Not once lifting her hand to steady the heavy tray on her head, Zarifa continued on her way, reaching the bare, uncultivated ground beyond the farms. The desert opened out before her as she walked on. She was damp with sweat but it was only a few moments before she arrived and stopped, breathing with relief. At the foot of the familiar cluster of white boulders, Zarifa lowered the tray and then knelt down beside it, wiping away her sweat with the edge of her wrap. Her loud, rough voice sailed across the rocks. Ya Baqii-ooo! Here is your food, may you give us leave to have our food, this is your share and so you can leave our share to us. Here it is, Baqiia, here’s your khiratha, look, the special food of Mayya, daughter of Salima, may you leave her in peace, in her state of confinement as she heals . . . may you not strike her down or harm the newborn girl.
Zarifa got back up on her feet and began the return journey to al-Awafi. Only two days before, she had undertaken this very same errand to deflect evil, but that time to ward it away from the wife of her son, also recovering from childbirth and from her own new granddaughter. Time after time she had made the same excursion. They were always successful, these offerings of hers. The jinni Baqiia had never grown angry, not once over the long period that Zarifa had dedicated herself to the jinni’s service, nor in the era of her mother before her. Well, except that one time, when someone bewitched Umm Abdallah somehow while in her confinement. Before Zarifa, her mother had shouldered this duty and before that it had been her grandmother’s task. All of them knew the most particular secrets about Baqiia, the jinni woman who specialised in stalking any woman recovering from childbirth who did not feed her from her own special food. Poor wretched Umm Abdallah, Zarifa muttered. May God show her His mercy, poor simple woman, she was only minding her own business. But people don’t show any mercy, and this boy of hers . . . well, this Abdallah, a man who’s not in the caravan nor in the warring band, as the proverb-maker says. What a useless fellow, no one listens to him. What kind of man lets his wife give his daughter this strange name? But how can I say anything? The proverb-maker said: What you criticize others for, you’ll find you’ve got it in spades. And my son Sanjar – who named his daughter, now? By God, men no longer have any say in things. Not all men are Sulayman! Aye, wAllahi! There just aren’t any Merchant Sulaymans any more. No Shaykh Saids, either. God protect you with His mercy, Mama! Where are you? Come to me, come back to your daughter and just see what the world has become.
Zarifa’s mother! People had nicknamed her Khayzuran, for like a reed of bamboo she was tall and gracefully slender. Her real name was Ankabuta: Spider-Girl. Her father had been fed up with his wife’s constant pregnancies and the terrible problem of finding yet another name. And the name of a baby born into a slave family must never, ever echo the names of the masters. When the time came, Spider-Girl was the only name he had in mind, and so it was.
Before she was even fifteen Ankabuta had become an ominously telling lesson for every slave woman – and every freewoman too, for that matter – who might have given even a passing thought to refusing her husband’s needs. Shaykh Said imprisoned her in an ancient cell in the fortress when she refused to sleep with his slave Nasib, to whom the Shaykh had married her off. Ankabuta languished in that cell for months. Once a day her food arrived and once a night her husband arrived. People had grown very tired of hearing her scream and finally she was freed. Maybe it was because Nasib had been declaring how sick he was of always having to tie her limbs to the rusting iron bedposts and stuffing her mouth with his turban-cloth, just to get his husbandly rights.
Ankabuta came out of prison pregnant with her only daughter. She was alone when the baby came, and after tying the cord Ankabuta decided to become a midwife, competing with Sabeekah who specialised in birthing for the daughters of shaykhs. People in al-Awafi hadn’t realised that Ankabuta’s hard dark face concealed an awesome and voracious appetite for living, though some did have an inkling that this woman who inclined to silence and self-concealment was in fact the great Mama who presided over the zar exorcisms, once a month in the desert out beyond the fortress and the farms that marked al-Awafi’s outer edges.
Abdallah
Thank you, my bright-faced air hostess. The orange cake is truly delicious even if I would have preferred our Omani jellies over any of the things you call halveh or – as London would say in emphatic English, sweeeeets. In the festival seasons or when my father’s large house was filled with guests, I would always wrap up a big portion of beautifully greasy dark hilwa in a page torn from my school notebook and carry it to Ustaz Mamduh. There were many times when I didn’t even get to taste these special sweets myself. In sociable gatherings the older and grander men always ate first. It was inappropriate for a young one like myself to show any appetite or to compete with the elders, and often the sweets on their tray were whisked away too rapidly for little hands like mine to have a chance. Whenever it came to that, my hopes would completely vanish, for I knew that my aunt would take charge and lock it all away in the storeroom, and I wouldn’t have the courage to ask for any.
But then Zarifa remembers about Ustaz Mamduh and, before anyone can notice, spirits away a big chunk for his sake. Or for the sake of the diploma. Just seeing the green cover of my diploma told her it was something to celebrate even though she didn’t understand a single word of what was written inside.
Once in a while I am enormously lucky, securing two massive chunks of it. One I wrap up for Ustaz Mamduh and the other I split with Maneen who has already caught a whiff of its light saffron smell even though I always try my hardest to keep the very scent of it under wraps. Maneen is always perched on a large rock in front of the opening to his mud house, which sits squarely on the route I have to take to school. Not a creature can pass in front of him without hearing that voice. Maneen is in bad shape, he moans. Give Maneen a few grains of rice, just a little handful! Pass him a bite of something sweet! I move from one school grade to the next but Maneen never changes his spot, as if he and the rock on which he sits were created as one piece, never to change, just as the worn-out robe he wears never changes. The only thing that changes is that he discovers mulberry cordial. He adds a line to his singsong call: Give him some Vimto to wet his throat!
Maneen’s son Zayid is in my class at school but I never see Zayid with his father. He is always at school or playing with the lads in the neighbourhood. People say his mother ran off with another man when Zayid was still a nursing baby and so all the women in the neighbourhood pitched in, treating him with fondness and taking care of his needs until he was old enough to care for himself. Zayid never laughed, and when we raced he always got the better of all the other boys. Our races started where the canal begins and ended at the furthest edge of al-Awafi’s farms, and Zayid was always ahead.
Whenever Maneen catches sight of me he ratchets up the musicality of his familiar call. He claps his hands together as he asks me. Soooo, Abdallah? How’s your father? What little trifle have you brought poor Maneen today?
If my pockets are empty I respond by snapping at him. Maneen, I know very well that the Ministry of Welfare gives you thirty riyals! Then I take myself off, heading at a fast clip towards the school building. But if I’ve been lucky with my share of sweets I sit down with him on his rock and we eat the luscious jelly-like chunk together. His mouth crammed with jelly-sweets, chuckles, and saliva, Maneen repeats the same old story I have heard a thousand times. Heyyy, Abbuuud . . . a blessed boy just like your papa! Hooo, Abbuud, my man, in the year of the horrible rains. Kharsa! It was a disaster for sure. The water came down hard for ten whole days, this house of mine went melting into the ground and even the homes of the big folk leaked water until their roofs fell in. We were dying of hunger, my boy, the rain completely destroyed all the dates. Ruined. All of our mats and furnishings and clothing were wet through and no one could find anything to eat – nothing to buy, nothing to sell – Heyyyy, Abbuud, you came along in easy times, times of plenty. You’ve never seen real hunger. The year of the
kharsa al-Awafi was afloat, it was just one big mess of gullies. Shaykh Said closed himself up in that fortress of his and he said to everyone, I have nothing left. All my dates have been ruined by the water, he said, and the fighting between the tribes took everything I owned.
But your father, he was a different story, bless the man! He opened his home, he put up tents for people in his own courtyard. They ate and drank until every cupboard door in the kitchen and storeroom was flung wide open and people could see with their own eyes that there was nothing more there. If it hadn’t been for your father and Shaykh Masuud – God’s mercy on the late Shaykh Masuud, my boy – we would have died of starvation. The year of the disaster, Abbuud – aye, and today all is fine with us, just see! The world, my son, what a world! So, Abbud – now, you don’t have any Vimto for poor Maneen?
We were growing up. Zayid no longer yanked at the girls’ braids without warning when we were playing hide-and-seek, dividing ourselves into two groups, boys against girls. Sanjar no longer reacted by diving for Zayid, throwing him to the ground and nearly throttling him. We grew up and Zayid went into the army. In a few years Maneen’s crumbling mudbrick house disappeared from the roadside to be replaced by a reinforced concrete home, three bedrooms and a sitting room. People said that Zayid had moved up rapidly through the ranks and was much approved of by the senior staff. He came back to al-Awafi infrequently now, in his red Camry. He rebuilt the house and filled it with large sacks of rice and sugar, and sealed tins of the best local sweets, the ones from Barka. When he did show up, he was always in uniform and everyone knew he was bringing crates of fruit and bottles of Vimto. Often he had a gang of workers in tow, to build another addition or to replace the wood door with a fancier one. But Maneen, his eyesight faded and his hair gone completely white, did not abandon the small rock on which he was always perched, or his tattered clothes, or his same old cry whenever someone passed by. The neighbours could hear furious rows erupting, as ever, between the father and his army-officer son. They could hear Maneen protesting that he couldn’t see any longer, and he was used to sitting by the roadside, he liked being there, it was his life, the people who came by. He didn’t want to be shut up inside a house even if it was brand new! He said he was only teasing people by calling out to them. All he wanted was some amusement, the pleasure a conversation gave him. No one actually gave him anything now, as they had in the days of poverty. No one was there to wash his clothes, he said, no one to cook the rice stacked up in the house. He liked eating with the neighbours anyway, he said, he liked being in the warm damp throng of children and their games. The neighbours could not make out any of the words his son was yelling back.
When I wanted to give out alms for Muhammad’s sake, hoping he’d be cured, I went to al-Awafi and slaughtered five ewes and gave out the meat, but Maneen refused to take any of it at all. He said that if he took it and Zayid found out, he would never forgive him. The Indian woman whom Zayid brought to the house as a servant tried to help Maneen undress and clean himself. She kept at it for a few weeks but then she started spending all of her time on her own needs. When her belly swelled up enough that no one could possibly ignore her state any longer, Zayid came and got her and sent her back to her own country. Maneen returned to his old ways and his usual appearance, the cheerful dirty face, his laughter and his stone perch. His calls came now in a faded voice that was hard to hear. Or he went silent, withdrawing inside his cement house, especially whenever Zayid was in al-Awafi.
Maneen yells out: The year of the disaster, my boy! Sanat al-kharsa, it was. When the water came pouring over the land, green places and dry brown ones both. But praise be to God, we lived through it. We huddled in the tents at your papa’s place, all crowded together, and at Shaykh Masoud’s, too, dividing up the dates and the dried fish, ten to a plate. Ilhamdulillah! Heyy, Abbuud, you’re sure you don’t have a swallow of Vimto anywhere in the house? You say to me, the pension from the Ministry. Thirty riyals, Abbud, that won’t even pay for a cig, so how is it supposed to pay for the notebooks and pens Zayid needs? Hafiza! Well, you see, it costs three riyals just to give her a look. She’ll say, Go take a shower, Maneen, and then you can come to me here. May God provide for the women, they’ve got no other way. In the year of the horrible rains, my boy, the women were dying of hunger, and one of them would sell herself even for half a penny. But some of them, well, Abbud, they were a stubborn bunch, money wouldn’t do it and neither would pretty words. I brought this Hafiza a bottle of Vimto as big around as my forearm is, and she still wasn’t satisfied. She didn’t taste hunger, she didn’t see the year of the horrible rains. She’d say, Go wash yourself, go on now . . . Now I ask you, is Zaatar any better than me?
Years later, when his eyesight was gone and his teeth falling out, Maneen joined in at the zar exorcisms, walking over hot coals and screaming as much as he pleased. The night he was found dead, from a rifle shot to his head, he had returned from the zar very late and very drunk. For hours after he returned, he was shouting, standing there in front of the door to his house. Poor Maneen! Wretched Maneen! Give him a bite of bread, give him a half-cigarette, give him a woman even if it is only filthy Hafiza!
Some folks said he’d simply been a wretched murder victim, they even called him a martyr, and they prayed over him. But others called him an immoral drunkard and would not join the prayers. They hoisted his body and did a proper burial procession, taking him to the graveyard west of al-Awafi. When the police arrived the next morning, no one claimed to know anything. No, they hadn’t heard a thing. In a few days the case file was closed. And no one in al-Awafi saw Zayid ever again.
Teacher Mamduh taught us in all subjects. There were no girls in our class. But between classes, Zayid would steal to the first-year group where four girls studied along with the boys. He would single out one of the four, pull her hair and run off. Finally Khawla complained about him to her father Azzan. After that, he had to stop.
When we were studying the Chapter of the Back-biter from the Qur’an, Zayid would glance sidelong at me whenever we launched into reciting those particular verses: ‘Beware the back-biter, who piles up riches as he piles up the faults of others, counting his wealth and bad-mouthing others, but will his hundreds give him eternal life?’ Teacher Mamduh went into long and elaborate detail, cursing the rich and their accumulation of wealth, and the merchants who hoarded gold. All the while, Zayid’s flame-throwing glances were burning me alive. And so, on the day when Ustaz Mamduh asked us what our fathers did for a living – when he already knew perfectly well what the answers would be – I almost died of embarrassment. I didn’t have the courage to say that mine was a merchant. The boys said, easily and confidently: He’s a farmer . . . a blacksmith . . . farmer . . . carpenter . . . men’s dishdasha tailor . . . judge . . . muezzin . . . farmer . . . while I broke out in a sweat, afraid to call out that my papa was a merchant. I had the uncomfortable feeling that the word merchant meant a fat ugly disgusting person with a bulging belly which jiggled and swayed as he piled up gold and tortured the poor. I was sure that my secret as the son of a rich man – he owned what was only the second automobile in all of al-Awafi, after Shaykh Said’s – would be revealed and then I would be the butt of some truly mean taunts. Just then Zayid shouted, His papa is Merchant Sulayman! The owner of the Big House, and the farms, and his land goes all the way to Maskad.
No one mocked me but I felt ashamed, like I myself was in disgrace. I wished hard that my father was a farmer like most of the boys’ fathers were.
In the break, Zayid and I were the only boys in the class who did not go to the canteen because neither of us had any spending money. Until I reached middle school, my father was absolutely firm; there was no way he was going to give me a hundred pennies every day for school. By the time I was finally given this allowance, other people were giving their children two or three hundred. I always had to choose between bread, cheese or a carton of Suntop juice drink. I couldn’t have both or all of them at the same ti
me. Not until the very end of high school.
Masouda
Although the neon streetlamps confidently signalled the route to every house in al-Awafi, on the rough road to Masouda’s house they flickered, hesitant. Her senses picked up the grinding rasp of the rusty iron door as soon as anyone would begin pushing it open to step over the threshold. The narrow packed-dirt courtyard led one into a cramped semi-circular space and a tiny room whose door didn’t close properly. The walls were lined with images on thin, dog-eared paper of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, and one luridly coloured image in a wood frame of Buraq, the heavenly steed who carried the Prophet skyward, an elegant creature portrayed with a beautiful feminine countenance. Thin mattresses – just cheap fabric stretched over a layer of sponge – were propped against the wall next to an assortment of plastic implements: baskets of various sizes and colours, big ladles, and pots with white lids. Next to the open door was a mirror in an ancient frame at the top of which was written in pyramidal form ‘Sultanate of Muscat and Oman’. The sitting room was completely empty but for a carpet whose edges were partly worn away and a rolled-up mat that always stood in the corner. But Masouda hadn’t set foot in any of these spaces for a long time. One of the women who lived nearby might stop in at midday, or a young boy or two at sunset. As the iron door scraped open groaning, the smell that had been imprisoned inside burst out. Masouda would shout, I’m here! I’m here . . . and anyone around would truly know she was indeed there.
Celestial Bodies Page 7