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Holy Wednesday
By Mahmoud Aboudoma
Translated by Sarah Enany
“I saw them split open your chest and pull out your heart. I saw your blood flow into the dirt; I saw them recite the prayers for the dead over you; I saw them write the story of your absence on your heart; I saw them perfume your body, wipe it down with rose-oil and henna; I saw them cover your body with salt and linen, pillowing you in the dust; I saw them build the wall of the burial chamber between you and the world, preparing you for true death. The old door through which I left bears witness to the story. But what perplexes me about you, even after all these years, is how you’ve managed to make up for everything that’s passed, how you’ve managed to connect everything that’s passed with everything still to come. But what I can’t understand is how you keep coming back to rewrite your story every time.”
These were the words written on aged paper, folded up in an old square of leather to be worn as a charm around the neck. It was wrapped in a scrap of black ribbon. My paternal aunt Mahbuba always wore it, pinned to the inside of her bra. Every night before bed, my aunt took it off and laid it on the bench, and when she bathed, she did the same thing. I reached out for the charm, unfolded the paper, and read it. I was afraid my aunt would catch me reading it behind her back. But every time she bathed, I unfolded the paper and read it until I knew it by heart, secreting the lines inside me, into the furthest corner of my heart. This is why I grew up with it; it is why, no matter how the years of my life fly by and my experiences accumulate, I still recall my Aunt Mahbuba—which means ‘beloved’—as through I were summoning a spirit.
Aunt Mahbuba’s spirit crowds before my eyes and will not leave me. She was different from all my other aunts: the smell of tobacco permeating her hair and clothing; the remnants of teeth blackened by tea and tobacco; the wrinkles in her skin; the veins that crisscrossed her hands, her narrow black eyes and white eyebrows; the cruelty that lived in her voice, her words laid out in careful rows of letters like ancient stones. There was the scarf wrapped around her head; her black dress; a body that showed there must have been curves once, indicators of a charm gone long before any of us was born. My aunt Mahbuba would sit on the same bench where her great-grandfather and grandfather and father had sat, and her paternal uncles and brothers after them; she would settle on the bench with one foot on the seat so her knee was up by her shoulder. She’d rest one elbow on that knee and hold the other hand up by her head, a cigarette between her fingers. Sometimes, she would open an old tin box and take out a lock of hair, dab it with perfume, and put it back in the box. My Aunt Mahbuba’s life was full of secrets never revealed. She would talk about other people’s lives, but was short when it came to her own.
My aunt lived in her father’s house; she occupied a big sitting-room and bedroom where her father once lived. In the bedroom stood a brass four-poster that my aunt slept in. The brass bed was moved from bedroom to bedroom until it came to her; her father had passed his wedding night in that bed, her uncle Idriss was born in it, my aunt Hanem and aunt Roda died in it, and Fatima and Dawlat were laid to rest upon it. So it witnessed love, and it witnessed death and birth, but it still stood where it always had.
My aunt Mahbuba had a house and land of her own, and children and grandchildren, and lots of gold jewelry and clothing, but her heart always lay in her father’s house. That is why, when her children were grown and her husband died, she left her husband’s house a year after his death. She gathered her children together and told them, “Your father is dead, and you have your own families and homes now, and I want to go back to my own home, too. That is: my father’s house. My inheritance from your father, the land, the money and the gold—I don’t need any of that. Divide it up among yourselves, and don’t let any of you take another’s fair share. As for me, I’ll live off the land I inherited from my father, until I lay my head down for the last time, and then you’ll each inherit your share according to God’s law.”
This happened a long time ago. By the time I was born, my aunt Mahbouba was already living in that house like a queen, and all who lived there were her subjects.
My aunt lived in a bedroom and sitting room in a house that had four bedrooms and four sitting rooms. Each of us lived in their own apartments, but we ate and drank and sat together. Three months out of every year, I stayed at my aunt’s: from the beginning of June until August, when school holidays ended. Sometimes I was bored there, but my aunt Mahbouba’s stories always captivated me.
There are stories you forget, and there are stories that never forget you. The image I remember most of my aunt Mahbouba was the dark-colored bottle she drank out of on the nights when she told her stories. When she saw the question in my eyes, she said, “It’s a cough medicine prescribed to me by a doctor in Assiut.” I got that; but what I didn’t get was why she sent for the medicine from Abu-Wadie’s corner store? And how could she drink a whole bottle of medicine every night and not die? And what was the medicine that made you loose-lipped and want to talk all the time, anyway? And what kind of medicine did you need to eat pickles with, and lettuce, and aged cheese? Anyway. I still remember the first question I asked in my life, the same one for which I still haven’t found an answer. “Where do people go when they die, Aunt?”
“They go to the far bank of the river.”
“And do they come back?”
“They must, my boy.”
“When, then?”
“Have a little patience.”
“What’s patience, Aunt?”
“Patience… it means you must be quiet and listen and understand. And you must listen well. You must pick the words apart and put them in your heart, then pull them out every now and then and think about them, alone, without letting anyone know about it, so as to keep anyone from knowing your secret and causing you heartache.”
“All that? Patience sounds pretty hard, Aunt.”
“What else? Did you think the world was a game where you’d take only the sweet and throw the bitter away? Are you going to listen patiently or go away?”
“I’ll listen, Aunt.”
My aunt took a pull at her cigarette. “Are you happy, boy, or sad?”
“I must be quiet and listen and understand and pick the words apart and keep everyone from knowing my secret so no one gives me heartache and makes me cry. Does it make me sad or happy, Aunt?”
“That makes you sad, but there are no tears in your eyes.”
“Didn’t you say I must hide my secrets from everyone?”
Aunt Mahbouba fell silent. Then she took a long swig out of her dark medicine bottle. “Good boy. A man must lock his secrets away in his heart. But a woman airs her grievances and ruins everything with idle chatter.” Then she lit another cigarette and looked me in the eye until fear filled my heart. In a different tone, she said, “Son of my brother, everything that God has made is written on the walls in Upper Egypt. They never let slip anything that came to pass in this world. Every flood that struck the land of Egypt, they kept a record: they wrote about every king who ruled the country, just or unjust, every bird that flew through its skies. Every good thing that came into this land, they inscribed it on the walls. Not a prophet set foot in Egypt but they wrote his name on their walls. Every war and plague, every affliction and celebration, they wrote on the walls. They wrote, my boy, of fear and hunger, of humiliations and sickness and joy, of betrayal and deceit and tears, of death and justice and honor, of wheat and kohl and perfumes. Of cakes and oranges, of dates and figs, of stars, floods and passion, of judgment, reward and punishment, Heaven and Hell and sin; they let nothing slip, my boy. Even light and darkness, and the times when those come, they wrote, too, on the walls. You must know, son of my brother, that there are appointments you await, and appointments that await you—and God has created man wise enough to know the difference.”
My aunt took another long swig from her dark medicine bottle. “The story I’m going to tell you truly happened, you should know. I heard it from my Grandma Fatima, who told it down to the dates and names and never let a scrap of any detail slip. It took three whole nights for me to hear the story from Grandma Fatima. Then I told it to myself over and over until it came to live in my heart, and now it’s hard for any part of it to emerge without taking your soul with it. Some stories, my boy, are as old as Adam and Eve, in short: when you reach their end, it’s the end of your life. Anyway. I’ll tell you the story as Grandma Fatima told it to me, the story of Bahra, the daughter of Itra and Abdullah el-Kott, which means ‘the Cat’.”
My aunt took in a breath and prepared to tell the story. At first she was confused, but after two or three sentences she settled in, the words flowing out of her like the current of a rapid river, such that no one could stand in its way. My Aunt Mahbuba said, in the voice of another:
*
My name is Bahra, the daughter of Abdullah el-Kott, which means ‘the Cat’. My name means The Sea; don’t think it strange, because that was the name they gave to girls born during the season of the flooding of the Nile. Bahra refers to the sea, but my father named me so because I was born on a night when everything was flooded. It was the night of the Christian Festival of al-Ghitas, when the rain pelted down. And although it rarely rains in Upper Egypt, on the night I was born, the rain fell endlessly from the sky. Everyone was delighted, and afraid too, but they thanked God that the rain had demolished no house, ruined no crops, and blocked no roadway. As they were cutting the cord between me and my mother, Father Abram’s church bells rang for Mass. Our house and the church were separated by only a single wall; that was why everyone who left the church after Mass came to congratulate us and put the usual gift of money for a newborn on the tray that held the water pots. Even Father Abram the priest came to congratulate us after he was done with Mass. Father Abram picked me up and held me aloft. He said a prayer into my ear and kissed me over my heart. Father Abram said to my father, “Blessings have come into your house, Abdullah.” Then he went to my mother, who was lying on the stone platform, with four women around her massaging her breasts to get her ready to nurse me for the first time. Father Abram laid his hand on my mother’s head and said, “Congratulations, Om Bahra,” which means Mother of Bahra. “Your breasts shall be filled with milk by the grace of the Virgin Mary.”
My mother smiled. “God will certainly hear your prayers, Father.”
Father Abram smiled, passed a hand over his beard, and laid his other hand on my father’s shoulder. “Listen, Kott. The world around you is different now. God has blessed you with a daughter, and He may well bless you with a second and third child. That’s why I want to tell you, Stop running after trifles. You have a treasure in your hand, but you cannot see it. My word is still good. We can buy your house and enlarge the House of God! I’ll pay whatever you want, and over and above, I’ll give you a plot of land on the bridge west of town, on the main road, where you can build a house and open a store. Going into business is good. If you don’t have enough, the church will help you build the house; if you need stock for your store, we can get you whatever you want from the best wholesalers in the country. Tea, oil, sugar, flour, soap, halva, coffee, and everything you need. My word does not change, Abdullah. The land under your home and the church is empty, and those who tell you that treasure is buried beneath are liars. There’s nothing under the House of God but blessings. In short: if you dig under your house for twenty years, you shall find nothing but dust. Listen, Abdullah. A lot of people talk nonsense about you, but I know very well that you are a good man. If you listen to me, you’ll never regret it.”
My father nodded. “Look, Father. If it were up to me, I would give you the house for the price you named and never haggle. But you know that the house is not mine alone: half of it belongs to the wife of my late brother, may he rest in peace, and she would never stand for such a thing, although she is better off than me. There is no end to greed, as you know. Please, Father, I have no desire to open doors that have so far remained closed.”
“Listen, Abdullah,” Father Abram said. “When you settle things with your sister-in-law, come straight to me and all will be well. If you want me to speak to her, I can do that, too. Just let me know how to speak to her.”
“We’ll see,” my father said.
Father Abram left after depositing a whole silver twenty-piaster piece in the tray, letting it ring out for my mother to hear.
There are stories in this world that you tell, and there are stories told about you. In short: there are stories in this world that you cannot forget, and stories that will not forget you. That is why Bahra said:
“Abdullah Khalil al-Wardany: that’s my father’s real name. But they called him el-Kott, ‘The Cat,’ because he had a twin brother named Sebaie Khalil al-Wardany. They called him Sebaie—which means Seven—because he had seven fingers and toes. But the real story starts with their mother, Grandma Radya. She said that she went into the twins’ room at night to nurse them, and she found the bed empty, with nothing there but black fur. She ran to the courtyard to call for help; there, she found two black cats chasing each other through the doorway. Grandma Radya ran to the bed again to find Sebaie and Abdullah asleep. She was baffled. When she asked her sister Hamida about it, Hamida said, “All the double-children turn to cats at night! Are you a child not to know this? You’re a grown woman and you should understand these things.”
Grandma Radya shook her head. “Grown, yes. Understanding, well, that’s another thing altogether.”
The days came and went; sometimes Grandma Radya found her children in bed, and sometimes she found the bed empty, until one day she went upstairs to nurse them, and she found only Abdullah, with Sebaie missing. My grandma sat at the front door, waiting for him to return. But Sebaie never came home again. My grandma told the story to Hamida, her sister, and Hamida told the whole town. Whenever people saw a cat, they said “Sebaie!” Some said they’d seen him at one of their windows; some said he was walking back and forth on the fence; some said he had passed by their home just that day; one woman said he and Abdullah had come in when she was baking and snatched two loaves out of her basket, and another said he drowned at the water wheel. They all described him as a black cat. Whenever Grandma Radya heard a story, she waited for Sebaie to come back. Sometimes, she questioned my father. “Where did your brother go?”
Grandma Radya waited at the door until she died, but Sebaie never set foot in the house again. And from that day on, my father became known as Abdullah the Cat—only everyone shortened it to just “Cat!” Everyone also thought he consorted with the djinn. In short, every night, he turned into a cat. He went into people’s homes and discovered their secrets; he went into women’s beds and saw the girls unclothed and clothed; he listened to conversations and knew everything that people revealed and concealed, and everyone avoided him, because he knew, too, the secrets of love and passion and sex and pillow talk. He knew who had stolen what, and hidden what, and who had made a hex bag and buried it. He knew which girls had made a love charm and buried it beneath the doorstep of the one she desired. In truth, I had never heard any such thing about my father, and he never breathed so much as a word.
I am Bahra, and, as I told you, the night I was born, God protected the town from a terrible flood, and joy filled every house. In short, everyone that day or night who went to market or had a trader come knocking or a beast of burden give birth was blessed with great bounty, as though poverty and misery had disappeared from the town for a single night. My father was overjoyed when he collected the gifts of money from the tray, and he called me a good thing and a source of joy in the house. My father’s joy had another source: he had brought me into the world when he was older, and my mother was blessed with neither looks nor fruitfulness. My grandmother always used to say, “The children born of old parents are orphaned early. Give them all the love they need before you leave them and go away. Your fate awaits you with every step. Count your wounds, O Pain, count your wounds,” which is an old saying.
My aunt Mahbuba fell abruptly silent. Then she drew near to me. “Are you asleep, boy?”
“I’m awake, Aunt! The last thing you said was “count your wounds, O Pain.”
“Do you understand what that means?”
“I do! And Heaven knows how much I want you to finish the story!”
“Good boy! You’ve learned your lesson well. Women lose track of words, and they come and go in idle talk, but a man never misses a word. He never lets his secrets slip; that’s why a man is master of himself. And here is the rest of the story just as Grandma Fatima told it: of Bahra, the daughter of Itra and Abdullah the Cat. And here it is in her own voice:
“My first night in this world… I remember it as if it were yesterday. The women sat around my mother to teach her how to nurse the baby. They wiped my tongue with a rough cloth, and my lips as well. They gave me sugar water to suckle, and they started to run their hands over my mother’s breasts to make the milk come, but none came. They put a ruby ring on her, and lit incense in the house, and put a scarab beetle in her hair, and strung up a crow outside the door to the house, but all this didn’t work. Not a drop of milk came out of her breast. My grandmother said, “There’s nothing for it but the milk charm. And the only one who can write it is Sheikh Saber, but nobody knows where he is these days.”
The midwife, Om William, said, “There’s no need for such foolery. The Word of God is the best thing. Recite the sura of al-Qari’a.” Sure enough, as soon as Grandma Hamida started reciting it, my mother’s breast gave milk, and my mouth was suddenly full of it. My mother’s tears flowed as she put her breast in my mouth. I was full of ardor, too: it was my first taste of food in this world. My mother managed to put her nipple between my lips and I started to suckle. Once, twice, three times; no sooner did I get a good mouthful of my mother’s breast than I pressed against it with my small hand, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and sucked in all the milk in my mother’s breast in one gulp. My mother stared. Grandma laughed to see my mother afraid, and my mother laughed, too, to see her, and she gave me her other breast. She put her other nipple between my lips: one gulp, then another, and all the milk was drunk.
My mother’s other breast shriveled up like a squeezed lemon. This time, it was my grandmother who cried out, “Woe is us! Is this a girl or an asp? She could dry out ten women in one night.” The women ululated and the house was filled with laughter. But the story was on everyone’s lips: “Bahra dried out her mother’s breast.” The women did what they could; they gave my mother cress and mughat to drink, and they fed her molasses, tahini, and peanuts. They made sweets like sikhina and sad al-hanak. They tied four live crows to our house; they recited the sura of Al-Qari’a seven times; but not a drop of milk came out. For my part, it was as if I had swallowed up everything the days had in store for me all at once: everything hidden, everything I was meant to experience in my life. As the old saying goes: O Pain, count our wounds, for they are without end.
I am Bahra. As the days went by, my mother and my grandmother began to send me out to other houses to nurse. I nursed at several women’s breasts: Aunt Zeinab, Aunt Farha, and also Aunts Sabah, Naima and Mariam, and many other aunts whose names I don’t remember, each with a rib of her own in my body. My mother’s mother lifted me up high, saying, “Bahra is blessed with plenty. She nursed at twenty women’s breasts, and she brings good fortune and joy to the people of every house she enters, and they are blessed with riches.” Then she raised me up higher. She unveiled her white hair and spread it all about, and she bared her withered old breasts and took them in her hand, raising her face to the sky. “Lord,” she said, “hear the voice of this woman, Gamila, daughter of Bikry Hassan. Here is the sign: her breasts are bare before You, her hair is unveiled to You, O Creator. Lord, by the bounty that fills this earth of Yours, let good fortune be at her feet, and on every doorstep she crosses. O Lord, keep injustice away from her; by Your light, keep her away from the paths of darkness, and let her remain like a gown of pure white, and protect her from all that may sully her.” She lowered me again and held me close to her chest. A tear fell from my grandmother’s eye into my mouth, and I swallowed it. O Pain, count our wounds, for they are without end.
I am Bahra, the child of the days of affliction that struck Upper Egypt. In short: there are days you can never forget, and days that will never forget you, and other days that you shall forget and days that shall forget you—but the days I shall tell you of may never be forgotten, even after a hundred years.
When I was in my seventh flooding of the Nile, a plague came into the land of Egypt, harvesting her children. The plague, in short, would make its way into each house and put out its candles all at once in a single hour, leaving behind grief and tears. Entire families perished; death took them all in a day. I would see more than twenty coffins heading for the graveyards every day; boys and girls and men and women and children and old people, all were buried together in a pit lined with live lime. In the morning, they would lay out the bodies in the pit and cover them with smooth sand, and then they would splash water onto the sand. The lime would float to the surface and smoke would rise; by sunset, the lime would have eaten up the bodies completely, until there was nothing left but burnt sand mixed with gypsum. The next morning, the pit would be filled again with the bodies laid out in their shrouds, and after they were eaten up again by the lime and the sand and the water and the earth, they lined it again with sand, to receive more bodies to be covered up with gypsum; the pit never filled, nor did the plague recede. Everyone was waiting their turn, and the stench of death filled the town.
The plague circled around our house without entering it—until it did. We suddenly found it among us, without asking permission, and before sunset the next day, it took my mother and my grandmother and my maternal aunt and my paternal aunt and four of her children, and Grandma Radya, my father’s mother, together with a little girl she was raising. In short, none survived but me and my father, and no other relatives survived but my uncle’s wife and her daughter Doha, who lived in a house on the path behind ours. The houses emptied out; everyone ran from death, only to meet it elsewhere along the way. Grief extinguished everyone’s hearts, and misery settled upon every house. There are griefs that you swallow, and other griefs that swallow you whole; as the old saying goes, O Pain, count our wounds, for they are without end.
I am Bahra. The days went by, and the plague left our houses, with many souls clutched in its hands. But as it left, it cut all the ties that bind. The plague left behind it orphans and widows and grief and pain without end. Everyone had to mend their wounds. People found comfort in each other and sought comfort in each other’s homes; that is why people joined their bodies together in marriages made by death and poverty and the burden that weighed heavy on everyone’s hearts. In short: here was a man who married his brother’s widow to raise her children and his, there a young woman who married a dying old man to support her, and old maids found husbands. Even cross-eyed women, women with hardly any eyesight, women with bad breath, and women with no hearing all found willing buyers in the marriage market; the blind man, too, found a woman to marry him. It was as though the plague had entered people’s homes in order to rearrange everyone’s priorities, to flatter and console and comfort those who had been dealt an unjust hand by the world. Although every house was bereaved, none had the strength to offer condolences, nor would the tears come to woman or man, for, in short, who will weep for whom when all of our walls bear scars?
When death left our house, my father closed the door in its wake and let no one enter. He refused to remarry and let another woman into our house to irk me. Many people suggested, “The Cat should marry his brother’s widow and raise Doha and Bahra together.” But my father said neither yea nor nay. Every Monday and Thursday, my uncle’s wife would send her daughter Doha to with us fresh-baked bread and a casserole, as well as cheese and milk and honey and milk, and she would take our wash and send it back clean the next day, also with Doha. But Doha never set foot inside our house. She seemed afraid to come in, I don’t know why, although we were friends and always played together. My father spent his days spinning sheep’s wool, drinking tea, and smoking. He was naturally a man of few words; if a gesture would suffice, he made it, and the rest of his words were confined to yes or no, and if the answer was somewhere in between, he would smile and nod or shake his head. He never had any friends; he didn’t visit anyone, and no one visited him. Sometimes, he would leave the house at night and say, “I’ll be back in a couple of days. I have a job.” Then he would add, “If someone asks, don’t ever say I’m away! Don’t tell our family’s secrets! Tell them I’m inside sleeping, or on an errand and I’ll be back in an hour.” Sometimes, he would disappear in broad daylight, and sometimes at sunset, but I would always find him coming back within the hour. He ate as little as he spoke; he had a very old wooden chest, full of papers that were old, too, and lots of money in a tin box. Sometimes, at night, he would take out the money and papers, bring the gas lamp close, and read them, as if he were looking for some word he had lost in there. I never did find out what my father did in addition to spinning wool. All day, he sat on the wooden bench spinning sheep’s wool, and when it was spun, I would take it to church to give to Father Abram and bring back the money he paid my father.
A year after the plague left the land of Egypt, my father sent me to the Catholic Church to learn to read and write from the nuns there. I had a lovely time at the church, and I learned lots of things. At school, I learned why nobody came to visit us: everyone thought my father consorted with the djinn, that he turned into a cat at night and went scrabbling through the graveyards to dig up hexes and bury them under people’s houses. That’s why people stayed away from us; in short, they were afraid of us. The other girls in my class at the church school would play with me for a little while, but as soon as they remembered, they’d tell each other, “Not Bahra, she’s the Cat’s daughter, she could turn you into something terrible! Nobody play with her!” At first, their words upset me. But little by little, I grew used to them. I was more comfortable in the company of the nuns. I was always closer to them. I would hang around on Saturdays after school and go with them to the kitchen and knead the dough for the communion wafers. I went upstairs to where they lived, and they filled my pockets with sweets and always gave me three or four old magazines full of pretty pictures. They accompanied me to the gates of the school to wave goodbye to me, and then I went home alone. As soon as I stepped into the house, there was Father, sitting on the bench, spinning sheep’s wool, drinking tea and rolling cigarettes. As if he was waiting for an appointment, he was always dressed in his finest, his turban on his head, shawl draped over his shoulders winter and summer, as if he were prepared to travel at any moment.
The image of my father on his bench remains in my mind. Even if he was out of the house, I would see him in the house with the spindle in his hand. To me, my father lived in my conscience. I loved him and longed to please him, but I was overcome with nerves when I stood before him. Everyone shall reap what he has sowed; O Pain, count our wounds, for they are without end.
*
My aunt Mahbuba fell silent, losing the thread of her words. She took another deep draught of the dark medicine bottle, and a pull of the cigarette in her tobacco-stained fingers. Then she looked at me. “Are you happy or sad, boy?”
“I don’t know, Aunt.”
“Shame on you, cursed boy! Then you must be happy and ashamed to say it to my face! Joy is in a woman’s nature, but it is shameful in men.”
“Then I am sad, Aunt.”
“What’s your evidence?”
“My heart aches to hear the story.”
“Where are your tears, then?”
“I’m sad, Aunt, but there are no tears in my eyes, because, like you said, I want to be silent and listen and understand and classify things and arrange them in my head. I want to keep my secrets inside me so that no one can hurt me or give me heartache or make me cry.”
“That makes you a good boy who has learned his lesson well. Everything is better kept close in your head, and waited on. Everything that God created has a time, you see, my boy; it takes its time and then goes away. Even people live out their lives and then go away; now here’s the rest of the tale, just as Grandma Fatima told it, about Bahra, daughter of Itra and Abdullah the Cat, as she told it herself:
*
I am Bahra. The days passed very close to me: they began to carve out the shape of my body. I started to ripen. Every day, something changed in me. My hair grew longer; my eyes took on a painted shape; my cheeks grew fuller and smoother; my neck grew longer and my shoulders broader to make way for my bust; my waist went in and my sides as well, to make way for broad hips beneath them that could carry a child. My clothes described my story, and, in a few months, I said goodbye to my old body. The Bahra I knew disappeared; in her place was another Bahra and a voice that came from my heart, that spoke of other secrets within my body to conceal and reveal; all this I saw plain in the eyes of those outside the door to our house. Many things inside me now clamored with a loud voice. The days passed. In short: there are times that pass through you, and times that you pass through, and the latter remain engraved in your mind as though inscribed in all the lines of your life’s story.
It was the first night before Good Friday. After supper, Father said to me, “Bahra, there’s something I want to talk with you about. I’m leaving for two or three months. I have a job that might bring in some money. God willing, I could buy the share your uncle’s wife has in this house. Then we can sell the house to the church and see what’s to be done after that. Bahra, I have seen signs and good omens that God will take our part. You too, Bahra, wait for the sign. If someone asks after me, tell them, ‘He’s taken the boat to my mother’s relatives in Edfu to pay his condolences, and he’ll be back in a few days,’ and not a word more until I come back to you successful! There’s some money in the chest, you know where it is, in case you should need to buy anything. Your uncle’s wife will bake for you and send you necessities twice a week, and I will be sure you are safe whether I am near or far.”
My father finished what he had to say and got up to see to his affairs; before sunrise, he opened the door to the house and stood at the threshold. He lifted his things up onto his shoulder and said goodbye. I wanted to tell him, “Stay here! Don’t leave home.” But something else made me raise my hand in a wave as I watched him through the tears that filled my eyes. My father stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him, leaving me to think of all the dear ones who had gone out of my life and closed the doors behind them. The world was empty now. I sat and waited for the signs he had told me about, the good omens, and counted the days that seemed not to pass. O Pain, count our wounds, for they are without end.
After my father stepped over the threshold, a cold wind came in through the door. When I felt the cold, I felt lonely, as though the loneliness had come to live in every corner of the house and then to live in me. I counted the days on my fingers to find that my father had been gone for ten, and I also discovered that it was Holy Wednesday, one night before Maundy Thursday. That is why there was a knock at the door; when I opened it, I found Father Abram at the door with a casserole of bulghur, and I took it from him and thanked him, and put it on the stone platform. I wished I could paint my eyes with kohl and go out and take a dip in the Nile with all the other girls at sunset, but I was afraid for no reason I knew, and told myself, ‘Next year, Father will be in the house, and I will go with his permission.’ I don’t know when the night came down. The sun went away, taking the day with it. The church bell rang an hour before Mass. After sundown, I heard something moving behind me. I turned. On the fence was a black cat, the same tomcat that had come into our house a year ago or more, and when I told my father I was afraid of him, he had said, “He is one of the guardians of this place. No harm will come from him.” To tell the truth, my father’s words reassured me, although I did not understand them; but at the same time, I thought of what the girls at school had said, and their stories about my father and my uncle. But I was always certain that the cat who came into our house was no demon or djinn, nor was he evil. He might be a good spirit, the ghost of a lost person still unable to find his way, or perhaps someone we loved sending their spirit to see that we were well. Anyway. The cat came in after sundown, between sunset and evening, and as soon as he came in, he sat in front of me and stretched his front paws out in front of him. But whenever I got up and walked about the house, he followed me, waiting for me everywhere I went. The odd thing is that before midnight, he disappeared. In short: although I could not tell where he had gone, it was as if he was still there before me, meaning that he was only gone in body. In short, he could see me, but I couldn’t see him; O Pain, count our wounds, for they are without end.
The nights scurried on one after another, and my fear for my father grew every day. But there was nothing for it but to wait; six months now with no word, and as soon as the sun went down and I began to think too much, there was the cat coming down the stairs, waving his tail at me as soon as he got close. Sometimes, I put out bread and milk for him, but he never ate them; sometimes, he would disappear and come again without warning. Sometimes, he would dig in the courtyard of the house and pull out wrapped pieces of fabric folded around charms, but I never read what was written in them. After a while, the cat would pick up the charm and re-bury it somewhere else, but still in the courtyard of the house. In the middle of the night, he would disappear, but he was still there, seeing me without my seeing him. I could feel him in my bed, you see; sometimes, I felt his breath at my back as I slept, or standing there as I put my clothes on. Sometimes, he covered me up while I was sleeping, or rubbed up against me as cats do, but he never went any further. For my part, I grew used to his presence in the house; I felt comforted and comfortable in his presence, and no longer lonely, waiting for the accustomed sign. And if a night went by without him coming to the house, I would be confused and upset and waiting for him to come back.
In the morning, my heart leapt with hopeful anticipation when I heard a knock on the door. I opened it to find Father Abram standing there, holding a hot earthenware casserole covered with a cloth and a reed basket full of sweet-smelling loaves. Father smiled and said, “Some lentils with olive oil and hot bread.” I smiled back and took the dish from him. Then he said, “No news of your father yet, Bahra?”
I said, “He’ll be back in a few days, may he come back safe and sound… Anything I can do for you, Father?”
“May he come back safely. If you need anything, Bahra, we’re neighbors, and neighbors look out for one another. And I always pray for you, my daughter.” Then he pulled out two bundles of raw wool and gave them to me along with a half-riyal coin. “I want you to finish this wool quickly, I need it in a hurry. As soon as it’s done, bring it to me at the church.”
I thanked him and closed the door after him, perplexed, a hundred questions running through my head. I put the food on the table and broke bread and ate what I could. Then I wrapped the rest of the bread in a cloth and covered up the food and put it in the cubby-hole and made tea. Then I sat down again on the bench, waiting. Something inside me wished that my father might come back today; my heart told me he was coming back! I put out the wool and got the spindle, and then I worked until sundown. I was still sitting on the bench, waiting for the door to open and show my father standing before me. When I had waited a long time, sleep overcame me. I lay down on the bench and covered up with a light woolen shawl, and took to thinking. Today, you see, was Holy Wednesday. Tomorrow was Maundy Thursday, and after that Good Friday. This meant an entire year had gone by, and still no news of my father. There was nothing for it but to wait.
When I felt warm enough, I fell asleep; but a little while later, I felt something moving behind my back. I looked up at the stairs leading to the roof of the house to find the cat again on the wall. As soon as he saw me, he waved his tail and started to come down the stairs, as though he were coming toward me. When he got to the bottom of the stairs, I reached out to stroke his back. I heard something else moving: I looked up to find another black cat standing on the fence. As soon as my eyes met his, he began to come downstairs. As he came down, a third cat appeared in the same spot, and began to come downstairs. And then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth, all coming down the same way, and so on until I lost count.
Was this a dream or not? I couldn’t tell. But what was certain was that the house was completely packed with cats. They were everywhere: on the stairs, on the bench, behind the door, and on the windowsill; on the couches and the beds; in every corner of the house there was a black cat. At first, I was too terrified to look at them: but after a while, for some mysterious reason, I began to feel secure. When the cats sensed this, they began to approach me and rub up against me, as if we were old friends. I was overcome with an odd sensation of fear and joy, especially when my body was all covered with cats, with not a spot left out. The cats began to sniff at every part of my body.
Time stopped. I could not tell how much time had passed, especially when the cats started to leave the house. Each of them would climb off me, step onto the first stair, then climb up to the wall. They would look back down at my body lying on the bench and then disappear into the darkness, as if everything had been arranged and they were just waiting for the signal. The cats left, one after the other, until the house was empty once more, and silence reigned. The woolen scarf fell off my body, so I leapt off the bench, cold and afraid and very thirsty. I want to the water jars and drank until my thirst was slaked, all while seeking some meaning within me. Were the cats a dream, or were they real?
The church bells rang for the Mass of Holy Wednesday. O Pain, count our wounds, for they are without end.
*
My Aunt Mahbouba’s tears fell upon her cheeks, crying silently. I laid a hand on her shoulder and asked her, “Are you feeling sorry for Bahra, Aunt?”
My aunt did not reply. “Was she dreaming, Aunt, or did the cats really come into their house?”
Her tears fell faster, but she was still silent.
Silence reigned, but my aunt could always make time move forward. She took a pull of her cigarette, drew very close to me, and looked into my eyes. In a vulnerable tone I had never heard from her before, she asked, “Are you happy or sad, boy?”
“I told you a hundred times, my heart is full of sorrow like yours, but there are no tears in my eyes. Since when are tears a sign of sorrow, Aunt? I want to be silent and listen and understand and classify things and arrange them in my heart. I want to keep my secrets inside me. I want to know how the story ends. Don’t just go away, Aunt, and leave me lost without you. In short: I don’t want sorrow to wound my heart and make my tears fall.”
In a voice weaker than before, my aunt replied, “May you never suffer a scandal of honor. Never let anyone uncover your secrets, boy: neither love, nor fear, nor lack of money, nor wine should loosen your tongue. Never tell your secrets to anyone! Keep them in your heart and lock them inside. And if you should ever love, never tell her ‘I love you’: make her say it to you. And if you be cursed with an affliction, my boy, lock that too in your heart and never complain to a soul of ill luck. Never betray a secret. Never tell anyone what is hidden in your heart, but let them read your sorrow in your eyes, for everyone’s sorrows are written in their eyes. Their fortune is in their eyes; their grief is in their eyes; their joy is in their eyes; their anger, their pain, their confusion, their fear—all are written in their eyes. You can read their book from their eyes. And here’s the rest of the tale, just as Grandma Fatima told it, of Bahra, daughter of ‘Itra and Abdullah the Cat, and here is the story in her own voice:
*
The days passed once more, and my father stayed away for a long time; ever since he closed the door behind him, there had been no news. Talk began to spread about the town, until it reached my door:
“The Cat’s left his home and run away.”
“A well collapsed on him and four other men as they were digging through it for old papers in the graveyards.”
“He turned into a cat at night the way he does, but this time he couldn’t turn human again.”
“Bahra turns into a cat at night, too.”
The girls came knocking at my door in the mornings, especially my cousin Doha, and she told me the things people said. Doha was afraid when she told me. Father Abram came knocking at the door every day asking after my father, knowing my answer. He would give me the raw wool with some money and take away the skeins of spun wool, and I sat at the spindle all day, spinning and wrapping skeins of wool and waiting for the absent one to return. But hope was late in coming! The days flew by all about me, and the world changed as well, and the cat who used to appear in our house from sundown to midnight disappeared; in short, he stopped coming into the house, like a companion on a journey who has traveled by your side a space, and when you came to a crossroads, takes another path and leaves you to journey on alone. Every night, I sat on the bench in the entryway waiting for him, but he never returned. We are souls made by the Lord for meeting and parting at preordained times. O Pain, count our wounds, for they are without end.
‘Everyone’s fate is written on their brow’, as they say, which means there is no escaping it: the hardest moment for a person is meeting their fate suddenly. That is the moment when there is no cheating, no lying, no subterfuge, and no betrayal: you must be clear and honest as the sunlight at high noon, and what can be said in four or five words must not be said in ten. This is why I shall not prevaricate before you. I shall tell what has lain hidden, from the start of the story, of which I cannot make head or tail.
One day, I found my belly growing larger, and something moving within me: it is a thing every woman knows without being taught. The days that every girl knows and counts had stopped coming these five months and more, in short: I was bearing fruit in my belly, but I had never sinned, nor given myself to anyone, nor let any man take my honor. No one had ever touched me, in holy matrimony nor yet in sin; but it happened the night I dreamt of the cats in our house on Holy Wednesday. I closed my door and held my peace: there are pains you wait for, and other pains that lie in wait for you.
One day, early in the morning, I found my cousin Doha knocking at the door to the house. Without a word, she handed me a bundle at the door, and blurted, “My mother says it’s become a scandal and things are different now. This is the last dish of bread you’ll get from us. And she says: get rid of the shame quickly.”
She left the bundle in my hands and backed away, eyes wide with fear. I backed away as well. But when Doha was gone, I crossed the threshold and closed the door behind her. Even you, Doha, will not listen to my story? Even you? I’m your flesh and blood!
Anyway. I went into the courtyard and sat down on the bench in the entryway. I put the bundle of hot bread down beside me and stared into space, thinking of God’s creation, until I heard the church bells ringing. I opened the bundle to find seven loaves of bread, salt, and another bundle of fabric that looked strange. I opened it and found a sharp knife with a short wooden handle.
I picked up the knife, tears falling from my eyes. Is this, Father, the omen you told me to wait for on the night you left? In short: things have taken on a different complexion now, kneaded through with death and blood and washing honor clean… O Pain, count our wounds, for they are without end.
*
My Aunt Mahbuba fell silent. She rolled a cigarette quickly and took a deep, deep drag. She raised the dark medicine bottle up high: there was only one swallow left in it, and she drank it all down and put the bottle behind her on the bench. She drew very near to me, but before she could speak, I cut in hurriedly, “Please, Aunt, don’t ask me anything! I swear on your father’s dear head, finish the story!”
My aunt closed her eyes. She dropped the cigarette butt on the floor and stepped on it. “A person’s fate,” she said quietly, “is always waiting at their door. As soon as you open the door, it comes in whether you will or no; it ruins your life as you stand watching, and it never goes away and leaves you alone. It never says ‘Enough’ until it has reached the end of you. And here is the rest of the story as Grandma Fatima told it to me, of Bahra, daughter of ‘Itra and Abdullah the Cat, and here it is in her own voice:
*
One night after Doha’s visit, the cat began to appear in our house again, but he seemed sad. Every night, he came in from the same place and sat on the highest step on the stairs, walked to the bench and rubbed his head against my leg, and then sat next to me on the bench. But as soon as it was midnight, he disappeared until the next day, returning as soon as it was sunset. Again, he came down the stairs and slept on the landing.
The summer went by, with its days and nights. Each day, my stomach grew, and my fear with it. The scents of autumn began to fill the world. The trees dropped their leaves onto the ground, and their branches, too, prepared themselves for death: it is an old score with Time that they settle every year together, a silent battle in which there is no winner or loser, a battle without blood or tears, sorrow or joy, witnessed by everyone, starting and ending in silence. In short: without a word.
The first Friday in the month of Babah, which is a Coptic month between October and November, the cat came into our house after three days’ absence. At dawn, I woke up freezing cold, my whole body trembling. The seed in my stomach was ripe: I began to feel pains in my stomach and back such as I had never known before, and a pulsing that filled my entire body. I bathed and put on a black dress, hung my silver necklace about my neck, and put on my earrings and bracelets. I braided my hair, put on kohl and perfume, and oiled my hair. I wrapped myself all about in a black veil and sat behind the door, waiting. As soon as the dawn filled the world with its colors, the cat came in and sat next to me on the couch. I opened the door to the house and stepped over the threshold and gave myself up to the open road.
The cat walked behind me, following me; the pain was growing worse. My steps grew quicker, and one path led to the next, from street to alleyway to bridge, to another road, and another, and another, until I arrived at the Nile, the cat one pace behind me. It was same bank I used to see in my dreams. I sat down: the dawn was still breaking. Suddenly, I felt my body lying down of its own accord on the banks of the Nile, until I was lying on my back, and I started to feel things I had never felt before. Giving birth is true pain. The pulse began to intensify within me, heartbeat after heartbeat, a third and a fourth following: hot blood like a current surging through my veins, as though I were giving up the ghost. Then I found a child between my legs. I reached out and grasped hold of it, and I pulled the sharp knife out of my clothing, the knife my uncle’s wife had sent with Doha, and I cut the rope that bound me to the child. Then I crawled down until I reached the water. I washed my son’s body in the Nile and dried him with the black shawl that was on my head. Then I wrapped him in my embrace and warmed him. I took out my breast and gave it to him to suckle on. The child drank milk mixed with my blood and his tears, and when he was full, he opened his eyes and looked at me. I, too, saw him through the tears that filled my eyes.
I stood up straight and walked ten paces, the cat at my heels, until I reached a gum arabic tree. I looked up at the sky and said, “Lord, protect him. I have left him in Your hands.” I put my child in the shade beneath the tree, and I looked before me at the Nile. It was like a sheet of pure glass. I put my hands to my eyes, wiped away my tears, then tore a strip of black off the hem of my dress and blindfolded myself with it. I stepped into the Nile. The cat was standing on the bank as though saying goodbye. Then I went in with my entire body, and I went deeper and deeper, until I reached the middle of the river. Suddenly, there was no solid ground beneath my legs, and my body began to sink. All the dreams I had had in my life came before me: many lines of torment and pain all written before me. But the Nile swallowed me into its bowels silently and turned my page out of its life. The sun was coming back from the ends of the earth to give birth to a new day here: a day I would not see. O Pain, count our wounds, for they are without end.
*
My aunt buried her face in her hands. She looked down at the ground, abstracted. She looked up until she met my eyes. Hoarsely, she asked, “Honest and true, boy: happy? Or sad?”
“I have not changed, Aunt. I have been sad for a long time. Since the first word of the story. My heart aches a lot. But you won’t believe me, nor is there a scrap of mercy in your heart, and all the time you keep asking me for impossible things. Honest and true, Aunt, tell me: How should my eyes be free of tears when my heart aches? How must I love, and lock it in my heart? Why is joy for women, and sorrow for men? You want the truth, Aunt? I am sad, in truth. I want to tell you all that I have locked in my heart. I shan’t be silent and listen or understand and classify things or arrange them in my head. I won’t keep my secrets inside me, either. People, as you told me, have their story written in their eyes, their grief in their eyes, their joys and confusions and weaknesses, their anger and pain and fear, are also in their eyes, so you can read my book in my eyes. O Pain, count our wounds, for they are without end.”
Sarah Enany is a literary translator who works between Arabic and English. She has had this affliction for at least 30 years; it is probably hereditary since her parents were both literary translators. Among the works she has perpetrated is The Girl With Braided Hair by Rasha Adly, which won the 2022 Banipal Prize for translation. She currently lives in Cairo, which her family infests, and can be reached at sarahenany@hotmail.com