Read Online Love in the Kingdom of Oil by Nawal El Saadawi - Free Book Online Page A

flown from the mouth of the burning pipe. The fire spread to the jars of oil. They exploded one after another and tongues of flame shot into the sky.
    When she opened her eyes, her nose was full of smoke. The man was sitting in his place gazing at her. He imagined that she had stolen a cigarette from his pocket while he was asleep. Before he slept, he used to count his cigarettes, and the coins in his inside pocket. He used to hide the bottle in a place that was unknown to her. But smoke engulfed the place. It had crept over the houses of the village like a black mist.
    The newspapers appeared stating that the fire had come about because of the intervention of Satan. The people of the village raised their arms towards heaven, and stoned Satan. But heaven did not listen to their entreaties. Satan used to walk on the bridge. The women’s eyes used to stare at him through the shutters. Their bodies trembled inside their black
jallabas
. They would tie black scarves around their heads. One of them tied her scarf more tightly, twisting it three times. She knotted it above her forehead so that it looked like the head of a snake. She twirled round and kicked the ground with her feet. ‘Our Lady of Purity!’ The voices of the ladies rose, and the beating of the drums, the cries of the children, the cracking of sticks in the hands of the men, the croaking of frogs in the pond, the barking of dogs which came from here and there, and the dust rising into the sky. The universe filled with a black fog, which gushed over the land like a waterfall. It was neither liquid nor smoke, and you could not catch hold of it with your fingers.
    ‘Where have you hidden the bottle?’ said she, waking up suddenly from sleep. Her throat was chapped with thirst and there was a burning fever in her stomach. The man was lying down with his face to the wall. She slipped her hand under his head. All there was there was the stub of a burnt cigarette. She crept away on tiptoe. She opened the door and went out. The wind no longer felt like wind. When she stretched out her hand in front of her, it bumped into something solid. She retreated step by step until she re-entered the door backwards. It was a movement that her body had not been accustomed to perform since childhood. She used to walk forward with her face looking backwards, or go out of the door backwards. Her aunt would be standing in front of her, gazing at her with eyes that made her body tremble. And all because she had asked her, ‘Is it true, Auntie, that Satan walks on the bridge?’
    Her eyes would dilate. The storm was at its worst. The rain was pelting down and all the lights had been extinguished. All she could hear was the whistle of the wind. Her aunt’s voice resonated in the darkness of the night, ‘The only devils are the children of men.’
    Before dawn she heard the dogs barking, and the creaking of wheels combined with the whistling of the wind. The men pounced on her aunt and carried her to the cart. She jumped up and ran behind them. She stretched out her arm as far as it would go in order to hold her hand. Her legs sank up to the knees in the lake. The wheels cut through the black water and disappeared in the darkness. The dogs swam behind it. All that was visible of them were their oblong heads like a swarm of frogs. She plunged into the lake. Her ears filled with black mud and voices came from the bowels of the earth, ‘A woman who does not believe in the existence of Satan . . . She is mad, Your Majesty . . . An unbeliever . . . Yes, Your Majesty, unbelief and madness are the same thing.’
    By that time she was completely submerged. All that was visible of her in the twilight was an outstretched arm, all five fingers contracted, clinging on to a piece of congealed mud.
    Arms stretched out to her to pull her out. As they had pulled her out of the womb. Women’s faces surrounded her, brown and wizened. The wind pushed in to her chest with a high-pitched noise like a cry