Thus the beekeeper began to teach Mamdouh everything he knew about the art of apiculture. His smile was nearly toothless, owing to rickets, and he never wore protective gloves, insisting that he did not like separation from his bees—although he always wore his hat and veil and kept a smoker nearby in case of a swarm. He insisted that Mamdouh wear gloves until he could feel the connection to bees in every part of his body, beginning with his heart and moving to other vital organs until it reached his skin. “Only then can you stop wearing gloves,” he said, patting Mamdouh’s shoulder.
In truth, Mamdouh could never have such a visceral connection to beekeeping as his mentor expected. True, he arrived early to work every day and stayed late listening to the beekeeper for hours. But Mamdouh’s enthusiam and attentiveness was born from the wound of fatherlessness, and from a desire deep in his thighs. He heard very little of the beekeeper’s tales, absorbing instead the warmth of being there and scanning his surroundings for a glimpse of Yasmine, the beekeeper’s youngest daughter. And as memory will often succumb to the insistence of longings, Mamdouh invented a memory of a father, whose features took on those of his mentor and his character that of a beekeeper, sitting down to tea after a meal to speak of honey while Mamdouh searched the room for wafts of love.
Before Mamdouh became the apiarist’s apprentice, his family had lived on whatever he could peddle or earn from small jobs and what charity they got from mosques. But it was never enough, especially when his mother’s strange cravings grew. Once, during Eid when Mamdouh was not yet twelve years old and the mosque had given their family half a lamb, Um Mamdouh got a frightening appetite that no amount of food could satiate. Mamdouh had to slap her before all the meat was gone. The Quran says that heaven lies beneath the feet of mothers, and everyone knows that to slap one’s mother is to make a reservation in hell. But surely Allah would forgive him because he had acted not as her son, but as the man of the house who needed to ensure the family might have meat to eat. That was when Mamdouh and his sisters started to turn against Sulayman, the other family secret, because they knew their mother’s appetite was his fault. They knew when he was near, by their mother’s voracious appetite, her transported eyes that showed only the whites, or by the singed odor of smoke Sulayman brought wherever he was.
FIVE
People who knew my great-teta Um Mamdouh eventually learned of Sulayman. Or they learned of her after they heard of Sulayman. In those days, they all recalled a verse from the Holy Quran (Al Hijr 15:26–27): “And indeed, He created man from sounding clay of altered black smooth mud. And the djinn, He created aforetime from the smokeless flame of fire.”
On a Dark, Cloudy December evening in 1945, Um Mamdouh wandered in search of the moon until she found it, a thin crescent tangled in the stars over Beit Daras. Sulayman was with her. He always was now. As she gazed at the night sky, she heard moaning and muffled laughter behind a wall of ruins from a Roman bathhouse. She moved toward the sounds and saw outlines of four teenage boys, their skin glistening with the juices of moon and starlight. Shivering and panting in the cold dark, the boys’ galabiyas were pulled up over their waists and each was masturbating, not with pleasure, but in competition, it seemed. She began to curse them, damn them to hell for such sin. The boys went instantly soft with fear and scrambled to pull down their galabiyas, until one of them saw who it was.
“It’s the crazy Um Mamdouh,” he shouted, and they sighed with relief, then laughed with malice.
“Go back to the Masriyeen neighborhood,” yelled one boy. “Crazies are not allowed here,” said another. “Are you going to pull up your thobe and shit in the river again?”
Um Mamdouh retreated, frantically waving her hands. “Stop it! Sulayman is getting angry. He never gets angry. Stop it! You must stop.”
Their laughter intensified. “Who is Sulayman? Is that your sissy son’s nickname? Is he going to shit in the river, too?”
Suddenly, before she could stop him, Sulayman began to emerge through her face. Specks of stars from a black sky glistened on the contours of her head as his presence grew. It expanded to the width of her shoulders, a dark immensity with raging eyes of red fire. It spat gibberish in a voice that thundered from all directions, and a cauterizing smell, like pollution, soaked the air.
Transfixed, their legs held upright only by the fear that stiffened them, their souls limp as their dicks, two of the boys urinated involuntarily, one shat himself, and the oldest among them, Atiyeh, the one who had been most arrogant and cruel to Um Mamdouh, was stunned into a knot of silence.
For the rest of their lives, the boys would compare their memories of that instant, and they would all agree that never had anything terrified them more, not even the Jewish gangs or later the Israeli military that came first with guns and machetes and later with incredible machines of death. They had glimpsed Sulayman in rare anger. A real djinni.
SIX
The Quran says that Allah made the djinn from smokeless fire. Everyone knew that. Some revered the djinn, others feared them, but everyone respected and cowered at their power. And those who communicated with the djinn were avoided by some, revered by others, and feared by most.
The next day, the parents and elders of each family convened and went to Um Mamdouh’s house, where they were welcomed in the Barakas’ small stone dwelling. The women were invited to sit on the carpet inside, while the men, including the stunned boy, received the hospitality of Mamdouh in the courtyard, where they were offered tea and dates and argilehs, or hookahs, already packed with tobacco and filled with rose water and lemons. Clearly, the family had been expecting them. Sulayman had emerged to protect their mother and, as there was no way now to contain this family secret, Mamdouh had surmised that the town would come. So, he had borrowed the argilehs from the beekeeper, who happily obliged, assuming they were for Nazmiyeh’s suitors.
Inside their hut, little Mariam watched suspiciously as visitors arrived. Nazmiyeh served the women sweet mint tea. Her headscarf was trimmed in cheap metal coins that chimed shamelessly when she moved her head, and a brazen portion of her hair escaped for the world to see a hint of her wild copper curls. Nazmiyeh walked slowly, aware that the women were watching her. She had worn her green and orange dishdasha, the one that snugly clung to her large breasts and arrogant buttocks and thighs that fanned from a small waist. Nazmiyeh had a way of filling every room she entered, sucking up all the air.
“Welcome to our humble home, ladies. We are honored by your presence,” Nazmiyeh finally said with a smile that allowed others in the room to breathe.
“The honor is ours, beautiful young woman,” they said in unison.
Nazmiyeh was not beautiful, not instantly attractive to those who looked her way. But for those who saw her, who brushed against her haughty defiance and irreverence, she was irresistible. She had walnut-colored skin that she made no attempt to lighten by keeping away from the sun. She didn’t try to straighten her coiled hair by wrapping, pulling, or ironing it for occasions, such as weddings, when women removed their hijabs for one another. Instead, she let her curls just be, enraged and arrogant as they pleased. Whatever people thought of her, she proved difficult to ignore. Indeed, she had been the object of many a fantasy in Beit Daras.
The women of Beit Daras had come bearing gifts of fresh fruit and vegetables, olive oil, honey, and sweets. They apologized on behalf of their children, assuring Um Mamdouh, whom they respectfully addressed as Hajje Um Mamdouh, that each boy had received a hard beating and each would come in to apologize personally, if she would so allow. Hajje Um Mamdouh sat quietly and only spoke when addressed directly. She assured the women that Allah is the One who forgives, and that she had already forgiven the boys. It remained unuttered, though understood by all, that it was Sulayman’s forgiveness that was being sought and granted.
Not until hours had passed did one of the women explain the condition of Atiyeh, the stunned boy.
“Bring Atiyeh to me,” said the hajje. “I will help him.�
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As Atiyeh entered, Nazmiyeh bore into him with a stare so indignant and loathful that he stopped for a moment, more unsure of the world than he had ever been. He had just turned fifteen, though he seemed much younger, and Nazmiyeh was seventeen, though she seemed to be so much older. Blistering shame spread through Atiyeh’s body and mixed in his organs with the image of Nazmiyeh’s orange and green dishdasha stretched by supple rounded flesh at her chest and hips. His ribs pressed down on his heart with embarrassment and, he was sure, with love. Despite all eyes upon him, he felt himself growing hard, and he quickly flung himself at Hajje Um Mamdouh to kiss her hand and hide his predicament. But still, he could not speak. The hajje took the boy’s head in her hand, pulled it back, and began to utter her scrambled ramblings. Her eyes rolled in their sockets and her stale breath reached those around her. Suddenly, she stopped, her eyes clear. The boy stood, seemingly taller than before he had knelt, as if in that moment he had crossed the final threshold to manhood. He glanced at Nazmiyeh with eyes that tamed her glare and assured her that he was stronger than she. No one could have perceived that fleeting glance, though it lasted an eternity between the two of them. Then he walked out as if nothing had ever happened to him, and that was proof enough that Um Mamdouh, the strange woman with no husband and three children in the Masriyeen neighborhood, who had once shat in the river and slept in pastures, was in reality among the blessed asyad, the gifted mortals who could communicate with the djinn of another realm.
News spread quickly through Beit Daras and the surrounding villages and people began to flock to Hajje Um Mamdouh’s home. Many came to explore the world of the unseen. Are there other djinn in Beit Daras? Do the djinn mean us harm? Are they good or bad? Is it true that djinn have free will? Are they like us? Is it true they live more than a thousand years? Most came to search the mysteries of love. Does he love me truly? Which suitor is best for my daughter? Is my husband planning to take a second wife? A third wife? They always brought bakhour incense to burn because Hajje Um Mamdouh said the djinn love it. Once, a woman gifted Um Mamdouh a bottle of perfume from Lithuania and Sulayman stayed away until she got rid of it. Such scents based in alcohol repelled the old djinni, which many took as evidence that Sulayman may well have been an angel.
SEVEN
These were the times in Beit Daras when my great-khalto Mariam got her wooden box of dreams and I would traverse time and death, before I was born, to wait for her by the river, where I taught her written language, she talked to me about colors, and we made up songs.
Mariam was delighted that so many visitors now came to her home seeking her mother’s advice. They came with gifts and brought the energy of other villages and stories from esteemed families in Beit Daras. Upon seeing Mariam, they would praise Allah for such unique eyes. Nazmiyeh would immediately take her sister aside and read Quranic muawithat to shield her sister with the words of Allah, lest the compliments strike her with the curse of hassad. Sometimes Nazmiyeh did it in front of the women to shame them for being so bold with their compliments to anyone but Allah, the Creator who had made her sister’s eyes. But Mariam did not care. She loved the attention and wanted the guests all to herself. She fought Nazmiyeh to be the one to serve them tea, going so far as to threaten breaking all the family’s dishes if Nazmiyeh did not allow her.
“Okay, little sister. I just thought the tray was too heavy for you,” Nazmiyeh relented, and the fierceness in Mariam’s mismatched eyes turned to a smile as she carried the serving tray.
Mariam’s ability to see auras had lessened over time so that now, at the age of six, she only saw occasional bursts of intense feelings. But her inner world was always sorted by color. So after weeks of working up her courage, she finally asked the women for a pencil, a cobalt blue pencil, the color of Khaled, her friend who was always waiting for her by the river.
The next day, several women came with pencils and notebooks and erasers and sharpeners tucked in a carved wooden box with inlaid mother-of-pearl calligraphy of the word Allah. Mariam received the gift with awestruck gratitude. It was a wooden box of dreams that Mariam would carry for the rest of her life. She began to spend more time at the river and no amount of threats or whuppings from Nazmiyeh could keep her home during daylight. Mariam had her wooden box to take each day to the river, where Khaled taught her how to write her name and the ninety-nine names of Allah. It was not long before she had unlocked the secrets of language. She had stopped watching the schoolboys walk to school and would leave after her chores every day for the river.
Several times Nazmiyeh followed her to see Khaled. Never finding him, Nazmiyeh concluded that Mariam had made him up to try to explain her self-taught literacy, and they settled into their lives thus. Those were perhaps the happiest days of the Barakas’ lives together. Um Mamdouh was respected, Mamdouh was happy in his job keeping bees, and Nazmiyeh became dreamy, looking prettier than ever.
For two years, Mariam would return home daily in the late afternoon, eager to show her sister all that Khaled had taught her, and Nazmiyeh would leaf through the pages, her heart swelling with pride. She was sure her little sister was the first girl in all of Beit Daras to learn to read. Once, in a moment of unbearable love for her brilliant little sister, Nazmiyeh began to cry. She held Mariam’s face gently in both her hands, crouched to bring her face close, and said, “You are the most spectacular person I have ever known, my little sister. Remember how special you are, how loved you are. We will always be together.”
“Are you okay?” Mariam asked, unaccustomed to this sentimental side of her sister.
“Yes! I’m more than okay. I’m in love,” Nazmiyeh whispered. Mariam gasped, wide-eyed.
“Shh, habibti,” Nazmiyeh put a finger to her smiling lips. “I will tell you later. But for now, this is our secret.”
Nazmiyeh had always assumed a motherly role in Mariam’s life. Now they were sisters, too, who could conspire and hold each other’s secrets. So, almost eight years old now, Mariam resolved to explain who Khaled really was. But not now. They had to pray the day’s fourth salat and prepare the evening meal before their brother Mamdouh returned home from his work at the apiary.
EIGHT
My great-teta Um Mamdouh could not speak with the unseen except for Sulayman, an old djinni cast out from his tribe for having fallen in love with a mortal. The villagers came to understand this over time, but it did not lessen their respect for her power. Although the villagers’ visits eventually dwindled, they continued until history arrived and Beit Daras was carried off by the wind.
In February 1948, Five men arrived at the Baraka home. Village elders and chosen mukhtars from each of the main families of Beit Daras, they were pious men who would not ordinarily visit a woman such as Um Mamdouh, who lived with the unseen and without a husband. Their faces were hard and sober, dignified by age and tribal tradition. They greeted the hajje’s only son, Mamdouh, with firm handshakes and a kiss on each cheek, a sign of respect for the man of the house, even though Mamdouh was now only seventeen years old. They showed Hajje Um Mamdouh respect and honor by averting their eyes from her and placing their right hands over their hearts.
“Welcome to our home,” Mamdouh greeted the men, motioning for them to enter and sit on the carpet cushions near his mother.
“May Allah grant you long life, Hajje. We have come to seek your help and the help of Sulayman,” said Abu Nidal, the venerable mukhtar of the Baroud family. Before they could say more, Um Mamdouh closed her eyes, enfolding herself in the climate of another world. She inhaled the severe air surrounding her guests, mumbling incomprehensibly until her body was filled with echoes and her skin exhaled a strong scent of soot. She opened her eyes.
“You come to learn the intentions of the Jews?” she asked. They all nodded, so she continued. “Our peaceful neighbors in the kibbutz are not our friends. They harbor treacherous plans toward Beit Daras.”
“Are you sure, Hajje? We have been good neighbors for years. We have given them cro
ps and taught them to till this land. Their own doctor has treated our people and, enshallah, helped them back to health.”
“I tell you only what Sulayman tells me. He does not lie.”
“Tell us more,” they said.
“Only Allah knows the unknown, and only His will shall be done. Our neighbors will come joined by others, and they will spill the blood of the Bedrawasis of Beit Daras,” she said of a family known for their bravery and warrior skills. “Beit Daras will be victorious. You will all fight and you will live, but some of your brothers and sons will fall; yet, that will not be the end. More Jews will return and the skies will rain death upon Beit Daras. The big-headed stubborn Bedrawasis of Beit Daras will not surrender. Time and again they will repel the enemy, but the ememy’s fury is great. Native blood will pour from these hills into the river, and the war will be lost.”
Recognizing the gravity of such a visit, Nazmiyeh, now twenty years old, stood still, listening in the tight space of broken wall between the kitchen and the main room. Eavesdropping next to Nazmiyeh, Mariam did not fully understand her mother’s formal words, but she could feel the disquiet they inspired. When she served them coffee, Mariam observed the men sitting straight and stiff, hands clasped in laps. Small, uneasy fidgets and hard swallows that ferried Adam’s apples up and back seemed the only movement in the room. They didn’t look one another in the eyes, as if doing so would betray the despair they labored to hide. Nazmiyeh pulled her little sister closer and they stayed that way, listening to a trembling silence crawl from the ground, up the walls. Finally, the men sipped their coffee, and Um Mamdouh spoke again. “Only Allah can know the unknown, but if Beit Daras does not surrender, this land will rise again, even if the war is lost.”
The Blue Between Sky and Water Page 2