A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore Read online

  SELECT TITLES IN MIDDLE EAST LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION

  All Faces but Mine: The Poetry of Samih Al-Qasim

  Abdulwahid Lu’lu’a, trans.

  Arabs and the Art of Storytelling: A Strange Familiarity

  Abdelfattah Kilito; Mbarek Sryfi and Eric Sellin, trans.

  The Candidate: A Novel

  Zareh Vorpouni; Jennifer Manoukian and Ishkhan Jinbashian, trans.

  The Elusive Fox

  Muhammad Zafzaf; Mbarek Sryfi and Roger Allen, trans.

  Felâtun Bey and Râkim Efendi: An Ottoman Novel

  Ahmet Midhat Efendi; Melih Levi and Monica M. Ringer, trans.

  Gilgamesh’s Snake and Other Poems

  Ghareeb Iskander; John Glenday and Ghareeb Iskander, trans.

  Jerusalem Stands Alone

  Mahmoud Shukair; Nicole Fares, trans.

  The Perception of Meaning

  Hisham Bustani; Thoraya El-Rayyes, trans.

  The translation was supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

  Copyright © 2018 by Barbara Romaine

  Syracuse University Press

  Syracuse, New York 13244-5290

  All Rights Reserved

  First Edition 2018

  181920212223654321

  Originally published in Arabic as Yawm Ghaa’im fii al-Barr al-Gharbi (Cairo: Dar El-Shorouk, 2009).

  ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

  For a listing of books published and distributed by Syracuse University Press, visit www.SyracuseUniversityPress.syr.edu.

  ISBN: 978-0-8156-1109-7 (paperback)978-0-8156-5462-9 (e-book)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Qandīl, Muḥammad al-Mansī, author. | Romaine, Barbara, 1959– translator.

  Title: A cloudy day on the Western shore / Mohamed Mansi Qandil ; translated from the Arabic by Barbara Romaine.

  Other titles: Yawm ghā’im fī al-barr al-gharbī. English

  Description: First edition. | Syracuse : Syracuse University Press, 2018. | Series: Middle East literature in translation

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018022452 (print) | LCCN 2018026512 (ebook) | ISBN 9780815654629 (e-book) | ISBN 9780815611097 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Historical fiction

  Classification: LCC PJ7858.A53 (ebook) | LCC PJ7858.A53 Y3913 2018 (print) | DDC 892.7/36—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018022452

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Contents

  1.Asyout

  2.Minya

  3.The Tombs at Beni Hassan

  4.Doubara Palace

  5.The Valley of Thebes

  6.Sayyida Zaynab

  7.The Village of Beni Khalaf

  8.The Red-Light District

  9.Thebes

  10.Tel al-Amarna

  11.Thebes: At Last

  Historical Figures Featured in the Novel

  Glossary

  1Asyout

  AT LAST THE RIVER’S EDGE APPEARED: tortuous, overgrown with reed thickets and thorny brambles. The air grew cold and damp. Flocks of white birds hovered and circled in ceaseless patterns. The mother kicked to a stop the donkey she was riding and took in the dark gray ripples of the river.

  “There’s no one here,” she said. “They’ve sent us to the wrong place.”

  Aisha advanced a little way on her donkey, and saw a boat moored to a tree trunk, bobbing up and down in the current. She said nothing. She had come all this way, not knowing the reason for the journey, the donkey steadily jogging along and stumbling through the gravel along the way until her own hindquarters ached. She saw a few pigeons huddling against the cold in the hollow of a tree, and wished she, like them, could take refuge far from her mother’s grim face.

  The mother dismounted, made her way down the slope of the riverbank, and disappeared among the reeds. Aisha heard the sound of panting, and was afraid. Could the wolves have followed her from her distant village all the way to this place? She could never get used to them, no matter how often she saw them, circling her or lurking all night beneath her window. They looked very like huge, dust-colored dogs, with their tongues hanging out, always panting—how could she ever get used to the sight of such creatures?

  Her mother emerged from the reeds and beckoned to her. Aisha tied both donkeys to a tree and followed her mother, just as she always did, descending by the narrow path that ran alongside the water, careful to avoid being scratched by the thorns. A hut came into view, constructed of reeds and mud brick. Aisha heard the gurgling of a nargileh and inhaled the smell of sweet tobacco.

  “Hey! Ferryman!” the mother called.

  There was no answer. Determined, she advanced until she stood before the opening to the hut. There was a lean, dark-skinned man seated languidly inside, holding the nargileh, before a glowing wood fire. It was clear he had deliberately refrained from answering them, not wishing for anyone to disturb his mood or draw him out of his den in such cold weather. He stopped sucking on his pipe and regarded them silently.

  “We want to cross the river,” said the mother.

  He stared wonderingly at them, resting his gaze a bit longer on Aisha, unsettled by her wide eyes and their captivating gleam.

  He said, “It would be foolish to try to navigate the river when it’s this rough. Come back tomorrow.”

  “We must cross today,” the mother insisted. “We’ve come a very long way.”

  “The river’s unreliable, ma’am. In weather like this all the spirits of the drowned awaken and come out of the cracks at the bottom. Who knows what could happen?”

  Aisha shuddered, imagining these spirits rising out of the water cold, pale, and sorrowful, surrounding her and her mother.

  “If you’re as skillful as they say you are,” said the mother, “you’ll pay no attention to such phantoms. That pipe gives you only smoke. I’ll give you a sultan’s riyal.”

  But the ferryman was thinking of something else. If the two of them went away now, this young girl would vanish from sight in a moment, and he would miss the chance to contemplate those eyes, to delight in that face at his leisure.

  The mother grasped the sleeve of the abaya that cloaked her body, untied a knot in the hem, and from its folds withdrew a silver riyal, clean and shiny. It was rare to come across such a coin in the midst of these isolated villages, most coins here being so coated with rust and dirt it was impossible to know whether they’d been minted in the era of the present sultan or in the time of the great Muhammad Ali. The ferryman reached out his hand, dazzled by the light reflected off the coin. Until then he had only ever seen small brass tokens—and seldom even those. He often took his fee in the form of a few bites of tomato or cucumber, or a single egg. Now he set aside the nargileh, put some wood on the fire to keep it going, and stood up, revealing himself to be tall and broad-shouldered, despite his thinness. He walked toward the tree and tugged on the rope, bringing the boat closer to shore, where it was stabler in the water. The mother turned to Aisha and said firmly, “Get in.”

  Aisha shrank back, shivering in the chill air, and the ferryman seized the opportunity to reach out and enclose her small, cold hand in his own, his fingers long and coarse. She lifted her feet and stepped into the unsteady boat. He turned to the mother, but she didn’t offer him her hand. He held the edge of the boat until she managed to climb aboard as well. He untied the rope, gave the boat a push, and then leapt aboard, water dripping from his trousers. The boat began to rock, addin
g to Aisha’s alarm, and she leaned over the side, prepared to vomit.

  “Don’t look at the water,” the ferryman told her kindly. “Look at the other shore and you’ll feel better.”

  Aisha raised her head. The opposite shore was still far away. There the peak of the western mountain could be seen, although fog had obscured much of its pitiless terrain. Aisha turned toward the ferryman, a melancholy, grateful smile on her face. Oh, Lord, he thought to himself, how did you bring forth such beauty from the belly of this poker-faced woman? I wonder how old she is—twelve? Thirteen? Or older? Her body was poised on the brink of its ripening and flowering phase; the buds had begun to emerge on her chest. In his heart the ferryman wished he could heave the mother overboard and keep rowing with this young girl, all the way to the river’s source.

  In the distance a weird howling could be heard, coming from the riverbank. It was none other than the wolf, which had followed her over all this distance and was standing on the shore.

  “There are no wolves on this side,” said the ferryman, perplexed. “And wolves don’t come around like this in the daytime. Lucky for us the river is between him and us.”

  The boat suddenly shook, and the current began to put it into a spin. The ferryman gripped the oars tightly, a series of whirlpools appearing on the surface of the water.

  “Hold onto the edge of the boat,” he said. “We should have kept off the river when it’s acting up like this. I warned you!”

  The boat became an insubstantial thing, something for the current to play with. Aisha’s eyes met those of the wolf; she saw its open mouth, its tongue hanging out. The ferryman struck at the water over and over, trying to keep the boat away from the whirlpools.

  Alarmed, the mother cried, “You’re going to kill us!”

  He plied the oars once more, as if he was trying to drive off the spirits that spun with the current. By some miracle the boat stayed upright. A sudden swell pushed it up against a ford composed of water hyacinth, whose roots snaked around the boat and brought it to a stop. Breathing hard, the ferryman thrust his oar into them. “You can get out here,” he said to them.

  In disbelief the mother said, “You want to drown us?”

  “It’s shallower than you imagine,” he replied. “If we stay in the boat, a whirlpool will open up and swallow us all.”

  Aisha stood up. She was afraid, both of the river and of her mother’s grimace. She hopped abruptly into the water and found herself standing on the bottom, which was yielding and slippery. She pushed aside the broad leaves of the plants and began to make her way toward the shore. She heard a splash as her mother jumped in behind her. She went on, pulling her feet out of the mud and setting them down again, holding onto the low-hanging branches of some ancient willows, the trees half in and half out of the water—they were what guided her to the riverbank. Her mother followed her, while the ferryman remained standing where he was, fearful, clutching his oars.

  The mother called loudly to him, “You’ll wait for us to come back.”

  “And where else would I go?” he replied. “There are whirlpools in the river and wolves on the opposite bank.”

  The mother turned to Aisha, who was shivering. In the same peremptory tone she said, “Let’s keep walking. The air will dry our clothes.”

  The mountain was close to the shore. They trod the middle of a rocky and desolate path, the journey dragging on until it no longer led anywhere. Aisha’s teeth were chattering. Clutching herself with her arms she discovered that her budding breasts were painful as well. The mother, who went in front, began to quicken their pace. Aisha was amazed—where did she get such stamina? They arrived at a burial ground set into the lap of the mountain, featuring a mixture of rectangular tombstones, crosses, and pillars with shattered capitals. Ground-level openings led to chambers hidden within the mountain. The wind cut through the fissures in the rock with a keening wail.

  The mother cast her eyes about, searching for something, some lost thing. A number of meager dwellings appeared, carved out of the rock. She stopped at last before a small house topped by a dome with faded paint, and rapped stoutly upon the wooden door, as if to awaken the dead. Presently, the door opened to reveal a bent old man. He raised his head with difficulty, as though unable to face the light of day. Black soot clung to his beard and his clothing.

  “Is it for such a visitation as this,” he said wonderingly, “that the weather is so cold? Come in.”

  Aisha hesitated, feeling as if she was about to enter the very hollow of a tomb. But her mother pushed her once more, and she stepped into a choking gloom, amid the smell of smoke from burning wood and rubbish. Mother and daughter sat beneath the dome, from which thin shafts of light trickled down. The man looked at their damp clothes and the dust that clung to them.

  “What a long journey you must have had,” he said. “Was there no avoiding it?”

  The mother pointed at Aisha and said, “I want you to put a tattoo on her arm.”

  “Well then,” replied the man, “if that’s what it’s to be, then let me bring a lamp.”

  He got slowly to his feet, fetched a tin receptacle with a blackened wick sticking out of the top, and lit it with a stick of firewood. It didn’t light the place up very much, but lent it a bit of life.

  “Why have you come here to the heart of the mountain,” he asked, “for the sake of a small tattoo you could simply have got at the Tuesday market?”

  “They told us you were the best,” was the mother’s terse reply, “and now it’s up to you to prove it.” She turned to the girl. “Hold up your arm.” She bit back Aisha’s name before speaking it. Aisha still trembled, but she drew back the shawl that covered her head and exposed her arm with its pale and tender skin, unblemished by the sun.

  “And what image do you want to put on this little arm?”

  “Make it the sign of the holy cross,” said the mother, “and beneath it write ‘Mary.’”

  Aisha gasped and stared at her mother, eyes wide and fearful, but the mother paid her no attention. She went on giving instructions to the tattoo maker:

  “I want it to be large and clear, but it must look faded, as if it had been drawn on her skin years ago—practically as if she’d been born with it.”

  “That will take a great deal of precision, but you’ve come to the right man. Where are you from?”

  “From al-Bayadah,” said the mother quickly.

  She was lying, as the man certainly knew. He was still examining Aisha’s arm, looking for the most suitable place to put the tattoo.

  “I know everyone at al-Bayadah,” he muttered. “I’m the one who tattooed all the baptismal crosses on their skin. I know everyone from al-Badari, too, and Deir al-Jabrawi, and even Shatab. Just from your appearance I can tell you two are from Beni Adi or Beni Khalaf—am I right?”

  Aisha looked into the man’s eyes and found that they resembled those of the wolf that had turned up on the riverbank, eyes that sought to penetrate the abaya concealing her body.

  “You ask too many questions, tattoo maker,” said the mother. “Get on with your work, and there’s your fee.”

  To Aisha’s amazement, her mother once again brought forth a silver coin to work its magic. Where had she got all these glittering coins? The man bit the coin to ascertain with his teeth that it was genuine, then put it carefully into his pocket. From a corner he fetched a packet containing the tools of his trade: pieces of mostly blackened metal, of which only the sharpened points still gleamed. He opened a small jar in which was some dark-colored substance with a penetrating odor, a mixture of zinc and powders extracted from minerals found in the mountain. He alone knew the secret of how to mix them. He took Aisha’s arm firmly in his grasp.

  Aisha turned to her mother with her eyes full of tears, and for the first time since that morning she cried, “Mother!”

  But her mother looked back at her impassively. Aisha felt the needle’s bite as it pierced her skin. She neither wept nor cried out, but she
wished the man would loosen his hold on her a little.

  “Try to relax,” he told her. “The more you relax, the less pain you’ll feel.”

  Aisha turned her face away from his foul-smelling breath to gaze at the walls hewn from the veins of the rock, and at the soot that covered them. The pain grew worse, and she tried to free her arm, but his fingers kept hold of her in a powerful grip. Fires of pain ignited throughout her body, and she began to weep quietly. The tattoo maker did not pause, but went right on with the procedure, killing off the living cells with the point of his awl and replacing them with that mixture of zinc and mountain metal. Aisha’s arm turned red, and a blue tint began to creep in among the whorled cells of her skin.

  All at once Aisha remembered that moment of pain she had felt on meeting her father’s fixed, expressionless stare. She had gasped and frozen in place, the men belatedly noticing her presence in the “washing” room, and then pulling her away. The sharp point wielded by the tattoo maker had awoken all the hidden sufferings she had been keeping back: her father’s death, the loss of the protective maternal embrace when another man entered her mother’s bed.

  A kind of paralysis spread through her arm and shoulder, and all of her left side. At last the tattoo maker let go of her arm, but the pain went on and on.

  “See for yourself,” he said to the mother. “A magnificent cross, with three more crosses at the tips. It will swell a bit, but when the swelling goes down the cross will be there for life.”

  “We must leave now,” was all the mother said.

  Her strength gone, Aisha stood up and nearly fell to the floor. She leaned against the wall.

  Watching her, the man felt sorry for her. “She needs to rest,” he said.

  “We haven’t time.”