I came out of my heavy moods. In the melodies and rhythms of Suwayd’s oud I could almost feel myself dwindling to nothing, a little like the way I sensed myself dissolving in the cloudy pallor of Mayya’s face. Perhaps I came close to becoming a fast-moving little stream myself, a rush of water ready to sweep away the sewing machine and plant me in its place. I could nearly feel my own earliest, inchoate self, my flesh recreated in Mayya’s thin fingers on the fabric, in Suwayd’s thin fingers stretched over the strings of his instrument.
If only my father had not caught sight of me.
For some reason he hadn’t stayed in his room as he usually did after the evening prayers. Having assumed that he’d sought the refuge of his bed as he did every night, I went out and Zarifa locked the door behind me. We both knew she would unlock it before going to sleep.
But when I returned I found the door bolted. I stood there confused and afraid. Did it make sense that Zarifa would forget about me? Or had some other person come along after her and locked the door?
My bewilderment didn’t last long. The door whipped open and I saw my father’s face through the darkness.
Fattum’s boy . . . yes, Fattum’s son. So you think you’re grand enough to go against me, d’you? Me? You’d disobey me? Fattum’s son! He bellowed a lot of words at me, most of which I didn’t understand or even hear – except my mother’s name. I lost consciousness after a blow somewhere to my head. He left me bleeding, lying in front of the gate. When I came to, I could hear Zarifa weeping but I couldn’t see her.
When he had kicked me, I yelled. I am not a boy any longer! I screamed my rage in his direction. And I will go out at night to have some fun. Like any other guy my age.
But in fact, my voice was too weak to be heard. I knew it then, and I know it now. So why, twenty-five years later, was I shouting at Salim, You’re not in bed yet? Where have you been? Are you such a grown man, then, that you can go against me and stay out all night?
He had gotten home at 2 am. As far as I could see, he was drunk. I had more to say, more to shout into his face, but I didn’t recognise the voice that was coming from me.
It wasn’t my voice. My father’s voice, in the black fortress of the entryway to his home, bruised my face and head. The next morning I was adjusting my turban as I got ready to leave when Salim came into my room. He still looked drunk and he said to me, Dad, I’m really sorry, really I am. And then he went out.
When I said to Mayya, furiously, and not for the first time, I told you, this son of yours is good for nothing, she made excuses for him. His exams were just over, she said, and all of his classmates were out on the town. He was not a boy any more.
Viper
Zarifa rapped hard on the door. Sanjar! Get out here, boy.
He was there immediately. Mama! Everything all right?
She would not come into his room. They walked through the broad front courtyard of the Big House and out to the little alleyways that were palely lit by the wan flows of light coming from the houses on either side.
Is it true what I heard, Sanjar? Is it true, you’d leave your own home town, your family too, you’d go away?
Yes, it’s true, he said. Come with me if you want to.
She pounced on him, her arms so hard around his neck that she practically throttled him. You give your little girl this strange name, Rasha, which no one around here would ever name her daughter, and you want to leave town too?
He shook off her grip roughly. His voice was loud now. Listen, Mama! I don’t care what my daughter’s name is – yes, if she’d been a boy I’d have named her Muhammad or Hilal or Abdallah—
What? Zarifa shouted. Merchant Sulayman would kill you! You’d give your child a name he gave one of his children? Are you crazy, boy? Who do you think you are? And who raised you in his own home and gave you an education and got you married?
He spoke through clenched teeth. Listen to me. Merchant Sulayman raised me and, yes, he put me through a little schooling, and he found me a wife, but it was all for his own self-interest, all because he meant me to serve him, and to have my wife as his servant too, and then my children later on. No, Zarifa, no! Merchant Sulayman has no claim on me. We are free – the law says so, free, Zarifa. Open your eyes. The world has changed but you just keep on saying the same words over and over: ya hababi, ya sidi, my master, my honoured master. While everybody’s gotten educated and gotten jobs, you’ve stayed exactly where you always were, the slave of Merchant Sulayman like that is all there is. He’s just an old man who can’t even keep his hands steady! Open your eyes, Zarifa. We are free, and everyone is his own master, and no one owns anyone else. I am free and I can travel wherever and whenever I like and I can name my children whatever I want to name them. If it’s what you want, then stay with him, the old fool. Fine. Just stay then.
Zarifa was on the point of slapping him, an automatic response left over from all those years of devilish boyhood – years which weren’t so far behind them, after all. Too quick for her, he stepped back and with her hand missing him, she lost her balance, teetered and fell, colliding with the base of the wall.
A woman from the village happened to be in the same alleyway. Hearing Zarifa’s sobs, she ran over. Like a woman in mourning, Zarifa threw her arms up and clapped them around her shoulders. Their heads together, shaking, they sobbed. The boy’s gone, the boy’s gone and left me, he talks just like his father. He’s making no sense, like his papa, and he’s going away like him too. Free, free! That’s what he always says. His father tormented me with such talk. I couldn’t believe it when Habib left and now his son here sounds just like him. Free, not slaves! What does any of this matter to me? I want my son here with me. That viper woman of his puts ideas in his head, she tells him to leave me and go away, she wants my heart to burn to ashes. And where’s he to go? What’ll he work at? Who will feed him and keep him safe? My son, my boy, my only one, he’s gone, gone . . .
The other woman, her arms around Zarifa, was sobbing just as hard.
But it wasn’t Sanjar’s wife, Shanna, who’d had the idea, even if she was ready enough to encourage it.
Soon after Shanna’s father, Zayd, had died, the year before, Zarifa announced to the young woman that she would betroth her to Sanjar. Shanna had been delirious with joy. Getting married meant getting out of her collapsing house and away from her family, and that was the most she could hope for. Marrying any man on the face of the earth would do that. Sanjar had nothing, of course, but she’d learned that he was hoping to go away sooner or later, leaving this entire country behind. She was bored with al-Awafi – its people, its animals, the mountains and farms – and she shared Sanjar’s fierce yearning for a new life in a place far away where there weren’t any poor people, or where at least, maybe, they could climb out of the poverty that dogged them here. She was fed up with being poor, with the filth and the begging that went along with having nothing. She was tired of a life that held no touch of style or refinement, or – and this was likely worse – a life in which she was always able to see nice things but never to have them. She was tired of carrying water on her head every morning and evening, of the smoke from their cooking fires and the dust cloud she stirred up whenever she had to sweep the house. But what really disgusted her, more than al-Awafi and its people and animals and poverty and service, was her mother Masouda.
Ever since Shanna had opened her eyes on life, this mother of hers had been a bent and twisted creature – a crooked form whose lashless eyes were swollen and whose hands were ever dry and cracked. When Shanna got older, she would hear that her mother’s permanently bowed back was the result of constantly stooping over the short-handled broom she’d always used to sweep the courtyard, and of course from carrying heavy loads of firewood day after day.
Shanna avoided Masouda as much as she possibly could and showed her aversion as thoroughly as a girl could do without stirring up too many comments or rumours. And as if this ill-starred mother’s misery weren’t enough, her husba
nd’s death had left her in a peculiar condition. She’s gone out of her mind, of course, Shanna muttered to herself repeatedly, just as she said to everyone else. She could not understand how her father could have felt anything at all for this woman who had spent her entire life carrying wood and sweeping the floor. It had always astonished Shanna to find the two of them spending the long evenings talking, even laughing together sometimes. Her father was a strong man – why, he was known as the fellow who could hoist two huge sacks of rice or two enormous bags of dates without any show of stress. For her mother, he had built this house out of gypsum with his own hands. He’d had the means to marry another woman but he didn’t. He stuck with this strange wife of his, seemingly fond of her and her odd ways. Many times, Shanna had said to herself, If he had married someone else then maybe now she, Shanna, would have brothers and sisters who could share some of the irritating burden of this mother. But as Zarifa – soon to become her mother-in-law – would always say, The beast of burden is made for burdens.
How could she know what might have happened, anyway? Likely those imaginary brothers and sisters would have washed their hands of her mother, because she was only their father’s elder wife, and they would have left Shanna with all the misery and toil of taking care of her. In any case Sanjar would emigrate as his father had done before him and then Shanna would be rid of the worry and the drudgery. She would no longer have to hear this monotonous tinny insistent voice that made the base of her skull vibrate. I’m over here! It’s Masouda. I’m Masouda and I’m here. Always that voice, embarrassing Shanna in front of the neighbours and shaming her before all the people of al-Awafi.
She hated them. She hated them all.
Abdallah
No sooner did Muhammad free himself of his obsessive attachment to the whirling fan than he became engrossed in another game: opening and shutting the door. He spent all of his waking hours yanking it open and then banging it shut, over and over, with never a pause. We tried desperately to interest him in some other activity, anything, or to get him to repeat the few unconnected words he could pronounce. All was in vain.
When I left the house, Muhammad would always insist that his mother stay immediately next to him as he opened and closed the door. She did not say a word. When I’d had enough of the company of my friends and the cafés we sat in, I would return home to find the two of them exactly as I had left them. Muhammad would be repeating his random words like a parrot, his mother there at his side. Eventually, out of sheer exhaustion he would collapse and fall sleep. She would go to sleep immediately, waking up only when he did.
One day I came back when Mayya was taking a bath. The sound of the door opening and shutting, opening and shutting, opening and shutting, began to erode my sanity, and it was all I could do to keep from knocking Muhammad’s head against that door of his or cuffing him. I wished he would open the window instead of the door, perch there for a moment, and fly right through it. Yes, I wanted Muhammad to fly out the window like the birds and never come back, if only that would stop this unending, never-changing sound for good.
Salima
Azzan informed Salima that he had accepted the request made by Khalid, son of Emigrant Issa, for the hand of his daughter Asma, and that he had excused himself to the Emigrant’s family for not accepting Khalid’s brother for Khawla, telling them that she had already been reserved for her cousin.
Salima flashed him an angry look. Her cousin who? she snapped. Nasir, that boy we haven’t heard a peep from in more than four years? Who never has asked after us or her? Since when is Khawla reserved? What is this talk? Where is he, this cousin of hers? Out on the streets like a tramp, miserable fellow, somewhere in Canada – and we refuse someone who really wants to marry our girl?
Azzan turned his face away. I have responded to them and there is nothing more to say. If you want to make preparations for your daughter Asma’s wedding and agree with the women in Khalid’s family about the dowry and the arrangements, then go ahead. But Khawla – no.
He threw a wool shawl over his shoulders and went out as he did every night.
Salima walked quietly into the middle room. Mayya was asleep. She picked up the baby, undid her swaddling and began rubbing oil and salt into her reddened navel. The tiny girl opened her eyes and stared at Salima. The baby’s grandmother could not keep back a tear or two as she remembered Muhammad, who had died as a nursing baby. She was trying not to remember Hamad – Hamad whom this baby so resembled, the son she had lost. She didn’t want to remember him at all.
She wrapped the baby up again tightly and settled the little bundle on her lap. She examined her face for a moment and closed her eyes. Opening them, it was not her granddaughter that she saw. She didn’t even see Muhammad or Hamad, her two dear departed ones, nor did she see Azzan’s glum face. Her eyes weren’t taking in the blue paint on the walls or the shelves set into their thicknesses, where the porcelain sat on display. What she saw was her uncle’s house.
Her uncle’s house? No, what she really saw was the thin line where the high thick wall of that fortress met the sky.
How many years had plodded by as she leaned against the kitchen’s outside wall, listening to the slave women quarrelling inside and the slave men’s jokes and shouting on the other side, the children screaming and fighting in the courtyard, the high-pitched screech of her uncle’s wife belting out commands. And no one ever listened to Salima, and no one ever spoke to her.
So many years had passed as she leaned there, against that wall, unseen and unheard, staring at the line where the wall met the sky.
Many times since those days, she had tried to remember what her feelings were as she leant there slumped against the wall. Did she feel any sadness when she learned her father had died? Did she feel any longings for her mother? Was she angry? She didn’t remember any of these things, though she tried. All she recalled was a sun so bright it hurt her eyes and the odour of kitchen smoke everywhere. She did remember one sensation especially well: hunger.
People used to talk, back then, about the impact of the world war, the terrible inflation and all of the unrest among the tribes, but she did not understand what any of it had to do with the way her uncle’s wife stared at her niece’s hands and mouth as the family ate their main midday meal. Ever since her father’s death, when her uncle had insisted on moving her and Muaadh to his home, Salima had forgot what breakfast tasted like. The adults drank coffee and ate dates but she always waited for lunchtime to come.
When they had guests from another tribe, Salima could smell the fragrance of meat grilling, and the broth and freshly baked paper-thin bread as the visiting men ate with her uncle. Then she, her uncle’s children and his wife gathered around the leftovers on the enormous tray that had been prepared for the guests. Usually there wasn’t anything more than a little broth and some bones with hardly any meat on them. Her uncle’s children fought over the remnants of food while her uncle’s wife trained her eyes on Salima’s hand. Salima would feel her hand must be huge every time she reached toward the tray. Her mouth was very big and ugly, she was certain. When there weren’t any guests, lunch was dried sardines that had been pounded and mixed with onion, lemon and water, along with a few dates. Rice was so expensive that only invalids were fed it. She hated the acrid smell of the dried-out sardines but since most of the time she was so hungry that her tummy ached, she ate the mixture anyway.
Yes, hunger. That was what she remembered of her life in her uncle’s home.
The baby’s shrill cry demanded Salima’s attention. She was hungry, of course. Mayya, sang out her mother, get yourself up now, nurse your baby girl.
Mayya struggled upright and managed to nurse her baby until the infant fell asleep. She lay down again, stretching out quietly on her mat. Her mother carried in a big smooth stone, laid it over the lit coals, and a few moments later wrapped it in a towel to preserve its heat while protecting Mayya’s skin from scorching. Mayya exposed her belly and her mother placed the stone there
, wrapping her and the stone up together like a package in a tattered old length of fabric. Twice every day for forty days Mayya had to endure the added heat of the stone on her belly so that her middle would not collapse into flabby post-birth wrinkles. The stone did not annoy her half as much as did the tightly wrapped cloth, over her belly and around her body, night and day, for forty whole days, until she was cleansed of her afterbirth and would emerge with a sleek, taut belly.
Entering the room, Asma broke into a smile at the sight of the swaddled stone on Mayya’s middle. I’ll be going to buy the gold, Salima said to her. And the clothes and wedding chest, all for your wedding. Next month.
Asma nodded, smiling to herself, anticipating her own experience of motherhood. Why wasn’t there even one book, among all of the volumes on her shelves, which singled out motherhood as the radiant experience it must be? Had her grandfather, Shaykh Masoud, whose library her mother had inherited, not been interested in motherhood? Or were books in general reticent on this subject? She didn’t know the answer to that one, since she had never seen another library in her life.
Azzan and Qamar
Azzan’s head lay in Qamar’s lap, his eyes fixed on the stars glittering in the soft clear desert sky. She was gliding her fingertips along his lashes and brows and flicking off the grains of sand clinging there, putting them in her mouth. He was accustomed to this gesture of hers now, so it no longer startled him. He floated in the ecstasy of her words, captured by her intensity which never seemed to lessen, her zealous attention to house, camels, work and brother. When she suddenly went silent he rubbed his cheek against her hand. Keep talking, I love your voice. She lay down next to him in the sand. Fingers interlaced beneath their heads, together they gazed at the constellation Ursa Minor which was unmistakeable at this time of year.
Celestial Bodies Page 10