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

laughing. One of the ladies was talking to her neighbour in the adjoining house. She was telling her what her husband did with her in bed. She interrupted her talk with bursts of braying laughter and then burst into tears.
    ‘You have been married for ten years and you haven’t become pregnant yet!?’
    ‘It’s God’s command.’
    ‘Rather it’s that cursed second wife. She’s cast a spell on you.’
    ‘Is it magic then? What a disaster!’
    ‘You are more fortunate than me. Your husband has only one other wife, but mine has three others. No sooner has one’s spell finished its work than another begins.’
    ‘Nevertheless, you became pregnant, didn’t you?’
    Seeping through to her through the wall, her voice sounded like her aunt’s. She used to wrap a black veil around her head and go out. She used to wander through the alleys collecting seashells, and the bones of the dead from the bowels of the earth. She used to crush them in a grinder with alum and frankincense. She used to drink the potion before breakfast and before going to bed at night. She used to dampen her husband’s pillow with it and the member between his thighs. Every demon used to have a special veil. It used to be written on by a blind sheikh in a darkened room. A blind man was more powerful than a sighted person in driving out demons. And of course a dead sheikh was more powerful than a blind one. The woman used to pay a piece of silver or a slaughtered chicken. A woman could not become pregnant without paying something.
    The women’s voices ended at night’s end, when morning dawned with crimson rays which burned like tongues of fire.
    ‘I beg you, haven’t I got the right to have a drink of water?’
    He must have been fast asleep. She did not hear a reply. His
jallaba
was torn from the chest. He was soaked in black sweat like congealed blood. Particles of oil stuck to his hair, and his lips were cracked like drought-stricken earth.
    ‘Can’t you hear me? A drop of water, please.’
    Her voice was dry, and her body was trembling with fever. Heat was rising from under her skin, dissolving the grimy crust bit by bit. Her lips opened, gasping, and she licked up the melting liquid with the end of her tongue.
    ‘I’ll give you the bottle on one condition.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘That you completely stop from hatching that plot.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Don’t you realise that you are under surveillance and that your every move is watched carefully?’
    ‘Surveillance!?’
    ‘Every move, indeed every emotion.’
    ‘Emotion?’
    ‘Yes, you must forget everything about your mother, your aunt, Hathur, Sekhmet and all women. Yes, all women, do you understand?’
    She nodded her head to indicate that she understood. But she did not understand anything. She wanted the bottle and nothing else. The man paced the ground, stirring up from it particles of oil. He brought the neck of the bottle near her lips. She consumed it with her teeth, shaking it a number of times. She bent over like an earthworm. Upside down above her mouth, the bottle was dry without a drop of water. Its base was thick and raised to heaven. The disc of the sun pierced through it directly into her eyes, as if it was an outstretched column of the everlasting fire.
    She threw the bottle into the eye of the sun. The man shook his head in shame.
    ‘Didn’t you know that it was empty?’
    ‘I knew, but . . .’
    ‘If we assume that a woman has a spirit like a man . . .’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then this spirit must live in her body.’
    ‘Yes, but . . .’
    ‘But what?’
    ‘After celebrating the Festival, little people like ourselves will be forgotten and the great will seize our portion.’
    She was looking into his eyes and realised that he was covering something else with his words. He used to hide himself in the back room and take her portion. Then he would hide the bottle in a place that she did not know about. Would he try to dominate her through