The Cheapest Nights Read online

  The women agreed immediately. Om George was the only “lady” on the farm, and the only one who was educated and could read and write. What was more she came from the town, where people knew all about everything.

  The children pushed and shoved as they crowded around the long procession leaving the steward’s house on its way to the bailiff’s. Eager yet dejected, the crowd stumbled on down the narrow lanes littered with dirt and piles of rice straw. It was still daylight although the sun was going down. Fatma, in their midst, walked blindly on, her face ashen, her heart sunk to her feet, feeling with every step that she was trampling on it. Trampling on her innocence, and the sweet memories of her childhood, and the days of her girlhood when she sang at wedding feasts, dreaming of her own wedding day, and the music, and the ritual night when her hands would be dyed with henna—the night when all would stand waiting for her to come out like a queen. And now they were waiting for her too. Hundreds of eyes riveted on her everywhere she looked, ravenous and brutal, raping her without shame as she staggered on, bleeding in her heart, barefooted, humiliated, driven without mercy.

  Her friend Hikmat tried to pull her veil down to cover her face but she pushed it back. What was the use of covering her face when all of her was bare?

  Sadly, inexorably, the mass of women moved on, heads and arms squirming, a trail of children and hungry dogs behind, all enveloped in a veil of dust. The geese along their path were scared away, and overhead the birds and doves flew to their nests and the women trudged on, grim and resolute, till at last they reached the bailiff’s house.

  * * *

  —

  At that moment Dorgham the watchman was having another of his fits, bawling as usual, while nobody paid attention, for people by now were used to his outbursts. He was the only man on the farm who came from Upper Egypt, and he had been watchman to that threshing floor since the day he arrived. He was now well over seventy and still at the same job. He had a huge black head and thick black features constantly knitted into an angry scowl. His hair was kinky and now quite gray, and his long white whiskers made him look like a mastiff. Sweat was constantly pouring from his face so that it glistened as though it were smeared with grease, and he spoke in fierce grunts which nobody understood. The sight of anyone coming near the threshing floor was enough to send him into a rage. After living thirty years on the farm he still did not know anyone by name, nor did he care to, and so long as people stayed away from his threshing floor he left them alone.

  Now he was barking at Gharib whom he had discovered hiding under a pile of maize. The boy had just come out of hiding, sneaking back to the farm in order to watch the result of his atrocious act. His already dusky face had browned to a dull tan. He wore his skullcap low on his forehead, no longer displaying his cherished forelock. It was a much subdued Gharib huddling there beneath the maize, glum and repentant, as his own depravity revealed itself to him in all its starkness. As the procession approached and Fatma appeared he sank deeper in his hiding place and looked away.

  It was his dread of Fatma and the fact that she was unattainable that had kindled his desire. And the more desperately he wanted her the more distant she had seemed. He had not intended any harm. All he wanted was a little recognition, a sign that she was aware he existed, if only a careless look over her shoulder. But that never came, and he retaliated by an even more fevered pursuit of other women, never for a moment giving up his passionate longing for one look or one word from Fatma.

  That wasn’t the first time he had hidden, watching for her as she carried her brother’s breakfast to the field, swaying in her black gown, the sweet breath of her body blowing over the trees, and the meadows, and the stream, filling the earth with her fragrance. Many times before he had stood watching for her, unobserved, afraid to be discovered, but that day for the first time he did not care if he was. He wanted her to see him. For the first time he longed to commit that Shame which had kept him sleepless and tormented, tossing on the straw. And yet he would have been content only to speak to that girl who was neither his sister nor his mother and listen to her timid reply.

  No sooner had he appeared before her, emerging from the field, than she stood rooted where she was as though she had seen him stark naked. As though it were the Shame itself looming before her. That very Shame of which Farag’s bloodshot eyes, branding her like fire, had given her warning. The basket fell off her head. She screamed in panic. Everyone came rushing at the sound. In one second the whole world was tumbling about her ears as Gharib took to his heels and vanished in the fields.

  * * *

  —

  Contrary to what they expected, Om George crossed herself and expressed her genuine sorrow over the whole affair, promising to do her best to help to find out the truth. She swore by the living Christ that she would get her husband to lock up Gharib in the police station, and get the police officer to tie him to the tail of a horse and hang him on a telephone pole. Om George was well-known for her piety. She was well-bred and dignified. Nobody knew her real name. She used to force her husband to take her to church in town every Sunday morning in spite of his grumbling. He was used to spending Saturday evenings drinking arak in the neighboring village where Panayoti, the grocer, also served liquor to those who wanted it.

  Om George was fair and short with graying hair and three dots tattooed on her chin. She knew all about Fatma, and she was rather fond of the girl. Often she used to send for her to come and help her with the biscuits Abu George5 couldn’t do without for breakfast. Or sometimes just to keep her company, or to fill her in on the latest gossip as she was forbidden to mix with the women of the farm. Had it not been for the difference in age she might have been her best friend.

  It was with the deepest humiliation that Fatma stepped into the bailiff’s house. She was going there now not because she was wanted, but in order for Om George to arbitrate on her honor; the woman who only a few days before had kissed her mouth saying that had they been of the same religion she would have taken her for wife to her brother who was a cashier in the province of Beheira.

  She stood petrified on the threshold but the women dragged her in and her veil slipped off her head. Om George went around to see that George was out of the house and that the doors and panes and shutters were properly barred. Fatma fought with all the strength of instinctive shyness, but they had fallen on her, forcing her down on the bed while one woman tied up her hands and two others got hold of her legs. Many hands stretched toward her: veined, ugly, dry hands. Eyes bulged, intent in their search for honor, seeking to guard it. Burning, piercing, boring through her, even when they no longer knew what they were looking for. Om George was all in a quiver as though she were the one about to go through the ordeal. She kept rebuking the women, in vain, at the same time reassuring Fatma, also in vain, while the struggle went on amid muffled cries that gradually died to a chill whisper. A stillness heavy with expectation hung over the room and spread slowly outside, to the house, and onto the farm, and over the whole universe. It hung gloomily over the heads of the people sitting with Farag and those hanging around near the irrigation pump or out in the fields, following in their imaginations what was going on at the bailiff’s house.

  The whole farm was lulled to a hush except Dorgham. Only one man was there to give him an ear and that was Abdoun, Gharib’s father. Lifting his gallabieh by the hem he had rushed to the threshing floor in search of any living soul before whom he could vent his fury and curse Fatma and his son and the entire farm—even if only Dorgham.

  Suddenly a loud trilling-cry coming from the room where Fatma was imprisoned, tore the silence. It was followed by others, alternating with cries of, “All is well! Thank God, all is well! Honor is safe.”

  Only then did Farag look up. “Bring her to me,” were the first words he uttered.

  A few moments later, no sooner had Dorgham’s vociferating died down than a tremendous racket was heard starting near the shaft
which fed the old water-wheel. It was deep enough to hold three men standing on one another’s shoulders, and there just at the edge was old Abdoun catching his son by the scruff of the neck, and with all his tottering strength trying to throw him in. From all around men had gathered around him in an effort to quell his fury and save Gharib from his clutches. Every time he failed to budge Gharib his vituperations redoubled and his curses poured like burning lava. Anyone watching this performance could have no doubt of Abdoun’s genuine intention of drowning his son. But there was something, perhaps an imperceptible inflection in his voice, or in his choice of insults, which suggested that Abdoun was at heart not ashamed of his son. If anything, that he was secretly proud to have sired a seducer no woman could resist, and that his son was accused of rape.

  Meanwhile at Farag’s house a regular massacre was about to take place. Farag was beating Fatma with the coffee grinder, and Fatma was howling with pain. Farag’s wife was screaming in terror lest he should kill his sister and get himself into trouble. The neighbors’ wives were screaming too, while everyone else from inside and outside the house rushed to hold him back, in vain. Farag was like a maddened beast heeding nothing but his wild intent to murder his sister. And yet there was something wanting in the measured force of his blows and the look in his eye strangely void of emotion. It was just that although Fatma’s innocence was proved, and his honor was untouched, he felt bound to perform some spectacular act by which to reply to the people’s gossip and the many speculations that had crossed their minds.

  Of course Abdoun never drowned his son, and Farag never murdered his sister. The sun went down as always, and as always people brought their cattle home from the fields, having loaded the donkeys with their fodder. Smoke began to rise through the cracks and over the rooftops of the mud houses, and cooking smells drifted in the air with the glow of sunset. The men went to evening prayers, and the women finished going up and down to feed the animals and lock the chickens in their coops for the night. By the time the call to the night prayer echoed above the rooftops, all was quiet on the farm again. Everything concerning the incident had been hashed and rehashed until there was nothing more to add. Heads began to nod, lamps flickered and died. Sleep crept in with the growing darkness and tired bodies stretched on their mats and lay still.

  After everyone had gone to sleep and Fatma was alone, weary and broken, she began to cry. Her tears flowed in spite of herself, streaming down onto the mud oven where Farag had forced her to sleep without mat or cover. Her body shook with her sobs, so did the chicken coop by her side, and the oven, and the house, and the entire farm, until she nearly woke the people from their sleep. She gave herself up to her pain and wept far into the night, racked by her suffering.

  During the days that followed, well-meaning friends tried to persuade Farag to accept Gharib when he proposed to marry Fatma, but he wouldn’t hear of it and they had to give up. As for Gharib, he never talked about Fatma anymore. As a matter of fact he stopped talking about women altogether. He cut his forelock and he took to observing the prayers regularly, but that did not prevent him from hanging around the farm, and loitering by the open window of Farag’s house.

  Fatma, on the other hand, was locked up in the house, forbidden by Farag to step outside or even to go to work although he was in dire need of her earnings. It made no difference, for she had renounced the world, and was quite content with her seclusion. The bloom was gone from her cheeks, and her eyes had lost their luster. She had grown to look like a sluggish beast: cowering, inert, unsmiling. There was submission in her voice, and her tone had lost the sparkle where her intense femininity rang with every inflection.

  Nevertheless none of all this lasted very long. Fatma did not remain a prisoner forever, and Gharib’s zeal for prayer fizzled out, and Farag went back to his boisterous clowning. For after many and many a market day, everything that happened was stowed away in the storehouses of memory. Peacemakers had seen to it that Abdoun was reconciled with his son, and all was well between them. Gharib even grew his forelock again and once more he was entertaining his friends with tales of his amorous exploits. Not without a shade of bitterness. For Fatma was up and about again, ravishing as ever, wearing her headcloth at a slant, holding her gown by the hem, her willowy grace driving the men out of their senses. She greeted everyone on her way. Everyone except Gharib; not deliberately, but simply because she did not see him, as if he had never existed.

  Fatma had returned to her old way of looking and talking and smiling and bewitching the men just as before. But people wondered sometimes. She had acquired something new, something they did not know her to have before. Or perhaps one should say she had lost something: that thing that gave her purity. The quality that gave sincerity to her smile and made her anger real. She had lost her innocence. Now she was a creature of guile and deceit and concealment.

  That was not all. If Farag happened to catch her leaving Sabha’s house, and he dragged her home, and locked the door and grabbing her by the hair asked her what she was doing there, she could stare him in the face and answer boldly, “I was having a fitting. Get out of my way.” And she would shake herself free of his grip and stand in a corner of the room rearranging her hair, with her lovely eyes looking straight at him, defiant, unflinching, and unabashed.

  BECAUSE THE DAY OF JUDGMENT NEVER COMES

  He strained once more to listen because what was going on was very important to him. Perhaps the most important thing in his life. There was the neighbors’ wireless. They lived wall-to-wall and it was going full blast. Outside, the children who were still awake were hollering the old rhyme about the bear who had fallen into the well with the pig who was her mate. Had she really fallen, and was she now lying quiet at the bottom of the well? Was her mate a fat corpulent pig like Aboul Seba‘ Ismail? He very much wanted to hear everything because it was his mother lying up there above him on top of the bed. The mattress was bulging between the boards although his mother was not a fat woman. Why then was the mattress bulging so? But then that was before, when he used to hear only the whispering.

  * * *

  —

  Dinnertime, and her shining smile, and the warm rays of her love, and her sleepy voice saying, “Come on, children, to bed, it’s late.” And she would lift the edge of the sheet that hung around the sides of the bed and make them crawl in under it like obedient chickens. Home was only one room. In the summer his favorite place was near the wall because it was cool and he loved to lie near it and rub his naked feet against it. When winter came he moved away from the wall toward the edge. And all year there was this rapping which he could never quite catch because by the time he woke it had stopped and the café would have closed and its bright lights would have been turned off and the whole street would be plunged in darkness. The door creaked a little when it opened and then he heard the whispering. Whispering and darkness. That’s all there was. And the rapping, like drops of water dripping onto the hard surface of the floor. Whispering, like the rustle of her nightdress. Or perhaps it was the rustle of her nightdress that sounded like whispering. And then his mother would get into bed. She alone slept on top of the bed, although it was wide enough to take them all. But she had insisted on making them sleep below, even when his father was alive. When they grew up and they grumbled that their heads knocked against the boards she called in a carpenter and made him raise the legs to make more room. As all children would, he loved the cozy shelter of that nook where he could hide and play. He loved to think of it as an Arab’s tent or a trench, or a holy man’s grave. But all the time there was that craving that made him long for his mother’s arms, long to nestle near her on the soft mattress and the clean white sheet. Sometimes in the middle of the night he would feign illness and groan loudly but he never got any attention except when she’d had enough of his groans. Then she would ask in a low voice, full of menace. “What’s wrong, Ibrahim?” and that would be the end of his groans as they were intended only
to see how far they would get him.

  * * *

  —

  The darkness, and the whispering and then his mother’s wakefulness almost as though it were caused by that foreign breathing that filled the room from the moment the door opened. She would toss and turn restlessly on the bed. One night one of the boards fell down and hit his sister’s leg and she screamed. He screamed too, and when his mother did not answer immediately he was seized with panic and went to sleep only after she gave him a smack. The tossing was surely not from insomnia; surely it was something else. When did he become aware of that other thing? Tonight was certainly not the first time. The first time had been that night before the feast when she had sent them out of the room so that she could take a bath and they came back and found her drying her hair and her clean nightdress was open and he saw her breasts. That was the first time he realized his mother had breasts. He saw them, and the look in her eye, and he thought he saw a shadow there, as though the world were darkening, and her eyes reminded him of the whispering, and of her breasts. He dared not stay and ran outside to the children yelling about the bear which had fallen into the well. He played for a long time until the dust filled his eyes and he felt drowsy and his head began to go around. Then he returned. He knocked on the door but nobody opened it. Then came his mother’s menacing voice. “Since you’re late, you’ll sleep on the doorstep.” And she wouldn’t let him in that night and he slept outside, which was just what he wanted. But when he woke up in the morning he found himself in his place under the bed, and she was lying near him, his mother. When she saw him waking she gave him a hug and said, “A happy feast to you, Ibrahim,” and he snuggled up to her feeling the happiest boy in the world. The only thing that bothered him was the scent of her soap. For some reason it was linked with something shameful, something one mustn’t do. He took her arm and put it around his neck and he played with her fingers which were darker outside than inside and he kissed her palms and her fingers one by one. It was a long long time since he had last done that for he hadn’t slept near her for so long. He felt the warm living flesh of her bosom pressing against him. Her living flesh and the scent of her soap and the peculiar smell of her sweat and the whispering in the dark. They worked him up to the point of tears that fell quietly on her hand. She pulled it away quickly as though she were stung, and when she realized he was crying she hugged him closer and he wanted to run away from her, outside, to the boys yelling about the bear and the pig who was her mate. But when he realized the night was gone, and that the coming day was a feast day when all the other children would be celebrating and getting presents he burst out crying and didn’t stop until his mother shook him roughly, crying, “What’s the matter, boy?” Indeed, what was the matter? What had happened? Nothing. At least nothing to make him cry. Then what made him so sad? Was it Aboul Seba‘ sitting there so long, and the piastre he gave him every time, insisting he must go and buy himself sweets, even though he didn’t want sweets? He was afraid to go and leave his mother alone with that man. When he dallied there was his mother’s commanding voice, “Listen to your uncle Ismail, Borham.”1 And Borham would search the man’s eyes before he left the room, looking for some sign that would dispel his fears. Although he did not fear the man’s great bulk or his huge hand which was the size of his sister’s pillow, he could not keep his eyes on him for long. Something in the man’s shifty look unnerved him. A look where treachery mingled with irony. The coarse brutish irony of a slovenly oaf who belched every time he was given a glass of water to drink, and then went on to talking in his coarse bellow. And when he leaned over to whisper into his mother’s ear his croak spread like an evil fog and hung about the room and over their lives with a disturbing sense of shame.