Sulha

by Malka Marom

  “Have you divined, yaa-Azzizah,” whispers Tammam. Is she reciting a line in a ceremony? Is Azzizah’s grunting and groaning also part of a healing ritual? “Have you divined?” whispers the girl-Badawia again.

  “Aywa—yes,” Azzizah says, her voice now a drone. “The alum revealed a man discontent with his fate, with Allah; yaa-Rabb, lacking faith, his heart empty, his soul a void . . . a hollow dark cave . . . the dwelling place of al-shaytan—Satan—the devil . . .”

  “Yaa-Allah!” exclaims Tammam. Little Salimeh must have seen Azzizah practice her medicine many times before; she snuggles against her girl-mother as though settling in for a good, scary show.

  “Aywa—yes. The alum revealed al-shaytan—the devil—looking like a snake, but flying like a bat, his head like a camel, but with two horns like a he-goat . . .” Azzizah drones on. “The alum showed al-shaytan, looking like a flying snake, had found a void in a man’s soul to raid-rob the thinking from this man . . . and so, not thinking of the plentiful bounty Allah had lavished on him, this man roams the desert feeling discontent with his own fate and envy of your fate, my fate. Aywa—yes, this man cast the harmful glance of the eye . . .

  “Did you notice-see the glance of the evil envious eye?” Azzizah asks me.

  “Laa—no,” I told her.

  “Aktar al-gubur min as-suudur—most graves are dug by envy in men’s hearts.” Azzizah repeats these words again and again. Her remedy for the evil glance of envy is a stone amulet, blue “like the blue eyes of someone who stands at the side, ya’ani—meaning, a stranger . . . Strangers’ blue eyes are most harmful,” Azzizah says, fastening the blue stone amulet to the beaded necklace she gave me.

  “Harmful how?” I ask her.

  Silence. Badawias’ eyes stare through slits in their veils.

  “Most graves are dug by envy in men’s hearts,” Azzizah intones, pulling a tiny leather pouch from her remedy sack-bag. She says I’ll have to wear it just like she, Tammam, and little Salimeh do. She pins it to my blouse with the safety pin that Tammam said was little Salimeh’s present to me. “The name of Allah is tucked inside,” says Azzizah, “for al-shaytan fears nothing but the name of Allah,” she adds, then forbids me to open the pouch, to look at the name of Allah. Strange how the Badawias sprinkle “Allah” liberally in every second sentence they utter, but I have yet to see either one facing Mecca to pray.

  “Where did you get these leather pouches containing the name of Allah?” I ask.

  Silence. Like in a trance, Azzizah stares at my face, grunts and groans as if she feels the discomfort of my ailment. I can’t make out a word she drones except “Fahemti—understand?”

  “No, your moon is up before your sun is down. I don’t know if you mean night or day,” I reply.

  “Wahada, wahada—one by one—cut your words, yaa-Azzizah,” says Tammam, jingle-jangling the flies away from little Salimeh. “What do you see?”

  “I see,” says Azzizah, her bloodshot eyes drilling holes in my face, “the swelling lumps, shifting like the sands, and like a nomad roaming, wearing shoes.”

  “Meaning?” Tammam asks Azzizah.

  “Meaning the ailment was caused by roaming in shoes, meaning not seeing where going, for wearing shoes is like wearing blindfolds on the soles of your feet,” replies Azzizah.

  “Abu Salim also wears shoes,” I remind Azzizah. “Yet you told me that he can see-sense through mountains, remember?”

  “Abu Salim would see much better if he were not wearing blindfolds on the soles of his feet,” responds Azzizah. “You have to be very careful when you walk without shoes, for you can step on kharah—shit—and that can make you very sick,” Azzizah adds. I laugh.

  “It is no laughing matter,” snaps Tammam, “stepping on ejaculated semen can also make you sick.”

  “And stepping on a snake or scorpion can kill you,” adds Azzizah. “So can stepping on broken glass . . .” She grunts, groans, stares, and drones: “I see your shifting swelling was caused also by bad winds blowing, min el ard—from the earth . . .”

  “Don’t be afraid. Azzizah will provide a remedy for that,” whispers Tammam.

  “Aywa—yes,” Azzizah says, then she tells me to lie flat on my stomach, and next thing I know she is dancing on my back to squeeze out the bad winds from my lungs. Her bare feet, surprisingly light, dance and massage my back. I feel a hell of a lot better now.

  Three welcome-carpets, Tammam spreads round the fire-circle in front of Azzizah’s tent now. A fourth one she rolls into a bolster for Azzizah’s aching back. “Rest, rest,” the girl-wife tells her senior co-wife. And it really looks like the divining, healing, and massaging has drained Azzizah. As soon as Azzizah reclines in the place of Honour, close to the fire but away from the smoke, little Salimeh tugs at the nursing slits of her thowb, and the senior Badawia, heaping blessings on the girl-infant, pulls a withered breast and offers it to the child.

  Meanwhile, Tammam cleans up glasses and brews tea—again, not a morsel of food, only tea, with loads and loads of sugar. She rolls a cigarette as she waits for the tea-water to boil. Bending almost to the ground so that her veils won’t catch fire, she lights it. Smells a bit like Geologises, the strong French cigarettes, her Badu tobacco.

  “Next year, Inshallah, may your womb, not your face, swell up,” says Azzizah, addressing me. She and Tammam both wish me to be blessed with many sons.

  “Why only sons, not daughters?” I ask them.

  “Because a daughter you raise only to lose her when she marries and moves to her husband’s compound, but a son you have for the rest of your life,” replies Azzizah (switch genders and you’ve got the Hebrew and Canadian saying: A son you have till he marries his wife, but a daughter you have for the rest of your life.)

  “And also because—write-to-remember—as I told it to you before, yaa-Rabb, how can a woman forget that her sons are her voice in the maq’ad; the more powerful your voice in the maq’ad, the more camel-riders you have crossing borders to gather information-power, and the more muscle you have to uphold your honour, your reputation, the story that remains when all else dies,” Azzizah explains.

  A gold coin—it looks ancient and priceless—Azzizah presses into my hand to keep as “an amulet to ward off your husband divorcing you. For, in a divorce, it is the husband who daimann—always—gets to keep the children. And the worst fate to befall a woman is to lose her children. Sometimes even this amulet cannot help, but sometimes it does help. Therefore, wear it always . . .”

  “Did the alum crystal reveal to you that I would lose my son?”

  “I did not consult the alum for that,” snaps Azzizah.

  “Swear!” I snap back, like a Badawia.

  Their bloodshot eyes, intense behind the slits in their veils, demand an explanation.

  I put my writing-to-remember aside, and told the Badawias about my husband, Arik, and about my son, Levi, and about the written consent to waive his exemption from high-risk duty. “My fear of fears is that my son will end up like his father; therefore, I am afraid to grant him my consent, even though he is full grown and already a pilot as good as his father. And, who knows, maybe the times will change from war to peace. What would you do if you were in my place?” I asked the Badawias.

  Silence. Water bubbles on the fire, yet neither moves to pick up the teapot. In this moment of silence, it seems they suspend life to lend solemnity and full weight to the burden of my dilemma.

  “If you lose your men—if you have no sons, no husband—what for do you need your Land, oh, yaa-okhti, yaa-okhti—my sister, my sister,” Azzizah responds, addressing me. Tammam picks up the bubbling teapot from the fire.

  “Your fear is my fear, yaa-okhti—my sister,” Azzizah goes on to say to me. “I also am afraid that fate might hold in store that my son, Salim, will end up like his father and my father and Tammam’s.”

  “But that is
good, yaa-Azzizah!” the girl-Badawia cries out, then spits three times, almost like my mother, to ward off evil eyes and ears.

  “Aywa—yes. Abu Salim’s reputation is unassailable. So is my father’s reputation, as is Tammam’s father’s. But when Egypt ruled this our Sinaa desert,” says Azzizah, heaving a sigh, her hands caressing Tammam’s infant-daughter, fast asleep now on her lap, “ah, yaa-Rabb, in those days, when Egypt ruled this, our Sinaa desert, the authorities who were of Egypt decreed that our young Badu men must battle in the army of Egypt, else they would be imprisoned or shot dead. But we Sinaa Badu serve no foreign ruler. Therefore, our young Badu men, my father among them, also Tammam’s father and Abu Salim, escaped from the reach of the Egyptian authorities.

  “And, under cover of night, far away from us, their loved ones, they wandered from waterhole to waterhole, month after month, year after year. And no matter how homesick they were, Abu Salim, my father and Tammam’s, and most of our young Badu men stayed away from our home ground. For that is where the Egyptian authorities kept coming to apprehend them. Then, all of a sudden, in the battle lasting six long days, your Yahodi tribe wrestled our Sinaa desert from Egypt, and everything changed. For, unlike Egypt, your Yahodi tribe did not know how brave at heart our Badu men; therefore, your Yahodi tribe did not decree that our young Badu men battle in your Yahodi army. And so all our clansmen came home from hiding, came home from their wandering under cover of night.

  “O, Allah, decree my son be spared such a fate as taking leave of his loved ones, and far away from his home ground going into hiding, seeking shelter under cover of night, wondering from waterhole to waterhole, covering his tracks for months and months, years and years. The only fate worse than this, Wallah, is to be caught crossing borders or breaking any other frangi—foreign—laws. For then a camel-rider is imprisoned, and that is a fate even worse than death.”

  “Aywa—yes—that is what my brother thinks,” mutters Tammam, her beautiful eyes tearful.

  “May he be spared such a fate,” says Azzizah. Little Salimeh, half-awake now, cracks a smile, and turns to her girl-mother, her arms flailing as if she can’t contain her delight and love. Heaping blessings on the child, Azzizah hugs her tight, but little Salimeh wriggles out of Azzizah’s clasp and crawls over to Tammam, who unties her veil to kiss her child, tears streaming down her beautiful face.

  “Yaa, how glad my brother will be to see you. Ayuni, galbi—my eyes, my heart,” Tammam says to her infant-daughter, “So much you have grown since he last saw you . . .

  “Aywa—yes.” Tammam turns to me. “Your Yahodi tribe did not compel our Badu men to battle in your army, but, Wallah, in the last war, I thought I saw the last of my brother.”

  “Ghule—tell on,” Azzizah urges Tammam.

  “Aywa—yes. It was in the big war that broke out four or five or six years ago,” Tammam goes on to tell. “The drought was only in its first or second year when the last big war broke out, and I first menstruated, turning from girl to maiden. Therefore, I veiled my face. But, under my veil, I was still a girl-child, yaa-Rabb. Like a girl-child, I found it very exciting at first, that more tribesmen, women, and children than I had ever seen before pitched their tents near my father’s compound and water source. Day and night they were tending goats or sitting around the fire-circle, Wallah. I had never heard so many men, women, and children tell so many stories, legends, and poems.

  “But all too soon we all ran out of food. Our tribes people who had fled from the Gates of the Wadi to seek shelter in our mountain brought with them food supplies only for six days, for they thought that this latest big war to break out, like the one before it, would be battled only for six days. No one thought this last war would be battled for more than sixty days, yaa-Rabb.”

  “They could have stayed in their home ground, for in the all-too-many days of this last big war, all the battles had been fought a distance too far to endanger the lives of those who lived around the Gates of the Wadi,” says Azzizah.

  “Aywa—yes,” says Tammam. “Everyone knew it to be so at the end of that war. At the beginning, no one knew if the war would be battled near or far from the Gates of the Wadi. All we knew after six days was that this latest Big War was not like the war before it. And also that, in the past six days, our numbers had so swelled in our sheltering mountain compounds that in but three-four days we mountain Badu would not have food supplies to sustain us and our tribesmen. That was not bad news to us children. For we children thought that, when we would run out of flour and rice, the grownups would slaughter the goats, and we children loved goat meat. But, as soon as the grownups found out why we children were glad our food was running out, they told us that our Badu way of life would die if we were to slaughter our goats.

  “And it was that evening, or the evening after, that our elders dispatched my father and my brother to fetch food supplies from Al-Arish, for they were among the best, the fastest of our camel-riders. Others were dispatched to purchase supplies in a place called Eilat, and across the border in a place called Aqaba, which is in a land called Jordan. And even to Saudia, and to Syria and Lubnan—Lebanon—our elders dispatched border-crossing men, to fetch not only food but also information. For our elders did not trust the war stories they heard told on the machine called radio, that one of our tribesmen brought with him from the Gates of the Wadi. And the machine called radio did not tell in which market the stores did not run out of food.

  “The desert’s passes were fraught with new dangers in wartime. No one but Allah knew who would be fated to return with food supplies or with information-power to purchase food with, or maybe even the release of our clansmen who had been imprisoned for crossing borders or breaking frangi—foreign—laws. My brother was glad to be dispatched on a journey befitting a courageous full-grown man. And I was glad for him.”

  “Were you not afraid that a calamity might befall your father or brother, or both, on their way to or from Al-Arish?” I ask Tammam.

  “No,” she replies. “Their blood was far more exposed before the war. For we were pursued at that time by a Badu clan bent on avenging the blood and Honour of their blood kin. We were forced to stay in hiding for months and months, years and years, Wallah. And only a few weeks before the last big war broke out, our dispute with that Badu clan was settled. To firm up the sulha, the most pure of our maidens was given in marriage to the most cunning of their trackers. So that, even if that marriage would last but one night, the child conceived in that one night would be of our blood and theirs.”

  “Is that how your marriage to Abu Salim came about?”

  “Let me answer one question before you ask another,” snaps Tammam. “Wallah, I never met a woman who interrupts a storyteller like a child lacking discretion and craving nothing as much as quick satisfaction of curiosity. . . such a child is made glad by none other than the stingy. For the stingy are the ones who tell their story narrow—to the point. Aywa—yes. Such a child is made but restless by the generous storytellers who tell their story wide, so they illuminate a world kept dark to me, to you. Sahih—right?”

  “Sahih, Wallah,” I agree, amazed by the change in Tammam. You wouldn’t know it was the same girl who gave you the shivers whenever she lamented, “Oh, my daughter, take what is left of the rest of my life . . .” It was as if, while I was ill, Azzizah’s medicine had done wonders for Tammam, curing her of her volatile mood swings, of her fear that she will die.

  “Tell on, yaa-Tammam,” says Azzizah, rolling herself a cigarette.

  “Aywa,” Tammam continues. “The sulha of our blood feud and disputes meant that no cunning tracker out to avenge honour and blood with dagger and sword would lay in ambush for my father and my brother on their way to or from Al-Arish.

  “Wallah, how disappointed my brother was that he and my father would cross no borders, break no frangi—foreign—law on their way to and from Al-Arish. But I was glad, because I knew that he and my
father would be spared the worst fate to befall a camel-rider . . .”

  “Which is to be imprisoned,” Azzizah interjects, cigarette smoke drifting through the cracks in her shell of veils, shawls, and dresses.

  “Aywa—yes,” says Tammam. “It was a long long week, that week of my waiting. And then, one day, they both returned to our compound, but with only one camel.”

  “Yaa-Allah,” exclaims Azzizah, almost like a child enjoying her favourite story. “Tell on.”

  “Aywa, with only one camel they returned,” Tammam continues. “The other one they were forced to sell, my brother told me, to purchase the grain, flour, rice, sugar, tea, and coffee that he and my father fetched on the back of one camel only, so light was the weight of the provisions with a price so heavy—a thoroughbred she-camel, yaa-Rabb. ‘Up and up and up, the price went, higher and higher, the more uncertain the uncertainty of the war,’ my brother said. No one he and my father met on their way would venture even to guess how long this latest Big War would last, or who would conquer to rule in this, our Badu desert. Badu from the desert over were riding to purchase food supplies in Al-Arish, only to find the stores in Al-Arish nearly empty, my brother said. And fresh supplies were not arriving to the Al-Arish stores because the suppliers, be they of the Yahodi or of the Egyptian tribe, were too busy with supplying food and weapons to their army men and machines. Therefore, there were hundreds upon hundreds of buyers for every sack of flour that remained. Like that, the price was raised higher and higher and higher, Wallah. Before they knew it, the money that my father and brother had carried with them did not suffice for even one sack of flour.

  “And so, from store to store my father and brother went, from store to store, my brother told me, until they entered a store in which the owner wished to purchase a camel. The owner of that store feared that this latest war might yet force him and his wives and children to seek shelter in the interior of the peninsula, where a camel would serve him and his household better than his truck, which was useless to the store owner now because the fuel for his truck, like the food-stuffs in his store, was commandeered for army use. Had it not been for this store owner, my brother told me, he and my father would have returned to our compound with the saddlebags of both their camels empty.”