Love in the Kingdom of Oil by Nawal El Saadawi
If it wasn’t for the beating of the sun, and some embarrassment, she could have taken more enjoyment in the process of washing. She was not related to her; she was not her aunt. She took off all her clothes. Nakedness was frightening. She had never previously had occasion to strip naked in front of a woman or a man, especially her husband. In his sight, she was as pure as the Virgin Mary. For his part, her boss at work used to call her the Lady of Purity. Until, that is, he suddenly began to search her.
‘Where is the pamphlet?’
‘What?’
‘The pamphlet that you’ve concealed.’
‘I haven’t concealed anything.’
‘I saw it on you, in your handwriting, against His Majesty.’
‘I haven’t written anything.’
‘Raise your arms!’
She raised her arms high. She felt his fingers searching between her breasts. They dropped lower to the forbidden regions.
‘This is violation of the sanctity of the body.’
When she regained consciousness, she was screaming. Where were the rights of women? She found herself lying in bed. Around her were women carrying jars. Over their eyes was a cloud. A dark layer of oil covered the pupil and there was an order from His Majesty: ‘Any woman detained with paper and pen in her possession shall be prosecuted.’
Whenever she looked into their eyes, the intensity of the pain increased. They disappeared one after the other. One of them went first and was followed by the others. She heard their voices through the wall. They were gasping with disjointed voices. The joints of their necks cracked under the jars. The beat of their feet on the ground was muffled. The wind carried it under the bridge where the houses of the village were. The barking of the dogs came from afar. The question turned over in her mind, ‘Should she flee by herself or should she reveal her plan to them?’
* * *
The plan had not been revealed yet. And her boss at work had written a secret report. The reports about her were only written in secret. Another woman had taken her place in the department. You would see her sitting in her office looking around her in curiosity. She would not stop looking until she knew the secret. She opened her drawers and searched through her papers. She latched on to an old love letter. Some verses of poetry that she read repeatedly. Between every verse her breathing would rise in a long sigh. In the secret dossier she came across her date of birth, and a picture of her aunt with a scarf around her head. Her eyes would rest on the house. A room without a toilet in the alley. Curiosity pushed her to look through the crack in the door. She saw the room lying in darkness, bare of furniture. She would cast a sideward glance at her husband sitting reading the newspaper. He would move his head a little and you could see his nose from the side. Big and beak-like, it resembled His Majesty’s. But his picture was not published and his name was unknown. Sitting motionless and completely silent. The silence betrayed her absence. Her soul was full of envy because she had been able to flee. How had she fled? She had gone on leave and not returned, had she? She nursed the secret in her heart and then it burst out in spite of her. The rumour spread through the archaeology department. Male and female colleagues whispered together and a look indicating jealousy would float into their eyes.
This jealousy was not an irrational thing. It was totally natural in the eyes of the employees. For there is nobody more envious than the employee. Especially in the archaeology department. He sees people moving around him and he is imprisoned behind his wooden desk. People speak about the future and he lives in the past with his archaeological digs. Life passes him by. Nothing will change in the universe whether he lives or dies. There is nothing before him apart from the slumber that overcomes him as he reads the newspaper or searches for gods in the bowels of the earth. A type of divine love, which leads him to long for death, or to go on leave.
* * *
‘Did you ever have a row?’
‘Never,’ replied her husband in the interrogation room. The policeman swung his body round in the chair.
‘Do you think that she could have committed suicide?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Didn’t she ever long for death?’
‘Never.’
‘How do you explain her disappearance then?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Yes, nothing.’
Her husband said ‘Nothing’ through pursed lips. He yawned until the bones of his jaws cracked. He turned his face towards the journalists. A camera flashed and burnt the surface of his eyes. His picture had appeared on the inside page. His jaw was square and his face was longer than it should be. There were no distinguishing features except a black mole above his left cheek. A smile escaped from between his clamped lips.
From his childhood he had imagined seeing his picture beside His Majesty’s. His mother raised her arms to heaven beseeching the Lady of Purity that her son might become like the King. Why not, our Lady of Purity? Was he not born from a stomach like the one from which the King was born?
The panting of the women had disappeared along with their black shadows. Dogs began to bark in the distance. Dogs do not bark without reason. Are those women planning some move? There had been a look of rebellion in their eyes under the clouds of particles. A counteraction always on the point of being launched.
She opened her eyes and felt the burning of the sun. She was chattering deliriously. The word ‘counteraction’ drew around her clouds of fantasies. She saw herself ensconced like a jar on the heads of the women. They were carrying her along the alleys of the village. Their eyes were looking down on her from the roofs. They were kicking the ground with their feet and the picture of His Majesty was shaking at the top of the pillar, then it fell under their feet and they trampled on it.
She rubbed her eye with her fingertip. The pain was burning and she was stretched out on the ground, totally worn out. A fly flew by and settled on her nose. It began to nibble a bit of peeling skin. She raised her hand to brush it away, but the fly remained in its place. In her other hand the chisel was lying, motionless. Dogs were barking at each other in the distance, children were throwing stones at each other and men had their hands intertwined. Oil was gushing out in all directions and the colours of the sky were being swallowed up in the darkness.
‘Prepare the supper!’
The man’s voice pierced her ears. An imperative tone, completely natural when a man addresses his wife. An unpaid servant. Wasn’t he her husband? She didn’t know exactly when he had married her. Probably he had married her in her absence and the marriage contract had been prepared without her being present. The woman didn’t attend her marriage ceremony anyway, and all the formalities could be completed without her existence.
The muscles of her fingers contracted around the chisel. A sudden surge of anger, which pumped the blood into the muscles. She raised her hand and struck the bowels of the earth. The head of the chisel hit something solid. A statue of bronze or alabaster, but its colour was less opaque, like volcanic glass.
Her fingers trembled as she pulled it out. Her fingertips caressed its soft surface. She fingered the neck and the chest. Her hand bumped into the prominent breasts. It was the goddess Hathur, bare-chested, holding her breasts in her palms in a position of total giving, holding a pair of snakes.
She would have seized hold of it had a sea of oil gushed out and submerged everything. Could it be Noah’s flood? She had read about the flood in the book of archaeology, years of famine and drought, and advancing deserts and mountains. The earth was on the brink of the Ice Age and an imbalance had occurred in the vital balance of the atmosphere. The regime had been overthrown after the slaying of the mother goddess.
‘Prepare the food! I’m hungry!’
She didn’t hear this time. The sound of the gushing oil covered everything else. Her fingers relaxed around the chisel and fell back. The current would have snatched it from her if she had not stretched her torso as far as she could and peeped over the
Her body convulsed with the name ‘Mummy!’ For the first time she had said the name clearly. Since she was born, she had never called out for her mummy. That was probably because her mother had died giving birth to her, or because she had not yet learnt how to speak.
When the storm died down, she stretched out languorously. She was gasping and her eyes were closed tightly. The picture of the ancient flood returned to her. Fear of drowning filled people’s hearts. At the height of their fear, they became eagerly attached to the name ‘Mother’. When her aunt was frightened, she used to cry out ‘Mother’ instead of ‘Mummy’. She spat into the opening of her jallaba. The alleys were narrow and blocked with piles of dung. The houses were made of mud and were totally invisible apart from little lamps that drew shadows like ghosts. The village night was frightening, a haunted night, in which it was quite appropriate for Satan to make his rounds. Her aunt was walking under the bridge when she saw him that night. He was Satan in flesh and blood having taken on human form. And people said, ‘The flood is from Satan.’ And they began to call on the mother goddess to save them,
Our beloved mother, where are you?
Has Satan eclipsed you?
Has he placed a thick veil over your face?
Has he distorted your image and changed your name?
She had been sleeping when her aunt read her the song in the book. The sound of their singing seeped into her ears under the pillow. The singing was interrupted suddenly and her husband’s voice rang out, ‘I’m hungry. Can’t you hear?’
She didn’t change the position of her body, which was stretched out over the edge. His angry voice came from afar, as if from the bottom of the well. She could scarcely hear it with her ears. The voice only touched the edge of her consciousness. She turned over onto her other side in order to reduce the intensity of the sun. In spite of the anger, his voice resembled that of a suckling child. Hadn’t his mother weaned him yet? Before her aunt weaned her, she used to clutch the teat. It was dark, the heat had decreased somewhat after the sun had set, and the sound of the flood was like the waves of the sea.
‘I’m hungry.’ His voice had become full of gentleness. Hunger refines men’s nature. It reveals the man under the rough exterior. Her heart was filled with a mother’s compassion. She went into the kitchen and lit the stove. She pressed on the revolver and a spark shot out. She laughed like she used to do when she was a child. She heated the soup in an aluminium saucepan. She peeled the potatoes and cut off the heads of the onions with a knife. Steam rose from the saucepan. Particles of oil dropped from the ceiling. They formed a dark layer on the surface of the soup. She went and fished them out with the handle of the ladle. However, the particles kept on falling and she had to keep on fishing them out, until finally she succeeded in getting them all out, apart from a few black particles which kept floating on the surface like flies on a corpse.
He sipped the soup with a sound like pipes sucking up oil. Between every sip he would rage with a sound like the roar of the wind. After he finished his food, silence fell. He closed his eyes without taking off the company uniform. It was blue in colour, but covered with oil stains. It exuded the smell of the gas that was stored in the bowels of the earth. Sleeping, he looked like the baby girl she had given birth to in her previous life, but who had subsequently died. When he woke up, she would take his clothes off, rub his body with a piece of rock, and then dry him with an old sarwal. She would twist the sarwal between her hands until it became like a bundle of aluminium wire. She dried him vigorously as if he was the bottom of a saucepan. In the distance dogs barked at each other and women gasped in unison. She shook her head in tune with them, her arms waving, her lungs rising and falling and her heart beating under her ribs. Then the movements became slow, monotonous and repetitious, sending her to sleep even as she stood there.
He yawned with a loud voice. She saw him smoking as he sat behind the newspaper. He would puff out the smoke between his lips and go off into raptures.
‘Give me a puff too please!’
‘What are you saying?’
‘One puff of your cigarette.’
‘Women do not smoke, by order of His Majesty.’
She clamped her lips shut and did not reply. She had fed him and washed him. She had treated him like her absent child. She had wiped away his pain. Didn’t she have the right to go into raptures like him?
When he handed her the jar to carry it, she had a desire to pour it over his head. But she had second thoughts. She could obey him today for the sake of a higher goal tomorrow. She could not lose everything for one puff.
Smoke was escaping from his nostrils. The nostrils dilated and the little hairs inside them trembled with the intensity of the rapture. She inhaled one or two deep breaths of the air, and some smoke found its way into her chest. She puffed it out from her mouth and nose. Yes indeed, if life held no rapturous pleasure for her, she at least had a right to take a puff of the smoke in the air. Anger seeped out of her body with the smoke, and the world appeared less depressing, or rather, perhaps, the smoke had gone to her head and she felt she had come across some genius idea that would deliver her from her present life.
She had seen pictures of geniuses in the book. Clouds of smoke surrounded their heads. One of them had his head tilted sideways, leaning his chin on his hands. His eyes were half open, gazing upwards into space. The smoke rose from his dilated nostrils. In the book she also used to see pictures of the prophets. They too could only see God from behind a cloud of smoke.
She drew a deeper breath. Her head filled with smoke. Her mind seemed to pulsate under her skull, and she felt the idea being born. She encircled her head with her hands, afraid that the idea would escape her. The idea might creep out through the holes that opened onto her ears, eyes and nose. She pressed her hands on her skull, but she could not continue long and eventually let her arms fall by her sides.
‘Are you sleeping on your feet?’ She stretched and yawned with a sound resembling the bleating of a goat. She heard the voice, like the whistle of the wind. The storm roared and black particles crept under her clothes, invading the orifices of her body. She closed her eyes completely and wakefulness dissolved in a strange dream. She saw herself riding on the back of the chisel as if it was a horse. It galloped with her over an unknown city. Its buildings were tall, the tops piercing the clouds. Its streets were so narrow that there was only just enough room to pass. The chisel flew with her through the air without wings. It hovered above the roofs and she waved her feet as if she was playing on a swing. The women gazed at her with pleasure mixed with envy. Their hands were raised in the air clapping. Then the hands tried to drag her down, hoping to make her fall. She shook her legs vigorously so that the horse could climb with her again. By now the horse was no longer a horse but a palm frond that she rode on like the village children did.
Hands seized her and she fell. Her body plunged downwards and sank into the fog. Then she saw herself walking on asphalt that melted under her feet because of the extreme heat. A bit of tar stuck to the heel of her shoe, smelling of oil. She quickened her pace, panting, and went into a black building without windows or doors, but with iron pillars. A choking smell filled the building. The chisel was in her bag and she held on firmly to the strap over her shoulder. Her legs climbed the steps, almost slipping. She regained her balance without grasping hold of anything. There were no railings and the staircase was a narrow spiral one, which was not wide enough to permit her body to pass. She was pushed into a narrow door, which opened suddenly, and there she was inside the room, which was bare of furniture apart from a swivel chair and a worktable around which a number of men were sitting. All that was visible of them were their prominent facial features, the foreheads, the cheeks, the jawbones, the noses and the chins.
They did not
The voice sounded like that of her husband, but the black pipe in his mouth indicated that it was her boss from work. He swivelled round, sitting in the chair. He came and stood directly in front of her. She saw his face and realised that he was the police interrogator. Silence fell. She heard the rustle of papers, and a cloud of smoke rose to the ceiling. His finger pointed to the name on the cover of the book. ‘This is your name, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the book!?’
‘It’s about goddesses.’
‘Isn’t that blasphemy against the gods?’
She wanted to raise her hand and ask ‘What is blasphemy?’ and ‘Where is the blasphemy?’ But the fog prevented her from seeing. She heard a noise like an explosion coming from papers being torn. Her nose filled with the smell of smoke. The papers were burning. A spark had flown from the mouth of the burning pipe. The fire spread to the jars of oil. They exploded one after another and tongues of flame shot into the sky.
When she opened her eyes, her nose was full of smoke. The man was sitting in his place gazing at her. He imagined that she had stolen a cigarette from his pocket while he was asleep. Before he slept, he used to count his cigarettes, and the coins in his inside pocket. He used to hide the bottle in a place that was unknown to her. But smoke engulfed the place. It had crept over the houses of the village like a black mist.
The newspapers appeared stating that the fire had come about because of the intervention of Satan. The people of the village raised their arms towards heaven, and stoned Satan. But heaven did not listen to their entreaties. Satan used to walk on the bridge. The women’s eyes used to stare at him through the shutters. Their bodies trembled inside their black jallabas. They would tie black scarves around their heads. One of them tied her scarf more tightly, twisting it three times. She knotted it above her forehead so that it looked like the head of a snake. She twirled round and kicked the ground with her feet. ‘Our Lady of Purity!’ The voices of the ladies rose, and the beating of the drums, the cries of the children, the cracking of sticks in the hands of the men, the croaking of frogs in the pond, the barking of dogs which came from here and there, and the dust rising into the sky. The universe filled with a black fog, which gushed over the land like a waterfall. It was neither liquid nor smoke, and you could not catch hold of it with your fingers.