the third floor the door to the foyer was standing open. Boutros knew that his sister would not be gone long. As he did every evening, he had placed his cane in the copper stand. The hat rack was empty. Boutros never took off his fez until he came to the table for the evening meal. A somber velvet tapestry separated the foyer from the room in which the cripple lay during the days, a room that also served as the dining room. The drapes were always closed; Samya could not bear the slightest ray of light.
Because of her devotion to her brother, Rachida never left the house before evening. The women of the village brought her eggs, milk, meat, and various vegetables. They would arrive, their arms full, their black robes brushing against the white walls, and they would laugh through the folds of their veils, now and then pulling them over their faces. Nostrils quivering slightly, they would laugh and their hesitant merriment would ring out as their eyes moved about the room as swiftly as mice scurrying into their corners. They might say: “There are new chairs in the house of the overseer.” Or, “This evening in the house of the Nazer they will eat stuffed eggplant.”
When the women left, Rachida would take up her work again; she preferred to do everything herself. Whenever anyone else was around, the cripple would manage silently to call attention to herself.
Friday was the day of prayers and on this day Boutros went neither to the fields nor to the office. The holiness of the day did not concern him as he was a Christian, but he observed the customs of his fellow Moslems. “I am a believer,” he would say whenever he talked of his own religion, and he was proud of the fact that his sister Rachida never missed mass on Sunday. “As for myself, work sometimes prevents me from going. But I believe that God will forgive me.”
All week long Rachida waited for Friday.
She would prepare the meal in two copper pots. Toward noon at Boutros’s call, she would come downstairs and together they would walk toward the banks of the canal. Rachida would place the pots one on top of the other, wrap them up in a white towel, knot the ends and pick them up. The pots were heavy, weighing down her shoulders, and she would pant, changing her burden from one hand to the other as she hurried to keep up with her brother. He always walked ahead of her, drawing circles in the air with his bamboo cane. Sometimes he would take off his fez and mop the sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief.
How well they suited one another, the two of them! They would have their meal together under the weeping willow trees, whose branches swooped down into the water, protecting you from the sun by enclosing you in a cradle of greenery.
Boutros would be unusually talkative. Rachida would nod in agreement. Then Rachida would talk and Boutros would say:
“You are an excellent woman!”
“You are a saint!”
“It is good that I brought you here.”
“What would have become of me?”
How well they suited one another, the two of them! The cripple never came outdoors with them. A wheelchair would have been a waste of money. What for? They were happier this way, without her.
But if she had known! If Rachida had known, if she had been able to foresee it! She would never have left the cripple’s side. She would have bought the chair with her own money. She would have wheeled Samya in front of herself always, without taking her eyes off her for a second. She would have pulled the wheelchair with her everywhere, into the kitchen, out onto the balcony. She would have asked for help to carry it up and down the stairs. She would have taken Samya for excursions into the road, to the cowshed, into the barn, along the river banks and over the smooth green paths. At the risk of exhaustion, she would have dragged the cripple with her everywhere, always!
On that particular day Rachida had hesitated before entering the room in which her sister-in-law lay. There were fava beans on the fire. Were they cooked yet? She opened the door to the kitchen. The burner was roaring with a strong blue flame. She raised the cover of the pot, plunged a fork into the beans. No, they were not quite done.
In the entrance hall everything was in place: the chair, the copper stand, the hat rack with its mirror, the threadbare velvet draperies. Samya would have liked a thin cotton hanging; she said that the touch of the velvet on her hands made her shiver!
Rachida shrugged. The eccentricities of a hysteric!
With two hands she seized the velvet drapes and pulled them apart. Then she thrust her head forward so that she could see better into the shadows.
. . .
The worn soles of her blue felt slippers made a dull thudding sound on the floor as she rushed to the shutters which she opened with a clatter, then to the cement balcony and finally to the iron balustrade.
“Help! Help! Come quickly! Quickly! Help!” Rachida grasped the railing and thrust her body forward as she screamed. Her skirt jerked up over her bony shins, exposing the crude darned spots in her cotton stockings. Her head trembled so violently that long pins slipped out of her bun of gray hair. From the wall opposite, her voice ricocheted back to her, distorted: “Help!”
It seemed as though the force of her cries might sweep her to the ground below. She did not see anything. She stood with her back to the room, her back turned toward that other woman. She looked straight ahead. She screamed:
“Someone has killed him! Someone has killed him! Come, come, all of you! Someone has killed the Nazer!”
Names came into her memory. She called them out in any order, without thinking:
“Hussein! Khaled! Abou Mansour! Help! Someone has killed my brother!”
She did not want to turn around. Above all, she did not want to turn around. Behind her was that woman, that Samya, and her stare was piercing Rachida’s back. Above all, she did not want to turn around until the others arrived. When would they come! When would they all come! When would they fill up the room! She called out, concentrating on the sound of her voice:
“Barsoum! Farid! Fatma, you Fatma! Where are you? Someone has killed the Nazer! My brother is dead! Hurry!”
Her voice, imprisoned in the alley which separated the two houses, ricocheted from one to the other, but it did not reach the fields nor the village, buried under a shroud of dust. Her voice crashed against the walls. It rose higher, seeking to overcome the distance and to penetrate the fields and the village.
“Come! Come! Everyone come!” cried the voice.
The railing of the balcony cut into Rachida’s palms. Her hair straggled down her neck. She did not want to turn around, to see Boutros’s fallen body, to meet the stare of that motionless woman.
She wanted to forget everything. Oh, if only they would come quickly! To forget everything, until they finally came!
To be nothing more than this cry:
“Help! Avenge us!”
. . .
Nearly hidden in her armchair, the woman said nothing.
The shutters were open; the light flowed everywhere. She was no longer used to it; she was blinking. A faded shawl concealed her legs.
Rachida cried in strange tones that clashed against one another. The woman’s pale hands rested on the arms of her chair. Her elbows were slightly raised as if she were getting ready
