I couldn't summon up the slightest desire to do anything, so I gave up and lay on the bed, staring at the bedroom ceiling. What exactly was happening to me? Since yesterday I'd been blaming myself, and the image of Maleeka had never left me. If Mahmoud had hit her and kicked her, I had been on the verge of killing her. A bad end to a beautiful beginning.
I was delighted when I opened the door to her and my heart beat with joy when I saw her beautiful face, after she took off the cloth that was wound around it. She came forwards awkwardly into the room and started pointing at me and then herself. Then she took two small stone statues of women that had been wrapped and tied in a cloth and showed them to me, smiling.
I contemplated them with astonishment. Two statues, primitive but displaying in their sculpting a feminine suavity and flow most appropriate to a woman's form. Where had she come across them, and why was she offering them to me? I looked at her for my part, smiling enquiringly, and she approached me and pointed to the heads of the two statues, so I started examining them in amazement. One of them had features resembling my own, while the other's had hers. I asked her in Arabic, holding the statues out to her,'Who?'
I wanted to ask her who had sculpted them but I didn't know how to get what I wanted to say across to her, and she took hold of the statues and brought them towards one another so that they touched, then pointed at me and herself once again. Then she raised the statues in front of my face and brought them together as though they were embracing. I kept on looking at her. She seemed to be thirsty, for she kept licking her full lips with her tongue. I did not, however, offer her anything to drink — my mind seemed suddenly to have stopped working — but stood there, my eyes fastened on her scarlet lips and her bewitching grey eyes.
My silence and smile must have encouraged her, for she placed the statues on the table and came hesitantly towards me. She approached until she was almost touching me and her heavy breathing was hot on my neck. Then she slowly raised her hands, put them around my shoulders and embraced me with extreme delicacy. I put my arms around her and hugged her too, but suddenly I screamed, 'No!' and pushed her away from me while she clung on to my shoulders and my dress tore and I kept pushing her away and repeating, 'No! No! I'm not Sappho!' Maleeka didn't understand anything but stood at a distance from me, looking at me with a wounded glance, tears gathering in her eyes. Then she started talking fast in her own language as I repeated, 'I'm not Sappho!' She went back to her statues and held them together while I shook my head saying 'No! No!' with determination and anger, and she threw the statues violently to the ground, where they smashed, and approached me again, and I realized from her tone of voice that she was pleading with me to understand what she was saying, despite my ignorance of her language. Kneeling on the ground in front of me, she embraced my legs with trembling fingers, weeping softly. Then she rose slowly to her feet, her fingers never leaving first my legs, then my thighs, then my waist until finally she buried her head between my exposed breasts and kissed them with her lips, which were wet with her tears and saliva. From that instant to this, the question keeps coming back to me — was the shudder that swept over me then one of revulsion or one of pleasure? Did I snatch up the palm rib and strike her with it when she sank back to her kneeling position beneath my feet in order to punish her or to confirm that this seduction could never touch me?
I kept repeating to myself, 'I am not Sappho!' True, I have memorized her poetry about her pupils and lovers but I am not like her. In agitation, I kept muttering to myself the same sentence, 'I am not Sappho! I am not Sappho!' while at the same time resisting the temptation to stretch out my hand once more and raise her from the ground and clasp her face to my bosom. Instead of doing that, however, I snatched up the palm rib and started beating her, and in the end I nearly killed her. Was I really angry with her or with myself? Was I angry because she kissed me or because of the shudder that swept over me when she kissed me? And since yesterday I have been asking myself the question. Why had her image never left me since I first saw her? Why did I become excited and my heart beat with joy when she knocked on my door? And why have I memorized the poetry of Sappho if I want nothing of her feminine love? I answer myself that I have memorized much ancient Greek poetry, from Homer to the verses of Alcaeus, Sappho's male lover!
After Maleeka left, I started trying to gather the bits of the two statues that she had smashed and put them together again, without success. They had broken into shards that could no longer be mended. What delicate fingertips, though, had sculpted this torso and formed these tiny hands and this cheekbone? Could it possibly be that it was she, Maleeka?
And while I fondled the smashed pieces in my hand, I kept turning over in my mind, in spite of myself, these lines by Sappho:
I have heard no word from her!
When she left me she was weeping.
I wished that I might die.
Before, she had revealed much to me, spoken much.
She had said, 'This parting had to happen, Sappho.
I leave you in spite of myself.'
'Go, then,' I said, 'and be happy!'
But it wasn't in my power to say to Maleeka, 'Go, then, and be happy!', knowing what awaited her at the hands of her family. If she should escape unharmed, if she should return…!
I was never like that in any way! I am not like that in any way!
Catherine, how many times have you said this phrase recently? You said it when you tried to conjure the spirit of Alexander, and when you were happy that Mahmoud was keeping away from you, and now when you submitted to Maleeka's seduction. Who are you, then? There's something here that changes people. In this isolated oasis in the centre of the vast desert, there is something that changes us. There's no call for me to be astonished that Mahmoud should fire the cannon to repulse a barefoot army after having been miraculously changed from a hater of the oasis to one who feels for its people. Enough of Mahmoud now. What about yourself? I would like to say that both of us have changed in this oasis, but what if it's the other way around? Why shouldn't it be that each of us has found his truth in this oasis?
No, this is not my truth!
But I have heard no word from her since she left me.
Mahmoud
There can be no stopping or going back now. I am henceforth responsible only for these soldiers who gallop behind me on their horses. Each has a family, a home and loved ones far from here. We were very close to death an hour ago. We needed a miracle to escape a massacre. Now we need more miracles. They are not deceived by this calm and nor am I.
We have reached the station and I have distributed them in defensible positions ready with their rifles — behind windows, on the roof, behind the surrounding wall — and we await what events may bring.
If they renew the attack we will not be able to do the same thing again. I hardly believed it myself anyway when the shell actually fired. I had pinned my hopes on the rust, sand and humidity not having ruined the gun and its ammunition alike. When I primed the gun and fired the charge myself towards the sky, aimed far from the town, I was certain that these were the seconds that would make the difference between life and death. I had distributed the soldiers in the best places I could think of for the defence of the building and ordered them to return the zaggala's fire if they charged the station, fully aware that there would be many dead on both sides.
Ibraheem warned me the moment I arrived at the station early in the morning. He said the atmosphere among the people was dangerous. There were people mobilizing the Westerners against me and Catherine, saying that we were the reason for all the disasters that had befallen them. They accused Catherine of having cast a spell to release the ghoul-woman from her prison and they were encouraging them to take revenge on us so that the curse that was destroying human, beast and tree might be removed from their land. He alerted me to today's expected attack and reminded me that they were fearless fighters. When it came to fighting outsiders in defence of their community, they would fling themselves at death as though they couldn't see the weapons of their opponents, rushing at them in droves and killing whoever was in front of them without caring how many of their own might fall.