Love in the Kingdom of Oil (14 page)

‘Are you awake?’

‘No, asleep.’

She did not know how he could reply to her while he was asleep, but he used to talk in his sleep more than any other time. If he turned over on the other side, she did not hear any sound. It was hot, as if the disc of the sun had not set. The darkness was so intense that it was almost palpable. The light of the lamp was almost spent, although it remained steady. Nothing moved apart from those winged creatures. It was natural for white moths to be drawn to the light. But these creatures were not white. And they were not as small as moths. They were as big as frogs, as black as night.

‘Does oil also change the nature of moths?’

The frogs began to orbit swiftly around the lamp. She gazed at one of them for a long time. It had a black head as if it were tied round with a scarf. Its mouth was fixed without a smile, beating time after time against the lamp. Its shadow on the wall behind was bigger than its real size, and danced as it moved, staggering like a chicken with its throat cut. It kept banging itself and was being drawn ceaselessly towards the flame, clinging to it and trying to steady itself on it for fear that it might fall.

It seemed to her to be an intelligent frog, in spite of its crazy longing. Did she not have anything to hold on to apart from what destroyed her? She was longing to be rescued, even though rescue was no other than death. The flame had afflicted her with a fever in the head, and it fell singed to the ground like a grilled fish. Her eyes protruded, filled with regret. She stretched out her arm to pat its head, and suddenly there rose from it the smell of grilled meat. With a swift movement of her hand she put it in her mouth and swallowed it in a moment. She did not have time for pangs of conscience.

The man looked at her as she licked her lips after the appetising meal. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve as if to conceal the sin. She tensed the muscles of her back. She began to move her feet as she used to do when she was a child. She quickened her pace. As if to meet a particular appointment at a particular place. She began to pant like a child. She almost cried out with joy when she arrived a moment before the time of the appointment. That night there was a storm and the black dust covered the sky and the earth. She continued to sit in her place waiting. Perhaps she remained waiting for half the night. She was certain that the women were there behind the clouds and that they would appear as they did every night. When she saw the clouds moving, she would move from this place to another place. The women will appear. They definitely will appear. She began to sing to amuse herself. She heard her aunt and the neighbour women singing to the Lady of Purity, or singing to the rising sun, or the wheat at harvest, or the waters of the Nile when they are in flood, or the moon when it becomes full. Her eyes lost themselves in the vastness of the pitch-black darkness. Tears glistened in her eyes. The women had not appeared as they did every night.

‘Had they betrayed her to His Majesty?’

The wind slapped her face with black particles. Everything around her was covered in darkness. It was not liquid and it was not solid. It crept in under the skin and entered the pores of her body. It penetrated under the bones to the sensory and nerve centres.

‘Moisten your tongue with a drop or two.’

The man was standing up with his arm stretched out towards her with the bottle. She was trying to stretch out her arm. Her eyes were wide open, her lips were moving without letting out a sound, her ears were blocked, the particles piled up and melted with the heat, like black wax. He was standing in front of her at arm’s length. His hand held the bottle. Her arm was stuck to her body. She tried to move it, but it would not move. Her body was firm in its place, while the frogs flew lightly around the lamp.

Her eyes widened, staring at the light. Her eyelids were inflamed and she could not close them. The flame burned the naked white. She closed her eyelids and pressed her eyes shut. Darkness seemed to be better than light. Her mind also seemed to her to be bigger than the mind of the frog. From under her eyelids she could see spots of light swimming in black spaces like drops of water slipping out from under her eyelids.

‘Are you crying like other women?’

She did not know that it was her who was crying. Her sobbing was echoing in her ears and made her sound as if she was one of the neighbours. Or like her aunt, or her mother when she herself was still in the womb. Or perhaps the Lady of Purity herself. She had never heard the voice of the Lady of Purity. But her aunt used to hear it, and when she used to go to sleep, she used to leave the window open, and strain her ears just before dawn, and the voice would come like a ray of light that she could scarcely hear as she lay there. She would jump up and crane her neck towards the horizon, and the voice would come to her from afar before the light of dawn appeared.

‘I have given the command for you to be healed from your headache. Get up!’

Her aunt would get up immediately from where she was lying. She would undo the scarf from around her head and sit in the tub. She would pour water over her body with the jug. As she poured each jug, she would invoke the Lady of Purity three times in a whisper.

‘Who is the Lady of Purity, Auntie?’

Her aunt would open her arms as if she was the whole world. The Lady of Purity is the mother of the universe. She is the mother of heaven and earth. She is the only one capable of healing her. She is the mother of all gods and prophets. She is the giver of life and health. She is the goddess of sickness and death. ‘Yes, my daughter, the one who gives life is also capable of taking it away. And the one who brings illness is also the one who brings healing.’

* * *

From behind the high sand dunes, across the great distance of the night, she saw the police commissioner sitting. He was in the same swivel chair, spinning it so that he was facing her husband. He looked as if they had woken him suddenly from sleep.

‘I see that your eyelids are swollen and your lips are cracked. Are you ill?’

‘Since the Festival they have not sent us the grant.’

‘Will you never stop complaining, even in your old age? Don’t you know that His Majesty is the faithful servant who is always vigilant in guarding our tranquillity?’

‘Yes, that is totally clear, but . . .’

‘You’ve no excuse now for not writing, now that you have that new machine.’

‘Is the company intending to bring us electricity?’

‘Yes, when it comes, you can write even when there is a power cut. As you know, this new machine thinks, writes, sweeps, wipes and . . .’

‘And washes and cooks and everything. It performs the work of four wives at least.’

‘Hasn’t your wife returned from her leave yet?’

‘Do you mean the first or the last?’

‘In any case, we’re serious in our search for her. We have to submit a report to His Majesty before the end of the Festival. As you know, he’s waiting for your new article in honour of his birthday party. Do you know that he asked me about you? Why don’t you write any more?’

Since he had stopped writing, there had been nothing but worldly emptiness. Night extended into day and nobody asked after him. Spaces of darkness filled only by sleep. Or reading the newspaper, or moving his arms and legs in the air, and cracking his toes. Like His Majesty, he knew neither how to read nor write. It was not for him to try and outdo the King. Moreover, what was the point of reading and writing? All the prophets were illiterate, but in spite of that they could lead the world, couldn’t they?

He was tapping with his fingers all night. The tapping beat inside her head as she slept. The wind was howling as well, and the waterfall roared like rain beating on the windows and the doors. She wrapped her head in the black scarf, and tied it above her forehead like a snake’s head. She saw herself in the mirror, like the goddess Sekhmet. She stared at herself with red eyes, swollen at the corners.

‘Are you awake?’

‘No.’

She mouthed the word. She closed her eyes, pretending to sleep. She studiously shut her eyelids, but he stretched out his arm. He tried to open her eyes with his fingers. As if he would put drops in them. Nothing poured into her eyes apart from the light of the lamp. It fondled the white of her eye like a flame. He was sitting in his place covering his upper half with the newspaper.

‘Naturally, you feel embarrassed when you read your article, don’t you?’

‘Don’t speak to me in that disrespectful way. Don’t you know that I’m your husband?’

‘No, I didn’t know.’

‘Don’t you know that God has ordered the woman to prostrate herself before her husband? Come on, prostrate yourself before me, woman!’

‘Don’t you know that you prostrate yourself before His Majesty?’

‘What’s shameful in that? Everybody prostrates themselves before him.’

‘Didn’t he announce that you had received a bribe from the devil to stop writing about him?’

‘That was nothing more than a gentle rebuke from His Majesty, and I wrote a complaint to him.’

‘You complained to him about him?’

‘What’s shameful about that? Everybody complains to him about him. Come on. Take off your dirty cloak, take a shower and let’s celebrate the Festival. Instead of one bottle we have two bottles. Look!’

* * *

He was holding a bottle in each hand and spinning round, beating the ground with his feet to a dance tune. The festival drums were beating out the same tune. The earth shook under his body, and his waistband came undone. His
sarwal
slipped to his feet. He kicked it with his right foot and it flew in the air and then caught a hook on the ceiling. It remained hanging there swinging under the light, covered with black stains and exuding a smell of oil. He continued to dance, naked as the day his mother gave birth to him. He did a complete turn and returned to exactly the same place where he had begun.

She had thought that he was still a youth, but his naked body revealed that he was an adult. His shoulders drooped downwards. His chest was bowed under a thin coat of hair. His muscles were like slack rope and his skin was as dry as a layer of plaster of Paris that one could peal off.

Her eyes followed the outline of his body downwards as it tapered off below his stomach. An oblique light fell on a mass of hair that shook at every breath, casting its shadow on the wall. The artery of his neck was swollen and pulsating. The pale light drew it with a black line. Yes, there was real oil in his neck. In that swollen artery and in that black liquid, which flowed like blood.

She remained standing, gazing around, fully dressed. He was looking at her expecting her to take her clothes off. However, she had begun to have doubts about him. She did not know that she had to strip like him. Her only aim in staying with him was to be protected behind a wall. If the waterfall caused the wall to fall down, then there would be nothing between them.

‘OK. If the wall collapses, everything else will collapse as well.’

Perhaps she took a long time to strip. Everything happened as if it was nothing. Then the whistle rang in her ears like a scream. A scream of pain, totally black and utterly despairing. A scream without bounds, which cut through the darkness like the edge of a sword. It carried with it all the pains gathered from the expanse of the lake, and the depths of earth and heaven. Like the back of an animal laden with all the pains of the world, with the memory of humiliations and blows, celebratory parties, bottles, articles, flashing lights, mud, and all the suppressed longings for death and for return to the mother’s womb.

Everything began to come to light in the light of the scream. The moon which was rising in the heavens. The wind which was ruffling the surface of the lake. Nakedness reaching the nadir of despair. Sweat feverish with hope. Memories of an obscure childhood. An unknown room in a previous life. The chisel of a researcher without any research to do. Goddesses without any existence anywhere. Small limbs scattered around, which can only be gathered by a supernatural power, gathering them and making them into those rays that stretch from her eyes to the surface of the moon.

‘Is it the end of the world?’

‘Rather it is the spirit of the Lady of Purity hovering around.’

She said it without opening her lips. Since her abortive flight she had almost forgotten everything else. Her whole life was pointless. However, her perspective on the affair changed as she moved her eyes. She saw the spirit hovering over the surface of the moon. She realised immediately that the moment had come. And she had chosen to carry out her mission. She tensed her muscles and sprang up. She quickened her pace along the path. Over her shoulders was her bag hanging from the strap. She grasped it with her hand as if she was pulling her existence out of nothing.

‘OK. She has made her choice and now she has to lead the women to the way of salvation.’

‘What are you saying, sister?’

‘There is undoubtedly a path.’

‘Haven’t you become pregnant yet?’

‘It isn’t easy to find a man capable of love.’

In the depths of her she longed for love. The other women had husbands and children. Each one of them could list the names of her children on her fingers. Their eyes were full of indifference to everything. They no longer had hope in life, for what had it achieved for them? She had not found anything, but at least she was not ashamed of uncovering her face, and looking unreservedly into the light of the moon.

‘Was it because of this that she had never in her life seen the man of her dreams?’

The man was standing in the doorway. She did not open her mouth. Even if she had said anything he would not have been able to understand, and if by any chance he had understood, fate would inevitably intervene to separate them. They were living within a system governed by fate. And fate only recognised one type of love. That fierce passion for the land and His Majesty. Perhaps that was because of the boundaries imposed by the oil. The strength of ebb and flow hidden in black waters, the roar of the wind and the movement of the waves and the gushing of the waterfall. It was certain that the man standing in front of her was not the man of her dreams. Both of them came from opposing points of the compass to meet by chance. As if all that had brought them together was fate.