The Wedding of Zein by Tayeb Salih Read Free Book Online

uproar and Zein exploded into laughter and threw himself down on his stomach, kicking up his legs in the air. Then he turned over on to his back and said, still choking with laughter: ‘I took hold of the little girl and bit her on the mouth.’
    Mahjoub was so shocked that he muttered ‘There is no god but God and Mohammed is His Prophet,’ and asked His forgiveness for having even heard something so terrible.
    â€˜I tell you, the women raised hell, the whole house was in an uproar, and the young bride began screaming. All of a sudden I found that somebody’d struck me in the ankle with a knife. I tell you, I started running and didn’t stop till I arrived back home.’ Suddenly Zein sat upright, the expression on his face wholly serious and, directing his words at Mahjoub, said: ‘Listen, are you going to marry your daughter Alawiyya to me or aren’t you?’
    â€˜I promise the girl to you—right now before all these people here,’ Mahjoub answered him in all seriousness, as though meaning what he said. ‘After you’ve reaped your wheat and gathered up your dates and sold them and brought the money, we’ll make the wedding celebration.’
    This promise satisfied Zein. For a while he remained silent with pursed lips, as though he had started to think about his future life with Alawiyya and the responsibility of taking on the cares of a wife and children. ‘That’s it, then,’ he said. ‘Bear witness, brothers—this man has given his word and he can’t come along denying it tomorrow or the day after.’ All those present—Ahmed Isma’il, Taher Rawwasi, Abdul Hafeez, Hamad Wad Rayyes, and Sa’eed the shopkeeper—stated that they were witnesses to the promise made by Mahjoub and that the marriage would, God permitting, take place.
    The story of Zein’s love for Alawiyya the daughter of Mahjoub is the latest of his romances. After a month or two he will tire of it and begin some new romance. For the present, though, he is completely taken up with her and she is ever-present in his mind. In the middle of the day you find him in the field, bent over his hoe, his face pouring with sweat, when he suddenly stops digging and cries out at the top of his voice, ‘I am slain by love in the courtyard of Mahjoub.’ In neighbouring fields tens of people momentarily stop digging as they listen to Zein’s cry. While the young men laugh, some of the older men, who are occasionally irritated by Zein’s tomfoolery, mumble with annoyance, ‘What’s that crazy boy gabbling about now?’ When at sunset work in the field comes to an end and the people take themselves off to their houses, Zein walks home from the field amidst a large crowd of young men, boys and girls, all laughing merrily around him, as he struts about among them, striking a young man on the shoulder, pinching a girl’s cheek, and making leaps into the air. Whenever he sees an acacia bush along the way he jumps over it and from time to time lets out shrieks at the top of his voice that resound through the village on which the sun has set. ‘Hear ye, you people of the village, O kinsfolk, I am slain by love in the courtyard of Mahjoub.’
    Zein was first slain by love when he had still not attained manhood. He was thirteen or fourteen at the time and was as thin and emaciated as a dried-up stalk. Whatever people might say about Zein they acknowledged his impeccable taste, for he fell in love with none but the most beautiful girls, the best mannered and most pleasant of speech. Azza, daughter of the Omda, was fifteen years old and her beauty had suddenly unfolded in the same way as a young palm tree flourishes when, after thirsting, it is given water. Her skin was as gold as a field of wheat just before harvesting; her eyes were wide and black in a face of limpid beauty, her features delicate; her eye-lashes were long and when she slowly