She raised her eyes to the horizon. Expanses of black stretched in front of her like an endless desert. The sand was moving, black in colour, and the wind was very dry. The surface of her tongue was cracked and her eyes were searching in the darkness for a drop of water. She noticed something moving, a small snake resembling a chameleon. Its eyes sparkled as it crawled along in its black skin. Its movements were graceful and its steps light and joyful as if it was rejoicing in its ability to change colour.
Her hold on the strap of her bag relaxed. Perhaps standing firm was not what was required. She abandoned herself to the wind, an attitude that her body was not used to at first. It appeared to be heavy. Then it became lighter. She closed her eyes in something resembling surrender. A new sensation began to flow into her, one of embarrassment. It was hot. At every step, black dust stuck to her shoes. She stopped for a moment. She knocked her heals against one another. She undid her plaits from around her head. She shook them out. She knocked one against another. Black particles flew around her, sticking to her nose and her forehead as if attracted by the smell of sweat.
She squatted without letting her bottom touch the ground. She did not want to dirty her cloak. She opened the bag and took out the chisel. She struck the ground a number of times, but the smell was unbearable. She put a handkerchief over her nose. Her neck was bent downwards. The earth stretched in front of her, and the darkness was becoming thicker. She was walking down the slope. Anybody who saw her would not have thought that she was walking. Her hand bumped into a mud wall. It resembled the walls of the village houses. She heard voices inside. She was standing, resting her hand on the wall. Her other hand held onto the chisel, and she was panting.
A door opened in the wall. It made a noise like the squeaking of a water wheel, rusty metal hinges or the creaking of old wood. A young woman appeared in a black abaya, carrying on her head a massive earthenware jar with a bloated stomach. The skin on her hands was cracked. Her feet were large and shod in leather shoes. The colour of her heels appeared to be black. Her head was wrapped in a black scarf tied in a knot above her forehead. The earthenware jar on her head was tilted, filled up to the brim, on the verge of toppling but not actually doing so. She twisted and turned her head without holding the jar with her hand, but not a drop of water escaped from it.
The woman was gazing at the chisel in her hand. She had never in her life seen a woman carrying a sharp instrument. She took a step back.
‘It’s only a chisel.’
‘What’s that, sister?’
‘I dig up the ground with it and search for goddesses.’
‘What?’
‘The goddess Sekhmet for instance.’
‘Sekhmet!?’
The woman was overcome with perturbation. Her body began to shake. But the jar remained fixed in its place, sitting composedly on her head.
‘Give me a little water please . . .’
‘What?’
‘Water . . . water . . .’ she repeated, beginning to scream. The woman stood staring at her through the slits, wide-eyed, as if she was watching a sheep bleat. At that moment there was another gust of wind, which almost tore her from the ground. The woman stood shaking her head, with the jar sitting firmly on it.
‘Who are you?’
She saw doubt in the woman’s eyes. She took her identity card out of her bag: name, sex, eye colour; profession: researcher in the archaeology department; of spotless reputation, married, no children. Her confidential files were unsullied. Her insurance premiums and taxes had all been paid. She had no debts and no police record. And until now no judgements had been issued against her.
The woman gazed at the identity card as if she did not know how to read. She considered her photograph, which was fastened with a pin.
‘Why don’t you veil your face? Have you no shame?’
She returned the identity card to her and then turned away. She walked slowly away down the track. She sucked with her lips and clicked her leather shoes. Her black heels kicked the dust into the air. On her back was a protrusion resembling the hump of a camel. Around her had gathered other women with jars on their heads. They all put their heads together. Whispered mutterings went round the group. One of them jumped up. From afar it appeared to be the diminutive one. A moment later she returned surrounded by a number of men. They were wearing baggy jallabas.3 On their heads were white headcloths.
The voices of the women remained a low hum, no more than a whisper. The men’s voices rose. They were all speaking at the same time, moving their arms in the air, beating the ground with their feet. A thick cloud of dust arose. Then the voices all suddenly stopped and silence fell. All that could be heard was the barking of a dog a long way off. She turned to go on her way. She quickened her pace. However, the voices followed her. A man with a black keffiyeh4 round his neck ordered her to stop. On his face were black spots like freckles.
‘You, woman!’
The word ‘woman’ pierced her ears like a sliver of glass. The muscles of her face stiffened. What gave a man the right to order her to stop by the side of the bridle path and then pour invective upon her? She turned her back on him and continued on her way. He followed her, beating the ground with his feet. His voice never stopped repeating that ugly word.
He stretched out his long arm like a wooden staff and seized her arm. He put his mouth to her ear and cried, ‘Woman!’ A pungent smell erupted from his mouth and a stream of black saliva escaped from the side of it. ‘Who are you?’
‘I am a respectable researcher and . . .”
‘Where are you from?’
She turned round and signalled with her head to the track from which she had come. It looked like a long dark subterranean vault, blotted out by black waters from the flood. She shut her eyes and then opened them.
‘I went on leave and . . .”
‘We’ve never heard of such a thing.’
‘Can I go back?’
‘There is no way of going back at this time.’
‘Can I rent a room until the morning?’
‘Are you alone?’
The man shook his head a number of times. ‘It’s impossible.’
He walked away from her, beating the ground with his feet.
She opened the bag and took out the map. Had she mistaken the place? She crouched down on the ground. To anyone watching her from afar she looked like someone about to sleep. However, she was deep in thought, trying to determine where she was. She came across a spot, which she marked with a pencil. She took hold of the chisel and began to dig.
Her head hung down as she dug, as if she was worn out. Perhaps it was the right place; perhaps a goddess was buried here. However, the darkness was total, and black specks danced in front of her eyes. She cleared away the dirt and noticed something like an ox’s horn. Before she could stretch out her arm she heard voices behind her. A line of men wearing jallabas were looking down at her. Their heads were wrapped in white headgear. Behind them was a line of women in their black abayas. One of them exposed her bare breast from under her abaya, and began to press on the black teat between her fingers until a thin white stream emerged from the opening. Then she took a little child from under her abaya. It took hold of the teat between its little jaws and began to suckle audibly.
The voices of the men became as faint as the voices of the women. They squatted on the ground forming a little circle. In the middle of a large stone sat their chief. On his little finger glittered a ring and above his head was a picture of His Majesty. The picture was surrounded by coloured lamps and a loudspeaker like a funnel.
‘On the occasion of His Majesty’s birthday we have been commanded to spend lavishly.’
The voice was the voice of His Majesty. His lips moved in the picture. They rubbed their eyes with their fingers. The corners of their eyelids were wrinkled and bloodshot. They exchanged glances, and repeated with one voice, ‘Able to do all things’. Then silence fell. They all rubbed their eyes, and considered the little black
specks sticking to their fingertips. They wiped them off with their jallabas and then rubbed their eyes again.
The voice of His Majesty mumbled over the loudspeaker. His words were indistinct, spoken in a strange accent, and nobody understood what he was saying. Their leader shook his head as a sign of pleasure and they all shook their heads. Then his head stopped shaking and their heads stopped shaking too. He jumped up from his seat, and they all jumped up too. He disappeared into the darkness of the night, and the men all disappeared behind him, and behind them went the women.
All that remained was the picture of His Majesty, hung in the sky without columns, and above it the trumpet. One man was sweeping the ground. He approached her slowly. He was the man with the freckles and the black keffiyeh. He blew his nose loudly.
‘This place must be cleared.’
‘And where shall I sleep?’
‘Come with me.’
He led her to the track going downhill. He went a pace or two ahead of her. Whenever she speeded up to walk near him, he would let his eyes rest on her, and she would slow down so that she was once more behind him. He went down the incline with his torso leaning forward, scratching his back with his hand.
She followed him with the strap of the bag over her shoulder, holding on to it with her fingers as if it would protect her from falling. In her other hand was the chisel, vibrating in unison with her body, but in the darkness appearing as if it was vibrating by itself.
The track went downhill and the soil became damper. The pungent smell increased. Her legs sank in up to her knees. The man gathered up his jallaba and tied it round his waist. Then he jumped into a boat. She jumped in behind him and the boat rocked. She would have fallen if she had not regained her balance with a movement of her arm.
The scene appeared natural to her, apart from the pungent smell and the flying black particles that penetrated her nose and ears and stuck to the corners of her eyelids. Darkness piled up in front of her eyes like hills, and the silence weighed down on her, relieved only by the sound of the oar striking the endless black sea.
The man began to rub his eyes as he sang,
O giver of life,
O taker of the spirit,
Mercifully spare us from the flood,
O deliverer from all anxieties.
As he sang, his eyes gazed towards the horizon. He rubbed the corner of his eye with his fingertip then looked closely at his finger and considered it for a long time before wiping it on his jallaba. Then he began to rub his back, under his armpit and between his thighs. The sound of his song floated sadly in the night, apart from the occasional moments when his voice quickened with sudden pleasure.
He stopped the boat at a mass of darkness resembling a wall. He leant forward in the direction of the darkness. He cleared his throat loudly to announce his arrival. All that could be heard was the barking of the dog. As he rapped on the door, he cried out, ‘Open up, brother.’
From behind the door another man could be heard clearing his throat. From the depths of the darkness, the door opened. A smell gushed out which hurt the membrane of her nose. A small flame appeared, trembling in a large hairy hand, and a rattling voice emerged from a throat, ‘Come in, woman.’
The word no longer pained her. A greater pain was in her ears. The tiny particles were building up inside both ears. They were becoming hard like little bits of gravel that rubbed on the membrane or the nerve.
His voice rose slightly, ‘Come in, woman.’
She was standing in her place without any part of her moving apart from her neck, which was turned upwards towards heaven, seeking air. Over her shoulder she pulled on the strap as if pulling her memory out of the darkness. How had she come here?
His voice rose even more, ‘Can’t you hear what is being said to you?’
She moved her feet and entered. She passed over a low threshold with a familiar shape. However, the house rocked under her feet as if it were a boat. The door closed behind her and she turned round. The man with the black freckles was not there. She heard the sound of the oars moving away. The man burst into staccato coughs then blew his nose loudly. She withdrew a step. In her anxiety it appeared as if she was returning to her childhood and she let out a cry. The light was so faint that she could scarcely see anything. She rubbed her eye with her fingertip. The room was bare of furniture and there was a chair nailed to the ground. Doubt overcame her. Had she never left her place?
‘Take off your clothes.’
His voice was no longer strange to her ears. The wind was rattling the window. Threads of black liquid were pushing their way in under the door. Black drops like rain were falling from the ceiling.
In point of fact, there was no window. It was simply planks of wood. And the floor was not a floor but rather planks of wood creaking under her feet like sick cats. A dampness like sweat crept out of the planks, sticking to the heels of her shoes, or the soles of her feet if she took off her shoes.
‘The smell is unbearable!’
She put a handkerchief over her nose and closed her eyes. His voice was rattling and distant as if coming from the other world. All that she could see of him were his feet and his knees inside his nightshirt. His upper half was hidden behind the newspaper. Black lead-print letters, line after line, poured out in tiny horizontal lines:
Researchers wanted in the Archaeology Department.
* * *
She typed out the request on the typewriter. She filled in the boxes for name, age and religion. In the box marked sex, she typed ‘female’. The head of department looked at her wide-eyed, ‘This department only accepts males. The work we do, I mean digging up the ground, is not suitable.’
‘My aunt used to dig up the ground, and my mother also used to dig up the ground, and sow and . . .’
‘Digs are something else . . . I mean searching for gods in the bowels of the earth.’
‘The gods are in heaven, are they not?’
‘But there are other gods. Haven’t you read anything about archaeology?’
She noticed something crawling under her foot. A long soft finger, like the tale of a snake. It was twisting and turning and digging a tunnel for itself after coming down from the roof. There was also a trickle of black liquid. Round it gathered hordes of ants, geckos, lizards, and cockroaches looking like scarabs with wings, which beat with something resembling joy.
She heard his voice from behind the newspaper. He was speaking to himself or reading a headline in an audible voice. Some movement crept into that room which was plunged in such darkness. Those little wings shed some joy as they hovered around the lamp. She stretched her legs over the low seat. Her feet were swollen from all the walking she had done, and the skin, covered in a layer of black grime, was peeling. Her bag was over her shoulder, dangling from the strap. The chisel was inside the bag, of course. Her eyes gazed around her, exploring the place. On top of the black wall she saw it again. A black lizard or a chameleon. It gazed at her with little eyes. A friendship was growing up between them.
The man cleared his throat loudly. The lizard hid in the crack. She did not know how he had seen it from behind the newspaper. His top half was hidden completely. Only his feet and his knees were visible through his nightshirt. Perhaps they were feelers that were apprehensive of any friendship that might spring up between her and another being.
‘Get the dinner ready,’ said he in the tone of someone who had hired a woman to cook for him. There was no space for that in the form she had typed on the typewriter. In the space marked work, she had already written ‘Researcher into goddesses’. ‘I’m hungry!’ he cried again in a loud voice.
In the kitchen the window was blocked. Here too, wooden boards had been nailed in, and bits of newspaper had been stuck in the cracks and piled up behind the door to prevent the trickle from entering under the door. The water tap was also blocked with newspaper.
As she was standing in front of the sink, she sensed the man behind her. She felt his breath on the back of he
r neck. She did not know how to light the match, so he gave her something like a revolver. She pressed on it with her thumb; it cracked, and a spark flew out. She laughed like a child.
Little things used to make her laugh. The darkness dispersed and a light shone on the horizon. She saw him bend his head upwards with pride. She followed his glance to the ceiling with her eyes. The black trickle was continuing to advance.
‘What’s that?’
‘Don’t you know what it is?’
‘No.’
‘It’s the oil.’
‘Does the oil seep through the ceiling?’
‘Of course, when the level rises in the ground or it pours down from the sky.’
‘Does the sky rain it down as well?’
‘The sky gives what it wants boundlessly.’
When she was in school as a child, she had learnt that oil is only found in the bowels of the earth. Over millions of years, it had been generated from dead bodies that disintegrated because of the heat, and little organisms called bacteria, and particles of soil and sand, and mineral dust. All that disintegrated into minute particles that absorbed water, and was stored in sponge-like layers, into which ran sand and little fragments of limestone. It was caught among the little particles and stored in cracks between two insulating layers, one that prevented it seeping upwards and the other a layer of water in the depths of the earth on which it floated, and which prevented it seeping lower. Like a prey for which all exits are closed, preventing it from emerging to the surface of the earth. Unless of course it should be shaken by an earthquake, a volcano or a bomb dropped in war.
She pursed her lips in silence. His neck was still craned upwards addressing the sky as if it was a goddess. She raised her head and he caught it from behind. He was standing behind her, rubbing against her without shame. She cringed inside her body in anguish. There was no box in the work contract for such things. Her cringing filled his soul with confidence, and he clung to her more. His breathing brushed her neck from behind. His arm stretched out and encircled her chest. Then his hand came to rest on her left breast. She saw his black nails from which emanated the smell of oil.