Love in the Kingdom of Oil by Nawal El Saadawi
She clamped her eyelids closed in a last attempt to sleep. However, she had no sooner closed her eyes than she fell into something like a well. All sound stopped. Time froze. The watch on her wrist no longer made its ticking sound. Particles of oil crept under the watch face and covered the hands. The second hand also stopped moving. Nothing moved apart from the pages of the newspaper that moved by themselves at the mercy of the wind. Each page revealed headlines in black and red script.
* * *
His Majesty donates three million dollars to zoo in the north.
Half a million killed in oil war.
His Majesty forbids the distribution of sweets on Children’s Day.
Woman shot at for walking in the street with her face uncovered.
Foreign Ministry to be sold at auction.
Oil Minister receives a bribe larger than the defence budget.
Drugs sold during term time.
AIDS spreads amongst children.
From atheism to faith; from doubt to certainty, by the chief of religious consciousness and the former head of the Communist Party.
Three women die in queue in front of bakery.
Eight men rape little girl in school.
Woman slaughters her children on Mothers’ Day, then commits suicide.
Missing man returns after seven years and does not find his wife.
She is wanted dead or alive. It is forbidden to give her shelter or protection.
New information obtained by police about the missing woman. She was passionate about searching for mummies as a form of recreation.
* * *
Time passed as she gazed at the word ‘recreation’. Sleep must have overcome her, because her brain had stopped working. She did not know the meaning of the word. The sun had begun to rise. Perhaps the man had gone to the company. There was no noise from the jar carriers. She stood up on tiptoe. She slipped her hand under the bed and took out her shoes. They were full to the brim with oil. She emptied them and beat them one against the other. She placed the chisel in the bag, along with the map. She put the strap over her shoulder and made off before any eye could notice her. She closed her eyelids as she ran, as if closing her eyes would conceal her from others’ eyes.
Deliverance appeared imminent, and flight easier if she continued without seeing. However, a new idea came to her mind. She could hide her face completely from people’s view, without anyone seeing her face. It was a woman’s right to conceal her face completely without anybody pursuing her.
However, in her case the situation was different. She was a barefaced woman. The newspaper had published her picture and her full name and address. Her room also appeared in the picture, the wooden bed with its collapsing boards, the dilapidated lamp on the desk covered with dust, and an open book with the head of a mummy peering out, and a desk drawer with some coins in it. A savings account book without any money in it. Then there was that rope hanging from the ceiling, as if prepared to be put around someone’s neck, dead flies sticking to it, and at the end of it a burnt-out light bulb. Then silence. Yes, the silence that whistles in one’s ears like the wind, or the snoring that a man usually makes when he is in deep sleep.
* * *
He had been a model husband, giving her a very peaceful life, and there was every sign that he sincerely wanted the marriage to continue.
‘There is nothing to arouse suspicion apart from this wretched mummy head! Do you know whose head this is?’ said the policeman as he swivelled round in his chair, shaking his hand in the air, holding a long cane in his hand, with which he pointed to the desk.
‘The lady Sphinx’s.’
Her boss at work replied in a confident voice, emphasising the expression ‘the lady Sphinx’ with his jaws and his teeth. Then he puffed out the smoke towards the ceiling, the pipe between his lips. He gazed at the policeman out of the corner of his eye, and confirmed in a loud voice, ‘Yes, the lady Sphinx’s.’
‘The lady Sphinx’s? We’ve never heard of it before.’
‘Not hearing about it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.’
‘Is she the Sphinx’s wife?’
The policeman was no longer settled in the chair. He swivelled round in it with his cane in his hand. He raised his arm and almost let it fall on the lady Sphinx’s head. However, her boss at work was settled in his chair. He puffed smoke out of his nostrils and mouth. Smoke also came out of his ears. The black pipe was twisted forward at a sharp angle. His neck was also twisted at the same angle. His eyes looked upwards, half open. He gazed at the policeman out of the corner of his eye. ‘After the Sphinx had usurped the throne, he ordered that the breasts be removed from the statue, and that a beard be added.’
‘A beard!?’
‘Yes. A borrowed beard. Watch!’
The policeman stretched out his hand with the cane in it and searched through the hair of the beard that was hanging from the chin. Her boss at work seized the opportunity and began to display the extent of his knowledge about archaeology,
‘The sculptors dedicated themselves to the service of the new god, and art changed with the change in regime. Even the shape of the eyes changed. The straight eyes with the straight lines became curly lines with a squint.’
‘A squint. What do you mean?’
‘For example, when your right eye looks at your wife and your left eye looks at another woman.’
‘That is natural, isn’t it?’
‘At that time it was unnatural. The lips also changed so that the smile became a scowl, and the open hand became locked closed with the fingers holding a cane.’
The word ‘cane’ came out of his lips with the smoke of the pipe, and the policeman jumped up without reason, hiding the cane in his hand behind his back.
‘What do you mean by all that?’
‘The lady Sphinx became the Sphinx, the soft smooth skin became hairy, the flood invaded everything, agriculture died, and the river waters changed to a black liquid with a sharp taste like salt. The new god ordered that breasts be removed from statues and a penis be added.’
The policeman’s fingers froze on the typewriter. He could not bring himself to type the word ‘penis’. He spun round without swivelling the chair. The movement did not appear in the picture in the newspaper. However, she could see everything as she slept, her eyes half closed. In the dream, reality appeared clearer to her.
* * *
In the dream she was thinking of something to say to her husband. For conversation had broken down between them from the time it had begun. There was no way of attracting him to her except by hiding herself. She also needed to attract other men and women. She dropped in on them each day in the office, her lips on the verge of breaking out in a smile, which would have broken out were it not for the frown on the ladies’ foreheads, or the face of His Majesty hanging above their heads, or the picture of the god Ekhnaton before the breasts had been removed, or the daughter of the lady Sphinx who had removed from her mother the borrowed beard and revealed that she was a woman, Maryat-Ra, daughter of Hachapsut.
She used to open the door every day and lean over her statue. The only daughter who came to know the face of her mother. She used to sit at her desk looking at the faces of the women. The colour of their skin was the yellow of dry clay. Their heads had been carved from limestone. The realisation plunged into the depths of her that she was one of them. She swallowed the bitter saliva that overflowed with self-hatred. However, His Majesty’s birthday was approaching and lights were being hung everywhere. The sound of music and singing rang in her ears. The children were wearing new clothes. The birthday celebrations in the houses were not like they were in the streets. There was nothing in the houses apart from husbands hiding their faces behind newspapers. They wrapped their heads in clouds of smoke. The wives stood in the kitchen, boiling frozen chickens with plastic heads. Tins of sardines made of magnetised tin. After eating there was a pleasure ship that went out to sea and did not return. In the long queue the lady martyrs
* * *
‘Do you think that she’s committed an offence?’
‘Of course, naturally.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Regardless of whether they are bare-faced or not, women are naturally wicked. Their cunning is indeed great.’
The voice became indistinct. She did not know if it was her husband or her boss at work. The face was like those of all other men. Bare with protruding eyes. He looked like someone who had woken up suddenly from sleep. He always showed jealousy towards her with regard to other men. He could become jealous of a relationship springing up between them and between other beings, like reptiles for instance. There was an ancient and incomprehensible enmity between him and the lizard. He was of the secretive type, as is usual with husbands and bosses. He did not inform anybody of the emotions of his soul. Up until now, under interrogation by the policeman, when he began to confess for the first time, ‘I am beset by doubt.’
‘We haven’t heard this from you before.’
‘This festival for instance.’
‘What about the festival?’
‘It makes us believe that something exists, while it has no existence. For this reason I prefer to work in the oil company.’
‘Oil?’
‘Yes, it’s a liquid without any solidity, but it induces greater tranquillity.’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘I can’t express myself more precisely.’
‘Do you mean that you are involved with the woman?’
‘No, but when the gushing increases, you yourself become like the oil, and so anxiety concerning death is dispersed.’
‘There’s no doubt that you are convinced of what you say, and I think you’ve convinced me. She went on leave, didn’t she?’
‘You did not need to be convinced by me.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I think that there is in her, as there is in other women, something resembling oil.’
* * *
She held her head between her hands. For the first time she was hearing his opinion of her in her absence. Her constant presence concealed the truth, and absence in itself had become a goal which might reveal the emotions of his soul. In a manner of speaking, they were taking revenge on each other. He was wearing another, thinner, cloak. Dialogue between them had always ended in silence. She would leave the house for work each day as if she was leaving the grip of one person to fall into the grip of another. The ceiling was one and the same, like a vault. She pulled herself out of one vault to then come under another vault. And noise resembled silence.
She had never in her life asked for leave. It was a leave that she had not told anybody about. But envy had appeared immediately in the eyes of the women. It concealed itself under a layer of blame. They were all keen to offend, and were fed up with virtue. However, a request for leave required a permit and an unprecedented boldness in love.
‘Love?!’
Yes, her heart could have palpitated, for the matter was extremely simple. Love was not lacking between her and the man. It tied them with such force that they had a quarrel every day. There was no dissolution of their presence together under one roof.
‘How was the relationship between the two of you?’
‘Legal of course.’
‘Was there a written contract?’
‘Of course.’
‘Of what type?’
‘A contract of work and marriage.’
The policeman’s eyes widened, and protruded even more. Then he swivelled in his chair, and his eyes dilated and came to rest on the ceiling.
‘Do you mean that she was working in your home?’
‘We all do that, don’t we?’
‘But we pay something at least.’
‘To our wives?’
‘To our lovers at least, isn’t that the case?’
She had no desire to follow the rest of the interrogation. It became clear to her that flight was a sort of impossibility. She moved her feet over the ground, but did not progress a single step. The oil had soaked up her strength, and the man had finished filling the jar. He stood waiting for her to move. He began to stare at her for a long time and then raised his arm upwards.
She had the idea of resisting, of returning blow for blow. But her arm remained stuck to her side. Perhaps it belonged to a wife of oil that made things stick together. Or perhaps it was because the movement of his arm came suddenly and she did not have time to move. In the depths of her, she wanted to pounce on him. No part of her body moved except for her jaws. A cry came out of her throat.
‘Don’t cry out!’
‘Are you hitting me?’
‘All you have to do is to carry the jar.’
Her posture showed complete submission. She showed no resistance whatsoever. She was in an almost soporific state. Or perhaps the unexpected blow had deprived her of her will and made her kneel down like a camel. He placed the wase on her head and the jar on top. It was up to her to walk with the ladies to the company. Each one of them gave her a word, just for the sake of chattering on the way to the company.
‘Do you understand? He will not beat you if you continue to work.’
‘Did you disobey, sister?’
‘It is not necessary for disobedience to happen. It is sufficient for you to think about it.’
‘Sometimes the thought is more dangerous.’
She continued to move, her neck bent and her breathing coming in gasps. Her chest contracted, rising and falling with the movement of her breathing. With her tightly closed mouth she pushed out the particles of oil that flew around her, blowing them far away from her face. Her feet were stuck to the ground, sinking in below the knees. She let herself sink. There was nothing for her to do except to sink, to sink to the bottom. Once she had reached the bottom, the only way left would be up.
‘Since I came I have not taken a wage.’
‘Isn’t it sufficient for you that I’ve taken you under my protection?’
She listened carefully to the expression ‘taken you under my protection’. Her swollen eyes widened. Her aim was not to conceal herself. She had another goal. She definitely had one, even if she did not know what it was. Her feet moved without rising even an inch above the ground. There was not enough air for a deep breath. Her feet had swollen up and the skin was peeling off them. Oil crept under her nails like black mud. The jar on her head was heavy. Her brain heated up in the sun. Her lips were blue and open, and her breath came in gasps. She pressed with her teeth on her lower lip and blood burst from it. Its colour was blue, flowing hot down her chin. It had a sharp flavour on the tip of her tongue. She saw her picture reflected on the surface of the lake, like a ghost wandering over the face of the earth. She imagined that she cried, ‘Help!’
She moved her neck towards the man. He could no longer hear her. Or if he heard her voice, he showed no sign of comprehension. He stared at her with a look that she had never seen before. Was he thinking of killing her?
She raised her arm and was about to throw the jar on his head. The move appeared to her completely legitimate. It was simply self-defence. Before her arm rose she looked in his eyes again and then stepped backwards. She had never before seen his eyes like this. The tremor was not apparent. Nothing in them expressed fear. But everything in him was as if scared to death.
She stretched out her hand and held his hand. Their fingers intertwined. He enfolded her with one arm, and she enfolded him with two arms. She closed her eyes and he closed hi
At that moment they began to cling to each other’s bodies. They held each other tightly. Their bodies became one mass, holding on to its parts, not wanting to be separated from any one of them.
‘Was that love?’
Perhaps it was, because she had not heard a sound from the women. She had her eyes closed, lost in a sort of swoon. Then the voices of the women began to draw near her. Simply voices without bodies. She lent her head on the edge of the lake, as if she was about to take a drink of water or to disgorge something stuck in her throat. She heard her voice emerging from the depths of her as if she was vomiting. She reduced the pain in her chest and the lights began to appear. The queue was moving from afar along the skyline. Black ghosts with jars on their heads. The women approached her and their features became clearer.
‘What are you doing here, sister?’
She saw the woman standing in front of her under a black abaya, her body completely invisible.
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you? Who else would it be?’
‘I am a researcher in the science of archaeology.’
A laugh rang out, followed by other faint suppressed laughs.
‘Aren’t you pregnant, sister?’
The word slapped her face like a blow. Pregnant? Could that be the reason for her detention here? She had been on strike against pregnancy from the moment her mother had died giving birth to her. She did not know what the point of pregnancy was. All women became pregnant.