martyr and enter Paradise.”
There was silence between them and suddenly the sheikh got up from his place and went over to Taha and looked at him for a short while. Then he hugged him hard and smiled and said, “God bless you, my son. This is what real faith does to those who have it. Go home now and pack your bag for a journey. Tomorrow morning I’ll come and go with you.”
“Where to?”
The sheikh’s smile broadened and he whispered, “Don’t ask. Do as I say and you’ll find everything out in due course.”
Taha deduced that the sheikh’s opposition to him at the beginning had been a stratagem to test the strength of his determination. Now, the following day, they were sitting next to each other in silence in the crowded metro car, the sheikh looking out of the window while Taha stared without seeing at the passengers, a disturbing question repeating itself in his mind: Where was the sheikh taking him? Of course, he trusted him, but fear and misgivings afflicted him all the same. He felt as though he was proceeding to some perilous point of no return that would be fundamental in his life. He felt a shudder when the sheikh said to him, “Be ready to get out at the next station, Turah el Asmant.”
The station bears the name of the cement company that the Swiss built in the twenties and which was then nationalized after the Revolution and increased its production to become one of the biggest cement factories in the Arab World. Thereafter, like the other major companies, it had been subjected to the Open Door Policy and privatization, with foreign companies buying numerous shares. The metro line goes right through its middle: on the right are the administrative buildings and the giant furnaces and on the left stretches the vast desert, bounded by mountains throughout which are scattered the quarries where the huge rocks are blasted with dynamite, then moved onto large transporters to be incinerated in the cement kilns.
Sheikh Shakir got down, Taha with him, and they crossed the metro station in the direction of the mountains and walked out into the desert. The sun was hot, the air laden with the dust that covers the whole area, and Taha felt a dryness in his throat and a low, continuous pain in the top of his stomach, followed by nausea and coughing. The sheikh said jokingly,
They stopped in front of a small rocky hillock and waited a few minutes. Then the sound of an engine reached their ears. A large rock-moving truck approached and stopped in front of them. The driver was a young man dressed in workers’ blue overalls that were worn and faded with use. He exchanged greetings quickly with the sheikh, who looked at him appraisingly and said, “God and Paradise,” to which the driver replied with a smile, “Patience and Victory.”
These were the passwords, and the sheikh took Taha’s hand and climbed up with him into the driver’s cabin. The three said nothing and the truck proceeded along a mountain track. Other transporters belonging to the company passed them until the driver turned off onto a narrow unmetaled sidetrack on which they drove for more than half an hour. Taha almost confessed his anxiety to the sheikh, but he saw that the latter was absorbed in reciting the Qu’ran from a small copy in his hand. Eventually, there appeared in the distance indistinct shapes that gradually became clearer and turned out to be a group of houses built of red brick. The truck stopped, Taha and the sheikh got down, and the driver bade them farewell, then turned and went back.
The streets had the look of any urban slum — conspicuous poverty, puddles of water in the dirt lanes, chickens and ducks running around outside the houses, small children playing barefoot, and veiled women sitting at the doors. The sheikh strode out with the confidence of one who knows a place well and entered one of the houses, Taha behind him. They went through the door into a spacious room empty but for a small desk and a blackboard that hung on the wall. On the floor were spread large yellow rush mats on which were sitting a group of bearded young men in white gallabiyas who all jumped up to greet Sheikh Shakir, embracing him and kissing him one after the other. The oldest among them, a huge, tall man aged around forty with a large black beard and wearing a dark green sash over his white gallabiya hung back a little. He had a scar extending from his right eyebrow to the top of his forehead like the remains of a large old wound and this prevented him from fully closing his eye. On seeing Sheikh Shakir, the man whooped with joy and said in his husky voice, “Peace be upon you! Where have you been, Master? We’ve been waiting for you two whole weeks.”
“Only urgent necessity has kept me from you, Bilal. How are you and your brothers?”
“Praise God, we’re fine, God willing.”
“And how is your work?”
“As you will have read in the newspapers — from success to success, thanks be to God.”
Sheikh Shakir put his arm around Taha and told the man, smiling, “This is the Taha el Shazli whom I spoke to you about, Bilal. A fine example of the courageous, pious, observant young man — and we give precedence over God to none.”
He brought Taha forward to shake the man’s hand and Taha felt the man’s strong grip and looked at his disfigured face as Sheikh Shakir’s words resounded in his ears, “Taha, God willing, I introduce you to your brother in God, Sheikh Bilal, the commander of the camp. Here with Sheikh Bilal you will learn, God willing, how to take what is yours and how to wreak vengeance on all the tyrants.”
Souad woke up and opened her eyes with difficulty. She had stomach pains, nausea, and a headache, and her throat was dry and hurting her. Little by little she realized that she was in a hospital. The room was large, the ceiling high, and there were old chairs and a small table in the corner. The double doors with two round glass portholes looked like those in an operating theater in an Egyptian movie from the forties. Next to the bed stood a stout nurse with a snub nose. She bent over Souad and put her hand on her face, then smiled and said, “Praise God you’re fine. God’s been good to you. You hemorrhaged badly.”
“Liar!” shouted Souad in a strangled voice. The nurse leaped back. “You aborted me by force. I’ll see you get hell!”
The nurse left the room. An insane anger swept over Souad and she started kicking her feet and shouting in a loud voice, “Criminals! You aborted me! Get me the Emergency Response Police! I’ll put you all in jail!” The door soon opened and a young doctor appeared. He came up to her, the nurse following. Souad shouted, “I was pregnant and you aborted me by force!”
The doctor smiled, obviously lying and scared. He said in an embarrassed voice, “You had a hemorrhage, Madame. Calm yourself. Excitement’s not good for you.”
Souad exploded again. She shouted and abused them and wept. The doctor and the nurse left. Then the door opened again and her brother Hamidu appeared, with Fawzi, Hagg Azzam’s son. Hamidu hurried in and kissed her. Clinging to him, she burst into passionate tears.
Hamidu’s face crumpled and he shut his mouth tight and said noth ing. Fawzi calmly pulled up the chair from the end of the room and sat down beside the bed. Then he leaned back and said in measured tones, enunciating the words clearly as though he were giving a lesson to children, “Listen, Souad. Everything is fated and allotted. Hagg Azzam agreed with you about something and you broke the agreement and ‘the one who begins is the more unjust.’ ”
“God take revenge on you and on your father, you criminals, you sons of bitches!”
“Shut your mouth!”
Fawzi shouted these words angrily, his face frowning and looking stern and cruel. Then he said nothing for a little, sighed, and resumed his lecture.
“Despite your rudeness, the Hagg has dealt with you as God’s Law requires. You had a hemorrhage and you would have died, so we took you to the hospital and the doctor was forced to carry out an abortion. The hospital paperwork is on file and the doctor’s report is on file. Tell her, Hamidu.”
