Sulha

by Malka Marom

  “Aywa—yes,” said Azzizah. “A camel-saddle weighing heavy to one side needs to be balanced lest it would slide off and all the goods contained inside would be lost to the sand. It was for this reason, to correct the imbalance somewhat that Abu Salim decided to receive you at Tammam’s fire-circles. And it is for this very same reason that I also advise you to be bathed in Tammam’s tent.”

  The Badawias escorted me to Tammam’s tent. As they watched me pulling a fresh, clean towel out of my duffle bag—not a face towel, for once, but a bath towel—Tammam muttered to Azzizah, “A towel like that she takes with her to the ditch, only much smaller, small enough to fit in her pocket . . . Then, in another pocket, she stuffs a long strip of paper she tears from a white roll, paper not like the paper she writes on to remember, but paper like my brother had told me of, paper softer than the softest Egyptian cotton. And then, after she defecates at the ditch, she wipes her tizzie with this softest of paper, does not wash it with water like a human being . . .”

  (Whenever Tammam follows me to the ditch to relieve herself, discreetly, under one of her many veils, she carries a tin can filled with water—a sort of portable bidet.)

  As soon as Tammam dropped the tent flaps (“For you can catch bad winds, even if you are bathed inside a tent,” explained Azzizah), I realized how good the constant desert breeze was, at cooling and deodorizing. During the first few minutes it took to adjust, even the Badawias had to fight the impulse to get the hell out. “The sky caved in, just for a moment, just for a moment,” they whispered, reassuring themselves and me, as though claustrophobia hit them harder than the stifling heat and the smell of goat and infant and fire-circles and woman. And now that the wind was not stealing away all other sounds, a frenzied hum filled the ears and, once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the swarming flies.

  The inside of Tammam’s tent is not the same as Azzizah’s. The senior wife has a sort of a lean-to in which she keeps her goats penned up behind a gate improvised out of branches and rope. A few goats escape whenever she opens and closes this gate. Still, Azzizah doesn’t have to sweep out heaps of goat dung, or choke on dust raised by her broom of twigs, like Tammam, whose goats stay in and around her tent when they are not herded out to pasture. Unlike Tammam, Azzizah stores firewood inside her tent, sparing her the coughing and frustration of lighting up and blowing life-fire into dew-drenched dung, firewood, and twigs.

  Each wife stores in her tent sacks of provisions. Azzizah’s swell full; Tammam’s are nearly empty. Next to the sacks of staples, Azzizah stores a trunk, the likes of which Tammam does not possess; it looks like a treasure chest pirated off some ancient schooner. Neither wife would reveal to me what Azzizah keeps locked in that trunk—her safe? Containing her ancient remedies, potions and amulets? Illigal drugs, weapons, or God knows what her clansmen smuggle? The passports and cash I had entrusted to Abu Salim for safskeeping?

  In both of the Badawias’ tents, bundles of God-knows-what, wrapped in rags, hang high up the tent pole, out of the goats’ reach. High up there, Azzizah also hangs a real water-skin full of that Badu delicacy samn.

  Only at that main centre pole could I stand at full height; everywhere else I had to walk in a crouch.

  “Did Abu Salim purchase your tent in El-Arish? Or in Baghdad, Damascus, or Amman?” I asked the Badawias as I waited for them to step out so that I could undress and bathe, “Badu-proper,” without anyone staring me in the face, as the Badawias would say.

  “We Badawias each weave our own tent,” explained Azzizah.

  “From the black hair of the goats,” elaborated Tammam.

  “Three years, yaa-Rabb, three years it takes a woman to weave her bit sha’r—tent woven from goat hair.” Azzizah sighed. “Then, every year, a woman has to weave patches to repair the damage done to her tent by the sun, the wind, the sandstorms. For thirty years, yaa-Rabb, I patched and re-patched my tent. Then, one day, I see my tent is but patchwork. So, for the next three years I weave a new one. And in the old one I keep my goats now . . .”

  “My bit sha’r—tent woven from goat hair—was bequeathed to me by my mother the day she died birthing me,” said Tammam. “Whenever I touch my tent I feel my mother’s hands. That is why I weave to patch and re-patch it, but never, ever will I weave a new one, Inshallah—God willing.”

  “Was the tent your mother’s to bequeath, or was it your father’s and he fulfilled your mother’s wish?” I asked Tammam.

  “My father fulfilled my mother’s wish, ya’ani—that is—he kept the tent for me year after year, all my child years, but it was my mother’s to bequeath, for a woman’s tent is hers, not her husband’s,” replied Tammam.

  “Not only a woman’s tent, but everything in it, including the goats, for her to keep and to bequeath,” added Azzizah. “That is why, whenever Abu Salim divorced me, I kept not only my old and new tents, but everything in them, including the goats.”

  “And what did Abu Salim keep whenever he divorced you?” I asked Azzizah. “What is Abu Salim’s to bequeath?”

  “The waterholes,” replied Azzizah. “And the passageways”—her term for the smuggling routes?—“Also the camels.”

  “All have empowered Abu Salim, and greatly enhanced his reputation,” stated Tammam, as she unhooked from high up her tent pole a bundle of crumpled sackcloth bags.

  “Many, many, many Badu the desert over are beholden to Abu Salim, for the use he gave them, their herds, and all in their household, of his passageways and waterholes in years of drought as in years of green, of plenty,” said Azzizah. “It is such giving that has enhanced Abu Salim’s reputation, and such beholding to him of many, many that has empowered Abu Salim.”

  Sackcloth bags that once contained flour, rice, and sugar were stored in the bundle Tammam unhooked from the centre pole. Two or three, she spread flat on the ground. Then, as if they comprised a spanking-clean tile floor in a shower stall, Tammam instructed me to “step onto them after you take off your stranger’s shoes and all your stranger’s clothes, even your stranger’s head scarf.” She and Azzizah made no move to leave the tent.

  “Is it not improper for me to undress in front of you?” I asked the Badawia co-wives.

  “No, for we are all sisters here, yaa-okhti—my sister,” Azzizah told me in reply.

  What would you say to that, Ahmed, yaa-akwhi—my brother—what would you say to that?

  “Yaa-okhti—my sister,” Tammam said, reaffirming Azzizah.

  The Badawias are just tossing out these words like a couple of empty shells, yet I grab them like a starved goat. Is that what you would say, yaa–Ahmed?

  As soon as I had shed my layers of stranger’s clothes, Azzizah demanded, “Now get ready to be bathed.” As I step off the sackcloth to fetch one of the jerricans from the closed-off entrance to the tent, intending to carry it over to the designated sponge-bath area, Azzizah and Tammam simultaneously cry out, “Laa!—No! No! No!” Thinking that they noticed a snake or scorpion hiding between the water jerricans, I break out in that unmistakable sweat that reeks of fear; then Tammam mutters to Azzizah, “Look at how afraid she is of being bathed—like little Salimeh.”

  I breathe in relief.

  “Yes, breathe deeply, deeply, and step back onto the sackcloth.” Azzizah instructs me in how to prepare for being bathed. “Now, holding your breath, you are to crouch and close your eyes—”

  “And hold your head down. Stay like that, even when we instruct you to let out the breath you hold, breathe deeply again, and then again hold your breath.” Tammam voices this set of instructions while her hands, as strong as my father’s construction worker’s hands, force my shoulders down and me to crouch.

  Then, all of sudden, splash! Ice-cold water breaks over my head and shoulders. God, I think, so quickly do you adjust to the heat in the tent that jerrican water as warm as piss feels frigid. I grope for the wash-towel and soap, then lock
my knees to stand up and—splash!—straight into my face—and a hand grabs the towel and soap while another forces my shoulders back down to crouch position and a foot unlocks my knees. Splash!

  “Yaa-Allah, give me a minute—dagigah, dagigah—a minute to shampoo, soap . . .” I try to say through a mouthful of water. Splash!

  “Now you can stand up and breathe,” Azzizah says, showing me that the water jerrican in her hand is empty. Chilled and shivering, my teeth clacking, I reach for my bath towel. It’s soaking wet.

  “Dagigah, dagigah—one minute, one minute,” Tammam mutters as she and Azzizah towel me dry with their hands, massaging and rubbing, massaging and rubbing—warmth and vigour—but then they forget how powerful their leathery hands are. “Bas—Enough!” I cry out in pain. They curse, draw back, and proceed to read my body as if it were a map of my life.

  “Oh, yaa-Rabb, yaa-Rabb—oh, my Lord, my Lord,” Azzizah cried out, her eyes troubled, angry, sorrowful, addressing mine. “Now I see why your nights are sleepless,” she tells me. The Badu tradition of receiving guests, no questions asked, keeps her and Tammam from prying; and spurs them on to assume —read my body as if it were a Badawia’s of their forbidden clan; the only women’s body they could possible know to read. . .

  “Oh, yaa-Rabb—my Lord—be careful, careful, yaa-Azzizah,” Tammam cautions, wincing as Azzizah’s fingers gently examine blue and black bruises that have faded completely from my memory if not altogether from my skin. The eye could barely detect them in the dim light-no-light that filtered through the thick black weave of Tammam’s tent. These bruises are just travel souvenirs I picked up on the roads-no-roads, when the Jeep gathered speed to fly over a sand trap but sank instead and catapulted the jerricans and desert gear into the front seat. But what are these travel tribulations compared with the desert hardships Tammam and Azzizah endure—not just for a week or a month or two, but every day of their lives. It is their endurance more than any past glory that invests the Badawias and their clan-tribe with legendary dimensions.

  It doesn’t always follow that the hardships of life harden a person’s heart; the opposite is often true.

  “O, yaa-Rabb, yaa-Rabb,” Tammam mutters, pointing to my bruises. “If that is how your husband beats you, rid yourself of him. There is no shame in divorce. Keep it secret, but sometimes it is better to be a woman divorced than a maiden, for a woman divorced can marry whomever her heart desires, whereas a maiden can marry only him whom her kinsfolk decide she must.”

  “But a woman divorced must leave her children with her husband; otherwise, few would be afraid to be divorced from a wife-beating husband. Aywa—yes—if you were to divorce your wife-beating husband, you would be bound to leave with him the one and only child you bore him—only one I see,” Azzizah says, checking the stretch marks on my hips. “Faint, seven or nine years old, meaning the child is old enough to stay with his father. Strange that your husband did not divorce you, even though your womb has been closed up for the past seven to nine years,” Azzizah muttered, then she examined my stomach and thighs.

  “Now, I see why he did not divorce her. Look at the scars of her struggle with fate.” Azzizah’s fingers direct Tammam to the old burn scars on my thigh, souvenirs from War of Independence. (I was twelve, with the fearlessness of the young, when an Egyptian Spitfire dropped a bomb next door, and I ran in, without thinking, to pull the screaming kids from the wreckage. I didn’t feel a thing until afterwards. It seemed natural at the time; now people remember it as heroic—or plain dumb.)

  “Here you can see,” Azzizah said to Tammam, her fingers tracing my old souvenirs, “how, ever since her son was born, she went from one darwisha to another, trying to reopen her womb. See how the darwishin tried and tried to cure her?”

  Badu fertility remedies for women burn-scar the thighs, it seems. The Badawias didn’t connect the scars to appearance or beauty. When they consoled me they said, “Next month, next year, Inshallah, you will conceive . . . next month, next year, Allah shall increase,” they said, just as we Yahod say, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

  “For the past seven or nine years, clearly no darwisha pressed burning rods to Nura’s thighs to fertilize her womb, for no darwisha doubted that her husband’s loin sacks had dried up, that he cannot implant a child in her womb,” Azzizah said.

  “Surely you beseeched your father and brother to demand your husband divorce you,” Tammam said to me.

  “Of course she did,” says Azzizah. “Of course she did. Only to discover to her bitter disappointment that her kinsmen refuse to demand her husband divorce her. For her kinsmen do not wish to return to her husband the bride-price he had paid them.”

  “Her kinsmen spent her bride-price, no doubt,” mutters Tammam, then spits in disgust.

  “Still, I would not lose heart, if I were you,” Azzizah tells me, her fingers assisting mine to unbraid my tangled hair.

  “Were it so easy to undo the ensnaring tangles of fate.” Tammam sighs, joining in the task of untangling my blind fingers’ braiding. The Badawias’ fingers are patient and gentle.

  “If I were in your place,” the senior Badawia went on to say to me, “I would wait for a moonless night, then I would escape with my child, escape from my husband’s compound; run and cover my tracks and my child’s, even after we crossed the boundaries of my husband’s home grounds and mine; run and cover our tracks until we were well into the boundaries of another clan, another tribe. Then, quick-fast, I would touch the tent flaps of a Badu elder there. For, as soon as you do that, the Badu elder is bound to shield and shelter you and your child for as long as you live.”

  “I know where you and your child can escape, even from capture of the authorities,” Tammam whispers, barely able to restrain her excitement.

  “Our tents!” Azzizah and Tammam exclaim in unison.

  “For no stranger, no matter how high among the authorities, would dare enter our tents,” explains Tammam.

  “And here, in Abu Salim, you have an elder of power to persuade the whole clan to shield you and your child. He might even persuade your kinsmen to uphold your honour and theirs. Here you also have me and Tammam to help you mother your child.”

  “May you be blessed with good fortune, and good health, and long life and rainfall and peace,” I muttered, overloaded with emotion, then I added, “These fading bruises were caused, not by my husband, but by—”

  “By another man, yaa-Rabb!” Tammam cuts me off. “Your blood-kin better avenge this abuse with blood or with blood-money paid to your blood-kin, else one and all of your blood-kin will be chipped at by the whole desert until nothing is left of your honour, reputation, power, possessions, just like in the story of the Habbashat birds that Abu Salim told you.”

  “Still, your kinsmen would be wise not to demand too high a blood price, and to refrain from mouthing words pointed like a sword during the negotiations of the blood-price, else a blood-feud would ensue,” said Azzizah.

  “A blood-feud would ensue from bruises you can barely see?” I asked.

  “Words you can barely hear have been known to spark a blood-feud lasting for generations,” Azzizah tells me in reply. “But more often a price is paid for blood or for whatever transgression to bring about a sulha—a reconciliation, peace, forgiveness. But such a payment can strip your clan of all the best of your goats, camels, waterholes, passageways, and sometimes even the best of your daughters, whom you must give in marriage to the person you, your blood-kin, or clansman had injured, so that a sulha can be brought about and sealed. Oh, it is such a punishment that the burden of one’s guilt falls on all you love and hold dear, just the thought of it has been known to drive a human being—even one only rumoured to be guilty—to flee from home and wander from waterhole to waterhole, for weeks, months, even years. That is why everyone the desert over is careful to restrain anger, passion, desire, envy, greed, and to hold back a heated tongue, fist, dagger
, sword, zoubi—prick—or cous—pussy.”

  “Not everyone is so restrained, else no blameless person would be rumoured to be guilty,” mutters Tammam. “Oh, take what is left of the rest of my life and enjoy it.” The girl-wife heaves a sigh, her jewels jingle-jangle as her hand gently swishes the swarm of flies from her infant’s face. The flies scatter, and then land once more on little Salimeh . . .

  CHAPTER 14

  From a distance, they looked like fireflies flash-dancing by a checkpoint roadblock, the crossbar and barrels glow-painted blue and white. Then, like moths, ten or twelve more swarmed out of the darkness into the high beams. And then suddenly the windows were full of men. Nearly all of them looked like they had been serving reserve duty there, at the tail end of the Common Road for thirty years, not thirty days, and had not seen a woman in all that time—a woman like the one sitting in this Jeep, a woman like their own back home, and as if I reminded them of why they were stuck in a wilderness, being ravaged by heat all day and by frost all night, they looked at me with a glint of swagger in one eye and sorrow in the other.

  The soldiers’ flashlights lighted the checkpoint at the dark periphery of their base. I saw now why they had resembled fireflies from far away.

  “Good evening,” they muttered, almost in unison.

  “Good evening,” Tal and I replied, almost in one voice.

  “Is this the last checkpoint out of the Common Road?” said Tal.

  “Yes.” Not one made a move to enter us in the ledger book or to lift the blue and white crossbar that blocked our passage to the open space beyond.

  “Smells like you bathed in the sulphur springs. What a place!” said one.

  “Nothing compared to this place,” said another.

  “This place! This place is the tail end of the world,” muttered a surly voice from the group that crowded Tal’s window. Like a chorus in a play, the group parted to make room for a dark Adonis to approach Tal’s window. He was so attractive, my face was burning—and my insides.