by Nomi Eve
* * *
Once we reached the environs of Wadi Kha, we shrugged off our fear of capture. The wadi connects the midlands to the Red Sea. We had climbed out of the plains and were high above Wadi Kha, which flowed through a narrow slash in a vast gorge. We stopped and marveled at the water, and I know I wasn’t the only one who wished I could dip a hand in, grasping for a moment a palmful of the water that would precede us in our trek south. Down on one of the higher banks of the wadi we glimpsed a wonderful site—tribesmen dressed only in loincloths, wading in. They were expert swimmers and flipped and dove like sea creatures, their long hair released from their turbans.
We slept that night not far from a place where legend tells that Ali, son-in-law of Mohammed, left a footprint on a large round rock. There were pilgrims camped nearby, and when they lifted their voices in prayer, I found myself wondering in whose steps we were following. I also wondered how we could learn to read the marks left by ancient travelers on the stones of this earth. The journey was rough, but pleasurable too. For the first time in my life I slept under the constellations and bathed under a waterfall. From a distance I saw a British woman riding in an open car—her blond hair blowing out from under her kerchief. I ate the meat from a deer caught by my brother Hassan with a stone-launched trap and roasted on an open fire. On the road from Yarim to Ibb, we watched Nubians pass us on a camel caravan laden with goods from Egypt. My brother Menachem tamed a caracal that followed after our carriage for a whole week.
We all became very companionable: Uncle Barhun told stories from the childhood he had shared with my dear father, Aunt Rahel shared stories of India, and Mr. Haza took us traveling as he walked us through the streets and alleys of Istanbul. Hani’s David was revealed to have the best songs. Yerushalmit surprised us by knowing the names of all the birds in the sky. Sultana’s husband, my brother Elihoo, proved to be a talented whistler. Young Remelia had the best jokes. Yerushalmit even let her hand fall from in front of her mouth and spun wonderful stories of an underwater kingdom. Hani was the best at spotting animals—graceful ibex, foxes, shy gazelles, sturdy oryxes, rabbits and porcupines and badgers camouflaged against the dunes that we passed along the way. And as for me? I baked our bread in ovens I constructed—quite ingeniously, I was told—out of stones I found wherever we camped. And I added spices and herbs I found along the way: wild sage, thyme, rosemary, wild onion that had a peppery taste. I also helped with the nighttime stews and the morning cups of coffee-husk brew and fenugreek porridge.
I lay awake many nights of that strange journey. The stars were closer to earth in those days, or at least they seemed to be. In my drowsy discomfort I sometimes reached up and tried to pluck them like daisies. But instead of starlight, I got only an emptiness that revealed itself in the form of glowing Eyes of God in the center of my palms. We wore no henna while we traveled, for we did not have the leisure to spend a morning devoted to adornment. But I saw henna everywhere—in the patterns in the rocks, in the trails of snakes left in the sand, in the tracks of foxes, ibex, and voles. In the sleeping forms of my sisters-in-law and their husbands. In the curled fists and rosebud lips of the children we met on the road. In the meandering shapes of dry riverbeds.
Chapter 23
Toward the end of our journey we met up with a curious group of travelers—a large extended family of Habbani Jews camped by the banks of the Khoreiba River. They were very far from their homeland in the Hadramut, where the Habbanim had lived since King Herod dispatched a brigade of Judeans to fight with the Roman legions in Arabia. The Hadramut was the name for the land bound by Aden to the west, Oman to the east, the Red Sea to the south, and the Rub’ al Khali to the north. It was the scorched hem of the skirt on the southeasternmost tip of Arabia. It was puzzling to find the Habbanim here—north and west of Aden—in such a beautiful spot. The gray-gold rocky mountains rose up on all sides, but the land around the river was jungle-green, dense with big-leafed trees, draped in flowered creepers, a welcome respite from the desert landscape. Yellow and orange butterflies danced through the air, and birds of every color flitted and chirped overhead. The family was camped in little reed huts. Their patriarch was a tall man whose naked muscular chest was shiny with oil under a blue prayer shawl, draped over one shoulder. In the Muslim style, he wore a big curved jambia on a belt around his waist. To cover his sex, he had on only an indigo-colored loincloth. His thick curly hair was tied with a thong, and he wore no earlocks, which was strange. I had never seen a Jewish man without earlocks. His face was sharp, his features angular, eyebrows very bushy, mustache clipped.
I had never seen Habbanim before, and had to stop myself from staring at the almost-naked men, though it was the women who most intrigued me. They were adorned head to toe in the most beautiful jewelry I had ever seen. All of it had been made by the patriarch, their husband, and father. At least this is what they led us to understand. They had so many necklaces; it looked as if their heads were being held up by the tiny metal links of their chains, not by their own flesh and bones. They wore filigreed disks on thick chains, as well as six or seven beaded necklaces, layered one on top of the other, all hung with amulet boxes. Their wrists were adorned with thick silver bracelets, five or six on each arm, set with carnelians and coral. And they had rings on every finger. Their hair was plaited in graceful manes of tiny braids that hung free around their shoulders, topped only by little embroidered diadems on their foreheads instead of gargushim or kerchiefs. Even the youngest girls were dressed like this, like wild little desert brides. On their foreheads some of the women and girls wore black-gall dots. Others wore kohl under dark eyes, or triangle markings on their cheeks and mouths, just the way Aunt Rahel had marked me when we went to Sana’a. We came to understand that three of the women were wives of the patriarch, who was a skilled silversmith, and that most of the thirteen or fourteen children belonged to him as well.
* * *
When my uncle asked them what they were doing so far from their homeland, the patriarch unburdened himself of a story. He had welcomed us with coffee and porridge and sat on a big rock not far from the river’s edge chewing khat. Uncle Barhun and the rest of the men sat down on other rocks. We women hung back, listening. He spoke Hadrami Judeo-Arabic, which meant that his pronunciation was different from ours, but for the most part, we could understand him.
He said, “An Englishman came to our homes near Abr, three summers ago. He was a representative of the Crown government, and came to build dams in the Hadramut, to help stave off the dreaded droughts that plague our land. This man, an engineer, had a wife back in Aden, and he was much impressed by the jewelry I produced in my little workshop. He was so enamored of my skill that he promised me that if I came to Aden, he would see that I was situated and compensated for my work. I could not refuse such an offer. We went to Aden, and spent two years as the favorites of the high officials of the British petroleum refinery. But it turned out that the engineer was a liar, and I was never fully compensated. The British engineers who purchased my work to give to their wives and lovers back home never paid me. Now we are tired of the city, and of the Englishmen’s lies. We have come north in order to live under the stars. We plan on returning home sometime before Hanukkah.”
Later that night I overheard my brothers speaking. They assumed that the man was lying and that he was returning to his home in the Hadramut a wealthy man. Elihoo said, “He doesn’t want to tell us that he prospered. He fears we will rob him. He is right to be wary of strangers he meets on the road.”
We camped not far from them, and enjoyed their hospitality, and the river’s green, rushing welcome for a few nights. I had heard stories of the Habbanim from Auntie Aminah—how they were fierce warriors, and how they were sometimes hired by the great sultans of the north as mercenaries. According to Auntie Aminah, the men “fought with names”: if a Habbani Jew was threatened, he would simply lift a finger and draw a Hebrew letter in the air. The letter became a weapon that speared the heart of his enemy. She
also said that Habbanis were the only Jews in Yemen allowed to wear jambia, because no imam or sultan would dare disarm them.
We spent the next morning gathering herbs and berries and replenishing our bladders of water, for the water from the river was sweet. Then we were invited by the Habbanim to share their lunch of peppery soup and bread. After eating, our men joined theirs to pray the afternoon liturgy. Some of the Habbani women and girls sat in a circle, embroidering a big green cloth that they told me would be used for a wedding canopy. One of the older girls in the family was to be married in a few weeks. I brought handwork and sat on a flat rock, close to one of the Habbani huts. A few of the little girls were playing near where I was sitting. After a few minutes of work, I absentmindedly put down my embroidery and picked up a stick. I crouched down and doodled some letters in the sandy earth, vav and zayin. One of the little girls inched over to see what I was drawing. She had heavy-lidded eyes, long lashes, a snub nose, and plump lips. The black-gall markings on her cheeks were little upside-down triangles. She had thick silver hoops in her ears and many necklaces and bracelets. After watching me for a minute, she reached out her arm, let it hover for a second or two in the air, and then gently put her hand over my own. Her bracelets slid down her arm, making a tinkling sound, which added to the gentle music of the flowing river water. She had a ring on each finger, except for her thumbs. Her palm was warm on my hand, but the rings were cold on my knuckles.
“Nu,” she said, “Sister-whoever-you-are, let me do it with you.” She held onto me like a little monkey.
I smiled. “You want to write with me?”
She shrugged. “Let me do it with you,” she repeated.
I thought for a moment and then I wrote , aleph. Her hand fast on my own. Then samech, , and peh, . I let the stick rest between my legs. She was squatting by our letters, and now rocked back and forth on her heels.
“What is your name?”
“Esther.”
“Pretty name for a pretty girl. Would you like to see your name? Yes? Come here, darling; put your hand back on mine. That’s right.” Together we wrote her name, , and then I drew a little crown over it. “Like Queen Esther, you too may wear a crown.” She squealed with delight and called to her sisters. Soon I had written the names of four little girls in the earth, and one by one they had put their hands over mine, helping me form the letters. Over in the culvert, the voices of the men gliding up and down the liturgy reached us in an emphatic crescendo. A tall woman with heavy-lidded turtle eyes came over and clucked for her daughter—little Esther, who had started me on my naming game. The girl went to her mother and then disappeared behind her.
“What is it? What are you doing?” The woman squatted down by the scribbled harvest of names.
“Just showing the girls how to write their names.”
“Eh?”
“Just their names, nothing more. See, there it is, Esther.” I pointed to the first name, the one with the crown. The woman squinted, puffed out her cheeks, then thrust her tongue through a blank spot in her teeth. She made a tsking sound. My heart fluttered, for she looked angry, and I knew that my mother would chastise me for making trouble with strangers we met on the road. But then I remembered—with the shock of the newly bereft—that my mother was dead and would never chastise me again. I suffered a terrible pang at this knowledge, for in the strange way that a captive will grow to love her captor, I would miss my mother’s constant rages and disapproval. I looked over to where our men were praying with their men. I was sure that the Habbani men had learned to read as little boys. But these women and girls were as ignorant as I had been before the other Damaris came to Qaraah. Had I overstepped? The woman’s face warmed in a broad, openmouthed smile. She pointed to her own chest, thumping the red, yellow, and green embroidery under her many necklaces.
“Rosa,” she said, “my name is Rosa.” She put out her thin callused hand, encased in an ornate sarcophagus of rings and bracelets. She clutched onto mine, over the stick. I was startled. “Rosa,” she repeated. “I am Rosa.”
She wanted a lesson too.
“And I am Adela,” I said. “Here; I will show you how to write your name.” I formed the resh and vav then zayin and heh , and when I was finished, I added a little flower next to it. All the while she held onto me like a rag doll—slack-wristed—so that I could move for the two of us without any resistance. Rosa called to one of her sister-wives, a younger woman with a high forehead, a nose like an upside-down arrow, long lashes atop piercing eyes, and a birthmark on her chin. Her name was Hemda, and I wrote her name too. Hemda called to her daughters, four leggy girls who looked like miniature versions of their mother.
Hani came to see what I was doing. As soon as she understood the “lesson,” she picked up a stick and began to write, just as I was writing, with an extra hand atop her own.
“So we have a school?” Hani asked, smiling and squatting behind the smallest girl, a little jewel with green eyes who had a zigzag scar on one cheek. “How wonderful. The School of the Road we can call it. The School of the Road for Girls.” She took the hand of the little girl with green eyes, closing her own fingers over the child’s little beringed fingers. “Like this, baby,” she cooed. “You write the tet from the top left to the top right, not the other way around.” I looked at them together, the little Habbani girl and Hani. Hani had her mother’s coffee-bronze Indian skin. The Habbani girl was much darker and finer boned. Hani was round and soft, and her hair had golden glints in it. The Habbani girl’s hair was obsidian black—braids oiled and gleaming. Hani was curled over the child, her own necklace—a single wrought amulet box—gently touching the back of the child’s head. They looked like two mismatched species, as if a lioness had adopted the cub of a mountain panther. By the time we finished, we had written the names of at least ten women and girls in the sand. Each girl guarded her own name. Some picked up their own sticks and began to copy the shapes of the letters. Two little girls got in a fight because one accidentally stepped on the other’s name. The mothers also picked up sticks. Hani and I walked among them, correcting and complimenting their efforts.
* * *
The next day I was at the water’s edge. We women had bathed, and now I was dipping my feet. The Habbanim all went barefoot, and I was enjoying the break from my sandals, which had been cutting into my heels.
“Sister-whoever-you-are?”
I felt a tug on my dress. It was little Esther.
“What is it, sweetie?”
She pointed over to the closest of the reed huts. Her mother was outside, looking in our direction. “My mother wants you.” She tugged again, but I needed no further invitation. As we walked together, she slipped her little hand into my own. The rings made her fingers heavy. I noticed her henna. It was an Eye of God, but not one I recognized. I hadn’t noticed it the day before. It was such a strange and alluring pattern. I told myself that I would ask Hani to look at it. Perhaps she would know its origin. When the girl closed her hand, it seemed to be winking, and when she opened it, the diamond-shaped eye seemed to twinkle.
We had reached the little hut.
“What is it? Oh, the henna?” Rosa had seen me looking at her daughter’s hands. “When she was just a year old, she survived a fall from a rock about as high as that one.” Rosa pointed to a cliffside overhang.
“She hit her head, and didn’t wake up for a week. While she slept, a traveler gave her this henna. My Esther finally opened her eyes the very moment the henna had set. The traveler was a henna dyer from Lahaj. She had beautiful eyes. Eyes that looked like this.” Rosa pointed to the ultramarine stone on one of her bracelets. A vivid blue with tiny specks of gold throughout. “She was very skilled. She saved my daughter. And now I reapply this henna every month. It is her lucky charm. I can show you how to do it. The henna dyer taught me how to draw the eye so that it moves—she said, ‘Your girl is looking at the other side of the world, but this eye will look back at her, and lead her back to you.’ And so it c
ame to pass. Just as the henna set, Esther woke up, and suffered no ill effects from her fall. Would you like me to show you? Yes? But you must give me something in return.”
“But I don’t have anything to give—”
“Sha, you are rich enough. You have your own bounty. I will give you Esther’s Eye if you give me your letters. Draw the aleph bet for me, and teach me the names of all the letters. Will you do that? An Eye for an alphabet, heh? I think that is a good trade.”
I smiled. “Of course.”
“Good. Let us start with the henna. It is a powerful charm. The henna dyer told me that for those who are sleeping, it wakes them up, and for those who are awake already, it sharpens their vision, though I must admit that my own eyes are poor—I have worn the special Eye many times, and my eyes are just as weak when I wear the charm as when I don’t. But I don’t question its power. Sometimes I think that the sharper vision is for the inner eye. I dream clearer when I wear it, and I have even had visions of the future, as if I can see beyond my own life span.”
She went into her little hut and came out with a henna pot and stylus. I put out my palm for her, and she put the stylus to my life line. But as it pricked, I hesitated, pulled back.
“Wait,” I said, “I have an idea. Would you wait for me? Please? I will be right back.” I ran over to our carriage and rummaged through my little bag of belongings. At the very bottom was the book I had made for myself when I made a book for Hani, using Masudah’s paper. I returned to Rosa with my book. “Please draw it in here”—I opened to the first page—“not on my hand.”