispering under the bones in her skull, a question she had never asked before, and which grew louder all the time until it became like a ringing bell. If it was not Galal, and of that she was sure, who was it then?

She suddenly remembered the day when the Mayor sent for Zeinab. Since the girl had married she had vowed to
Allah never to set foot in the Mayor's house. Kneeling on the prayer carpet she said to Him, ‘I did what Thou willed me to do, O God, and I thank Thee for curing my Aunt Zakeya. Now I am a wife lawfully married according to the
Sunna
of Allah and His prophet, and I will never go there again.' And that night she heard a voice from heaven say to her, ‘Yes Zeinab, you are a wife now, and Allah forbids you to go there again.'

It was as though this new awareness had given her a strength which nothing could overcome. No power on earth could any longer convince her to go to the Mayor's house. When the Chief of the Village Guard came to her, she insisted, ‘No, I will not go. I refuse to disobey Allah, Sheikh Zahran.'

‘But who told you that if you go back to the Mayor's house you will be disobeying Allah? On the contrary, it was Allah who ordered you to go to the Mayor's house, was it not?' asked Sheikh Zahran.

‘That was before I married,' cried out Zeinab. ‘Now I am a wife and Allah has forbidden me to go there.'

Zakeya was sitting in her usual place listening to what was being said. Suddenly another tiny star lit up in the darkness of her head. She could not grasp anything at the beginning but a slow movement kept going through her mind, and once it started it went on slowly at first, then a little faster. For once she had started to think, it had to go on. She had caught the top of the thread between her fingers and now the reel would
keep turning and turning until it reached the end, no matter how long.