Zeina by Nawal El Saadawi Read Free Book Online Page B

eyes were two blue volcanic stones, two dark blue flames that changed with the movement of the earth around the sun and with her mounting anger at one of the girls. When Miss Mariam smiled at her, she had a bright childish smile like the sunlight in the morning dispelling the night’s darkness. Miss Mariam lived in a two-bedroom apartment on a narrow street off Tahrir Road. Her Muslim mother, Fatima, had married the Christian Mikhail without an official marriage contract. Both Shari’a and civil law forbade the union of a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man. Fatima ran away from her family in Upper Egypt and Mikhail ran away from his in al-Beheira province. They met in Cairo during one of the anti-government demonstrations.
    Miss Mariam became a music teacher. Before he emigrated abroad, Mikhail had been an oud (lute) musician in a band. Her mother, Fatima, was shot dead by her Upper Egyptian father.
    On a cold, dark night, as Miss Mariam was walking along Nile Street, she saw a little girl lying on a long wooden bench inside a wooden shack, where street children slept in their ash-colored galabeyas. A huge cat with green eyes gleaming in the darkness lay near them, surrounded by her six little newborn kittens, clinging to her for warmth. She licked the dirt and blood from their little bodies.
    Miss Mariam wore black leather shoes with thick, square heels. She stomped hard on the ground, one foot after the other, the sound ringing in the stillness of the night. On hearing the sound, the mother cat started to her feet. She encircled her six little kittens, her green eyes burning, and bared her teeth, ready to defend them. Like street children, street cats were always engaged in fights: against stray dogs, gangsters, drug traffickers, unemployed and unhopeful young people, farmers who had deserted their poor, barren land, workers laid off by bankrupt factories, prostitutes with nothing left for them to sell but their bodies, and wives living on the streets after their husbands had pronounced the words “You’re divorced” three times.
    Zeina Bint Zeinat was unique in that she was fortified against molestation and rape. No man could touch her, even when she was fast asleep. Her long pointed fingers would stick like nails into the neck of any man, and her strong, sharp teeth would cut into any part of his flesh like knives and would tear it out.
    During the day, she sat with other girls on the wooden benches or on the stone or iron fences along the Nile. She recited aloud to them a song she had written in her dream, which she knew by heart along with the music and the rhythm. She tapped with her toes, or with her fingers that were as hard as nails, on the wooden bench, on the iron fence, or on the asphalt of the street. She trod on rocks and digested stones, tapping the rhythm and singing along with the girls who danced in their tattered galabeyas and stomped with their little chapped feet on the ground. The clouds in their eyes vanished, revealing their true color: dark blue or green, like those of newborn kittens. Zeina Bint Zeinat watched over them like a mother, even though she was only a year or two older than they were. She looked as though she was a hundred years older, as though she hadn’t been born a baby but had grown tall inside the womb and come out into the world as a fully formed girl. She was so strong that whenever the world dealt her a blow, she retaliated with equally strong blows. But the child inside her survived and sang until the very end. Her heart beat hard within her chest whenever Miss Mariam or one of the girls on the street or at school smiled at her, and when she stood on stage.
    She had no friend at school except Mageeda al-Khartiti, who sometimes invited her to her large house in Garden City. There they played together in the big garden around the house. They also played the piano together in the large lounge, although Mageeda’s plump fingers were extraordinarily slow. She was as short as her