The Sudanese Woman

The Sudanese Woman Translated by Judith J. Radke Arizona State University "I have destroyed difference. Between the faces of my self and the faces of others." MAYAKOVSKY Up there on the terrace, the Sudanese woman was dying. . . . When I found out about it, later, part of my flesh was stripped away, a bright light wavered. And then I felt a sudden tormenting guilt because I'd forgotten her for periods of time, because I hadn't been there to help her. I imagined her last breath, too slight to measure, growing still lighter so it wouldn't weigh heavily on those around her. That fragile breath gathering one last time in her ample body, rising upward from her dark and fertile clay. That breath floating then across her terrace, before it flew over the swarming city crowds which had once filled her with terror ; dissolving, finally, a distance away, at the edge of the desert. It was from her husband, porter of the small ten story building — a dignified man, scarred, gentle — that I'd finally received permission for her to come down from her terrace for a walk in the streets of Cairo one afternoon. Since they'd come from the Sudan — that was more than twenty years before — the only places in the city she'd known were perched high above the streets, places from which she could contemplate the ever-increasing multitudes below from a distance. Half veiled, huddled back in the taxi, she'd crossed the city only three times. First, when they'd arrived, and then twice when they'd changed terraces. Moving up from the working class suburbs to the heart of the city, the porter had improved his social status little by little. He even had an interest in the tiny café, crammed with chairs and tables spilling out onto the dead-end street, tucked away on the bottom floor of the building where he was supervisor. Getting them to accept the excursion wasn't easy. Since he trusted in those customs and prejudices which consider women to be fearful and childish, as did his wife, I'd surprised them, both of them, with my suggestion . She'd refused, at first, with a mixture of constraint and warmth. I insisted. 81 82Rocky Mountain Review "She's afraid," he said. "We'll go together. We'll go hand in hand." I described our future comings and goings, the passers-by, the store windows. . . . Finally, I saw her eyes sparkle. I was close to thirty at the time; she, eight or nine years older. The many and varied strata of my daily life gave me questions and choices; her life was rooted in a single uniform layer. But I felt she was so vibrant that I had an obsessive desire to tear her from an existence in which her brightness would slowly dim. Her five children were different, especially her daughters, who knew the outside world. But they didn't talk to her about it. As for her, she didn't inquire. Two little girls were still going to school, the third did needle work for an embroiderer who worked at home, an apartment several blocks away. It seemed an accepted fact that the Sudanese woman's life, cut off from all activity, would unfold to the end in this isolated space fixed between sky and asphalt; that, sheltered from all inclement weather, the skein of her days would unravel as if she were on a raft whose course she would never consider changing and of which she would never complain. Her family had a tender, distant respect for her. She often made me think of those rocks smoothed by water and time which are embedded — unchanging and tranquil — on the edge of the beach; while the sea's movement keeps on tumbling pebbles and shells against them, transmitting to them the vibrations, the metamorphoses, which make them akin to all living things. With a burst of loud laughter that shook his entire being and displaced his turban (he straightened it before he answered me), the porter had complied with my request. "Remember, I warned you. Don't say I didn't warn you." Through...