by Nomi Eve
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Contents
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part Two
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part Three
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Part Four
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
Questions for Discussion
Enhance Your Book Club
Acknowledgments
A Note on History
A Note on Henna
For Ahoova, in whose kitchen I first savored malawach and jachnun and other forms of essential nourishment.
My beloved is unto me as a bundle of myrrh, that lieth betwixt my breasts.
My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna flowers in the vineyards of Ein Gedi.
—SONG OF SONGS, 1:13–14
Prologue
I loved Asaf before I loved Hani. I think of him looking out at me from deep within his cold armor. His eyes beseech me. Rescue me, they say. Melt my prison, breathe on my fate, and release me with the heat of your forgiveness.
Auntie Aminah used to say that there were people who died as they lived, and others who did “quite the opposite.” She was referring to the lazy woman who died dancing, or the man with the energy of fire who lay on his deathbed like a snuffed-out ember. According to my aunt, such mismatched deaths left an imbalance for the angels to tinker with in the World to Come. Asaf’s death was like that. He was a boy on a thundering horse, a child of the hot northern dunes—yet he died a cold, still death, trapped like a bug in frozen amber. But Hani died as she lived, inscribed with henna. Her killer took a knife and used it to trace her intricate henna tattoos, carving through the skin on the soles of her feet, her shins, her palms, the backs of her hands, her forearms; slicing her into an elaborate, bloody decoration. She was tied up and left that way and must have bled to death. If such barbarity had happened in Qaraah, or in Sana’a or in Aden, we would have assumed that it was the family of one of the brides. When a marriage went wrong, or a first baby was born dead, the henna dyer was often blamed, as if the henna dyer’s art were more than art, as if it could really ward off or conjure evil. When I learned of Asaf’s and Hani’s deaths, I held my hands up to my face. I hadn’t worn henna for many years, but the old markings seemed to appear on my skin—my own ghostly lacery. The henna elements on my palms became letters, the letters spelled their names. And there it was. Their stories inscribed on my skin, their smiles and sorrows my own tattoos.
Now I spend my days surrounded by my children and grandchildren. In their laughter, I discern codes and secrets. Sometimes I decipher what I hear. Sometimes, I am stumped. Life itself has become a puzzle to be translated, a curse or a blessing written in the language of henna.
* * *
It was my husband who suggested that I write this story. He said, “This story will submit to you, and to you alone.” His words made me wonder: Do stories submit to authors? Or do authors submit to the tales that tangle up their guts? I confessed to him that if I were to write about Hani and Asaf, I would have to write a love story, “For I never stopped loving them,” I said shamefacedly to the man who had rescued me from their manifold betrayals.
He wasn’t cowed. “Love them,” my husband urged, “write them, and write yourself.”
I tried to begin, but my story came out in a voice I didn’t recognize. I tried again, and I failed again because my chapters were all told from a faulty perspective. Then I failed a third time. I finally realized that I was going about it all wrong. I didn’t need characters but ingredients. I didn’t need settings or scenes, I needed age-old herbal recipes passed down from mother to daughter, aunt to niece. I didn’t need plot or point of view, but symbols so old they were once swirling in the dust of creation. I didn’t need pen or paper, I needed stylus and skin. I am a woman of henna so I needed to rely upon the traditions and tools of my craft.
I began yet again, but writing in henna presented its own challenges. You see, the master henna dyers in my family always started elaborate applications in different places. Aunt Rahel always began with the palm of her subject’s right hand because of the psalm: “If I forget thee O Jerusalem, then let my right hand forget its cunning.” She liked to say that henna was prayer in color, and prayer was henna in words. My cousin Nogema favored the tips of the fingers. My cousin Edna always started by inscribing elaborate elements on the tops of her subjects’ feet, because her designs depended most of all on symmetry and balance. And my cousin Hani, whose story I had set out to tell? She never began in the same place. She was the first to admit that her haphazard approach wasn’t scientific and sometimes resulted in aesthetic disasters. But more often than not, Hani’s designs were the most beautiful of all. When I was well practiced in the henna craft, I preferred to start with the underside of the forearm. My subject would stand before me with her arm raised, her hand on my shoulder. That way I could decorate the bottom of her bicep without smearing the top of the arm.
So you see, we all had our own tricks; the only thing you could say about all of our techniques is that in the end, the first line blended into the last like blood running through veins.
As for my story? Where should I begin? Should I ask my reader to extend an open palm so that I can inscribe my words in the warm gully of a branching life line, and our fates may mingle? Or should I ask her to recline on jasmine-scented pillows and let me begin with the tender soles of the feet, so that my story accompanies her wherever she goes, pressed into the earth, like footprints for posterity? Or should I demand my reader reveal her bosom, so that I may write these words upon her heart?
I have done a great deal of thinking about this matter. About where to begin a story that ends with blood and sacrifice. At last I have come to believe that my story begins on the day the Confiscator came to my father’s shop for the first time. This man, the monster of my childhood, the ghost who haunts my dreams, casts the same shadow as all the other predators who have hounded my people since the dawn of time. Different men, they are all descendants of the same ancient darkness.
* * *
I was just five years old when the Confiscator came. We lived in Qaraah, a day’s ride from the ancient city of Sana’a in the Kingdom of North Yemen. The year was 1923. Yes, this is where my story must begin. Many years have passed since I last sharpened my stylus, but I feel the old elements ready at my fingertips. Palm, soul, heart. If my hand is steady, the last line will blend into the first, and ends will embrace beginnings.
What was it that Aunt Rahel used to say to the girls and women whose limbs she would ador
n with intricate and beautiful henna designs that marked the skin and pierced the heart? Whether they were there for a henna of solace or a henna of celebration, she treated them all with the utmost tenderness. She would beg them to relax, whisper soothing secrets in their ears, and comfort them with a blessing, a calming word. And then she would begin to draw . . .
Part One
* * *
Chapter 1
“What is wrong with the girl’s eyes?”
“Nothing, she sees fine.” My father cleared his throat and looked down at his work—a single broad piece of leather lay over his bench—the flap to an ordinary market bag.
“But they are too big for her face.”
“If you say so, sir.”
The Confiscator moved closer, coming in front of my father’s bench. I’d ducked behind my father, peeking out from behind his supply shelves. The stranger was tall, thick-shouldered, and had a face so long it seemed to drip down to his belly. He absentmindedly touched the hilt of the jambia sheathed on a belt around his waist. The curved ritual scimitar was exquisite—the blade a gleaming threat of forged iron, the hilt a mellow yellow Eritrean ivory, overlain with two jeweled serpents wrapped around the handle, a band of rubies at the thumb point, and an embossed hawk’s head on the lip of the hilt, representing both mightiness and honor. He wore an expensive maroon silk djellaba with a black turban, and his beard was carefully tended.
“Eyes like that see either too much of the world or too little of it. And the color—greenish gold? Pretty and ugly at the same time. What is her name?”
My father opened his mouth and then shut it again without speaking.
“What was that? Her name, sir. Surely the imp has a name.”
“Adela . . .” Almost a whisper.
“I have no daughters, only sons.”
“Sons are a blessing.”
“Indeed, they are.”
My father coughed, a wet and phlegmy cough. He took out his handkerchief, blew his nose, and studiously avoided the man’s gaze.
“Your health, sir?”
“My health is fine.” My father coughed again.
“Eh . . . fine?”
And again, big grating hacks racked my father’s body. The Confiscator’s eyes narrowed; he stepped back until he was halfway out of the stall and screwed up his face in distaste—no, he wouldn’t catch this plague, not if he could help it. And yet my father’s obvious weakness clearly gave the Confiscator pleasure. A smile played on the corner of his mouth. He tipped his head forward to get a better earful of the miserable sound. And still he stared at me—looking at me, seeing me live a different life. For that was his job, to pluck children out by the roots from the soil of their birth and replant them in a different garden.
I stared back at the wealthy stranger. I wasn’t afraid of him yet. I was really afraid only of my mother. No one’s wrath or whims—not even the Confiscator’s—could scare me by comparison. Even then, at only five years old, I saw him perfectly for what he was: a thief, an evildoer, and a descendant of Amalake. I wanted to spit at him, but I knew I would be punished for it in this life and in the World to Come.
“But I am not here to discuss your daughter A—del—a’s un—for—tu—nate eyes.” He drawled on my name and the word unfortunate, stretching them out. “No. I am here to order a pair of bashmag sandals for my wife. She sent me to your stall because her friends say you make shoes that do not hurt before they are worn in. She must have three pairs. She insists that you, and only you, make the shoes she will wear to her sister’s wedding. And clearly I have been put here on earth for the sole purpose of seeing to her pleasure.” He waved a beringed hand. His nails were long, manicured. “Here are her foot measurements. I will be back in two weeks to collect them. And”—the Confiscator nodded in the direction of my hiding place behind the shelves—“make sure the girl is here when I come to pick them up. Yes? You understand me? Good, good. It is good that we men understand each other.”
My father didn’t ask why the Confiscator wanted me to be there, and he didn’t ask what would happen to either or both of us if I were elsewhere on the appointed morning. Instead, he asked the Confiscator a few questions about color, texture, and adornment and then recorded the order in his big ledger.
When the stranger left, I came out from behind the supply shelves. My father placed a hand on my head and patted me softly. He didn’t say, “That man is of no importance” because it would have been a lie, and my father was not a liar. Instead he murmured a snippet of scripture, referring to the miracle of sight and the clarity of spiritual vision. Then he picked me up and put me on his workbench and kissed my nose, before giving me scraps to play with as he began to ply the leather—making it supple with the caress of his tools.
I knew that the Confiscator was a bad man. I knew that my father hated and feared him. But it was only later that I understood that he was a bringer of nightmares, a kidnapper. History, religion, and politics had conspired to make him such. What did a little girl know of such subjects? But my father was wise—nothing like his ignorant and innocent daughter—and that is why a tear came to his eye as he tucked an errant lock of hair into my gargush when we left the shop that afternoon. He knew what I was to learn in the coming years—that his lungs were weak and his health fragile, and that as a consequence I was in danger of being stolen away from my faith and family.
* * *
History, politics, religion. I dip my stylus in the dark mists of time. The Confiscator worked for Imam Yahye. Imam Yahye wrested power from the Turks, and had become ruler of the Kingdom of North Yemen in 1918, the year of my birth. My family and all the Yemenite Jews dreaded the Imam’s many decrees. The day the Confiscator first came to my father’s stall, I couldn’t have told you a lick about politics, but I could have reported how often my father and brothers came home stinking like shit, death, and piss because they had been conscripted to carry dung, cart off sewage, and haul animal carcasses. The Imam’s Dung Carriers Decree relegated Jews to the jobs of refuse and carrion collectors. The Donkey Decree forbade the Jews of the North from riding horses. Instead, my father, brothers, and our friends could ride only donkeys, and they couldn’t even ride our donkey, Pishtish, like hearty men; instead they were forced to ride sidesaddle, which limited their ability to travel. There was also the House Decree, which forbade us from building our houses as tall as the houses of our Muslim neighbors. And the Walkers Decree, which forbade us from walking on the same side of the street as a Muslim.
But the worst by far of all the Imam’s decrees was the one that brought a tear to my father’s eye the day the Confiscator paid us a visit: the Orphans Decree. It called for any orphaned Jewish child to be confiscated, converted, and quickly adopted by a Muslim family if a father died. This meant that Jewish children were ripped out of the arms of newly widowed mothers. That’s why the Confiscator had lingered in my father’s stall—because of my father’s cough. The Confiscator had a quota to fill. Perhaps he had heard that the shoemaker was sickly. Perhaps he had had his eye on me for a long time already.
* * *
That night my parents fought. My father banged his fist on the breadboard and growled, “You must engage Adela—the bastard came to my stall sniffing around for children to put in his pocket. It is your duty as her mother to find her a husband.”
I was the youngest of nine, the only girl, and my mother’s last and least-favored child. I was a bitter afterthought—a thorn in the side of my mother’s old age. She would have neglected to betroth me at all, leaving my fate to the whims of chance, but my father, who loved me well, intervened. That night, he reminded her that it was her duty to find me a husband in order to protect me from confiscation. The Jews of the Kingdom engaged their children as toddlers and married them off the moment they reached maturity. Once a child was married, he or she couldn’t be confiscated. This is how it came to pass that my parents were arguing about my marital status when I hadn’t even lost all of my milk teeth.
/> “If you don’t, I will,” my father threatened, “and for a man to make inquiries of this sort is unseemly. But I will do what I must if you refuse to do your duty.”
“My duty?” My mother arched her back, stuck out her slackened breasts, and made a crude gesture toward her own sex. “If I had refused to do my duty, we wouldn’t have a daughter or eight sons for that matter. Mmph. Don’t speak to me of duty. Now take your dirty hand off my breadboard. Leave me in peace.”
“But Suli, she is already five years old.”
I was a spinster by our standards. A girl three doors up was engaged when she was two. The goat-cheese maker’s daughter was engaged while still in the womb. I was like Methuselah, older than time and still unattached.
My mother wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Leave me in peace if you expect dinner.” As Father stalked out, she muttered after him, “What a bother, what a ridiculous bother.”
* * *
The next time the Confiscator came to my father’s stall, he didn’t mention my eyes, and for most of the exchange he ignored me completely. But even though he didn’t glance in my direction, I felt his gaze upon me. Not his “this-lifetime” eyes, as Auntie Aminah called them, but his “next-lifetime” eyes—the hooded eyes of the soul that can see into the heart of a small girl. And that is when I learned to fear him. When he saw right through me, making me feel simultaneously naked and invisible.
I crouched in the back of the shop. I was suddenly so afraid that he would take out his jambia and kill my father with a nick to the jugular or a swift downward blade to the heart, that I was almost sick when he finally said my name, “A-del-a, A-del-a, don’t hide, little one. Come out and show your face.” I emerged clammy and pale as a ghost. He knelt down so that the folds of his djellaba pooled around his feet. Then he pointed to a beautiful pair of shoes on the shelf, maroon with little embossed florets around the ankles. I had helped my father with the florets. He was teaching me how to press and stamp and glue leather. He didn’t mind that I helped him, even though it was unusual for a girl to assist her father in his stall. My mother never cared where I was, as long as I wasn’t bothering her. “My Adela works better than any boy,” my father would brag, but my brothers would hear and torment me for the compliment—with pinches and slaps, and knuckle punches in places where the bruises wouldn’t show.