Henna House

by Nomi Eve

  Each sign had a corresponding connotation. A squiggle was a wave in the ocean, but it was also a cupped palm, a gesture of greeting, or of harvest plenty, or both. I memorized thirty or so of the most important “elements” and their corresponding meanings. I practiced combining the elements to create traditional forms (arabesque, peacock, garland, nightingale, fish, sunburst, paisley cuff, and so on). I marveled at how a single line or dot, replicated with artistry and expertise, could create a design so intricate. Learning how to apply henna made me look at the world differently. Where before I had seen pebbles, pine needles, blades of straw, I now saw shadows and lines that were the sinew and bone of pictures yet to be drawn.

  Hani was delighted that I wanted to learn. She gave me practical tips: “You hold your subject’s hand in your own, start on the left and finish on the right. That way, you don’t smear the side of your own hand as you work.” She showed me how, when making ankle designs, one must paint three-fourths of the way around, and then go back to the beginning to meet the line from the other side. “Otherwise, there is a good chance your lines won’t meet, and instead of a bracelet, you will have inscribed an endless line, which you will have to finish off somehow, probably with another rotation.”

  One day, she took my arm and put it over her shoulder. She was taller than I, and my arm sloped up, my hand burrowed in her hair.

  “In order to do the inside part of the arm, have your friend rest her arm over your own shoulder as you work.” Hani always called henna subjects “friends” even though a henna artist is often hired to decorate the skin of strangers. She pretended that she was holding a stylus and showed me how she would decorate the skin between my armpit and elbow. We were very close together. Before she let me go, she leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. Then she proceeded to tickle me so that I doubled over with laughter. When I had recovered she said, “Silly Adela, you are adorable. Look at you. You’ve seen me do this one hundred times, and now you are wide-eyed and curious.”

  My own henna skills? In spite of Hani’s patient tutelage, I was not very good, but after a while I was proficient enough to have my own flair. I mastered the basic vocabulary. Most designs are linking ones, with one line touching the line next to it, garlands and chains joined in concentric dances, which link a girl to herself, a woman to her mother, a mother to her grandmother, who wear the designs too. My lines were never as elegant as Hani’s. But my swirls always flowed together in a pleasing manner. My garlands of flowers or hearts or triangles or wings or seashells were always continuous in a way that seemed to suggest that the arm or the hand was only a starting point, and that the design repeated itself in swirls of infinity.

  One day Auntie Aminah came to visit. My mother was stirring a stew. I had hennaed my mother’s hands with a pattern inspired by the cuff stitching on a pair of fancy leggings—paisley tears and interlocking triangles as well as concentric circles and little stars. I noticed Auntie Aminah looking at my mother’s hands gripping the stirring spoon. When I walked her home she was unusually quiet. I was quiet too. When we reached her house, she took my hand in hers, kissed my fingertips.

  “Adela, your mother was wrong.”

  “Wrong about what?”

  “Hani has not influenced you at all. You are your very own person. An original girl. I am proud of you.”

  I held up my hennaed hands. “Auntie, surely I am a copycat, mimicking my cousin’s skill, stealing her interests and talents.”

  “Dear, there is a difference between mimicry and inspiration.”

  “Humph. I have no idea what you mean.”

  But my auntie could see that I was smiling, proud and grateful for her compliment. Because I did know what she meant. I knew even then that my designs were different from Hani’s and Aunt Rahel’s, and that I drew from a different place, my artistic eye trained on a different horizon.

  * * *

  Aunt Rahel did not show me designs or correct my artistic mistakes, but invited me into her “laboratory.” She was teaching me some recipes and letting me watch as she “cooked” the henna to the right consistency. By midwinter, I had grown quite adept at forming henna elements. Now Aunt Rahel promised to show me how to make the henna paste a more vibrant shade of red by adding a brandy infusion. We made an appointment at Hanukkah time. I remember that it was Hanukkah because she had told me to come over after I had finished preparing the zalaviyye pancakes for our holiday meal. I finished cooking and then walked through the courtyard and into the little house, but no one was there. Instead of leaving, I decided to wait. Hani was with Masudah, helping her with her babies. Uncle Barhun had gone to the market with my father. I sat back on the jasmine-scented pillows and felt something bulging beneath them. I reached underneath and pulled out a little leather satchel. I held it up and realized that it was Hani’s, the one she had brought to Qaraah, tied around her waist. I hadn’t seen it since. Without thinking, I tugged at the leather thong that cinched its neck closed. Then I hesitated; for a moment I felt as if I shouldn’t. But Hani had never been stingy with her treasures. I opened it up. There were the dolls with their shiny white cowrie beads for heads, cork bodies, and translucent aquamarine beads for hands and legs. I lifted them up one by one, fingering their cold smooth faces. But the bag wasn’t empty. I upended it onto my lap. The chipped sapphire came rolling out. I pressed my fingers into the defects of the stone. The old sprig of wall rue had been replaced by a sachet of crushed rosemary. And there was the book of psalms. I flipped through the pages. When Hani had taught me to read, she had used this very book of psalms for instructional material. Now I could read myself. I mouthed the words as they flew past my fingertips. And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly; yea, He did swoop down upon the wings of the wind. As I flipped through, something caught my eye at the very back of the book. On the last page, in the margins, up and down Psalm 150, were graffiti. In her precise, neat hand, Hani had made a grid and filled it in with the Hebrew alphabet, the aleph bet.

  Corresponding to each letter was a tiny henna element. I was stunned. She had written in the sacred book, as if it were no more holy than a piece of butcher’s paper. There are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet and there were twenty-two henna elements in the list, the most rudimentary ones, slashes and humps and dots, swirls, circles. On their own these elements are meaningless, but when joined together by a skilled henna artist, they become a blooming hibiscus, a thorny vine of roses, a venomous snake, or the Eye of God itself. I ran my finger down the page, my fingertips touching each Hebrew letter and its twin henna element. When I had finished, I half expected to have wiped off the letters—as if they were little fruits that I could collect from a tree, or berries on a bush no one had ever seen before—and to have my hands full of Hani’s cryptic henna work. But my hands were empty and the page was still full. I knew these elements well by now. They were the building blocks of complex designs, little picture-bricks in the sturdy house of henna work. I scanned again, with my finger traveling down from aleph to taf. The last henna element was a thick sideways hook like a thumbnail clipping. This element is useful in windmill designs, each curve a different blade on the swirl. Just as I was beginning to lose myself in this strange new language, I heard a noise. Aunt Rahel.

  “Oh my dear,” she said, “I am so sorry that I left you waiting!”

  Quickly, I shoved the dolls, the sachet, and the sapphire back into the bag. Without thinking, I took the little leather-bound book of psalms and secreted it in my skirt pocket. By the time Aunt Rahel was standing before me, the leather satchel was back beneath the pillow.

  “Now where were we? Oh yes, I was going to show you how to make a brandy variation in order to deepen the color red. Your father was kind enough to get me the brandy. Here, smell it. Strong eh? Well, we had better get started, we have much to do.”

  She began by adding coffee water to crushed henna leaves. As she mixed, adding the water drop by drop, she told me stories about the many brides she had hennaed. I had heard so
me of them before, for Aunt Rahel often told them in the henna house, when the fire was low, and designs complete, the paste setting on our skin.

  “There was the bride who laughed like a crow,” she said, “and the one who cursed, and fainted. And the silly little bride who shuddered, as if she were being beaten. And a nervous one who drank so much date wine, she farted and burped during the ceremony, and almost fell asleep before it was over. And then there was a dainty bride, with fine black hair. As I hennaed her feet, she whispered that she was going to die on her wedding night. She’d had a vivid premonition.”

  “Did she?”

  “Of course. Of course, she did, two months after the chuppah. Adela, all premonitions on a bride’s Night of Henna come true.”

  “Really?”

  She looked over at me with a sly smile. “Only if you want them to. And then there was that skinny thing—what was her name? Oh yes, Beena, her name was Beena, and she had knobby elbows, a crooked nose, and buckteeth.”

  I remember being surprised by Aunt Rahel’s stories, by how irreverent they were. She didn’t hesitate to make fun of brides, or to laugh at their fear.

  “Auntie Rahel, is it proper?”

  “Is what proper?”

  “To laugh at them, to find amusement in their suffering?”

  “Silly Adela, what do you think? That a henna dyer is a confessor? A friend? A confidant? No, the henna dyer is engaged to offer a service. Not to fawn over or flatter the girls who wear the bridal gargush. And anyway, a good henna dyer must maintain a sense of distance from her subject, otherwise—”

  “Otherwise what?”

  “She risks absorbing their sadness, their sacrifices. That’s where the danger lies. For the sadness of a bride is more permanent a dye than henna. And no woman could stand to saturate herself with all the emotions of so many brides. A lifetime of brides would stain a soul.”

  * * *

  I still remember those story-brides exactly as Aunt Rahel described them. The women given to pay monetary debts. The women given to become stepmothers to a dozen children even though they were still children themselves. I remember Rahel’s tales of ugly brides bartered for so many goats, and her descriptions of the weird bug-eyed, thin-lipped creatures given in deference to ancient agreements between families who had traded boys and girls back and forth so many times and through so many generations that their lineages were a macramé tapestry, every fresh wedding a new knot on the brocade.

  And then there were the brides who actually loved their grooms. When Aunt Rahel spoke of them, her voice slowed down, became deeper. I came to understand that these stories were rare.

  “When there is love, the stylus is swift, magical,” she said. “The honey and almond pastries set out for us to eat are sweeter.”

  “And the songs?”

  “The songs we sing to the brides sound louder, as if there are extra voices in the room; brides who love their grooms let me—they let me anoint them with oil, massage them, make them smell like a fragrant field of jasmine flowers.”

  “And the ones who don’t love their grooms?”

  “Brides who don’t love endure these rituals, and even, sadly, begrudge me for participating in their enslavement. But brides who love welcome my ministrations and even let me confide my special secrets.”

  * * *

  As I macerated leaves, mixed an herbal infusion, or measured scent according to Aunt Rahel’s instructions, every so often my hand would bump against the book in my pocket. It made me feel as if I had a secret. But I also knew that I had nothing to hide and that if Hani were there, I would show her. “Look,” I would say, “I found your book.”

  When the concoction was almost finished, I asked Aunt Rahel something I had been wondering about for a long time.

  “Aunt Rahel,” I said, “your henna designs are so beautiful. But they disappear so quickly, a few weeks, poof, they are gone. They have no . . . no . . . posterity.” I searched for the word, which felt very grown-up on my tongue. “Why don’t you ever draw or paint on paper?” I asked her. “Like Masudah. She makes her own paper and draws pictures from her home, from Aden. You could too. You could draw all your patterns. That way the designs would last.”

  “Phe, Adela, paper is for men.”

  “Skin is for women?”

  “Parchment is skin. The Torah is written on the skin of an animal. So, you see, skin has holiness.”

  “But no permanence?”

  “Adela, if you look for permanence in this life, you will be sorely disappointed.”

  “Well, at least there is your book.”

  “What book?”

  “Your henna book, with the elements; maybe one day it will be in a museum.”

  “Eh?”

  “I heard about museums from my father,” I explained. “He said that in Istanbul they have museums of ancient civilization. They have displays of artifacts from the time of Abraham our Father. He said that it is possible to see a bowl or a spoon or a necklace made of iridescent glass beads, perhaps worn by Sarah our Mother herself. What I am saying is that I would like to build my own museum.”

  “And what will be in it, this . . . museum?” Aunt Rahel smiled.

  “Your henna work. Your patterns. The designs you collect, and those you create.”

  “No, not my work.”

  “Then whose?”

  “They are not mine to claim. The patterns, the elements. The recipes. They belong to all of us. To any woman who has ever held a stylus in her hand.”

  * * *

  That night when I was alone, I took Hani’s book of psalms out of my skirt pocket and studied the list of elements and their corresponding letters. I rummaged a piece of thin kitchen paper from the pantry, the kind we used to wrap meat. I copied the letters and their corresponding elements, checking over the list three times to make sure I hadn’t made any mistakes. Before falling asleep, I tried to memorize as many as I could. Aleph was a wavy line. Bet was a left-to-right slash. Gimel, an open-bottom triangle. Dalet, a left-open triangle. I folded up the paper and put it in the drawer where I kept my underclothes, under a cotton shift. I put Hani’s book under my pillow. When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of Hani’s little cowrie dolls. But in my dream they were all in pieces. The heads had become detached from their bodies. Their hands were broken off. Their legs were all in a tangle at the bottom of the satchel.

  In the morning I made some excuse to go next door. The house was empty. Aunt Rahel and Hani were at the market. I didn’t know where Uncle Barhun was. Quickly, I dug underneath the pillows and retrieved the leather satchel. I put the book of psalms back where it belonged. When I came out, my mother was in our doorway. I remembered that I had promised her I would mix more hawaij. My mother rarely complimented my cooking, but more and more she asked me to make dishes, spices, and breads that she usually made herself. I knew that everyone liked my hawaij because I added saffron and extra cardamom.

  My mother squinted, appraised me. There were wedge-like lines on her forehead and deep wrinkles coming from her eyes.

  “You will ruin that dress. So much turmeric will stain more than your fingers.”

  “What?”

  “Take it off; you can’t make hawaij wearing a nice dress, can you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, go change. Go already. You should be halfway finished with your chores by now.”

  By the time Aunt Rahel and Hani returned from the market, my fingers were yellow from the turmeric, and I was tired from all my chores. After the hawaij, I had spent time at the grinding stones smashing corn for meal for dumplings, and then I had collected and delivered eggs to Auntie Aminah. I was a mess. My braids were falling out of my gargush, my apron was stained, my face sweaty.

  Hani smiled at me. “You’ve been hard at work. Let’s go wash you up, and then I’ll braid your hair.”

  We walked from the grinding stones to the washbasin, and I splashed water on my face. Then we walked to Auntie Aminah’s house
and sat under her frankincense tree, while Hani brushed and braided my hair. I shut my eyes as she tugged my head backward. I imagined that Hani’s sisters, the cousins I knew only from her stories, were there with us. Naama and Asisah, the dead twins, were there as shadow-selves; Edna was in front of me, Hamama and Nogema behind us, and we were part of a chain of girls braiding one another’s hair, a chain so long that every girl in the whole world was another link, her nimble fingers tugging, tucking, weaving, and telling tales.

  “There, now you won’t feel so hot.” I had thick heavy hair, and it was a relief to have it off my neck. We sat there for a few more moments not speaking and then we got up to go. As we approached the dye mistress’s yard, we could hear her humming a tune about swallows and springtime. Hani began to hum along. I began to hum too. The dye mistress was at her troughs. She stopped humming when we walked by and we exchanged casual pleasantries. I followed Hani through the wall, to our houses. I thought of her henna alphabet. I wondered if I should ask her about it, and if I did, if she would be amused that I had found it, or angry at me for opening her bag, invading her privacy. I was never a girl reluctant to speak my mind, but when I opened my mouth to ask her about it, no words came out.

  She stopped, leaned against the donkey’s hitching post. “What, Adela? What is it?”

  I think that is the first moment I ever really saw her. Her hair was falling loose from her gargush. Strands of gold and red, embedded in her chestnut locks, glinted in the sun. Or maybe what I mean to say is that for the first time I really understood her. As if she too had been a code that suddenly cracked. I have often thought of her at that moment. So pretty. Her head cocked to one side, as if she were listening to the music of scripture, the desert song of ancient days.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” I suddenly felt fear, a prickly chill at the back of my neck. “But . . .”

  “But what?”