Celestial Bodies

by Johka Alharthi

  How did you know, Zarifa?

  She cackled, the sound loud in that quiet early morning. Sonny, as the proverb-maker says: A human hand spread wide can’t block the sun outside.

  So I got married, you see, my kind and pleasant air hostess, whose artificial smile makes me feel such pity for you. I dislike fake smiles as strongly as I do laughter. Mayya – that’s my wife, my dear hostess – did not laugh on her wedding day. She didn’t even smile.

  Motherhood

  Just before dawn, Mayya was sitting up on her bedding, the nursing baby in her lap. Her newborn daughter had finally stopped wailing and dropped off to sleep. Mayya tipped her tired aching head back against the wall. She sensed, more than she saw, the dark, shiny oily blue-green colour on the walls, giving off a hard light that hurt her eyes. Closing them, she could see the maternity wing at the Saada Hospital, the salt and oil placed on the newborn’s belly button, the wife of Abdallah’s uncle in Wadi Aday. The women visiting every morning, afternoon, and evening, fresh chicken broth, Zarifa’s saliva as she blew into the face of the baby girl and repeated half-intelligible supplications to the Divine for her protection, that enormous silver ring Zarifa wore, the white swaddling, the newborn’s tiny red tongue and her fingernails which were not allowed to be clipped lest she become a thief in her future life.

  Mayya opened her eyes and studied her daughter. Her body was scrawnier than the bodies of most newborns and her scream was particularly sharp. Mayya passed her hand over the baby’s thin layer of black hair. She could not suppress the incredulity she felt. So this is motherhood then?

  Every day, Asma would ask her, So what does it feel like, motherhood? Is it the greatest feeling in the world? Mayya wouldn’t answer. All she felt was exhaustion, pains in her back and belly, and an urgent need to bathe. Her itchy scalp, which made her want to constantly rub her fingers into her hair, was simply no longer bearable. Finally her mother permitted her to have a quick bath but only on condition that the water didn’t touch her hair. After all, colds stalked brand-new mothers, Salima would remind her. And if their hunt was successful, well, we all know that fever is fatal to new mothers . . . Meanwhile, tiresome Asma went on asking about motherhood and what she called the warm intimacy of nursing! But all that nursing meant, as far as Mayya could see, was no sleep all night long and a constant struggle with the baby to get her to open her mouth, not to mention the back pain she had after sitting in the same position for so many hours. Mayya didn’t say any of this to Asma, though. Listening to her sister kept her occupied, and she didn’t have to say anything as long as Asma was chattering on.

  Mayya considered silence to be the greatest of human acts, the sum of perfection. When you were utterly quiet and still you were likeliest to hear accurately what others were saying. And whenever Mayya felt bored with their words she listened to herself in the bubble of silence she had created around her. If she said nothing, then nothing could cause her pain. Most of the time, she had nothing to say. And there were moments when she might have something to say but knew she didn’t want to speak. The muezzin’s wife approved and even pronounced a blessing over Mayya’s silence. On the Day of Judgement it will be known that your tongue has created no complaint against you.

  Once this child of hers was much older, after Salim and Muhammad had arrived in the world as well, Mayya made another discovery: sleep. Sleep! She would sleep and sleep, and as long as she stayed asleep nothing could harm her. She came to realise that sleep was an even greater miracle than silence, since when she slept she did not even have to hear what others were saying. Asleep, she would not be speaking, nor would others speak to her. In her sleep she saw nothing, not even dreams. Entering the realm of sleep meant coming into a place of no responsibilities where she felt nothing, and the things she had anxiously needed to hold on to while awake fell away. The repeated nervous twitches of Muhammad’s hands; the sounds of mortal combat and tinny shouts of victory in the video game; London’s white coat, so big it accentuated her extreme thinness; the loud drip and splat of water drops from the tap onto the dirty dishes and utensils piled up in the sink; the Indonesian servant’s dubious hand gestures; the surreptitious stares of the driver looking at her in the car’s front mirror; Abdallah’s unending dialogues with London and his quarrels with Salim. When she slept, she fell into a comfortable void which sent her downwards softly and gradually to where there was no longer anything. Best of all was that no dreams passed across her vision – no nightmares, no images, no voices, nothing. She savoured her enjoyable coma, a place she could go where she had nothing to confront. Sleep was her only paradise. It was her ultimate weapon against the pounding anxiety of her existence.

  Now, sitting up on her bedding, Mayya heard the muezzin’s voice. She found it comforting in the dawn silence. Life appeared to her sharply divided in two parts, like night and day: what we live, and what lives inside of us. She dozed off, waking up to the sound of her father opening the door, having just returned from the mosque. He squatted next to her and took the baby from her lap. Ma sha’ allah, your daughter is the very picture of you, Mayya! She smiled, seeing the traces of water from his ablutions clinging to his chin, and thought about how he had no choice but to spend most of his time outside the house until she would have completed her forty days of confinement, when the women who constantly came and went would finally depart. He appeared delighted with the girl. He had already told Mayya that the baby’s tiny body and sparse hair reminded him of her brother Hamad as a newborn. The dawn light edged into the room, illuminating it little by little, as Mayya and her father gazed at this new person without exchanging any more words. The rooster was crowing and she could hear the rustling of the nabk tree outside the window. Azzan returned the baby to her bed. I swear, Mayya, she really does look like Hamad! When he was born he was so tiny, only a touch larger than the palm of a hand. We said he wouldn’t live but he did. And then, once he was filling our eyes with his bounce, and giving us so much joy, he left us.

  Mayya could remember everything. She had been ten when it happened. Hamad was two years younger. He took off into the farmlands on his steed, which was nothing more than a dry date-palm cluster, a limb fallen from a tree, his little-boy locks of hair riffling in the breeze and the silver amulet around his neck. Together they would slip away from Qur’an school. Mayya never succeeded in mounting that stallion, though she did try to get it away from him. The date-palm branch could rip a dishdasha to shreds. But since she was a girl, she couldn’t shimmy her dishdasha up her body and tie it around her middle as Hamad did his. Nor could she take it off as he sometimes did. They would steal green mangoes from Merchant Sulayman’s orchard and collect unripe dates from beneath the palm trees.

  Then Hamad left them. Just like that, suddenly. Mayya remembered people coming to offer condolences and mourn with them; she remembered the tears and the silver amulet. Her mother was keen to retrieve his clothes and the amulet. No one cared about Hamad’s mount. The steed remained where it was, a thin dry body splayed apart for Mayya to see, every time she stared at the base of the courtyard wall.

  When her father left the room the newborn began to cry. Mayya hugged her close. Did her daughter really look like her?

  Twenty-three years later when she would smash her daughter’s mobile phone to bits in anger before slapping her across the face, the only remaining traces of resemblance were their brown skin and wiry frames. London would be taller than her mother, a good-looking young woman, and such a talker that it wouldn’t be surprising if she were nicknamed Chatterbox. This room would have become the refuge of her grandfather, an old man in his sixties. By then, the oily blue-green, already faded, would have been covered when the room was repainted a watery light blue. Against the wall would sit modern wood wardrobes instead of her mandus, the beautiful old gilt-edged wood chest, while a sofa upholstered in velvet would have taken the place of the Indian sequined cushions. The seam where walls and ceiling joined would be hidden beneath a white strip of plaster dé
cor and London, who no longer resembled her mother in much of anything, would not enter this room, or the house around it. Not ever. That’s how afraid she was of her grandmother. But by then, this grandmother would have taken refuge in another room to which her mandus-chests had been removed along with some fancy pillows cushions, all wedged alongside the new, modern-style wood-frame bed and its accompanying suite of furniture. By then, this grandmother of hers was swearing out loud that she would slit her granddaughter’s throat if the rebellious girl really did marry the peasant’s son. How could she possibly marry the issue of the man who had threshed the family’s grain?

  Abdallah

  The clouds today are very thick, impenetrable. I like the idea of being so high that gravity loses its power over me, as I stare down at the clouds. I can remember how surprised I was to learn that clouds are not substantial enough to bear a person’s weight. Ustaz Mamduh exploded in laughter when he realised how deluded I was. So who do you think are, or you’ll be, when you grow up? A big important man who takes off into the air and sits on top of the clouds? Those clouds are like smoke, you idiot! Only air.

  A month after she graduated, London said to me, I love clouds, Papa! When I was little I used to dream I had wings, like the girl in the TV Ramadan Riddles show, and I could fly up there and sit on top of the clouds.

  I did not tell her that this had been my dream too. I didn’t get a chance. We were sitting in her new car. She was driving and talking incessantly. Suddenly she asked, How about we go down to the shore at Sib?

  The renovations along the seafront at Sib had been completed by now, with a new coast road extending about four kilometres along that stretch of coastline. Every so often there was a stylish long asphalt parking area that allowed drivers to pause, alongside paved walkways with fancy entrelac for pedestrians, and lampposts that were miniature copies of the towering Burj al-Arab in Dubai. Long before these renovations were begun I used to go to Sib with my father, on his periodic visits to the fishermen there. He was trying to make agreements with them to buy their houses which overlooked the sea coast. He wanted to convert the area into a commercial complex. He was convinced that the Sabco and Okay Centre malls and even the al-Harthi Centre which opened during his final illness, were too far away for would-be customers who lived in the Sib area.

  But the buying power here is weak, Father, I would exclaim. We are not in Dubai.

  You don’t understand anything about commerce! would come his response. We’ll start with those fishermen, and then you’ll see.

  Our excursions ended, as did talk of the project, when we learned that the Ministry of Housing had prohibited such commercial ventures anywhere along the seafront. We would be in Father’s white Mercedes, with me at the wheel. We didn’t have anything to say to each other, unless he wanted to bring up some issue concerning his business, or to moan how sad he was that it would all very likely be lost after his passing anyway, as long as his progeny consisted of the likes of me ‘who doesn’t appreciate the value of a penny’. One week after his death I presented my documents to join the distance learning programme at one of the universities in Beirut. The idea was that I would travel there twice a year for the examinations, until I graduated with a BA in Business Management. It doesn’t really matter to me now, Father, that you never saw my diploma. After all, you didn’t have any desire to see it. But what did that man desire? You are my only son, he would say. I want you to be a man . . . the best sort of man.

  After my marriage I spent ten years on the road: back and forth between Muscat and al-Awafi. He refused to let us move to Muscat, for then who would keep the Big House alive? Who would preserve it as a home? Who would receive the guests? Who would preside over those sociable gatherings that brought men together every evening? He would not hear of it. No, no, absolutely not! We would do our business in Muscat – one day there, or perhaps two – and then we’d be back in al-Awafi. That was our home town, not Muscat. After another ten years, my son Salim said, But Muscat is our home town not al-Awafi. Why can’t we spend all of our school holidays and the big feast days here in Muscat?

  At first London objected to the streets in the capital city that she said were designed only for ‘cars’ feet’. Then she adapted herself, and she even came to like the long stretch of paved seaside corniche. But she had a response for Salim: What there is in al-Awafi that isn’t in Muscat is the graveyard. Most people who live in Muscat aren’t buried in Muscat. They’re buried in their home villages.

  On this evening she stopped her car at one of the Corniche parking areas along the Sib shoreline. She put out the lights and then she burst into sobs. I had not seen her cry even once, since her babyhood, until the year just past, on that day when her mother hit her and broke her mobile phone.

  Honey, what is it? What’s wrong? Is it Hanan? She will recover, my dear. She’ll be all right.

  London shook her head. It’s not Hanan. Even though, you know, her family refused to go to court about the rape because they were afraid of the scandal, and she gave in to them.

  She tugged her embroidery-edged abaya closer around her body and slouched over the steering wheel. Ahmad and I used to come here, she said. He would tell me, Don’t turn around, and don’t get out of the car, there are young guys running around in shorts here, don’t open the window and don’t look out. I would say, Ahmad, you’re my love, I don’t see anyone but you! He would laugh, Papa, and he’d say, Why don’t you see anyone else? Are you blind or something?

  When this anger overwhelms me, as it’s beginning to do right now, amidst all these clouds, I don’t know what to do with all of it. It won’t quit, and I can’t find any window for it to escape through. This anger – this rage that comes every time I picture her face as she talked, sitting there in the car. This single, fierce emotion stifles everything else, even my breathing. I have never felt so helpless in front of my anger as when my daughter was crying, and then confessing. I gave in to him, she gasped between her sobs, because I was afraid of failure.

  I felt the same helpless anger when the nurse took out the tubes from my father’s body, her way of announcing he was dead. This anger of mine pursues me to the edge, where I’m screaming without making the slightest sound, crying without any tears. But it’s an anger that carries no force. All it accomplishes is that it keeps me from taking a breath.

  I didn’t feel angry when I learned, long after the event, that Zarifa had died. I just felt as though the earth had given me a violent shaking. Suddenly, I was that lone child of so long ago, whom Sanjar and Marhun forced to steal the rifle and then deprived of eating any magpies. I felt like my father was going to punish me for leaving Zarifa to die far away and alone. He would punish me, lower me into the well trussed up in the palm-frond rope. I felt her loud ringing laughter vibrating through my body, sending my whole body into shudders in the dawn. Again, I heard her whispering. Your mother did not die, my boy, no, Abdullah. Your mother is alive. The jinndjinn guarding the basil bush – they took her away, but she is alive.

  I opened all the windows in the new car and listened to the sound of the waves as if that would cover up the sound of my daughter’s crying. Why didn’t you tell me from the start? Why did you wait a year? A whole year!

  She moaned. I couldn’t . . . I mean, I chose him. Every one of you rejected my choice, and so I insisted. What else could I do, after that? And I was happy in the beginning. So I just tried to ignore it. And how could I possibly confess to my mother that I was wrong? What would I say to you, to any of you?

  So you waited until he actually beat you. That was what it took for you to say anything?

  Her sobbing got louder and I remembered her mother’s wailing. He beats her? She said he beats her? The peasant’s son beats my daughter, mine? And what kind of man beats his wife? In all of al-Awafi I have never heard of anyone beating his wife except for that old drunk Furayh. He used to come home soused and throw up on her, and then he would start hitting her. And so this educated ‘dokhtoor’
– as he calls himself, hah – is just another version of Furayh the drunk? He beats her? The peasant’s son beats my girl? No one ever put his hand on me and no one put his hand on my mother or my sisters, and now this dog comes and beats my little girl? What a scandal we must look amongst all the tribes, every clan, our own, out in the open. The man our daughter is already legally married to, even if, thank the Lord, they haven’t moved in together, and Furayh the drunk – they’re cut from the same cloth? By God, if only he had never set eyes on her! By God, he’s divorcing her today and he’d better do it fast.

  He divorced her. We paid him the dowry and so my daughter got herself out of that marriage and got her freedom.

  London, I said to her, Today you are free. You are a successful physician and you have your freedom and a good social life and he doesn’t deserve even a stray thought. It was just a bad experience, it’s over, and that’s that.

  She breathed in the sea air and left her tears rolling down her cheeks. You’re right, Father. Just a bad experience.

  The teenagers laugh and shout and open their cans of cola, the sea breeze grows colder, and I drive on the way back to al-Khuwayr, muttering to myself. God be praised that the actual wedding had not yet happened and the whole thing came to an end when they were still only bound by a nuptial contract.

  Zarifa

  Zarifa made up an enormous tray with samples of all the dishes that had been prepared for Mayya while she recovered from London’s birth. A plate of rice and chicken cooked in cloves and samna; that special flatbread with honey; a tower of apples, oranges and bananas, and a ladleful of jelly-sweets. Zarifa covered the tray, balanced it on her head, and left Salima’s house. She crossed the Falaj, the main canal, and then she passed the houses, the fortress-like complex where Shaykh Said and his family had lived forever, the school, and Hamdan’s shop before her path brought her to the farms. In the past, al-Awafi’s homes emptied completely on summer days, as everyone, young and old, converged on the farmers’ fields in flight from the heat, returning home only when the soft night-time breezes wafted them there. But by this time – the early years of the 1980s – there was no need for this daily exodus. Electric fans, even air conditioners in some of the houses, put an end to these excursions. Those ‘horrid new-fangled heretical air conditioners’, as Zarifa called them.