Boutros would be unusually talkative. Rachida would nod in agreement. Then Rachida would talk and Boutros would say:
“You are an excellent woman!”
“You are a saint!”
“It is good that I brought you here.”
“What would have become of me?”
How well they suited one another, the two of them! The cripple never came outdoors with them. A wheelchair would have been a waste of money. What for? They were happier this way, without her.
But if she had known! If Rachida had known, if she had been able to foresee it! She would never have left the cripple’s side. She would have bought the chair with her own money. She would have wheeled Samya in front of herself always, without taking her eyes off her for a second. She would have pulled the wheelchair with her everywhere, into the kitchen, out onto the balcony. She would have asked for help to carry it up and down the stairs. She would have taken Samya for excursions into the road, to the cowshed, into the barn, along the river banks and over the smooth green paths. At the risk of exhaustion, she would have dragged the cripple with her everywhere, always!
On that particular day Rachida had hesitated before entering the room in which her sister-in-law lay. There were fava beans on the fire. Were they cooked yet? She opened the door to the kitchen. The burner was roaring with a strong blue flame. She raised the cover of the pot, plunged a fork into the beans. No, they were not quite done.
In the entrance hall everything was in place: the chair, the copper stand, the hat rack with its mirror, the threadbare velvet draperies. Samya would have liked a thin cotton hanging; she said that the touch of the velvet on her hands made her shiver!
Rachida shrugged. The eccentricities of a hysteric!
With two hands she seized the velvet drapes and pulled them apart. Then she thrust her head forward so that she could see better into the shadows.
. . .
The worn soles of her blue felt slippers made a dull thudding sound on the floor as she rushed to the shutters which she opened with a clatter, then to the cement balcony and finally to the iron balustrade.
“Help! Help! Come quickly! Quickly! Help!” Rachida grasped the railing and thrust her body forward as she screamed. Her skirt jerked up over her bony shins, exposing the crude darned spots in her cotton stockings. Her head trembled so violently that long pins slipped out of her bun of gray hair. From the wall opposite, her voice ricocheted back to her, distorted: “Help!”
It seemed as though the force of her cries might sweep her to the ground below. She did not see anything. She stood with her back to the room, her back turned toward that other woman. She looked straight ahead. She screamed:
“Someone has killed him! Someone has killed him! Come, come, all of you! Someone has killed the Nazer!”
Names came into her memory. She called them out in any order, without thinking:
“Hussein! Khaled! Abou Mansour! Help! Someone has killed my brother!”
She did not want to turn around. Above all, she did not want to turn around. Behind her was that woman, that Samya, and her stare was piercing Rachida’s back. Above all, she did not want to turn around until the others arrived. When would they come! When would they all come! When would they fill up the room! She called out, concentrating on the sound of her voice:
“Barsoum! Farid! Fatma, you Fatma! Where are you? Someone has killed the Nazer! My brother is dead! Hurry!”
Her voice, imprisoned in the alley which separated the two houses, ricocheted from one to the other, but it did not reach the fields nor the village, buried under a shroud of dust. Her voice crashed against the walls. It rose higher, seeking to overcome the distance and to penetrate the fields and the village.
“Come! Come! Everyone come!” cried the voice.
The railing of the balcony cut into Rachida’s palms. Her hair straggled down her neck. She did not want to turn around, to see Boutros’s fallen body, to meet the stare of that motionless woman.
She wanted to forget everything. Oh, if only they would come quickly! To forget everything, until they finally came!
To be nothing more than this cry:
“Help! Avenge us!”
. . .
Nearly hidden in her armchair, the woman said nothing.
The shutters were open; the light flowed everywhere. She was no longer used to it; she was blinking. A faded shawl concealed her legs.
Rachida cried in strange tones that clashed against one another. The woman’s pale hands rested on the arms of her chair. Her elbows were slightly raised as if she were getting ready to stand up. Her dark hair gleamed; her ears were partly concealed by a violet band. Pinned to her unbleached muslin blouse was a safety pin adorned with a blue stone, like a brooch. A necklace of square green beads was loosely knotted around her throat.
The dead man’s head was resting on her feet. She did not seem to feel its weight.
Rachida screamed and leaned even further over the railing of the balcony, revealing her bony shins and darned stockings. Why was she in such a condition? She was in danger of toppling off the balcony.
One day Boutros had killed a crow with a single shot. He had been so pleased to see the bird fall out of the top of the tree! In the sunlight the crow was black, tinged with grayish light and blood-stained. Remembering this made her feel anxious. If she were to tumble into the alley between the houses, she would be black and gray, with blood on her skirt and her hair disheveled.
The other woman was far away. All of this seemed like a tale that one might hear while standing on the railway platform waiting for the train to leave. A story from some distant place.
Rachida screamed. She screamed. Her voice was becoming hoarse. She shook her head; she looked straight ahead. Not once did she turn around.
If Boutros had been there, if he were not already icy, he would have come to his sister’s side. Without hesitating, he would have come to her. He would have gotten up and joined her on the balcony, and they would have stood together with their shoulders touching. They were almost the same height. The two of them would have leaned over together above the balustrade. They would have cried out with one voice.
After a while Boutros would have turned around. He would have asked Rachida to be quiet and he would have turned to face Samya.
He would have taken several steps forward, then, with his arms crossed, he would have looked inside the room, into the armchair and beneath the violet headband. If he had not already been cold, he would have been there facing Samya, harsh, implacable, shaking his head as if scolding a child.
Then he would have returned to the balcony to his sister’s side. Their voices would have risen together again.
This is what he would have done if he had been there with his face animated under the red cap. Now the fez lay in the center of the room, abandoned to the last rays of the sun.
Later, Boutros would have said:
“Did she have anything to worry about? She had everything. It was my sister who was wearing herself out. Did I ever deprive her of anything? Was I unfaithful to her? She had everything!”
These would have been his words if he had been able to stand on his stiffening feet.
“She had everything! A husband, a home, good food! What more could a woman want? I have known for a long time that she would come to a bad end. My religion prevented me from denouncing her. Now I can do nothing more for her! Take her! Do whatever you want with her!”
Motionless, the high back of her chair rising above her head, the woman would have gone right on killing herself.
Today as yesterday, she would have continued to