The narrow road led to a large enclosure, abandoned at this time of day, where the fellahin threshed the corn. She often lingered here for a breath of air before the evening meal. But not this evening. A calf had been born during the night. She would go to the cow shed to admire him.
She needed new slippers, new stockings as well. With their robes down to their ankles and their bare feet, the fellahin had nothing to worry about. But she couldn’t go about as they did; she had to maintain her rank by keeping her distance. Rachida was careful about this. Unlike her sister-in-law, that Samya, who had no pride. Before she became paralyzed, Samya had wanted to pass her time in only one way, wandering about the village, mingling with just anyone. Samya claimed that she was happy doing this. Boutros had reprimanded her many times.
It was the close of a day like all other days. Rachida walked toward the cow shed. Around her head she wore a kerchief edged with small red plush balls.
It was the close of a day like all other days, except that the sun was a little less intense than usual. There was the bleating of a sheep, the barking of a dog, the fluttering of pigeons’ wings.
The end of an afternoon like other afternoons. Rachida could foresee nothing.
She will tell everything, Rachida promises herself. She will tell everything. People have evil thoughts sometimes. She will know how to silence venomous tongues. She will tell everything; she has nothing to hide.
This is the way it was. She was walking down the road. She was going to the cowshed to visit the baby calf. Boutros, her brother, had greeted her as was his habit before entering the house and climbing the stairs. She had listened to his footsteps until he had passed through the door that opened onto the foyer of their three rooms. Everything as usual. After that she had heard nothing at all.
The shed was not far off. A shaky structure held up by half-rotted wooden boards with sackcloth partitions tacked into the boards to separate the animals from one another in makeshift stalls.
As Rachida approached, Zeinab came out carrying a child on one shoulder and a bucket of milk in her free hand. She was too busy to notice Rachida. But everyone on the farm knew that Rachida took a walk at the same hour every evening.
Who would even dream of reproaching her? The atmosphere of their three rooms was so confined; she needed to get away for a breath of air. She was not a demanding woman. Ever since she had come here two years earlier, she had not even gone as far away as the town. Rachida did not need entertainment; she was utterly devoted to her brother. But taking the air was different; it was a matter of health. One invalid in the house was enough!
The cowshed was dark, but Rachida knew every corner and she found the new calf at once. Frail legs, silky brown hair, a huge soft tongue with which he kept licking his nose. Repeatedly, Rachida stroked him, murmuring into his ear, pushing his head against her black apron.
Rachida lingered. She knew the names of each of the animals; she herself had chosen the mare’s name. Picking up two nails that had fallen onto the earthen floor, she looked about, searching for a piece of wood which she could use as a hammer to replace them. But the nails were rusty and crooked, and she had difficulty driving them back into the posts. She hammered and hammered until she thought she would deafen herself.
Maybe that was the moment when it happened.
She will tell everything, Rachida vows. Everything that she had done from the moment Boutros had disappeared around the bend in the stairway. All of that, and everything else as well.
The damp straw in the shed stuck to the soles of her slippers. The mangers were mostly deserted, the fodder scattered about the earth. Ammal had not yet returned with her sheep; she was the granddaughter of the shepherd, Abou Mansour.
That Ammal was good for nothing! Rachida had seen the softness with which Ammal treated the cripple. Sniveling over her each time she carried up the cheese. Ammal said that Samya was too good to suffer. Too good!
Still complaining to herself, Rachida began to walk back toward the house. At the entrance, she took off her slippers and rubbed them together to shake off the mud. On the other side of the road the fields stretched out as far as the eye could see, flat and green, crisscrossed by paths of black sand. Set back from the village, a clutter of muddy buildings behind a thin veil of trees, stood the two houses, face to face.
Rachida put her slippers back on, noting how they had faded. As she entered the house, she thought about those other slippers underneath the shawl that covered Samya’s useless legs. They were black and lustrous. What good were they? Why not suggest an exchange of slippers with the cripple? But if she did this Rachida would have to deal, as always, with Samya’s selfishness. As she moved toward the stairway, Rachida recounted her woes.
Without hurrying she climbed the stairs. When she reached the door of the storeroom and that of the office she stopped and examined the locks with a sharp eye. This was her way of helping her brother. But everything was in order; Boutros never overlooked anything.
If only she had known! If only she had been able to guess! She wouldn’t have bothered with locks and doors. She would have rushed upstairs. She would have awakened the entire village!
It was: a day just like all other days. She could not have foreseen anything.
The bannister with its wrought iron flowers was shaky; you didn’t dare lean on it. The stairs were concave, worn by generations of footsteps. The solitary window had lost its panes of glass.
On the third floor the door to the foyer was standing open. Boutros knew that his sister would not be gone long. As he did every evening, he had placed his cane in the copper stand. The hat rack was empty. Boutros never took off his fez until he came to the table for the evening meal. A somber velvet tapestry separated the foyer from the room in which the cripple lay during the days, a room that also served as the dining room. The drapes were always closed; Samya could not bear the slightest ray of light.
Because of her devotion to her brother, Rachida never left the house before evening. The women of the village brought her eggs, milk, meat, and various vegetables. They would arrive, their arms full, their black robes brushing against the white walls, and they would laugh through the folds of their veils, now and then pulling them over their faces. Nostrils quivering slightly, they would laugh and their hesitant merriment would ring out as their eyes moved about the room as swiftly as mice scurrying into their corners. They might say: “There are new chairs in the house of the overseer.” Or, “This evening in the house of the Nazer they will eat stuffed eggplant.”
When the women left, Rachida would take up her work again; she preferred to do everything herself. Whenever anyone else was around, the cripple would manage silently to call attention to herself.
Friday was the day of prayers and on this day Boutros went neither to the fields nor to the office. The holiness of the day did not concern him as he was a Christian, but he observed the customs of his fellow Moslems. “I am a believer,” he would say whenever he talked of his own religion, and he was proud of the fact that his sister Rachida never missed mass on Sunday. “As for myself, work sometimes prevents me from going. But I believe that God will forgive me.”
All week long Rachida waited for Friday.
She would prepare the meal in two copper pots. Toward noon at Boutros’s call, she would come downstairs and together they would walk toward the banks of the canal. Rachida would place the pots one on top of the other, wrap them up in a white towel, knot the ends and pick them up. The pots were heavy, weighing down her shoulders, and she would pant, changing her burden from one hand to the other as she hurried to keep up with her brother. He always walked ahead of her, drawing circles in the air with his bamboo cane. Sometimes he would take off his fez and mop the sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief.
How well they suited one another, the two of them! They would have their meal together under the