by Edna O'Brien
We stood, a little embarrassed as she looked and noted our names and the mat we slept on. The next evening more hands went up and by the following day we were nine in all. We guessed what it was for. A husband-to-be had excelled himself in battle and the reward for that was marriage to a girl who was not with child.
In the morning we were brought for viewing. We stood in a huddle and then she told us to spread out and the young man walked among us, appraising us as if we were cattle. He was shortish, his face partly uncovered and one of his eyelids drooped. He did not look directly at anyone. Then on the third circuit, he lingered where I stood and I knew that he expected me to smile, except that I didn’t. Afterwards he and the emir’s wife went to another room, while we waited, unsure, because who could say which was worse, meeting the requirements of one man, or the six or seven who plundered us nightly. Then she beckoned me into another room and on the way congratulated me at how lucky I was.
She sat me down but he and I did not exchange a word. Nevertheless, we were to be married.
Afterwards, she gave me my bride money and told me to go to the store and buy things. I bought a clean cotton wrap, sanitary towels, and a packet of biscuits to share with my friends.
When I crossed to our dormitory, my friends were cold with me. Why me and not them? Buki was close to tears.
‘I’ll come and find you in the garden,’ I whispered, but she did not answer.
The ceremony was very brief and very simple. I was put standing next to the mosque as the emir recited prayers and read verses from the Qur’an, which I repeated after him. My husband was not present.
It was dark in our hut when I met him. The bed we sat on was low and he took my hands and he put them between the palms of both his hands in gratitude. Then he told me his name, which I repeated and I told him mine. Mahmoud. Maryam. I knew that I did not love him.
He gave me a gift of a veil, which they must have looted from one of the shops in a town before torching it. It did not smell of burning. How many girls had looked at it in a shop window and dreamed of owning it and where were those dreams now. Lost in an infinite nowhere. And where were those who had dreamed them.
He was hesitant, not like the brutes, and I knew that I would have to encourage him. He removed my clothes and then his own, placing his hands all over my body, as a blind person might and that was his way of claiming me as wife. Maryam. Mahmoud.
It was lashing outside and we could hear the rain dripping off the grass fringing of the roof as we sat postponing the next minute and the next. Then just before getting into the cot bed he dragged something from under it. I thought it was a gun, as many of the others kept their guns as a boast, while they jovially raped us. Instead it was a long wired cord with metal snouts that all of a sudden pulsed into light. Lights came willy-nilly, purple and blue and magenta, all along the floor, on his hooded eyelid and on my hand that searched for his.
In the morning he touched my lips, delicately with his forefinger and he told me his mother’s name. Onome. She was the person he loved most. He had enlisted to save her from starvation. The Sect were always scouring villages to recruit young men of a fighting age, promising them big sums of money. One night, they came to his village and he was soon persuaded. He hid the money in the granary, where he knew his mother would find it, but he did not say goodbye.
‘And you left her?’
‘I belong here now,’ he said, as if he were talking to one of his commanders.
‘What happened to your eye?’ I asked. And he thought for a moment before answering. As a young boy in his village, he had been caught in a skirmish between Muslims and Christians and accidentally a stone that was intended for someone else caught his eyelid and tore it.
‘Can you see?’ I asked.
‘I can see you,’ he said.
We went about our various duties and never met until evening, when I served his supper and watched, sitting a little apart, while he ate. Then I ate. Then he prayed.
‘But you have not converted,’ he said.
‘No, I have not converted,’ I replied, but I was not as afraid of him as I had been of the others.
Sometimes he was gone on raids for days, weeks, never saying where he had been or how bad the fighting was. He would return hungry for food, for comfort, for rest. In those times, back from battle and readying for the next one, he was like a dreamer, saying little, as if he wanted to separate the two worlds, the two hims. He worked over in the carpentry shed and made a shelf for above our bed, where we put the torch, my broken comb and the razor with which he trimmed his beard. He loved his beard and talked to it.
It was mayhem in the camp. A truck was driven in and the dead bodies laid out in a line, next to the mosque. Wives were allowed to search for their husbands, but there was to be no crying. Some men had their faces blown off, so that the women had to identify them by a boot or some scrap of clothing.
Mahmoud was not among the fallen. I did not love him, but I did not wish him dead.
He was brought back a few evenings later, carried into the hut and laid down. A soldier held a lantern above him and in the swaying light I saw his right leg, broken and skinless, with matter oozing from it. The male nurse who had brought him also had some ointments and bandaging, but said it would be better to leave the wound open to the air and to discourage him from itching it.
‘What if his leg has to come off?’ I asked.
‘Then he is no longer any use for combat,’ was the reply.
He lay there in a gloom, beyond reach. Sometimes he talked to himself, but he did not talk to me. The wife of one of the elders would come to dress him and I was sent out. I watched through the window hole. I watched her pour water from a plastic bowl, all over him several times, then she dried him, dried his hair and his beard, the beard that he now tugged at in the night. She brought him a soup made from scraps of meat and bone. He was so feeble he slurped it. He drank tea brewed from flowers, which she brought back from the village. Older wives, such as her, were allowed out, beyond the frontier, but I never yearned to go, because I knew that a glimpse of the outside world would break my heart.
Feeling lonely and unwanted, I used to walk around and hope I might meet one of my old friends. One day I saw Buki in the gardens, in her khaki smock, her face scrunched, her whole being intent on pulling up tangled roots of trees, to make a new patch of garden. Twice she straightened up and lifted her face, but she did not acknowledge me. I wanted to tell her I was having a child, but that was not possible. I had told no one.
It was weeks later and still he had not recovered. His mind wandered. I could hear him talking to himself, or to this creature on his lap that he cradled, as though it were a child. I had no idea what it might be. I longed to take out the string of fairy lights that had marked our wedding night and one evening, to my surprise, he told me to get them. His leg was stretched out on a stool, but I could see that it was suppurating.
‘I’m an animal … I am an animal,’ he said, fiercely. He could not contain it any longer. His unit had raided the village he was taken from. He and three others were sent on ahead, across the sacred grove. The weathered mud huts were quiet in sleep, his mother in one of them. Within minutes, the entire settlement was crumbling. His first cousin tried to escape and when the commander saw him skulking away, he was apprehended. Mahmoud was then ordered to kill that cousin with a knife. ‘Turn the knife three times,’ the commander said and so he turned the knife three times, as if chopping timber.
Then his mind cracked and he began to speak senselessly, the nine daughters of some god and the image of a beheaded head. ‘A beheaded head is a wild and dripping thing.’ It was what he held, it was the creature that he had been conversing with all those weeks and that he cradled in his arms.
‘Shut up, Mahmoud, or they will shoot you.’ I knew that if they heard him he would be brought out for a beating, or worse. I kept trying to hush him. A beheaded head is a wild and dripping thing. He would never come back from this d
elirium.
‘I am having a child and they will shoot us both,’ I said. That shook him. He stopped his raving and told me to fetch a plastic bag from under the bed. There were folded newspapers inside it, each one containing an envelope filled with money. It was the money they had been given after successful raids, to instil in them the notion that they were free, which they were not. The notes were dirty and frayed. They smelt of flesh. I did not count them.
‘But this is freedom money,’ I said holding up one wad.
‘Hide it … tell no one,’ he said and he stroked my cheek in a wan memory of how we had once been.
Then he began to laugh, wild, unruly laughter. He remembered a joke. As a reward for his bravery, he was invited to sit at the front of the truck next to the driver and that way when they returned to base, he was welcomed by his comrades as a hero.
It was the last time we were together as man and wife.
THE PAINS STARTED IN the early morning. Mahmoud was not there. He lived away from me ever since the night he confided his perfidy. He slept in a hut near the rampart, along with other watchmen who were no longer any use for combat.
Once I went into labour, women were sent for. They were from villages that the Sect had taken, but they were unharmed, because of their skill at delivering babies.
There were about nine women in the group, all with guns, which they put down.
It was in an open space with a straw roof, empty rice bags on the floor to serve as cloths and full bags of cement in one corner. They brought various things – rags, pails of water, small sticks finely shaven and bundles of leaves. I learned later that the leaves were both a poultice for my forehead and also for brewing, to make a drink when the pain was extreme.
They were talking and cackling and fussing about, already arguing among themselves as to what was best to do. One woman, whose name was Rashidah, dampened my lips and told me to be brave.
The fighters were already out in the yard, shooting their guns in the air in expectation. She told me that the real jubilation came with the birth, that is, if it was a boy. A future fighter. If it was a girl, there was less gunfire and no jubilation.
The pain began to get worse and to ease it Rashidah dipped the shaven sticks in a pan of water and sprinkled me with it. Some of the others were half crazed, shouting prayers and incantations. Every time I let out a roar, the vexed woman gripped my hair and said it was a mother’s lot. They were running around, disputing with each other and then one put stones on my chest, to hurry up the labour. Pepper was heated on the fire they had made outside and then a warm paste of it was spread over my face. I was suffocating. I began sneezing and begged to be brought outside.
When the wall of water burst from inside me, I thought everything would be easier and Babby would uncoil and swim out of me like a fish and then flounder along the floor.
I am moved over and positioned on the bags of cement, so that my buttocks are raised. It was like I was being sawn in two. I could feel the ball of its head, like a metal hoop, making up its mind to come out, but then retreating. This happened many times. They said I would have to count the time between the contractions and hold my finger up. They counted by stamping their feet. The brew I had drunk had made me woozy. They were shouting at me to push and then two of the women slid their hands inside, to haul the head out. I felt the shoulders, first one, then the other, cleaving their way, and then I heard it bawl and vent its rage on the abhorrent place she was born into.
It came out in a wet whoosh and once the cord was severed and knotted, it was held up for me to see. It was a girl. There were hollers of dismay – ‘It is not a male child.’ Two women, whose job it was to announce the birth, went to the door, each holding up a black rag and the fury was instantaneous. There was no cheering, only sporadic gunshots, and men dispersing. I did not know where Mahmoud was, but wherever he was, the honour he had hoped for was not to be. Blood was oozing from me, followed by small clots that eked out in silent surges. I am moved back onto the floor, so that the cement bags would not be harmed. Then, Rashidah put a fingerful of corn into my mouth and told me to chew it and swallow it, because that child would be needing milk.
Some were complaining because the placenta had stuck. They were starving. I saw them tear it out in pieces and then sit on the floor and eat it. Others were picking up their guns and getting ready to go. Their work was done.
The shrew who had been in charge of the pepper poultice told me to clean up all that blood before I left. Rashidah stayed behind for a moment, took a syrup jar out of a bag, which had a small consignment of oil in it. She also had a taper, which she dipped into it and lit it.
I was alone with my child for the first time. Her cries spoke of some hunger and something more. She pounded on my chest. I believed she would have drunk my blood in lieu of milk, if she could get to it. I wetted her lips with water that had been left in a bowl. She spat it out. I tried holding her, but she slithered out of my grasp.
I prayed that someone would come, but no one did, not even Mahmoud. Perhaps he had been forbidden to. I am even afraid to hold her. I run to the far corners calling to anyone who might be passing outside.
Later on, I do not know when, I crawl to where she is. She looks at me, looks through me, with a vacancy.
A WHINE, A WHISTLE, then rumbling as if the earth were turning itself inside out. Our army had come to rescue us.
I could not see the plane as it was too high up, but out of the vapourish darkness, sheets of lightning were streaming down and the whole yard is a blaze of colour. It was not yet dawn.
It was as if I had already rehearsed it. I knew what to do. I picked up my child, backed her and took the wrapper with the escape money in it. ‘Run. Run.’
Balls of fire swirl through the air in the yard and the militants from their trenches are shooting up, unable to deter the next bombardment. Orders are being yelled for us to go to the bunkers to which we had been assigned, but these commands are ignored. I was running through smoke and carnage, running in the direction of the fire and yet weirdly unharmed by it.
I met Buki halfway and she grabbed my arm as we ran together. We had not spoken since my marriage but that did not matter now. We had to step over the dead and the dying. Girls lying there, their cries, their cries. Cycles, laptops, fridges, umbrellas, bed springs, all flying up and then tangling in grotesque heaps onto the dead. My last sight of that blazing and hated inferno was of their black flag, with its white insignia of swords, in tatters everywhere.
Mahmoud was on sentry duty. It was the task he had been given after his leg was amputated, since he was no longer a fighter. He had not spoken to me since the night he confessed his disloyalty. He slept in a hut next to the sentry box and he and Musa, the mechanic, alternated shifts. He had never seen the child. It was I who named her. Babby.
‘Go, go,’ he was saying, as Musa tried to block us, but Mahmoud struck him such a hard blow that he staggered.
We were out.
Over a trench and into the first frontier of the forest. It was dark, darker still where the trees meshed overhead. Paths and slopes were wayward, but we ran with a speed we did not know we had. Our legs vaulted us.
We had run a great distance before we flopped down under a cover of trees. Old mulchy leaves beneath us, green leaves above us and our hearts hammering. Babby was asleep, as if she had died. We were unable to speak. A bird with a chestnut belly chirped ceaselessly as it stood on the ground looking at us. Fat tears fell from our eyes. Finally Buki whispered, ‘We are free … we are free.’ Not since the three girls had been taken that morning, long ago, to be sold as brides, had the word free escaped our lips. The leaves were still shedding water, and we raised our faces to them, to be baptised anew, to be washed clean. The shelter that flowed from those trees, so benign, so different from the tamarind tree we sat under.
We were a little hysterical. We kissed the moist mossy barks and pressed our foreheads to them in gratitude.
From the should
er bag that she kept in the garden, Buki took things out. She was smiling at her own enterprise. She had always believed that our army would come and that she would escape. Each night she stored whatever she could steal and always filled a water bottle from the emir’s cistern in his private garden.
She had nuts, a fistful of seeds and a piece of bread, which she broke in three. To anyone observing us from above we would have seemed lost and insignificant, but to ourselves we were champions. Babby held her piece of bread in her mouth and sucked on it, her sole sustenance. We pulled up tufts of grass and moss to make pillows, because the roots of those trees had spawned and were hard and sinewy. Buki and Babby fell fast asleep, but I was unable to. I was listening for the sound of the trucks coming through the forest to recapture us. Then, in half sleep, I pass through that bombed-out yard and see them pull up their own dead for burial. I see my friends dazed and distracted, walking around, searching, not knowing who or what they were searching for, but knowing in their hearts that with their bodies they would pay dearly for this bombardment. Fast asleep, I dreamt of Mahmoud, his mangled corpse, free of all obligation, reunited with his mother and his beheaded cousin.
*
Night came suddenly, the shadows flitting at first but then thicker, sturdier. The air was full of rustles, scrapings, squealings and the terrors born of night. Buki had gone in search of food. She had been gone a long time. My thoughts were dark also. I was alone. I thought what if she did not come back. What if she went astray on one of those paths that meandered towards everywhere and nowhere. What if we never made it to the tarred road. I held Babby. It was hard to know who was mother and who was child.
‘Come chop,’ Buki said merrily as she came back with bunches of dates that hung from their slender branches. We ate standing up. ‘Dabino. Dabino.’ We gorged. I fed Babby mouth to mouth. It was the first sweet thing she had ever tasted. She drooled for more. More. I did not love her enough. How grim her life had been from the moment she was delivered by these heartless midwives.