Henna House

by Nomi Eve

  The bride was a beautiful creature with perfect teeth, high cheekbones, plump lips. She was ensconced in a wooden throne cushioned with red velvet and bedecked with chains of fragrant rue flowers. Her bridal “undergarments” revealed a generous bosom, a soft belly, big hips. She wore nothing but the undergarments—a sleeveless white dress and silver and red short trousers—so that Aunt Rahel could easily paint her hands, arms, feet, and legs. She wasn’t wearing a conical gargush—as a Jewish bride would have—but a tight-fitting gold and red scarf with rupee bangles over her forehead. She had on big silver hooped earrings and three rows of coral and amber beads around her neck. So that Aunt Rahel could do her work, she wasn’t yet wearing her bracelets or rings, but I knew that by the time she was dressed in her finery, her arms would be mostly covered with jewelry. Cousins and sisters surrounded her throne. One of the women was very pregnant and she had a black and red lafeh scarf tied around her big belly. I wondered if this lafeh came from the dye mistress who lived next door to us. The bride’s henna “base coat” had been applied the day before. The fresh henna was protected by strips of cloth, called mehani, wound around her limbs. The mehani strips hadn’t been removed yet, and I knew that our first task would be to unwrap the bride’s hands and feet.

  I hung back, behind Aunt Rahel. The bride was singing. “La, la la, la la,” her husky voice tripped up and down an octave. In between la la la’s, she would giggle, and the girls all around her would laugh along with her, as if to the punch line of a private joke. No one noticed us at first. For those first few moments, I was acutely aware that I was a Jewish girl among Muslim women. Of course, I knew Muslim women in Qaraah, but I was never in their homes. We saw one another at the well or at the market. We were not intimate like this. My skin pricked and I felt my mother’s fears climb my spine, leaving me queasy with an anxiety not really my own. Then the bride saw my aunt and said, “So you are to paint me?” The Sana’an bride squinted and appraised my aunt, cocking her head a bit to the right.

  “I am.” Aunt Rahel’s voice was low and soothing.

  “Well, I am very ticklish, so you will have to put up with my writhing and wriggling.”

  “No worries, daughter, I have a light touch.” Auntie Rahel smiled. “Some say they don’t even feel my stylus on their skin.”

  “Ticklish on a wedding night is not a bad thing,” one of the sisters piped in. The bride giggled. “Yes, but it is my groom who should do the honors.”

  They all laughed, and then someone fed the bride a fat white lychee nut, and someone else wiped the juice running down her chin.

  The women were nothing but kind to me. They complimented my black-gall makeup and my henna. They cooed and petted my arms and invited me to eat and drink, but I heard my mother’s voice in my head and declined their date wine and honey balls of semolina dough, their mango and melon slices—piled like orange and green smiles on a tray—in spite of my growling hunger.

  Aunt Rahel addressed the bride. “Please, hold up your hands, like this . . .” She held her own arms up, stiffly in front of her. The bride followed suit.

  “Take the end,” Rahel instructed me. Slowly we unwound the mehani cloth from the bride’s arms. She stayed as still as a statue as we tugged—my hands looping over and under her arms, close to her torso and then around her pretty feet, such elegant little toes, lifting them up gracefully so that we could unwrap her heels, her arches, her ankles, her shins. When all the mehani cloths lay in a heap on the floor, Aunt Rahel began handling the bride’s limbs as if they were her own—turning a wrist, squinting to inspect a forearm, ducking down to espy the soles of her feet. The bride let herself be inspected and admired like a rag doll. Then Aunt Rahel stepped back and nodded her approval. There was clapping and laughing and ululations, kulululu, the women trilled their tongues to warn off any lingering demons. Everyone was happy. The henna was a henna of good fortune! The leaves had done their work, for her brown skin was rust red with a hint of vermilion, shades of blood orange, all scented with roses, jasmine, and high notes of honey. Aunt Rahel nodded her head again in approval and then wasted no time getting to work.

  She began by measuring out the ingredients for her waxy mixture—resin, myrrh, frankincense, and iron sulfate—mixing them together, and heating them in a high-sided pan over a fire until it was like molten wax. She also added sage and mint extract. Once she had brought the earthy mixture to the right consistency, she scooped out a small amount and put it into a wooden bowl; then she handed me the spoon and told me to keep stirring, lest it clump. After I had stirred for ten minutes she said, “Go to the bride and show her this.” She handed me a little oval clay pot, the size of my palm. I opened it, and inside saw that there was a miniature naked clay lady, with big breasts and a round belly. She was lying side by side with a naked man whose member was so long that it snaked out from between his legs, and in between hers. I did as my aunt instructed. Soon the bride and her sisters were tittering over the fertility amulet. Meanwhile, Aunt Rahel crouched on the floor by the bride’s right foot, dipped her stylus into the little bowl, and began to draw on the balls of her feet. Later, when I asked her why she had begun with the most ticklish part of the bride’s body, Aunt Rahel said, “If I can do her feet without tormenting her, then I can do everywhere else. I start there, to show her that she has nothing to fear from my touch.”

  Aunt Rahel finished the ball of the bride’s left foot before the girl even noticed that the work had started. When she realized that she’d been tricked she laughed. “You bring such wonderful ‘toys’ and have the softest touch, Mrs. Damari, you are a mistress distracter and a magician with your hands.” Aunt Rahel thanked the bride for her compliment and kept working. She was executing a variation on a traditional grain of wheat design, alternating the stylized grains with waves and crescents in a tight spiral. Every so often she would hand me the bowl and I would fill it with more of the mixture. Every ten minutes or so, I stirred the mixture and checked the consistency. In this way, we passed three hours. And just as the bride’s attendants fed her little bits of meat, bread, and sweets, so too I fed Aunt Rahel, urging her to take a sip of tea, a bite of date pastry, a piece of melon. But I didn’t eat a thing. I heeded my mother’s injunction, despite my growling belly.

  By the time the bride’s feet, shins, hands, and forearms were covered it was already late afternoon. Now it was time for the shaddar. Aunt Rahel mixed a paste of ammoniac and potash. She spread this paste on top of the waxy mixture. The bride grimaced when it was being applied, but by now she was feeling the effect of all the sips of spiced wine her sisters had given her, and she didn’t complain that the shaddar was cold, or that it smelled like moldy ashes, or that it was giving her a headache. I knew that brides often complained about the “ordeal” of henna, and Aunt Rahel would say, “It is a bride’s prerogative to complain about the shackles of beauty.”

  One hour later, Aunt Rahel rubbed off the shaddar. When the paste was all off, I saw that the henna had turned a dark greenish-black, but everywhere Aunt Rahel had applied the waxy mixture was still reddish-orange. The result was an intricate brocade of red against the darkened skin. The design had within it elements of labbeh necklace patterns—double-sided crescents, pears, flowers, and spheres that danced on her hands and forearms and were joined together by little links. The bride started singing her funny little song again. La, la, la, la, la, she sang, with her sisters and cousins joining in. I bowed low and shuffled backward, as all the women in the room gathered around to coo and trill their tongues at the success of the application.

  All around me were delicious smells coming from overflowing trays on tables around the sides of the room. My belly grumbled, and my head hurt, but I ate nothing—that is, I almost ate nothing. Just before we left, I stole a few bites of a persimmon. I was so hungry, I couldn’t resist. The fruit’s mellow flesh dissolved on my tongue. I took another bite, and another. Many years later, when I heard the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades, I thought of my mothe
r’s warning, and how strange it was that at the henna house that day, I ate forbidden fruit just like Demeter’s daughter. I wondered if perhaps I too later had suffered for giving in to my hunger. But at the time, I was so hungry, I barely noticed that I had disobeyed my mother at all.

  We left Sana’a at dawn the next day. As we rode away, I crooked my neck back and saw the city not as a series of structures made by man but as a pattern for henna. The jutting towers and graceful minarets, the arches of the gates, and the encircling girth of the walls combined into a henna of history, a henna of conquerors and conquered, a henna of brides and grooms.

  “What are you thinking of, dear girl?” Aunt Rahel brushed a few strands of hair out of my eyes. I thought for a moment before I spoke. I was very grateful to my aunt, and wanted to give her a snippet of conversation that would make her feel that I was worthy of this gift of a journey. And I was also feeling mischievous, unbound from ordinary life. I spoke in a whisper, so that Uncle Barhun couldn’t hear me.

  “I am wondering about your little ‘toy,’ and if the real groom is as well endowed as the groom of clay that the bride was so eager to fondle.” Aunt Rahel’s eyes flashed in a conspiratorial smile. “Oh reeeeally?” She giggled. “I had thought you weren’t paying attention.”

  * * *

  When we returned, my father was faring better and coughed only at night when he lay in bed. During the day, he seemed full of a careless vigor, but also half out of step with himself, as if a younger version of himself had climbed into his skin, making him clumsy from the inside out. But no one paid much attention. The bustle of Hani’s wedding preparations occupied us all. We made marvelous concoctions out of our meager stores. We women cleaned and sewed and darned and baked. By the time of Hani’s Night of Henna, all of us were exhausted. Even my mother contributed. She generously gave of her stored beans, coffee, and honey sugar, and opened her larder to let Aunt Rahel take a precious jar of stewed persimmons for the wedding feast. And on the day before the Night of Henna, she lent Hani a pair of tomb bracelets, which had been part of her own dowry. Tomb bracelets, named for the little tomb-sized protrusions all the way around, were an essential part of any wedding outfit, and were supposed to help scare away the evil eye by shielding the bride with opposite tokens of grim fate. Hani kissed my mother for the bracelets, and my mother let herself receive a hug, stiff under the embrace. In her own queer bitter way, my mother had forgiven Hani for the idols, and joined in the festivities and preparations with no hesitation, as if Hani were a favored daughter, and not a niece of whom she had always been suspicious.

  Hani’s Night of Henna? Aunt Rahel came in with the pot of henna on the candle tray and swung her hips to the music. She approached Hani, resplendent in her bridal gargush. She danced in front of her for a few moments, swaying her hips so that the candles on the tray cast jumping shadows on the walls. Then Aunt Rahel smeared a single dab of henna at the center of each of Hani’s palms. We all rubbed henna on her forearms and I joined in, spreading the musky paste over her shins and feet as Aunt Rahel danced with the other women, our neighbors and friends, who had gathered to see Hani become a bride. When the paste had set, we wrapped Hani in mehani cloths, and then began to feast. We ate and drank and danced until well after dark.

  The next day, after we had unwrapped the cloths, Hani entertained us all with songs and jokes. She was a laughing, chatty bride on her throne in her white shift, her orange and gold leggings. The henna house was different that night. The colors of the women’s dresses were brighter, the sounds of the shinshilla cymbals and the khallool were louder, the food was both sweeter and spicier. Yerushalmit told stories. Masudah plaited Hani’s hair. I took my turn with the tabl drum and heard myself thrumming out a strong, sure beat. And Aunt Rahel’s art? When she finished decorating her youngest daughter, and we rubbed the shaddar off her skin, Hani was revealed to us as the most beautiful bride anyone had ever seen. Aunt Rahel hadn’t just given her an ordinary decoration, she had improvised at every point; every petal had a hundred tiny petals inside of it, tendrils never ended, paisleys held within them miniature worlds, and whimsical flourishes were Eyes of God in disguise. Hani held out her hands and laughed with delight. She and David were married the next day. I stood on tiptoe trying to get a glimpse of them under the bridal canopy. I couldn’t hear David as he said, “With this ring I make thee holy unto me,” but I heard him stomp the glass to scare away ghosts and demons, and then we all raised our voices in celebration of the sanctification of their union.

  Chapter 20

  Our little town, Qaraah, was nestled like a bird in the winged embrace of the Naquum Mountains and, being so high up, escaped most of the cursed plagues that were such scourges to the lower-lying villages and towns. At least that is what we all liked to believe, that we were safer. That the mountain breezes coming south from Amran or west from Marib swept cholera and typhus germs west to the Red Sea or south all the way to the Gulf of Aden before they could settle in and destroy whole families. But the breezes betrayed us that year, for we were afflicted by all manner of pestilence. Illnesses no one had ever seen before ravaged whole families. Overnight, in one of those acts of nature that cause men to believe that the world is not as it seems, the Little Lyre river dried up. The big and little wells ran dry. An attempt was made by the men of the community to dig a new well on the eastern edge of town, and the effort commenced with gusto. But even as the men worked, we all knew that the well wouldn’t water our fields or make the millet and sorghum sprout. We began to feel the effects of the drought. Our family suffered losses just like everyone else’s. Masudah lost a son—four-year-old Binny. Yerushalmit, who had never before been pregnant, now suffered a miraculous pregnancy, and a tragic birth. She vomited every day until she delivered. She grew so skinny, she looked like a skeleton with a little melon between her hips. Her front teeth fell out in her fifth month, and then she lost twins, two little boys. When she got up from her sickbed, she would speak only with her hand in front of her mouth, and her eyes had receded so far in her head that she could barely see. And that wasn’t all. Sultana’s mother and sister died, and she fell into despair, temporarily unable to care for Moshe. In those dark days, we ate sparingly, paid many visits to houses of mourning, and grew even skinnier. I often went to bed hungry, and dreamed of the days when we had so much food that I could steal some away and make feasts for myself and Asaf in my cave and no one was the wiser.

  Our sorrows only multiplied. Auntie Aminah died in late autumn. Masudah found her, collapsed in a corner of her kitchen, when she went to help her dip Sabbath candles. She said, “Auntie Aminah died with a dolly in her hand.” I ran to her house when I heard, but I was too late to kiss her on the lips before she was taken to be cleaned and prepared for the World to Come. Left behind on the floor was the Muslim bride dolly she had been making for one of Masudah’s many children. It wore a red and yellow polka-dotted kerchief and orange glass beads for necklaces, but the pink brocade dress was only half-finished. The doll had little black bead eyes and a sewn-on mouth. I sat in the corner hugging it and crying. When I gathered myself up, I took the doll with me, swearing I would finish the stitching myself.

  A few weeks later, my mother’s friend Devorah suffered an attack in the ritual bath, lost control of her bowels, and soiled the pure water with a gush of foul sickness. After that, no woman could cleanse herself from the impurity of her menses, and if they couldn’t cleanse themselves, they couldn’t lie with their husbands, and if they couldn’t lie with their husbands, well, everyone knows what misfortune comes from a husband who is not sated, let alone scores of them. People lamented that such a misfortune would besmirch our town for years to come. My mother’s old friend Devorah died three days into her sickness. My mother went to help dress her in her lulwi dress. When she came back from dressing Devorah and saying psalms over her corpse, my mother stripped out of her antari. Her eyes were red, and she cried big gulping tears as I rubbed her naked body with mint soap that we mois
tened in boiled cooking water. Then I patted her down with rosewater. I had never given my mother a standing bath before, and she showed absolutely no modesty as I touched and rubbed to rid her of the stink of the death house. When we were finished, she donned a clean dress and trousers and put the soiled garments in a closed sack in the storeroom for washing when there was more water.

  Other deaths followed. The tinsmith’s wife, the slaughterer’s son, the young daughter of a teacher in the Talmud Torah, the wife of the couple who had moved into Auntie Aminah’s house, a lampmaker, a harnessmaker, and the eldest daughter of the glassblower—all succumbed to a malady of the belly that came from drinking bad water. The new well was blamed, but what were we supposed to do? The other wells were almost dry.

  After Devorah’s death, during that foul gray midwinter, my mother fell into an ill temper. From my parents’ nightly arguing, I understood that ever since I went to Sana’a with Aunt Rahel, my mother had refused to lie with my father. Their arguments grew more bitter. I buried my head in my pillow as my mother hissed at Father to stop pawing at her. But, as I shared a corner of their room, I heard everything.