Free God Dies by the Nile and Other Novels by Nawal El Saadawi Page B

of her milk floated around him, made him stretch his neck and close his lips over it tightly, and almost immediately he would feel the warm flow of milk in his mouth.
    As soon as he could pronounce a few words he called out to her. He named her Aziza, and whenever she heard the name she would turn her head towards him, and her eyes would say ‘Yes, Kafrawi.’ Every day he pronounced a new word, and she answered with a look in her eyes which said something different each time. Gradually they learnt to understand one another’s language. One day she complained to him that his father had beaten her with a stick several times as she went round and round tied to the yoke of the water-wheel. That day he experienced a feeling of hatred for his father, and refused to eat with him. His father tried to force him to eat by beating him with the same stick, but he refused obstinately and went to bed without supper.
    When his daughter Nefissa was still a small child she used to wonder at the way he would talk to the buffalo. ‘A buffalo can talk and understand just as we do,’ he said to her many a time. Nefissa herself had not yet learnt how to speak, but she too seemed to understand what he was saying to her, and she would assure him with a look of her big, black, knowing eyes. She nodded her head and laughed, and sometimes would even stretch out her small hand and try to play with his whiskers. He opened his mouth, closed his lips over her smooth little fingers, and pretended to bite. She gurgled with laughter whenever he did this, and quickly pulled her hand away. But one day he really bit her finger with his teeth, as though he was about to eat it up. She screamed with pain, and backed away from himin fright. And from then on she started to be afraid of him sometimes, especially when for one reason or another his face would suddenly turn dark and forbidding, and begin to look like that of the buffalo. The face of the buffalo could put fear in her heart also, just as did the face of Kafrawi. She often played with her and pulled her tail, but all of a sudden a change would come over her, very much like the change which came over her father’s face. Then her features no longer looked calm and resigned, but dark and angry. Her big eyes would be filled with a look which was very frightening, and at any moment she was capable of lashing out with her hoof, or butting at her with the head. On one occasion she even bit her badly on the leg.
    Kafrawi rubbed his forehead against the full udder of the buffalo, opened his parched lips, and took the black nipple into his mouth. He could feel the warm milk flowing down to his stomach. His lids became relaxed, and dropped softly over his eyes. But the milk continued to flow further down to the lower part of his belly, and the upper part of his thighs. He felt something fill up, become swollen and erect, like a strange organ which was not a part of his body. He pressed on it with the palm of his hand, trying to push it back, but it refused to yield. He watched it get out, breaking through the limits of his body and his will, like a part of him over which he had lost control. Slowly it crept over the soft udder, breathing in the smell of female, lapping up the familiar wetness, slid up into the inner warmth and was lost in a great stillness, likean eternity, like death. After a while it tried to slip out into the fresh air again where it could breathe more freely, but the hole closed itself closely about it, like strong fingers intent on choking it to death. It fought for its life, jerked with the mad spasm of an animal caught in a trap, erupted itself of all capacity to fight and collapsed, like tired eyelids on tired eyes surrendering to the deepest of sleeps.
    But a few moments later he opened his eyes again to the sound of a terrifying voice screaming out. The voice was not that of anyone human, whether man or woman. Nor was it the voice of some animal being beaten. It was a