Zeina (15 page)

“This girl was a child only yesterday. Today she’s a woman, a luscious female. Girls grow at the speed of lightning, and their breasts grow almost overnight.”

He closed his eyes, imagining her in his arms, seeing her underneath him in bed. He would have her, no doubt, for he never desired a woman but had her in the end. God had made slave girls and concubines lawful for all men, and for him as an emir, no doubt!

The emir had a mysterious power, which he called the power of God. He used to meet the officials of the government in secret, and oppose its policies in the papers, pretending to be its enemy. He received money and arms from abroad, and hired fighters for God from everywhere. He had assistants in government offices, schools, universities, unions, courts, and ministries. He had eyes in all establishments, even the police and the security apparatus, and in nightclubs and brothels.

One of the emir’s men filed a suit against both Safi and her husband. She had made a statement supporting her husband’s view that menstruation was not an evil visited on women, and that Islam in essence respected them. Menstrual blood was similar to other types of human blood. As such it was sacred. Without women, there would have been no humanity. The legal charges directed at both of them were the following:

Intellectual men and women were split in two, for while some, led by Ahmed al-Damhiri, sanctioned the charges, others, led by Bodour and her daughter Mageeda, attacked them. The whole thing ended when the case was shelved, which meant a state of neither acquittal nor conviction. The case remained unresolved, stashed in one of the drawers. It would stay there until the government saw fit to reopen it and bring it back into the light.

Contradictory currents and views often coexisted in the same family. The pious father would have an atheist son, and the Muslim mother’s womb would bring forth a Marxist daughter. A brother would be on the side of the government, while his sister would be on that of the opposition. But blood was always thinker than water, and families were united during funerals and weddings. They exchanged kisses and hugs, then returned to the arena of conflict and dealt blows to one another, above the belt as well as below it.

It was natural for Ahmed al-Damhiri to attend the birthday of his cousin’s daughter, Mageeda Zakariah al-Khartiti. Bodour’s image had been in his dreams throughout adolescence. Her daughter, Mageeda, was a rising writer with her own column in the
Renaissance
magazine. He wished to show her the righteous path of Islam. Her father had a permanent column in the
Sphinx
newspaper, and he swayed between science and religious faith. Ahmed al-Damhiri wanted him to become an asset to Islam, for religion needed the protection and support of worldly power, such as the power of money, arms, and the media.

Ahmed al-Damhiri taught political sociology at the American University, for he spoke English and French, and travelled to Paris, Washington, and London to attend religious conferences. He swam like a fish in seas and oceans, and established a company specializing in publishing religious books, manufacturing censers, rosaries, and charms. It supplied arms and audio-visual transmission and reception equipment, and exported salted fish, sardines, and pickles, in addition to translating the Qur’an to the various languages of the world.

“Hello, Ahmed. Lovely to have you at the party!”

“Lovely to see you, dear cousin Bodour!”

“Hello, Uncle Ahmed.”

“A very happy birthday to you, Mageeda, and many happy returns!”

“Thank you, Uncle.”

“I follow all your writings. Bravo, Mageeda. But I wish one day you would write more on Islam and religious matters. The hereafter is more permanent than this world, Mageeda!”

His eyes followed the movements of Zeina Bint Zeinat. She played the piano, sitting on the backless stool with her back upright. He saw her profile, her hair raised high like a crown on her head, her complexion tanned by the sun, her long, graceful fingers speeding like fingers of light over the keys of the piano. All the eyes in the hall gazed at her, and the voices were drowned by the music.

“Is Zeina your friend from long ago, Mageeda?”

“From my school days, Uncle.”

“Try to advise her, Mageeda, to go back to God!”

“My friend Zeina is a decent young woman, Uncle. Her life is given completely to art, music and sing—”

“All these things are forbidden, Mageeda.” “

Why forbidden, Uncle?”

Safaa al-Dhabi turned to them, chipping in, angrily whispering, “Why forbidden, Mr Ahmed? Beautiful art is a gift from God, for God is beautiful and He loves everything that is beautiful. Isn’t that right, sir?”

“Can we stop talking now please and listen to Zeina?”

It was Bodour’s voice. Sitting in the chair behind her friend Safi, she was worried that the jolly atmosphere might be ruined. She didn’t want her cousin, Ahmed al-Damhiri, to create bad vibes, for she knew him well from childhood. He wouldn’t keep quiet until all eyes were on him. He expected Bodour to introduce him to her guests. He expected them to look at him with awe when they realized that he was present. But he had to sit like all the other guests, a nonentity, in spite of being an emir, a star who was recognized everywhere, a god or a demi-god in the eyes of his followers.

He fidgeted in his chair, wavering between staying and leaving. But he changed his mind once Zeina Bint Zeinat started to sing, her voice producing a mysterious electric charge inside his body. His whole being quivered, wiping out old sorrows. His lustreless eyes began to gleam. Zeina stood in front of the piano facing the audience in the large hall sitting in rows, their eyes fixed on her. She saw the face of her mother, Zeinat, sitting in the last row next to the servants and cooks. Her eyes twinkled with tears. She left her place on stage and went to her, passing through the rows with her head held high, as she used to do between the rows of girls at school twenty, thirty or a hundred years earlier. The past seemed to have happened only yesterday. She embraced her mother and walked back with her between the rows, climbing with her the few steps leading to the platform. She bowed with natural pride in front of the audience and said, “I dedicate this song to my precious mother, Zeinat. She’s more precious to me than the earth and sky, than this world and the hereafter.”

Bodour al-Damhiri looked down, swallowing her tears in silence.

Ahmed al-Damhiri fidgeted in his chair. “This girl is blasphemous, what does she mean by better than the earth and sky? There is nothing better than the hereafter, you infidel!”

The words passed through his head, but he said absolutely nothing. The hall became totally silent, then the band began to play. The children were now young men and women, having climbed high in the world of music and art together with Zeina Bint Zeinat. Miss Mariam had trained them, day in day out, month in month out, until Miss Mariam’s band became famous all over the country. Miss Mariam sat next to Mageeda al-Khartiti. Her face lit up when Zeina Bint Zeinat pointed at her and took her to climb the platform with her. She introduced her to the audience, standing between her and her mother Zeinat.

“Miss Mariam is my second mother, for she was the one who taught me to love music and singing. She trained us and took us from the street to the world of art. We called our band the ‘Mariam Band’ and we had no place except the streets, with their dust, women, men and children, with their demonstrations and cheers, ‘Down with injustice, and long live freedom’. The streets inspired our tunes and music and rhythms. We drew music from the streets, from the pavements, and the dust, from people’s warm breaths on earth and not from the coldness of the sky.”

When she spoke, her voice sounded melodious. Her large pupils sparkled and her warm voice touched the hearts of the audience, transforming sorrows to innocent joy. The simple words came as naturally out of her chest as her breath. Everything around her seemed natural, though a little peculiar.

Ahmed al-Damhiri trembled in his chair. “This woman is not a simpleton. She is dangerous, for she plays with words. What does she mean by the coldness of the sky? This is heretical talk.”

This was how he spoke to himself.

The hands in the hall clapped, and the sound of applause drowned out all other noises. Some of Ahmed al-Damhiri’s aides were sitting in the back rows or standing in the aisles, for the emir never went out without armed guards in plain civilian clothes: white gowns or khaki suits. Inside the pockets of each of them was a silent gun. Although their heads moved in every direction, their eyes remained set on him, for they saw nobody but him, even when the hall was full of people. They heard only his voice, even when other voices rose high or the music played and the singing began. They saw him tremble in his chair and mutter under his breath. His muffled voice might have been lost in the sound of clapping, but they were trained to read his lips, and their muscles moved in unison with them. Then there was silence, and Zeina Bint Zeinat went back to playing and singing.

Something about music charms people, animals, and other creatures. Horses and donkeys dance to the tune of music, birds chirp in the morning, and crickets sing at night with the croaking of frogs. Snakes also relax and refrain from biting when they hear the sound of the flute. Psychiatry uses music to cure the mad and the deranged. Music turns tigers and hyenas in the jungle into tame and docile creatures.

However, not all types of music, singing, or dancing can do that. Zeina Bint Zeinat lived through music. She heard the melody in her sleep, wrote it down when the sun shone in the morning, sang it with the nightingale, and danced to its rhythm as she ran toward her mother, Zeinat. Zeina never imitated other writers or poets, for her lyrics were inspired by her own experiences in life. In her childhood, she learned what adults did not know. She understood the secrets lurking in girls’ eyes. As a child, she saw men’s naked flesh. Now she was beyond pain and rape, because no man could ever destroy her. She had no father, elder brother, uncle, grandfather, lover, or husband. Only music was her love. She loved those who loved music and loathed those who hated it, even if they were kings or princes.

She held her head high on stage, and under the lights she seemed like the goddess Venus, Isis, Nefertiti or the Virgin Mary. Or perhaps she didn’t resemble any of them, for she was a calibre all her own. From her tattered gowns to her proud head, her steady walk, and her pupils radiating a unique light, she had the power to charm, to make the hearts throb and to lead minds to enquire, “But who is she? Why did God give her these self-confident eyes when all the other women’s eyes radiate humbleness and timidity?”

Her charm lay in the two daring pupils that had the power to delve deep and uncover all that was concealed, in the steady, unflinching stare, and in the amazing lustre of the eyes of a girl who was always amazed and curious, and yet remained beyond astonishment. She graduated from the school of the streets and knew the pinnacles of sorrow and of joy. That was why she was no longer afraid of heights or depths. No man ever possessed her and never could. Even music didn’t possess her, but she possessed it and was therefore free from poverty, fear, and bondage.

Zeina Bint Zeinat became a phenomenon in the world of music, poetry, and singing. At the end of the party, when journalists asked her about her dream in life, her face beamed like a child and, in a singing voice, she recited the words of the first poem she wrote as a child:

At night, she appeared to Ahmed al-Damhiri in his dreams. During the day, he saw her in the distance as he walked. It might not have been her, but another girl who looked like her, with her tall, graceful build and her head held high. He wanted to hold her head in his hands and smash it, break the insolent eyes, and tame the unruly shrew in bed. He wanted her to lie beneath him so that he could penetrate her with his iron rod and gouge her eyes with his finger. He wanted to make her moan endlessly underneath him, pleading for forgiveness like a worshipper praying to God for His mercy.

Since his childhood, Ahmed al-Damhiri had dreamed of greatness, a myth nurtured by a prophecy his mother had:

“God came to me in my sleep, son, and told me that I was carrying a boy in my womb, a boy who was destined to become a king or a prince, and would ride a white horse and fly ... fly ... fly ...”

His eyes moved to the sky to follow his mother’s voice, which urged him to fly. In the dream, he grew wings with which he flew over houses and seas, and over the heads of men. No man’s head towered above him.

His father took him to the mosque. He prayed and kneeled down like his father, thanking God that he was created male and not female. If he was stung by a bee, his father would scold him, “You’re a man, you shouldn’t cry like a woman!”

When his schoolmates beat him up, he hid in his room and cried. He trembled with fear whenever he saw a cockroach, a rat, or a lizard. He was small and short and felt inferior whenever he walked in the company of men. But with women, he was filled with vanity and walked confidently with the steps of a commander. He saw himself as a leader carried by the cheering crowds.