Henna House

by Nomi Eve

  * * *

  Binyamin was where he said he would be—standing next to the entrance to the fairgrounds. We spent a pleasant hour walking through the attractions. We watched a puppet show that thrilled Mara, who clapped her hands and let out delightful little laughs at the puppets’ clumsy clownish exploits. Binyamin took a turn in the shooting gallery. Then we went to watch the tamboora dancers representing all the many tribes of the midlands and western Hadramut. Binyamin explained how the long-necked tamboora endowed magical properties on those who danced to it. Hani cheekily asked him if his khallool had a similar effect. “Of course it does,” he replied, “but my magic has a renegade flair, and I can’t predict the effect it will have on those who dare to dance to it.”

  “How does your major feel about that?” I looked at him sideways, smiling.

  “My major has two left feet, so there is no worry that he will get himself in trouble at my expense.”

  We walked through the rhythmic throng, stopping occasionally to watch a performance. We played a game of Lucky Dip and a game of Ring Toss. Hani and Mara rode on an elephant. Then Binyamin steered us toward the Ferris wheel. Years have passed since that afternoon and I have since been on Ferris wheels the size of ten-story buildings, but back then, when I was still a girl in Aden, the Ferris wheel in the festival at Sheik Othman was a true marvel—though by today’s standards it would be looked upon as nothing more than a pile of matchsticks. It was fabricated entirely of wood, and had three cars. When on top, the riders were approximately one story above the ground. The entire contraption was turned by a giant wheel that was hitched to a team of oxen. There were several three-seat wheels, which turned at various speeds, depending on the perk and vigor of each wheel’s oxen. Hani and Mara went in the first car, Binyamin and I climbed into the next.

  Every time we reached the top my heart jumped to my throat, and when we swooped down again it came back up, up and down, up and down. Binyamin kept paying extra rupees for extra turns. On our eighth turn, the wheel stopped when we were on the top. We swung there as the operator let Hani and Mara off. But the next couple haggled about the price, and so we were left swinging as they settled the matter. Tamboora music floated over to us from behind the roulette tables.

  “Do you know what that is?” Binyamin pointed to the arena. From where we were, we could see the audience and the dancers. The crowd consisted of British officers’ families, Indian bureaucrats and their wives, a handful of tourists from Europe and Australia, and an assemblage of local Arabs and Jews from Aden and the environs. The men in the troop began to dance a slow beat, and then a frenzy. One by one they took out their jambia from their sheaths and cut themselves—in the palm, on the face, on the bottom of a bare foot—and all the while they kept dancing.

  “The dance of the jambia.” I grimaced. “I have heard of this ritual, though I have never seen it.”

  “Some call it barbarism,” Binyamin said. “My major disapproves, and is hoping to eradicate the custom.”

  “Do you think he will succeed?”

  “Those men have been dancing that dance since the dawn of the seventh day, when man was created.”

  “Do you mean to say that Adam our Father danced the dance of the jambia in Eden?”

  “No, I mean it just as a figure of speech. I don’t believe that Adam our Father was ever in Eden. I am a rationalist, and I believe that men were descended from apes, not men from men.”

  “Men were never descended from men,” I teased him, “or do you not know the ways of the world?”

  He took up my challenge. “Perhaps I need a wife to teach me.”

  I let this suggestion float in the air. But it did not stay there. With those words, the Ferris wheel became gigantic, lifting us higher than Mount Sirah, until we were on top of a spinning wheel of mythic proportions. Our hands touched and our fingers entwined. He espied my new henna, lifting my hands up to examine them. He traced the intricate wonder of the petals, paisleys, and tendrils on my wrists. I shivered under his touch as he patted a little paisley drop on one of my knuckles. From down below some of the jambia dancers had begun to scream. “Look,” I said. I took my hand away from his, pointed. A few of the dancers had broken loose from the arena. “Where do they run to, bleeding like that?”

  Binyamin shrugged. “I suppose to the well at the fairgrounds’ entrance, to douse the pain.”

  “What did you mean to say? About the major . . .”

  “Men have always mixed blood with music and magic. No British major will be able to take the dance out of their legs or the knives out of their hands.” Darkness flashed over his face. His eyebrows hunched together, he huffed in exasperation. “Ach,” he said, “what a shame that our conversation should be so serious. It’s not . . .”

  “Not what?”

  “Not at all what I had intended.”

  The wheel began to move again.

  “Adela?”

  Open lips. Soft mouth.

  Yes. Oh. Yes.

  * * *

  That Sabbath, Binyamin came once more to my uncle’s house. We went out into the garden after grace. He took my hand. Raised it to his lips. Brushed his lips against my knuckles. His finger traced my life line, and then doubled back on the tiny shallow tributary lines that flow up to my fingers and down to my wrist, which inscribe the filigree fortunes of love, hope, trust, and honor. I felt the rose vines on my forearms come to life, as if they were growing, spreading out, wrapping themselves around my arms. He kissed my fingertips. The tiny buds on the backs of my hands burst into bloom. I had heard tell of this in the henna house, how henna can come to life if bidden by the conjuring of a love match. Bride for groom, groom for bride. His forefinger was on my palm, on my life line, and then up to my wrist, my forearm, and then he was holding me by both shoulders and pressing his lips to mine.

  In the morning, I rolled onto my back and lifted my arms to inspect my henna. I expected living flowers and sinuous green vines, but my henna lay once more flat and maroon on my skin, and the pulsing life of my nighttime longings seemed to have left no trace of whispers or magic. Had I dreamed it? Or lived it? And had Binyamin Bashari and I really spent a night such as that in the garden? Years later, Binyamin told me that the day after we stood together in the garden, he asked his major for permission to leave his unit and for help in obtaining visas to enter Palestine. He planned to ask me to marry him, and hoped that we would travel together to Jerusalem to make our home there.

  If only that night had lasted forever. Could I have saved Hani and Asaf by staying true to Binyamin? Or would my beloved cousins have doomed themselves anyway? I search in the thicket of the past for answers that are always out of reach. In my dreams, I follow Binyamin back to his barracks, whispering frantically in his ear that we must consummate our love before daybreak. He takes me in his arms—but the dream dissolves, and my history of betrayal begets its own betrayal with the coming dawn.

  Chapter 29

  Asaf came at Hanukkah time, when the windows of the houses of the Jews of Crater were filled with hanging oil lamps, lit to commemorate the miracle of the tiny drop of oil that blazed for eight days, resanctifying the soiled Temple.

  I was sixteen and he was seventeen years old. Eight years had passed since our engagement. In one version of the story of my life, Asaf became a dove that flew through the window of Uncle Barhun’s house, perched on my shoulder, and pecked my ear, drawing not blood but honey. In another version of the story, when he came to Uncle Barhun’s house, knocking on the door, I didn’t know who he was. I mistook him for a stranger, and refused to acknowledge that in another life, on a far-off mountain, we had played husband and wife. And in yet another version, I knew him immediately, and pretended to be overjoyed to see him, but in my heart I was distraught, for anyone could see that he had come too late, and that my heart now belonged to another.

  Uncle Barhun was immediately fetched from the warehouse on Steamer Point. My uncle didn’t recognize his nephew, as they had never bef
ore met. When he had gathered up his wits and realized that he was standing on one of the good latitudes of life—a spiritual line that demarks charm from curse, gifts from retributions—my uncle’s face quivered. He flushed red as a beet, tears came to his eyes, and he sank to his knees, exclaiming with such loud joy that everyone in the street came running to see the commotion.

  When he had sufficiently recovered, Barhun said, “You are my dear brother’s son, and now you are my son too.”

  Asaf was taller than Barhun, but Asaf tilted his head respectfully in a way that made it seem as if he were not looking down, but up, at his uncle. Soon everyone was crowding into our house—Aunt Rahel and my brothers and sisters-in-law, my cousin, and their husbands and all the children—they all came to see Asaf, our very own Hanukkah miracle.

  There was a resemblance between Asaf and Uncle Barhun. Aunt Rahel was the first to mention it. She said, “This boy is your mirror-child, Barhun,” shaking her head in wonder. “Coined as if from the mint of you.” It was true. Both had heart-shaped faces, high foreheads, curly black hair. Uncle Barhun’s was thinning, but Asaf’s tumbled out of his cap. I hadn’t noticed the resemblance when Uncle Barhun first came to Qaraah, but of course the Asaf I remembered was a boy, and the Asaf now in front of me was a man. His face had grown into itself. I took an accounting. Their noses were crooked (Asaf’s upturned nose had been broken in the intervening years, but now it was as roguishly charming as Barhun’s), their lips were thin. Why, each even had a scar on his brow. It was as if they had weathered the same storms, even though they had only just met. But there was something else. Asaf, like my uncle, was unabashedly handsome.

  The night Asaf arrived I was supposed to meet Binyamin for a walk in Steamer Point, but I sent word that I couldn’t come because I was busy with household duties. The next day, I made another excuse—that I had to help Nogema, who was pregnant. On the third day, Asaf caught me looking wistfully out the window. We were alone in the house. Aunt Rahel was out back in the garden.

  He bent toward me and asked, “What are you sorry about, Adela?”

  “Nothing,” I lied. “I am sorry about nothing.”

  “Your expression tells me otherwise.”

  I didn’t look at him when I asked, “Have you heard about the dance of the jambia?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “A native custom, it’s gruesome but impossible not to watch.”

  He gently touched my chin, tenderly forcing me to look at him. “What makes you think about it?”

  “My mind is just wandering, that’s all.”

  “You always were a dreamer, Adela.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “In your cave, you would imagine whole worlds, wouldn’t you?”

  “No, I would imagine only this world, and the way I fit into it.”

  “Do you remember, Adela, when we—”

  I cut him off. “I remember nothing of those days, Asaf. How about you? Do you trust your memories?”

  He didn’t answer me. I let him kiss me, even though it wasn’t the least bit proper. His lips were rough against my own and he smelled like his travels—spicy and foreign and improvised.

  I was false to Binyamin. A coward, too. I broke off my connection to him by messenger. We were not yet engaged, so it was as simple as that. My brother Hassan went to him in the barracks in Ma’alla at my behest. Hassan did me an act of great kindness by sparing me the details of their exchange. After it had been accomplished, Hassan said, “The musician is an ugly man, Sister. A crude Esau to our Asaf’s fair Jacob. You chose well. And our dear mother, may her memory be a blessing, would approve of your steadfastness. You do her a great honor by staying true to the old contract and marrying our cousin, which was, after all, her intention.”

  Hani was the only one to question my choice. She took me aside, held me close by the shoulders, and spoke to me in urgent tones. “Are you sure, Adela? Is this really what you want?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not.” I began to feel angry. “Hani,” I said, “I’ve always loved Asaf, before you ever knew me. He was there . . . he was there first.”

  Then I almost told her that when we first met, Asaf was wearing a red cap and we were both missing our two front teeth. I almost told her about the first time I ever saw him riding Jamiya, and about how he had once played a valiant boy-Moses at our Passover seder. I wanted to tell Hani that Asaf and I had been innocents together and that it was our sweet innocence that filled my heart now and that bound me to him—not what came after. But none of these words reached my lips. Instead, I remained silent, and pulled away from her. Hurt and disapproval flashed across Hani’s face; then some other unruly emotion that I couldn’t quite recognize flickered in her eyes, but finally she took a deep breath, kissed my cheek, smiled, and purred, “Forgive me, Adela. I will never question your choice again. I promise.”

  Why did I really agree to marry Asaf? Because for so long I had worn my engagement like armor, shielding me from the Confiscator’s reach. And because my mother came to me in a dream. She pinched me under the arms, bared her gums, and railed at me, threatening me with all manner of mortal punishments. She said, “Asaf Damari came back for you. He honored his commitment, and who are you to spit on the sacred promises of the past?”

  * * *

  How had it all transpired? I will pause in my story, because it is time for a full accounting. Here is what Asaf told me. He left Qaraah with his father in 1927, when I was nine and Asaf was ten. They went south by donkey, to Aden. From Aden they took a steamer to Port Salalah in Oman, and from Oman they sailed to Bombay. They traveled inland, and spent months on the continent collecting spices, unguents, and rare ingredients. They purchased the prized choya nakh essence in Uttar Pradesh, then turned around and began the long trek west. They took sail on the Sabbath of Miketz, when scripture tells us that Pharaoh had two dreams, and only our Father Joseph could interpret them. When they reached Aden, Asaf and his father sailed on a dhow for Eritrea. But in Eritrea misfortune struck, and Uncle Zecharia suffered an attack that left half his body paralyzed and killed him within a week. Asaf buried his father in Africa on land he purchased from a farmer for a small quantity of Red Sea coral. The farmer kept cows, and when Asaf was digging the grave, the cows kept him company, lowing softly as he pried the parched yellow earth loose from the rocky sediment below. Asaf continued the journey alone, trading some of his stores for passage on a felucca that sailed north on the Nile, through Egypt. Then he bought himself passage on a steamer to Palestine. He stayed in Jaffa for almost a month before sailing on a British ship to Cyprus, and from there to Turkey. He had with him, tucked in the folds of his cloak, several vials of precious onycha oil, distilled from Red Sea mollusks. This oil was a powerful aromatic fixative Asaf was delivering to a perfumer in Turkey, who would use it to make incense and unguents to be sold in an atelier in Paris. In Istanbul, the perfumer took a liking to Asaf and asked if he would like to stay and work in his shop. Weary of traveling, he accepted the offer, living in the back of the perfumer’s shop, learning his craft. When he eventually left, he traveled even farther east, landing finally on the Greek island of Corfu, where he lived with the family of an olive farmer, bartering work in the groves for lodging and food. After a year on Corfu, he decided it was time to return for me. He regretted that he had not returned sooner, for he was possessed by wild fears and bad dreams on his journey and was certain that his bride either belonged to another, or had already gone to the World to Come.

  He reached Qaraah two years after my family and I left for Aden. What he found was wretched—my parents were both dead, Masudah was dead, my brother Dov, Masudah’s husband, had lost his mind, and we were gone. The village itself was a dried-up husk of itself, a ghost-village with few inhabitants left. Asaf went through our empty house. He stood in the alcove where my pallet had been. He squatted in the place where we had taken our meals. He stood be
fore the emptiness of my mother’s big chest on the second floor—the chest that had held his father’s Torah—and then he went outside and sat under the frankincense tree. Under the tree he lost himself, and cried out my name. The dye mistress heard him and gestured to him from her yard. She had stayed behind to care for her elderly father, who refused to leave Qaraah. She gave Asaf food and drink and told him where we had gone and when we had left. He went down the street to Auntie Aminah’s old house. He walked past the old citrons and down the escarpment, over the culvert. He pushed back the henna bush, which had grown as big as a baby elephant, and ducked to enter the cave. When he saw my drawings, he let out a little sound, like an ah crossed with a moan. The chalk boy and girl on the wall heard his cry, and then told him their secrets, as if in a dream. With the back of his fingers, he caressed the cheek of the girl on the wall, and then bent and kissed her hennaed hands, which he later swore to me were warm, and not cold as stone should be.

  He started for Aden that very day. His journey south took him just two weeks—much quicker than ours—because he wasn’t traveling with children or women. According to scripture, Noah’s flood ended in the Jewish month of Kislev. It was Kislev when Asaf reached Aden; in the secular calendar it was November of 1934. There were heavy rains in Aden that month, but the day Asaf’s donkey cart passed the grave of Cain, the sky was as cloudless and clear as it must have been when the dove brought Noah an olive branch. I know because I felt the sun on my face as Asaf stood before me and once again claimed me as his own.