Free The Wedding of Zein by Tayeb Salih

this to you—who’s the criminal dog who struck you?’ The women screamed and some of them began weeping. Ni’ma stood looking on from afar, silent, her eyes fixed on Zein’s face, the sullenness in them having been replaced by a great tenderness. ‘The doctor!’ said Hajj Ibrahim, and the words fell like water on fire. The women’s wailing died down. Mahjoub called out, ‘The doctor!’ Then Abdul Hafeez called out, ‘The doctor!’ and Ahmed Isma’il set off on his donkey to fetch him.
    When Zein returned from the hospital in Merowi after a stay of two weeks, his face was sparkling clean and his clothes a spotless white. When he laughed, people no longer saw those two yellow fangs in his mouth, but a row of gleaming white teeth in his upper jaw and another row of pearly dentures in his lower. It was as though Zein had been transformed into another person—and it struck Ni’ma, as she stood among the ranks of people come out to meet him, that Zein was not in fact devoid of a certain handsomeness.
    For a long time after that Zein could talk of nothing else but his trip to Merowi. He enjoyed it when his old friends— Mahjoub, Abdul Hafeez, Ahmed Isma’il, Hamad Wad Rayyis, Taher Rawwasi and Sa’eed the merchant—gathered round him and he would relate to them what had happened.
    â€˜Directly I arrived they took my clothes off and dressed me in clean ones. The bed was a splendid affair, the sheets as white as milk, and the stone floors so highly polished you slid around on the rugs’.
    â€˜Never mind about the rugs and stone floors,’ Mahjoub interrupted him banteringly. ‘What did they fill that great stomach of yours with?’
    Zein’s mouth trembled as though he were about to tuck in to a banquet. ‘Now you’re talking! Merowi Hospital’s food— there’s nothing like it. There wasn’t any sort of food they didn’t have—fish dishes, egg dishes, dishes of roast meat, dishes of chicken.’
    â€˜But aren’t the helpings in the hospital a bit small?’ Mahjoub again interrupted him. ‘How did you manage to get enough?’

    Zein gave a wide, knowing smile, revealing his new teeth. ‘Because my nurse took a fancy to me’.
    â€˜There is no god but God,’ exclaimed Abdul Hafeez. ‘You good-for-nothing, were you even flirting with the nurses?’
    Zein’s body shook with stifled laughter. ‘Oh yes, believe me she was quite a wench.’
    Hamad Wad Rayyis, who up to now had been listening and laughing but not saying anything, intervened with: ‘The Prophet bless you, Zein—give us a description of her.’
    Zein looked behind him as though frightened that someone might overhear him and lowered his voice: ‘God save us, men, she had quite a backside on her!’
    The thread of the conversation was broken for a time as the assembly rocked with laughter. When Hamad Wad Rayyis had recovered his breath—though vestiges of laughter still remained in his chest—he said: ‘What did you do to her, you rascal?’
    â€˜The wench was from Omdurman,’ Zein continued as though not having heard the last question. ‘She was smooth-checked without cuts.’
    Wad Rayyis crawled up close to Zein and repeated his question in another form: ‘And how did you come to know she had a large backside?’
    Zein immediately retorted: ‘Did they tell you I’m blind? Can’t I see what’s there right in front of me?’
    Mahjoub, delighted at the reply and looking at Wad Rayyis, said: ‘The scoundrel knows what’s what.’
    Zein put his hands behind his head, and leaned backwards slightly; then, with a mischievous smile on his face, he slowly said: ‘Do you want to know, men, what I did to her?’
    Eagerly Wad Rayyis said, ‘By the Prophet, Zein, tell us what you did to her.’
    Zein’s smile widened,