The Zanzibar Wife

by Deborah Rodriguez

  Unfortunately, the four of them didn’t get quite as far as Ariana had hoped. From the parking area in town Hani turned up a hill onto a street so narrow in places that the Lexus could barely squeeze through. Behind faded pink walls—scraped raw from unavoidable two-way encounters—only the tallest of homes and the tips of the palms were visible above the jasmine and bougainvillea. Even the intricate metal gates that led into the residences stood as barriers to the outside world, painted in thick coats of yellow and purple and green and blue. A quick look down an alleyway revealed a few signs of life—trashcans and hanging laundry, and a tree heavy with pomegranates pushing up valiantly between two stone facades—but all in all it was pretty quiet.

  “So this is the scenic route back to the highway?” she asked.

  “It is nice, yes? But no. It is the way to the potters.”

  “But—”

  “They are very special, these potters,” he insisted. “They are the ones who learned to do what they do from their fathers, who also learned it from their fathers. Rachel will get many photos. And I promise you, I will have you back in Nizwa by nightfall.”

  Ariana slumped down in her seat just as the car pulled into a dusty lot. Hani kept the engine running as he nodded at the crumbling buildings.

  “You’re not coming in with us?” she asked.

  “They are expecting you. It will be fine. I will come back for you after I take Miza for an errand.” Hani pointed at Rachel, who was already sailing through a massive iron gate that had been left halfway ajar. “And I know these men. They will allow photos of everything. This place will give her just what she needs. You will see.”

  Ariana slid out of the car and planted her two feet on the dry earth. Hani leaned across the seat and wound down the window. “I will be back in less than one hour!”

  She shaded her eyes with one hand for a cautious look around. Pottery in every direction, resting on every available surface: crammed atop weather-beaten shelving, stacked to the ceiling in a little dark room behind an arched stone doorway, plopped onto each step of a steep stairway leading to a second landing. Some pieces were still orange, rough and unglazed; others had been painted. Some were wide and flat and others not, like the water holders drying bottoms-up under the sun, looking like an army of bald men seen from above. Across the lot she spied a pair of domed kilns made out of brick and mud, each with a tall smokestack teetering above. Indeed, the jumble of bricks and buckets and tarps and wooden planks was strong evidence of this being a genuine place of work.

  She found Rachel standing quietly in a doorway, her camera pointed toward a dozen men crouched together on a woven mat, huddled over a tray of sliced pink watermelon, their sandals and shoes tossed off to the side. Their heads, some covered with kumas, others with turbans, bobbed up and down as they spat the slick seeds into their hands.

  The first man to notice the two women standing there on the threshold smiled and rose from the floor. The rest of them followed, smoothing the fronts of their clothes as they stood. “Come,” the tallest of the group said, ushering Rachel and Ariana into the darkness of a room illuminated only by the sunlight flowing through the open doorway behind them.

  The first to get back to work was a bony man with a trim white beard and a short-sleeved button-down shirt, stiff with dried clay. He remained on his feet as a half-finished urn nearly as tall as he was began to spin beside him, its damp exterior wrapped in thick twine partway up its neck. Ariana and Rachel watched as he used a wet rag to smooth the outside with one hand while his other arm disappeared all the way up to the shoulder inside the urn. He shaped and reshaped until he seemed satisfied, then took one end of the twine between his fingers and let it unwind as the wheel continued to turn, unlashing the urn from its support. Ariana let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding in at the sight of the tall pot remaining firmly in place.

  Next, a lanky younger man in an impossibly spotless white T-shirt and matching sarong gestured for the women to accompany him as he settled onto the seat behind a mud-splattered wheel. In less than four minutes he had turned a shapeless lump of clay into a delicate vase. Every part of his graceful hands had been used as a tool: the two thumbs that pressed firmly down into the wet mound at the center of the wheel, the steady fingers that gently coaxed the clay into a rising cylinder, the soft space between the fingers and thumb that smoothed the top, the edges of each fist to even the surface, the index finger that caressed the emerging neck until the other digits joined in with a gentle squeeze, the pinky that created a delicate lip with its steady tip. Ariana watched closely as his long brown fingers scissored around the top of the vase, leaving behind a fluted edge even more perfect than the ones she’d seen encircling the pies on that baking show back home.

  The entire room was soon buzzing with activity. The men seemed to be moving in a dance they had practiced forever, their powerful hands and agile limbs working in sync as they paired up to stack fresh clay into piles of wet bricks, transfer partially finished pots onto empty shelves for drying, turn broken-down parts into more wheels that would turn endlessly into the evening. It is magic, she nearly said out loud, before the thought snapped her back to reality. She turned to hustle Rachel along.

  But before she could speak, Rachel—at the urging of the younger potter—was removing the camera from around her neck and replacing it with a smock. She eased herself onto the round seat, pulled her hair back into a little ponytail and rolled up her sleeves as the man tossed a hunk of clay on the wheel before her. It began to spin between her knees. Rachel pressed first with her thumbs, just as she had seen him do, and when the pot-to-be rose a few inches she cupped her palms against the rotating surface as it wobbled from side to side.

  “This is awesome,” Rachel said in a voice Ariana had never heard before, with a smile she’d never seen. “I haven’t done anything like this since art class in high school.” The young man reached in to save her creation from collapse, then stood back to allow her to continue. Rachel seemed transfixed by the lump of wet earth before her, her eyes shining like two candles in the dimness of the room. “Really, Ariana. You should try it.” She dipped her fingers into a bowl of dirty water as if it were a pot of gold. “It all just feels so incredibly amazing.”

  Ariana wrinkled her nose at the filthy brown mud splashed across Rachel’s arms and the sludge embedded beneath her nails. She pointed to her own manicured hands and shook her head. But the truth was, it wasn’t just the filth of the wet clay that made her keep her distance. There was no way she’d take the risk of touching anything in this place.

  Rachel was too engrossed to notice Ariana slipping away to call Hani. It wasn’t until she was outside that she remembered her disabled phone, still sitting useless in a bag of rice. The wind had kicked up, leaving the scattered tarps flapping and the palm trees swaying like hula dancers. Ariana checked her watch as she headed to the top of the driveway in search of the car.

  It was then that she spied the roiling wall of sand in the distance. At first she thought it was smoke from a massive fire, but she’d seen this before from the windows of her high-rise in Dubai. Already the sky above her was becoming an orange haze. Suddenly the Lexus was right in front of her. “Get inside!” Hani yelled before jumping out and rushing through the gates to find Rachel. Through the back window Ariana watched the sandstorm approach like a slow-motion tidal wave, lifting the dirt up off the ground and whipping it into a frenzy.

  “Wow!” Rachel slammed the car door and immediately turned her lens toward the barreling fury. “Where the hell did that come from?”

  “We must hurry,” Hani said as he started the car and turned up the hill. “First we must go get Miza,” he explained before Ariana could question the route.

  “We’ll make it back to Nizwa before it gets too bad, right?”

  “We will try.”

  Ariana’s heart sank as she saw the doubt cross his face.

  Hani turned on the high beams and emergency blinkers and ste
pped down harder on the gas, maneuvering the narrow roads as if he knew them by heart. Even the sudden gusts that seemed capable of pushing the car back the way it came didn’t seem to sway his determination.

  “Where is Miza, anyway?” Ariana asked as the dark horizon advanced like a distant herd of wild horses.

  By now they had slowed, Hani squinting to make out the road ahead. Nobody spoke. The car echoed with the sound of sand against the glass as they continued to crawl up the hill that had all but disappeared from view. Hani spun the wheel sharply to the left and pulled to a stop just as day was turned instantly into night.

  24

  “Where are we? Whose place is this? Where’s Miza?” Ariana’s questions were snatched up by the howling wind before they could reach Hani’s ears. She shielded her face with one arm and struggled against the violent force of the storm to follow him from the car toward a large, low house barely visible beneath the darkened sun. Rachel was close behind, the neck of her shirt hiked up to cover her mouth and nose. They managed to reach the front gate just as it, the house, and the three of them were swallowed up by an infinite cloud of red dust.

  Holding tight to each other, they crossed a covered courtyard toward a heavy wooden door. Hani banged on it with his fist until it cracked open a sliver, the sand barging ahead like an unwelcome guest. A young woman, her black abaya billowing as if it were a parachute, hustled them inside and slammed the door against the ferocious wind.

  Ariana stood and wiped the grit from her crusty, matted lashes as she took in the room around her. It was as long as a bowling lane and practically as narrow, the wood-paneled perimeter lined with brown velvet sofas, except for the one wall reserved for a huge television. She watched the muted screen in horror as a pack of spotted hyenas silently devoured a zebra, ripping it apart limb by limb.

  “So what are we—” She turned to again question Hani before seeing he was involved in greeting two more women who had popped up in the room, indistinguishable from the others save for the hue of their headscarves. Like color-coded tokens in a board game, she thought. Rachel was busily brushing the thin layer of red from her jeans. Even despite the heavy front door shut tight and the room’s only window buried behind heavy, thick drapery, the grainy dust was still managing to find its way into the room, gathering on every open surface like a new coat of paint.

  A door to her left suddenly swung open as a little girl who wore a pleated yellow dress over long white leggings came barreling through. Hani bent and swept the child into the air, tossing her high above his head as she squealed with glee. The woman who had ushered them in from the storm appeared behind them, handing the girl a quick admonishment and a plastic tablecloth, which they both bent to spread smoothly across the over lapping rugs that covered the bulk of the tile floor. No sooner had they finished their task than the door flew open again as an even smaller child—a carbon copy of her older sister, right down to the jangling silver bangles on both dark ankles—joined the crowd, her hair still wet from a bath.

  “Who are these people?” Ariana mouthed to Rachel, who simply shrugged her shoulders in response.

  The woman in the purple headscarf, the one who had let them in, gestured toward the floor. Ariana raised her eyebrows at Hani.

  “They are inviting you to sit and enjoy a meal,” he explained.

  “Oh no, I don’t think so.” Ariana shook her head as she adjusted the handbag on her shoulder. “We’ve got to get back.” She wiped at the dust on the face of her watch. “Why, just look what time—”

  Rachel took Ariana’s wrist between her fingers, still flaked with clay, and gently pushed her arm back down to her side. She turned her eyes to Hani. “We’d be delighted.”

  The two of them lowered themselves to the floor as the rest of the group, including Hani, disappeared through the swinging door. “Bloody hell, Rachel!” Ariana whispered. “You know I can’t be staying here any longer than I have to.”

  Rachel pointed to the front door and the dust that continued to infiltrate the room. “The storm? Remember?”

  “I don’t care about the damn storm!” she hissed. Already she’d felt too close for comfort to the mysteries of this town, as if she were on the verge of opening a gate that simply needed to stay shut. She felt herself shudder a little.

  “Could you just stop already? Seriously, Ariana. Get a grip.”

  Ariana stood and climbed onto the sofa below the window and pulled back the heavy curtain, only to find the glass panes underneath not to be glass at all, but instead opaque, colored resin that suddenly made the room feel like a coffin.

  “Is everything okay?” Hani had silently returned pushing a wooden teacart, its shelves heavy with plates of pears and oranges and bananas, dates, grapes and mangoes.

  Ariana could feel her face warming as she reached one foot back toward the rug, knocking over a vase of faded plastic flowers in the process. “Just trying to check on the weather.” She smiled weakly.

  “Yes. It is supposed to be a very big storm. We will have to wait to see when we can go back to Nizwa.” He left the cart behind and retreated through the door.

  “I swear, I am done with this, full stop.” Ariana thumped down to the floor next to Rachel. “And where is Miza, anyway?”

  “Not sure,” Rachel answered as she took out the camera she’d kept protected beneath her shirt.

  “You know, I don’t think it was just on a lark that she decided to follow you here.”

  “Uh-huh.” Rachel twisted her torso and began to click, aiming her lens at anything and everything in the room.

  “She had her reasons.”

  This time it was the green-topped woman who entered with food—a covered dish that she placed with care in the center of the plastic sheet.

  “I said, she had her reasons,” Ariana repeated in a loud whisper as soon as the woman was through the door.

  “I heard you.” Rachel turned her lens on the food before her.

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “Don’t you want to know what those reasons are?”

  Rachel didn’t respond.

  “You know, the Zanzibaris, they’re into all sorts of black magic.”

  “Uh-huh. I know.”

  “You know there are supposedly lots of healers here in Bahla, right?”

  “I know.”

  “Well, I think Miza’s here to find one.”

  “I know.”

  “And I think she might have found one at the souk. A witch doctor, like—Wait. What? Did you say you know?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “As in you knew she was coming to Bahla for that purpose?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “How could you know and I didn’t?”

  “Because she talked. And I listened.”

  “And you didn’t tell me this why?”

  “Because it was her business. It is her business. Not mine, and not yours.”

  “What the hell, Rachel!”

  Ariana sat fuming as Hani returned to join them on the floor. “We start with the sweets,” he said as he dipped his fingers into a bowl of warm water before passing it to her to wash her hands. “You are not hungry?” He gestured to Rachel. “Fadal. Help yourself. Please.”

  Rachel dug in as if she hadn’t eaten in a week. Ariana reluctantly picked an apple from the bowl.

  “Halwa?” Hani held out a glass bowl filled with a thick, wobbly paste. Ariana scanned the floor for a spoon, or even a fork, but Hani shook his head, holding up his fingers.

  Rachel reached across and scooped up a mouthful with her hand. “It’s really good! Try it.”

  Hani waited with the bowl still resting in his hand. Ariana plunged two fingers deep into the mess and flung them into her mouth before the goo could ooze onto her lap. The sweet glop tasted of honey and roses, and might have been better if it weren’t for the grit from the storm that remained in her mouth, and the unease that had settled in the pit of her stomach.

  She l
icked her sticky fingers and checked her watch again, as if it held the key to her escape from this place. The door swung open and yet another platter was placed on the floor in front of her. Hani reached to remove the lid from a bowl of steaming rice and peeled back the foil from a platter holding saucy chunks of meat. The scent of cloves and cinnamon rose into the air. “There is fish also, I think,” he said as he peeked under the covers of more dishes strewn across the plastic sheet. Again the door swung open.

  “More food?” Ariana muttered as her eyes lifted upward. And there stood Miza, and behind her the big, dark man from the souk, his looming presence so intense that it made her feel as though she were melting.

  Ariana remained motionless on the floor as Hani rose to greet him with a kiss on the hand, then one on the forehead.

  “I think you have already met my father?” he said as he turned to Ariana with a smile.

  25

  Sabra clenched the damp pillow under her burning cheek as her tears continued to fall. Five days she had spent under her uncle’s roof, five long days confined to the house under her aunt’s watchful eye.

  The woman had not been pleased at all when her husband arrived home from Stone Town dragging Sabra by the arm. She had been sitting outside in the empty doorframe as the children played in the shadows of the night, tossing pebbles against the rough cinderblocks, squealing at nothing Sabra could see.

  “What were you thinking?” her aunt had screamed at her husband. “You can barely feed the mouths of your own children, let alone that of your dead brother’s. Just what am I supposed to do with that useless creature underfoot all day? A girl who can barely keep her own shoes tied, let alone sweep a floor or cook a meal.”

  “I am only taking back what is rightfully mine,” her uncle bellowed back, flinging Sabra inside through the doorway that had no door.