Sulha

by Malka Marom

  “But that Badu youth was dirty, yaa-Rabb, filthier than tarfa bark, which gives off only black smoke when put into the fire. This dirty youth must have dropped a bewitching leaf into her tea for she lost her reason and, right there and then, without telling even her mother or her father, she left her flock and went off with the dirty Badu youth . . .

  “Far, she followed him, yaa-Rabb, far across the desert and the border to another land—Jordan, I think is the name of that faraway land . . . And there, in Jordan land, the Badu youth, knowing that their blood was exposed, her kin bound to search for her far and wide—for forty years, or even four hundred, if need be—and that she, of such great beauty and tall as a palm, would not escape notice, sooner or later someone was bound to tell her kin of their whereabouts, and her kin were bound to kill him and her. That terrible Badu youth knew all of that. And so, fearing for his life, the Badu youth vanished in Jordan land. Yaa-Rabb, he lacked the courage and the nobility to offer her even a marriage of destruction, meaning a marriage in a distant land, a marriage with no approval . . . Aywa, lacking character and muruah, he left her in that faraway land called Jordan.

  “And she, her reason returning by and by, thought more and more of the hills and the plains of her home. She missed her mother and her father, her brothers and her sisters, longed to see them, even for the brief moment before they were bound to kill her. And so she decided to journey back.

  “On and on she walked—yaa-Rabb, walked a vast strange desert all alone. Walked and walked but always at night time. Hiding behind the darkness so that no one would see-tell, shaming her and also her blood-kin. But one night she was border crossing when Yahodi soldier-men caught her. And the Yahodi authorities, yaa-Rabb, as if she was a man smuggling information, imprisoned her—a fate worse than death, Wallah.

  “Day and night the Authorities asked her question upon question . . . but she, being a woman, how could she tell them even her name? She could not. How could she tell them why she had crossed borders without shaming herself and her blood-kin? She could not. And the Authorities, thinking she was ill, drove her to a clinic called ‘asylum’, and there they also locked her behind bars, for they feared she would escape.

  “And there, in the asylum, she sat for many weeks, maybe months. Until, one day, a Yahodi darwish—Doctor, was his name—saw that she was proper-modest, not ill. But, not knowing her name, he did not know the name of her tribe, and not the name of her dwelling place. And so he did not know how to reach her kin. He did not know what to do. He thought and thought, and then, one day, someone told him that Hilal knows all the Badu in Sinaa, and so he was bound to know the Badu maiden and her blood-kin. Right away, the Yahodi darwish fetched Hilal. And when Hilal saw how beautiful the maiden, how graceful and tall, he recognized her right away. For her father had favoured her, even more than a son. And like a son, he raised her, even invited her to sit round the fire-circle in his maq’ad. It was there that Hilal had seen her. Wallah, so noble and courageous was this maiden, even here in this place called ‘asylum,’ she greeted Hilal and blessed him, as she did every guest in her father’s maq’ad. Hilal returned her greetings and blessings, and then he told her, ‘How can I escort you to your father when I know he is bound to kill you?’

  “‘I am not afraid to die,’ she said, ‘but let me see my parents, my home, even if only for a brief moment.’

  “Hilal, however, did not have the heart to escort her to her death. And so, he alone, without her, went to her father’s maq’ad—guest-receiving place . . . And there Hilal waited and waited until her father’s guests had all departed. When he was certain that no one would hear, Hilal told her father, ‘Listen, yaa-my brother, the Authorities have searched and searched, and finally they have located your missing daughter. She is safe and well, I swear by the life of the rain that falls from the sky. But the Authorities will reveal her whereabouts to you only if you swear that you will never, ever harm her, or her sons, or her sons’ sons . . .’

  “Her father swore by the life of the trees and the plants, and by the life of the shield of Suleman, son of Daud . . . Her father swore by the life of everything sacred and dear to a Badu, and then he told Hilal, ‘I pray, yaa-my brother Hilal, that one day you will believe a Badu, even without all this swearing. Yaa-Hilal, why would I harm my daughter when I was the one who had sent her on a mission that took her far, many weeks and months away from home. Aywa, I told you she was missing only for to divert you from her mission. Wallah, this daughter of mine is more courageous, more cunning, more generous and strong than a man. That is why I raised her, not only in her mother’s tent, but also in my maq’ad . . . Aywa, do you think only you Yahod raise daughters to be soldiers?’ . . . Like this, her father talked, until he had convinced Hilal that he had no cause to harm his daughter, for she only followed his orders. Her father also convinced the whole tribe, and he slaughtered twenty or maybe two hundred goats to honour her return. For seven days and seven nights people feasted, sang, and told stories in his maq’ad.

  “But then, one day, a week or two before her wedding day, her cousin who was bound to her in marriage when he and she were twelve-fifteen years old, or maybe she was only eight or ten, suddenly came to her father’s maq’ad and said, ‘I cannot marry your daughter for she is blemished.’

  “Her father looked at his daughter’s cousin. Wallah, he looked at him long and hard, and then he said, ‘Aywa, I see why you cannot marry my daughter. Aywa, I see, and I agree that you should not marry my daughter. For her horizon is wide and your horizon is narrow.’ Wallah, her father did not talk empty for he refused all the men who came to marry his daughter.

  “For a year or two, or maybe three, he refused every man, until Abu Salim came to him and said, ‘My son is blemished, for he went to see the world against my wishes. But his horizon always stretched wide, and now, after he went to see the world, his horizon is much too wide to marry any maiden but your daughter.’

  “That is all I know to tell. Now, will you give me your camera Polaroid?”

  “Wallah, you are a good storyteller,” I say, handing her the camera.

  A’ida presented me with her silver anklet—to repay me for the Polaroid, I assume. “No need, yaa-A’ida. Your story was more than enough payment.”

  “Stories are for keif—sheer pleasure, not for camera Polaroids,” A’ida replied.

  CHAPTER 28

  “Bukra—tomorrow—Inshallah, Salim will come home,” his mother, Azzizah, kept saying day after day. If she expected him to show up this day instead of the next she gave no sign of it. Today, she and A’ida, with her little ones, went to comb the mountains and wadis for firewood. The older children went to tend the goatherd. As soon as all the others had left, Tammam went to the lookout point.

  For an hour or so Tammam waited at the point. Then, like a superstitious, lovesick girl who believes her prince would comes only when she doesn’t wait for him, she whipped herself into a frenzy of work. Time and again she lugged jerricans of water up to the compound. Then, she did the laundry, washing every piece of clothing she and her infant daughter owned. Next she washed her welcome-carpets, and every pot and pan and tray, and spoon, and tea glass and coffee demi-tasse. And another jerrican went to bathe little Salimeh. In the high heat of noon, she dressed her infant daughter in the new woollen dress and jacket I had brought her from Canada. Then Tammam asked me to bathe her. Afterwards, she groomed herself, braided her hair, kohled her eyes, applied red polish to her nails and her infant’s, dabbed on them both so much essence of rose that the compound smelled like a florist’s. By then none of us—Tammam, little Salimeh, or I—could keep our eyes open.

  It saps you, the desert heat, and the climb from the waterhole to the compound is a hell of a workout. It’s quite the fat farm, this compound. The longer I stay, the looser my jeans get. Also, the more easily I doze off, and longer and longer my stretches of lethargy become—“Bedouinism” it’s called in The La
nd.

  By the time she heard a man approaching, Tammam’s housekeeping efforts were invisible—everything was once again coated in dust and sand.

  “Rajol—man—approaching,” Tammam muttered, half-asleep. Then she jumped up and got the fire going in her honour fire-circle. Quick-fast she rinsed the teapot and filled it with the water she had mulled here, spit-and-polished her infant girl, and primped, adjusting her veils and shawls, her jewels jingle-jangling.

  Not much later, a Badu shows up, looking like an extra from Lawrence of Arabia—long flowing robes in muted desert colours, embroidered in gold thread; silver and turquoise on the handle of his shibriyya—dagger—and its holster and belt; spanking-white kaffiyye belted with a white silk agal; and biblical sandals, like mine, made in Israel by Nimrod.

  Salim. I sensed in him what I knew only too well in myself—the anxiety, the expectations, the memories, and the fatigue that accompanies you home after a year or two. The rush of adrenalin and city energy . . . He was restless, impatient, awkward, choked by restraint as he exchanged salutations-greetings-blessings with Tammam.

  She poured tea, silent-proper, dropping her eyes when he looked at her.

  “How beautiful the child.” He broke the silence.

  “Her name is Salimeh,” said Tammam. The strain in her voice frightened little Salimeh, who started to cry. Tammam pulled out a breast to pacify her. “The infant loves you, yaa-Salim. She was crying only because . . .”

  “How are you, Tammam? How are you?—Keif enti, keif enti, yaa-Tammam?” Salim kept asking her.

  Tammam replied with silence, her head bent low. She was crying, it seemed. But her eyes were dry when she looked at him and whispered, “How are you, yaa-Salim?—Keif enta, yaa-Salim . . . keif enta . . . keif enta?”

  Now the silence was his and he dropped his head. I was intruding, I felt.

  “Shvi shvi—sit, sit,” he muttered in Hebrew when I rose to my feet.

  Without saying a word, like a Badawia, I walked away. They didn’t call me back.

  Not long after I reached my ‘private’ nook at the huge outcrop of granite boulders, it sounded like a maq’ad full of men were heading to the compound. Tammam seemed tense when I re-joined her and Salim. And the closer the sound of the men’s voices and footsteps got to the compound, the angrier Salim looked and the more he resembled his father, Abu Salim.

  So many black veils, shawls, and capes had Tammam thrown over her head, and little Salimeh, she looked like a ghost’s shadow carrying off a hapless infant, rising to her feet to greet more men than I had ever seen up here in the compound. All except Abu Salim, Akram, and Abu Hasan muttered a greeting-blessing while shaking her hand, or rather the black shawl that covers it—like an ultra-orthodox Jew would the hand of a woman he thinks is unclean—or incendiary, such a flame to his twig, one touch will start a forest fire . . .

  Tammam remained standing until all the men were seated on her welcome-carpets, and only then did she fold her legs and start to brew another pot of tea. God only knows how she could see-breathe through all the layers of black covering her eyes, face, head, and little Salimeh.

  Silence—only the mountain echo of a shepherd child yelling-singing in the wadi below.

  Imsallam Suleman Abu Salim looks like he has aged ten years in less than a day. His face is drawn, pained, old; slumping with tiredness, he stares past his son, Salim, as if he has no strength to endure the sight of him.

  Because Salim ran off to see the world? Because Salim fathered Tammam’s child? Because Abu Salim took for himself this girl-wife his son had been engaged to marry since they were children? Salim is the very best tracker in the whole world, according to Mutt and Jeff. Surely he could have covered his tracks for another year or two—maybe ten. Why didn’t he?

  Was Salim homesick, missing his home ground, his mother, father, sisters, hamula—clan—Tammam? Did he return to spare them years of shame and worry, or was he simply tired of wandering from waterhole to waterhole, furtively, driven to become a fugitive by the storytelling of his father’s enemies?

  The jingle-jangle of jewels, coins, and beads announced the Badawias’ return to the compound. A’ida and her infants joined our fire-circle, but Azzizah clearly wanted to greet her son in the privacy of her tent.

  “Your mother is back in her tent,” muttered Abu Salim, as if Salim was a child and had to be told to go to his mother to pay his respects. For a moment Salim seemed to resent it; next moment it looked like he was thinking: Wallah, I am home—and like a good boy he does what his mother wants when his father wants him to.

  As soon as Tammam had served tea to the men around her fire-circle, Abu Salim told her to build a cooking fire.

  “But the water will boil out before the herd returns,” she muttered—thinking that Abu Salim will slaughter a goat to honour his son, I guess, just as the father of the blemished bride did to honour and celebrate his daughter’s homecoming . . .

  Turns out that his son’s homecoming, Abu Salim had no intention of honouring with anything more than coffee.

  Azzizah comes to help Tammam prepare the usual for supper. Something terrible must have happened during her reunion with Salim in her tent. Her eyes are like open wounds.

  And Salim looks almost as if, like Tammam’s brother, Akram, he thought his mother had conspired to get rid of her junior co-wife. Perhaps he regrets that he hadn’t made love with Tammam as rumoured, that he would rather be tested for proof than be married to anyone just to put the rumour to rest. Perhaps he has come home to exact justice—to make sure his mother’s wish comes true and his father divorces Tammam, so that he, Salim, can marry her; otherwise he’ll tell the whole desert that the rumour his mother had fabricated is true. It’s as if he would rather die than let her reap satisfaction from the seeds of her poison.

  Could this be the basis of the reunion between mother and son?

  Ah, the fury of a woman scorned is nothing compared with that of sons and daughters who have a mother to blame for all the wrong in the world.

  “Yaa-Salim! Salim!” The joy of the shepherd-children returning with the goatherd filled the compound.

  “You see? I told you. I knew Salim would bring a lot of candies.” Mutt and Jeff both offer me a fistful of toffees. Then they point to the Badu that everyone round the fire-circle was calling “El-Hajj,” meaning he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. “That is my father,” says Jeff. “My father also,” mutters Mutt.

  Three dozen people, give or take, including children, were in the compound now. Some of the children chose to eat with the men around the coffee-honour fire. Others joined the women around the cooking fire.

  “Tell us of your journey, yaa-Salim,” said Azzizah’s uncle, with the seashell hearing aid.

  “Ghul—tell on . . . Tell on.” The mountains answer the Badu’s command.

  “First, I went to the holy city, Al-Quds—Jerusalem,” Salim went on to tell in the lilting voice of Badu legend telling. “And there, in the holy mosques with the huge domes all covered in silver and gold, I prayed shoulder to shoulder with a thousand worshippers.”

  “Yaa-Allah! Yaa-Allah!” the mountains exclaimed.

  Only Abu Salim and Azzizah appeared unmoved, as though Salim’s recounting of his defiance heaped insult on injury.

  And then, almost as if to impart to them how God had punished him for defying his parents, Salim went on to tell how he had wandered in the land of Israel without food and shelter for days and nights until he had earned money to survive. No one had invited him to visit-sit, not even the men who had worked with him in the dockyards in Eilat, Ashdod, and Haifa.

  “Aywa . . . aywa,” muttered Abu Salim, knowingly, like a man who should have been obeyed.

  “Aywa—yes,” agreed Salim, lighting a Yahodi cigarette and continuing to tell how he couldn’t stomach the Yahodi food, “for the Yahod cook, not on fire like us Badu, bu
t on fuel called electricity that robs the food of taste. But often, late at night, I would walk and walk until I reached a stretch of open space, and there I would build a fire, brew tea, prepare pita—just like here at home. And sometimes I would fall asleep by the fire under the sheltering sky, just like here, and I would sleep sound. Wallah . . . sleepless, restless, were most of the nights I stayed inside a dwelling-place made of concrete or stone, like most Yahodi dwelling-places in Israel. Such places are good for winter-cold, but in summer-heat are so stifling, you cannot breathe. Out in the open, it would often be dangerous to sleep. For Yahod called ‘policemen’ would fall upon you and say you could be charged with an offence called trespassing, meaning crossing over to a place belonging to someone, just as our passageways belong to us.”

  “They imprisoned you, yaa-Rabb! . . . May a drought strike their towns! . . . May the Angel of Death snatch their breath!” Azzizah’s uncle cried out, and the mountains boomed after him.

  “Aywa—yes,” said Salim. “They detained me until the Yahodi who was paying me for my working came and swore that I was not of the Arabs they call terrorists. Wallah, what destruction these terrorists wreak on the Yahod . . .”

  “For the Yahod did not kill the children of the Arabs who had killed their children in Ma’alot,” interjects Abu Salim, flinging his cigarette butt into the fire.

  “Ghul—tell on,” Tammam’s brother urges Salim. “Did you see the moving pictures?”

  “Yaa-Allah . . . Yaa-Allah,” Mutt and Jeff exclaimed after they heard Salim tell about moving pictures, where people pay money to see story-acting, and places called restaurants, where people pay money to eat, and places called cafés, where people pay money to drink coffee.