Sulha

by Malka Marom

  “Neither have I,” muttered Abu Salim. But neither he nor Akram granted Tammam’s wish. “Forbidden,” they said, then they all urged Tammam, “Ghanni—sing on.”

  Tammam, disappointment in her eyes, and sorrow, pain, anger, just sat there tapping her fire poker on one of the stones that rings the fire-circle. Then she picked that fire poker up, and one end disappeared under her veil and the other clearly turns into a flute. Her eyes closed, she tried to coax it to sing. The only sound is trembling breath.

  CHAPTER 24

  “Go tend goats today,” Azzizah told-ordered me soon after “breakfast.” She appointed her grandsons to be my guardians today. “Her blood is on your heads . . .”

  “Tending goats is women’s work. I want to stay with Abu Salim and Tammam’s brother, Akram,” declared Jeff. His little brother, Mutt, protested that he had no strength to entertain a stranger-guest—

  “And to carry her food and her water jerrican,” interjected Jeff.

  “Adabb—manners,” Abu Salim growled; then he said that they had been dispatched here to tend the goats because their grandmother and Tammam were busy entertaining their woman-guest.

  Abu Salim, Tammam, Akram, and Azzizah obviously didn’t want me to stay in the compound today. Why today, of all days? Are they expecting Salim today and don’t want a stranger to be there when he arrives—when they test him for proof?

  It is inconceivable to me that Akram would kill his sister, Tammam, or that Abu Salim would kill his son. Is that why my gut tells me there is no need to worry, that everything will be all right? Or does the contrary hold true? “What a contrary breed we Sabras—native Israelis—are,” Arik used to say. “In real trouble, emergency, wartime, we Sabras tell ourselves and one another: Don’t worry. Everything will be all right. The rest of the time we worry like maniacs . . .” Like now, it worries me that I’m not worried, that I have become pragmatic after living all those years in pragmatic-land Canada: There’s fuck-all I can do to avert this “honour killing,” as the Badu term it, so what’s the use of worrying? It also worries me that maybe I’m not worried because I’ve become gutless, and too proud to admit it.

  “I would rather go tend goats bukra, Inshallah—tomorrow, God willing,” I told Azzizah.

  “Would do you good to catch the wind, stretch your legs and your horizon. It is the best remedy for you,” Azzizah insisted, as she packed a lunch box—wrapped leftover pita in a dusty rag—and as she handed it to her grandsons, she reminded them again, “Nura’s blood is on your heads.”

  Mutt and Jeff walked, like “true-real-men,” a pace or two ahead of their stranger woman-guest.

  The goat path twisted and turned down the plateau. The goatherd had reached the waterhole way ahead of us, as had scores of shepherd children. Some of these kids are smaller than little Mutt; at kindergarten age they have already been sent to learn on the job—how to survive in this awesome desert, how to traverse the treacherous and magnificent mountains and dry riverbeds of their home-ground, and how to tend the goatherds that sustain their Badu way of life.

  “Looks like you were mistaken when you said that tending goats was women’s work,” I say to Mutt and Jeff.

  “Laaa—no—tending goats is women’s work,” they reply, one interrupting the other. “But the women are always busy tending infants; or spinning wool; or weaving tents, welcome-carpets, camel-saddles; or entertaining guests; or . . . like today, our grandmother Azzizah had no time to tend her goatherd because she has to help Abu Salim with—”

  “Oskot—shut up,” Jeff snapped, trying to crease his face into a copy of Abu Salim’s fierce frown. “You don’t know what to tell, and what not to tell.”

  “Yes I do,” says Mutt. “I was not going to tell what I am not supposed to. I know what to tell and what not to.”

  Already the child knows how to swim with one foot in the river beneath the river, and the other foot in the masking river they show us.

  Remember Leora: these children are like a broadcasting station. Every word you utter, they repeat to Abu Salim, his wives, and God knows who else . . .

  They stand next to me, like toy bodyguards. The other shepherd children huddle and whisper, giggle, and sneak looks at the woman stranger-no-stranger. They ask no questions, and Mutt and Jeff volunteer no information—only cigarettes, my cigarettes. Jeff asks me to hand him my pack, then he presents to each child a cigarette and hands me back the pack, containing only one now for the rest of the day. The shepherd girls, like the boys, light up, and the mountains cough in sympathy, towering even taller above the children.

  The children’s clothes are dusty, stained, tattered; their feet bare; their grey faces smeared by smirks. Pus drips from the corners of their eyes, and amulets like mine hang from their wrists and necks—leather pouches containing the name of Allah to ward off al-shaytan—Satan—and blue stones, like strangers’ blue eyes, to shield against the evil eye. The shepherd-girls jingle-jangle with every move.

  “The ones dressed in black veils and long robes are maidens; the others are still girls,” Jeff whispers close to my ear—so that no one will hear how ignorant his woman-stranger-guest, I guess.

  “A girl is like a boy,” little Mutt explains. The Badu child-boy stands high on his toes even when I bend down, and whispers in my ear, “A maiden is a woman that looks like a girl . . .”

  “A maiden looks like a girl, but she can bear sons and daughters, for she menstruates,” Jeff elabourates. “That is why these girls wear veils. “Do you know what means ‘menstruates’?” he asks me, as if he has just remembered that a stranger-woman is not a woman. No one has taught him the facts of life, I assume. Just like it was for me, when I was his age, such instruction is left to the goats.

  The shepherd children couldn’t help but be aware that the waterhole, the only one around here that has survived the drought, is more empty than full. The bucket clatters on the rock bottom regularly. The girls and maidens, just like the boys, drag the brimming bucket up by a rope, and only after their goats are satisfied, the shepherd children quench their thirst—from the same bucket, and then they draw another bucket to fill jerricans. The splashing and spilling are reckless, as if they lived in water-rich Canada and not in a desert plagued by draught for the past six or seven years.

  “The whole hamula—clan—owns the water rights to this well,” Jeff whispers to me.

  “But Abu Salim owns the well,” says Mutt. “And, after Abu Salim will die, his son, Salim, will own the well . . .”

  “Salim? Azzizah told me Salim has been away a long, long time,” I say, playing on their innocence. “What will happen if Salim never comes back? Who will own the well then?”

  “Salim is on his way to the tents,” they tell me. “Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, you will see-meet him, Inshallah . . .”

  “Maybe today?” I pry.

  “Maybe today,” replies Jeff.

  “Perhaps we should go back to the tents,” I suggest.

  “What for?” snaps Jeff.

  I wish I could answer him. God, I wish I could be straight and not devious. How I hate to manipulate. But I would hate even more to discover this evening that the double execution had been carried out, while I concentrated on remaining blameless.

  “What if Salim returns today, shouldn’t we wait for him in the tents, greet him proper when he arrives?”

  “Wallah, we should,” says Mutt.

  “Laaa—no—even a giggling maiden would not leave her goats to wait and wait in a tent until her beloved arrives,” says Jeff.

  Both adamantly refuse to let me help them water the goatherd. “The others will laugh, say we are not proper hosts,” Jeff elaborates. Then, he and his little brother fill my canteen with water from same bucket that served as a water trough for the goats . . .

  The water up in the tents comes from this well, this bucket. Is that what made me ill? There
was a time I could drink water from any source. I was immune then. I’ve become a kvetch in antiseptic Canada; so damn refined I have to boil every drop of water and drink only tea.

  Leading their goats, the neighbouring shepherd children leave like the grownup Badu—without a parting word. Each one runs to catch up with his or her herd, shouting, “Urjah, yaa-urjah!!!” During the mountains’ mocking reply, they all disappear behind the shaded bend.

  Mutt and Jeff draw another bucket for their jerrican. We must hurry to catch up. There is no brake pedal on a herd of hungry goats.

  I have never been happier to find a spot of shade. It is cool, paradise here, at this shepherd’s cave, as the Badu call this shaded ledge. There is not a tree or a bush in sight—and not another shepherd; they all disappeared behind a bend in a wadi. The sky, the mountains, the riverbeds are bleached blinding white by the sun. My clothes are drenched through, and my water canteen is half-empty already. So much for not drinking a drop of murky water without boiling it first.

  The last few hours felt like years of hard labour. Mutt and Jeff ran circles around the herd while I was dragging my butt—in a good, sturdy pair of desert boots, which I had neglected to break in. My feet are blistered, pinched, swollen; if I take off my boots now, I won’t be able to put them on again. More “refinement,” I guess. Mutt and Jeff walk barefoot on burning gravel, stones, and thorns. They laughed when I asked them in what direction the tents lie. They pointed to a mountain that looks like every other one around here—bare, desolate, and granite-hard.

  I see a barren desert where Mutt and Jeff see lush, green pastureland. They have shown me seven different shrubs and plants so far—“one more poisonous than a viper snake,” Jeff said, counselling me to look and to remember to never, ever, touch it.

  “This one also,” says Jeff, a cluster of leaves in his hand. “Look. Remember this plant.”

  Mutt laughs and laughs then says, “If I drop this leaf into your tea, you will be bewitched.”

  “Meaning you will fall in love with him right here on the spot,” Jeff explains, joining in his brother’s laughter. “Bewitched love is not a good love,” he adds, wiping away tears.

  “What love is good?” I ask him.

  “Married love is good,” Jeff replies, “and loving your father and mother—parent–children love is also good, and love between brother and sister and all your blood-kin is also good. Love of friends is also good . . .”

  “My brother is already promised to marry his cousin,” says Jeff. “And I am also engaged.”

  “Laa—no. You are telling a story,” I say.

  “I swear on the life of the rain that falls from the sky that I told you no lie,” says Jeff. God knows where that child found a few dry twigs. Mutt lights a small fire and unties Azzizah’s lunch box; with the pita she also packed tea and sugar and a rusty tin can. Jeff collects three rocks and plunks them into the fire; when he burns his fingers, he curses Mutt for lighting a fire before arranging stones to hold the teapot—the rusty tin can. As befitting a true real man, the child-boy ignores the pain, spits behind his back like Abu Salim, and curses Azzizah for packing tea, not coffee, to honour a guest, as is proper.

  “My brother knows how to talk love,” says Mutt. “Tell her, tell her. Not all in one breath,” he says to Jeff. “And if the words will run away, stop to catch them . . .”

  Jeff turns shy. His brother keeps nagging him. “Ghul—tell . . .”

  “Oh you fair one whose love is a hero—a hero among warriors . . . The sight of your beauty releases prisoners. Your chiselled mouth is a gift to Allah . . . from Allah . . . and in it grains of sesame are scattered . . .”

  The mountains chuckle and mutter after Mutt, “Yaa-salaam! . . . Salaam . . . laam.”

  “Where did you learn to love-talk like that?” I ask.

  “Can I tell her? Can I? How you learned to love-talk from tending goats?” says Mutt.

  “Not proper to tell,” snaps Jeff. He can’t resist, though, it seems, showing his power—his wealth of information. With much noise, he sips his tea, then he tells of Badu shepherds who talk love: “and some even do love where they think no one can see,” adds the Badu child-boy.

  “But before lovers marry, it is very forbidden—very, very, very dangerous—to do love,” pipes up Mutt.

  “That is why lovers wait until the wadis and hills around their tents are deserted,” Jeff explains. “And then, when the herd is grazing a distance of three or four days away from their tents, Badu shepherd boys and girls do love. But first a Badu boy must learn to cover his tracks, for if he is caught doing love to a maiden, her father and brothers would be bound to kill her, and him also . . .”

  “Wallah, I love my uncle Salim,” interjects Mutt. And the present is gone, swallowed up by the past and the future.

  Jeff stares at Mutt but says nothing. Mutt chews and chews his dry, leftover lazy pita, and sips his tea with much noise, like his brother.

  “My father told that my uncle Salim knows to cover tracks better than all the Badu in all the deserts,” says Mutt. “That is why no one could find his tracks for more than a year—not even my father, not even Abu Salim . . .”

  “Laa—no. Abu Salim is the best of all trackers, even better than his son, my uncle Salim,” says Jeff. “That is why he was able to track down my uncle Salim.”

  “Why would Salim have to cover his tracks for a whole year? Did he do love to a maiden?” I am pushing it now, I know.

  “You strangers know nothing,” Jeff responds. “Shepherd-boys and maidens do love one night, and maybe even three or four nights. Therefore, they have to cover tracks for one or three or four nights, but not for more than a year . . .”

  “Salim wanted to see the world,” Mutt cut his brother off.

  “Aywa—yes,” says Jeff. “My uncle Salim wanted to see the world, but his father, Abu Salim, said that it was not good to see the world. That is why Salim had to flee and to cover his tracks for more than a year. Wallah, he had to be even wiser, more cunning than his father and mine and the whole clan, the whole tribe, to do that.”

  “My uncle Salim will bring many gifts when he returns,” says Mutt. “He will also teach me to cover tracks just like him.”

  “I know to cover tracks already,” says Jeff. “Do you want to see?”

  The mountains laugh with us when he walks backwards and then wraps our three kaffiyyes around his feet and ties two ropes to his ankles that twist and turn behind him, leaving the tracks of two snakes. Then he ties twigs to his ankles and leaves behind him the tracks of lizards and scorpions. With Mutt up on his back, Jeff demonstrates how to evade a tracker who is searching for two. Dropping Mutt, he shows how walking a looped path leads your tracker himself to cover up your trail. “Riding a goat leaves no tracks at all, see?” he says, climbing onto a scrawny black-haired goat, ravaged by drought, too tired to escape capture. “That is the best way to cover your tracks . . .”

  “No, it is not,” pipes little Mutt. He goes on to show me that the tracks of the unfortunate goat are deeper than normal.

  “I wish to be a good tracker so that, if someone will steal my camel or goats, or rob my tent, or cause harm to my women, I will find him. Wallah—I will,” says Jeff.

  “And a man has to be a good tracker for things that I cannot tell. I cannot tell, can I?” Mutt asks Jeff.

  “No,” says Jeff, and the little one beams, delighted.

  “You see. I know what to tell and what not.”

  They will have to know how to cover their tracks for smuggling at border-crossings, which I guess I’m not supposed to know.

  I should have brought the cassette recorder and camera. After being cooped up with Badawias who announce every other second that something or other is not proper, not allowed, I forgot that it’s okay to record and photograph children.

  “My father can even recognize came
ls grazing too far to see,” says Mutt.

  “So can I,” says Jeff. “I will trap a crow and then after you will suckle the heart of a crow, you also will sense-see even through mountains, just like us Badu.”

  “Just like me,” says Mutt. “My heart is like the heart of a crow because when I was born my father gave me a tiny morsel of the heart of a crow to suckle so, like a crow, I will fly off before any approaching enemy comes into view—even an enemy like a snake or a scorpion, or even a ghulah.”

  “A ghulah?” I say, shocking the little one.

  “Strangers know nothing,” Jeff mutters. “Ghulah means a witch that dwells-inhabits caves and mountain crags, like this one. She waits and waits until she sees a man or a boy travelling or camping alone. If she sees a man, she will entice him; a boy, she will snatch.”

  “But she only devours boys and men, not girls and not women. So you don’t have to be afraid,” Mutt assures me.

  “My father had thought that a ghulah witch had devoured Salim,” says Jeff, sipping his tea with his grandfather’s sound effects. “But then, last week, he heard that Salim was well on his way home, so he went away to greet Salim—”

  “I wish to go back to the tents to greet my father and my uncle Salim, proper, like she said,” Mutt mutters to his brother, but Jeff tells him that the sun is still high, the goats still hungry, and my feet still sore; that we all need to rest.

  “Perhaps we should borrow the camels I saw grazing down in the wadi, just for the ride back to the tents,” I suggest. “Those camels looked lost, like they had wandered off from the herd . . .”

  Mutt cracks up, runs behind a boulder and then back. It looks like he peed into the wind and sprayed his feet. He continues to munch lazy pita without washing his hands; their jerrican is nearly empty, and the waterhole is a hell of a hike from here. “Wallah, today I laughed and laughed more than any other day in my whole entire life,” says Mutt.