Abdul Samad did not settle his debt that day.
By midday every one’s tongue was wagging with the news. Zein himself was at the well in the centre of the village, filling the women’s pitchers for them and indulging in his usual antics. The children gathered round him and began chanting, ‘Zein’s getting married—Zein’s getting married,’ while he hurled stones at them, tugged at a girl’s dress, prodded a woman in her middle, or pinched another’s thigh; children laughed, the women shrieked and laughed, and above all this laughter could be heard the laugh that had become part of the village ever since Zein was born.
At first, as is well known, children meet life with screams. With Zein, however, it is recounted—and the authorities for this are his mother and the women who attended his birth—that no sooner did he come into this world than he burst out laughing. And so it was throughout his life.
He had grown up with only two teeth in his mouth, one in his upper jaw and one in the lower. His mother, though, says that his mouth was once filled with pearly white teeth, but that when he was six she took him one day to visit some relatives of hers; at sunset, passing by a deserted ruin rumoured to be haunted, Zein had suddenly become nailed to the ground and had begun shivering as with a fever. Then he let out a scream. After that he took to his bed for several days, and on recovering from his illness it was found that all his teeth had fallen out—except for one in his upper jaw and one in the lower.
Zein had an elongated face with prominent bones to his cheeks, his jaw, and under the eyes. His forehead was rounded and jutted out; his eyes were small and permanently bloodshot, their sockets deeply set in his face like two caverns. His face was completely hairless, with neither eyebrows nor eyelashes, and on attaining manhood no hair had sprouted on his chin or upper lip.
This face of his was supported by a long neck (among the nicknames given to Zein by the children was ‘the giraffe’) which stood on two powerful shoulders that straddled the rest of the body, forming a triangle. The two long arms were like those of a monkey, the hands coarse with extended fingers ending in long, sharp nails (Zein never pared them). His chest was concave, his back slightly hunched, while his legs were long and spindly like those of a crane. His feet were splayed and bore the traces of ancient scars (Zein disliked wearing shoes), and he remembered the story behind each one of them.
For example, the story of a long scar on his right foot extending from the back of the ankle to the opening between the first and second toes, Zein recounted as follows: ‘Now this scar, men, has a story to it.’
And Mahjoub would egg him on with the words, ‘And what story would this be, you good-for-nothing? Did you go off to steal and they give you a hiding with a thorn tree branch?’
This would have a splendid effect on Zein, who would fall over backwards, legs raised high in the air and hands beating the ground, while continuing to give vent to that strange and singular laughter that resembled a donkey’s braying. Infected by him, everyone else would burst into loud reverberating guffaws. Collecting himself, Zein would wipe the tears away with his cuff and say: ‘Yea—yea—so I did go off to steal—’
Mahjoub would again egg him on: ‘And what did you go off to steal, you scoundrel? Perhaps you said to yourself you’d look around for something to eat.’ And Zein, wiping his hands across his face, would once again break into laughter, and those present would presume that he had come by that particular scar entering some house to steal food, for he was well-known for his insatiable greed. At wedding feasts, when the trays of food were brought in and the people formed themselves into circles around them, each group tried to avoid having Zein sitting with them, as he would dispose of everything in the dish in a flash, leaving nothing for anyone else.
‘Do you remember what you did at Sa’eed’s wedding?’ Abdul Hafeez said to him.
‘Certainly I do,’ Zein answered with a guffaw. ‘By God, I would have eaten up the lot right down to the last little bit if Isma’il’s son, God damn him, hadn’t caught me.’ Zein had been entrusted with transporting the food at Sa’eed’s wedding and had walked back and forth between the diwan, where the men were congregated, and the kitchen at the back of the house, where the women were doing the cooking. On the way from the kitchen to the diwan Zein dawdled along, eating the choicest bits from the dish he was carrying, so that on arrival it was all but empty. He did this three times before Ahmed Isma’il noticed what was happening and followed him. Halfway to the diwan Zein stopped and lifted the lid off a dish filled with fried chicken. No sooner had he taken hold of a chicken and brought it to his mouth than Ahmed Isma’il pounced upon him and gave him a sound beating.
‘Come along,’ Mahjoub again asked him, ‘why don’t you tell us what you went off to steal, you rogue?’
When Zein noticed that the people around him were all agog to hear, he sat up straight, placed his arms between his knees and said: ‘Last summer, at the time of the harvesting of the millet, I was kept late at the water-wheel. The moon was atwinkle as I tossed my shawl across my shoulder and came up homewards. I tell you, when I reached the patch of sand by the edge of the village I heard the sounds of joyful ululation.
‘Yes, that’s quite right,’ Mahjoub interrupted him. ‘That was Bakri’s wedding.’
Zein continued: ‘And so I told myself I’d go along and see what it was all about. Now it seems that the Talha people were having a wedding and when I got there I found that things had really hotted up—a proper hullabaloo with drums and ululations. The first thing I did was to go off and look to see if I could find something to eat—’
The gathering burst into laughter, for it was what they had expected. ‘The women in the kitchen gave me some bits of meat to eat and something bitter to drink.’
‘That must have been arak, you good-for-nothing,’ said Mahjoub.
‘No, it wasn’t arak,’ said Zein. ‘Do you think I don’t know what arak is? I’m telling you, man, this thing I drank really flew to my head. Afterwards I slipped out of the kitchen and went into a room where I found a group of women and the smell of perfumes and scented ointments. May I divorce if the very smell didn’t intoxicate me.’
Abdul Hafeez laughed. ‘And where is the woman you’d be divorcing?’
Zein paid no attention to this but continued enthusiastically with the story. ‘And right in the middle I found the bride—a sweet little chit of a girl, all beautiful-smelling from the smoke bath and finely dressed.’ Zein became silent at this point and turned his small eyes on the faces of those present, his mouth agape, his two teeth jutting out.
Mahjoub, unable to contain himself, egged him on to complete the story. ‘And what did you do then?’
‘Then—I jumped on the bride.’ Having said which he leapt up like a frog. Everyone broke into an uproar and Zein exploded into laughter and threw himself down on his stomach, kicking up his legs in the air. Then he turned over on to his back and said, still choking with laughter: ‘I took hold of the little girl and bit her on the mouth.’
Mahjoub was so shocked that he muttered ‘There is no god but God and Mohammed is His Prophet,’ and asked His forgiveness for having even heard something so terrible.
‘I tell you, the women raised hell, the whole house was in an uproar, and the young bride began screaming. All of a sudden I found that somebody’d struck me in the ankle with a knife. I tell you, I started running and didn’t stop till I arrived back home.’ Suddenly Zein sat upright, the expression on his face wholly serious and, directing his words at Mahjoub, said: ‘Listen, are you going to marry your daughter Alawiyya to me or aren’t you?’
‘I promise the girl to you—right now before all these people here,’ Mahjoub answered him in all seriousness, as though meaning what he said. ‘After you’ve reaped your wheat and gathered up your dates and sold them and brought the money, we’ll make the wedding celebration.’
This promise satisfied Zein. For a while he remained silent with pursed lips, as though he had started to think about his future
life with Alawiyya and the responsibility of taking on the cares of a wife and children. ‘That’s it, then,’ he said. ‘Bear witness, brothers—this man has given his word and he can’t come along denying it tomorrow or the day after.’ All those present—Ahmed Isma’il, Taher Rawwasi, Abdul Hafeez, Hamad Wad Rayyes, and Sa’eed the shopkeeper—stated that they were witnesses to the promise made by Mahjoub and that the marriage would, God permitting, take place.
The story of Zein’s love for Alawiyya the daughter of Mahjoub is the latest of his romances. After a month or two he will tire of it and begin some new romance. For the present, though, he is completely taken up with her and she is ever-present in his mind. In the middle of the day you find him in the field, bent over his hoe, his face pouring with sweat, when he suddenly stops digging and cries out at the top of his voice, ‘I am slain by love in the courtyard of Mahjoub.’ In neighbouring fields tens of people momentarily stop digging as they listen to Zein’s cry. While the young men laugh, some of the older men, who are occasionally irritated by Zein’s tomfoolery, mumble with annoyance, ‘What’s that crazy boy gabbling about now?’ When at sunset work in the field comes to an end and the people take themselves off to their houses, Zein walks home from the field amidst a large crowd of young men, boys and girls, all laughing merrily around him, as he struts about among them, striking a young man on the shoulder, pinching a girl’s cheek, and making leaps into the air. Whenever he sees an acacia bush along the way he jumps over it and from time to time lets out shrieks at the top of his voice that resound through the village on which the sun has set. ‘Hear ye, you people of the village, O kinsfolk, I am slain by love in the courtyard of Mahjoub.’
Zein was first slain by love when he had still not attained manhood. He was thirteen or fourteen at the time and was as thin and emaciated as a dried-up stalk. Whatever people might say about Zein they acknowledged his impeccable taste, for he fell in love with none but the most beautiful girls, the best mannered and most pleasant of speech. Azza, daughter of the Omda, was fifteen years old and her beauty had suddenly unfolded in the same way as a young palm tree flourishes when, after thirsting, it is given water. Her skin was as gold as a field of wheat just before harvesting; her eyes were wide and black in a face of limpid beauty, her features delicate; her eye-lashes were long and when she slowly raised them one would experience a quickening of the heart. Zein was the first to draw the attention of the young men of the village to Azza’s beauty. One day he suddenly raised his voice whilst amid a great gathering of men brought together by the Omda for the cultivation of his field, raised his hoarse, piercing voice as does the cock at the break of dawn: ‘Hear ye, O people of the village, O kinsfolk, Azza the Omda’s daughter has slain herself a man. Zein is slain in the courtyard of the Omda.’ The people were taken aback by such daring and the Omda turned round sharply towards Zein, instinctve anger rising within him. Suddenly, as though everyone had at one and the same instant become conscious of the laughable disparity between Zein’s appearance, standing there as though he were a dried-up goat’s skin, and between Azza the Omda’s daughter, they all burst out laughing at one accord.
The anger died in the breast of the Omda, who was seated on a chair in the shade of a palm tree, red of eye and dusty of moustache, as he spurred the people on to work. He was a serious, awe-inspiring man who seldom laughed; however, on this occasion he gave a harsh explosive laugh at Zein’s words. ‘Zein,’ he shouted out at him, ‘if you go on working hard till evening we’ll give you Azza in marriage,’ and once again the people laughed, in deference to the Omda. Zein, however, remained silent, his face serious and preoccupied, unconscious of the increasing strength and frequency of the strokes of his hoe in the ground.
After that a month elapsed with Zein talking of nothing but his love for Azza and her father’s promise that he would marry her. The Omda knew how to exploit Zein’s emotions and gave him any number of arduous tasks which would have defeated the jinn themselves. So Zein the Lover would be seen bearing a yoke with tins of water on his back at high noon when the very stones groaned with the heat, hurrying to and fro as he watered the Omda’s garden; or he would be found wielding an axe larger than himself and cutting down a tree or chopping up wood; or you’d come upon him earnestly engaged in gathering fodder for the Omda’s donkeys, horses, and calves. And when, once a week, Azza smiled at him the whole world could hardly contain him for joy. Not a month passed, though, before it became known in the village that Azza had become engaged to her cousin, who worked as a Medical Assistant at Abu Usher.
Without fuss, without saying a word, Zein started on a new romance. One day the village awoke to his cries of: ‘I am slain among the people of the Koz.’ His ‘Laila’ this time was a young girl from among the bedouin who lived along the Nile in the north of the Sudan and came down from the lands of the Kababeesh and the Dar Hamar, and from the encampments of the Hawaweer and the Mereisab in Kordofan. At certain seasons water became scarce in their lands and they would journey down the Nile with their camels and sheep in search of watering for them. Sometimes years of drought, when the sky withheld rain, would bring them down and they would arrive in droves at the watering-places in the lands of the Shaigiya and the Bideeriya who lived along the Nile. Most of them remained only until things got better, when they would return whence they had come, though some of them, taking a liking to the settled life in the Nile valley, stayed on. The bedouin of the Koz were one such group. They continued to pitch their tents on the edge of the cultivated land, where they pastured their sheep and sold the milk, collected wood for fuel, and hired themselves out at low rates in the date-harvesting season. They did not intermarry with the local inhabitants, considering themselves to be pure Arabs. The village people, however, regarded them as uncouth bedouin.
Zein, though, broke down this barrier. Always on the move, spending all day long wandering through the area from end to end, his feet one day led him for no particular reason to the people of the Koz. He was roaming round the tents as though looking for something he’d lost, when a girl appeared and Zein, struck by her beauty, was rooted to the spot. The girl had heard of him, for his fame had reached even as far as the bedouin of the Koz, so she laughed and said jokingly, ‘Zein, will you marry me?’ He was speechless for a while—in the thrall of the girl’s beauty, he was now made spellbound by the magic of her words. Then and there he called out at the top of his voice, ‘O people, she has slain me.’
Many heads craned out from the doors of the houses and from between the flaps of tents. The girl’s mother called out, ‘Haleema, what are you up to with that dervish?’ And the girl’s brothers rushed at Zein, who took to flight. But Haleema, the belle of the Koz, thereafter became the object of an infatuation that did not leave him till she was married. People got to hear about her and many of the wealthy men of the village, the eligible youths and notables, came to ask for her in marriage from her father. In the end she was married to the son of the Cadi.
The marriage of the Omda’s daughter and that of Haleema were a turning-point in Zein’s life, for the mothers of young girls woke up to his importance as a trumpet by which attention was drawn to their daughters. In a conservative society where girls are hidden away from young men, Zein became an emissary for Love, transporting its sweet fragrance from place to place. Love, first of all, would strike at his heart, then would be quickly transferred to the heart of another—just as though Zein were a broker, a salesman, or a postman. With his small mouse-like eyes lurking in their sunken sockets, Zein would look at a beautiful girl and would be overcome by something that was perhaps love. His innocent heart having succumbed to this love, his thin legs would carry him to the far corners of the village, running hither and thither like a bitch that has lost her pups, his tongue continually singing the girl’s praises and calling out her name, so that ears were soon cocked and eyes on the look-out. Soon, too, some handsome young man’s hand would stretch out to take that of the young girl. And when the wedding took place, if
you looked around for Zein, you’d find him either working away at filling pitchers and large ewers with water, or standing bare-chested, axe in hand, in the middle of a courtyard cutting up firewood, or exchanging good-natured banter with the women in the kitchen, while from time to time they fed him with tit-bits and he’d burst out into that laugh of his, so like a donkey’s braying. And then would begin another romance, and from each romance Zein would emerge unscatched and, to all appearances, unchanged: his laugh unaltered, his tomfoolery in no wise lessened, and his legs never weary of bearing his body to the outlying parts of the village.
Years of abundance replete with love were experienced by Zein. The young girls’ mothers went out of their way to gain his affection, tempting him into their houses where they’d give him food to eat and tea and coffee to drink. On entering, a seat of honour would be spread out for him and breakfast or lunch served up in the best crockery, after which mint tea would be brought if it happened to be morning, or strong tea with milk if afternoon; after the tea he’d be served coffee with cinammon, cardamom, and ginger, be it morning or afternoon. No sooner did the women hear that Zein was in a nearby house than they’d flock to him, for they were amused by his raillery. Mothers would urge their daughters to go along and greet him, and lucky the one that gained a place in his heart and whose name was upon his lips when he went out, for such a girl was guaranteed a husband within a month or two. Perhaps Zein instinctively became aware of the importance of his new status and so began to play ‘hard to get’ with the girls’ mothers and would show hesitation before accepting an invitation to breakfast or lunch. Yet with all this, there was one girl in the district about whom Zein did not speak and with whom he never played the fool. She was a girl who would observe him from afar with beautiful, sullen eyes and whenever he saw her approaching he would fall silent and leave off his raillery and bufoonery. If he spotted her far off he would flee from her presence, leaving the road to her.