“Light of my eyes!” she cried and threw herself in his arms, but he was cold. He kissed her cheeks and hand in silence.
In the evening he told Magd al-Din about the city where he had spent all that time, white Alexandria, where foreigners from all over the world and poor Egyptians from all over the land went. He chose not to give his address to anyone. He said he would visit them from time to time. In the morning they could not find him at home. Hadya entered into a phase of more profound silence. Magd al-Din did his best to give her courage and urge her to preserve whatever light remained in her eyes. Little by little the mother was reassured, for Bahi was making an appearance from time to time, though sometimes at long intervals.
Then the people of the village noticed that a new building was being constructed with red bricks brought over from the kilns of Kafr al-Zayyat. They asked the construction workers about the house and its owners, and they said they knew nothing except that it was a government building. The house was being built outside the village limits on deserted land that no one owned. Then the mayor received an official letter stamped by the Islamic civil court in Tanta, requesting him to render assistance as it was requested of him by the representatives of justice in the new court that would be built in the village. By the end of the year the court had been built, and the mayor eagerly awaited the representatives of justice. When a sign was erected reading “The New Courthouse for Civil Law,” with the emblems of justice — the scales and a hand placed on the Quran — beneath it, the mayor saw that the time had come for him to render assistance to the representatives of justice. The court judge, usher, and clerk came to him, and the clerk presented the mayor with a new letter in which it was requested that the mayor assign two watchmen to guard the court. The mayor gave the representatives of justice an elaborate banquet.
The courthouse was a one-story building. It had three rooms, a hall, and a bathroom. The court began to accept cases. The first complaint came from an extraordinary woman. Khadra, daughter of the deputy mayor, was complaining that her husband had beaten and insulted her.
Khadra was one of the village’s beauties. Her husband was her dreaded cousin. To the amazement of the villagers, the court summoned her husband. That was the first time in their life that they had heard of a woman taking her husband to court. It had never happened once in the history of the village. The husband did not go to court, and he decided that the wife would not come back to his house, even if she were to withdraw her complaint. The court, through the clerk, summoned him again to appear within a week. He did not, and the judge ordered that Khadra be granted a divorce. The village was shaken to its foundations by this unheard-of verdict. The judge disappeared from the courthouse for a week. Bahi appeared in the village streets for a few days, then disappeared again. People saw Khadra’s father, a broken man, walking in the street in shame. How could a woman complain to the government about her husband? What courage! And what heresy!
It was natural after that that men would give their wives strict orders not even to pass in front of the courthouse. A whole year passed without a single complaint or verdict. So people were reassured, especially since Khadra had disappeared from the village and her ex-husband had married an even better wife. The truth was slightly different. It was simply that the story of Khadra and her husband was now past history. Another woman lodged a complaint asking for justice against her husband, who had seized her inheritance. The judge ruled that she be given her inheritance back and granted her a divorce since the husband was not faithful to his legal duty. The village was shaken again.
Then, at intervals over a long period of time, a number of men were surprised to receive summonses to appear before the court. The husband would go, not knowing what awaited him. Before going, he would beat his wife, pressing her to admit that she had lodged a complaint against him. The poor, helpless wife would deny doing anything of the kind. Then the husband would go and be surprised not only that his wife had complained, but that the judge knew intimate details about his personal life as well. Thereupon the husband would fall to pieces and not wait for the verdict, which in a number of cases was simply that he should go back and treat his wife better. He would go back and divorce his wife without any discussion. In three years, twenty women were divorced. Bahi would disappear and then reappear riding a gray horse along the canal or the edges of the fields. The painful story of the vendetta was over and done with. The village’s biggest preoccupation now was the court that had so shaken families and homes and whose activities extended to the neighboring villages, especially in matters of inheritance.
It turned out that dozens of women had lost their rights because of husbands or strong brothers. The court always found in favor of these wronged women. Then came an ominous day when the court summoned the mayor himself.
The mayor went, thinking that at most, the court needed some help carrying out the verdicts. But the judge did not receive him in his chamber, but rather in open court, and did not permit him to sit down. True, he was a mayor, but the court had its own traditions that applied to great and small alike. The shocking question to the mayor was whether he was abusing his wife. It was she herself who had lodged the complaint that he did not treat her well, that he did not take her the way the sharia, the Islamic civil law, ordained, but that he took her from behind.
You can imagine the mayor as he sprang forward, as he attacked the judge and the usher, held back only by the guards who had gone with him. They prevented him from making that mistake. They were in a state of great surprise and fear. The mischievous among them hid their smiles.
The mayor left the courthouse without answering any questions. He rode his horse and raced the wind. Halfway home he stopped. The vast open space and the green fields around him restored his feeling of calm. This village had been calm throughout its history. The calm was broken only by the vendetta between the Khalils and the Talibs, which was over and now remained only as a memory. He did not think that similar events would befall any two families after the tragic end of the Khalils and Talibs. Then came this court, which had shaken the village and unearthed all its heinous deeds. The judge, usher, and clerk must be killed and the courthouse demolished. He must contact the authorities requesting that the court be moved somewhere else. It was Satan’s court. But his wife could not have done that. Or could she have? He had tried more than once to sleep with her in a non-customary manner, but she kicked hard and he never tried it again. He had been an impetuous young man. It was impossible that his wife would remember that now and complain against him.
In a few minutes the mayor reached his house. He stood in front of his wife, shaking with anger, nearly breaking into thousands of little pieces. He would die if he did not do something about it. Those dogs, the guards, would spread the news. But she was his beautiful, rich wife from a great family, and he truly loved her. He broke down in tears before her and said nothing. He slept, asking God for death.
His wife was the daughter of one of the notables in the next village. The news made it there instantly. In the evening, her father and his men came. The father said in an almost inaudible voice, “In the morning, we’ll go to the court. If there is a complaint, we’ll kill our daughter and that’ll be the end of that.”
In the morning there was no one in the courthouse. Its doors were wide open. Even the sign on the door had been taken off and was lying on the ground. By noon, policemen from the governorate were there, and the village was filled with laughter and crying. It was not a real court. It was just a trick invented by a devil to ruin the village. The village went to sleep that night wondering who that devil might be.