The old white tiled floor in Aziza the Alexandrian’s ward looked sparkling clean even though it was faded through the wear and tear of time; Jamalat had just finished scrubbing it with a piece of sackcloth and water, mixed with a little liquid chlorine in the absence of any other disinfectants like carbolic acid which Aziza preferred because it gave a good shine and cleaned well. Unfortunately carbolic acid was not allowed because it came in dark bottles, instead of transparent plastic containers which couldn’t harm anyone in the violent incidents which broke out between the prisoners from time to time.
Aziza looked with pleasure at the damp, clean tiled floor, so cool at this hot time of the year, and her eye followed the thin, curved wainscot along the edge. She had just voluntarily given up her small iron bed to one of the political prisoners she came across from time to time. She could see no obvious reason why such people should be dumped there or why the Government should be on collision course with them. This political prisoner was extremely friendly to Aziza and one day she greeted her as she passed her in the corridor where Aziza was standing with Azima the giant. After the political prisoner had given her a broad, friendly smile Aziza felt encouraged to approach her to discover her story. She guessed she might be a communist or belong to the Muslim Brotherhood because they were the only kind of political prisoners Aziza had met during her long stay in prison.
She soon came to the conclusion that she must be a communist because she was not veiled and seemed rather lively and straightforward. The girl spoke to her in the same way that all the other communists Aziza had met in prison before had done; she never understood anything they said to her, nor the purpose of the mental and physical anguish that women like this girl brought upon themselves. Aziza noticed that almost all of them were educated and respectable. They had good jobs and lived in more pleasant circumstances than most; she observed the lavish visits they had every other day and the cigarettes which arrived for most of them in cartons of two hundred. Now she felt annoyed with herself because she no longer understood things as she had before; she was distracted and her mind was in turmoil.
Aziza sighed, she found it rather a strain to listen to the girl’s story which had nothing new in it as far as she was concerned. She had heard the same story from many others before and had concluded that such stories were good for nothing – useless – because, if the truth be told, these politically-minded people lived in another world and knew absolutely nothing about the poor they were always talking about. She looked over into the girl’s cell and noticed there was no bed in it – only a straw mattress lying on the floor. The political prisoner then asked her about her story and Aziza told her an abridged version; the girl gave her another smile and wished her well, presenting her with a whole packet of Marlboro cigarettes. Aziza was overwhelmed by her generosity and began to think of how she could reciprocate; after returning to her cell she decided to give her her iron bed since Aziza saw little difference between sleeping on a bed raised from the ground or on her mattress directly on the tiled floor, particularly as the summer heat was intense at that time. Aziza decided that she could accompany her on the golden chariot with winged horses at the moment of lift-off to heaven. Aziza actually carried out her first idea and asked Jamalat and Azima, the mourner, to carry the bed and place it in the political prisoner’s ward. However, her second idea was aborted by the Government’s decision to release the girl only a month after her imprisonment. Aziza bitterly regretted not having informed her about the heavenly ascent before she had received the order for her release. There was no doubt in her mind that the girl would have been so taken with the idea that she would not have left prison but would have joined the passengers on the chariot ascending to the beautiful celestial world, the like of which could never be found on earth.
However, after thinking about it a little, Aziza thanked God that the girl had left prison, for if she really had joined the chariot she would almost certainly have talked incessantly about politics and incited all the passengers to demonstrate against their contemptible conditions in prison. This would have enraged the government and, even if the chariot had taken off into the clouds, it could have aborted the ascent by sending one of its many planes to arrest the girl.
Aziza inspected her large room carefully, and after she was satisfied that her few possessions, just old clothes, her combs and hairpins, some plates and plastic cups, were in place and perfectly clean she looked gratefully at Jamalat who had made everything shipshape and said to her: “God preserve you, Jamalat. By God, my spirit has been lifted.”
Jamalat’s round face broke into a gentle smile which made it look like the smiling face printed on children’s sweet wrappers. She replied to Aziza saying: “Are you contented and happy then, love?”
Aziza cast her eye about the room once more with the kind of artificial disdain she usually displayed in the presence of those inferior to her – a legacy from her old life – then she was quiet for a little and said, “Get on and wash this plate and put it back in its place, then come and eat something to keep you going.”
Jamalat went out to wash the plate still covered with leftovers which she had left in the communal washroom at the end of the long corridor near the ward. Meanwhile Aziza began to prepare Jamalat some bread and a piece of white cheese which Azima, the mourner, had given her with a Cleopatra cigarette – the not-forexport kind, rich with wood shavings. She also put aside a guava, one of four which ‘Heroin Safiyya’ had given her when sharing out amongst her friends and those she liked, a whole crate presented by her two sons on their last visit. She had not kept them for herself because she was afraid they might go off after a few days. As Aziza prepared the snack for Jamalat she began to think about the circumstances of the girl’s life.
Jamalat returned and put the clean plate in the far corner of the room away from the bed and the clothes and then came to squat on the clean, swept floor next to Aziza. She placed the cheese on top of a flat loaf of bread and sank her teeth into it. Then as she chewed she said: “I want your opinion about something, Aunt Aziza”.
“Is it something good?” Aziza replied enquiringly. Her eyes bulged as she fixed her gaze on Jamalat’s angelic features because she thought Jamalat was going to draw her onto the subject of the golden winged chariot and her desire to join the ascent to heaven.
After she had finished the cheese, Jamalat pushed what was left of the bread into her mouth in one go. She shifted a piece of grit, which she came across in the last mouthful, to the front with her tongue and spat it out: “Do you know something … When I get out of here, God willing, after doing my time, I have been thinking about changing my job. Stealing has become more trouble than it’s worth with all the rushing hither and thither so I’ve decided to work like girls from good families; I’ve had enough of all this strain and stress.”
As she made this important statement Jamalat looked at Aziza wide-eyed and full of innocence. She had never confided her plan to anyone before but she trusted Aziza and felt at ease and secure with her despite all that was spread around the prison about her madness. For this reason she preferred to perform jobs for her rather than for the drug dealers who were excessively generous to those who waited on them and who used the considerable amounts of money they had to buy anything they wanted in prison, even bribing the warders. Although Jamalat sensed that Aziza was slightly mad because she sometimes looked at her in an unsettling way or smiled at her for no reason when they were chatting together, she still considered her a kind and sympathetic person who would always share anything she had. Jamalat had only to approach her about something for her to offer it to her, if it was within her power, and for this reason Jamalat ignored the rumours and warnings that Aziza might hit her or assault her if roused. Moreover Jamalat had found no one in the prison – a place where friendship between one prisoner and another was so vital – whom she would rather serve and be friends with than Aziza. They came to be like two sisters from the same womb, showing the same degree of sympathy and human understanding for each other. The ordeal of isolation and imprisonment behind bars created a bond between them which encouraged her to confide in Aziza her secret thoughts about what she intended to do if she managed to survive and get away from the place. Aziza was older and wiser and over time she had proved she was a good judge of character.
Aziza banged her head against the floor, thinking. The banging continued as Jamalat continued to put across her point of view clearly, although Aziza made no comment.
“Prostitution is easy and reliable and the sentences are light if you get caught by the police. If I stuck at it year after year I’d soon make a tidy sum of money after which my worries would be over. I would open a general hire shop which would earn enough for my daily sustenance, and that would be that.”
Aziza did not reply because she was now fully engaged in watching a huge Persian ant dragging a tiny piece of bread which had fallen on the floor when Jamalat was eating a little while ago. It made its way towards its hiding place, a crack by the old door of the cell which was so scuffed that the dark wood showed through the paintwork. Aziza followed the ant intently with her eyes, announcing, “It would be better if you approached it from the top of the bed”.
The ant responded by disappearing from sight into the crack. Jamalat, who had no idea what Aziza was on about, was busy tidying the fine strands of brown hair which had strayed onto her cheeks, and said, “You know … if they bring us some beef – I’m dying for a great fatty piece which I could boil and make a gravy out of vinegar and garlic – then you and I could sit and eat it together.”
Aziza looked up from the floor and asked Jamalat to go and make some tea. When she stood up Aziza looked over her body, which was on the plump side, and her smooth white legs. She began to mull over what Jamalat had just told her, which was completely new to Aziza despite the long period they had been close friends in prison and all the details she already had of the girl’s past and of why she had been imprisoned.
Aziza knew that Jamalat came from a family of gypsies whose skill as professional pickpockets and thieves had been passed down the generations. The men of the family practised their trade in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, particularly during the pilgrimage season when the crowds provided an excellent source of income. Jamalat and her sister, who had no mother, lived where Jamalat’s stealing took her – in the city of Tanta to be exact – especially during the festival of Saint Badawi when the crowds were at their height and everyone flocked to join in the festivities, providing ample opportunity for stealing.
However it was not stealing which finally led to Jamalat’s arrest but a matter involving her sister who was about three years younger than her. She was more beautiful than Jamalat but was mentally retarded. She had suffered brain damage during a difficult birth, after which her mother died. She had softer hair than her elder sister and sweet, honey-coloured eyes, which attracted the attention of a young man who made advances to her. He had noticed that the two sisters lived on their own in a furnished apartment, a situation not considered socially acceptable, because of the way Egyptian cinema focused on the reputation of the inhabitants of these flats as being generally immoral and because of their connection to the world of oil money which had caused an increase in rental transactions as well as the related shady dealings which offended the law and religion. The problem arose because this simple-minded sister with her buxom body was more attracted to dairy products and sweets than she was to the young man; she was oblivious to the fact she was being pursued and he was totally unaware that she was simple-minded. Jamalat, who was alert to this, was afraid that one day this man would take advantage of her sister and that she would be faced with the added burden of having to feed three mouths instead of two. Her sister was a cross she had to bear day and night; she always accompanied her if she went out and, if she left her alone, she had to make sure that the windows were firmly secured and the front door double locked from the outside to prevent the foolish girl from letting someone in. Despite all these precautions, when Jamalat went out she was always apprehensive that her sister might expose herself to danger in her absence – that she would fiddle with a sharp tool or set fire to the house unintentionally.
Jamalat tried hard to encourage her sister to fend for herself and coached her in elementary stealing and simple methods of picking pockets. But this only compounded the problem. One day, she hurled the corn cob she was eating at the chest of an old man who was passing by, demanding that he empty his pockets of any money and hand it over to her. But for the fact that the old man thought it was the prank of a harmless young girl her action might have created no end of problems.
Jamalat warned the young man, who worked as an assistant in a hairdresser’s shop on the ground floor of the block, that if he interfered with her sister she would give him such a beating that he would be no good to anyone. After begging him to keep away and to mind his own business, she was surprised one day to find the young man knocking on their door. When she opened up to insist that he should stop his foolish behaviour, which had reached the stage where he followed them to their front door, far from leaving and apologizing he pushed past her and forced his way inside. Before answering the door Jamalat had been ironing a red silk blouse, stolen from one of the most famous shops in the city, she unplugged the hot iron and hurled it at the young man. According to the doctors in the public hospital it had landed with full force on his head, causing severe concussion.
Aziza thought that Lula the hairdresser might have put Jamalat up to these new plans to become a prostitute, because Lula was a professional procuress who organized many networks of prostitutes, an activity which frequently landed her in prison. Amongst her victims were female university students, civil servants and middle class women. But Aziza pushed such thoughts from her mind because Jamalat loathed Lula and was always mocking her because she had found out that she preferred women to men. Everytime Lula had passed Jamalat standing in the prison courtyard she used to move up close to her without any good reason, and was eager to touch her in a peculiar way. In the beginning, Jamalat put this down to a display of friendship which made her happy because no one else showed her any sympathy or consideration. However, one day she went to wash in the prison bathroom; the water only trickled from the tap because about a month previously the stopcock had started leaking, so Jamalat asked Lula if she would fetch her a bucket of water. When she let her in to bring the water, Lula offered to massage her back with a loofah and soap. Once Lula started doing this it became clear to Jamalat that her real intention went beyond simply helping her to wash the parts of her body which were difficult to reach. Lula started breathing heavily as she praised the contours of Jamalat’s body, which really was beautiful, despite being slightly on the plump side. Jamalat repelled these advances, needing no further proof of their immoral and shameful nature, but this did not deter Lula from spreading details of the episode to everyone in the prison, especially those who loved this sort of gossip like the old hags in the ward for the weak and of course Umm Ragab who spied for the authorities. The spreading of this slander was certainly to Lula’s advantage, in that Saniya Matar, the most renowned drug dealer in the prison, sentenced to life for importing drugs by air from abroad, lapped up the news with the greatest glee and promptly included Lula in her list of favourites. However Jamalat continued to drip venom on Lula, poisoning the procuress’s life. Lula felt angry and impotent in the face of this assault, and if she was unable to respond it was not through good manners or a virtuous tongue – neither her tongue nor the rest of her had ever been virtuous – but because, despite all the abuse and harsh words, she had really fallen in love with the young girl to the point of being unable to sleep.
At this point Aziza could not fathom what lay behind Jamalat’s decision to change her way of life or what convinced her that it was the right thing to do because Aziza had not yet been introduced to Huda, the newest inmate of the scabies ward, who had arrived at the prison a week before. She was only sixteen years old, which made her the youngest woman in the whole prison, and she already had two babies. Despite her youth, it was she who had been able to convince Jamalat to pursue a new career which, Huda could testify from her own short but extensive experience of life, would be more lucrative.
Huda had landed in the gutter of depravity along a twisted path, which she never would have imagined possible. It had all started a few years back when she accompanied her mother to a police station for the first time, not because she was guilty of any crime but because her mother wanted to inform the police that one of her fourteen hens, which she had kept from the time they were chicks until they laid, had been killed. Huda’s mother had accused a neighbour of the crime. The neighbour lived in a shack next to hers in one of the city suburbs which, over a few years, had swelled to resemble several large country towns. During the dispute with the tyrannical neighbour her mother received a direct blow with a large brick that ruptured her eye. A visit to the Government hospital followed, the purpose of which one might have guessed, was to get the eye examined. But not a bit of it, the real purpose of her mother’s visit was to convince the extremely reluctant doctor on duty to issue a statement about the death of the assassinated hen, confirming that it had been killed by strangulation. She would then present this evidence to the police who could take the necessary steps against her neighbour.
The doctor failed to make Huda’s mother understand that it was not his job to write medical reports on hens and when he offered to write a report certifying the serious damage she had suffered to her ruptured eye, she walked out in the belief that he was simply the stooge of a government which never got to the bottom of any problem. So she made for the police station and, once inside the door, met a distinguished staff sergeant who was not the least interested in the mother’s lost eye, nor in the hen, the victim of this perfidious act, which was lying motionless, wrapped in part of the woman’s long black scarf. All he was concerned with was sizing up the white, tender-skinned body of the young girl who was standing, clinging onto her mother and anxiously following what was going on around her. He brought them a cold drink – a most unusual thing to happen in a police station – and the mother became convinced that revenge would be meted out to her criminal enemy. He then asked her details about her daughter and after barely quarter of an hour had offered to marry the self same young girl standing beside her.
This momentous surprise made the mother forget about the eye she had lost, the wretched hen and the cruel neighbour. She had never in her wildest dreams imagined that she would become linked in any way to someone connected to the Government, especially someone so senior. It did not take long to agree to his proposal to marry her daughter, and her eyes gazed with amazement at the coloured badges fixed on his lapel which proved he was a staff sergeant and not a junior policeman without ribbons. She believed that destiny had crossed her path to pluck her from her utterly miserable life to better things. The man was generous and had made a serious offer, promising her a bridal dower of thirty pounds and the same value in clothes. He would include all the small necessities for a bride with a gold bracelet from Jamal, the jeweller, whose speciality was gold-plated copper jewellery, carrying the official hallmark, a guarantee particularly prized by poor peasants who were seldom able to afford such things.
Two months later the staff sergeant married the girl who was not yet thirteen years old. He managed to get round the legal age required for a girl to marry by purchasing a birth certificate for two pounds from a private doctor who also specialized in illegal medical activities like abortion and repairing the ruptured hymen of girls about to get married. Despite his conviction that the girl was under age, the official authorized to perform marriages agreed to write the contract. He was statisfied that the birth certificate, albeit forged, would deter any suspicious colleagues from causing trouble.
Only a year had gone by when Huda gave birth to a beautiful boy by the very same staff sergeant. The child was almost her double and by the time another year had passed there was a baby sister suckling beside him. However, her mother had become a chronic drug addict and passed on the addiction to her second child who was fretful and never stopped crying. Her addiction went back to the early days of their marriage when there wasn’t a night when her husband returned without heroin or hashish which he usually obtained in raids on drug dealers or which the pushers in the quarter presented him with, to keep him sweet and to buy his silence. As time passed, the husband came home less and less and eventually abandoned his young family for another woman whom he met during his varied work. Huda had then to face life on her own, and to look for a means of supporting herself and her two children and, above all, of finding a way to meet the demands of a system accustomed to a daily intake of drugs. Necessity led her to reconsider her position and she took up the oldest and easiest profession in the world.
Jamalat was not in the scabies ward like Huda but because of their friendship she came to spend a major part of her time there. This was unlike most of the prisoners who avoided any contact with those who lived in that ward for fear of infection from the scabies brigade. Because of their poverty these sufferers were unable to buy even a piece of the cheapest soap to wash themselves or their clothes, and had to make do with the tiny piece issued to them by the prison authorities. The full ration of soap which they should have received was lost in the pockets of the contractors and petty prison officials so most of these young bodies became a rich pasture on which the microscopic bugs could graze and settle permanently. It was Huda’s zest for life, her good nature and her endless facility to crack jokes that attracted Jamalat to her as well as the dancing and singing sessions which they both joined in with the rest of the girls on the ward. Huda tried very hard, albeit unsuccessfully, to imitate the voice of Farid El-Atrash, whom she adored, but was still the unrivalled star of the concerts in the scabies ward, despite her youth. Everyone felt bound to obey her orders, particularly the rotas for sleeping places and cleaning tasks – although the latter were extremely limited due to the almost complete lack of cleaning materials. During the day Huda also saw to the collection of old bits of paper and rags from the prison courtyard which were burnt at night in an unsuccessful attempt to get rid of the mosquitoes. These mosquitoes vied with the awful scabie bugs in sucking the blood of the prisoners; the smoke rising from the fire was insufficient to deter the mosquitoes and merely caused chest complaints.
Aziza lit up a cigarette, and thought sadly: if Jamalat becomes one of those who sell their bodies to any man who can pay, how many men will taste the nectar of this tender body seated before me? Aziza thought of the old men, the tall men, the short men and those with huge paunches and teeth, discoloured and rotten through drug-taking, who might squeeze the last bloom of youth from Jamalat’s body and would completely destroy her spirit reducing her to a human rag, worn out from over-use. She asked herself why it was ordained that a beautiful young girl like her should have to put up with all this ugliness and why her life, which had hardly started, should take such a course which could only lead to a dead end. Why shouldn’t Jamalat find a man who was as good as her, to whom she could give herself body and soul and who would give her everything a man can give a woman? Her thoughts raced ahead, imagining what would happen if Jamalat were to do what she was thinking of. She would then undoubtedly become another Lula, an experienced procuress not content with selling her own body but also engaged in selling the bodies of others.
This line of thought not only made Aziza sad but extremely angry as well. She lifted her head and fixed her eyes on the iron bars of the window and let out a cry of protest directed towards an undefined and supreme force which she considered responsible for all that had happened and would happen in the future to this decent, lovely girl with her pure heart and childlike innocence. All the while she peered upwards at a chink of blue sky, cloaked by dark grey clouds, sadly saying: “Can you hear? Can you see? Things have gone too far to be ignored any longer.” Then she continued with a note of defiance in her voice:
“Very well, and on my mother’s soul, this girl will come up with us, God willing, and she will sit right next to me. The first step must be to give her a hot bath with fenugreek soap to guard against infection and to ensure she is beautiful and lovely for the journey.”
At that moment, Jamalat, who had been busy scratching the infection between her fingers, became aware that Aziza was talking. She turned to where she was standing in the corner of the room and poured the tea into two glasses on a tray; she had delayed pouring it out until it had turned a dark ruby-red colour. Then turning to Aziza she addressed her in a puzzled way, calling her by the special name she used when she was in a good mood:
“Did you say something, moonbeam?”