Mother of All Pigs Read online

  When Mansoor heard the sound he ran excitedly to his grandmother and hung on her apron. “She’s still hungry, Jadda.” Together, in the kitchen, they measured feed and stirred it carefully. Mansoor fetched the bowl of water and they went into the reception room. Half hidden behind his grandmother’s legs, the child watched wide-eyed as the pig sloppily demolished yet another enormous meal. Sometimes the pig fell asleep with its head in a metal bowl, but it seemed to the boy as though the animal kept a half-opened eye on the reception room’s doors in anticipation of its next meal.

  Of course, the more the pig took in at one end, the more it expelled at the other. To Mother Fadhma, the relationship was completely disproportionate. Although she cleaned out the room every morning and again at night, gathering up the soiled straw into large plastic bags and spreading out the fresh supplies that Abu Za’atar brought under cover of darkness each evening, she was unable to keep up. Even in the most remote area of the house the smell would engulf her, and she would rush for the squeegee-mop and ammonia. After a couple of days, however much she worked and meticulously checked her slippers, the smell clung to her clothes and followed her everywhere. Embarrassed and fearful that the secret guest would be discovered, she stopped going out.

  This provided a convenient excuse to put off friends who were accustomed to visiting for morning coffee. They were told that Mother Fadhma was ill and in need of peaceful recuperation. If they commented on the pungent odor, it was passed off as an unfortunate problem with the new house’s drainage system. No amount of explanation would make the smell go away, and when the wind blew in from the river in the west, instead of the crisp, clean air that normally filled the town, a rankness that defied description emanated from the Sabas home. Strongmen acted like girls and drew their keffiyeh headdresses over their faces and fled the dreadful stench.

  The constant cleaning and feeding disrupted Mother Fadhma’s routine, and she became forgetful. Laundry ended up in the wrong drawers; food was burned. By the end of the week, she forgot to lock the reception room doors. She had been drying herbs on the back kitchen terrace and needed something from her room, when she noticed that the reception room doors were open. She was confused. Even unlocked, they should have remained closed. Then she realized: the pig had used its precocious snout to press down on one of the handles. It had been watching her all the while, biding its time until she made a mistake.

  In a panic, she retrieved a broom from the kitchen and began to search the house. Samira had taken baby Fuad out for a walk, so Mother Fadhma faced the crisis on her own. Stealthily, the old woman entered the living room. With nowhere for a pig to hide, everything was as it should be. Her husband’s stern expression from his frame urged her on. She checked the front door. Fortunately it had been locked, or by now most of the town would have gathered to admire the bizarre apparition in the Sabas yard. Hearing a noise, she rushed into the kitchen, but there was nothing; the door to the yard was closed. The back terrace was another potential worry. When she looked all she saw were the herbs she was drying outside in the sun. She shut the door to the terrace, locked it, and returned to the hall.

  One bedroom door waited like a sentry. She was reminded of one of Al Jid’s apocryphal stories. A pagan envoy went to Mecca to pray for rain. He came out of the desert at exactly the wrong moment, during the twilight transitional period between the many gods of old and the solitary God of Muhammad. After the envoy prostrated himself, a voice ordered him to pick from the white, red, or black clouds on the horizon. Associating the darkest cloud with a heavy storm, he chose wrong and inadvertently condemned his idolatrous race to death. Mother Fadhma understood the story’s real-life applications. With the breakdown of accepted codes, a bad choice was as easy to make as a good one, and usually it was irreversible.

  She made the Orthodox sign of the cross over her chest and, clutching the broom, entered her daughter’s room. Bright light streamed in through the window. Against the walls, two single beds were neatly made up. Samira’s nightgown was folded on the pillow at the head of one of them. On a table, a single red plastic rose stood in a cheap brass Indian vase. There was nothing out of place in her room or the bathroom. In Mansoor and Salem’s room, Fadhma made a thorough examination underneath the bed, in the closet, and inside the toy chest. There was only one place left. She gently pushed open the door to Laila and Hussein’s bedroom.

  Because of the baby and Laila’s migraines, the curtains were always drawn. Mother Fadhma switched on the light and nearly fainted. Fuad’s clean clothes, kept on top of the chest of drawers, lay in a mess on the floor. Laila’s jewelry box had been overturned, the contents scattered among the broken fragments of two china figurines of braying camels she received as a wedding present. On the carpet in the middle of the room, a large red stain oozed like blood from a trampled tube of makeup. Nearby was a crumpled silk blouse that Fadhma, trembling, held up. One arm had been completely bitten off. She folded it neatly and put it away. Maneuvering cautiously around the baby’s crib, she opened closet doors and thrust the broom into corners, discovering nothing. Only the bed was left. She lifted the skirting at the edge of the bed frame. Underneath in a nest of clothes and torn children’s books, their animal guest from hell was nibbling on a baby’s rubber bib.

  Mother Fadhma knew she would have to account for the destruction of the room, and she was fearful of the consequences and annoyed with herself for allowing it to happen. She was so upset that, for once, her passivity disappeared and she brought the broom down hard on the bed, over and over again. When she stopped, the room was utterly quiet except for her rasping breath. Unsatisfied, she hit the bed again and again, and still there was nothing. She crouched down and craned her neck to get a better view. Undisturbed, the pig was sniffing one of her daughter-in-law’s sandals.

  Fadhma wondered why whenever her brother was involved, she was the one who suffered. Using her full weight, she pushed the bed away from the wall. The legs scraped against the tile floor, but the sound was nothing compared with the pig’s high-pitched squeal as the broom came down hard on its backside. It rose up, shaking free bits of torn paper and cloth, and squared off against its assailant. Mother Fadhma was sure it barked like a dog before it charged. With the agility of a woman twenty years younger she vaulted up onto the bed.

  When Laila and the boys came in from school, they found an old lady with a broom acting as the last line of defense between a prowling pig and the vegetable cupboard. Red in the face, Mother Fadhma was sweating profusely. “This one,” she wheezed, “is ruled by gut alone.”

  After that, the pig was moved to the farm and the operation became more professional. Instead of allaying her fears, the meat’s popularity only made her apprehensive. Now, in front of Al Jid’s portrait, she closes her eyes and calls out to him, “Do not forsake us. Do not forsake us. Do not forsake us. Do not forsake us.”

  The words are a mantra. In an intensity of belief that burns white hot, all she can hear is her beloved’s voice: “Eat meat and drink wine rather than partake of the evil of your brother’s flesh. If you meet the evil of the world with good, then your own passions will not devour you.”

  She perceives him quoting, as he often did, their mystical ancestor, the starving desert hermit Saint Sabas, whose arcane pronouncements were always filled with references to food. If she applied this advice to her relationship with her brother or Laila, life would be easier. But her dead husband still hasn’t told her how the family might escape the envoy’s fate and the approaching devastating storm.

  7

  No matter how often the businesses on either side of the butcher shop have been painted, the cracking asphalt, gravel, dirt, and garbage give the cramped parade of single-story buildings a uniformly grubby appearance. From his stool behind the counter, Hussein gazes onto the street. With the busiest period of his day over, he’s glad to be sitting down. In the morning, the wives of farmers and tradesmen who prepare substantial midafternoon meals come in early, and the cheaper m
eat sells quickly. They are an unpretentious bunch, loud and chatty. When he first started the job, Hussein exhibited the suspicion of a man who spent a limited amount of time among women. The army had not prepared him for his female customers’ ribald jokes and vigorous haggling; but in time they wore down his natural reticence.

  As he got to know them better, the women confided in him and he kept abreast of anniversaries, engagements, and baptisms, any occasion that could bring additional revenue to the shop. He also found himself becoming more sympathetic to the needs of the community and charged less or sometimes not at all. “He has a sixth sense,” remarked the poorer women of the town.

  But Hussein has no special talent for divination. He guesses rising or falling family fortunes from individual purchases and offers assistance if necessary. In this he resembles his father, except that he gives freely without sermons or proverbs. More important, he assists the less fortunate without starving his own.

  He is about to reach for a cigarette when the arrival of a veiled woman outside the store stops him. Hussein knows she is still deciding on whether to come in and won’t do so until he’s alone, so he orders Khaled to leave his comic book and clean the yard. Still, the woman hesitates outside. Rising from the stool, Hussein goes to the door.

  “Please, the lamb is gone,” he says, “but we have goat.”

  She is not a regular customer. Many Muslim women use the butcher’s, and although they are veiled and say little, he recognizes them, sometimes by a piece of jewelry or simply by the way they drape their robes. From her manner, the woman is clearly nervous. Among the stricter Muslim families it is customary for the men to do the shopping. Religious rules, however, rarely apply to the poor, widowed, or abandoned. Hussein doesn’t bother with which category the woman belongs to. The scarf obscuring her face doesn’t disguise her need. She motions at the joint that she would like to purchase.

  When he gives her the parcel she pays in piastres, which he doesn’t bother to count. “This is too much,” he says, and deposits most of it back into a hesitantly outstretched palm. He would have charged nothing, but then she, beholden to him, would never return to the shop. In this way embarrassment is avoided and a way left open.

  The woman speaks in a near whisper, “Shukran jazeelan. Thank you very much.” A feeling of sadness lingers in the shop after her departure.

  Hussein sighs. He relies on his Fridays to be smooth and uneventful before a hectic weekend of selling pork. But today hasn’t been like any other. With Khaled in the back, Hussein thinks about the jar, but the sound of the bell jerks his hand away and he wipes the counter instead.

  A friend, Nabil, steps inside. He is around Hussein’s age and works on one of the larger farms that grow herbs for Western supermarkets. At one time many of the men in the town would have stopped at the butcher’s on their way home from praying at the mosque. Their numbers have all but dwindled except for Nabil, who regularly visits. Hussein doesn’t feel like smiling, but for Nabil’s sake he makes an effort. “Come in, come in.”

  “Word travels fast. Teenagers get excited,” Nabil says, and takes a cigarette from the pack Hussein proffers. “And there are fanatics among us, asking questions. This morning’s khutbah was particularly vitriolic. The sheikh is again calling for the town to be cleansed of un-Islamic elements. Although you were not personally named, many people thought of you.”

  After the two men light their cigarettes, Nabil speaks first: “They say the meat is succulent. Have you tasted it?”

  “It’s similar to human flesh.” Hussein is deadpan, then grins. “To be honest, I’ve not tried it.”

  “Truly?” Nabil leans closer, surprised.

  Hussein feels ashamed. He shouldn’t have tried to fool a friend and weighs more than a half kilo of chopped meat and refuses to accept any extra payment from Nabil. The two men argue back and forth, Nabil insisting and Hussein pushing money away. The laborer finally acquiesces when Hussein says, “Because you are my friend.”

  “And as your friend I tell you, Hussein Sabas, today might be your last chance to listen. I don’t know what’s planned but I thought I should warn you.”

  Hussein feigns indifference as he shakes Nabil’s hand and says, “Tomorrow’s another day.” After Nabil leaves, he suddenly becomes aware of the smell of meat emanating from the corners of the butcher shop, unremarkable in every respect, but tomorrow it will be transformed into a specialty deli—all because of a single pig. Gone are the days when a few pork cutlets were sold discreetly from under the counter. Now orders are filled, hams wrapped, and sausages stuffed for the weekend. Much of the work that he and Ahmad and his sons accomplish at the farm is done almost mechanically, with little physical and emotional effort on Hussein’s part. It is the passions running high in the town he finds difficult and draining. He sinks back down on his stool and stares at his hands and then at the floor.

  The discordant jangling of the shop bell rouses Hussein from his torpor. His first reaction is to tell the sheikh and three of his followers that they’ve come to the wrong premises; he never sells pork on Friday. However, the old sheikh’s steely countenance kills the whimper of sarcasm in his throat. The man refuses to look Hussein in the eye and speaks loudly, forcefully, as though preaching to a multitude.

  “It is time for you to consider the effects of your sins.” His booming voice shakes the narrow confines of the butcher shop. “Every one of them moves us further from the greatness that should be ours. Instead of walking the path of righteousness, we are victims of your decadence. Don’t confuse material advancement with moral good. I tell you now, what you are doing threatens our survival and yours.”

  He raises his walking stick to prevent interruptions, but it’s not necessary. Hussein couldn’t have spoken even if he wanted to. Despite the sheikh’s robes and scowling companions, he is struck by the similarity between the religious leader and his father. Certainly Al Jid was rarely bombastic. But the sheikh’s arrogance, the bullying of Hussein, makes the two men similar. Hussein intuitively knows that like his father, the sheikh believes that with the passing of the prophets, ordinary men can no longer be innocent bystanders in their own fate, reliant on soothsayers, gypsies, and fakirs. Abandoned on the earth, alone by themselves, they must act as agents of God’s righteousness, with every individual having a duty of faith and conscience, and if they failed, there would be inescapable ramifications—eternal and earthly.

  “Why have our people been forced into exile? Why are we the ones attacked?” despairs the sheikh. “From Syria to Iraq, Afghanistan to Chechnya, innocent Muslims are being slaughtered—entire families destroyed, homes and lands lost forever. We wander through the winter of our existence. Laish? Why? For what reason? What have we done?”

  He thunders again: “We live in the end of days predicted by the prophets. There is no turning back. As believers, we stand unafraid. We do what Allah demands because if we forgo the one true path, we remain miserable, mired in failure, because He has forsaken us. Allah has willed our misfortune, our suffering, our backwardness.”

  His words hang oppressively in the air—it is a grave accusation against all who call themselves Arab.

  “Think carefully on what I’ve said.” The stick again admonishes the butcher. “The time will come when actions will demonstrate the truth of my words. If you block our way, then you and your family must accept the consequences. What is the saying of the People of the Book? ‘You reap what you sow’?” It is a not so veiled threat against the once mainly Christian town. “No cult, no worm, not even the president of the United States, obstructs the will of Allah.”

  As quickly as they arrived, the sheikh and his followers file out of a shop that doesn’t even belong to Hussein. The owner, Khaled’s father, is so advanced in years that he is unable to take an active role in the enterprise. In fact, he had been obliged to continue long after he should have retired. His eldest son, after attending the university in Cairo, refused to take over the family business, and Khal
ed, his youngest, was regarded as too slow-witted to be responsible. It was with some happiness, therefore, that the elderly butcher offered the job to Hussein, who was in desperate need of one.

  “A man is lucky if his sons appreciate his handiwork,” the old butcher complained as he showed his new manager around for the first time. Hussein, reminded of Al Jid, agreed. The arrangement worked well. The butcher secured retirement and enhanced his status by doing a favor for a member of such a prominent family. When Hussein decided to sell pork and went to consult him, the old butcher said, “Strip the meat from the bone and the starving won’t be able to tell the difference.” Except for the new fridges, the shop hadn’t changed much since the old man’s day.

  Looking around, Hussein is gripped by conflicting emotions. He resents the sheikh’s officious manner and is so angry that his face has turned red. But his blush also contains an element of embarrassment and guilt. He does not want to be pressured into doing something he does not believe in; at the same time, his own conscience will not allow him to feel at ease with what he has done.

  He also wonders why they bother with him at all—and there it is again: that niggling suspicion that never really leaves him, that somehow they have found out about his military past. But he shrugs off these thoughts as he always does. If they did know they would come after him—not in broad daylight with rocks and a walking stick, but under the shield of night with a knife. No, Umm al-Khaanazeer, Mother of All Pigs, is responsible for the passion infesting the town, where pork is being sold and eaten, although never in his own home. Hussein is sure about that.

  So deep is his self-absorption that he does not immediately notice a man waiting by the shop’s screen door. And when he finally comes in, Hussein sees at once he’s not a customer, although he doesn’t recognize who it is straightaway. The bearded man, unkempt and dirty, wears old fatigues and heavy well-worn boots. After a curt nod he places two bulky, makeshift bags under the counter out of sight. Their shapes remind Hussein of the long distances he and his men covered by foot in the army, and the complicated weaponry they used under extreme conditions, which they learned to assemble wearing blindfolds.