by Malka Marom
“She has no husband,” he declares to Abu Salim. “No husband would allow his wife to visit-sit with people not her kin.”
“I trust she has a husband and a son, as she has told she has,” says Abu Salim, with obvious restraint.
“She has told you but story,” the visiting Badu tells Abu Salim. Then he turns to me and demands I show him pictures of my husband and my son.
“I have no pictures to show,” I tell him.
“If she had a husband, and a son, and a camera, she would have pictures to show. All strangers show pictures,” says the visiting Badu, casting doubt on Abu Salim’s trust.
“Why do you have no pictures to show?” Abu Salim asks me, as if I’d betrayed him.
“I carry no pictures of my husband, or of my son, or of my mother and my father, for they are all carved in my heart,” I reply, and I am about to tell the visiting Badu to keep the fucking Polaroid when the children burst into excited cries as Mutt and Jeff return with the goatherd.
The mountain chains shout, laugh and screech as the children play a sort of hide-and-seek among the goats and saluki-dogs, raising circles of dust. The infants cough and cry. Breasts are pulled out to pacify them. Not one grownup tells a child to shut up.
Imsallam Suleman Abu Salim himself, probably twice the age of his visiting blood-kin, now starts to unpack their camel, as dictated by Badu hospitality—extended to all, or just to visiting testers-of-proof? It looks like they have come to stay for good, having packed everything they own: black goat-hair tent, blankets, carpets, pots and pans, and sackfuls of God knows what—flour for pitas, perhaps, and probably rice, onions, sugar, tea, cans of tomato paste, sardines, and tuna. The visiting man doesn’t move to help Abu Salim; it’s not proper for a guest to sweat, do work . . .
Is that why Tammam is pitching the visitors’ tent—not in between Azzizah’s tent and Tammam’s, even though there is space, but about fifty meters southwest of Tammam’s tent, where boulders and cliffs will protect the visitors’ tent from the winds? Tammam is using stones to hammer in the tent pegs and poles. This tent, like hers and Azzizah’s, is also facing east, at such an angle that no one can see into it, nor what is cooking at the fire-circles at the maharama—the place of the women.
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Two cooking-fires this evening in front of Tammam’s tent. On one, a huge pot of rice, on the other pitas, handed to the children as soon as they are done.
Azzizah grabs Jeff’s arm when he comes for another helping of pita. She checks and checks his hand, and I was probably the most relieved of all to see that his blisters haven’t festered. Abu Salim said nothing this evening, just frowned when I cleaned the blisters with alcohol and dabbed on a fresh coat of iodine.
The visiting Badu stuck his nose into my first-aid kit and asked if I had any ointment or pills to cure his son’s ailment. Then he went on to tell me that he had dragged his son to every darwish and darwisha in the Sinaa desert, even to Hilal and the Yahodi darwish at the clinic, but Hilal and the Yahodi darwish, like all the Badu darwishin he had gone to, could not exorcise the djinn-demon who had slipped into his son’s head when the child was but two or three years old (that’s when they noticed he was slightly retarded, I guess). “My son is good, his heart is good . . . I will give you my camel, all my camels—everything I possess—if you will cure him,” he said to me. “My son only lacks discretion, but a Badu who lacks discretion is not a Badu.”
“There are special schools, special teachers, who could teach your son to be more discreet,” I told him.
“Yes, that is what Hilal and the Yahodi darwish told me. But you know how fearful-irritable my son is when away from his mother. And she cannot go with him to these schools, for it is not proper for a woman . . . Aywa—yes, my son told us how good you were to him. Allah shall repay you for that. What is your name?”
“Leora; the Badu call me Nura.”
“I am Abu Hasan,” he says, meaning the father of the child he was speaking of, Hasan. A father concerned about his child resides behind this wild, angry-looking, savage face—all teeth, bulging eyes, sunken cheeks, black stubble.
Dinner: the usual, pita, rice, dip of fried onion and tomato paste, and loads of sugar in the tea, which is served in shifts since there are not enough glasses to go around.
“I heard your son, Salim, is on his way home,” the visiting Badu, Abu Hasan, says, rolling an after-dinner cigarette.
“Aywa,” says Abu Salim. “My son is coming home to get married . . .”
“To get married?! . . . Married?! . . . Cannot be!” The mountains cry out after Abu Hasan and his wife. There is outrage here, as if Abu Salim has robbed them of their bribe, or the bloody thrill of a double execution. They obviously didn’t come here expecting a wedding.
“Not a word did anyone hear of it at the Gates of the Wadi, not even we, your blood-kin,” says Abu Hasan.
“Tomorrow, Inshallah, the whole desert shall hear,” responds Abu Salim, barely able to conceal his pleasure at surprising the whole desert, quashing rumours and preempting testers extorting bribes. “Tonight, Inshallah, the men shall gather at the maq’ad to decide what price for the she-camel, water rights, or rights of passage.”
“Who sold you his she-camel for such a high price?” says the visiting Badu, as if he thought no one would be willing to marry his daughter off to a man of such a stained reputation as Salim, not for all the water rights and smuggling routes in the world.
“Iben Jahama, the honourable elder of the powerful clan,” replies Abu Salim.
“Surely you did not purchase his eldest she-camel.”
“His eldest and most favoured she-camel.”
“But she is blemished . . .”
“So is my son, Salim.”
“Your son is blemished?” says the visiting Badu, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “How is he blemished?” asks Abu Hasan.
“Any son who leaves his father’s tents to see the world is bound to be blemished,” says Abu Salim, killing the rumour once and for all.
Tammam, cradling her infant daughter, sits folded into herself, a show-nothing mask silencing her eyes.
A blemished she-camel, meaning: a blemished bride, Tammam, not for your husband Abu Salim, but for his son. Why did it not occur to you that Azzizah was talking of a bride for her son, Salim? Did her son promise, swear, he’d marry no one but you, yaa-my sister Tammam, No one but you, even if his father refused to grant you a divorce? Did he vow that, under the cover of darkness, together you would flee from this compound, with little Salimeh wrapped in your arms, covering your tracks, until you reached the shelter-tents of a Badu elder powerful enough to negotiate your divorce and license you to marry your heart’s desire? Is that how you and Salim dreamed it would happen, yaa-my sister Tammam?
Is it for the death of this dream that you are grieving now—lovesick, as in the Song of Songs: O do not judge me for I am lovesick. No river of water could put out the fire of love, no fire could ever burn love out . . .
Was it to meet his son that Abu Salim disappeared when I was ill? Did he ride away to give his son the news that he had found a way for him to come home and live with his blemished bride in a tent next to yours? Is that what’s killing you, yaa-Tammam? Would you rather your daughter be motherless and your brother be imprisoned for life? Would you rather Azzizah be a mother bereaved? Would you rather the whole hamula—clan—be destroyed, their reputation sullied in a story that remains when all else dies? Oh, Tammam, yaa-my sister, was it to avert all of that, that Azzizah urged Abu Salim to pay whatever bride price was necessary? Did Azzizah whisper that night, did she keep you in the dark for she feared you’d betray both her son and yourself, tell the whole world the rumour is true? Was your brother by your side when you were told of this wedding—the day I was dispatched to catch the wind and tend goats with Mutt and Jeff? Did he tell you, “Ashow—wake up—yaa-my sister Tammam. S
marten up. Grow up. Dir-balak—watch out. All the eyes and ears of the desert are upon us, watching and listening for the story that we leave behind . . .”
CHAPTER 26
“Go be my ears and eyes in Abu Salim’s maq’ad,” Azzizah instructs me, soon after the evening sun sinks and the wind swallows the men’s footsteps. They have gone to decide what price to pay for the blemished bride.
“But I am your eyes and ears outside the tents,” Jeff protests, as if Azzizah has just demoted him for no good reason. “Your eyes and ears, and my mother’s,” he adds.
Azzizah smiles.
“You stay fil bayt—at home—with the women,” Jeff tells-orders me. “It is forbidden for a woman to sit-stay in the maq’ad—men’s guest-receiving place.”
“Forbidden for a woman Badawia, but not for a woman Yahodiya, as is our guest Nura,” Azzizah tells her grandson Jeff.
Tammam tilts her head as if Azzizah is now at a new angle, no longer rigidly upright.
Night rode out to meet us when we reached the maq’ad—Mutt and Jeff, the visiting children, and I. As soon as we got there, Hasan, the slightly retarded child-boy, ran over to his father seated in the inner circle closest to the fire’s crackling heat. His sister and little Mutt also crawled forward. Only Jeff remained at my side, his teeth chattering. I took off my parka and wrapped it round his shoulders. He organizes it into a sort of a tent, sheltering us from the wind, and my flashlight from the frowning faces of the elders, “who think you write-to-remember for to inform to the other side.”
“Which other side?”
“The side of the bride,” Jeff whispers back. “You better switch off the torch, for the moonlight is as bright, and not offensive to the elders.” In a muted whisper close to my ear, this Badu boy who chuckles whenever I call him Jeff, guides me through his clan’s customs and rules of debate in the maq’ad.
Some men in the inner circle turn to him and frown. “For it is not proper for anyone but the elders to speak here tonight. And it is also not proper for a woman stranger-no-stranger to sit here tonight, even outside the circle, in the dark,” Jeff, defying the frowns, whispers in my ear.
Circles within circles round the fire-circle. In the inner circle the elders and honoured guests, including the visiting Abu Hasan; in the outer, their camels. Jeff and I are huddled in between, just outside the rim of the firelight, on the cold gravel, behind the backs of the Badu men, and they must have heard us way before we arrived. Yet no one offered a welcome-carpet to us, or a greeting or even a nod of recognition. The men continue to talk as if the children and I were shadows of saluki dogs or camels, or boulders arranged in a semicircle to protect the men against the cold night wind. From here, Jeff and I can hear only the crackling and the hissing of the fire-heat. The wind taunts us with whiffs of the fire’s warm fragrance.
What a beautiful night, yaa-Rabb. A full moon lights the desert, as if it is midday and someone has decided to drape a pearl grey lampshade over the sun. The granite mountains seem to be buffed by the moonlight, their edges softened, feminine, inviting, enticing you to their bosoms. Woe to anyone enchanted by this mirage. The kaffiyyes, abia, and jalabeeyas are transformed into regal robes by the moonlight. The Badu look like desert monarchs and noblemen, even those who had looked like fierce outlaws on the moonless night when Tal and I had first encountered them.
Aside from Abu Salim and Abu Hasan, I recognize only three or four of the others: the Badu wearing a black eye patch like Moshe Dayan—Abu Salim’s brother and Azzizah’s cousin, according to Jeff. And the Badu with seashell earrings—Azzizah’s remedy for hearing loss, Jeff explains, “He is Azzizah’s uncle.” The toothless Badu whose face looks like a potato—“He is Abu Salim’s uncle . . .” And the Badu with two fingers missing from his left hand and one from his right— “. . . had tried to render powerless-harmless a land mine planted in Wadi M. by Yahodi soldiers, or Egyptians, or English, or Turkish . . . He is Abu Salim’s cousin, and Tammam’s . . .” Jeff doesn’t know anyone in his clan who is not blood-related to him. His parents are first cousins, as are his parents’ parents, “and most everyone’s parents ever since time remembered.”
Not all the elders are old. Some are probably not yet forty, maybe not yet thirty, like the visiting Badu Abu Hasan. “Why does he have an elder’s voice, here in the maq’ad?” I whisper-ask Jeff.
“Allah aref—Allah knows,” he replies. “Maybe Abu Salim invited him to be a tongue speaking for our many clansmen who dwell at the Gates of the Wadi so that later they will not say they want no part of the decision, because they had no voice in the decision making tonight . . . Aywa, I remember my father told me that no one disputes a decision if he has a say in it. That is why the host of the maq’ad lets all the elders have a say, and only then, after he hears all their opinions and their debating, their agreeing and disagreeing, he tells what he has decided to decide, and why he has decided to decide it.”
“You mean Abu Salim alone will decide if the bride-price is to be water rights or rights of passage?” I ask him.
“Taba’an—naturally. For Abu Salim owns the waterhole and the rights of passageways . . . and, after he dies, his son, Salim, will own it. And if Salim also is fated to die, it will not go to my mother, but to Abu Salim’s brother, the brother who is the father of Abu Hasan; he is my uncle Salim’s cousin . . .” Jeff points at the visiting Badu, Abu Hasan, the father of the retarded child-boy.
He stands to gain quite an inheritance if Salim is executed. Family rivalries, if not feuds, are bound to inform this debate.
“One or the other, water rights or access to passageways—smuggling routes—is too high a price for this she-camel,” says Abu Salim’s nephew, Abu Hasan, his abaiah wrapped round his retarded son. Here in the maq’ad he doesn’t say that the she-camel, meaning the bride, is blemished, as he did in the tents. Here he has to take a long silence to gather the courage, it seems, to disagree with everyone who has had a say so far.
None said straight out that the bride price was too high, yet all implied it.
“Aywa, cunning, rich, and powerful as a sheikh is the owner of the she-camel; his many sons and their large herd will drink our waterhole dry if we give him water rights for his she-camel, and they will take over our passageways if we give him a foothold in them. That is why I think one or the other is much too high a price for his she-camel.”
“Aywa—yes,” Azzizah’s uncle, the Badu with the seashell earrings, agrees. It takes him ten minutes to say he agrees, and ten more minutes to say that one or the other is not too high a price—“For it is the price, not only for the she-camel but for our alliance with her noble owner and his powerful clan.”
Silence . . . Silence is also a speaker here, taking a turn after each man. Each one talks in wider circles around the point, yet no one interrupts.
“El haqq ma’ak—the truth lies with you.” All the men in the inner circle agree, in keeping with their tradition of maq’ad debating. Then a minute or so later comes the “But . . .”
“But I would pay for her, not water rights, but passageways, for they are worthless—only routes to prison,” says a neighbouring Badu.
“I agree; passageways are worthless these days, but tomorrow, if Israel is to trade this Sinaa desert to Egypt for peace, Egypt will rule in our Sinaa and, Wallah, how valuable were the passageways when Egypt had ruled here in Sinaa,” says Azzizah’s uncle and Abu Salim’s.
“I remember . . . Wallah, I remember . . . It is very difficult to decide what price to pay when you don’t know what Israel and Egypt will decide,” says Abu Salim’s cousin, the Badu whose fingers were taken by a land mine. “If they decide to sign the peace pact, then Israel will evacuate Sinaa, and soon after Egypt will rule Sinaa, and then our passageways will not be worthless. If that is what fate holds in store, I say let us keep the passage routes for us and pay water rights for the she-camel. But if fate holds in store that
Israel and Egypt will decide not to sign a peace pact, then Israel will continue to rule here in Sinaa, and our passageways would but be passage routes to prisons. Wallah, if I knew that that is what fate holds in store, I would say let us keep the water rights . . .Wallah, it is hard to decide, for only Allah knows if Egypt and Israel will sign a peace pact or not.”
The last thing I would have expected is that a Badawia bride price would depend on the peace talks at Camp David. No matter how well I know that Mid-East politics is just Mid-East politics in Canada, here it’s a major consideration in any personal decision—something at the core of the inner-self, the spirit, the soul, mine like the Badu’s, yearns to be free from the dictate of politics, fate, nature . . .
“Aywa,” agrees Azzizah’s uncle and Abu Salim’s. “The only way to figure what to pay for the bride-price is to figure what Egypt and Israel will do . . . Wallah, if I were Israel, I would not make a peace pact with Egypt. First of all because, once before—twenty years ago it was, I think—soon after the war the Yahod call the Sinaa war, Israel returned the whole of this our Sinaa desert to Egypt for peace. Yet, ten or eleven years later, Egypt had attacked Israel again. Therefore, I think that now, as then, Egypt means to make a peace with Israel, but not a sulha. Surely Israel knows that; Wallah, the tribe of Israel is not a tribe of stupid bats. And the other reason is that Israel has built too many towns in Sinaa to give them away, and too many clinics and schools and army bases and air bases to give them away, and also too many roads and too many biyaar—wells, Wallah . . . wells and wells, of water and of black gold. Aywa, I think Israel is peace-talking with Egypt only to not offend her ally, America.”
“I also say, let us pay rights to passageways, not water rights for the she-camel. For I think that Egypt cannot ever make peace with Israel,” says Abu Salim’s brother, the one with the black eye patch like Dayan’s. “The Arab fellahin of Filastin, Syria, Lubnan, Jordan, Iraq, Saudia, and many more the desert over, will never forgive Egypt if she makes peace with Israel. For their war with Israel is a holy war—a jihad. A holy war should end with victory, never with peace. Aywa, yes, if Egypt makes peace with Israel, she stands to lose her honour. Wallah, the Egyptians will become a pack of hateful hyenas, crouching to drink from strangers’ holes, lapping up water when no wind blows to convey their stink to all others. . .”