He mumbled indistinct words. He staggered, then reeled, bringing his hands to his forehead as he fell onto his knees.
The woman had loosened her grip and the gun slid from her hands, making a thud on the floor.
She looked away; she longed to be far away. She yearned to abandon her own body, to leave it to whomever came along, and to think about something else. For the first time she had performed, accomplished, completed an action, and now it was necessary to separate herself from it. Later, there would be time to dream about it. The others would see to that.
The man’s head seemed to become heavy. She bent toward the chest in which life was still struggling. Then, as if all the threads snapped at the same instant, Boutros collapsed against her legs.
. . .
The dead man’s head was not heavy.
The woman breathed more easily. She detached herself from her action; she did not concern herself with it any longer. In order to see the dead man’s head she had to support herself by clasping the arms of her chair while she leaned forward. And what would he then awaken in her? Perhaps nothing at all.
At this moment she thought that she might be able to stand up; her legs would obey her, she felt sure. But where could she go? It was too late; nothing ever begins over again. Buried in her armchair, right now she was farther away from this place than she would ever be able to walk. A weight had fallen from her chest, carrying with it the room itself and this very moment. This story was no longer her story.
Soon the house would be filled with the sounds of Rachida’s return. She would cross the threshold; one would be able to hear her climbing the stairs. In spite of her sixty years, Rachida climbed quickly. She often boasted about what strong legs she had, stating and restating her belief that one never grew old if one had nothing bad on one’s conscience.
Just as she did every evening, Rachida would test all the locks with her heavily veined hands. As suspicious as her brother, she would examine every single door. They had duplicates of all the keys. She would climb the stairs without even leaning on the shaky bannister. The door to the foyer was partly open, she would push against it.
Rachida was hesitating before the velvet draperies, the ones that she refused to replace. She insisted that velvet was “rich looking.” She said that in the white house opposite their house, in the landlord’s house, all the curtains were velvet, as well as the armchairs and the sofas.
One would be able to hear her moving into the kitchen before the roar of the lighted stove would muffle the sound of her steps. She would return, grumbling: “I really go to too much trouble! No one helps me. At my age, to have to wait on a woman who could be my daughter! I do it all for Boutros, may God bless him! What would become of him without me?”
As soon as Boutros arrived, she made a fuss over him. After dinner they would pull their chairs close together and they would whisper:
“We’re talking quietly so we won’t wear you out.”
“In your condition,” they said.
. . .
Soon, Rachida would open the velvet drapes and she would run across the room. She would throw open the shutters, allowing the light to pour into the room. She would lean over the balcony and she would begin to scream.
All of this no longer mattered. Bubbles bursting above the water, that was all.
. . .
Rachida screamed but no one heard her!
In the village the women were entirely taken up with their children. They were tending to the little ones and they had ears for no one else. They were giving orders in order to make themselves feel important before their husbands came in from the fields.
“Ahmed, come here. Your father will soon come back home.”
“Saïd, go and bring me water.”
“Tahia? Where is Tahia?”
“Amin, put down those pebbles. You know your father likes to find you here when he returns.”
“May your soul be damned, Tahia! Next year you’ll see! I’ll send you off to the fields!”
Rachida would have to go on waiting; soon her voice would be little more than a murmur. Night would fall, and she would still be here, clinging to the balustrade. Alone with Samya, who would stare at Rachida until she reduced her to a shadow.
On the way home from the cotton fields the men walked after one another in a file. They were tired and walked without talking. Suddenly, one of Rachida’s cries fell among them like a stone, and some of the men heard it. Hussein, who always walked at the head of the line, stopped and said, “Listen, someone’s calling for help.”
“Nothing but a fight among the women,” remarked Khaled, shrugging. His two wives were always yelling at each other.
Rachida’s voice rose higher, like the whine of a dog baying at the moon.
“Something’s going on,” insisted Hussein.
The others, too, began to listen; they forgot their weariness. One of them suggested: “Let’s go see what’s happened.”
“Yes, something’s happening,” repeated Hussein.
He began to run and the others followed him. Now they were all running. And when they saw other men far off in the fields, they called to them either to join them or to alert the people in the village.
As soon as the women heard cries for help, they too dropped everything. Nefissa, who was too old to go with the others but could read the future in the sand, repeated: “I knew it! I knew that this day had the feel of misfortune!”
With their children the women abandoned the village to Nefissa and the new-born babies. The men ran along the path; they were coming from every direction: from their small houses, from the river banks, from the rice fields, from the cemetery, from the garden, from the mosque.
Rachida saw them coming. Still leaning over the railing, she lost awareness that she was screaming.
Everyone seemed to arrive at the same time, packed into the narrow passage between the two houses. Their robes brushed against the walls. A dull anger that they could not yet explain thudded in their chests. Together, they seemed to form a single body, and one could hear them cry out as if with a single voice.
The room above seemed to lurch, tossed by this shout as a rowboat is tossed by a wild sea.
. . .
The past burst into a foam of images that grew and threatened to swallow up everything.
The outcry of the crowd reverberated against the walls, sounds sticking as tightly as the knots in a piece of string. Ammal, who had left her flock of sheep, was squeezed in among the others. She was small for her thirteen years. She was wearing the yellow dress that Samya had made for her. What was this uproar all about? Ammal was worried. What had happened to Sit Samya? She battled her way through the crowd; she wanted to be the first one to get to Sit Samya.
The old woman Om el Kher followed the crowd. Something was going on, something must have happened to Sit Samya. Troubled,
