by Sanmao
Of course, our most demanding work was applying for each and every document required for marriage. It was the bane of my existence. Even now, thinking back on it riles me up.
Since my place of residence wasn’t marked, I rented a mailbox down at the post office. It took about an hour to walk into town and check my mail each day. Within three months, I got to know the majority of the town’s residents, especially those at the post office and courthouse. We became friends since I was visiting them every day.
One sweltering, unbearably hot day, I was back at the courthouse. The secretary man said to me, ‘Well, it looks like the paperwork in Madrid is all wrapped up. You can get married now.’
‘Really?’ I couldn’t bring myself to believe that this grand struggle with bureaucracy was finally over.
‘I’ve arranged a date for you,’ said the secretary, all smiles.
‘When?’ I asked urgently.
‘Six p.m. tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? You said tomorrow?’ I probably sounded incredulous and not altogether happy.
The old secretary man seemed a bit cross at me for being ungrateful. ‘Didn’t José say he wanted to do this as fast as possible?’
‘Yes, thank you… We’ll come by tomorrow.’ I drifted downstairs as if in a dream and sat on the stone steps outside the post office, staring off into the desert.
Then I noticed the driver for José’s company rolling by in a Jeep. I ran up to stop him. ‘Are you going to the office, Muhammad Saleh? Would you mind passing along a message to José? Please tell him that we’re getting married tomorrow and he should come into town after work.’
Muhammad Saleh scratched at his head, perplexed. He asked, ‘How come Señor José does not know he is getting married tomorrow?’
‘He doesn’t know,’ I answered emphatically. ‘And I didn’t know either.’
Upon hearing this, the driver looked at me with an expression of fright and drove off swerving into the distance. It was then I realised that I’d misspoken again. He must have thought that I’d been dying to get married and lost my head.
José didn’t wait until after work to come flying over. ‘It’s really tomorrow?’ he asked in astonishment as soon as he arrived.
‘Yes, it’s true. Come on, let’s go and send a telegram home.’ I dragged him out the door again.
Apologies for giving you such short notice. We didn’t know in advance that tomorrow would be our wedding day. Please forgive…
José’s telegram was long enough to be a letter.
Me, I sent my telegram to my father and wrote:
Getting married tomorrow. Sanmao.
Just a few words. I knew that my parents would be so delighted and comforted when they received this news. They’d been suffering for many years because of this wanderer. I had really let them down.
‘Hey, what are you wearing tomorrow?’ José asked.
‘Don’t know. Something simple.’ I was still considering my options.
‘I forgot to ask for the day off,’ José said, sounding vexed. ‘I still have to work tomorrow.’
‘Go ahead, our wedding isn’t until six in the evening. If you leave an hour early, you should make it back in time.’ I didn’t see any problem with someone going to work on their wedding day.
‘What should we do now that we’ve sent our telegrams?’ He seemed to be in a kind of stupor that day.
‘Let’s go home and build furniture. The table needs to be nailed together, and I’m still missing half of my curtains.’ I really couldn’t get why José had to act so strange.
‘Do we really have to work the night before we get married?’ Apparently he wanted to start the celebrations early and goof off.
‘Well, what do you want to do then?’ I asked him.
‘I want to take you to see a movie. Tomorrow you won’t be my girlfriend anymore.’
So we went to the only cinema in the desert to see a brilliant film called Zorba the Greek. I guess it was our way of saying goodbye to the single life.
3.
The next day, I was taking a nap when José knocked on the door. I had worn myself out carrying a bucket of fresh water back home. It was already 5.30 in the afternoon. ‘Get up!’ he cried as he came in. ‘I have something for you.’ He was quite excited, holding a large box in his hands.
I leapt up and ran over in my bare feet to snatch the box from him. ‘It must be flowers!’ I said.
‘How could flowers grow in the desert? Oh, please.’ He seemed a little disappointed at my guess.
I tore feverishly at the wrapping paper and opened the box. Wow! Two eye sockets of a skull stared up at me. I pulled this surprise gift out with some effort and took a proper look. It was a camel skull, white bones neatly assembled, with a huge row of menacing teeth and two big black holes for eyes.
I was overjoyed. This was just the thing to capture my heart. I set it on the bookshelf, clucking and sighing in admiration. ‘Ah, splendid, so splendid.’ José was worthy of being called my soulmate. ‘Where did you dig this up?’ I asked.
‘I went looking for it! Walked around the desert for ages. When I found this intact, I knew you’d love it.’ He was quite proud of himself. It was genuinely the best wedding gift possible.
‘Quick, go get changed,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘We’re almost out of time.’
I had lots of pretty clothes that I usually never wore. I took a look at José, who was wearing a dark blue shirt and had trimmed his beard. Alright then, blue it was. I found a light-blue dress made of hemp. Even though it wasn’t new, there was something simple and elegant to it. A pair of sandals would suffice. I let my hair down and put on a wide brimmed straw hat. With no flowers to be had, I went to the kitchen to grab a bunch of coriander and pinned it to the hat. I didn’t own a purse so I had nothing to hold. José looked me up and down. ‘Lovely. Bucolic. You look beautiful in this kind of simple get-up.’
And so we locked the door and stepped out into the desert.
From where I lived, it took almost forty minutes to get into town. We didn’t have a car and so had to walk the whole way. Beneath a vast and borderless sky, we were the only tiny figures crossing a wide expanse of yellow sand. A quiet desolation surrounded us. The desert was beautiful beyond words in that moment.
‘You might be the first bride to walk to her wedding,’ said José.
‘I would have liked to ride a camel, whooping all the way into town. Can you imagine how majestic that would have been? Too bad, really.’ I sighed.
Before we had even reached the courthouse, we heard people saying, ‘They’re here, they’re here.’ A stranger jumped in front of us and took a photo. I was startled. ‘Did you hire a photographer?’ I asked José.
‘No, it’s probably the courthouse’s doing.’ He suddenly became nervous.
When we got upstairs, we saw that everyone in the courthouse was dressed in suits and ties. Compared with them, José looked like he had just come along for the ride.
‘Oh crap, José. Look how formal they are! This is crazy.’ The thing I fear most in life is this kind of pompous ceremony. It looked like there was no escape this time.
‘Bear with it,’ José encouraged. ‘We’ll have tied the knot soon enough.’
The secretary man was dressed in a black suit and a silk bow tie. ‘Come, come, this way.’ He pulled me into the assembly hall without giving me time to wipe the sweat from my face. Looking around, I saw that this small room was filled with familiar faces. Everyone was grinning at José and me. God! How did they all find out?
The judge was very young, probably around our age. He wore a robe of black satin.
‘Sit over here. Please, sit.’ We were like puppets being manipulated. José’s sweat was trickling down to his beard.
Once we had taken our seats, the secretary man began to speak, ‘Under Spanish law, there are three points to which you must abide after marriage. I will read those now. Number one: after marriage, both parties must cohabit…�
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When I heard this, I thought it was just pure rubbish! Absolutely ridiculous and uncalled for. I started to laugh to myself. I didn’t pay a bit of attention to what he said after that. Eventually, I heard the judge call my name: ‘Señorita Sanmao.’
‘What?’ I snapped to attention.
I heard a chuckle from the audience.
‘Please stand.’
I rose slowly.
‘Señor José, please stand as well.’
So long-winded. Why not just say, ‘Would you both please stand?’ This would also have cut down on our suffering.
I noticed then that the young judge’s hands were trembling as he held a piece of paper. I nudged José to look. This was the first time the desert courthouse had performed a marriage. The judge was even more nervous than we were.
‘Sanmao, do you wish to become José’s wife?’ the judge asked me.
I knew I was supposed to say, ‘I do.’ Instead I ended up replying, ‘Yeah!’
The judge laughed. He asked the same question to José, who answered firmly, ‘I do.’
Once both of us had spoken, the judge seemed like he didn’t know what to do next. The three of us stood in silence. Finally, he blurted out, ‘OK. You’re married now. Congratulations!’
As soon as I realised this awkward ceremony was over, I livened up immediately and swept my hat off to use as a fan. Many people came up to shake hands with us. The secretary man was especially happy, almost as if he were one of our parents. Suddenly, someone cried out, ‘Hey, what about your rings?’
I had the same thought. What about the rings? I turned to look for José, but he had already gone into the hallway. ‘Hey, did you bring the rings?’ I called.
José was very happy. ‘Here,’ he boomed. He took his ring out and slipped it onto his finger. Then he went to find the judge. ‘Judge!’ he called. ‘My family register! I need my family register!’ He had totally forgotten that I also needed a ring.
The wedding was over. There wasn’t a single decent restaurant in the desert, but neither did we have the means to host a dinner. Everyone dispersed, leaving just the two of us unsure of what to do with ourselves.
‘Why don’t we stay overnight at the Hotel Nacional?’ José proposed.
‘I’d rather go home and cook. One night at that kind of hotel is a week’s worth of groceries.’ I wouldn’t stand for wasting money.
So we traversed the desert once more on our way home.
There was a large cake in front of our door. When we got inside, we took the cake out of the box and a slip of paper fell out: Congratulations on your marriage! It was from a group of José’s co-workers. I was really touched. We were truly blessed to be able to eat fresh cake in the desert. Even more precious were the two figurines in wedding garb on top of the cake. The bride in white silk even had eyes that could open and close. My inner child surfacing, I grabbed them and yelled, ‘The dolls are mine!’
‘No contest there!’ said José. ‘Would I even try to take them from you?’
He cut a slice of cake for me and finally slipped a ring onto my finger. It was only then that our wedding was officially over. And this was how I got married.
Apothecary
I don’t really like to see a doctor when I’m ill. That doesn’t mean it’s rare for me to get sick. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite. I’m too lazy to get checked up because I’m constantly dealing with minor afflictions. I’ve made it to middle age thanks to my prized possession, a big cardboard box of medicine that I take everywhere. Having relied on it for so long, I feel like I know a thing or two about curing minor ailments.
Last year during my travels across the great desert, I gave two aspirins to an old Sahrawi woman to relieve her headache. While I was still lodging in her tent over the following days, an endless stream of people came by, dragging their children or elderly along to ask for medicine. The only things I felt comfortable giving them were antiseptics, anti-inflammatory creams, painkillers and the like. But they proved incredibly effective for these nomadic people who were so removed from modern civilisation. Before I went back to the little town of El Aaiún, I’d left behind all the food and medicine I had on me for the impoverished Sahrawi in their tents.
I hadn’t been in town that long when my African neighbour came looking for painkillers to cure a headache. I remembered there was a government hospital in town, so I wasn’t planning to give her anything. I suggested she see a doctor instead. It turned out that the women of these lands all belonged to the same club as me, refusing to see doctors when they were ill. But their reasons were quite different from mine. Since the doctors were men, these women who’d spend the rest of their days beneath their veils would rather die than be examined by a male medic. Helpless in this situation, I grudgingly gave my female neighbour two painkillers.
From that point on, women from all around came looking for me to treat their ailments. Who knows how the word spread. Besides medicine, I would occasionally give them some Western clothes, which made them even happier. More and more people began seeking me out. My thinking was this: if they would rather die than see a doctor, I might as well lend a hand with non-fatal diseases. It would relieve their suffering and, at the same time, ease the loneliness of my life in the desert. Wasn’t that killing two birds with one stone? I also realised that the majority of women and children to whom I gave medicine recovered right away. So I gradually grew more bold, even making house calls from time to time. José thought that I was healing the sick as if playing with dolls. He was often gripped by a cold sweat on my behalf. To him, I was just messing around; but he didn’t know that behind this seeming carelessness was a great compassion.
Our neighbour Gueiga was ten years old and close to being married off. Half a month before her marriage, a red boil appeared on her inner thigh. At first it was the size of a coin, hard to the touch and without pus. Due to swelling, the skin at the surface was bulging and shiny. Her lymph nodes were also swollen and hard as seeds. When I saw her a day later, the boil on her thigh had grown to the size of a walnut. The girl was in such pain that she could only lie moaning on her ragged mat.
‘No question about it, she has to see a doctor,’ I told her mother.
‘This region cannot be shown to a doctor,’ her mother answered adamantly. ‘She is getting married soon.’
I had no choice but to give her a topical cream, as well as a specific treatment for inflammation. Her condition hadn’t improved after dragging on for three or four days. ‘Can we take her to a doctor?’ I asked again, this time to her father.
The reply was the same. ‘Definitely no.’
Then I remembered the soybeans at home. There was no other option. Might as well let the Africans try some Chinese medicine. So I went home to grind the beans. José saw me in the kitchen and stuck his head in to ask if I was making food. ‘It’s Chinese medicine for Gueiga to put on her skin,’ I replied.
He was dumbfounded for a moment. ‘What does that have to do with beans?’ he asked.
‘It’s an old trick I saw in a Chinese medicine manual.’
Upon hearing this, he looked very disapproving. ‘These women won’t see a doctor, but they’ll still trust you. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.’
I poured the soybean paste into a small bowl. ‘I’m an African witch doctor,’ I proclaimed as I headed out to Gueiga’s house. That day I applied the soybean paste on Gueiga’s red swelling and put a gauze on top. The boil had softened by the next day. I put on some fresh soybean paste, and by the following day there was yellow pus beginning to show beneath the skin. The next afternoon, large amounts of pus oozed out, along with a little bit of blood. I applied more medical ointment. She was completely fine within a short amount of time.
‘She’s cured,’ I told José smugly when he came home from work.
‘Was she cured by the soybeans?’
‘Yes.’
‘You Chinese are so mysterious,’ he said, shaking his head uncomprehendingly.
A few days later, my neighbour Khadijatu came calling. She said to me, ‘My cousin came in from the desert. She is staying in my home, near death. Will you come see?’
As soon as I heard that she was near death, I hesitated. ‘What illness does she have?’ I asked Khadi.
‘I do not know. She is weak and dizzy. Her eyesight is slowly getting worse. She is very skinny, about to die.’
The way she described it was so vivid. I was already starting to feel intrigued when José heard our talking from inside the house. ‘Sanmao, mind your own business,’ he yelled, very agitated.
I had to lower my voice. ‘I’ll come in a little bit,’ I said to Khadijatu. ‘I can’t leave until my husband goes to work.’
Once the door was shut, José began scolding me. ‘And what if this woman actually dies and they blame you for it? If she won’t see a doctor, then she deserves it!’
‘They just aren’t educated. It’s quite sad. . .’
I knew José had a point, even though I was trying to talk convincingly. But my curiosity was strong, and I was gutsy. I wasn’t willing to budge. José had to go to work. He barely had one foot out of the door when I slipped out behind him. I went to Khadi’s house and saw a young girl, thin as a bundle of sticks, lying on the ground. Her eyes were deep black holes. I didn’t feel any fever when I touched her. Her tongue, her fingernails and the whites of her eyes seemed to be a healthy colour. When I asked her where she didn’t feel well, she couldn’t speak clearly. Khadi had to translate from Arabic. ‘Her vision is blurry. Her ears will not stop ringing. She does not have the strength to stand up.’
I had a sudden stroke of inspiration. ‘Your cousin lives in a tent out in the desert?’ I asked Khadi. She nodded. ‘She doesn’t eat very well?’ I pressed.