became like islands amidst the water. The men
moved between the houses and the fields in small boats or covered the distance
swimming. Mustafa Sa’eed was, as far as I knew an excellent swimmer. My father
told me — for I was in Khartoum at the time — that they heard women screaming
in the quarter after the evening prayers and, on hurrying to the source of the
sound, had found that the screaming was coming from Mustafa Sa’eed’s house. Though
he was in the habit of returning from the fields at sunset, his wife had waited
for him in vain. On asking about him here and there she was told he had been
seen in his field, though some thought he had returned home with the rest of
the men. The whole village, carrying lamps, combed the river bank, while some
put out in boats, but though they searched the whole night through it was
without avail. Telephone messages were sent to the police stations right along
the Nile as far as Karma, but Mustafa Sa’eed’s body was not among those washed
up on the river bank that week. In the end they presumed he must have been
drowned and that his body had come to rest in the bellies of the crocodiles
infesting the waters.
As for me, I am sometimes seized by the feeling which came
over me that night when, suddenly and without my being at all prepared for it,
I had heard him quoting English poetry a drink in his hand, his body buried
deep in his chair, his legs outstretched, the light reflected on his face, his
eyes, it seemed to me, abstractedly wandering towards the horizon deep within
himself and with darkness all around us outside as though satanic forces were
combining to strangle the lamplight. Occasionally the disturbing thought occurs
to me that Mustafa Sa’eed never happened, that he was in fact a lie, a phantom,
a dream or a nightmare that had come to the people of that village one suffocatingly
dark night, and when they opened their eyes to the sunlight he was nowhere to
be seen.
Only
the lesser part of the night still remained when I had left Mustafa Sa’eed’s
house. I left with a feeling of tiredness — perhaps due to having sat for so
long. Yet having no desire to sleep, I wandered off into the narrow winding
lanes of the village, my face touched by the cold night breezes that blow in
heavy with dew from the north, heavy too with the scent of acacia blossom and
animal dung, the scent of earth that has just been irrigated after the thirst
of days, and the scent of half-ripe corn cobs and the aroma of lemon trees. The
village was as usual silent at that hour of the night except for the puttering
of the water pump on the bank, the occasional barking of a dog, and the crowing
of a lone cock who prematurely sensed the arrival of the dawn and the answering
crow of another. Then silence reigned. Passing by Wad Rayyes’s low-lying house
at the bend in the lane, I saw a dim light coming from the small window; and
heard his wife give a cry of pleasure. I felt ashamed at having been privy to
something I shouldn’t have been: it wasn’t right of me to stay awake wandering
round the streets while everyone else was asleep in bed. I know this village
street by street, house by house; I know too the ten domed shrines that stand
in the middle of the cemetery on the edge of the desert high at the top of the
village; the graves too I know one by one, having visited them with my father
and mother and with my grandfather. I know those who inhabit these graves, both
those who died before my father was born and those who have died since my
birth. I have walked in more than a hundred funeral processions, have helped
with the digging of the grave and have stood alongside it in the crush of
people as the dead man was cushioned around with stones and the earth heaped in
over him. I have done this in the early mornings, in the intensity of the noonday
heat in the summer months, and at night with lamps in our hands. I have known
the fields too ever since the days when there were water-wheels,
moved between the houses and the fields in small boats or covered the distance
swimming. Mustafa Sa’eed was, as far as I knew an excellent swimmer. My father
told me — for I was in Khartoum at the time — that they heard women screaming
in the quarter after the evening prayers and, on hurrying to the source of the
sound, had found that the screaming was coming from Mustafa Sa’eed’s house. Though
he was in the habit of returning from the fields at sunset, his wife had waited
for him in vain. On asking about him here and there she was told he had been
seen in his field, though some thought he had returned home with the rest of
the men. The whole village, carrying lamps, combed the river bank, while some
put out in boats, but though they searched the whole night through it was
without avail. Telephone messages were sent to the police stations right along
the Nile as far as Karma, but Mustafa Sa’eed’s body was not among those washed
up on the river bank that week. In the end they presumed he must have been
drowned and that his body had come to rest in the bellies of the crocodiles
infesting the waters.
As for me, I am sometimes seized by the feeling which came
over me that night when, suddenly and without my being at all prepared for it,
I had heard him quoting English poetry a drink in his hand, his body buried
deep in his chair, his legs outstretched, the light reflected on his face, his
eyes, it seemed to me, abstractedly wandering towards the horizon deep within
himself and with darkness all around us outside as though satanic forces were
combining to strangle the lamplight. Occasionally the disturbing thought occurs
to me that Mustafa Sa’eed never happened, that he was in fact a lie, a phantom,
a dream or a nightmare that had come to the people of that village one suffocatingly
dark night, and when they opened their eyes to the sunlight he was nowhere to
be seen.
Only
the lesser part of the night still remained when I had left Mustafa Sa’eed’s
house. I left with a feeling of tiredness — perhaps due to having sat for so
long. Yet having no desire to sleep, I wandered off into the narrow winding
lanes of the village, my face touched by the cold night breezes that blow in
heavy with dew from the north, heavy too with the scent of acacia blossom and
animal dung, the scent of earth that has just been irrigated after the thirst
of days, and the scent of half-ripe corn cobs and the aroma of lemon trees. The
village was as usual silent at that hour of the night except for the puttering
of the water pump on the bank, the occasional barking of a dog, and the crowing
of a lone cock who prematurely sensed the arrival of the dawn and the answering
crow of another. Then silence reigned. Passing by Wad Rayyes’s low-lying house
at the bend in the lane, I saw a dim light coming from the small window; and
heard his wife give a cry of pleasure. I felt ashamed at having been privy to
something I shouldn’t have been: it wasn’t right of me to stay awake wandering
round the streets while everyone else was asleep in bed. I know this village
street by street, house by house; I know too the ten domed shrines that stand
in the middle of the cemetery on the edge of the desert high at the top of the
village; the graves too I know one by one, having visited them with my father
and mother and with my grandfather. I know those who inhabit these graves, both
those who died before my father was born and those who have died since my
birth. I have walked in more than a hundred funeral processions, have helped
with the digging of the grave and have stood alongside it in the crush of
people as the dead man was cushioned around with stones and the earth heaped in
over him. I have done this in the early mornings, in the intensity of the noonday
heat in the summer months, and at night with lamps in our hands. I have known
the fields too ever since the days when there were water-wheels,
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