Betraying Behita: Superstition and the Paralysis of Blackness in Out el Kouloub's Zanouba

At the climax of Egyptian author Out el Kouloub's novel, Zanouba, the reader is witness to a crime. We find ourselves in Matariyya, a village north of Cairo, in a somber bedchamber with a blind shaykh. It is the room where only a week before Zanouba, the novel's titular character, suffered a forced miscarriage in the final month of her pregnancy and lost her long-coveted male child. The women of the household are lined up in front of the shaykh—all except for Zanouba, who is still bedridden, and her co-wife, Mashallah, who is exempt from participating because she is menstruating. They prepare to swear on the Qurʾan their innocence in the matter of the miscarriage, as Zanouba's husband, Abdel Meguid, and her mother-in-law suspect foul play.