“‘You’ll find excellent work,’ Umm al-Khayr told me. You’ll be able to work in the palaces. You will know greatness and prosperity, and you’ll be a rich man.’ But I never became rich, and I wasn’t a man anymore.
“I learned a few days later that I had been castrated, and that all I would use my penis for was to urinate. Imagine that, Turad: they tricked me over there with a piece of grilled fat, and I fell into the slave traders’ trap, and here they tricked me with a small ball of cotton, which they shoved up my nose, and I fell unconscious. The first time I sold my humanity for the smell of gristle and became a slave, and the second I sold my manhood for the smell of cotton and became a eunuch. May God destroy all smells. If I didn’t have a nose, Turad, if I’d lost my nose like you lost your left ear…Your left ear, by the way, you never did tell me how you lost it. Did somebody cut it off with a knife, or a razor?”
A Fight with the Guards
NAHAR AND I WERE LIKE THE WILD ANIMALS of the desert. We could sniff our prey from far away, and would pounce on it brilliantly. We knew the desert—its dunes, hills, and sandy plains—like a man knows the lines of his own palms. We knew the places of pasture and abundance, the dry riverbeds, and the water holes. We made our way guided by cairns and stars, and we raced with the wolves and sought shelter with hyenas in their lairs. Many a time we’d choose a cave where we could rest and spend a night or more. True, we used to rob innocent people, true, we were thieves, but believe me, my brother Tawfiq, we never killed anyone unless our lives were in danger and we had to defend ourselves.
Turad and Nahar knew not only the roads they used to take and the places where the caravans stopped for the night, but also the times of their coming and going that greatly increased with the hajj season, when their booty and earnings were more abundant. They would wait in the darkness behind a hill or a rock, or beneath a huge acacia or awshaz, overlooking the spot where the line of camels would pass, whiling away the black night with tales of the desert, battles, and women. When Turad sniffed the caravan slowly approaching from many miles away, he’d tell his companion he could smell the men and the camels, and they would keep still, concealed behind a rock and holding each other’s hand, for they could communicate by prodding and pinching their hands. As soon as Turad realized that the caravan was long and loaded with goods, and that there were few men and no weapons, he would tap Nahar’s hand two times in quick succession as a signal to attack, but if he saw that the caravan guards were bristling with arms, he would prod the center of Nahar’s palm with his middle finger as a sign of death, and they would crouch in their hiding place until the caravan passed.
On one occasion, at the beginning of the night with the crescent moon just over the horizon like the slender sculpted eyebrow of a sleeping woman, the scent of camels came upon them, like a herd in the desert. It invaded Turad’s nose, and he motioned to his companion to be silent. They lay motionless in the sand like two rocks. They had tied bands of cloth around their waists to keep up their tattered thobes for ease of movement. They had their sharp knives ready, for it was their intention to sneak up past the guards and slip into the middle of the caravan. Turad would cut the rope linking two of the camels in the train, while Nahar would slice through the rope two camels behind. Turad would then lead the two animals away from the caravan, and Nahar would tie the two ends of the rope back together. None of the guards would be any the wiser. No one would be killed nor any blood shed.
As the caravan drew near, their ears discerned no singing from the guards, indicating that they had indeed approached at a time when the men were taking a short nap, which guaranteed a greater chance of ease and success in their mission. Turad’s eyes fell upon a red she-camel followed by a white, and he tapped his colleague’s palm. The two of them rushed forward in the desert darkness like cunning wolves. They separated. Turad moved in ahead of the red she-camel, and Nahar walked next to the white one, awaiting a sign from his companion. As soon as Turad had cut the rope, he gave the signal and held the two ends of the rope in his hands so that Nahar might finish his task. At that moment Turad would lead the two she-camels quickly away and disappear behind a hill, followed by his friend.
For the first time in his life, Nahar made a mistake, as a result of which his day was to turn into a heavy night devoid of stars. After Turad managed successfully to cut the rope halfway between the two animals, he kept hold of the two ends so the caravan wouldn’t become separated and the guards realize that something was amiss. Meanwhile, Nahar was busy with the rope to the rear of the two she-camels. He was walking with the caravan, sweat pouring from his brow and the rope pulled taut between his teeth and his right hand, while his left gripped the knife and sawed away at the rope. But perhaps because he had taken just a fraction too long, as soon as the rope came loose, he tugged urgently at the camel behind so that he could fasten its rope to the one in front, Turad having led away the two stolen camels. Nahar had pulled the camel too forcefully, and all the animals in the caravan lurched forward to keep up, which drew the attention of one of the guards at the rear. He galloped forward and yelled at the top of his voice, “Al-hanshal, thieves!” The silence and tranquillity of the desert night was shattered, and the caravan roused from its slumber. The men leaped down from their mounts as Turad tried to get away with the two she-camels. Then sensing the danger, he abandoned them and ran toward a ridge of sand that lay parallel to the route of the caravan. Nahar fell into the hands of the travelers, for they greatly outnumbered him. One of them caught up with Turad, leaped on his back, and brought him to the ground. They began to fight. Turad was able to cut the man’s arm with his knife, and warm blood gushed onto the dark desert sand. Then three men rushed Turad all at once. He tried to stab one of them in the stomach, but a huge club thudded into his back, and he fell to the ground. As he struggled to his feet, one of the guards, who was very heavy, knelt on top of him, grabbed his hands, and tied them fast behind his back.
Turad was led before the emir of the caravan, his hair disheveled, blood and sweat dripping from his mouth. The emir was a middle-aged man with a beard streaked with white, a long twisted mustache, and two sharp eyes like a hawk’s framed by sharply arched eyebrows. He looked at Turad and Nahar from atop a light-colored camel as they cowered on their knees below him with their hands tied behind their backs. He knelt his camel, dismounted, and walked toward them. He peered into Turad’s eyes, bending over slightly so that their faces were almost level. Then suddenly he spat forcefully in Turad’s face, turned away, and walked back to his camel.
I had closed my eyes grudgingly, Turad remembered. I would have loved to spit in the face of their emir, so that he might know the taste of the bitterness of the men of the desert, but at that moment I was a coward. I was hoping he would pardon us, because he was an emir, well armed and surrounded by his men, and we unarmed and bound, and completely at his mercy.
Turad wiped his face, suddenly aware of the noise and bustle of the waiting room. A small crowd had gathered by the counter for passengers on the waiting list, and the ticket clerk had climbed on a chair and was shouting, “Would everybody please calm down. You will all get a place. Now, would you mind getting into an orderly line?” As soon as they had lined up, others started to join the line in the middle, or hand money to those near the front, asking them to get them tickets, which caused the chaos and fuss to start all over again.
Turad let his mind wander once again to hear the voice of one of the cameleers in the desert, on that route they called the Shafallah Trail, for along its edges there were lots of shafallah bushes, with their abundant branches spread out over the ground. The man stood behind them, and his dagger flashed in the darkness: “Shall we cut their throats, sir?” As the light-colored camel raised itself off the ground, the caravan’s emir looked into their pleading eyes. “No,” he said. “They do not deserve that we pollute our hands with their blood, as we are intending to do the hajj.” Turad’s heart no sooner danced than the man continued: “Dig two h
oles for them in the sand and throw them in. Bury them up to their necks. Just leave their heads so they can breathe. That way they will not harm passersby.” With that his huge camel set off in the direction of the Kaaba, while his men began to dig by the side of the trail. After they had made two deep holes on either side of the track, they stood Turad in one and Nahar in the other, then poured the heavy sand over them until they were completely covered up to their necks. Then they departed. One of them turned back, and walking toward them he lifted up his thobe and doused Nahar’s face with his urine, which he then turned on Turad just as the stream came to an end. And with a laugh he ran to catch up with the caravan.
Abused as a Child
HE STARTED LIKE A BIRD AFTER HIS short nap in the waiting room. The voices of the travelers resembled the buzz of flies in the scorching midday sun. Turad looked at his hands and found that they still gripped the green file, like the fingers of a little boy would clutch the thumb of his father in a busy crowd. He tried to get up out of his seat, but he had pins and needles in his legs, and all of a sudden he slumped down on his backside. A small plastic bag fell out of the green file. He bent over to pick it up off the hard cold floor of the waiting room. He inspected it closely and felt with his fingers something firm, the size of a pomegranate seed, and something else soft and limp. At that point he decided to open the little bag, and he glanced around furtively more than once: No one was watching him.
A child, five years old, an English word on the front of his dark green T-shirt, is laughing merrily, holding a knife in his hand. On the table in front of him stands a cake covered in white frosting, with some red flowers and thin candles around the edge. The candles have just been blown out, and wisps of white smoke rise into the air. Behind the child are other children crowding around, clapping, and more happy smiling faces.
As Turad looked thoughtfully at the photograph of the little boy, he noticed the missing left eye, and while the boy raised the knife and shouted, the other eye glowed, reflecting the flash of the camera. Turad turned the photograph over and read, “Nasir Abdulilah’s birthday, five years old, the Home.”
What kind of birthday is that, my young gentleman? Is there an anniversary to commemorate the day you were thrown away and lost? Do you celebrate the day you were born in a banana crate and left on the corner of the street, without a possession in the world save two little shining eyes looking toward the dark sky, imploring Heaven to protect you from the vermin and the creepy crawlies and the animals and the people? All you found was dejection and everlasting disappointment. What special day are you celebrating? The day vicious stray cats attacked you to dine on your plump shining eye, and you let out an immortal scream into Allah’s Heaven? But it did not reach Heaven. Your mother in her red blouse did not hear it, nor did your father in his Toyota taxi. None of those lingering in their deep sleep heard your cry for help. The whole earth did not hear you. Nothing paid heed to your plight save a branch stirring on the huge cinchona tree that leans languidly against the mosque of Abdullah Ibn al-Zubair. Ah, you trees, cinchona and binsyan, acacia and lotus, wave your branches to the world so that it sees me!
The five-year-old child in the embrace of a Filipina woman gazes in astonishment at the camera. She has her arms around him like a fence, and her legs restrain his movement. She is laughing saucily at the camera. On the back of the photo, Turad read, “Nasir Abdulilah and Filipina maid, Lumbai, at the Home.”
The six-year-old child is wearing blue overalls with a white shirt and a yellow hat. His mischievous right hand is thrown around the neck of a fat woman who is laughing uncontrollably as she tries to fend him off. Turad turned the picture over: “Nasir Abdulilah with nanny, Gamalat. First day of school.”
A young man, his mustache just sprouting, has his arms stretched out across the shoulders of two other young men. All three of them have around their necks a green spotted snake made of wool and stuffed with cotton. The young man to the left in the picture is holding up two fingers behind the head of the young man in the middle. The wan smile on his face is more akin to a sneer at his friend, whom he has made with his fingers into a donkey or a rabbit or some other stupid animal.
On the back of that photograph, Turad read, “Memories. Muhammad Abdullah, Nasir Abdulilah, and Khaled Abdulsalam.” After he had had a good look at them all, Turad stuffed the photos back into the small plastic bag. As he did so, his hand came upon another very small bag. He removed it slowly and found inside a lock of soft black hair. On the piece of paper stuck to the bag was written, “A lock of Nasir Abdulilah’s hair the day he started school.” Another small bag fell to the floor, and when he picked it up he read, “Nasir’s first tooth. Six years old.” An ambivalent smile flitted across Turad’s lips as he looked at the tiny tooth, which was a yellowish color with some brown decay at the root.
My friend, Turad thought, all the mementos you have are bits of your body. You don’t carry a family tree with you. You don’t have a lovely house with a majlis for the men at the front, with low couches and cushions lined up against the walls, where you could proudly hang your family tree in a gold frame, like people do in this country, for they are very proud of their ancestry. You have no father, only a tooth that fell out, and no mother, only a lock of soft hair. You have no brothers or sisters, only people like yourself, abandoned and deprived, who are captured for you in photographs taken by a transient Egyptian nanny who hides your fish dinner in the evenings because she fancies it herself, and gives you a cheese sandwich instead, and then tells the social worker that none of you likes the smell of fish.
It wasn’t only the animals roaming through damp warm alleyways that abused your body. The nannies and the maids didn’t spare you their mischief or lechery, either; your body wasn’t safe in their charge, even as a tender child. Bath times filled you with dread. Lumbai, the Filipina maid, would scrub your body in the bathtub, and her hands would work their way unnoticed between your thighs, then her face and her mouth, until your skin was raw and turned bright red. In the end the doctor had to come and have a look at it after you complained about the pain. A decision was made to terminate Lumbai’s contract after an investigation, during which she admitted her habit, with the excuse that you had something rather large, different from the other boys and Filipino men.
You have a big organ, and the Filipina ladies working at the home couldn’t ignore it. It helped them while away their loneliness and isolation. And Amm Tawfiq—they chopped off his world between his thighs and left him with a urinator, nothing more. You came into this brutal world thanks to the chaos of nature and the lust of your arbitrary father, Mr. Abdulilah, servant of God; it might as well be said servant of Satan—there’s no difference. The women around you have been trying to repeat the tragedy. You could find yourself with a little creature of your own, mewing like a cat. Would his mother run away from the hospital and leave him to the nurses and midwives, or would she place him by the door of the mosque in a crate for bananas or oil or sanitary towels? Damn, Nasir ibn Abdulilah. Is there no one who will save you, pluck the fruit between your thighs and toss it into the rubbish bin in the quarter of al-Mazlum, or in al-Sadd al-Gharbi district, so that finally you will be free of those who interfere with you and have so wantonly abused you?
Moon Passion
“AFTER SOME MONTHS MY DEEP SCAR began to heal, and the devastating terror that had swept over me at that time receded. I forgot the incident as I forgot my own name. Now I am Tawfiq, in a strange and distant land, separated from my own country and name by a sea and jungles and wild animals and merchants and raiders and middlemen and ships and houses and trails and tracks and innumerable sorrows.
“This alien country was to be my country, her people my people. I would wear their clothes and eat their food, and I was to be at their service until the day I died, or so I understood. Abu Yahya, the fat man, had decided to lend me out to his neighbor the perfume-seller, who had a shop in the souk in the center of town. He had taken me to him twice to fet
ch some herbs and potions for his daughter, Khairiya. She had been laid up in bed for forty days after giving birth to a very beautiful little girl.
“Khairiya was a pale adolescent girl. Her breasts were two ripe fruits, and her soft, intelligent eyes flashed brightly between her dark lashes. Her fingers were long and slender and ended in red-painted nails. When she moved them in her dark room it was as if red moons were appearing unexpectedly from behind the clouds. She loved her mother a great deal, and saw her father only on Friday evenings, for he spent all day in his perfume shop, and when he returned at night she would have nodded off already like a child. He would kiss her forehead and cover her face with a white branch-patterned bedsheet.
“The perfume-seller’s daughter was neither bold nor flirtatious, but she had not listened to the tales and warnings of the older folk. She had not realized the madness that she could bring upon her family and house if she took a chance on the night of the full moon and hung out her underwear on the clothesline. She thought that they were just stories the adults told to amuse themselves on moonlit summer nights, but in fact she really did get into trouble. She had given her underwear a good scrub in a tub full of soap suds, wrung it out with her own soft hands, and hung it on the clothesline on a night when the moon was completely full. Before going inside she stood for a moment to contemplate the roundness of the awesome silver moon. He was looking down at her madly, contemplating her charms, the roundness of her bulging thighs, her breasts surging inside her cotton nightgown. She looked at him without paying too much attention, but then suddenly she started, as she noticed him shamelessly exploring the details of her body, and she shuddered with fear as she felt him descend toward her underwear and sniff it with his silvery light. She ran back inside the house, unaware of what the full moon might do to her panties with the little red flowers on them, or her white bras.
Wolves of the Crescent Moon Page 6