Beyond Paradise

by Mansoura Ez Eldin

Excerpt translated by Paul Starkey

Salma Rashid went down the eight steps of their house like a raging tiger, followed by a servant staggering under the weight of the huge wooden trunk he was carrying. She stopped in a bare area in the rear courtyard of the house, which had lost most of its charm, and waved her hand. The servant put his load down on the ground, and wiped the sweat and grime from his face. She seemed to be unconcerned about the scorching heat of the August noontide, and paid no attention to the black snake that poked its head out from the pile of straw nearby, before disappearing inside it once again, nor to the fat grey rat that quickly scampered from the site that Salma now occupied. Nearby, a quarrelsome gerbil disappeared between the leaves of a vine whose branches hung proudly from the orange-painted trellis, whose colour had faded over time.

She was like someone driven by a power within her, stirring her anger for an unknown purpose. She opened the trunk with difficulty, took out the papers inside it, looked at them for a short time then put them back. She poured a little kerosene over the trunk and without a moment’s hesitation set it alight.

With her frizzed hair tied back, her steely gaze, and her lips pursed in deadly anger, she looked as though she were performing some obscure pagan rite, especially as she had begun to move her hands closer to the fire – so close that anyone seeing her might think that she was about to grill them. Soraya, who was secretly watching her from behind the window, did not understand what on earth her daughter was doing, but she seemed happy that she had finally emerged from the room where she had shut herself up ever since coming back home.

As the fire began to singe her, Salma quickly withdrew her hands, and sat down on the enormous trunk of the willow tree that Rashid had cut down a few years ago. Its trunk had remained there, like an oddly shaped seat, like a message to unknown visitors of the existence of a tree here one day in the past, and a life crammed with incidents and small details that had disappeared, never to return.

She had watched the trunk being eaten away as if her life depended on its death and decay. In front of her, Rashid, Samih, Jabir, Rahma, Soraya, Jamila, Hisham and Lola were being eaten away and consumed by fire. She herself would burn with them, to begin anew with a youthful spirit and less painful memories.

The thick black snake emerged again from the pile of straw and headed for a crack under the wall opposite, leaving a cylindrical trail etched in the soft soil. Salma didn’t see it this time either, and even if she had seen it, she probably wouldn’t have lifted a finger, so absorbed was she in watching the flames and the thick smoke rising from them.

After a little she got up sluggishly, shook some imagined dirt from her clothes, and walked slowly and distractedly around the garden before turning back to the front steps of the house and hurried up them.

Ever since her childhood, she had believed the steps had to be taken at a run, and despite being two years into her thirties she still unconsciously retained this belief.

She pulled back a bamboo chair and sat down beside her aunt Nazla, who was studiously reciting the Qur’an in a quiet voice. She looked around at the wide veranda – in a corner of the roof a spider had woven its web. She took a deep breath and sighed. This was the first time she had left her room even though she had been at home for a month.

Her eyes were more sunken than usual, and crisscrossed by several tiny capillaries; she was lost in thought in a different place, somewhere older and more lively. In the middle of this place was a young girl, crying, with the eyes of a startled cow.

* * *

Salma went back to her father’s house, driven on by a dream.

Her dream was only a bit like her. It was violent, but its violence wasn’t of the hidden sort that only reveals itself in impatience, extreme boredom and unjustified anger. On the contrary, this was real violence embellished with murder, blood, and burial rites.

She was overcome by a frightening feeling of guilt. She was living through what criminals suffer when their lives have moved on to the point when they feel they are cursed forever and when there is absolutely no hope of wiping away that curse. The feeling that sometimes drives them to the point of wanting to die, and to be reborn with an innocent, unsullied spirit.

She was convinced that she had killed someone, buried him with her bare hands, and got away with it. She was standing cold-bloodedly watching his blood ooze out, then congeal. She dismembered his corpse, then gathered the parts together, threw them in the earth and buried them, levelling the ground with her feet. Then she sat down on the damp soil without noticing that her elegant clothes were dirty.

“It’s Jamila I’ve killed,” she said to herself.

As if she were summoning back a scene from the distant past, the events of the dream came back to her, and she was overcome by a deep feeling of guilt. It wasn’t the feeling of a criminal whose deed has been exposed, and who is now subjected to looks of condemnation and contempt from other people because of his hideous crime. Such looks may give him the power and courage to challenge the others, to spit indifferently in their faces in order to conceal from them the waves of repentance he is beginning to feel. But for her, rather, it was the feeling of a killer who has skillfully committed a hideous crime without anyone knowing about it ­– of a man who thought himself so strong that he would never feel a twinge of conscience, but then his strength failed him and his subconscious turned into his bitter enemy.

She felt that she had ruined her whole life by that crime of murder, and despite the fact that no one had seen her, she was thinking of a way to make amends and wash her hands of the blood.

At a certain moment she became detached from her dream. She emerged from it and stood contemplating it, scared by her sense that she was a murderer who had hidden her crime for decades, and that now her strength had deserted her she had to confess to it.

The moment of detachment from her dream was usually a crossing point to the land of reality. A few seconds later she would wake up, though she could not completely throw off the effect of her dreams. The details of her real life would remain confused in her mind for some time, her dreams mingled with reality, and her nightmares with her inner feelings.

Eyes closed, she remained for a time sifting through the events of her life. She could not discover any crime worth mentioning, and thanked God that her bitter feelings of guilt would not have a basis in real life, even though she did not stop feeling intense pressure and confusion. Several times her dreams had taken control of her real life, making her detached from it, and then she was so immersed in the madness and confusions of the dream that that fantasy and reality became completely intermingled.

She was deluding herself if she imagined she could escape from this feeling of guilt. It was true that it was considerably less oppressive than in the dream. But she could not get rid of it completely; it stayed clinging to her, and she tried to find some explanation for it.

She thought that the point of this dream lay in the secret nature of the crime she had committed; no one knew about it, and so she had received no punishment for it. Secrecy, then, was the key to it all. What was the secret she was harbouring, do you suppose, the secret that pursued her in her dreams? She wondered about this without arriving at a satisfying answer.

The next night she had another dream, which was like an extension of her first one. In this dream, the details appeared more clearly and were more disturbing.

With Jamila’s body lying peacefully on the bed that she had with difficulty moved her on to, Salma straightened her clothing in front of the bathroom mirror. She put on fresh lipstick and painted a long line of kohl on her upper eyelids. The rosy colour of her cheeks made her forget to add any other make-up.

Jamila’s hoarse, rattling voice as she uttered her last words almost made her stop, but Salma had already reached the point of no return, so she continued her powerful thrusts into her chest. Jamila’s bright red blood gushed out warm, and Salma began to tremble, her eyes fixed on the face from which the life was draining forever. She thought it would be stupid to bother cleaning things up. She looked at the pink sleeveless jacket and short black skirt she was wearing to check they were clean. Fortunately the jacket had not been touched by blood, although her left arm had a long red smudge on it; it looked just like a red gladiolus, with a long stem and some four blooms pressed together one above the other. She was pleased by this comparison and gave a laugh, the echoes of which resounded in the locked flat. She had forgotten the person sleeping inside, for nothing about her showed any sign of life.

She sat on the sofa and put her large black bag on the floor between her feet. She took out her pack of cigarettes and started smoking calmly. She felt she had finally detached herself from her former life with all its clamour and frustrations. She was no longer the young woman she had been a few days ago, nor the girl she had been in the past. She had no feeling of regret; on the contrary, she felt a secret pleasure that stunned her, even though she did not attempt to deny it. A captivating feeling that she had not previously experienced had her in its grip.

Completely numbed, she started to smoke another cigarette. When she had finished it she picked up her bag and went into the bedroom where the body of her childhood friend was lying. She seemed to be taller than she really had been. She looked at her still, blue face but didn’t dare touch it. She was struck by the resemblance between it and her own face.

She went back to the bathroom, turned on the tap and washed her arm more than ten times. This time she noticed in the mirror the blue rings around her eyes. She also, for a moment, imagined she saw her father’s face in the mirror, but when she looked again more carefully his face had completely disappeared.

She left the flat quietly and shut the door behind her. The staircase was quite dark, and she took longer than usual to reach the almost deserted street. She walked along slowly. She could find nothing to think about, so she occupied herself with counting her footsteps, but whenever she reached the tenth step she lost count and had to start counting again. When she tired of this game she made for a nearby cafe and sat down in an out-of-the-way corner. The effort she had expended had exhausted her as well as creasing her clothes, giving her an overwhelming feeling of being dirty, which she tried to ignore as far as possible. She lit a fresh cigarette and took a sip from the cup of coffee the waiter put in front of her. The waiter quickly retired, and she drank the coffee with pleasure, then turned the cup upside down on the saucer. Immediately she held it up to see what the dark pattern inside it most resembled. Jamila’s face was in front of her, with all the pallor and terror that had gripped it in her final moments. She couldn’t control the shaking that suddenly took hold of her. Jamila’s face would be imprinted on her mind, clinging to her as she had clung to the knife, whose stabs had brought them closer together than ever before.

She remembered her fondly as she had tried to grab at anything, as great volumes of her blood gushed out. She wished she had been able to freeze that moment for ever, for she had never been as close to anyone as she had been to Jamila at that moment. She was so close to her that she dreamed of eternity, an eternity that Jamila had deprived her of.

She looked at her arm. The bloody gladiolus flower was once again etched on it. She tried to rub it off, but it would not disappear, spreading itself out like a lazy wild animal. She ran out of the cafe. She ran a long way without noticing how far, and when she felt tired she stopped and leaned against a lamp post in a crowded street. The flower was still spreading, and the eyes of a woman just like her were fixed on it. She walked on with sluggish steps, repeating: one, two, three . . .

She thought that she ought to have a final look at Jamila. She wondered how she had managed to leave her behind so quickly. She started to feel like someone who had been stripped of her name and her identity, or at least of a large part of it. The name “Salma Rashid” no longer meant the same to her as it had a few moments ago. It had become distant from her, and she had become equally distant from it, with neither of the names signifying the other any longer.

As for Jamila, her presence seemed as though it would redouble itself as a result of her absence; as though it would take hold of her and distance her from herself. Jamila Sabir was the curse that would inhabit her forever, her alter ego that had detached itself from her and severed its relationship with her without a second’s hesitation!

Salma woke up from her sleep feeling extremely annoyed. This time she felt that what she had seen had not been a dream, but rather a reality she had experienced, and which had left a bloodstained mark on her soul. Usually her dreams were just unconnected fragments, lacking any logical sequence of this sort.

She stayed in her bed for some time wondering why Jamila had suddenly been drawn into her life again, even if only through dreams. She left her bed and went barefoot into the bathroom, washed her face, then went to the kitchen and made a cup of Nescafé, which she took with her to the study of her small flat.

She sat in front of the computer that she had forgotten to shut down before she slept. There were no emails for her. As usual, Zia had not answered her numerous emails to him. She shut down the computer, and took a light breakfast. She got her clothes bag ready, and put the sheets of the “novel” she was writing into her handbag. Then she left for her father’s house in the village, the house that had been deserted ever since her father’s death, except for her mother and her ageing aunt and occasionally her sister Hiyam, who stayed with them from time to time.

About a month later, Salma was racing down the eight steps of their house like a raging tiger, followed by the servant with the enormous wooden trunk. She stood in the empty part of the rear courtyard of the house, unconcerned by the blazing heat. She took no notice either of the black snake slithering quietly from the pile of straw to the hole at the bottom of the wall.

Her eyes were more sunken than usual and crisscrossed with several capillaries. Her mind was elsewhere, wandering in an ancient place, in the middle of which was a young girl with the eyes of a startled cow.

Outside, the peach trees were in blossom, children were racing each other to buy halva, and peasant women were sitting in front of their doorsteps chattering with each other.  The women of the house had gone to visit the graves early in the morning and had come back with a young girl. Hikmat had found her crying on the way there. They brought her back while the men and children took their breakfast at a low, round table on the house’s wide veranda, accompanied by the servant Sabir, his wife Bushra, and his daughter Jamila.

The girl stood crying in the middle of the veranda. She was wearing a short, green-coloured georgette chiffon frock. Her short, reddish brown, hair was cropped like a boy’s, and her eyes were as wide as those of a calf.

She was about the same age as Jamila and Salma. The two young girls looked at her with a curiosity mingled with envy. This made the girl launch into another round of crying, even more noisily than before, as if she felt that her existence had become threatened by these inquisitive eyes staring at her.

Soraya went up to her and patted her gently on the shoulder as she wiped away her tears, then drew her aside to sit on the Ottoman couch, which was covered in a coarse white cotton cloth. She asked her name, and the girl replied in a trembling voice: “Samah!” Between her tears, she added: “Samah Ahmad ‘Abd al-Hadi.”

El-Ain Publishing, Cairo, 2009