Koran?' 'Yes, we swear.'
After they had sworn this oath, I went with them to the war. On the first day, I would fire and look around to seek out the weak spots in the ranks of our enemies, thinking how we might benefit from these gaps in the next day's fighting and the fighting of the day after, until the promise that one of our clans would be obliterated was made good. Before midday, however, I saw that some or our men were defeated and withdrawing. My shouts to them reminding them of the oath did no good, and neither did the slights of the women or their insults against those who fled. By the afternoon, I found myself among a minority of my people. Then I found myself alone. I would emerge from my position and fire one drum's-worth with great precision at the serried ranks of the Easterners. Their bullets, however, always went wide. They could have killed me with the greatest of ease but they didn't do so. Then suddenly, after one of their shots, they rushed towards me, threw their weapons at my feet, and started kissing my hands and kissing my head and saying I was the bravest man the Earth had ever borne. They proposed that I stay with them and live among the Easterners as their honoured guest, but I mounted my donkey and returned neither to my house nor to my people. Instead I proceeded towards the labyrinth of the desert, determined never to return.
This is the story of my madness, Maleeka, which they don't like to tell. I know I was wrong, my child, but believe me it was because I loved my people that I'd hoped they might be obliterated so that someone at least might live in peace, and believe me, I am ready to do the same now. At this age of mine, I will fight them on my own to give you life. Who, in this land, cursed in its people and its superstitions, is worthier of life than you?
If only it were my life that were the price, Maleeka!
If only this donkey would hurry!
* * *
At Gouba Spring I saw people coming from the direction of Aghurmi.
One of them took hold of the donkey's halter, stopped it in the middle of the path, and spoke to me. He spoke at length and I did not respond.
I remained where I was, in the sun, for I don't know how long, and eventually the donkey moved on of its own accord, with slow steps, towards the house.
I entered without saying anything. My sister Khadeeja spoke and her sons spoke. They interrupted one another in their noisy determination to get the story straight. I, however, neither interrupted nor questioned. I just listened to the men with their oaths and the screaming women and said nothing. They said that Maleeka had locked herself up in her room as soon as she returned from the commissioner's. She didn't content herself with simply locking her door but piled all the chests and furniture that were in the room behind it. She screamed abuse at anyone who knocked on the door or addressed a word to her. At the top of her lungs she insulted her mother and her brothers and she made a special point of cursing the late Mi'bid. Why did they consider her a widow when Mi'bid wasn't a man? She was still a virgin and the blood that Mi'bid had brought them after his first night with her was faked. She'd never been a wife or a widow, so how could she be a ghoul-woman? She repeated what she said many times and laughed and wept, saying the ghoul-woman must be Mi'bid because he wasn't a man. But she also challenged anyone who knocked on her door to enter and let her heap all the curses of the ghoul-woman on their heads and afflict them with every one of her catastrophes and burn up every man, woman, rock and tree in the oasis. But first, they had to tell her why she was a ghoul-woman. She complained to her mother that the man with whom she'd lived for two years had never come near her and would beat her for no reason, which made her mother beat her too and forbid her to say such things again, for it was enough that she had the shadow of a man in which to shelter. But she hated Mi'bid's shadow and because of him hated all the men and all the women of the oasis. She hated them all, so why wouldn't they let her, after God had sent her the mercy of Mi'bid's death, seek a beautiful friendship far from them? She wasn't like them and there was no one else like her in the oasis and she loved the woman more than her mother. Where's my uncle Yahya? Where's my uncle? He's the only one I want to talk to. Why didn't he come and why doesn't God make the Earth swallow up the rest of you?
I listened in silence to what they said. In the end they had succeeded in breaking down the door and left her mother to enter alone. They said, 'Maleeka received her standing in the middle of the room holding a large knife in her hand, her hair dishevelled and spattered with blood. Khadeeja tried to calm her down and held her hand out to her with a plate of food, but Maleeka spat at her and asked her, weeping, why had she sold her? Why had she thrown her to Mi'bid? Then she turned the knife on herself and buried it in her breast, cursing all the men and women, and a fountain of blood spurted from her towards her mother.
My sister, weeping, pointed to her bloodstained clothes, then started slapping her cheeks again, but I left without a word.
Khadeeja ran after me. The funeral, Sheikh Yahya? When is the funeral?
I didn't look back.
On the road to my garden I was thinking over what I'd heard and asking myself, where lay the truth? Did Maleeka indeed plunge the knife into her breast, or was it you who buried it in her heart to remove, as your agwad claimed, the defilement of the ghoul-woman from the land? Where was the truth and what difference would it make if I knew, now that Maleeka was lost? Lost to men's lies and women's terror and the conceit of that district commissioner who was consumed with hatred. Lost, so what was the point of anything?
I don't want to see her dead body. In the days that remain to me I don't want to remember that child as a corpse. I want her to remain a living creature to me as I used to know her. The loveliest shoot this land ever put forth.
She needed shade and protection and to have us keep the evil weeds away from her but… Yahya, O Yahya, how much death has come your way during your life! With these two hands, I've buried brothers and sisters, wives, children and grandchildren. How is it, then, that now that I am old and failing I cannot bear your death, my child? I weep for you and for myself. Now I despair of this land of theirs.
I have not been able to bring it out of its darkness, either as a young man or as an old one. I tried and I failed. The Lord didn't guide me to the right path, but now I know my way. I shall seclude myself from them all. I no longer have the strength to go out into the desert as I did in my youth. I shall keep to the small hut in my garden and never set eyes on you again.
I renounce you now, oasis, not, this time, to find myself, but to bid her farewell.
14. Mahmoud
I don't know which did the trick. Was it the shot from the cannon, which was just a deafening bang and a few flying sparks, or the imprisonment of the two sheikhs? After that, I haven't needed to imprison or flog anyone. I kept Idrees and Abd el Majid as guests in a room at the station and ordered the soldiers to treat them well and allow their relatives to visit them and bring them whatever they wanted from their houses. In any case, the message got through and after a few days I let them go.
From the first day, loads of dates and tuns of olive oil started to arrive, filling the stores to overflowing, so that we had to put some of them in the station forecourt. Sheikh Sabir comes himself or sends a representative to say this is the quota of such and such a family and ask for a receipt to the effect that they have paid their share of the taxes. The greater part of the tax in kind has been received, plus the fine in cash, and I stay in the station almost all day to monitor the collection of the shares and their inventorying.