God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels (41 page)

Midday had arrived, and the sun was now blazing hot. Its red disc was reflected in the round brass buttons, giving them the likeness of twenty suns that made one's eyes water at a mere glance. Unable to go on looking at them, she dropped her gaze to the ground. But the surface beneath her bare feet seemed aflame; she had never felt such heat underfoot before. His high boots struck the ground with a strange metallic sound, like iron grating against iron. His stride was long, each foot planting itself firmly on the asphalt. The feet rose into long legs inside trousers of heavy cloth, with a deep, vault-like pocket in which was hiding a sharp, hard implement, hanging down along his thigh.

They turned off the broad thoroughfare into a narrow side street, the long fingers still encircling her arm. But now the five fingers had become only four. The fifth had disengaged itself from the rest, moving upwards on its own, over the soft arm, cautiously, stealthily, until it buried its coarse black tip into the soft childlike armpit that as yet bore no sign of hair.

She tried to pull her arm away. But the four fingers contracted, closing around her upper arm more tightly, digging
into the soft flesh, while the fifth finger emerged from beneath her armpit, straining until its pointed black snout reached as far as the soft rise of her breast – still just a bud – bearing down on it with cautious, trembling, jerky pressure which became firmer at the bend of a street, or behind a wall, and relaxing or stopping altogether whenever they were walking down the middle of the street; and occasionally, as they passed a throng of people, that fifth finger would retract itself quickly and join its four brothers.

A foul odour suddenly filled her nostrils, she found herself in a dark, narrow alley. She saw him come to a stop before a small wooden door. He drew a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, pushed her inside ahead of him, and closed the door.

At first she could see nothing, for the place was pitch dark. He lit a small kerosene lamp, which at once revealed a bare, tiled floor, with just a little rug in one corner that reminded her of the mat at home. It was a cramped room, and had only a single, small, iron-barred window high in the wall, a clay water-jug perching on its sill. In the faint light, the walls of the room looked a grey colour, overlaid with the sort of black tint produced by soot from a gas burner. On a nail in the wall hung a suit of heavy cloth. From its chest and broad, padded shoulders, yellow brass buttons gleamed in the darkness like eyes, open and feverish with a viral liver infection. On the floor sat one huge, high-topped boot, looking like a headless animal, and beside it was tossed a pair of white, baggy pants,
the rear yellowed and the belly gone blackish, giving off the smell of old urine.

She raised her head from the tiled floor and saw him standing there, naked. His broad shoulders had become narrow – bony, even – and his collarbone protruded sharply. The sturdy trouser legs had given way to thin and bowed limbs; his massive feet, which before had rested so far above the ground, now had nothing to separate them from the tiles. The sharp, rigid implement concealed in his pocket had become visible.

She caught her breath with a gulp, her surprise imbued with a panic that she resisted instinctively. But he threw her down on the floor, his bulky finger tearing at the neck of her
galabeya
so that the threadbare garment ripped in half down the front, revealing no underclothes below.

‘Who are you?' she asked, her voice cracked and weak.

‘I'm the government.'

‘The Lord keep you – let me go.'

He answered in the same coarse, imperious tones. ‘Go where, girl? You're already condemned.'

Everything began to happen with the extreme rapidity of panting breaths, of muscles contracting and expanding, an extraordinary speed which occurs only in dreams. But this time no confusion marked the dream: instead of a shopkeeper beating her with his stick, there was before her a male creature with a rough moustache that rubbed coarsely across her face,
a smell of tobacco which stifled her, and a chest of thick hair, matted and plastered to the skin by a sticky, viscous sweat.

Suddenly everything stopped: a moment of stillness akin to the moment of death. She lifted her head from the tiled floor and looked about her. She saw him lying on his back, eyes closed, utterly still. She thought perhaps he had died, when a faint snore began to issue from his gaping mouth, soon rising to become like the gurgling of an ancient waterwheel turned by an ailing bull. She raised herself quietly and composedly from the floor, pulled the two sections of her torn
galabeya
over her chest and stomach as best she could, and tiptoed to the door. She twisted her head back calmly, and saw the twenty yellow eyes, wide open and staring at her. Hastily, she opened the door.

The broad main street was visible ahead of her. She took off along it, running with all the strength she could summon, fleeing without a moment's pause.

* * *

That very moment, Hamido had stepped down from the train. Now, his back to the south and his face turned northward, he stared straight ahead, gazing at the many faces crowding the area outside the Bab al-Hadid railway station, Cairo's old central depot. His bare feet padded over the asphalt; beneath the ample folds of his
galabeya
, the knife swung down close to his thigh like an artificial limb or an organ newly implanted in his flesh.

The knife's sharp tip bumped against the flesh of his thigh, and he shivered, the tremor passing through his neck and head. He staggered, and almost fell among the heavy leather shoes surrounding him, but he tautened his leg muscles and kept his balance. His eyes lost themselves in the vast, buffeting ocean: rising with the buildings' towering summits, falling with the sun's rays reflected on the gleaming asphalt, circling with the movement in the immense traffic circle, at the centre of which stood a huge stone statue with a human head. Around it moved row after row of people, and flags, and cars, round and round, uncoiling and branching off into numerous straight lines, only to intertwine once again, pouring into another traffic circle, and then branching off, the branches splitting into still more branches, separating, then mingling again, and dividing, endlessly.

He shaded his eyes with his hands and leant his head back against a lamp-post. He couldn't fight the drowsiness which was overwhelming him, and he dozed off standing up. A muted sound awakened him. Glancing around, he noticed that the boulevard, submerged in the evening gloom, was now calm and empty of people and vehicles. His sharp eyes bored into the darkness, and he caught sight of a spectre running in the distance, its feet bare, its long
galabeya
not loose enough to hide the visible swelling over the stomach.

‘Hamida!' He gasped her name out, sending a rush of pent-up breath through his barely parted lips, then took off over the
asphalt, his left hand raised protectively before him, slashing at the darkness, and his right hand plunged into his pocket, fingering the sharp hardness of the knife-blade. The spectre stopped in a darkened corner. With slow, wary footsteps, Hamido drew nearer, until there was no more than a single stride between them. He heard the rough voice, coming in a whisper that was more like a hiss.

‘Only blood washes out shame.'

He pulled the weapon from his pocket and hid it behind his back. Suddenly, a moving searchlight exposed the darkened corner, and he saw his mother's face beneath the black
tarha
. He screamed; the sound rang out in the night and the light came to a stop on his face. Someone drew near; in the darkness he couldn't see the figure's eyes. But he could see eyes on the shoulders and over the chest – two rows of eyes, round and staring, giving off a yellowish light.

His lips formed their question, but a large, coarse palm landed on his temple, followed by a second slap across the other temple. He lifted his arm to resist the blows, but it was arrested by five tightly encircling fingers. He brought his other arm upwards instinctively protecting himself, when there loomed in the air a cudgel-like wooden arm that came down on his head.

Hamido opened his eyes to a violent headache. Probing his head, amidst the hair he stumbled on the wound, already crusted over with dry blood. He scratched at the scab until
it fell, landing beside a huge pair of boots rising to high leather tops, surrounded by a trouser-fold of heavy cloth. The legs seemed awesomely long; he realized they stretched up eventually into a stocky chest. Down the front and across the shoulders were fixed two rows of round yellow buttons which reflected a faint lamplight.

The enormous boot trod on the clot of dried blood, trampling it brutally underfoot. With the thud of the boot on the floor, there rose in the air a harsh voice.

‘Your name?'

‘Hamido.'

The sharp razor passed across the skin of his head: his thick hair tumbled into a pail, along with his
galabeya
. The sun of early morning was slanting in, and he saw the shadow of a tall, broad-shouldered person following him across the floor. The shadow came to a stop. He moved; it moved. He struck the floor with his foot and heard a strange metallic sound, not one that he had ever heard his own, bare, foot make. He looked at his feet, and there he saw the enormous, heavy boots, rising into high leather tops. He saw trousers of heavy cloth. Inside trousers and boots were his very own, actual, skinny legs, which extended upwards into a broad squarish chest, bolted with a row of brass buttons, and then into broad shoulders padded with cotton, or perhaps with straw.

In his new boots, he paced the ground, taking slow, timorous steps. Inside each boot rested a small, bony foot,
clenched and compressed under the thick leather, its toes thin and white, bloodless and motionless, dead or nearly so, the entire foot absolutely still inside the boot. It was the boots which gave movement to those feet, lifting and lowering them, carrying them over the ground step by step. With every step over the asphalt, the iron-studded soles produced a dull thud, metallic and slow, like the sound made by the hoof of a sickly calf as it is driven to the slaughterhouse.

He stopped; so did the black shadow, sketched so meticulously on the ground. The utter smoothness of his shaven head reflected the sun, and his eyes were no more than holes emitting a penetrating light. His neck muscles were stretched taut and his back muscles tensed; beneath the tight wall of his abdomen lay a distended emaciated stomach, fed only on black smoke, black saliva, and an end of dry bread, baked to hardness, which he dipped in treacle and ate with a slice of onion, or a bit of pickle which stung like a bitter cucumber, to balance out the sweet taste of the treacle. Then he would neutralize the bitterness with black smoke, sucked in through nose, mouth and gullet to fill his chest and create pressure on his stomach until he could belch like one whose belly is full.

A thin whip stung him on the nape of his neck; his feet moved automatically over the ground. Right foot first, then left foot – iron cleats thudding against asphalt with a regular beat, like the hour striking or the heart beating, lub dub lub dub. Left right left right.

‘Halt!' The strong, harsh voice resounded through the air. The boots on his feet collided against each other noisily. His legs and thighs came together tightly, muscles contracted. His right hand plunged into his pocket and came to rest over the killing tool, its hardness extending along his thigh and ending in a tapered and punctured metal head.

‘Attention!' shouted that grating voice.

The fingers of his right hand closed around the implement – four fingers only, the thumb moving away to rest alone over the hammer. He had one eye trained on the fixed point halfway between the open eyes.

His mouth dropped open and he began to pant. But a strong hand slapped him across the stomach, and the harsh voice pierced his ear.

‘Close your mouth. Hold your breath.'

He obeyed. The rough, commanding voice sounded.

‘Only blood washes out shame!'

And he pulled the trigger.

He heard a loud report, a sound he had never heard before, and saw a body fall to the ground. From beneath it ran a red stream which he recognized at once as ewe's blood. For today was the feast-day, and here he was, still upright, his stance unchanged, staring at the pair of open eyes, still and lidless eyes, fixed in a cold, dead stare, eyes that had dilated with terror. The terror shifted to him; beneath the full
galabeya
his thin legs began to shake, and he ran to bury his head in his mother's bosom and weep.

He rubbed his face against his mother's chest, wiping away his tears. He looked up. There were his father's eyes, covered with the tiny red capillaries. There were the brass buttons over the chest and shoulders, with their own unique gleam, and the hoarse voice, with its frightening, peremptory harshness.

‘Crying like a woman, hunh?'

And Hamido returned to his position in the rank. He stood erect, his eyes reflecting the redness of the sun directly overhead – for their blackness had fled, beneath the lid, under the shade, to a secure and moist place. The asphalt blazed, and seemed to melt in the heavy heat. He felt that the heels of his boots were digging into the asphalt, in the way that they would bore into the soft, muddy ground.

Hamido stopped for a second to pull up his boot tops. Lagging one step behind his row, he felt the stinging blow of the whip on his nape, and bounded forward to get in line. But instead he tripped and fell on his face.

His boots slipped off just as he was toppling over. The burning air thrust its way into his chest in the shape of a spoken word, uttered in a voice that he realized was his own. He became aware that it was his own body, and no one else's, that had fallen to the ground, and that the regular beats pounding on his inner ear were in fact issuing from his own chest. He felt proud of his ability to distinguish his body from that of the ewe.

Pride showed in his eyes, although his face was still to the ground. Spittle flew from the coarse mouth, coming to rest on the back of his head. And it was followed immediately by a familiar curse – an epithet pertaining to female genitalia – and then by a fierce kick with the blunt toe of a heavy boot, which landed in his back, directly over his kidney.