After Coffee

The Wolf Slayer-1

The Wolf Slayer

Khalil tossed and turned outside his shop, which overlooked the canal. He batted a fly that hovered over his nose, then dozed off again. The breeze toyed with the hem of his jilbab, as if it wanted to pick up the fabric and fly off. Nothing disrupted the serenity of this scene until a noise surfaced - a cacophony of screaming, laughter, and barking - from the direction of the canal. A group of boys was crossing over while a black dog protested over how they’d charged towards the water without him. The boys were fleeing from the Upper Egyptian locals with their loot: dates, prickly pears, and reeds. Khalil woke up when the boys’ commotion reached him, and all traces of sleep disappeared once the afternoon call to prayer sounded from the farthest end of the village. It felt as if a firm hand was shaking him, urging Khalil to get up and go to the mosque to pray on time, but he didn’t budge. Those little devils were still running riot, even though they usually panicked and scampered off to their hiding places once the blistering midday hour had passed. After the shame of what had happened with his sister, Khalil felt no desire to do his ablutions or pray. He wished he could sleep and never wake up. He didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything. His customers no longer had anything to say to him, either. They each grabbed what they needed before hurrying off. No one would stay and sprawl out on the ground outside his shop anymore to play cards, drink tea, and smoke muassel. All that had ended, and anyway he didn’t want to face them. He saw the question in people’s eyes, which nobody dared to utter: ‘Where did she go?’ Every time a customer appeared, he lowered his head. He had transformed from an intimidating character to a man broken by the weight of shame and helplessness, all over what his sister Zakiya had done. What’s the use of having a shop and buying and selling when you can’t talk to anyone? Wouldn’t it be better to stay at home and let no one see your face? He finally stood up to close the shop. But what’s the point of staying at home? he wondered. There was only one person to turn to for help: Ibrahim Abu Zaid.

He walked past Nafisa’s house. The old woman was outside chasing her chickens with a broomstick - a dried palm branch with its strands still intact - to bring them in for the night. She wouldn’t usually do this before sunset, but had decided to bring them in early that day. As Khalil walked by, he turned his head to avoid greeting her. He had started to despise the old woman because his sister used to go to her house and work for free. ‘I hope you’re well, Khalil,’ Nafisa called out to him, but he didn’t reply.

‘You bear a heavy burden, my boy,’ she added, when he was further away. ‘God help you, my dear.’ Still, the fact that he’d ignored her had stung. She didn’t deserve that. Whatever had happened had happened, and she was not to blame. Medhat had also passed by her house a short while ago with his dog and his friends, on their way back from the opposite bank of the canal, brandishing their reed sticks. ‘Come here my darling,’ she had called out to him. ‘Give your nana a kiss, my love.’ But the boy stopped to say with disdain, ‘I don’t kiss old people.’ ‘Come here boy, be kind,’ she said. ‘I’m your nana, your darling nana.’ ‘When you take off your nose ring,’ he replied. That scrawny kid is only five years old, she thought as she shook her head. You’d think he was spawned by devils. God rest the souls of your mother and father, Medhat. Then she sighed. ‘But then again, who does like old people?’

She was the last of the grandparents’ generation. Back when she lived with her late brother’s wife, Zainab, she was treated like a queen. But after Zainab died, she went to live with Fatima, Zainab’s second cousin, until she grew weary of the way Fatima’s daughters treated her. The girls also don’t like my nose ring, like Medhat, she thought. ‘What is that hanging from your nose, Nana?’ they would say. ‘No one wears those anymore.’ They didn’t like the tattoo on her chin, either. And they would never let her utter a single word without making fun of her. ‘Nana never stops talking,’ they would say, or - even worse - ‘My nana’s started spouting gibberish.’

They liked her food, sure, they would devour it - all the old recipes she carried in her heart - but they didn’t want her to speak. Fatima had asked her to teach her eldest daughter the basics of cooking, in preparation for marriage, but could Saadiya endure her instructions and advice? ‘Nana, you’re driving me crazy with all this talk about how much water to add to the rice, because you say perfecting the rice is the stamp of a good cook. And the tomato sauce that has to be stewed just so... Do you think the man will be as bothered as you? Why can’t he just be quiet and eat whatever I cook?’ At first, Fatima would tell her daughters off, but she soon changed. After she got fed up with Nafisa’s rambling about her missing son and her relentless, futile appeals to him, she gradually began to let their comments go. Whenever the memory of his absence became too painful, Nafisa would find somewhere private and start crying out, imploring him to come home. After Fatima gave up on her, she gathered her belongings and moved to this house that turned its back to the village, facing the country road instead. Here, no one had any right to complain about her, and she could see out her remaining years in peace. And here, she could wait for her absent loved one. Thirty years had passed since her son Hashem was whisked off to the provincial jail. It was said the police found him and the rest of the gang because one of them had left behind a sandal as he fled the scene, which is how the police dogs were able to trace them. She had seen one of them return - Musa Abu Mostafa. He had stepped out of the police van supported by two policemen because he couldn’t walk on his own. After fifteen years in prison, he was back, but the happiness of his wife and children was short-lived. Shortly after reaching his house, he lay down and never got up again. He died after spending barely a week with his family. When she saw him clambering out of the police van, she knew he didn’t have long. Having witnessed pangs of death in both the young and the old, she had come to recognise the meaning behind his pallor.

But her son Hashem never came home, not even after the end of his prison term. The rumour was that he had escaped prison and fled to Palestine. It was also said that he was spotted several times wandering the fields on the other side of the canal, near the Sa’ida, or Upper Egyptian, village. So why hadn’t he returned? Hashem, why won’t you come back home? She recalled his life from the day he was born, including the time she found him a fiancé, and how she had tried to hasten his wedding so she could become a grandmother, since he was her only son. She would return to her memories of each event as if it had happened yesterday, without skipping a single moment. She remembered the date, the season it fell in, what food she had prepared, and the colour of the chicken’s feathers that she had slaughtered for the occasion. One of Fatima’s daughters would interrupt her. ‘Nana, do you have to go into so much detail? Do you really have to tell us about the rooster you slaughtered for the guests, how heavy it was, how its feathers were black and that its crest was large?’ No one wanted to listen to her tales of sorrow.

Ever since she’d started living alone, the days had dragged and the nights even more so. Her visitors slowed to a trickle. Her family began to forget about her. Zaki no longer dropped in on her. He used to stop off after his afternoon nap, before the asr prayer, to see if she had anything he could snack on. She would bring him whatever he wanted - a hot loaf of bread, some crushed salt and chilli pepper. Zaki was the only one who was still faithful to the old days, and the only one whose heart still went out to everyone. But she didn’t know what had happened to him lately. His visits had dwindled and, when they did happen, they were fleeting. His face seemed permanently strained.

Salama - may God prolong his life and protect him from danger - was the only one in her family who still cared about her. He farmed her land, was content with his share of the harvest - a quarter - and never refused her a single request. He also helped to sell her share and brought everything she needed from the Monday or Wednesday markets. ‘The boy is gallant and chivalrous and has a kind heart, but what kind of a nightmare has he caught himself up in?’ she wondered. There was no one left but Zakiya - the Baharwa girl - to help her with household chores like kneading the dough, baking, and washing. Guided by the Most Merciful One, she did it all for no wage, even though the Baharwa people were famous for being tightfisted. Then, the One and Only God ordained that this calamity would fall on her and Salama. Nafisa started to worry that Salama and Zakiya would end up as unlucky as Hashem - he, too, had been kind, chivalrous, and naïve. But still, God had brought a catastrophe down on him, great is His wisdom. She worried they would end up doomed like Zainab’s youngest and most handsome child. He was the one known as ‘the star’ and ‘the neighbourhood heartthrob’, before he was lured by some thugs, became addicted to ‘snorting powder,’ and ended up dying at one of those gatherings. Over the years, she had seen how misfortune only ever remembered the kind ones. Hashem, for example, didn’t murder anyone, and none of that gang had any intention of killing a soul. They were a bunch of misguided youths and the devil used them as his playthings. May God avenge them. That gang leader sent respectable kids to hell while he dozed at home so he could escape the consequences as smoothly as a strand of hair teased out of a lump of dough. They had wanted to rob the home of a widow in the Nazlet Elwan village to steal her silver, but she woke up and confronted one of them, who stabbed her with a knife. It was an accidental blow. But Hashem didn’t attack anyone; he didn’t clash with anyone and hadn’t even gone into the house. He’d been standing guard at the top of the road ready to whistle if he saw anyone approaching. ‘Why did you do it, when you came from a good family?’ she moaned. ‘Did you need any gold or silver? Why then, when you’re the one who always gives away everything you have? Why not come home, my son? My heart is tired of waiting, Hashem. They say you come to the other side of the canal at night. So take a little turn, my darling. Say, I’ll go and see my mother whose tears have run dry. Hashem, there’s nothing but a canal to separate us. You can cross the water by foot.... They are just a few short steps, my sweetheart.’ When she had managed to usher in the last chicken, she fastened her door shut with a latch and key.

***

Hajj Zaki was the first to appear when the worshippers began arriving at the mosque in answer to the afternoon call to prayer. He circled the building to inspect its condition and reached the back door, pursing his lips with discontent. His brother still lifted water out of the mosque’s well to fill the bathing basin, as well as the place for ablution and the latrines. He also raised the prayer call at the regular times with a booming voice that travelled across the canal and was heard at the Sa’ida’s village - a beautiful sound that humbled people’s hearts. But lately, it had started to cause a tightness in Zaki’s chest. And the building was in a deplorable state; the wall by the well had large cracks in it that warned of imminent collapse. He appealed to the Muslims to rescue their mosque before it caved in, but none of the Qassimis or the Baharwa people were interested in his pleas. No one wanted to pull a piaster from their pocket to help repair the house of God. They wanted him to bear the burden on his own, as he had in the past, but he couldn’t do it anymore. The mosque was old, built in his grandfather’s time, and his father had taken charge of its upkeep throughout his whole life. As for the others, their hearts had toughened and their faith weakened. He sighed. The families of the neighbouring villages used to come for Friday prayers, but now their attendance was rare. He recalled painfully how he used to invite everyone after the prayers for lunch at the guesthouse they called the seera, serving them lentils in winter and rice pudding in summer. That was in the good old days. An onion shared with a loved one is a lamb, as the saying goes, but this loved one had neither lamb nor onions anymore.