Egyptian Earth E-Book

Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawi

• Herausgeber: Saqi Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Saqi BookShelf
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 370

Beschreibung

A twelve-year old boy returns from school in Cairo to find his village torn by feuding and fear. A corrupt official has decreed that the peasants must irrigate their fields in five days instead of the customary ten – a demand that threatens to severely disrupt the life of this small community. It will take something extraordinary for the villagers to overcome the greedy ruling-class. The schoolmaster Sheikh Hassouna urges the villagers to stand together if they want to keep custody of the land they have lived on for generations. But it takes many attempts, some disastrous, others comical and touching, before they join forces against their oppressors. Egyptian Earth was first published in 1954, two years after the Egyptian revolution. An epic drama of great power, it is a masterpiece of modern Arabic literature.

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ABDEL RAHMAN AL-SHARQAWI (1920–1987) was born into a peasant family in the Egyptian province of Menoufia. His first works were published while he was a student at the law school of the University of Cairo and he became widely known after the publication of his novel Egyptian Earth in 1953. The author of four novels as well as numerous short stories, poetry collections and plays, his work is highly regarded for its realism and commitment to social issues of the day. Al-Sharqawi also took part in the antimonarchy struggle and founded the progressive journal Al-Katib, which advocated peaceful cooperation among peoples. In 1974, al-Sharqawi received the State Appreciation Award in Literature by the Egyptian government. He died in 1987.

Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawi

EGYPTIAN EARTH

Translated from the Arabic byDesmond Stewart

Foreword byRobin Ostle

SAQI BOOKS

Gable House, 18–24 Turnham Green Terrace, London W4 1QP

www.saqibooks.com

First published by Saqi Books in 1990

This edition published 2024

First published in Arabic in 1954

First English publication in 1962 by William Heinemann Ltd

Copyright © Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawi 2005 and 2024

Translation © Desmond Stewart Estate, 2024

Foreword © Robin Ostle, 2005 and 2024

Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawi has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978 0 86356 968 5

eISBN 978 0 86356 722 3

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A

CONTENTS

Foreword by Robin Ostle

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

The author and the translator wish to express their thanks to Towfik Hanna, whose help and advice proved invaluable.

FOREWORD

ABDEL RAHMAN AL-SHARQAWI (1920–87) published Egyptian Earth, his first novel, in 1954, just two years after the Free Officers’ Revolution of 1952 had inaugurated a new era in the modern history of Egypt. It was an era which seemed to offer fresh hope for the disinherited millions of Egyptians in both town and country, but in particular for the peasants, the fellahin, who still form the majority of the population. Until that time, Egypt’s experience as a modern nation state had seen a progression from great hope and heady aspiration to an ever-increasing sense of deception and disillusion. At first the path towards Egyptian independence had been marked by great and significant achievements: Saad Zaghloul (1860–1927) created the first organized mass party in modern Egypt, the Wafd Party, and via the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, events moved swiftly towards the British Declaration of 1922 which created an independent sovereign Egyptian state. A new Constitution was proclaimed in 1923, and after elections were held in January 1924 Zaghloul and the Wafd formed the first parliamentary government of independent Egypt.

This ‘liberal experiment’ was to prove sporadic and shortlived: the royal dynasty which had ruled Egypt since the days of Muhammad Ali (reigned 1805–48) was restored by the British after the First World War, and the new Constitution gave powers to King Fuad I which seemed designed to undermine the fabric of parliamentary government. The British themselves were far from relinquishing crucial control over Egyptian foreign and military affairs, and the political behaviour of both the Wafd and their opponents led rapidly to a fatal degeneration in public affairs which played into the hands of those who had no interest in seeing the triumph of liberal democracy.

Egyptian Earth is set in the early 1930s, the years that seemed to destroy all hope of a genuine development of parliamentary government. The monarchy had just mounted its third campaign against the democratic process in less than seven years. In 1930 Ismail Sidky assumed the premiership; within a short time parliament was dissolved, the 1923 Constitution was suspended and Sidky had formed his own ironically named People’s Party. New electoral laws ensured that large sectors of the Egyptian population were effectively disenfranchised, the Omdas or village headmen were used increasingly as corrupt instruments of government control and violence became an endemic feature of political activity.

The plot of the novel thus unfolds in a milieu of oppression and corruption in which the fellahin are the constant victims: the Omda holds on tenaciously to his power, acting as the agent of the government and aided by the immoral brutality of the chief of police, Mahmud Bey. The Pasha is a shadowy figure who symbolizes the exploitation of the peasants by the government and the capital city and whose palace will be linked by the new road to Cairo, destroying much of the villagers’ valuable land in the process. Ranged against these inimical forces is the sense of solidarity of the villagers, led by Abdul Hadi and Abu Suweilim who personify in quasiheroic fashion the traditional virtues of the rural community. Although the divisions between town and country appear to be unbridgeable, Sheikh Hassouna, the schoolmaster from Cairo, is an important character who is able to deploy his urban skills and knowledge to the advantage of his relatives in the village. It is worth recalling that the period 1930–34 was one of grave economic difficulty in which cotton prices dropped to an all-time low, and when the market for agricultural goods was extremely depressed. The debts of farmers, both large and small, rose dramatically, as did the interest rates to service their loans. In such conditions it is obvious that the harshness of the existence of the majority of fellahin became even more acute.

Egyptian Earth is one of a series of landmarks in the development of the modern literature of Egypt. In the history of this literature to date, the representation of the fellahin has been one of the dominant motifs. The rise of the novel form in Egypt is closely associated with the mood of romantic nationalism which was to guide Egypt towards the first phase of its independence. Zaynab (1913) by Muhammad Husayn Haykal (1888–1956) is one of the first examples of this genre, although it was inspired by an ideological commitment quite different from that of Abdel Rahman al-Sharqawi. Haykal’s vision of the Egyptian countryside and the fellahin is one of pastoral idyll rather than social criticism, although the book is not altogether devoid of a sense of the harsh realities of peasant life. Zaynab was also written at a time when it was important to emphasize Egyptian national identity, both in political and in artistic terms. Even though the peasants suffered from poverty, disease and ignorance, they constituted the majority of the population of the newly emerging Egyptian nation and were the guardians of traditional cultural values and virtues. In fact, the peasants and the countryside were a constant dilemma for politicians, writers, artists and intellectuals in the period between the two World Wars. After the initial burst of romantic enthusiasm which Haykal expressed in Zaynab, it became increasingly clear that the cultural gulf which existed between the small city elites and the teeming masses of the countryside was impossible to bridge. Haykal’s major contribution was to establish the novel as a respectable genre in both modern Egyptian and modern Arabic fiction; he also placed the fellahin at the centre of both political and artistic preoccupations. Another landmark among the literary representations of peasant life in Egypt is Maze of Justice by Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898–1987). This book is a biting satire on the folly of trying to apply a legal system which is quite inappropriate to the peasant way of life. By the time that it was published in 1937, it was clear that the romantic idyll was no longer a credible vision for literature or for life.

Egyptian Earth was the artistic expression of a new ideological phase. It highlights the ultimate bankruptcy of the systems which had governed Egypt until 1952, and looks forward to new departures. In its heroic idealization of peasant solidarity in the face of government oppression and corruption, its vision is in some senses just as romantic as Haykal’s had been back in 1913. But although its ideological commitment is clear, we are also in the presence of a considerable work of art which makes significant advances beyond the literary representations of the fellahin prior to the 1950s. The literature of Haykal’s and al-Hakim’s generation tends to observe the peasant condition from the perspective of the cultured city-dweller. With the generation of al-Sharqawi and Yusuf Idris, the world is viewed from the perspective of the peasants themselves: we see life through the eyes of Abdul Hadi and feel via his emotions and those of the whole range of other rural characters. The book is rich with the colourful variety of peasant speech and song, and the reader can savour the sensitive portrayal of the timeless features of Egyptian rural life: the profound visceral attachment to the land, its produce and its animals; the volatile temperaments of the villagers that explode into surprisingly violent anger and which equally surprisingly subside into warm and genuine reconciliation; the colourful and active roles played by the women of the community within the limits of the accepted structures that define honour and shame; the beauty and mystery of the peasant girl Waseefa, who inspires the sexual fantasies of several of the male characters.

The Revolution of 1952 was proclaimed in the name of Abdul Hadi and his fellow villagers, but although the plot of Egyptian Earth is actually set in the 1930s, during the Sidky dictatorship, there is perhaps an unspoken fear in the author’s mind that the new regime may repeat the mistakes of its predecessors. When the Free Officers abolished the 1923 Constitution and disbanded all political parties, al-Sharqawi may have suspected that one set of exploitative bureaucrats was merely being replaced by another, with equally scant interest in allowing the peasants to take charge of their own destinies. Egyptian Earth remains al-Sharqawi’s outstanding contribution to modern Egyptian literature. Through its translations into numerous languages and its highly popular film version by Youssef Chahine, it is arguably the most widely known work of modern Arabic fiction both inside and beyond the Near and Middle East.

Robin OstleSt John’s College, Oxford

EGYPTIAN EARTH

PART ONE

THAT WAS the summer I finished primary school. When I went home to my village, I heard a lot about Waseefa – whom I could not remember.

Usually the boys in the village would question me about Cairo. They would ask me to say a few sentences in English, or joke in English, or open an English book to show what the letters looked like. But this year they were all talking about Waseefa. We were loitering outside Sheikh Yusif’s shop; he was the grocer, and his shop was on the main road from the village to the river.

I asked the boys who this Waseefa was.

One of them, adjusting his skullcap of grey wool, murmured:

‘You mean, you’ve forgotten Waseefa, you mean Cairo’s made you forget her?’

The boys smiled, and still I could not remember her. One boy raised his eyebrows. ‘So you don’t remember Waseefa who used to jump with us into the canal, all day long, four, or was it five years ago?’

And another boy, leaning on his little mulberry stick just as the older men lean on their staffs, broke in: ‘She’s come to the boil; she came back from the town last winter.’ Then he turned to me, scratching his back, ‘You really mean you don’t remember her, my friend? Waseefa – your wife!’ And the boys burst out laughing, and I joined in the laughter, suddenly remembering all that had taken place between Waseefa and myself.

The year before I went away to school we used to bathe in the small canal near the village, all of us together, boys and girls. We used to roll in the dust and cover our faces and heads with mud, to pretend we were demons. Then we jumped into the canal and plunged into the muddy water, our shouts mingling with the cries of ducks and geese which welcomed us with flapping wings.

One day we all met by the small canal as usual, just before the time for noon prayers. Before we undressed, Waseefa challenged us:

‘For a change, let’s swim in the river.’

She knew a place which was not too deep, where we could stay within our depths. For in those days we were too small to swim in the river, though we longed to do so, like the bigger boys who could even cross it.

She alone could climb the mulberry tree and shake it, so that we could eat the fruit; she alone could make necklaces from berries; and she alone climbed Abdul Hadi’s frighteningly high sycamore, to come down with a handful of fruit, still green, for us to play with, or to eat. She would answer back any men who shouted at us when we played; if necessary she would insult them too. Therefore as soon as Waseefa proposed swimming in the river, we at once ran after her, enthusiastic to splash the water, and to dive into it like the bigger boys.

Near a deserted waterwheel we took off our clothes. It was easy to see that Waseefa was older than us, for her body already resembled that of a grown woman. None of the rest was more than eight, so we always examined Waseefa’s body with interest. She was nearly twelve, her waist was already well defined, her hips too; the lines of her body were well formed, and we boys enjoyed touching her breasts and her back.

We piled our clothes in a heap under a tree. We then went into the water, our pride warring with our fear. Just at that moment some women came down to the river to fill their pitchers. One of them spied us. The hem of her black dress in her teeth, she rushed up and grabbed Waseefa by the thigh, screaming:

‘Get out, you shameless slut! Pushing yourself like this among the boys ...’

Waseefa answered with her usual defiance:

‘Slut yourself! Are you my mother or father? Be off with you. No one beats me, I am the daughter of the Chief Guard.’

At that moment another woman threw a handful of mud at her.

‘What shame! You are not a baby, you almost are a woman, but already you act worse than Kadra.’ Waseefa shouted back: ‘What business is it of yours, you hypocrite? You have a good time yourself on feast-days!’

We were astonished by Waseefa’s courage, and we stood defiantly in the water. But a third woman threatened to take our clothes to our families and leave us there naked. This got us out of the water in a hurry.

‘Let’s go,’ Waseefa suggested, ‘to the waterwheel which belongs to your cousin, Abdul Hadi. We can play in the shade of his sycamore.’

We all agreed. Waseefa got there first and leant against the trunk of the tree that shaded the waterwheel. Nearby there was a place for prayer, surrounded by a low fence. We all sat down in a group, near Waseefa, waiting expectantly to see what game she would think up. Some way off Abdul Hadi was bent over his hoe. Waseefa looked at Abdul Hadi, and under her breath said, ‘Thank God, he’s still at work.’ She then asked the boys where Kadra was. One of them said she was with the other children, picking insects off Mahmoud Bey’s cotton. Waseefa sighed, and looked at us all, and we waited to hear what game we would play – for she knew many. But this time she made no suggestion. Instead, she began to tell us about what she had seen, the day before, at her sister’s wedding.

Her sister had married a man who had moved to the town and now wore a tarboosh, as well as a jacket over his gallabya. She told how, after her sister and the midwife had gone into the bedroom, she and Kadra had slipped in unnoticed. With the others she had waited for the groom. He came at last, wearing a silk gallabya, his brilliant red tarboosh was pushed forwards on to his forehead. But he was not carrying the white handkerchief which grooms should carry. And when he saw that the room was occupied, not only by his bride, but her mother, the midwife and several little girls, he drove them all out in a rage, insisting that he be left alone with his wife-to-be. Thereupon the midwife rushed out, beating her face and asking the Chief Guard if this kind of wedding was the new fashion in the cities. Muhammad Abu Suweilim rushed angrily inside and slapped the groom on his face and ordered him to use a handkerchief with his daughter, just as all grooms did with reputable girls of the village. In every way let him follow tradition!

So after a while the midwife went inside again and the groom turned the white handkerchief round his finger and again the two little girls slipped into the room.

We listened, all ears, to what Waseefa told us, and our hearts thumped, and we edged closer to her. She enjoyed her recital. Her eyes glittered and her lips parted. We nudged each other and anxiously entreated her to go on and tell us the whole story of her sister, the groom and the white handkerchief.

So Waseefa told us all, from the moment her sister screamed out, to the moment when shouts of joy greeted the white handkerchief, now stained with blood, which the groom threw to the people waiting outside. The men carried other handkerchiefs on the tips of their staffs, and went through the lanes of the village shouting, ‘He’s a good fellow!’ while in their wake the women danced and clapped their hands above their heads and chanted excitedly:

‘Tell her father, if he’s hungry, to eat’s all right!

His noble daughter’s honoured us tonight!’

Waseefa left out not a single detail.

When she finished, we were silent. Some of us then began to hunt for a shady place under the tree.

Waseefa suddenly looked at the prayer-place.

‘What about playing at weddings now?’

She chose the players. She herself would be the bride; she needed a girl to play the midwife, it was a pity that Kadra was away picking the worms from the cotton, and could not be with us; a smaller girl had to make do. For the groom, she chose me, because of my city connections, all my brothers being away at school in Cairo, where I would soon join them. For the bedroom Waseefa chose the prayer-place. First she went in, then the midwife, and last of all, myself. The other children stayed outside, the girls making the traditional cries of joy, while the boys took little sticks and waited.

But the game did not reach its climax, though I, as groom, was ready. For at that moment Sheikh Shinawi arrived. The Sheikh was the village mufti, the preacher at the mosque, the teacher of the children, the adviser of the old. A tall, stout man with a bull neck and a large stomach, he was a man who enjoyed fiestas and every opportunity for eating. We children believed that if he wanted, he could swallow a cow whole. He was popular, someone to joke with, though nearly everyone had been beaten by him in school. Now, from behind our ‘bedroom’ wall, the children’s songs suddenly hushed, and their frightened shouts mingled with the sound of running feet. ‘Look out! Sheikh Shinawi ... What a disaster ... Run off before he gets you ...’ And at the same time we heard the authoritative voice of the Sheikh himself. It reminded us of the way he intoned the Koran when we had written a passage on our slates at school. We heard his voice (he was now on the bank by the sycamore tree) telling the children to be off, to keep away from the place of prayer, and not defile it.

The children’s voices receded. We heard the click of the Sheikh’s beads and his voice intoning some verses of the Koran. He blew his nose, spat in the direction of the children, took off his shoes, and stepped into the place of prayer.

We were taken utterly by surprise, Waseefa, the midwife and myself; we crouched against the wall of mud and reeds, trying to conceal ourselves in the folds of the mats. But in vain. The Sheikh saw us, in astonishment. He stared at us, his face gone pale. I peeped at him, and saw him step backwards, murmuring something I could not hear. He stared at Waseefa’s half-naked body, then exclaimed:

‘I take refuge in God from this filth and sin. I take refuge in God from Satan the Accursed. Oh, God! Oh, God! Are they human or are they devils? “Say, I take refuge in the Lord of Daybreak from the Evil which He hath created.”’

My throat was dry, I huddled closer to Waseefa, and the midwife huddled close to me. Waseefa burst out, ‘It’s not my fault, by the Prophet! Forgive me, it was his idea, not mine, that we should play at marriages.’

The Sheikh was no longer afraid. His voice rang out.

‘So it’s you, you pigs, you filthy creatures ... Even in the place of prayer. By God, I’ll throw you in the river.’

We were terribly afraid. The Sheikh could do whatever he liked, could carry out any threat, justifying any action by some saying of the Prophet. Desperately I clung to Waseefa, and she clung to me, in equal terror, and the little midwife threw herself on top of us. We were all undressed, in readiness for our game. The Sheikh fell on us with his huge hands. ‘Still at it, in front of me? In front of me, you lie on top of one another, you blasphemers? Be off with you, be off!’ He wrung his hands. ‘I don’t know what has become of this village. From top to bottom, it’s all filthy. Abdul Hadi, come here! Abdul Hadi!’

Abdul Hadi was hoeing near the waterwheel, but hearing the Sheikh’s cry, he ran up. Our terror increased as the Sheikh continued:

‘Why these children don’t sleep in the noon time ... They go to the river at the height of the sun ... Aren’t you afraid of the river-jinn? I wish to God she would carry you off – it would be better for you than to grow up in evil!’

Our mothers had told us about the river-jinn, the evil spirit that crept from the river at noon to carry off in her scarlet fingers whatever children she could find. If she found a small boy walking alone she would entice him with her fingers, ‘Come and eat dates, little boy!’ But when he followed her, she would drag him down into the depths and he would never be seen again. But these stories were not the cause of our fear: what frightened us was the Sheikh, glaring down at Waseefa’s body. ‘A black year for you, my girl! Though you are almost ready for marriage.’ Looking at me, where I lay huddled against Waseefa, he cried out, ‘Get out, all of you, leave this holy place which you are defiling.’ To Waseefa, ‘Who is your father?’

‘The Chief Guard,’ she said, weeping.

‘Muhammad Abu Suweilim? So light can beget darkness.’

Abdul Hadi wiped the sweat from his brow.

‘What’s all the fuss?’

Before the Sheikh could answer, Abdul Hadi recognized me. ‘It’s you, by God,’ and he sucked in his breath.

The Sheikh told the whole story to Abdul Hadi. His words filled me with shame and horror, but Abdul Hadi burst out laughing and pulled my hair. ‘A chicken, and already you’re cocksure!’ But the Sheikh was not amused, and he scolded Abdul Hadi. For the first time we heard terrible words from the Sheikh’s lips: fornication, and worse, adultery, ‘the destroyer of homes’.

Abdul Hadi picked up a stick from the ground and beat Waseefa with it. ‘The boy’s but a child, he’s too small to know what shame is, but you, you slut, you are ready for marriage ... Is this shameful game the only one you know?’

While Waseefa was crying under his blows, the little midwife made her escape and Abdul Hadi picked up a lump of earth and threw it at her back. ‘Wait, a fever take you!’ But the girl did not wait, and Waseefa and I ran after her. When she was at a safe distance, Waseefa turned and shouted back: ‘May you be whipped one day, Abdul Hadi, and you too Sheikh Shinawi!’

But as for me, I could not forget the angry Sheikh, with his purple cheeks and his denunciations of fornication, adultery, and broken homes. It all seemed so causeless. We had been so happy at our game; the children had sung, we had laughed, there was nothing in our actions that deserved such heavy words, nothing in particular that deserved ‘the fire’. My father had told me: ‘Don’t lie: because those who lie are burned in the fire.’ And from that moment I had never lied, although I had seen many liars burn others with the fire of their lies. But no one had so far told me that children’s games could also lead to fire.

But that evening, when Sheikh Shinawi visited us, he whispered for a while in my father’s ear, then burst out in a loud request for a fiesta, in honour of God. My father then called me to him, and gave me a beating. Although he did not tell me, I knew the reason. And I never played that game again, for I now knew that it, like lying, could burn me with fire. I did not ask my father why this should be so; instead I would ask Waseefa. But I could not find her. She no more came to the canal just before noon, and no more sat on her doorstep in the evening, beating out rhythms on an upturned tray, while we children joined in the choruses of her songs. I heard that in the evening her parents whipped her and forbade her to play with us anymore, and her father told Abdul Hadi to heighten the fence round the prayer-place, and to make a door which could be locked to keep children out. And the year after that, I went away to Cairo, to live with my older brothers, and to get ready for school. When I returned to my village the following summer, it was to learn that Waseefa had left to live with her sister in the chief town of the province. Her sister’s husband worked as odd-job-man in the agricultural school.

Four years passed ... five ... and I had finished primary school, and come back for the summer holidays, loaded with books, and also with dreams of secondary school, of wearing long trousers and a jacket with an inside pocket, a tie which would flutter in the wind, and Oxford shoes. I begged my mother, kissing her hand, to intercede with my father to give me a monthly allowance, instead of pocket money, now that I had passed the exams of my first school. And I began to dream of little silver coins jingling in my pocket, and of a watch on my wrist. But this my mother refused; it would distract someone of my age from his studies. ‘A watch, like long hair, is the privilege of secondary school boys.’ And yet I still dreamt of a watch, as well as of studying French, and would sometimes glance at my wrist as if it carried a watch.

But most of all I dreamt of taking part in demonstrations. For I had heard so much from my brothers about what they did in the university to protest against the dismissal of Taha Hussein. For at that time the name of Taha Hussein, our most famous writer, aroused immense admiration among all students.

These dreams drove out Waseefa. The children spoke her name to me, but I wanted to tell them about Cairo, where I had seen things utterly new to me.

For at that time Cairo was in a state of continual unrest. From what my brothers said amongst themselves, as well as from the newspapers, I knew that a man called Sidky ruled Egypt with fire and iron, having first suspended the Constitution in the interests of the English. And I had seen him unleash English soldiers with red faces on the streets of Cairo, to bolster up his authority. At that time I was in the Muhammadiyah Primary School, and every day I heard machine-gun fire. On my way home after school, the whole city would vibrate with firing, and nevertheless every morning the workers were on strike once more, and the students were demonstrating.

The Khedivial Secondary School used to pour on to the streets every morning, shouting: Long Live The Constitution! Freedom! Independence! Down with Sidky and his English masters! One morning in March they invaded our school, much to the distress of the headmaster. But we joined the bigger boys, delighted to be asked. We were part of a vast procession, surging through the streets of Helmia Gedida, shouting the same slogans, united, enthusiastic, our hearts and our voices one, our blood afire, while from their balconies women watched us approvingly, and even girls normally hidden behind shutters appeared in their windows to applaud. But suddenly we ran into a line of pink-faced English soldiers, their guns towards us. Screams from the balconies. One of us shouted, ‘Complete Independence Or Immediate Death!’ Women implored us to go back. We went back. But we now found ourselves confronting Egyptian soldiers, brown-faced, like the men in my village, calling to each other by the same names borne by the men at home. But they were holding truncheons, which crashed against the earth, against our heads.

All this I told to my friends, all that I remembered of Cairo, my dreams, the demonstrations, my long trousers, the English, Sidky, my watch. From time to time they listened, but they reverted to Waseefa. Yet they knew Sidky’s name. One of them asked me ‘This Sidky, tell me, just how big is he really? If he and Abdul Hadi fought, say with sticks, who would win?’

Before I could reply, someone else said that Sidky was a fabulous creature who could outfight a hundred Abdul Hadis – but at some other game than sticks. He fed on bread made of pure wheat. He never touched maize bread, such as we ate. He drank iced water from a tap. Sheikh Hassouna, the headmaster in the next village’s school, had been transferred to a remote part of Egypt because of his support for the Constitution. Another boy whispered in my ear that the Chief Guard, Waseefa’s father, Abu Suweilim, had been dismissed for the same reason. The village had boycotted the Election in which Sidky had tried to impose his new ‘People’s Party’ on the country. Not one villager had bothered to vote. The local magistrate had told Abu Suweilim to drive the electors to the polls. But Abu Suweilim had seen them registering the votes of dead people, and he refused. Yet another boy led me out of earshot of Sheikh Yusif’s shop, to tell me that even Sheikh Yusif had lost half of his one acre after the Constitution was suspended. In fact, the boys told me so many things, that I realized that although they had never taken part in a demonstration, they nevertheless knew far more about the Constitution – and with the bitterness of experience – than I did myself.

And I had a new respect for Sheikh Hassouna, the schoolmaster, and a new pity for Abu Suweilim, the father of Waseefa, my childhood friend. I learnt that he was now working his half acre all alone, and that Waseefa had come back so as to help him. Now that he was unemployed, he could not afford to pay someone to assist him. Waseefa’s return made the whole village think of little else. For one thing, she alone of all the village women not only wore a brightly coloured dress, instead of the customary black, but also wore it quite openly, regardless of public opinion, which was divided: some people saying her father could not afford a new black dress, others said that having deprived her of her life in the town, he did not want to deprive her also of her coloured dress. But all agreed on one thing: that the new Waseefa was most beautiful, with an elegant, citified accent. Yet when Muhammad Effendi, our schoolmaster, with a monthly stipend of as much as four pounds, asked for her hand, Abu Suweilim refused him, saying he did not want his daughter to marry someone from the village. Abdul Hadi, rumour said, had made a point of visiting his old friend, Waseefa’s brother-in-law, and of saying the Opening Prayer of the Koran in his company. Yet another rumour spoke of a cousin of Waseefa’s, Abdu, who had approached Waseefa’s mother – but as he had left Cairo without a job, he too was rejected. With all these rumours, my head was in a whirl about Waseefa.

One evening my friends and I were loitering in the broad roadway near Sheikh Yusif’s, gossiping about everything. Suddenly an old she-donkey trotted by, ridden by a young man in a striped gallabya, somewhat grubby, letting his legs hang down on one side of the animal.

‘That’s him ... that’s him ... Abdu, her cousin ... spent all his life in Cairo from the time his father went to work there as a groom ... when the old man died he came back, said he wanted to help Abu Suweilim ... not a thing does he know about farming ... look how he sits sidesaddle, as if he was inspecting his huge estate!’

And we watched the donkey till it disappeared down one of the village lanes.

At this moment a long line of girls came in sight, carrying their water-jars from the river. All of them wore the usual long black dress, except for one; her voice too stood out from the voices and the laughter of the others. Taller than the others, she carried her jar full of water on her head, as did the others, but at a yet more attractive angle. She wore a transparent black veil over a bright red kerchief which covered most of her hair.

‘That’s Waseefa, that’s her,’ said one of the boys. ‘Don’t you remember her?’

The women came nearer. I heard Waseefa’s voice, ‘Shush! Kadra, we’re almost in the village, be polite ... And the procession came near, and I marvelled that my village of low, dusty houses had given birth to someone as lovely as Waseefa. Her neck was full and fair, her body strong, her breasts pronounced. In every way she stood out from the other girls, from the blue glass bracelets she wore on her wrist, to the slippers on her feet. Not that she was beautiful, so much as attractive, with a complexion the colour of honey and cheeks brilliant with life.

Her thick black hair fell in braids from her red kerchief onto her breast; her nose was small and shapely; and with all these details of physical beauty went an elegance which marked her out from the other girls.

‘Waseefa!’ I shouted out, as the girls passed. The boys were astonished, as no one had ever got away with speaking in public to Waseefa before. A boy whispered that surely she would empty her water over my head as a punishment. But I stood up and introduced myself to her and complimented her on the way she had grown up. Whereupon she (who was taller than I was) glanced down at me, while I looked up at her, from her head allowing my eyes to descend the length of her whole body. At once Kadra recognized me.

‘You’ve come, you’ve come! How’s Cairo? Praise God you are safe and well!’

And Waseefa smiled and welcomed me with the same warmth.

‘By God, what sweetness! It’s you! How are you? What a time it’s been ...’

And her smile lit up her whole face, and her eyes sparkled, and from the way she smiled, and the way her cheeks dimpled, I recognized she too had been away to the cities.

‘Have you brought me something nice from Cairo?’

I could not answer; I had never given her a thought.

I heard many stories about Waseefa in that first week of my holidays. One concerned Alwani, a Beduin boy born in the village. One evening Alwani, who was guarding a plantation of watermelons, saw Waseefa going alone to the river, just as the first glooms of darkness were covering the house, fields and water. At sight of her, he clapped his hands and shouted out joyfully: ‘Welcome! Welcome! Stay a moment ... There was no one else in sight, the farmers had driven their animals home. This emboldened Alwani, who selected a plump melon, saying, ‘I work for the masters, I obey them utterly. Take this melon. Even the Prophet accepted a present. Take this extra sweet melon, it will refresh your heart in this heat.’

Waseefa angrily replied, ‘Blight on your heart, you Beduin scoundrel!’

But her anger only made Alwani more delighted. ‘Ah! But from you I accept anything. I like such tirades. A lover’s beating is sweeter than raisins.’

Offering the melon, he stood in her way; Waseefa rejected the melon with one hand, with the other still holding her pitcher. She was furious.

‘Who do you think you are, you good-for-nothing Beduin? You urchin? So proud of working for the masters, and yet stealing their melons!’

This only brought laughs from Alwani. ‘Just this one, please!’

Waseefa’s fury mounted. ‘I care nothing for you or your masters, and I curse your thieving. Let me pass!’

But Alwani still stood his ground, still offering her the melon. ‘I take all your insults, only please accept my present. And remember, I am an Arab sheikh, Waseefa. Accept my present, girl!’

The word ‘girl’ enraged Waseefa. ‘May you bite off your tongue! Girl, you say: pestilence take your girl and your parents! You exhaust me, you make my life bitter, you boy from the desert! Girl, you dared call me girl, did you, I am your mistress, and the mistress of your masters. I know your reputation. You used to perch in the branches of Abdul Hadi’s sycamore, peeping at us when we went swimming. By the Prophet, if my father, or Abdul Hadi, or Muhammad Effendi, or anyone passing had seen you, they would have snapped your neck for you!’

‘A pretty speech, by the same Prophet, a pretty speech! Continue. Say more, I like it, only continue.’ And at the same time he held out the melon till it touched her breast, saying at the same time. ‘It’s perfect, my mistress, take it, if only to make peace, in the Arab fashion.’

Suddenly Waseefa put her jar on the ground. ‘Good, give it to me.’ And she took the melon and threw it with all her force in Alwani’s face, and having done this, continued to the river, to the place, not far from Abdul Hadi’s sycamore, where the women went for water, a place screened from the bank by a thick growth of bushes.

This story spread round the village, and none of the youths who heard it dared be familiar with Waseefa. The rebuff to Alwani was the greater, since he was already popular with more than one woman in the village, and he was respected by men too. Like his father who had drifted to the village before him, he was brave, a good shot, an expert at the stick-game so popular in the villages, and was employed by the landowners to guard their orange-groves or plantations of melons. He possessed a very old gun which he had inherited from his father; besides this gun, and a stout heart, he had inherited nothing else. But these two possessions won for him a deep respect from Beduin marauders and the good-for-nothings of the village. Now the story of his encounter with Waseefa became so well known that even among the children of the village the phrase ‘like Alwani’s watermelon’ became proverbial. It, and her father’s insistence that she should never marry someone from the village, protected Waseefa from the suitors who would otherwise have importuned her. Only Abdul Hadi refused to give up hope. As he said to Sheikh Yusif, ‘Her father neither says yes nor no. I shall be patient. After all, he can’t expect to marry her to the Sultan, can he?’ And he thought again of his old friend, her brother-in-law. As for Sheikh Yusif, he said in front of the mosque, just before they went in to pray, ‘Really Muhammad Abu Suweilim is not acting properly. If you wanted, I would drive my daughter to your house by force. Really I would!’

Abdul Hadi placed great hopes on his friend, who had been at school with him, and indeed grown up with him. He liked the same songs, the same games, and now that he was married, and living in the town, Abdul Hadi would write to him regularly, sending him the texts of any new songs that had appeared. Waseefa liked Abdul Hadi, as he was the only person who could reconcile her sister with her husband when a quarrel broke out between them. And she knew perfectly well that he wanted to marry her, but she could not decide what she felt. She had set her mind on marrying someone who wore a tarboosh, like her sister’s husband; at the same time she was always happy when she saw Abdul Hadi sitting amongst the men of the village, listening to her singing at a wedding. For Waseefa had not outgrown her love of singing, of dancing, of the stick-game, which had been her childhood loves; she still liked to put on a black veil and attend the ceremonies when it was permissible for a respectable young woman to dance, very modestly, in front of the men.

‘He spread his handkerchief,’ she would sing, and the men would answer, ‘on the stretch of sand!’ and she would go on:

‘There on the sand she comes to him!

Oh, you, hiding behind the wall,

Who are you? Guest or groom?’

And in another voice would reply:

‘Guest I am, I hold a sword!

With which oppressors will be gored!’

And all the men would repeat, ‘Oppressors gored! Oppressors gored!’

I had always loved the songs of the village girls, and Abdul Hadi remembered this. One afternoon he called in at our house and asked me to go with him to a big wedding to be held that night. He was wearing a flowing gallabya of blue cashmere. In his hand he held the stout staff with which he had made himself famous in our village and the next.