Sulha

by Malka Marom

  “You want to borrow a camel, yaa-Allah, you strangers know nothing,” says Jeff, shaking his head. “Look. You see the tent folded up here in the branches.” He points to what looks like a nest of an eagle, or a hawk, or a family of ravens. “It’s a winter tent. In the spring or summer, a woman folds it up like that, or when she goes to visit her father or mother, or goes to attend a circumcision or a wedding. Why does she need to carry her belongings or her tent when she can leave them on a tall tree, too tall for goats to reach, for only goats might touch it—no one else. Wallah, the law is very, very strict on this. Remember, write, repeat,” the child orders me. “Remember, never touch anything; never even borrow anything unless you receive permission—especially not a camel, yaa-Allah. Even after many, many years, everyone will recognize who owns it, and even if you deny and bring many, many witnesses to attest your innocence, once they suspect, they are entitled to demand that you swear . . .”

  “And that you also test for proof,” says Mutt. The rumour has risen again.

  Jeff spits behind his back and gives Mutt such a look, the little one starts to cry and curse. “You talk empty,” his brother tells him. “The test for proof is only in case of murder or in other criminal things like murder . . .”

  “But stealing is a criminal thing like murder,” says Mutt, wiping his eyes and nose. His face is a mess of tears and flies. “You think I know nothing,” he mutters to Jeff, “but I know, I do.”

  “Write-remember,” Mutt tells-orders me, emulating his brother. “Write-remember to never ever swear that you did no crime when you did the crime, for you will die right on the spot—on the spot, Wallah. My father told that it was better to pay even many camels and many goats and many everything than to swear at the grave of a saint called ‘a just man,’ for even if innocent you can die on the spot just from the fright. My father told me it is better to test for proof . . .”

  “How do you test for proof?” I ask the child, already guilt-ridden for using his innocence and losing mine.

  “Ana ma ba’ref—I don’t know,” Mutt replies.

  “I do,” says Jeff. “Aywa, once I even saw a bish’ah—meaning ‘a licking of fire,’ meaning ‘a test for proof.’ Only one family or two in the whole desert of the whole tribe knows how to conduct a bish’ah, my father had told me. From generation to generation they pass the knowing. The same one or two families conduct the bish’ah, my father said.”

  “Do you know how it is conducted, this licking of the fire?” I ask him, hiding my shame behind the veil of smoke from the last cigarette in my pack.

  “Aywa—yes,” replies Jeff. “The elder of the family builds a fire, then he rests a skillet on the fire—a skillet for roasting coffee but empty of beans. After the skillet turns white-hot, the elder takes it from the fire, then rubs his hand on the white-hot skillet three times to show how the innocent will not be harmed. And then he hands the white-hot skillet to the one suspected of crime. Now the suspected one must stick his tongue out to show all who gathered to attest the test of proof, that his tongue is clean of blisters and sores before the licking, and only now he licks the white-hot skillet three times. Aywa, three times. Then the elder gives the one suspected a glass of water to rinse his mouth, to clean the ashes from his tongue, so that all who gathered will see the result. All fall silent and hold their breath when the one suspected sticks out his tongue. Now, if his tongue is clean, he is deemed innocent by one and all. But if his tongue shows a blister or a sore he is deemed guilty by one and all.”

  “My father said that you can bribe the elder to heat the skillet not so much as to blister the tongue,” pipes up little Mutt. “That is why he said it was better to test for proof than to swear at the grave of a saint, a just one.”

  “You are talking ignorant, like a stranger,” Jeff says to his little brother, then he tells me, “Write to remember. A bribe is a crime to give or to take. But it is better to test for proof than to swear, for if fear does not dry your spit, your tongue will not blister when you lick the white-hot skillet . . .”

  “When are we going back to the tents? I wish to see if my uncle Salim and my father have arrived,” says Mutt.

  “Soon, soon,” Jeff tells him, sends the little one to fetch la’anah. Mutt picks up a few crusty leaves from some dried-out shrubs and brings them to Jeff, who chews a couple as if to show they are not poisoned, bewitching leaves.

  “Eat, eat,” he tells me, screws on his gruff, grown-up face. “Eat, eat,” he urges, like Abu Salim. They taste like salted juice. “La’anah leaves are as good as water. Write-remember. If you are ever lost, they will quench your thirst.”

  Mutt gets up and runs down to the wadi, disappearing around the bend.

  The mountains shout after Jeff, instructing Mutt: “You better gather goat and camel dung on your way, else we will have no fuel for a cooking fire tonight.”

  “Is he going back to the compound by himself?” I ask Jeff.

  “Yes,” he replies. “My brother will not get lost. The little one only talks ignorant like a stranger, but he is a Badu—a true son of the Sinaa sahrah—the Sinaa desert—like me.”

  The shadows were stretching long when I returned to the compound and found Azzizah rejuvenated, as spritely as a girl, and Tammam haggard, shoulders slumped, hands limp, eyes vacant and dazed like a woman stunned by sudden loss. Abu Salim looked like he could barely restrain his anger at her, at Akram, at Azzizah.

  What went on here while I was away with the children? I wanted to ask.

  Just then, as we joined the fire-circle in front of Azzizah’s tent, her sharp darwisha—medicine-woman—eyes caught sight of the nasty blisters on Jeff’s fingers. “How could you be so careless to burn your fingers? Even an infant, a baby, knows that before you build a cooking fire you lay down three rocks and only then do you light the fire . . .”

  Jeff dropped his head, flicking the flies away from his blisters.

  “Do you feel pain-sore under your arm?” Abu Salim asks Jeff. The Badu clearly fears the blisters will burst then fester.

  “Laa—no,” Jeff mutters, shaking his head.

  Azzizah checks and rechecks his hands and arms and says he must dunk his blisters in the camel’s urine, else his veins will turn black.

  “You are not going to amputate my fingers,” Jeff whispers.

  “I may have to,” mutters Azzizah, and Jeff starts to cry.

  I took off my boots and showed the Badu the purple and yellow medicine I had applied on my blisters to prevent them from festering. “It is called iodine.”

  Azzizah said she had never heard of nor seen such a remedy.

  Tammam’s brother, Akram, said that he had seen such a purple-and-yellow medicine stain on many a nasty cut and blister. “Some on my own flesh. It healed very clean and fast.” Azzizah was convinced, but not Abu Salim.

  “Did Hilal give you this medicine?” Abu Salim asked me, as if any medicine that came from his foreign rulers was poison.

  “No,” I replied. “I would give this medicine to my own son.”

  Still, he kept saying no, and ordered Jeff to take Badu medicine—to dunk his blisters in camel’s urine, as Azzizah had told him.

  “But my father’s veins turned black even after he had soaked-dunked his fingers in camel’s urine,” says Jeff.

  “That was the will of Allah,” mutters Abu Salim. “That was decreed by fate.”

  Azzizah is not as religious, nor as fatalistic. “Are you sure this purple-yellow remedy is so good you would give it even to your son?” she asked me.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Go fetch it and give it to my grandson.” Azzizah ordered me, overruling her husband.

  I was astonished, and relieved: she would not let him kill her son, Salim, it seemed clear now.

  Abu Salim didn’t say a word. Fierce as always, he looked, and angry as hell at Tammam, who sat there l
ike a zombie while breast-feeding little Salimeh. That wild streak on his left jaw glistened red as Abu Salim watched me dressing his grandson’s blisters, then he left, without saying a word in parting. That didn’t seem to bother anyone but me.

  Jeff wears his Band-Aids and purple and yellow medicine like a proud pioneer. I remind him again to keep his fingers dry and clean. God help me if his blisters fester.

  “What happened here today while I was away?” I whispered to Tammam. I had followed her to the ditch. “You look like a terrible calamity has befallen someone near and dear to you.”

  Silence.

  “I can’t . . . I can’t . . . You are truly my sister,” she broke the silence, her eyes tearful, her voice raw with the sorrow of the ages.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Visitors-guests approaching!” Azzizah is first to hear today.

  “The vultures descending upon us,” Tammam mutters, like a girl condemned. Azzizah is clearly shaken by this comment. It knocks me out—like a huge wave—engulfs me with terror, confusion, pain . . .

  “Dir-balak,” Azzizah says to Tammam, the warning in her tone, her eyes, as well as her words. Watch out. One wrong word from you, one wrong move, in front of the vultures, and you are dead, she conveys silently. “Ashow—wake up!” Azzizah adds implying: Snap out of it. Smarten up. Use your brain before it’s too late.

  But the girl-Badawia, almost like a girl-widow drained by grief, can’t find it within herself to give a damn about anyone or anything, least of all her life.

  And now Azzizah, frenzied, as if her life depended on it, takes action, sweeping the gravel ground of Tammam’s tent and round the fire-circles; shaking the dust, gravel, and sand out of the welcome-carpets and spreading them out in a wide circle round the honour-coffee fire-circle; propping up tent flaps for shade; rinsing glasses, teapot, coffee bakraj, and skillet. For once she didn’t tell me it is not proper for a guest to do work: Tammam sat by the side of her tent absently until I sponge-bathed little Salimeh and dressed the infant-girl in a clean change of clothes—a flower-print dress, sweater and bonnet to match.

  “Hush, the visitors are but steps away,” she whispers, by force of habit, it seems. Jingle-jangle, she and Azzizah adjust their veils and brace themselves for the vultures . . .

  Running up the path, leading to and from Abu Salim’s maq’ad, comes the Badu child-boy who had dragged me up to these forbidden tents months ago—a lifetime ago. A scrawny girl-child, trying to restrain him and catch her breath, mutters, “My brother, he ran ahead of my mother and my father and my sisters and my brothers . . .”

  “First of the vultures,” Tammam mutters under her veil.

  “Aywa—yes.” Azzizah grunts, frowns, heaves a sigh, rubs her aching back—they’re a pain, these visitors.

  Both Azzizah and Tammam rise to their feet as soon as the saluki dogs run out to greet Abu Salim and the visitors. (Tammam’s brother, Akram, is not with them. He rode away to greet Salim, according to Mutt and Jeff, who are tending the goatherd today also.)

  Touching forehead to forehead, the Badawias exchange salutations, greeting-blessings. The Badu man-visitor kisses Azzizah’s head, but doesn’t go near Tammam, just throws the girl-wife a half-assed marhaba. Then he sits himself down on the welcome-carpet in the place of honour, close to the fire but away from the smoke. His children hang onto him like to a life preserver in rough sea. Five children—the oldest is the child-boy I met when I first drove into Abu Salim’s maq’ad with Professor Russell. What a temper tantrum he had thrown then, frothing and jerking in spasms almost like an epileptic seizure until I relented and escorted him to this forbidden compound.

  Silence. Even this child-boy—slightly retarded, according to Russell—observes the silence of greeting-ritual, or ceremony, or just a quiet moment to adjust to new group dynamics, to sense-see through to the river beneath the river . . . The child-boy looks at me as if trying to remember where he had seen me before, why he feels he knows me. He and his brothers and sisters have travelled barefoot and are wearing the same layers of tribal clothes as Mutt and Jeff and the neighbouring shepherd children; they have the same amulets and the same eye infection and runny nose, and their faces are busy landing fields for formations of flies.

  Abu Salim starts to roast coffee beans in a blackened skillet—the one that his son, Salim, will have to lick when tested for proof?

  The visiting infant breaks the silence. As soon as he begins to cry, his mother, sitting before Abu Salim, pulls out a breast.

  Her face is covered by a veil, identical, almost, to Azzizah’s, Tammam’s, and the neighbouring Badawias’, indicating that she is of their tribe. Her shawls and thowb are embroidered and cut in same tribal colours and style, and are laden with almost the same jingle-jangle jewels, coins, and bead work, only much more of it. She checks me over with a pair of suspicious, disapproving eyes, heavily kohled, and bloodshot. Shocking-pink plastic sandals “blindfold” her feet, and running shoes her husband’s.

  He has travelled with a doobon—a khaki Israeli Army parka or some imitation of it—over the same sand-coloured ankle-length tribal jalabeeya as Abu Salim wears. The handle of his shibriyya—dagger—tucked in a leather holster, is inlaid with mother of pearl. A kaffiyye headdress that once was white is wrapped, rag-like, round his head, the same as Abu Salim. He and his wife are probably of the same tribe, and also Azzizah’s blood-kin and Tammam’s; otherwise, it would have been forbidden for them to even enter this compound, let alone sit round the fire-circle with Azzizah and Tammam. Unless an exception has been made in their case, as in mine.

  Is it because these visiting Badu disapprove of such exceptions that my presence seems to annoy them? Or is it because the Badu rarely show a friendly face on first meeting, showing instead, by their expression, that they are fierce, aggressive, intimidating, threatening, as befitting true real men and women. Maybe they are just tired of the sizzling sun that has dogged them all journey long, and they are parched and hungry, and their children must have been a handful.

  Did their father come here to test Salim for proof? Is he of the one or two families who have tested their clansmen-blood-kin throughout time? Would he accept a bribe? Declare that Abu Salim’s household was simply victimized by a malicious rumour?

  “What have you got in your bag? Is it a shibriyya—dagger—or a gun?” the visiting Badu barks at me.

  I check my bag and see that it contains nothing that resembles a weapon, only a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, an extra pen, a cassette and my toilet kit, which I had pulled out when I sponge-bathed little Salimeh. The handle of my hairbrush sticks out—is that what aroused his suspicion? With such mistrust, paranoia, xenophobia, how can there be peace in this place? I say nothing, Badu-proper, like Abu Salim and his two wives. But I couldn’t resist showing the visiting Badu how useful for brushing hair this weapon is. The tension dissolves with laughter, even Tammam and the visiting Badu joining in. The mountain chains send back the laughter and the delightful squealing of their eldest child-boy, who now remembers me and asks if I have any candies like the ones I gave him when he escorted me to the tents. His sister runs to pull him away from my side. “Leave him be. We are old friends,” I tell her, and she hides, shy, behind her father’s back.

  “Is she the stranger-woman who stayed by your side when you were afraid to walk by yourself from Abu Salim’s maq’ad to his tents?” the visiting Badu asks his son.

  “Aywa—yes,” replies the child. His parents heap their blessings on me, just as Abu Salim hands me a glass bubbling with honour-coffee.

  I was about to hand it to the visiting Badawia when Abu Salim snaps at me, “What is your grievance against me, my household?! Did we offend you in any way?”

  “The opposite is true,” I respond.

  “Why then did you reject the coffee—the honour—I served you, starting from the right, as I had told you to write-to-remember?” he demands.<
br />
  “I thought you meant to serve your guests first,” I reply.

  “But you are also my guest,” says Abu Salim, flashing his brown grin.

  “Are you ready? Write-to-remember it better this time.” He dictates: “Never, ever, reject honour-coffee served to you, unless you mean to say for all to see and hear that you have a grievance against your host, or that his companions are not worthy, or that you think his brew was poisoned . . .”

  A person could start a war in this part of the world over a fucking cup of coffee.

  “Who gave you this necklace?” Here we go again. The visiting Badu decides to test trust—not only mine, but Abu Salim’s.

  “A friend from Sinaa,” I reply, just as Abu Salim had drilled me.

  “And which friend gave you these rings?” the visiting Badu continues.

  “My friend from Sinaa.”

  “Where is your friend’s dwelling-place?”

  “In the vast expanse of Sinaa.”

  “What is her name?” The visiting Badu laughs when I reply with silence. “You taught her well,” he says to Abu Salim. But next breath he snaps, “What is she writing? I would not allow her to write . . .

  “Did she bring a camera?”

  “She did, but I trust she will not take pictures of the women. She knows full well it is forbidden,” replies Abu Salim.

  “What is the name of her camera?”

  Silence. Abu Salim has had it with his tribesman’s interrogation.

  “Is your camera called Polaroid or Kodak?” the visiting Badu asks me.

  Abu Salim, with a regal nod of the head, gives me his consent to reply.

  “One is called Polaroid; the other Pentax,” I say.

  “I shall pay you one hundred dollars for your camera called Polaroid,” says the visiting Badu.

  Is my Polaroid the bribe? Abu Salim gives me no clue; neither does Azzizah or Tammam. So I light a cigarette, and then say nothing. And now he offers me two hundred dollars for the Polaroid. Before he raises his offer again, I tell him a lie: “The Polaroid is a gift I received from my husband . . .”