I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops (24 page)

They were eaten up heart and soul with their love for Christ. This was true love, the like of which he had never found in any novel, translated or otherwise. Never before had he encountered such passion and devotion. Was this what they called sacrifice? The dwarf checked himself. Of course. They had sacrificed the world and their families for the sake of this love, or for the sake of competing for this love. Closing his eyes, he decided to respond to their love, to help them realize that Christ knew about them and the way they showed their love for him. Moreover, Christ had sent the dwarf as a messenger to them. Wasn’t that what the old nun had said? He would help those who were waiting their turn to love Christ by doing their embroidery with them, or by changing the linen in the church. He would snatch the washing out of the boiling water to save them from having to do it. He would have liked to hang it up to dry in the scorching sun, but he wasn’t tall enough to reach the washing line. He would light the coals and fan them until they were glowing embers and load them into the flat-iron. He would plant flowers and pick them for the garlands they wore on their heads, so that they didn’t have to use
artificial flowers. He would feed the hens with grain day and night until they were bursting with health and well-being and laid the choicest eggs in the country. He’d polish the nuns’ shoes until they could see their faces in them. He’d make their mud-brick beds for them and be close to their sheets—for Christ must smell that they were clean.

At this the dwarf halted his flow of enthusiasm and supressed the leap in his heart, as he did every time he heard the rustle of their bare feet on the coolness of the earth floor. He closed his eyes firmly as if this also closed his ears and steadied his heartbeat, which broke away from its usual rhythm at these unpredictable thoughts.

After a few months the dwarf found that he had become quite used to these expectant brides of Christ as they moved around him holding whispered conversations, sighing gently, smiling at him, and not concealing their bad moods in his presence. It was as if he had become one of them, and what was more he had pledged himself to the virgins, swearing that nothing would separate him from them but death. When he died he would put their love to the test. They would either return him to his family or put him in the burial chamber, where he had gone one day with the senior nun to help her sweep the floor. He wouldn’t have been able to see anything, but the old woman had lit a little candle and held it up to a casket on a high wooden shelf and raised the lid. He gasped in fright at the sight of a bony
frame. The ribs were plainly visible and some flesh still clung around the hands. He heard the old nun’s voice whispering, “You shouldn’t be frightened. You were sent to us by the Lord.”

And so it was. The dwarf only looked at the iron gates occasionally, when he heard his mother’s cough and knew that she still had not lost hope. At first this caused him pain, especially when he pictured her sitting on the stone where he had sat. He heard his brother calling him day after day, banging on the gates, urging him to come home. But the dwarf followed instructions, did not reply and turned back to his work. He was growing used to this obligatory link being severed, so that he could concentrate on what he wanted and not let the vibrations from the trivia of the outside world intrude and confuse him. However, when he pictured his mother and his brother taking turns to sit on the stone, he couldn’t help thinking of the hoopoe and wondering whether it came to them as it used to come to him, from the direction of the green trees and the canal, or from the barren land, looking for bread crumbs.

The car rolled
, and over before it sank to the ground like a slain bird. From a distance it could have been a mirage, a vivid spot of green created by the desert in expanses of land so vast that the eye was scarcely able to take them in.

There was another, larger splash of color on the sand, from which a young man emerged, hurrying in the direction of this green spot at high speed. These were major events in this silent land, where there was nothing but the sun burning
the sand tirelessly day after day, the intense shimmering brightness of mirages, the sudden gusts of wind and the night frosts.

The splash of color was made by a few tents pitched in the bare landscape of the desert, whose inhabitants, a team of hired workers roaming the sands in pursuit of creatures with unusual markings, lived a peaceful, humdrum existence, disturbed only by occasional bad dreams. These were usually the result of disappointments in their work, when the snakes and lizards escaped from the traps so painstakingly laid for them.

Jasim was the first to reach the green dot, which was still shuddering and clanking painfully. A camel lay some distance away, beating the sand in a terrifying flurry of movement like a cyclone. Its screams drowned out the sound of the liquid from the car pouring over the sand, and the faint groans of varying rhythm and pitch emerging from it.

Jasim might have stood there indefinitely, gazing in shock at the machine as if it were a species of lizard he had not seen before, but he suddenly noticed the groaning, and began trying to drag one of the passengers out through a window, his resolution hampered by the gentleness he exercised out of respect for the shattered glass, to no purpose because the window was too small to allow easy passage of
the man’s huge bulk. In the meantime one of his workmates arrived at a run and together they righted the car, restoring it more or less to its original position. When they had got the crumpled door open, they were brought up short by the sight of the woman in the rear passenger seat. She was moaning faintly and her clothes were rumpled and hitched up over her twisted body, exposing a large part of her stomach, while a thick plait of her hair fell around her face and over her arm, and her gold earrings were visible. Jasim glanced at his companion for a moment; then, with silent complicity, they disregarded what they had seen and devoted their energies to dragging out the driver, who appeared to be dead. They caught each other snatching a look at the woman, focusing on her bare stomach. They managed to free the child who must have been sitting next to her and had been flung against the door by the force of the collision so that fragments of his skull and brain were sticking to the side window.

Working steadily, they finally had the remaining passenger out on the burning sand in the full glare of the sun, which made the blood run more furiously and hastened their deaths. All around was calm, now that the camel had subsided and lay motionless, and the woman’s moaning could still be heard from inside the car, clearer than ever.

The two youths stood quite still looking at each other,
exchanging unspoken words, and only moved to avoid the liquid that began to flow more forcefully from underneath the car. They found themselves edging farther and farther away as the flow gathered momentum, until without warning Jasim suddenly rushed back toward the car. He leaned the upper half of his body into the car with determination, and reached out his arms to take hold of the woman, but once again he was transfixed by the sight of her naked belly and her brown flesh, and the light scattering of fine hairs around her navel. He had not seen a woman’s nakedness before; he hadn’t seen a woman at all without yards of material wrapped around her, covering her from her head to her black-hennaed feet, and revealing only her eyes behind a gauze opening in the cloth, like two insects caught in a fishing net. So he backed away from the car. Then, as if he felt a sudden pang in his heart, he struck one palm against the other, regretting his retreat and looking at his companion in confusion, tinged with disappointment and frustration. Silently, he begged him for support, so that he would have the courage to go back and free the woman from the car.

They stood briefly together without speaking or moving, but then the strong-smelling fluid took the decision out of their hands, igniting spontaneously and in a flash transforming the car into a mirage burning in its own dryness: it was a long time since it had been filled up with water. The
heat of the explosion drove the two youths away, but after a few moments they set about the task of dragging the three victims out of reach of the blazing wreck with great application, trying not to look or listen as the fire consumed the woman, although the feel of her stomach would stay with Jasim for a long time.

Hanan al-Shaykh was born in Lebanon in 1945. She was brought up in Beirut before going to Cairo to receive her education. Upon her return to Beirut, she pursued a successful career in journalism, working for the prestigious daily
Al-Nahar
, until moving first to the Arabian Gulf, then to London, where she now lives with her family.

Catherine Cobham teaches Arabic at St. Andrews University. Scotland, and has translated a number of contemporary Arab writers, including Yusuf Idris, Liana Badr, and Naguib Mahfouz.