I WOKE UP VERY EARLY THAT DAY. I COULD HEAR MY father repeating “God be praised” as he prepared to perform his prayers. Later he came past me:
“Your eyes look tired. What’s happened? Didn’t you sleep well last night?”
I nodded, turning the soap over in my hand, and began to look at my face in the mirror with its silver back peeling away at the edges, without replying to my father’s questions. I did not turn my head, but I realized that he had hung the towel round his neck and put on his sandals. He began to yawn, stretching his arms as far as they would go. As I soaped my face I heard my sister ask my father:
“What’s happened?”
“Nothing. Your brother’s face looks as though it’s been bleached; he definitely didn’t sleep last night. Do you know when he came home yesterday?”
“Yes. He wasn’t late.”
“You’re lying. You always tell lies, when it’s something to do with Nabil.”
I began to rinse my face with water, and though the conversation seemed to threaten a nasty storm, I felt that I was outside it all. I heard my sister say:
“I told you that he came home early last night. You just don’t want to believe it. Will you drink your coffee?”
“I don’t want any coffee. I don’t want to be poisoned. Can he tell me why his face is so pale if he went to bed early?”
I dried my face and turned towards him. I knew he was looking for a reason to explode. That is how he appeared every morning, doing nothing the whole time before breakfast except search for a pretext to unburden himself of his rage; today I represented his first attempt. He looked hard at me and then repeated his question, his lips quivering:
“If you went to bed early, young man, why is your face so pale?”
I circled round him, and when my shoulder was level with his I observed quietly:
“Facial pallor has a number of causes. It may be due to worms in the stomach, or a heavy meal the night before, or excessive smoking. And there are more serious causes, anemia for instance, TB, or the onset of hemiplegia.”
What I expected did not occur, for my father did not get in the least upset. Instead he gave me a sidelong admiring glance. Perhaps he was remembering that he had supported me for more than ten years so that I could enter the medical faculty, and here I was giving him scientific answers in all seriousness, which brought joy to his heart. But he did not want to give way so easily.
“You woke up early this morning. Did you give the call to the dawn prayer then?”
I had reached my room, and flung the towel over the bed. Without turning to face my father and sister, who were standing in the doorway, I answered in a calm tone:
“I woke up early to rob a grave.”
“To rob what?”
“A grave.” I turned and faced him, trembling. “To rob a grave. Yes. Is that strange? In the faculty we need a skeleton, and Suhail and I have been told to provide it.”
My father was still incapable of taking in the whole picture, and he stood there repeating without being aware of it:
“To rob a grave?”
“Yes, to rob a grave, and steal the skeleton of some man who has been dead more than twenty years because I want to study it.”
My sister closed the door between us and left me alone. When I could hear no sound on the other side of the door, I put on my clothes. The sack and shovel I had already prepared, and it was up to Suhail to provide a small pick. I bent down to pick up my things, but my sister opened the door before I could straighten up and gave me an affectionate rebuke:
“Why did you upset him, Nabil? You’re not yourself this morning. Why did you lie to him?”
“I wasn’t lying. I mean to rob a grave.”
My father had joined her, and was looking over her shoulder. I noticed that he was trembling, and then he burst out shouting:
“God curse the hour when I enrolled you in the medical faculty. You want to steal a corpse, do you? Thief! Godless sinner! Haven’t you read what God said in …?”
“I have. I’ve read all God’s Word, but God isn’t against the medical faculty. They require me to provide a skeleton, just as the sheikh used to require you to know the section ‘Ain Min.’”*
He gave me a look of disapproval for intruding into his past with this levity, then quickly came up with an angry question:
“Are all the students of the medical faculty going to rob people’s graves this morning? You won’t leave a single corpse in the graveyards! Tell me, are all the students going to rob graves?”
I threw the shovel into the sack, twisted it round my wrist, and went up to him:
“Certainly not! A skeleton costs seventy-five lire. Have you got seventy-five lire? That’s why Suhail and I mean to steal, because you can’t give me seventy-five lire, and his uncle can’t give it to him either!”
I pressed my lips together and glared angrily at him. He was gazing at me, completely at a loss, and I lifted the sack, thrusting it into his face.
“And now, let me go before the sun rises and gives us away.”
He moved out of my way, baffled, unable to take his eyes from my face. His mouth was hanging open, although he was incapable of uttering a word, as I passed him on my way to the door.
Suhail was waiting for me close to the corner. In the twilight before dawn he resembled a black ghost lurking in a corner to frighten a naughty child.
“Is it you?” he whispered in the gloom, and drew his arm through mine. I knew, without looking at his face, that he was as frightened as I was. We took a few steps, then he stopped.
“He hasn’t given you seventy-five lire, eh?” he asked in the tone of someone wanting to say that he too had been unable to obtain the seventy-five lire. I shook my head and then explained:
“I left everything till this morning. And apparently surprise prevented him from even thinking of it. So I went out, expecting him to shout to me before I left that he would give me the seventy-five lire. But he stood there, flabbergasted. What happened to you?”
Suhail said, nodding:
“My uncle thought that I wanted to fool him out of seventy-five lire, but when I assured him that that’s how things really were, he told me that he was prepared to pay the expenses of the living but not the cost of the dead. Then he said I was young and brave, so what prevented me robbing a grave and saving the money?”
We walked on a little, then turned into the street that led out of the city. I heard his whisper:
“So that’s how it is.”
“What?”
“We’ll rob a grave. The attempts at begging have failed. Your father would sell his own skeleton for less than seventy-five lire; as for my uncle, he’d sell his for the price of one breakfast. It’s no good, we must rob a grave.”
I stopped, and gripped his shoulder.
“Don’t say you’re afraid! If you are, go back, and I’ll go on alone.”
“I? Afraid? Ha! I’m not frightened. But I don’t like making my way through the end of the night to steal a corpse. How do you think you look, on your way to rob the dead?”
There was no doubt about it, he was frightened, more frightened than I. We walked on silently, our heads bowed. There was a cemetery outside the city, an old cemetery with low graves built out of brown earth. It was not walled, and was generally quite unguarded. It was a graveyard such as is found in some remote spot, inexplicably, as though it were the remains of an ancient battle between strangers who had come from afar and perished without anyone bothering to give them a proper burial.
Our steps had a funereal ring. When we approached the cemetery I felt my chest shaking, so violently was my heart beating, and I fancied that something, a ghost perhaps, was perched on my shoulder. I did not look at Suhail, out of fear that he would think that I was scared, and I seemed to hear the whistle of his breathing as he trod heavily and silently beside me.
“Here we are.” I spoke after I had gathered all my forces together, and shifting the sack from one shoulder to the other, I stood still. “We must choose a good grave.”
He did not reply. In the distance an ugly light was silently spreading above the top of the mountain. The incubus was still perched on my shoulder, and my chest was shaken by violent spasms. I turned to Suhail, who was gazing in front of him, motionless.
“Listen, Suhail! If you are frightened, let’s go back.”
He glanced at me for a moment, then walked in front of me up the slight incline to the cemetery. Panting as he climbed, he began to speak:
“I? Frightened? If you want, you go back. But I’ll carry on. What do you think of this grave? It looks solid, and old, and it’s large. Don’t you think it’s suitable?”
I didn’t expect Suhail to be so courageous. What he said caught me by surprise, and made me want to prove to him that I was equally brave.
“This one? It looks to me more like a bull’s grave, but it’s fine so long as it takes your fancy.”
As soon as I finished speaking I was terrified, and I made the sudden discovery that Suhail, too, was terrified, and that he was looking at me in utter disbelief that I could speak such ill of the dead. I was trying hard to put the sack on the ground and get out the shovel, but I had the feeling that the sack was too heavy to move and my arm was a numb, empty shell. I could hear Suhail whispering to himself:
“Seventy-five lire! Only seventy-five lire! For heaven’s sake!”
I saw him throw his small pick on the ground, take off his jacket with a nervous gesture, and turn to me:
“Don’t stand there like a fool. Let’s start before it gets any lighter. Don’t tell me you’re frightened! It was your idea.”
I put the sack down. Suhail had gone to work forcefully and quickly and had broken away the mound of earth. He leaned on the pick as I shoveled the soil away. We could both feel our blood beginning to flow again.
“There’s still the stone slab. What do you think? Shall we drag it away?”
I glanced at him as he panted for breath. In the light of dawn he took on a mythical aspect. “We’re almost there,” I said to myself, making an effort to appear normal. It was clear to me that Suhail was relying on my courage; at the same time, I had to earn my reputation in the faculty when Suhail related the event the next day. I felt the slab with my fingers, then raised my head to him.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to move it away. Let’s make a hole in it.”
“But we may break part of the skeleton.”
“No, when a corpse is buried they usually place the stone some way away from it. Haven’t you ever seen a burial in your life?”
He lifted up his pick with a curt “No.”
I took the pick from him when he tired, and he in turn took it from me. We worked quickly, out of fear that the columns of peasants would begin to reach the city. It was growing lighter, an ashen, cold, ugly light, and we each of us could make out the expression on his companion’s face without difficulty. So, come what might, we busied ourselves with the work.
Suddenly a small cry burst from Suhail. The head of the pick had made a small black hole in the stone and stuck itself into it. We raised the pick together, and he lifted his head and looked at me when our hands touched. I smiled and began to widen the opening as I felt him looking beyond me fearfully.
“You won’t be able to get it out of that little hole. You must make it wider,” said Suhail behind me, his voice trembling. I was gasping as I enlarged it, and I found it preferable to talk so that my fear would lose itself in the panting brought on by exertion.
“We won’t get anything out now. We just want to be sure that it’s there, and then we can widen the hole.”
“And which of us will stick his hand in?” he asked in a quiet but scared voice, while I began to clean the edges of the hole. It gave forth a strong stench of decay. I ignored his question.
“Who will put his hand in?” he repeated, and this time I stood up and faced him.
“Either of us. You aren’t afraid, are you? Do you know what’s inside? A skull like the ones that the students pick up every morning in the faculty. That’s all.”
“Then you put your hand in,” he said in a desperate tone. He was as terrified as it is possible to be, and had reached a point when he could no longer go on with the game. For my part, I could not imagine that we should give in after all we had achieved, so I gave a calm reply:
“Yes. I’ll put my hand in.”
I knelt down, put my arm through the hole, and groped inside the grave for several minutes without being able to feel anything. I stood up.
“I couldn’t reach the bottom. You’re thinner than I am. How would you like to put your arm in? You’ve seen with your own eyes. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
He glanced at me in silent doubt for a moment, then stepped forward, bent down till he was kneeling, and stretched his arm through the hole. His face was white, but then his color returned, and I guessed that he had found nothing.
“I haven’t got to the bottom,” he said with a certain cheerfulness. Meanwhile I bent down opposite him, saying:
“Bend your shoulder down farther. We mustn’t go back empty-handed. Try!”
Suhail slid his arm farther in, and began to squeeze his shoulder through as he lay on his side, stretched out, with his face touching the ground.
“Have you felt anything?”
He gave a jerky “No!” in reply.
I stood up, putting my hand on my hip. He was obviously keen, and making sustained, violent efforts.
I cannot recall what distracted my attention from him the next moment, but all of a sudden I was brought back to my surroundings by a terrible scream that did not stop. In the tide of swift fear that I felt flow through my limbs, I saw Suhail turn over, his face grazing the gravestone, as he made a hysterical attempt to pull his arm out of the hole. I glimpsed his eyes as I dragged at his other arm in an effort to free him, and I shall never forget the sight of them, stretched open as far as they could go. His blue lips trembled while he choked out the scream of a slaughtered beast between his teeth, and his whole body trembled on the stone as though the awful hand of an unseen demon was shaking him savagely. Even when I could get his arm out of the hole, he did not stop screaming. The jagged edges of the opening had cut deep scratches in his shoulder and forearm and they were beginning to ooze blood.
Without stopping those hideous loud screams, Suhail stood up, while I in turn had begun to shiver and had no idea what I ought to do. I tried to grasp his shoulders and shake him, but he was turning round and round, trembling as though he were having convulsions. All at once he fell silent, and it was as if he was not the person who had been screaming a moment before. Pressing his bluish lips together obstinately, he turned to face me. There was no color in his face, and his eyes were reddened circles. On his forehead beads of sweat mingled with the fine dust of the tombstone. He stared at me as though he were looking through me at some loathsome vision, but then he opened his lips and shouted in my face, forcing the words out between his teeth:
“My fingers! My fingers! I stuck them in its eyes!”
I was trembling, but more out of fear of Suhail than anything else. I gripped him by the shoulders and shook him fiercely, shouting:
“You idiot! This is an old grave … it’s more than fifty years old!”
He gave me a stupid look; clearly he had not heard me. He started repeating:
“His eyes … I stuck my fingers in his eyes!”
The rest of Suhail’s story is not very strange. And why not admit now that the idea was mine? And that it was not expected that in the first year of the medical faculty we should buy a skeleton? But we, Suhail and I, wanted to acquire a skeleton, so as to have the feeling that we had joined the medical faculty.
Suhail and I went back to the university that afternoon. I was ill. Suhail, however, began to tell the story to the other students, trembling like a leaf as he did so. In the days that followed, he continued to tell the story to anyone he came across, explaining in amazing detail how he had put his fingers into the eyes of the corpse. The university found itself obliged to expel him from the medical faculty after all hope of curing him had been abandoned. Everyone thought he had gone mad. I, for my part, transferred to the faculty of law after I discovered that I could not stand the sight of a skeleton.
Today, after more than seven years have passed since that incident, fate has proved that it was both just and stupid. I remember how Suhail’s uncle told me the next day that he hoped that Suhail would not be able to get to the cemetery, and expected that he would come back to him panic-stricken, after which he would give him the price of the skeleton. My father, on the other hand, praised God at length when he heard the story, and observed to my sister that the thieves had received their due reward from the grave and the dead man. Thus he came to believe that the grave we had desecrated was that of a saint and took to visiting it every dawn to receive blessing from its earth and sand and pray beside it.
Yes, it was both a just and a foolish fate. For only yesterday, after more than seven years had passed, I learned by chance the story of the graveyard we had visited.
It was not a real graveyard. It was a kind of wasteland belonging to a Turkish peasant who, during the periods of famine, had taken the trouble to construct earthen graves that were actually no more than covers for small storage spaces where he kept wheat and flour to avoid its being stolen or confiscated. The Turk had left a will that was only opened yesterday, when he died, and the secret was contained in that will.
Only yesterday, the heirs took possession of the ground to remove the graves and begin cultivating it.
The city’s newspapers published the news on their front pages.
______________________
* The Quran is divided into thirty sections for purposes of recitation, and each section is numbered according to letters of the Arabic alphabet. (Tr.)