Washerwoman's Dream

by Hilarie Lindsay

They dropped anchor in the roadstead at Jedda. The sun was directly overhead. Winifred was dazzled by the luminous blue–green water and the white tower-like buildings set against purple hills that lined the beachfront. She turned to Karum Bux, her eyes shining, ‘How beautiful,’ she said. She wanted to kiss him but held back, knowing that no show of affection between men and women was permitted. Instead she smiled at him and touched him lightly on the arm.

  He returned her smile. ‘The name of this city means grandmother. It’s something to do with Mother Eve. She’s buried here. Her tomb is the most sacred of places.’

  ‘Will we be able to see it?’

  ‘It all depends. There’s a new ruler — King Ibn Saud. With the help of the British he has driven the Turks out of the Holy Land after skirmishes lasting twenty years. He has pledged to guard the pilgrims by promising the Bedouins free food during the hadj. They prey on the pilgrims and no one can touch them because they claim to be descendants of the Prophet. We will go where we are told.’

  It was almost dusk before they were allowed into the small lateen boats that came racing towards them through a line of white posts marking the channel. The tide was running swiftly and the small boats were being tossed about, making it difficult to jump aboard. Winifred passed Pansy to Karum Bux who had jumped first. When it came to her turn the mast holding the sail swung around and she was knocked sideways and flung into the sea. She was hauled back into the boat and as she stood there, gasping for breath and fighting back tears, she heard someone say, ‘Look,’ and saw sharks circling in the clear water. She glanced at Karum Bux who was still holding Pansy. He was standing there impassive, almost as if he thought she had jumped overboard on purpose. And then he said, ‘It is of no consequence. You are safe. It is the will of Allah. And your clothes will soon dry in the sun.’ He held out one arm and she moved closer until she was leaning against him.

  As the boats got closer to the grey sandy beach, Winifred could see the houses more closely, with their ornamental balconies, fancy cornices and carved lattice work in richly toned woodwork. But it was hours before she was able to take a closer look. On shore there were formalities to be completed, which meant a long wait. Other pilgrim ships had also dropped anchor and there were thousands of people milling around until it was their turn to be shown into a long shed smelling strongly of carbolic.

  Inside was all clamour and noise as pilgrims argued with men in uniform who were demanding a tax of seven rupees, which was being levied by King Ibn Saud to pay for safe crossing of the desert. Once the levy had been paid and their health and travel documents checked, Winifred and her husband were assigned to a mutawwif who collected their passports and retained them until their return from Mecca. They were advised to take full details of the name and whereabouts of the agents to ensure the return of their papers. Without them they would not be able to leave the country.

  The mutawwif also arranged accommodation and camel transport. Because of the huge influx of visitors during the hadj, it was often difficult to find a room. Many of the poorer pilgrims were housed nineteen to a room for a charge of one rupee each. Winifred and her family were more fortunate. They secured a room to themselves, on the top floor of a five-storey house, with a flat roof where they could walk in the evening. Here there was a sea breeze, which drove away the evil smell of rotting garbage and filth that lay about in the alley below.

  Because of the dense crowds Winifred gave up any idea of exploring the city. From the barred window in their room she looked down on a mighty river of people. She had never seen so many jammed so tightly together in one place. She could see right down to the middle of the bazaar which was partly shaded with date palms. There were seagulls and cormorants in the skies overhead. Winifred discovered that the houses were built with beams jutting through the roofs so that the birds would have somewhere to roost. She and Pansy watched the baker with his thin rings of bread looped over both arms, and the old woman with the goat which she milked straight into the customer’s container. There were stalls selling silks, prayer rugs, earthenware and gleaming copper bowls. Silversmiths sat by the roadside hammering out metal into bracelets and other jewellery. Winifred was thrilled when Karum Bux bought her a bangle in the shape of a serpent, a large silver crescent to wear in her hair, and a phial of attar of roses.

  The sight that delighted mother and daughter most was when the judges and court officials rode to the law courts on donkeys, so small that the judges’ feet almost scraped the ground. The animals had their heads and hooves painted red and were hung with coloured tassels and tiny bells that chimed merrily as they trotted along. Hearing the bells Pansy would run to the window and clap her hands and laugh.

  Once Winifred saw a judge on foot, his robes almost sweeping the ground. He strode across to the local butcher, who had set up business in the middle of the road with the carcass of a goat hanging between three sticks, and began to haggle. The deal closed, the butcher hacked off a shoulder and a swarm of flies rose in the air, then settled back on the carcass, while the judge strode off with the meat, which he held by the shank end. He was followed by a pack of pariah dogs whom he whacked on the nose with the unwrapped meat when they got too close.

  Then there was the man with a handcart filled with rows of coloured jellies, which he carried uncovered and swarming with flies. People in the street bought them and ate them as if the flies did not exist. When she mentioned it to Karum Bux he shrugged his shoulders. ‘When you can barely afford food, flies are the least of your worries.’

  Winifred’s day started when she heard the call to prayer floating across the city. She watched as Karum Bux tied his turban and went to his devotions, rising to stand at the window to listen to the shuffle of thousands of sandalled feet and gaze at the shadowy figures shoulder to shoulder as the faithful hurried to the mosque. She stayed there until the sky became streaked with pink as the sun rose, then she knelt at the barred windows to pray to Allah for a safe journey, never ceasing to marvel at the fact that she had come so far without serious mishap.

  By the time she looked out the window again the alley would be filled with vendors opening up their stalls, with steam rising from water pots, the smell of hot brewed coffee, millet cakes and meat slowly roasting on a spit, ready for when the pilgrims returned from the mosque. Because of the desert that stretched beyond the town, there was no local agriculture. The harvest lay in the rich pickings from the thriving pilgrim trade, with 50 000 or more souls on their way to Mecca. Ahead lay a fifty-mile trip by camel, the thousands of pilgrims at the beck and call of the camel drivers.

  * * *

  The scene beside the town hall where thousands of camels were waiting, with everyone clamouring to be first away, was chaotic. It reminded Winifred of Oodnadatta when the train came in and the camels were being loaded, except that this was on a gigantic scale, with pilgrims jostling and being jostled, while the camels snorted and bucked and refused to stay still.

  It was too much for Winifred. Concerned that Pansy might be trampled, she asked Karum Bux to find them a place to wait while he secured them a camel and a place in a string. He led them to a group of tables without chairs, where the agents were drinking coffee, and lifted them onto a table. ‘Don’t move or I may never find you again.’

  It was good to sit and relax, away from what Winifred saw as a near riot. There were clouds of dust as the camels kicked and threshed around. She drew her chador tight and made sure Pansy’s face was covered. Just the same something lodged in Winifred’s right eye. Though she rubbed and rubbed she found it impossible to dislodge. Then she noticed that a little fat man wearing a black fez had come to stand beside their table and was smirking at her. He spoke to her in Arabic, in words she did not understand. For a moment she thought he might be offering to remove the mote from her eye. But there was something suggestive about the way he was looking at her that made her feel uneasy. She looked around for Karum Bux and saw him hurrying towards her. He scowled at the man in the fez and spoke to him
angrily, which sent him scuttling away.

  ‘What did he say?’ Winifred asked.

  Karum Bux, still scowling, looked away and grunted.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘I want to know.’

  ‘He was asking how much you charge, and offering to take you to a nice quiet place.’

  Winifred began to laugh, rubbing her right eye again to dislodge the speck of dust. Suddenly Karum Bux grabbed her arm and yanked it down. She stared at him, wondering why he was being so rough.

  ‘Damn it, woman. You’re doing it again.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Rubbing your right eye. That’s the Arabian courtesan’s signal for trade.’

  She was tempted to ask what happened if you rubbed your left eye, but knew it would only make him angry. He had enough on his mind, trying to find a place in a string where the camels were properly broken in, and with a driver he could trust. Instead she said, ‘I’d like a cup of tea.’

  He turned to face her, almost snarling. She was smiling at him, a mischievous grin on her face. ‘I was only teasing,’ she said and squeezed his hand. His face relaxed and he began to laugh and was still laughing as he strode back to the camels.

  It was sundown before they finally rode through the city gates. Beyond them lay the desert. Here they halted and everyone dismounted to pray. They had barely finished when the alarm was raised. The camel drivers prodded the beasts to their knees and called on the pilgrims to take shelter. Winifred could feel her pulse racing. She held Pansy close and, sheltering her with her body, drew her chador over them both and crouched beside the camels, a choking sensation in her throat as a great wall of dust came out of the desert and whirled about them It lasted for only a few minutes and was gone.

  The incident alarmed Winifred, though once they had risen and shaken the sand from their garments all was well. Pansy seemed unconcerned, as if it had been a kind of game. It had all happened so quickly the child did not have time to sense her mother’s fear.

  As the pilgrims stood about drinking water to clear the dust from their throats, she said to the moulvi who was travelling with them, ‘I am concerned for my child. I was able to shelter her with my body, but what will happen if a dust storm blows up when we are sleeping?’

  He gave her a gentle smile. ‘That was only a small storm thrown up by the desert to test us. Allah be praised. Your daughter is strong. She would know to cover her face.’ He went to turn away and then stopped. ‘This is not like the other side of Hejaz where there is the simoon. I have heard tell of it. The eye is calm but around it swirl violent gusts of poisonous vapours.’ He described a circle in the air with his arms. ‘It travels slowly. You know when it is near by the awesome violet light.’

  His brown eyes glittered as he leaned towards her. ‘I have heard tell there is a feeling in the limbs as if molten lead has burned them. And in the chest a feeling of suffocation. The only way to survive is to cover your face and lie prone without breathing until it passes. The camel has been told by his ancestors to bury his nose in the sand. I have not seen these things but I have heard tell of it.’ He smoothed his beard and his expression was kindly as he said, ‘Rest assured, sister, Allah is with us.’

  Winifred was holding Pansy in her arms. He smiled and passed his hand over the child’s head, saying, ‘Allahu Akbar La Ilaha Illa Allah.’

  Two pilgrims rode, one on either side of a camel, which was fitted with two string beds, with the camel’s hump in between. Because of the beds the camels could not be hooshed down properly. This meant that the first passenger had to climb on the beast’s head and balance on the hump until the second person arrived. It was like being on a seesaw. Until she mastered the art Winifred had a few falls. Over the beds was a beehive cover of jute, with a centre prop in line with the animal’s neck. The red water-crock was lashed to this. Everything else was stowed behind the pillow. The weight had to be evenly balanced with Karum Bux on one side of the camel and Winifred and her daughter on the other. Their camel train had forty beasts to the string, with two drivers who walked alongside holding pointed sticks.

  Winifred was in a dreamlike state that first night as they set out with thousands of camels in strings tied nose to tail. It reminded her of a mighty army, with camels on either side of them as far as the eye could see. She slept fitfully, waking to the sound of the camels, feet shuffling, like running water as they swished though the soft sand. It provided a background to the coughs and groans of the sick and elderly.

  Later she said to Karum Bux, ‘So many are old and ill. They will be dead before they reach Mecca.’

  He seemed unconcerned. ‘Many of the elderly hope to die on the hadj and be buried in the land the Prophet has blessed,’ he said.

  When the sun rose the first morning she looked across at the stark, inhospitable landscape with extinct volcanoes and bare mountains dotted with black basalt boulders, and was surprised to see shadows which seemed to emerge out of the landscape. They turned out to be beggars who ran alongside, invoking the name of Allah and calling out, ‘Baksheesh!’

  ‘Where do they come from?’ she asked Karum Bux as the beggars ran beside their camel to catch a few coins he had thrown.

  ‘They live in the caves that line the mountains. They know it is an act of mercy to give alms. The money they get may have to last them a whole year. That is why they look so thin.’

  Winifred thought about her own life. It had been hard but she had never had to beg for food. There was always something, even if it was only a piece of damper and a cup of tea. And though she had slept without a roof over her head in the prickly pear, it had not been for long. She had always had somewhere to live, even if it was only a small hut. These beggars had nothing.

  Towards morning it always became bitterly cold. It was a relief when the camel train halted at dawn for a ten-minute break for prayers and she could stretch her legs and walk around. The camels halted again at midday and there was a rush to buy some firewood to cook chapattis and a little bit of curry. Other times they had to exist on a handful of dates and a drink of water.

  The days were long and tedious, with waves of heat shimmering around them and swarms of flies that crawled into their eyes and noses, sucking the moisture from the beads of sweat that gathered on their skin.

  The pilgrims prayed five times a day, with different prayers chanted aloud in Arabic on each occasion. Winifred was always conscious of being watched, but survived by giving a dry little cough when she did not know the right word.

  When they stopped in the middle of the day Winifred was unable to let Pansy run around and play as she’d hoped, because the sand felt as if it was on fire. All the child could do was hop around on the prayer rug Winifred spread beside their camel for a little bit of shade, or jump up and down while her mother clapped her hands and recited a nursery rhyme. But even being on the rug proved dangerous when Pansy pointed to something moving in the sand. It turned out to be a cluster of scorpions, each only the size of Pansy’s little finger. A bite could make an adult ill for a long time. Winifred snatched Pansy up, fearful that if she was stung she would die.

  She did not complain, however, keeping her feelings to herself. As she lay awake at night she watched Karum Bux as he slept, a serene expression on his face, as if this was the culmination of a lifelong dream. He had warned her of the hardships of the trip, but she had not really believed him. Now she knew what he’d said was true. For his sake she must endure, wondering if it would have been easier if she had been born a Moslem.

  Despite the hardships there were aspects that appealed to Winifred. She was fascinated by the wells where the camels drank, particularly after she was told that the Patriarch Abraham had dug them when he travelled with his flocks. They did not look like ordinary wells. There were two circles of water, each with an eight-inch wall. The water was dipped by bucket from one and poured into the other. Both animals and humans drank from the same well. And once someone pointed out a goldmine and told her it was from this mine the
gold had come to build King Solomon’s temple.

  A welcome respite came when they stopped at an oasis and she could sit under the palm trees enjoying their shade and eat the creamy dates straight from the tree. On Juma they camped overnight. It was a relief to be off the camels. With their rocking motion it felt like being on board ship again.

  The village people who lived around the oases were friendly and sold them fresh vegetables and an edible grass. She saw coffee trees growing in terraces, sheltered from the direct sun by other shrubs, the beans already harvested, the berries drying in the sun. At one oasis there were pomegranates, which Winifred had never seen before. They looked so beautiful with their smooth red skins. She was disappointed to discover that inside was nearly all seeds.

  Another time she watched a farmer working his land with a wooden plough without wheels, which barely scratched the earth. There was no winter. They sowed all the year round, irrigating with water drawn from the well. She watched the oxen which were harnessed to ropes and pulleys attached to leather buckets. When the filled buckets touched the crossbeam on top of the well they tipped over into channels that ran downhill to the crops, which were watered twice a day. As she turned away to leave, the farmer picked a ripe melon from a vine and gave it to her.

  That night they feasted well, sitting on their prayer rugs eating boiled mutton with millet cakes, followed by the melon. They gorged themselves on the sweet flesh, laughing as the juice ran down their chins. Later, lying under the date palms, Winifred slept soundly for the first time since they had left Jedda, dreaming just before morning that she was with Ali. When she woke she could hear birds singing in the palm trees and saw large beetles with stilt-like legs clustered around the trunks. The thought came to her that the Garden of Eden must have been like this — an oasis in the desert.

  There were children at the oasis for Pansy to play with, children of her own age who ran around naked, like the piccaninnies the child had played with when they had travelled with the camels in Australia. It gave Pansy a welcome respite from the long hours beside her mother in the string bed, as the camels plodded along at five miles an hour. At the oases they were also able to bathe and wash their clothes, and when they left they felt clean and refreshed.