His Egyptian friend bemoaned the fact that the V&A was not more like the antiquities museums in Cairo. If you worked there, he claimed, you could make double your wages by hustling the tourists. Threaten them with grave consequences if they take a photograph, then whisper that you’re willing to turn a blind eye should they extend you a handful of cash. Or if you spot someone with a keen interest in mummies, offer to show her some ‘special specimens’ that are not on public display, then lead her to a back room housing a few bird or dog remains.
Today his train of thought had been abruptly derailed when a woman with familiar features had entered the museum, followed by a television crew. She walked up to one of the paintings on display and contemplated it briefly before turning to the camera. A man handed her a microphone and proceeded to ask her a question in English. She answered in classical Arabic, but a few words slipped out in Yemeni dialect. Tareq inched closer to hear.
‘When I was a little girl, there was one mirror in our house. I would gaze into it for hours. My mother tried to wrest me away. She used to say, “If you keep this up, that mirror will swallow you whole!” One day I was helping her bake some bread and I spilled a little salt – she was furious. She slapped me, hard, and said, “On the Day of Judgement, God will make you pick these grains up, one by one, with your eyelashes!” and it was that threat, that gloating threat, that made hot tears rush to my eyes, and not the slap at all.
‘I stared long and hard at those grains through blurry eyes. Slowly my vision cleared and I burst out: “If God is so big and has to take care of the whole universe all the time, will he really be so worried about a few spilled grains of salt?”
‘A realisation began to crystallise within me. I began to understand why I kept gazing into the mirror that way. I was asserting my right to look, really look: to delve into the world around me and ask questions, even if those questions made people turn away in anger or apathy or fear – questions big and small, about boys and girls, about our life and traditions, about nature and the meaning of it all. Once, when I had been repeatedly shushed, I found myself yelling, not only at my mother, but at everyone, including my youngest sister, who was in the garden playing with one of our goats, “Why are we created with eyes, then? Isn’t it so we can see?” And with the greatest urgency I rushed to draw an eye, as if it were a matter of life or death.
‘That eye sought to expose what others tried to obscure, what everyone tried to hide from me for fear that I would break the rules, step outside the bounds of the familiar. But the tighter the chokehold on me grew, the more I rebelled by drawing eyes everywhere: on my hands, on my legs, on my clothes and schoolbooks, on the chairs and walls and bedspreads.’
Tareq’s heart began to hammer in his chest. He almost cried out, ‘I know you! I know who you are! You’re Aisha!’
The Englishman broke in with another question. ‘Why do you use henna in your paintings? Are oils not available in Yemen?’
The painter smiled. ‘Painting materials are available in the capital, Sanaa. But henna is an essential part of my culture and upbringing, of our daily rituals. Plus I find it has beautiful colours… and a powerful, evocative smell.’
The attendant’s trembling heart could not resist coming closer and closer to the woman from his homeland, to the girl he had once seen squatting in the dirt fifteen years ago. It was said, at the time, that she had lost her mind, mixing henna incessantly and painting eyes, day and night, on anything within reach, even rocks and trees. One neighbour warned the others not to hang their clothes outside to dry, after coming out of her house to find her freshly laundered sheets staring back at her. Others whispered that the girl was possessed, she was not drawing eyes, but cryptic signs.
Tareq had been intrigued by these rumours. He recalled how he had made his way to her house on the outskirts of a neighbouring village. He wanted to lay his eyes on her, and if her beauty appealed to him, he had resolved to ask for her hand and break her free of the black magic. He remembered now how he found her scribbling eyes on pebbles and in the dirt, and when he crept closer she looked up, straight into his eyes. She had smiled and asked, ‘Who are you?’ In panic, he scrambled backwards and fled. A normal girl would never initiate a conversation with a boy like that! Once at a safe distance, he looked over his shoulder to see her mother dragging her back into the house and raining down blows. When he later heard that she had disappeared – run away, or maybe been killed? – he blamed himself terribly that he hadn’t whisked her away that day. But soon, leaving his village for the city, for university and a new life, he began to forget.
She looked younger than him now, tall and willowy, even though they were both in their thirties. The years had not been so kind to him: they had stripped away his hair and puffed up his paunch. How incomprehensibly strange that they should be here now in the land of the English, her mysterious eyes on display in a museum, revered as art, and he responsible for guarding it.
Tareq waited until she had finished her interview, then approached her, hand outstretched. ‘I’m from Yemen – from your home town, actually. I just want to say that our pride in you is bigger than this museum. A thousand congratulations.’
She shook his hand, briefly. ‘You’re so lucky to be living in this oasis of knowledge and beauty,’ she said politely. ‘Or do you get tired of seeing the same things every day?’
An image of Tipu’s Tiger, sinking its teeth into a British soldier, sprang to mind. The wooden statue with its striped tail was the one piece that had caught his attention since he started working at the museum six years ago, not least because on the tiger’s face were inscribed the Arabic words asad Allah, ‘the lion of God’. The tiger once used to produce horrifying mechanical shrieks and moans. More than once he had seen little children squirming out of their parents’ grasp to run to it delightedly.
‘No, I don’t get bored – I move to a different room every day! Anyway, my name is Tareq and I’d be very happy to take you on a special tour of the museum, and maybe show you some of the things that are not on display. My colleague is in charge of the warehouse. Do you live in London? Let me give you my number.’
‘No, I live in Aden – I’m just visiting.’ He watched her press the digits into her mobile phone.
‘Bye, Tareq.’ As she smiled and shook his hand, he realised he would never hear from her.
He found himself standing alone in front of her painting. It was bigger than all the others. In the centre of the canvas was an eye the size of the earth. The smell of henna suddenly filled his nostrils. Hanoon, they called it in Yemen: ‘she of the tender heart’. A familiar scene from his childhood crept unbidden into his mind: his mother filling a large tub with hot water and henna and submerging herself in it, her skin turning from white to gold.
The eye drew him in, and he basked in the warmth of the Yemeni sun. Its veins were the tremors on a heart monitor, inscriptions in Aisha’s secret language. He read: The eye is the gateway to the soul; the eye is insight; the eye is exploration. The ignorant are blind even if they see; the learned see even if they are blind.
He understood now that those villagers had been right, in a way: Aisha was enchanted, enchanting. As he wandered from one room to another with Aisha’s eye, he saw the treasures of the museum anew. Its pupil, crimson, like life-pumping blood, led him through an oasis of knowledge and beauty, to look and explore, to feel and wonder – and to remember.
The antique gilded candelabra were the flickering fireflies that dotted the Yemeni night. The ivory comb was the one his grandmother used to tug through his little sister’s tangled hair. A sword of gold echoed the janbiah – the curved dagger Yemeni men wore tucked into their belts.
Everything before him – hand-woven rugs and lush textiles, wood inlaid with mother of pearl, pottery engraved with delicate shapes – all this, which was considered part of western heritage, he had seen before in the homes and buildings and mosques of Yemen. Raphael’s image of Jesus and the miraculous draught of fish rang di
stant bells: a parallel legend that told of answered sea-prayers of a Yemeni sheikh. When he saw a tiny box containing a replica of a skeleton to remind human beings of the day of reckoning; a coloured clay bowl to serve soup to a new mother moments after childbirth; a glass bottle that, if broken, would bury its owner under a hailstorm of disaster – he thought: ‘So many countries scattered across the earth. How is it that folklore is almost one?’
Tareq heaved a sigh. An old song bubbled up from deep within, and he let it take him over:
Oh henna, dear henna, oh drops of morning dew –
My sweetheart’s eyes are a window that lets the breeze
sing through…
A hand clamped down on his shoulder. He opened his eyes with a start to find his supervisor pulling him to a corner of the room, asking in hushed, harried tones, ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Sorry, I… I don’t know what happened… it’s like the… I felt for the first time this place – it… it reminded me of home.’
‘You still have to keep it together at all times. You know very well how we react when a visitor raises their voice, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I ask them to stop, and call in security if necessary.’
‘Alright then. So you know the rules.’
Translated by Wiam El-Tamami
Biographies
Leila Aboulela is a Sudanese author whose short stories and novels engage with themes of identity, migration and Islamic spirituality. Her work includes The Translator (1999), which was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, Minaret (2005), and the short story The Museum, which was included in her collection Coloured Lights (2001), for which she was awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000. A number of her plays have been broadcast by the BBC, and her most recent novel, The Kindness of Enemies, was published in 2015. She now lives in Aberdeen.
Shaista Aziz is a former international aid worker, Al Jazeera journalist, writer, and stand-up comedian from Oxford. Publications to which she has regularly contributed include The Guardian and The Globe and Mail, and she is a frequent panel guest on BBC Radio specialising in current affairs. Aziz has performed stand-up across the UK, winning the King Gong open mic competition at the Manchester Comedy Store in 2010. In 2014 she presented the BBC Three documentary A Nation Divided? The Charlie Hebdo Aftermath, in which she explored cultural and religious polarisation in the wake of the infamous shooting.
Seema Begum is fifteen years old and lives in Tower Hamlets, London. She loves reading books and in particular romantic novels. Begum loves writing, and her favourite subject at school is English. She aspires to become a judge, and she also has a dream to write a poem that will one day be studied by students.
Selma Dabbagh is a British-Palestinian novelist, blogger, journalist and reviewer. Born in Scotland, she now lives in London. Her work engages with themes such as idealism, rootlessness and political engagement, and the impact of social conformity. Her debut novel, Out of It (2011), which follows a family’s experience of besieged Gaza, was nominated for the Guardian Book of the Year in both 2011 and 2012. Her short stories have appeared in various anthologies and publications, and her radio play The Brick was broadcast by the BBC in 2014. Her second book, We Are Here Now, is due for publication in 2017.
Born in Pakistan and raised in Scotland, Imtiaz Dharker is a poet and documentary film-maker. She has published several collections, including Purdah (1989), I speak for the devil (2001), The terrorist at my table (2006) and, most recently, Over the Moon (2014). In recognition of her work, she was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014. Much of her poetry explores themes of identity and gender politics, geographical and cultural displacement, and the ramifications of the culture of purdah. She is an accomplished artist, and her pen-and-ink drawings have been featured in ten solo exhibitions across the world, including India, Hong Kong and the UK.
Asma Elbadawi is a visual artist and spoken word poet from Bradford. Her work is often a means of exploring her Sudanese heritage, and poetry has been the medium through which she has negotiated dyslexia. She was recently chosen as one of the finalists of the Words First competition, a collaboration between BBC Radio 1Xtra and the Roundhouse. She holds an MA in Visual Arts, and is interested in pursuing the themes of belonging and identity through the interplays between art, performance and the written word.
A dual citizen of Britain and Jordan, Fadia Faqir is an awardwinning novelist, playwright and short story writer. Her works have been published in eighteen countries and translated into fourteen languages, and include five novels including Pillars of Salt, My Name is Salma and Willow Trees Don’t Weep. She is also the editor and co-translator of In the House of Silence: Autobiographical Essays by Arab Women Writers (1998) and was the senior editor of the Arab Women Writers series, for which she received the Women in Publishing 1995 New Venture Award. She was a member of the judging panel of Al-Multaqa Short Story Competition 2016. Fadia Faqir is an Honorary Fellow of St Mary’s College and a Writing Fellow at St Aidan’s College, Durham University, where she teaches creative writing. She is a co-founder of the Banipal Visiting Writer Fellowship.
Born in Pakistan, Nafeesa Hamid is a poet, playwright and spoken word artist from Birmingham. Her work engages with issues of mental health, domestic violence, gender, identity and culture. Hamid regularly performs in various locations in both the Midlands and London, and has established a monthly open-mic night and poetry workshop. Organisations that she has collaborated with include Apples and Snakes, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, mac birmingham and Beatfreeks. She is currently studying in Derby and is part of Mouthy Poets, a collective of young artists and performers based in Nottingham.
Triska Hamid is a journalist and editor who has covered the Middle East for the past eight years. She was the winner of the Columbia University & Citi Journalism Excellence Award. Hamid works across multiple platforms and publications, such as Vice and The Telegraph, as well as being the Business Editor for The National in the UAE. She also occasionally writes poetry, and was a participant of the Royal Court’s Young Writer’s Programme.
Raised in Reading but living in Birmingham, Aliyah Hasinah Holder is a spoken word poet and creative producer. Her work explores the themes of heritage and representation, seeking to use art as a tool for social change. She has previously collaborated with various organisations and collectives, including Beatfreeks, the Southbank Centre, The Poetry Society and BBC 1Xtra. In 2015, she founded Herstory LIVE, an event combining histories with performance art to raise money for charitable causes. As part of spoken word duo A2 she is currently working on a Random Acts Film for Channel 4.
Amina Jama is a nineteen-year-old British-Somali poet based in London. In 2015–2016 she was one of BBC 1xtra’s Final Six for the Words First program, creating work for BBC iPlayer and The Roundhouse. She wants to make her audience challenge what they think they know about poetry, and inspire them to fall in love with words. She is part of several London collectives performing across the city.
Sabrina Mahfouz is a British Egyptian playwright, poet and screenwriter. She was awarded the Fringe First Award for her play Chef, and her play Clean transferred to New York in 2014. Her poetry has been performed and produced for TV, radio and film, including in the recent Railway Nation: A Journey in Verse on BBC2. Mahfouz has an essay in the award-winning The Good Immigrant, and has published eight plays with Bloomsbury Methuen. How You Might Know Me is her debut collection of poetry with Out-Spoken Press.
Aisha Mirza is a writer and counsellor from East London, now living in Brooklyn, New York. She is interested in body hair, madness and race. Mirza studies the impact of microaggressions (including forced hair removal) on the psyche of queer black and brown people. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Black Girl Dangerous and openDemocracy.
Miss L is an actress and the creator of Casting Call Woe, a site where she highlights the very worst of casting calls. She regularly writes about the trials of bein
g an actress, and her work has featured on Buzzfeed and in The Guardian and Grazia.
Hibaq Osman is a twenty-two-year-old Somali writer born and raised in West London. She currently studies psychology and counselling at Roehampton University. In 2012 she won both the Brent Poetry Slam and the Roundhouse Poetry Slam. She is a member of the Burn After Reading collective, a community of young and emerging poets and writers founded and supported by Jacob Sam-La Rose and Jasmine Cooray in London. Her poetry pamphlet A Silence You Can Carry is published by Out-Spoken Press.
Born in Pakistan and raised in Canada, Shazea Quraishi is a poet, playwright and translator based in London. Her sequence of poems The Courtesan’s Reply, published as a pamphlet in 2012, is voiced by a series of Indian courtesans, exploring the dynamics of relationships, sexuality and the gaze. Her first collection, The Art of Scratching, was released in 2015. Having received an award from the Artists’ International Development Fund of the Arts Council England, she recently travelled to Pakistan to undertake research for a transgender character that will feature in her upcoming play, The Jasmine Terrace.
Samira Shackle is a freelance British journalist, writing mainly on politics, terrorism and gender with a particular focus on the Indian subcontinent. In 2016, the Words by Women Awards shortlisted Shackle in the Foreign Correspondent category and she was also longlisted in the New Voices category at the One World Media Awards. In 2015, Shackle was awarded the Richard Beeston bursary by The Times newspaper; and in 2014, she was selected as one of MHP’s top thirty journalists under 30. Shackle writes for the New Statesman, The Guardian, The Times, Vice and Deutsche Welle, and is Assistant Editor of the New Humanist magazine.
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