Love in the Kingdom of Oil by Nawal El Saadawi Page A

The pain was burning and she was stretched out on the ground, totally worn out. A fly flew by and settled on her nose. It began to nibble a bit of peeling skin. She raised her hand to brush it away, but the fly remained in its place. In her other hand the chisel was lying, motionless. Dogs were barking at each other in the distance, children were throwing stones at each other and men had their hands intertwined. Oil was gushing out in all directions and the colours of the sky were being swallowed up in the darkness.
    ‘Prepare the supper!’
    The man’s voice pierced her ears. An imperative tone, completely natural when a man addresses his wife. An unpaid servant. Wasn’t he her husband? She didn’t know exactly when he had married her. Probably he had married her in her absence and the marriage contract had been prepared without her being present. The woman didn’t attend her marriage ceremony anyway, and all the formalities could be completed without her existence.
    The muscles of her fingers contracted around the chisel. A sudden surge of anger, which pumped the blood into the muscles. She raised her hand and struck the bowels of the earth. The head of the chisel hit something solid. A statue of bronze or alabaster, but its colour was less opaque, like volcanic glass.
    Her fingers trembled as she pulled it out. Her fingertips caressed its soft surface. She fingered the neck and the chest. Her hand bumped into the prominent breasts. It was the goddess Hathur, bare-chested, holding her breasts in her palms in a position of total giving, holding a pair of snakes.
    She would have seized hold of it had a sea of oil gushed out and submerged everything. Could it be Noah’s flood? She had read about the flood in the book of archaeology, years of famine and drought, and advancing deserts and mountains. The earth was on the brink of the Ice Age and an imbalance had occurred in the vital balance of the atmosphere. The regime had been overthrown after the slaying of the mother goddess.
    ‘Prepare the food! I’m hungry!’
    She didn’t hear this time. The sound of the gushing oil covered everything else. Her fingers relaxed around the chisel and fell back. The current would have snatched it from her if she had not stretched her torso as far as she could and peeped over the edge with her head. The swirling oil resembled a whirlpool. It rotated as swiftly as the earth rotates. Smoke rose from it as if it was boiling. She was dressed as a child crying, ‘Mummy!’
    Her body convulsed with the name ‘Mummy!’ For the first time she had said the name clearly. Since she was born, she had never called out for her mummy. That was probably because her mother had died giving birth to her, or because she had not yet learnt how to speak.
    When the storm died down, she stretched out languorously. She was gasping and her eyes were closed tightly. The picture of the ancient flood returned to her. Fear of drowning filled people’s hearts. At the height of their fear, they became eagerly attached to the name ‘Mother’. When her aunt was frightened, she used to cry out ‘Mother’ instead of ‘Mummy’. She spat into the opening of her
jallaba
. The alleys were narrow and blocked with piles of dung. The houses were made of mud and were totally invisible apart from little lamps that drew shadows like ghosts. The village night was frightening, a haunted night, in which it was quite appropriate for Satan to make his rounds. Her aunt was walking under the bridge when she saw him that night. He was Satan in flesh and blood having taken on human form. And people said, ‘The flood is from Satan.’ And they began to call on the mother goddess to save them,
    Our beloved mother, where are you?
    Has Satan eclipsed you?
    Has he placed a thick veil over your face?
    Has he distorted your image and changed your name?
    She had been sleeping when her aunt read her the song in the book. The sound of their singing seeped into her ears under the pillow.