by Alia Mamdouh
Farida’s voice created a new layer: “Ouch! Let me rest a little while. I’m dying!” Her bursts of trilling were like a declaration of war. Umm Suturi’s voice sounded: “God’s blessings upon Muhammad, flesh, fat, and beauty. May God give you joy, dear Farida. We’re almost done.”
Aunt Naima: “Listen, Farida, men don’t like hairy women. You have very little hair. Just be calm until we finish. For two months you’ll see the water running over your body like silk.”
She took her arm and got as far as her armpit. The bride wept and fell back.
“You’ll be numb any minute now.”
The bride kicked among their arms, bracing herself against the wall. Umm Suturi took her head and held it steady in her hands, and presented her face to Aunt Naima. The slender thread moved along her cheek, her chin, and her face.
“Leave my eyebrows!” she cried.
“Today you just be quiet.”
Farida looked like a ripe fig. Her cheeks were spotted, her forehead was a blazing red, and her eyebrows were reduced by half. Her beauty was turned upside down. They put her hair up with a narrow ribbon, and her neck turned and moved. My two aunts went down to her chest and stopped at her nipples and the fiery divide. With the tweezers they plucked out her downy blond fuzz. They palpated her and watched her. They drew flared rays from her belly, which folded over a little, running downward to the last dream, and up to her nipples.
“Look at Huda here with us. Go away. Go outside.”
Aunt La’iqa’s voice: “When you grow up we’ll marry you off ourselves, and rejoice with you. Now go play with the children.”
The children, the little ones, and the house was inundated with women. I had not seen them before. I knew Rasmiya, Umm Suturi, Umm Mahmoud, Umm Hashim, Umm Ghanim, and the wives of our neighborhood’s shopkeepers. They all flocked together to the bath in our house, washing and drying, changing clothes, combing their hair, exhaling pleasant odors and cheap perfume, sudden voices, murmuring among the aromatics, slanders coming from their gums: “Yes, this Munir is her cousin. His looks! He frightens the children. But he’s terribly rich, and all the luck in the world. Everyone has tried asking for Farida’s hand, but life’s like that.”
“Well, that’s her luck. Yes, she’s pretty, but she’s vain and sour, and her tongue cuts like a saw. When she opens her mouth about anyone, God help them!”
The flood moved into the kitchen as well. Aunt Bahija stood in front of the pots and rolled up her sleeves. She skimmed the grease and sprinkled cumin on the meat and rice. She fried the meatballs. Her pelvis shook as she kneaded the dough for the stuffed pastry. She stirred the pot of milk with her long wooden spoon, blew on the froth, and sprinkled saffron and aromatic herbs on top of the custard.
Aunt Najia beside her brewed the tea, cleaned the tea glasses, spoons, saucers, and knives. Her voice dripped with greed and jealousy: “Who invited Naima? It must have been you. Are you trying to kill me? Don’t you have enough women? Oh, if I could have, I’d have killed you and been saved from you.”
The grease, the smells of the kitchen, the distinct smell of Aunt Bahija’s repressed laughter. The smell of fingernails painted with grease. The long nightgowns did not exude anything other than this steam without this panting. The fragrant steam of delicious food warmed the kitchen. The legs of the wedding lamb had been cut, its intestines removed, and the carcass skinned. Hubi had sized it up and taken his share—the head—in advance. My grandmother’s voice: “Leave a little meat for us to distribute to the poor at the mosque. This day is a favorite of God’s.”
It all collided and mingled together, the flesh of the lamb and the flesh of all these women, my mother’s sisters Nahida and Zubayda.
The young boys and the girls watched, moving from room to room, not knowing what to do. Grandmother Wafiqa came and went amidst them all. She had bathed before them and still had not changed her clothes. She brought the new silk robe, embroidered with violet thread. She adored this color and always pronounced it incorrectly. She smacked us when we laughed at her inability to say banafsaji, saying instead banoonsaji, meaning my teeth have gone and my tongue is crooked through grief.
On this day they called her “the mother of the bride” and Umm Jamil. I pulled her by her dress: “I want my mother. When will she come? Today is my aunt’s wedding.” She did not reply. Adil was dressed in his old holy day clothes: long trousers the color of dirty sugar, a blue shirt, and new shoes. He combed his hair and stood bewildered at the gate to the house. He spoke to no one and made no jokes. When he grew tired, he sat on the bench, which the women had pushed out of the way so they might pass without bumping into it.
Firdous was with me as I alternated between the kitchen and the trays of doughnuts and baklava.
The house was upside down. We brought bamboo chairs from our grandfather’s big house and the neighbors’ houses. These were lined up along the left, and a small table was set before each chair. New mats were laid on the floor, to the right, and freshly fluffed mattresses made up with clean sheets. Big cushions were propped up against the walls. The glasses gleamed, and the dishes and spoons were taken out of the boxes on the top shelf, and were all set out on a rectangular table at the opening of the hall.
This was the wedding of the first girl. My grandmother had lost three girls and a boy; there was only Jamil and Farida, with fifteen years between them.
I went up to the roof and murmured with my father’s first voice. Today neither Mr. Jamil attended, nor my aunts Widad and Inaam.
I plunged alone into those walls that had been demolished. The storm had harvested all that the other rooms had abandoned. The roof, which had been a bridge leading me to the sky, was now crowded with new fears. Uncle Munir had leveled the surface, paved its rutted mud with colored tiles, and colored its walls a bright shade of apricot. The old things were gone; Munir Effendi had taken them out of their boxes and the secret rooms and built the wedding chamber.
He had bought a great wide bed. Its frame was gleaming brass, with scalloped designs at the top and middle. New cotton was brought and the old was fluffed up. A ribbed, bright yellow eiderdown was made to cover it. He bought a wardrobe with four oaken doors, a chest of drawers with a round mirror mounted on top, and a small, low chair upholstered in embroidered black velvet. He replaced the glass in the ceiling with new, colored glass decorated with a branch pattern.
On the bed they spread out a pink, low-necked nightdress and a robe whose bosom and sleeves were worked in lace and silk thread. The bride’s high-heeled shoes were set out on the floor, high and shining with broad feathers. I opened the wardrobe and looked at the bride’s clothes. The bundles were lined up: these were her clothes for the first seven days, perfumes, rosewater, sprigs of lavender, dried flowers placed among the bundles, and everything bright, shining, and orderly: blue, red, pink, yellow. I opened them and touched, sighed, longed. This was the corner for Rachel’s clothes, this was Aunt Naima’s pile. Between them hung Uncle Munir’s suits, upright, elegant, new, ironed like a border guard’s. Iqbal’s clothes had been stored since her trip in a small suitcase tossed on top of the wardrobe. Her first wedding dress, her only silk handkerchief, her hairband, and a picture of her with my father on her wedding day, which she had placed before me on the shelf near the Qur’an.
This was the new bathroom on the roof, and the toilet. The silvery pitcher Aunt Naima had bought, the first washbasin, shining taps and doorknobs. A set of new sofas was set up in the other room, all with broad wooden armrests. The women came up here, hung the velvet curtains, set out sticks of incense, and lit them at night. The odor reminded me of the Abu Hanifa Mosque on the nights of the great holy days.
My mother’s coughing was absent on this day. The roof swayed once, but no one came up from downstairs and no one asked about the absent woman. From the glass of the roof, I looked down at everyone. Now the roof belonged to my aunt and Mr. Munir, and I no longer owned an inch of this sky. And the ground—it was just another form o
f fever and coughing.
Firdous’s voice behind me: “What are you doing here alone?”
She was staring. “God, Aunt Farida’s trousseau is beautiful!”
She opened the wardrobe, looked, and sighed. “Quiet and sad. I know you’re remembering your mother. Come, let’s go down. Pretty soon your aunt will be coming out to the courtyard. Come see her in her wedding dress—she doesn’t look like the same aunt! Please, Huda, be patient, your mother will come back safely.”
Going down the stairs, she whispered in my ear: “Mahmoud is standing by the gate of the house. He wants to see you.” He, too, was wearing his school trousers and holy day jacket, and leather shoes with his clean toes sticking out. His uncombed hair was the color of cooked turmeric. He had left his bed and the fever. I stood before him on the stone steps. Mahmoud had grown. Now you only looked at each other. The promises of the first laugh were gone. The school’s bench was peeling and the flowers in the garden where you both got lost were crushed. Offer him baklava; let him taste Farida’s wedding. Share with him the sugar that’s dipped in dreams. Put Jamil on the ground and spatter him with the blood of your absent mother.
I had not hated my father enough until now. He did not come. He grew angry and quarrelsome, argued and threatened; he would not consent to this marriage. He stayed far away, but sent a message: “In a few months Farida will be divorced and sitting in front of you again! Munir’s real home is in bars and with whores!”
My grandmother did not listen, and did not stop my aunt. My father’s voice rang from room to room and in my eardrums. No one heard it but I. I gathered it in my head and approached it. The first time that voice blazed I followed it.
But still the house banished his voice. The nights approached. Baghdad rolled up its sleeves and boiled, and Mahmoud was still boiling before me. Adil’s voice: “Dear Huda, I want some sweets.” I have a plate of sweets in my hand. We are standing, Mahmoud is ill, good-looking, clean. “Why did you get out of bed?”
He did not reply. My hand touched his fingers. Silence and sugar syrup and the stupidity of people passing by.
The women came in, and among the silence the stickiness ran down.
“Congratulations, Huda, God bless your aunt Farida.”
“Mahmoud—you! How are you now?”
“A little better.”
“But your hand is hot and your face is red.”
Adil turned. He loved Mahmoud and this sister of his.
“You’re as pretty as a rose today.”
I would not bow my head. I will always remember this date.
“Your clothes are beautiful, and your hair—when are you going to let your braids down?”
Speak, Mahmoud, write, announce, rejoice and don’t hold back. I heard Mahmoud’s mother’s voice behind me: “Who got you out of bed? Do you want to die and kill me too?”
I left, the baklava in my hands and mouth. Adil grasped Mahmoud’s hand: “Go, I’ll go with you, I don’t like being here alone.”
The two shadows moved away. The call to evening prayers could be heard from the Abu Hanifa Mosque. The incense rose from the recesses of the house, and rosewater was sprinkled on everyone’s faces. Prayers were read. The bride set out. Two highbacked chairs were put in the house. Palm branches were stuffed into big tubs and arranged amid the tall white candles, whose wicks, once lit, projected high flames. The little candle holders were on the steps, in the hallways, and the entrances to the rooms. Mint leaves, cardamom seeds, sugar ground with nuts were placed in small gilded glasses. Sweets were thrown at everyone. Umm Suturi’s voice trilled, and I watched the movement of her tongue and my aunt’s head in its first practice: she was the bride; she was Farida. My grandmother called her in a loud voice that everyone present heard:
“Lord, keep her feet on the path to goodness and comfort. Lord, make her happy and spare me long enough to see her children. Almighty God, blessed be the name of Your messenger Muhammad. Darling, trill with joy; all my dears, where are your voices?
“Umm Suturi, Bahija, Naima, darling Umm Mahmoud, God willing when Iqbal comes back from her trip we shall have a proper wedding.”
The trilling and voices, the commotion, the prayers sprinkled over them all. The shut-in women of the neighborhood stood and watched from the corners, looking on and resting for a moment. They were unveiled and colored; their faces painted with red and blue and adorned with gold taken from its boxes. They wore robes and gorgeous Iraqi overdresses, worked in gold and small jewels.
Najia coughed and trilled. Bahija shook her middle and, taking my grandmother’s hand, danced amidst the din of the women and children. My aunt was ready to collapse. There were a few meters between her room and the courtyard, and she crossed it in minutes. Everyone was a watcher, wanting to see this ambiguity in the face of brides.
Farida was tinted: her face gleamed, and her eyebrows were more fully arched. But she looked ugly! Her teeth shone white, her fine skin was radiant, her lips were the color of a new beet. Her finger bore the gold wedding ring, and another finger an emerald-colored one. On her chest lay a pearl necklace, a gift from my grandmother; the pearl earrings were a gift from Aunt Bahija. Her rings and bracelets and necklaces were from her aunts, Naima, Zubayda, Nahida; the buttons on her white dress twinkled, and around her waist was wrapped a wide belt that hung as low as her haunches.
The wedding veil on her head was entwined with small artificial roses. The veil flowed over her neck, shoulders, and arms and down her back. She did not know what to do with her hands. Now she raised them; now she laid them down. On her right was Aunt Najia, to her left Aunt Bahija, and before them Naima kept the path clear and quietly watched the two aunts. The rest of the women walked behind them, stopping or slowing down, reciting Qur’anic verses and trilling, shooing the children out of the way, bearing cushions and trays of sweets.
So this was the bride. She looked nothing like the original Farida. I did not like her this way.
I stood near a tray of candles. My aunts and grandmother called out to me: “Come take the tiara from your aunt. Look—even on a wedding day she’s stubborn.”
I did not move. I looked down at everyone from the top of the stairs. Beside me, Firdous took a step. I took morsels of the dripping wax and made little balls with faces. I looked up. My mother was coming, wearing a long white silk dress. Her bosom was round and prominent, and her height was exaggerated; she was like a goddess fleeing the earth. She did not turn or speak. She looked only at me as if intoxicated, walking and acting like a woman who knew her private fortune. She walked toward me and touched my face, held my hair in her palms, turned with me, held my hands, pressed them and lifted them up, kissed them and smelled them, and held them to her cheeks, which had grown plumper and healthier, more pink and glowing. Her hair was longer than mine, hanging loose, combed and shiny, clean, and parted in the middle. She wore glittering diamond earrings, which moved whenever she moved. I turned with her; I danced, and we danced. We opened the rooms in the house one by one. We opened the closets, the drawers, the suitcases, the bundles, the boxes, and pulled out all the contents. We opened the windows, walked on tiptoe and sang as if meeting each other for the first time. Our voices rang out and we paid attention and called out to no one else. We did not even recognize the people we knew. She held me by the waist and I embraced her arms; I grew tall, we stretched and grew bigger. Now we had wings, and the great and small houses opened up to us. We did not repeat the same songs or remember what we said. Everything came out of us spontaneously, as if the words knew their cue. She carried me off like a fabulous roc bird, from the house, the lanes, and our street. She ascended and I ascended. I flew and pressed my face against hers, and her eyes saw me as if for the first time. My mother’s eyes had grown as large as the ceiling as she slipped out of my arm. I did not see her or pursue her.
Suddenly silence fell. Munir cleared his throat. The trilling grew louder, but with one movement of his hand he silenced them all. He called for my grandmo
ther, and they both entered the room. Only I could hear her cry out: “Oh, God, she’s gone, alas, poor Iqbal! Almighty God, I will not resist your wisdom, most merciful of all the merciful.”
“Tell me, grandmother, is it true my mother is gone?”
Look and let her go. Slam the doors behind you and open the windows of all the houses before you. You piss on the cushions and the gold, on Munir’s baldness and Aunt Farida’s rear end. You trample the mats and the carpets. If only I could have screamed. It was the twenty-seventh day of the month of Ramadan. “A wedding on this day is a blessing,” my grandmother said.
And a death on this day?
Today the new visitor, Iqbal, is “gone.” Today the holy little hairs emerge from her precious flask. God has abandoned me.
Only the Prophet is left. Cry out all the curses you have learned by heart in the burial shrine of Naaman Ibn Thabit. Release your amplified scream everywhere, and lift your mother’s coffin, containing the future days of both of you.
9
To the Abu Hanifa Mosque. I ran, fell down, picked myself up, cried, and struck my face with my hand. I was thinking of no one.
I stood with the crowd, the confused crowd of our neighborhood. The long rows pushed and shoved, people bending, their arms and legs. Their voices mingled together in prayer and supplication: “God, have mercy,” they cried as they revolved around the tomb with its silver dome and scalloped columns. They wandered and trembled. There were children and elderly people, tying green and white scraps of fabric to the window of the tomb. Their hands were like flowers scattered by a storm. Mothers and grandmothers lifted up their little boys and girls and perched them upon their shoulders. They kissed the columns as if they were suckling breasts; their whole bodies craved the blessing. Their voices were hoarse, heavy, delicate, and helpless. Their black cloaks undulated over their statures, rose and fell, and returned to their passionate heads. Handkerchiefs, covers, and towels were drawn over their sweaty necks. There was incense I had never smelled before that reminded me of penitence. I did not know where it had been placed, but it stole through the confines of the space and drifted by our noses like the drowsiness of dawn.