Zeina (32 page)

Police sirens blared out and policemen were ready with rifles, batons, water hoses, and tear gas. People marched side by side like a huge barricade to fend off the attack and ward off the bullets. Loudspeakers and bells were heard together with the whistling and the beating of drums.

Armored vehicles ran over the bodies of children and cats. The children got up from underneath the wheels to receive the bullets with their naked chests. The cats also fought with them, fell down and rose up again. If cats had seven lives, how many did human beings have? Those children lived and died a hundred times over. Life for them was like death, and death resembled life.

Zeina Bint Zeinat walked among the crowds playing her lute. She held it like a baby in its mother’s arms. Her long fingers moved over the lute strings with the speed of lightning as they did over the piano keys. The lute was closer to her heart than the piano, for she carried it in her arms and rocked it at night before she went to sleep. She held it beneath her ribs to keep it safe from the thieves and the police. It lay in her arms throughout the night. She wrapped it in a leather case to protect it from the cold, the heat, the little stones and pebbles. Children gathered around her and she trained them to play music. They shared the pavement, the love of music and singing, and the lute. They played music spontaneously, without learning to read notes. They sang when the white cotton buds blossomed and when the golden ears of wheat gleamed in the sun. Without a family to provide for them, they slept on the pavement. Music compensated them a little for the absence of family, eased their pains and sorrows, and lifted their spirits high. It healed their bodies and comforted the pain in their breasts. They slept listening to the sound of music and the voice of Zeina Bint Zeinat singing for them. In their dreams they chanted the songs of the revolution:

She stood in the spotlight on stage before the shots were fired. Her two large eyes were two blue volcanic rocks, two dark blue flames. Their color changed with the movement of the earth around the sun, bluish black like the color of the earth and the sky, surrounded by the transparent whiteness of the waves gleaming in the sun or the high mountaintops beyond the sea.

She looked older than her real age by a hundred years, for she had known life and death, God and Satan, and was no longer afraid of them. Her face shone brightly as she smiled. Her childlike smile dissipated the darkness like the rays of the sun. She hugged her lute, and her long, sturdy fingers moved over the strings with the speed of electricity. They were as strong and hard and pointed as nails. Nobody could attack her or attempt to rape her, for she would dig those nails into the neck of any attacker. She played the rhythmic tune, singing with the children the first song she sang for her mother when she was a child:

Her mother, Zeinat, wiped her face with a white handkerchief. She held her tears deep in her eyes. Next to her sat Mageeda al-Khartiti, sobbing silently.

Her mother’s friend, Safi, whispered in her ear, “Did you hear the shots?”

“It’s the sound of clapping, Auntie Safi.”

“It’s bullets, Mageeda.”

“No, Auntie. Zeina is singing, listen to her.”

The sound of clapping drowned the sound of bullets. Zeina Bint Zeinat stood on stage, erect and graceful, hugging her lute. Her eyes met those of her mother, Zeinat, for whom she sang the model mother song when she was a school girl:

She wore her white dress made of cotton. Blood-red lines started leaking from her chest. Her voice rose higher as she sang and danced to the tune. The audience clapped thunderously and shouted, “Encore, encore, encore ... sing ‘I Dream’ ... again, Zeina, again.”

She started singing again:

People sang with her, the whole auditorium sang with her, men, women, and children, and they danced to her tune.

She bled from the chest as she stood singing and playing music, people around her singing and dancing. They carried her over their shoulders, chanting, “Long live Zeina Bint Zeinat, long live Zeina Bint Zeinat, long live freedom, long live freedom, long live love, long live love, long live music, long live music, long live beauty and justice and virtue, long live love and art and beauty and justice and virtue, long live Zeina Bint Zeinat.”

Bodour was walking when she heard the sounds of hundreds, thousands, millions cheering and chanting.

Bodour walked, dragging her suitcase behind her. The black cloud covered the whole sky, obscuring the sun and the moon. She couldn’t tell whether it was day or night. She walked on and on, following an endless road, until her feet were swollen. She sat on a wooden bench on the Nile front and took off her tight leather shoes with their high pointed heels. She removed the brassiere pressing into her chest and the hairpins and the gold bracelets and the rings studded with stones. She broke the chains that kept her in shackles from head to toe. Her flesh and bones were released from captivity, and the reins restraining her were loosed. She let her body swim freely on the bench which was as long as a boat. She heard a whisper in her heart saying, “I am neither a wife nor a widow and I shall not grieve, like Babylon, the whore in the Bible.”

Inside her suitcase, which she placed under the wooden bench, was a yellow folder containing her novel. There was also her old white cotton dress, with the dry blood stain and the tears and the sweat that had never dried. Through her half-closed eyes she glimpsed a phantom dressed in mourning and walking, her back stooped and her white rubber shoes the color of dust. She held a black plastic bag in her hand. Her dark face was pale and she was out of breath. She sat on the pavement, opened the bag and a swarm of street children and newborn kittens, gathered around her, sniffing the bread inside the bag. These were the leftovers from well-to-do families: pieces of meat, bones, and rice. Zeinat collected them from the garbage and put them in a bag every day and walked along the Nile front. If she didn’t find a bag, she used a newspaper to wrap the crusts of bread. She recognized the framed photographs published in the paper. The eyes were pierced by a fish bone or a chewed meat bone. On the front page was the picture of the president and the first lady. Their faces were stained with tomato sauce and reeked of onion and garlic and dried
bastourma.
On the second page was the picture of Zakariah al-Khartiti, whom she addressed as sir. His nose was slashed and his long column was soaked in chicken soup. The ink ran on the paper and the words were covered with a black liquid that looked like mercury or tar.

Zeinat sat on the pavement surrounded by stray cats, dogs, and children. Their eyes glimmered as they devoured the leftovers. They chewed the remains of meat and bones with their strong teeth, and munched the dry bones and bread. She called one of the children Nessim, like her son. Her son’s eyes twinkled and his large pupils sparkled like the sun when she offered him a glass of fresh milk and an egg fried in butter. The gleam intensified when he smelled the plate. He was eight then, going to school and shouting with other demonstrators, “Down with injustice, long live freedom”.

They called her “mother” and carried her name Zeinat. According to religious and secular laws, a mother’s name brought disgrace to her children. The little kittens called her Zeinat, and their eyes sparkled when they smiled. A little girl with large kitten eyes filled with wonder and joy was called Zeina Bint Zeinat. Her two black pupils were surrounded by a blue circle and snow whiteness all around. She woke up with the lark singing, “Mum is coming back, coming soon, coming with a gift ...”

Her mother left her on the pavement, withdrew her hands from the little fingers and whispered, “I’m coming back, dear child, coming back, coming back. Mum is coming back, coming soon ...”

Bodour struggled to open her eyes and arise from sleep. She saw Nanny Zeinat sitting beside her on the wooden bench, singing to her child, “Mum is coming back, coming soon, coming with a gift ...”

The sound of her singing was drowned by the thousands, millions of voices coming from afar, all singing the mother song. The singing rose to shake the earth and sky.

“Is that the sound of thunder, Nanny Zeinat?”

“No, Miss Bodour. It’s demonstrations. Get out of bed. Everybody is wide awake, Naim, Nessim, Badreya, Mohamed, Mageeda, Safi, Mariam, and Zeina. Everybody. Even the newborn kittens, Miss Bodour, are demonstrating and saying, ‘Long live justice’.”

“Can cats speak, Nanny Zeinat?”

“Yes, child. It’s a different world now, and the blind kittens have opened their eyes and can speak.”

Bodour stretched her limbs and reached under the bench for her suitcase. It was a sturdy suitcase made of expensive leather. It had been bulging with the pages of the novel, hundreds of papers written with blood, tears, sweat, and exhaustion. Hundreds of evenings and nights were spent writing it. The suitcase had been pregnant with the papers when she placed it under the wooden bench before she fell asleep. She now felt its roundness, pressed on it with her palm, and reached down to the bottom. Between the upper lid and the bottom there was absolutely nothing, only a terrifying emptiness like death. She reached again into the emptiness and almost fainted. She tried to scream out, “My novel has been stolen. Oh my God, it has been stolen while I was asleep!”

Her voice came out raucous, hoarse as though in a dream. People gathered around her asking, “Who has stolen it, ma’am?”

“I don’t know. It was in the suitcase. They took the novel from the suitcase while I was sleeping.”

“But who stole it, ma’am?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps the police. I don’t really know. Perhaps the thieves.”

“You mean the police are the thieves?”

“Perhaps somebody else other than the police and the thieves.”

“Somebody else? Do you know his name? Do you know what he looks like?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. My novel is gone, people. My life’s work is all gone.”

Bodour turned around, completely stupefied. The sun set and the darkness fell while she was still turning, surveying the earth and the sky with her open eyes in the darkness. She crawled on the pavement, searching, reaching with her hand under the wooden bench on the Nile front, feeling the pebbles and the stones, sifting the sand with her hands. The dust leaked through her fingers like water seeping out of a sieve, leaving nothing in her hands. She tripped over a bundle wrapped in a newspaper. She opened the bundle but found nothing but her husband’s long column, squirming like a snake, covered with mud and the stools of stray dogs. She wore her glasses and with difficulty managed to read the writing in the faint light: