The small scissors are not sharp enough to cut the thread, so she cuts it using her teeth, carrying on with her conversation, “But after you buy it, and use it to garnish your clothes, you get used to its texture between your fingers. Then you realize the truth….”
She looked at me intently. “You discover that it’s just a boring pattern, made out of a strip of white threads. It soon becomes faded, and its edges turn yellow.”
She checks with her fingertip every now and then that the beauty spot she has applied to her cheek with eyeliner is still there. She claims that she has a cold so that her clients don’t kiss her. She doesn’t want it to get smudged. Her heart fills up with joy when they tell her that she looks beautiful today. I watch the movement of her beauty spot, saying to myself, “Didn’t her husband tell me in our first drawing class that everything starts with a dot?” Then I ask her, “What news of Umm Mazin?”
“She cries on her own. Everybody else has abandoned her.”
“And Badriya?”
“It seems as though her mind was unable to cope with the shock. She sits in the police station all day singing ‘I want baklava and sweets…. Where will I go, where will I sleep…. If I sleep in the alleyway, the cats will cry for me…. If I sleep in the station, then the ducks will cry for me.’ And she strikes her cheeks between each verse.”
“When will they be coming back to the building?”
“I don’t know. They’re still under arrest, accused of practicing witchcraft and sorcery.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AFTER THE PALM trees were bombed, the bees no longer had the dates to feed on. Instead, they fed on the fruits that fell from the citrus trees. Abu Ghayeb said that his bees were lucky to have this alternative. The residents of Fatima Khatoun Building, however, weren’t so lucky. It was located a few streets away from our building. The second missile landed on it and exploded on impact. That happened two months after the first missile struck, and all of Karrada Dakhil was thrown into turmoil.
Hamada was our correspondent. He traveled with his newspapers and the latest news between the alleyways and the rubble. The explosion shook our block of flats. Women, children, and men, choked, burned, and were shredded underneath the collapsed building. We were told that dozens of families perished in the incident. The rescue teams joined the local people to pull out all the dead, whose names were added to the list of martyrs. No one slept a wink for many days.
The second night, at three o’clock in the morning, I heard men’s voices, mixed with the sounds of hammering and banging. I got out of bed and tried to make out what was happening from my bedroom window. I could see a gathering of shadows in the distance. They moved about swiftly without any lights through the club’s grounds. Something was going on, in the darkness.
The next day I accompanied Abu Ghayeb to work. We were surprised to find that the appearance of Court No. 2 had changed. The fencing around the court had been covered by khaki colored cloth. It was similar to the material that was used to make tents. The top of the rectangular court was also covered. It now looked like a room made out of thick cloth. A young soldier sat outside the entrance. A sign had been hung up on the outside, at the front of the khaki room. It said in clear letters, DO NOT APPROACH. We therefore complied, and kept away.
We head toward the apiary. My aunt’s husband instructs me to behave as if nothing has happened. We walk across a patch of grass that is still coated by the morning dew. It looks like a lawn of emerald fuzz. He tries to concentrate on his explanation of the propolis. He says, “It’s a sticky substance that the bees collect from tree bark. They use it to narrow the entrance to the cells in the winter.”
He then adds in a distracted manner, “The word is derived from Greek, and made up of two segments. Pro meaning the beginning of….”
Suddenly, the soldier moves from his position. Abu Ghayeb follows him with his eyes. I tug on his sleeve to regain his attention. “What about ‘polis,’ my aunt’s husband?”
He replies, “It means town.”
He readjusts his thoughts. “When we join the two together, the meaning of the word propolis becomes ‘the beginning of the town.’ That’s the elementary construction material used by the bees.”
He blows some smoke around the entrance of one of the hives. This is to encourage the bees to do something else instead of defending it. He blocks the opening with his hand and waits for two minutes to allow the bees to sip the honey and thus be less inclined to attack. He then starts removing the wax worms from the hives. He treats the affected frames by fumigating them using sulfur dioxide.
My aunt’s husband is busy, but he is still watching the movements in the other court, out of the corner of his eye. An officer arrives and speaks to the soldier for a few minutes. He then goes around the rectangular tent. Finally, the young man executes a military salute, and the officer leaves through the club’s front entrance.
He hands me the sticky, greenish brown substance. It has a relaxing smell like a mixture of buds, honey, wax, and vanilla. He says, “When it’s burned, it releases a smell reminiscent of very old aromatic gum. It’s a substance that stimulates the secretion of the female sex hormones.”
Saad asks me to look after the shop till he gets back in the evening. He fills his bag with his hairdressing tools and makeup kit. In spite of the sorrow that has enveloped our area, people are still getting married in other parts of the city. He has been called out to attend to two brides that evening in their homes before the start of their wedding party. He says to me as he leaves, “Please don’t tell anyone that I’ll be attending weddings.”
I shut the door after he has gone and sit down to flick through a magazine. They have published an article in color about this amazing invention called the Internet. I let out a long sigh. Any information you might want can be obtained at the touch of a button, from whatever source you can think of. And what was this I was reading about electronic mail? You could actually communicate with another person at the other end of the world in a matter of minutes!
When Adel sticks his head in through the door, the chewing gum starts melting in my mouth. He says, “How are you, Dalal?”
“I’m fine, thank you. Come in.”
“Where’s Saad?”
“He’s been called out to attend to two brides this evening. He doesn’t think he’ll be very late.”
“Have you got any coffee?”
“I do.”
He sits down on the sofa. “When will this all be over? I can’t bear to go on making false limbs.”
“You look exhausted.”
“I haven’t slept. This explosion has shaken us.”
How can it be that I hear both the sound of the birds, and the rain at the same time? I head toward the window. The waters from the heavens are cascading violently down. It seems that the rain is beating itself against the pavement. Adel joins me. “What beauty!”
“Did you want anything from Saad?”
“Do you want me to leave? Is that it?”
The rain is tracing strange patterns on the windowpane. It trickles down on the outside dribbling into the pot that houses the mulberry bush. Adel’s voice blurs into the hiss of the rain entering my head like the noise of a needle scratching on a surface of mercury. He walks to the door, but instead of leaving, I realize that he has locked it. Then he leads me, not unwillingly, to where the silver stars are.
We drift, young squirrels cleaning their fur under autumn shadows. I feel his hair, Gujarat blossom tendrils. He lays me on my back. He makes contact with me through the buttonhole in my shirt. He tastes my cherry stones. His fingers like softened okra find their way, slip down, lose their way. I look into his eyes. A lilac cover floats above him. We play, our hands are exploring silky corners. The olive oil voice asks me gently to hush. The legs of the bed quiver.
Abu Ghayeb cannot understand why his docile bees have suddenly become fierce and aggressive!
It seems as though they are about to swarm. He rushes to
check them one more time, to make sure everything is all right. The hives are not overcrowded with bees. The wax discs are not overfilled with honey and the queen has not run out of room to lay more eggs, nor has she reached the age when the amount of eggs she lays is insufficient. That would have driven the bees to leave their nesting grounds and exchange their queen.
In spite of all that, the bees start circling around the hives in a distinctly different manner from the way they usually fly—in a straight line. Some of the bees also appear very heavy, and unable to defend themselves. We then find unusually large groups of bees aggregating around the entrance to the hive. Suddenly Abu Ghayeb calls out, “Swarming normally takes place between ten o’clock and midday. Hurry up, Dalal, we have to stop them from leaving.”
His shouting disconcerts me. “What should I do?”
“Spray them with water. When they get wet, they’ll stop flying.”
I approach them with the water hose and proceed to obey his instructions. I am worried that I will kill them by drowning them. He calls out from the separation room, “Have they calmed down?”
I spray the water in all directions. “A little.”
“That’s not enough.”
Suddenly, my aunt’s husband appears with an empty tin can. He starts to strike it with a wooden stick. He is hoping to irritate them with the noise and prevent them from flying. He asks me amidst the racket, “Are they still about to take off on your side?”
“I think so.”
We notice that the soldier guarding the second tennis court has stood up and is observing our sudden flurry of activity.
We finally manage to control them when my aunt’s husband brings out a medium-sized mirror and reflects the sun’s rays onto the restless cells. For some reason, their agitation starts to subside when the reflected rays land among them.
Abu Ghayeb sighs with relief.
In the afternoon, my aunt opens the door to the flat just as we are to go in. Abu Ghayeb asks her, “Where to?”
“I’m going to visit Umm Mazin.”
As she leaves, she turns toward him, her cheeks reddening. “There was a phone call for you from Jordan.”
“Who from?”
“Who do you think!”
She then slams the door.
He looks at his watch. It is not a good time to ring back. We relax briefly after the day’s experience, then start making the sugar blocks. Abu Ghayeb thinks that one of the reasons the bees may have wanted to swarm was because they needed more nutrients. He thinks that might be due to the prolonged cold spell this winter. His fascination with the bees’ behavior continues in the kitchen. “Bees have an exceptional ability to differentiate between a wide variety of smells. They can remember them even if they’re kept away from them for up to five days.”
I can’t find my notebook, so I take down the information using my university notes. I write on the back of an article analyzing a novel by Balzac. He starts preparing a solution using four parts of sugar to one part of water. He heats it up on an open flame bringing it to the boil. That makes it thicker and stickier. I then help him to spread it out onto the trays that we have sprinkled with sugar dust. As we wait for it to cool down, I ask him, “Is it true that bees communicate by means of signals?”
He sits down on the chair, rolling up his sleeves, and starts to assess his psoriasis. He smiles. “Yes, just like your aunt and me; the way the deaf and dumb communicate. Bees’ signals are transmitted through their movements that resemble a dance to show their wishes, directions, and distances. When they want to indicate the site of a food source, or a spot they’ve chosen to swarm to, they convey that information in relation to the position of the sun.”
My head is weighed down with all this information. The sugar paste has finally solidified. We proceed to cut it up into pieces. We are going to offer it to the bees the next day by placing it above their frames.
Either we are late, or the battle started very early in the morning. We arrive at the apiary carrying the sugar blocks in order to lay them out between the hives. We find the bees killing each other. A strong colony is stealing from a weaker one. We are able to identify the thieving bees; they fly with their feet pointing forward. They attack the hive in raids, while the normal bees are still flying in straight lines.
Abu Ghayeb drops the bag of sugar candy and runs toward the raided hive. Its entrance is a battlefield. We see the casualties dropping in mid-flight, and outside the hive. We also note that the thieving bees are now flying more heavily, and in curves. He points out to me that the thieving bees seem to be sticking to each other. They fly as a mass around the outside of the hive they are attempting to enter. He calls out, “This way.”
He then orders, “Get me some grass.”
I hand him a few clumps of grass. He starts blocking up all the openings that the thieving bees might attempt to use. He then says to me brusquely, “Dissolve some salt in a bucket of water, quickly.”
I run into the separation room and make up the salt solution. He starts spraying it onto the thieving bees and their flight path. He tries to fool them into thinking there is nothing there to steal, hoping that will make them stop. However, our rapid movements between the boxes have agitated the rest of the bees. They all start to whiz about crazily, in every direction, all around us. Bzzz, izzz, bzzz, izzz. Two bees attack me, committing suicide in my neck. It feels like a hot knife has pierced my skin. I scream out in pain, and Abu Ghayeb comes running. He sits me down and extends my head backward as he tries to remove their stingers with his fingernails. He covers the wound with his other hand to try and stop the smell of the poison from spreading as that could enrage the other bees.
He smiles when he notices my tears, and says, “Immunity; this will give you immunity.”
He can think of no other solution to try and calm things down. He therefore resorts to using the bellows. He sprays the bees, and they calm down after a while. The thieving bees, however, continue to assault the weaker hive. Abu Ghayeb eventually removes it to another part of the apiary and seals its entrance saying, “We’ll reopen it in a few hours’ time.”
He finally sits down beside me. The soldier sits down too. He has spent his time watching us. We both glance at him. He leans his chair back against the cloth of the rectangular tent. He is wearing a khaki uniform, so he merges into the khaki background behind him. All we can see of him now is his face, his two hands and the reflection from the metal part of his weapon.
Abu Ghayeb opens the bag of sugar candy and offers me a piece. “Why not?”
We share it to distract ourselves with the sweet taste beneath our tongues. He strikes his forehead. “It’s all my fault.”
“How?”
“Last month, I didn’t feed all the colonies at the same time. The other thing I didn’t take into account was that I should have fed the strong colonies first, and then the weaker ones. Only now have I realized my mistake.”
He helps himself to another piece of candy. “One of the factors that contribute to thieving is when the bees feel they’ve been cheated. I must have distributed the food unequally amongst the different colonies. Or, maybe I left one of the hives uncovered when I was examining it. That was when the thieving bees became aware of the amount of stored honey the other colony had.”
An energetic bee starts circling around his face. It is trying to steal a lick of the candy he chews. We check on the hive that he has moved away before we leave the apiary. The battle has resulted in the decimation of the weaker colony and the death of most of its members.
My aunt’s husband bows his head at this grievous loss.
Umm Mazin has taken her nine lives and left us.
The same two policemen accompany her back to collect her affairs from the flat. She says her goodbyes to everyone with bitterness as she mutters, “Numerous were my friends when my days were treacle, now that my good fortune has dried up, away they trickle.”
After she asks for my aunt’s help in finding a buyer for
her flat, the first policeman then takes her away. He gets her a taxi. She has to leave for good. The investigating officer had been prepared to let her stay. She, however, refused to sign any documents stating that she will renounce her practice. The police officer therefore ordered her to leave the city, and to refrain from harming anyone else. She decided to return to Hilla, the city of her birth. She felt obliged to drag her servant along. She was afraid that Badriya would starve if she abandoned her. The second policeman stayed behind. He gathered up all that had been left in the fifth floor flat. He collected the dried plants, the bottles of liquid, the potions, the jars of honey, and the talismans. Then he burned them inside a big barrel in the parking lot, next to Saad’s salon.
I decide to spend the evening cleaning Ilham’s flat. It still contains a large amount of dried herbs, spread out on a plastic sheet on the floor. Handfuls of colored powders lie on one side, while dark-colored sticks and paler ones lie on the other side. In the center are collections of seeds, leaves, and hairy roots. Scattered around them are crystals and earthen lumps. Strips of acid are laid out in one spot, and a random arrangement of solid masses is laid out in another. A fistful of cactus needles is stacked in the corner. There are mounds of a yellow powder stacked in alternating waves of sulfur. I recognize the plant called “the Earth’s bellybutton.” It is a perennial shrub with fleshy, watery leaves. Its stems are long, with a constriction in the middle, giving it a trumpet-shaped appearance. Umm Mazin once told me that mixing it in a potion made from the skin of an old turtle would prolong youth. As for the clumps of carpenter grass, they have been compressed together into cubes. They are like tiny building bricks piled up on top of each other.
I settle into the chair to gaze at this scene for the last time. I am going to put it all in bin bags and send it to the incinerator. I open the window. The sound of the call to prayers from the Mosque of the Unknown Soldier intermingles with the multicolored compositions spread out in front of me. The dried plants respond to the sunset. The rays of light from the setting sun disperse themselves harmoniously amidst the herbs. I submerge myself in the scene to the point of stupor. I am aroused by the sound of a voice calling my name. It is as though I am in a large hotel where someone has walked past me, carrying a black notice board. It has my name written on it in white chalk, and a small brass bell dangles from its side. It is being rung to attract my attention by a young bellboy wearing a Syrian fez. Suddenly, I am awakened by a persistent knocking on the door. I get up to answer it. “Adel! What’re you doing here?”
Absent: A Novel Page 19