Celestial Bodies

by Johka Alharthi

  At this voice, Salima gave her daughter a little warning slap. Don’t even think about getting yourself up, not for just anyone, girl! Not for her. It’s only the old man’s sweetheart, that’s all.

  Zarifa strutted down the long room, pausing deliberately and methodically, the name of God streaming incessantly from her mouth. She dug her toes energetically into the Persian carpet to test its depth and softness. She shoved aside the thin, almost transparent cloth that protected the tray of fruit and dates, and sized it up with a swift glance. She jiggled the tiny silver spoon in the cup to assure herself that it really did hold thick, solid threads of saffron. Only then did she continue on her way towards the middle room.

  Welcome, Zarruuuuf, muttered Salima, with no attempt to keep the derision from her voice. My, my, you’ve come so early! If only you had waited awhile, say ten days or so. Now you’ll have to excuse me, my leg is giving me trouble, it’s painful enough that I can’t get up to greet you.

  Zarifa heaved her massive body to the floor at the foot of Mayya’s bedding. She sucked in a slow breath. Relax, dearie, just keep yourself where you are resting, milady! Anyway, when did you ever get up for Zarruuf? She twisted the huge silver ring on her right index finger and leaned into the mat slightly. How are you doing, Mayya? Good girl, you’re safe and sound, blessed with a good strong body and the baby, my girl . . . I’m so sorry, I couldn’t come any earlier, because my boy Sanjar, just now he’s got another baby girl.

  Mabrukeen, Salima said. Double congratulations on your blessed addition! We didn’t hear the news.

  Zarifa leaned more heavily over the recumbent Mayya. Only yesterday. The viper Shanna had a girl, another daughter for Sanjar. We had our hands full.

  Opposite Zarifa, Salima’s response was to bend closer over her daughter. And today? she asked. Where’ve you been since dawn? You couldn’t come to see your master’s daughter? But of course, we have to remember the proverb-giver’s words: The feet walk fast for the loving heart’s sake, but when you feel no longing, your feet drag and ache.

  Zarifa stretched herself out and narrowed her eyes. No, that’s not the right proverb, habba! Listen, milady. You know perfectly well, the old bubber only eats Zarifa’s bread. And the proverb-maker says: Who’s fond of you, love him back, who shoves you away, shove him back, who keeps himself from you, give him the sack. Well! I see no one’s been here to see you yet, no one whose coffee we’d be pouring out right now. Hand over the little girl, Mayya, I’ll say some prayers for her, make some pleas up there.

  The little girl wants to nurse, Salima interjected. Zarifa smiled and wiggled her shoulders lightly, like a dancer. Fish are good for her, you know, they’ll make her milk come. Not so good when she’s just given birth, Zarruuf, Salima snapped. Zarruf guffawed and sang out, The proverb-giver says: Give the sick what they yearn for, but it’s God alone will restore. But why not some salted fish, since dear Abdallah already brought her forty hens? She must have her strength back! Even that viper of Sanjar’s – he brought her a live chicken out of the goodness of his heart, and honey and butter too, and still she doesn’t want me to cook for her. The proverb-spinner says: When the ass’s belly is full of food, then and there he kicks you good. She’s forgetting those days when she didn’t even have a dishdasha to cover her body, way back before she married my boy. Ya ayni alayk, you poor boy, my Sanjar. Your luck took a wrong turn with that viper!

  Get up, Mayya, sit up now and nurse the girl, muttered Salima, showing her disgust with her guest. Mayya struggled into a sitting position.

  The viper who’s with my boy nurses lying down, Zarifa sang out. Like a bitch dog. Won’t even sit up. And she named the girl Rasha. My wretched son didn’t say a word – well, what’s he going to say? She’d bite the boy’s flesh and poison him if he so much as said a word. Instead of naming them Habiba or Maryam or Fatima, they give them these names – Mervat, and Rabab, and Naabaab, Shaaakaaab, Daaaadaaaab, or maybe, why not, She-who-gouges-out-Satan’s-eye? What a world it is! And you, Mayya, now what’s your baby named?

  Mayya was staring into the baby girl’s face, nestled at her breast.

  London.

  There was a sudden silence. Zarifa dropped her head. Then she heaved her immense body off the floor. Must get myself moving, she muttered. Have to make lunch for you. She got to her feet heavily and headed for the kitchen.

  Salima let her breath out slowly. She was worried that the oily hue of the walls in here was darker and heavier than it ought to be for a new mother. Still, she preferred to keep her recovering daughter in this room because it was warm, and guests would see the shelves made by the little wall-openings stacked with fancy plates. The mandus, the old, elegantly worked wooden chest with its brass fittings that she’d had since her own wedding, added some grace to the room as well, especially since it had recently acquired a fresh gloss and a new layer of gilt paint on the fixings. And there were the cushions and the carpets embroidered and sewn with Indian silk. Salima was always very careful with décor and adornment, except when it came to her own body.

  When the voice of the muezzin’s wife sang out, asking permission to come in, Salima hurried over to the open end of the reception room to meet her. At the same moment Zarifa emerged from the kitchen, which sat at the eastern corner of the courtyard in front of the house. Well, just look there! Salima’s legs are all better now, she can get up after all! she muttered loudly.

  As Salima and the muezzin’s wife were greeting each other with obvious warmth, Zarifa’s loud hoarse voice sailed across the courtyard. The proverb-maker says: Morning or sunset, the beloved’s loved ever, but no welcome for the other, though proud and clever! She slapped her palm across her thigh and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Years ago the muezzin’s wife had come here from the town of Sama’il deep in the interior. Her own name was long forgotten since people had started calling her simply Muezzin-Wife. She and Salima launched themselves into a conversation that meandered and branched off into new tales, becoming ever more engrossing. Mayya stared at her nursing baby, her gaze silent and neutral.

  Asma came in and sat down next to them. Listen, Mama! You have to make up this mixture for Mayya, just like the writer of this book Fruit for the Wayfarer said to do it. It’s got—

  With a laugh Salima interrupted her. I don’t need any of your medicine books or those fancy dukhtoors teaching me what to make for my daughter. I brought up five living healthy souls, I did, and no one had to teach me how to do it. Those books will make your eyes pop out if you keep on reading them all the time. Come on, time for some coffee.

  Look here, Mayya, said Asma. Modern medicine has established that dates are very good for a woman who has just given birth, and that was revealed in the Qur’an, too, after all, when Our Lady Maryam shook the palm tree and the dates fell down on her, and all around. She was in childbirth and in the Qur’an she was told, ‘if you shake the palm-tree trunk, towards you, it will bring you fresh ripe dates.’

  Asma pronounced the word rutban in the classical way with its proper grammatical ending, hoping to dazzle Muezzin-Wife. But her mother’s firm hand around her arm yanked her away from her sister. Leave Mayya alone! She’ll eat on her own, by herself, when she wants to.

  Why? asked Asma. Muezzin-Wife had an answer ready and she intoned it half under her breath. Because she is unclean inside. It is not proper for people to share her food. It is not permitted to eat from the same platter as an unclean woman.

  Asma was annoyed. She was certain there was a hadith on this. She was convinced that God’s Messenger had said or shown somehow, in his own life, in what he told others, that a woman could eat and drink in company no matter what her condition. But in the presence of the muezzin’s wife she could not say anything, since the woman might think she was criticizing the Faith.

  Zarifa came in to pour their coffee. She had always been the only woman of slave origins who ate from the same platter of food as the free women did. In fact, she’d given herself th
is privilege, imposing it on the ladies. But no one had ever objected, or started an argument with her over it. Now she began tossing chunks of the sweet oily delicacy that marked special occasions into her mouth, licking the oil left on her fingers with obvious pleasure.

  Take it easy on yourself, Zarifa, Muezzin-Wife muttered. Remember about your diabetes. Your body – ma sha’ allah! – I wouldn’t say it’s exactly scrawny.

  Zarifa cackled. What should scare me about being sugar-sick? Death comes when it comes, milady dear. No need for us to torture ourselves over it. And my body – ma sha’ allah! – is just fine. May the envious one go blind! I don’t listen to what those dukhtoors say. Sukkari, they say! Well, diabetes or no diabetes, I don’t mind them. Anyway, as the proverb-maker says: The flesh of youth? Old age devours it! She refilled her cup and sipped, her bulging fingers slipping around the cup.

  Muezzin-Wife smiled thinly. Seek God’s forgiveness, Zarifa! The flesh of youth is devoured by old age? How much older, Zarifa? May God’s forgiveness always be there, since humans have such tall hopes! You’re at least fifty now.

  Zarifa shrugged. So, what’s fifty, ya habba! Fifty is the summit of youthfulness, I say. And my son’s only just had a child. I didn’t become a grandmother before I was even forty, like some folks do.

  Salima acted as though she hadn’t been paying attention and didn’t understand the gist of the remark that Zarifa had flung her way. She busied herself eating orange sections. It did not bother her that she had become a grandmother while still in her early forties, and she made a little show of her indifference to Zarifa’s comments. But Muezzin-Wife persisted. True, Zarifa, wAllahi, you aren’t really elderly, but you were in too much of a hurry anyway. You married off your boy so young.

  Zarifa sat up straighter, swallowed the sweet and looked the muezzin’s wife straight in the eye. Mercy be! she said. I didn’t realise Shanna was such a viper. Her father had just died, and one shows mercy to the dead. Her poor miserable mother, Masouda, went mad. The girl is a relative, I told myself. There’s a connection from the womb, God forbid we abandon her. And I ask you, anyway, was it better to marry off Sanjar or to leave him to the mercy of all those men who know exactly what they’re after?

  Salima gave her a sharp look and Muezzin-Wife shook her head hard. Seek God’s forgiveness for such talk, she exclaimed hastily.

  More women’s voices could be heard, asking leave to enter. Salima gave Asma a sign. She got to her feet sluggishly. Asma was not at all convinced that she had no right, as an unmarried girl, to sit with the married women and listen to their conversations, especially since the ‘experience of life’ that this custom of theirs tried so hard to keep from her was something she could obtain easily enough from books. Aah, the books! The thought of the enormous pleasure of books quickened Asma’s pace. It was a good moment to lose herself in their joys.

  Abdallah

  As much as I have travelled, I still like getting the seat by the window. I like to stare down at one city after another, dwindling and then vanishing. Papa, London said once, you travel an awful lot. I did not say to her that when we are away from home, in new and strange places, we get to know ourselves better. And that is exactly the way it is with love. London does not know much about strange places or being far from home but she certainly knows about love. Her stubborn endurance under her mother’s blows allured and pained me in equal measure, until I cracked the whip myself and married her to him.

  What do you really know about love? she demanded of her mother. From the very first day you opened your eyes on life, you never saw anyone, until you saw my father. How old were you when they married you to him?

  She thought I was out of the house at the time but I was there and I heard her say these things. Mayya laughed, but there was something almost violent in her laughter. Hearing it, I was frightened. And that was all – she didn’t actually say anything. She did not say that she loved me, had ever loved me. She didn’t say that at all.

  Now my father is dying and I am suffocating.

  The tubes going into his body sucked the life out of me. He mumbled things I couldn’t make out, and it was I who cried, sitting there next to his bed until daylight came. Muhammad was only a year old and I was thinking of him, too, as I sat at the bedside of my dying father. London screamed when she found out he had died, and Mayya chided her. Your screams make the dead hurt, she told London. It had been a long time – it was years before – that she had said to me, Don’t you see that you carry your respect for your father too far? I scolded her for saying such a thing.

  Ustaz Mamduh said: I came as a service to patriotism and Arabism.

  London said: I want a BMW, it suits my status as a doctor and as the daughter of the House of Merchant Sulayman. Why did London have to mention her ties of blood to her grandfather?

  Salim said: I want the new PlayStation.

  Zarifa said: Best we marry off this boy before something happens that we’ll really regret.

  My aunt said: Go to Muscat and don’t worry, I’ll see to things in the Big House.

  My partner Abu Salih said: This deal is watertight.

  Teacher Bill said: Why didn’t you learn English when you were little? Now do you realise how important it is? It’s the most important language in the world.

  The most important language in the world. In the world. The world. The world is very big. Very small. My partner Abu Salih said, We’re finished with the old ways of commerce. It’s all about ads these days. That’s what moves minds and opens pockets.

  Pockets, pockets.

  Papa, I said, I want a riyal. And he laughed. A whole riyal for a scruffy lad like you? In my days, we used to hope maybe one day we’d see a penny with our own eyes. One single little penny!

  I wrote her name on the palm-tree trunk. I engraved it with hot metal onto the gate out at the farms. Mayya. The small world. The large world. No, thanks, I do not want any juice. I want shay. Yes, tea. More tea, please. Why is my head pounding? The stock exchange collapsed and Mayya screamed and moaned, You mean to say we aren’t building the new house after all? she wailed. Our own three-storey house!

  What was I to do? It collapsed. The stock collapsed. Mayya collapsed, Habib fled. Zarifa said he was raving. That’s all, raving. Raving mad. He fled. My father went mad. He was on the cusp of old age. He threatened, he promised, and then he never returned to the subject. Zarifa returned to her old habits, freeing herself to take care of me.

  On the day my father decided to marry her off to Habib, Zarifa tipped the paper horn of pepper into my mouth and poured it all down. Then she grabbed my ear, squeezed it hard, and said, If you tell anyone I did this, your father will truss you up and hang you upside down from the palm tree.

  I didn’t have anyone to tell, anyway. The pepper burnt my throat all the way down. I drank lots and lots of water, and when night came I could not find Zarifa. I could not find Zarifa’s embrace to hide myself in.

  My partner Abu Salih said: We’ll take on this deal. My cousin said: Buy a building. Real estate is the safest thing in this country. This country. Everything in this country changes with astonishing speed.

  London said: I don’t like this al-Khuwayr neighbourhood. Papa, there’s nowhere to walk.

  Don’t exaggerate, London.

  Papa, all these streets are designed for cars’ feet, not people’s feet.

  Then she forgot all about it, once she and her friends started to get absorbed in their never-ending expeditions from one mall to the next, in her car.

  I love the capital! said Salim. True, it isn’t Dubai, but we can find everything we want here. I didn’t ask him what exactly it was that he wanted.

  Muhammad didn’t say much at all. Not then, and not ever in his life. Neither he nor Salim made me as happy as London did. When she was born the world couldn’t contain me for happiness. She was pretty and cute and she looked a lot like Mayya. At the time, Zarifa swore that she would not enter Salima’s house. She would not go in there and d
o her duty, pouring the coffee for all the women who would come to visit. I said to her, But this new baby is my daughter, mine, and Mayya is my wife. Why are you thinking of Salima? What does she have to do with this? She said she could not stand to see Salima, and she would not darken the door into Salima’s home.

  When Mayya had Muhammad, she said, I will not go to my family’s house to rest up. I’m staying here. I’ll have a maid to help.

  In the graduation ceremony I was given my secondary diploma. I held onto it tightly. That evening, I showed it to my father. I was breathing hard. He laughed. Why are you panting like a dog in front of everyone? You won’t gain anything from that bit of paper. This is what will help you, he said, and he patted the pocket of his dishdasha. He laughed.

  He laughed. Laughed!

  I couldn’t find anyone to ask. No one would tell me how she died. When I got older I asked my aunt. It was the basil bush that killed her, she said.

  At conferences, every so often they place flowers along the tables. But never basil . . .

  How could this be, Auntie? How could a basil bush kill someone?

  She waved my question away.

  Zarifa despised my aunt. When my father died and I moved to Muscat she went to join her son Sanjar in Kuwait. How could my mother die because of a basil plant, Zarifa?

  I don’t know.

  But – you know everything, Zarifa.

  Hooting, she yanked me close. Clutched to her chest I could smell her sweat, mingled as ever with that chicken-broth scent. I am Zarruuf, she said. That’s all I am. And I never know everything. I know how to cook, I know how to eat, how to dance, and I know— She made the kind of obscene gesture I’d begun to notice a lot, from men, from women, as soon as the fuzz began to show across my upper lip.