The Sand Fish

by Maha Gargash

  The bucket tumbled down the cistern, landing with a dull thump at the bottom. And then it journeyed back up—no spill, no overfill. As Noora listened to that sound, more rock in it than water, she felt her rage return. Why was she waiting for Sager? Without another thought, she rose and started climbing back up to the plateau to make her way home.

  Let him carry all four water skins on his own!

  4

  That was how it went when boys and girls, brothers and sisters, grew up to become men and women. Their worlds separated.

  By the time Noora reached the edge of the plateau, the sun had leaped into the sky, bleached the mountains, and crusted the earth. It was as hot as the fury she was still carrying.

  Noora paused to look down her valley. There stood the four stone huts that made up her home: the two living-sleeping rooms, the goats’ and chickens’ shelter, and the store. How lonely they looked.

  She ran her eyes farther down beyond the huts to the bottom of the valley, where a small hill rose. Its side was smooth, and stuck to it were the ruins that had once been her great-grandfather’s dwelling. Under the dazzle of the morning sun, she could barely make out their outline. The rough oval blocks were camouflaged so effectively, swallowed, as it were, that they became a part of the barren hill to which they were attached.

  She knew every chip and crack in the weathered blocks that made up those ruins. She and Sager had played there when they were younger. It was their childhood watchtower, where they made up their games: hiding and appearing, building and demolishing. They pretended the blocks of stone could shield them from all the big, dangerous creatures that roamed the mountains. There were wolves, which they sometimes heard but never actually saw. There were leopards, too, which they imagined slinking around the huts in the dark of night, and the snakes and scorpions, of course. Her brother was different then. He used to laugh and shout. They used to laugh and shout—together.

  And now Sager was drawing a line that would keep them apart. He wanted to trace that same line found in every society of the Hararees. But why did he have to do that? They lived in an isolated patch of the mountains. They belonged to none of those communities.

  Noora marched down to the huts. It was only when she saw the smoke spiraling from the outdoor hearth that she began to calm down. Her father was lighting the fire to make breakfast. Preparing the food was a woman’s job, but her father, with his own set of rules, embraced the acts of brewing coffee and baking bread as if they were the most natural tasks for a man of the mountains. It had always been that way. Her father, Ibrahim, mixed up the male-female roles so that they were interchangeable. And that was how he had brought them up, long before the voices entered his head and made him unpredictable.

  She noticed the change in him soon after her mother’s death (even though she now suspected the madness had been in him much earlier). He was sitting in the middle of the valley, stiff as a stone, his mouth mumbling words she could not make sense of. She had felt invisible as she tried to get his attention. His eyes had remained glazed as he slipped into that other world to confer with the whispers in his head.

  Noora skipped over the last bits of rubble and, stepping close to her father, looked deep into his eyes. She whispered God’s protection, “Masha’ Allah, masha’ Allah,” and quickly decided he was alone. No voices ruffled the clarity of his hazel eyes.

  How she loved his eyes, made lighter as they sat in the smudged black outline of his kohl. There were little gold specks in them that glittered the way water did when the sun fell in it. She preferred their energetic gleam to the murky green of her eyes, which were more like the sludgy mess left behind in the little ponds of stagnant water where the tadpoles lived.

  “What is it?” he asked, when he noticed her staring at his face.

  “Nothing,” she said, and stepped back.

  Little sparks flew into the air as he fanned the fire. “Hungry?”

  She nodded, sinking onto her haunches and grinning. Sager could lecture all he wanted, but her father was still of sound mind, capable of taking charge of their home. Her gaze drifted toward the scurrying goats and chickens, released from their night shelter. The donkey was near her hut. It hauled out its teeth and yanked a yellow clump of grass lodged in the dry earth. She could hear her other, much younger, brothers, Aboud and Hamoud, playing in the ruins. The normality of the scene filled her with warmth—until she turned back to her father.

  Ibrahim was gazing north, at a distant peak. She knew it well; that was Jebel Hnaish. The vertical dome spiraled upward just like the snake it was named after. Her tribe, the Al-Salmi tribe, used to live there. Now all that remained on its flat summit were the stone skeletons of their abandoned homes.

  Jebel Hnaish was part of Ibrahim’s tale of loss. He had narrated it to her when she was a little girl and had asked why she had no cousins, uncles, or aunts. “We are all that is left of the Al-Salmis,” he had told her. “A long time before you were born, a vengeful drought came to the village our people lived in, up there on Jebel Hnaish. The well and underground sources dried up, and when their livestock died, the tribe could not do anything but wander out, to find water. The able set out, and for days they traveled long distances.”

  How intrigued she had been. In her little girl’s mind, she had pictured the long procession of men sliding down the rough mountain face, journeying into the unknown. She had imagined the group staggering with thirst, having no option but to lick the dew off the morning plants.

  She shook the memory out of her head, sprang up, and grabbed the earthen bowl off the low wall by the hearth. “Abbah,” she said. “Here’s the bowl, take the bowl.” She had to deter him. Whenever he spoke of their tribe’s defeat and cowardice, it threw him into a trance that lasted for days, broken only by bouts of bitter remembrances and a sinking depression. She scooped a ball of dough and lifted it to his face. “Abbah, let’s bake the bread.”

  He ignored her, kept his eyes fixed on the mountain. “The mountain can be deceptive,” he said. “What may look like no more than plain rocks and stones could very well hold blessings—water, deep, deep down. But our tribe could not find it.”

  She swiveled in front of him, tried to break Jebel Hnaish’s hold on him. But it was too late. The golden specks in his eyes had stopped moving.

  “Let me tell you what happened to our tribe.” His brows furrowed with importance and he added a solemn nod. “Our tribe was destroyed by one man, one selfish man: Ahmad Al-Salmi—that was his name. He was their leader, and he led them to hell. He found a well and his thirst was so great that he immediately went toward it.” Ibrahim paused to throw a curse. “God show him the flames of hell.”

  “He’s gone now.”

  “That stupid, selfish man just helped himself to the water, without thinking of the consequences. Do you know what happens to people who take someone else’s water, Noora?”

  “Yes, abbah, they get killed,” she said, and pointed to the fire. “Look, look, the embers are ready. We have to bake the bread, quickly before the fire dies.”

  Ibrahim would not look. “Ahmad Al-Salmi understood the law of the Hararees: the touching of someone else’s water without permission only brings tragedy. Ahmad Al-Salmi did not respect the law.”

  Maybe if she hurried him on. “And then he was killed by the Al-Hatemi tribe, who owned the well, and so was everyone else who had touched that water. And the rest escaped and ran back to the village.”

  “They ran to the village like mangy dogs,” he said, spitting at the mountain. The clump landed in the hearth with a sizzle. “But what was the use? Revenge was going to follow them. The Al-Hatemis arrived with angry eyes and raised arms that held sharpened yirzes.” Ibrahim’s arm was up now, clutching a make-believe yirz, the small-headed ax that all mountain men carried to chop wood or to use in battle.

  “Instead of fighting, they ran.” He waved his arm at Jebel Hnaish. “The Al-Salmis left their homes and ran. They were chased all the way to the sea. I hope th
ey drowned in that sea—cowards, dirty dogs with no shame, filthy animals.” His voice was losing its strength, turning into a croak that was drowning in humiliation. “They chose defeat over an honorable death in the name of protecting their roots. Imagine, Noora, they left their homes!” His arm remained suspended above his head and his jowls melted into his neck. The only movement came through the flicker of his eyes.

  Noora thought he might collapse, so crushed did he look. “Why didn’t the Al-Hatemis attack us as well?” she asked. Of course, she knew that part of the story, too, but she was trying to bring him back home, to the people who loved him: his family.

  At first, she thought it worked. Ibrahim shook his head as if waking from an odd dream. “Because our home was so far away,” he answered simply. “You see, the Al-Hatemis didn’t think to look here. They didn’t know that we were Al-Salmis, and they certainly didn’t know we had our own source of water. By the time news reached my grandfather about what had happened, it was too late. The tribe was scattered. The Al-Hatemis were victorious.” He pointed to the ruins. “You know my grandfather lived just over there.”

  “I know, I know. Aren’t you hungry, abbah?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Hungry? Breakfast?” She shoved the bowl back into his limp hands. Yes, he was recovering now. Yes, he was going to bake the bread now. Or so she thought.

  He let the bowl slip out of his hands and crash to the ground. And then he wandered away.

  Instead of following him, Noora rushed to salvage what dough she could before the earth swallowed it completely. Two, maybe three, pieces of bread, she reckoned as she spread the dough onto a thin, metal pan and placed it in the hearth.

  Grainy bread: that’s what they would have to eat this morning.

  5

  She wanted the day to end.

  No sooner had she stitched the tears on her dress and serwal than she plunged into a whirl of frustrated vigor. She felt her hand tug too hard as she milked the goats and sweep too broad as she cleaned the huts. By late afternoon, she was pulling out weeds from their plot. And still the sun blazed, casting a layer of wobbling haze over the rocks and stones of the valley. The heat made everything move slower. And Noora remembered her mother.

  “The stones, it’s all because of the stones.” That’s what Fatma had said over and over again, whenever she spoke of the madness that had plagued so many of her husband’s ancestors. “All those scalding rays,” her mother had insisted, “bounce off the stones and, over the years, burn the mind. It made them all live in their heads and share secrets with voices no one else could hear. Thank God, your father wasn’t affected.”

  “Thank God he wasn’t affected while you were alive,” Noora mumbled into her chest as she raked the earth to root out a particularly stubborn weed. As a girl, Noora had not believed her mother. Now she wondered whether it was true. There was her father, farther down the valley, as still as the boulder he was sitting on. And there were the rocks and stones attacking him from every direction. The sun’s hammering rays fell hot on her head, and in a sudden panic she rushed to take cover.

  Noora shifted the panel of wood that sealed the entrance to the store and collapsed in a corner between the small bushels of maize and onions harvested from their plot. Half a sack of flour, a tin of ghee, and a basket of dates sat in the other corner, leaning against a few pots, pans, and earthen containers. Every few months Sager and her father made the journey to the coastal village of Nassayem for those supplies in exchange for the wood they collected from the mountains. This time Sager would probably have to go alone. And then her heart softened as she realized the duty that was beginning to weigh heavy on his shoulders. Besides, she couldn’t stay angry at him forever.

  A fat, green fly landed on her nose. She flicked it away and reached out to shift the sack of flour, behind which sat an oblong basket. Lifting the cover, she dipped her hand through the mass of cut-up squares and triangles of fabric used to patch the rips in their clothing. She ran her fingers along the bottom, feeling its rough weave, passing the blunt teeth of the comb she no longer used, and flinching at her reflection in the grainy surface of the hand mirror that went with it. She looked like a young woman, not the girl she still felt she was. From heightened cheekbones, her face extended into a slender nose that seemed to pull everything else to the sky. She wiggled it, and the pout of her peach lips quivered like the petals of a dainty flower in a breath of desert air.

  She rummaged once more, finally finding the knotted bundle of stones she was looking for. It was her collection of pretty pebbles picked from the mountains by Sager, all especially chosen for her.

  After undoing the knot, she tumbled onto her tummy and anchored her head on her palms for a leisurely inspection. Even in the dimness of the store, they shone. They were smooth, special, some pale, flashing lines of brilliant color—saffron, lime—others dark, speckled in gold and silver, dancing like a watery night.

  Yes, she couldn’t stay angry at him forever.

  A yawn crept from the back of her throat. Her eyelids slackened, her head slumped into her sinking elbows, and she fell into a deep sleep.

  It was the fat, green fly that woke her up with its hysterical buzz, or so she thought—until she heard the howl, which was eerie yet familiar. Then silence, but her eyes snapped open anyway. And no matter how wide they swelled, she could not see a thing in the deep black that surrounded her. Only the musty smell of dust and old fronds cleared her sleep-drenched mind. She was still in the store.

  She stumbled to the doorway, wondering why nobody had woken her, feeling irritated that nobody had worried about her absence, when she heard the howl again. Softer now, a human sound coming from an animal—or was it the other way around?

  Sometime during her nap, clouds had gathered and drawn a mighty blanket that swallowed the stars, the moon. Noora’s eyes remained wide open as she walked past the huts and toward where the sound was coming from. And that is when she saw the shadow that was her father. He was down in the valley, perched rigid on the same boulder as before. How long had he been sitting there?

  “Abbah, why are you out here?” Noora asked, when she was close enough to speak softly so that she would not jolt him.

  The moan he made was part confusion, part grief, a whimper that reminded Noora of a pained animal. “Gone,” he mumbled, “all gone now. I’m all alone here.”

  “No one has gone,” she said, trying to pick out his expression in the darkness. “We’re all here, near you. We have always been here.”

  Ibrahim crossed his arms and let his head drop to his chest. “Gone,” he repeated, “all gone.”

  Noora touched his arm. “Let’s go back to the hut, sleep.”

  Ibrahim’s voice evaporated to a soft whisper. “You, you, you…” And his head began to sway from side to side, like a rumbling rock rolling down and up, again and again, along the sides of a smooth ravine.

  “We’re here,” she repeated. “We’re he—”

  And she jumped back with a squeal as her father flung his arms in the air. “Why did you leave your homes?” he yelled. “Why didn’t you defend your honor?”

  A flare of lightning blanched the sky, caught the gold in his eyes. He looked haunted, hunted. He was struggling, she could see that, struggling against those devious voices. They tortured his mind, made him imagine things, made him forget who he was: her father, the one she loved, the one who pampered her when she was a girl, the one who let her do as she wanted as a woman. And he was straining to chase them away. And she had to help him now.

  Noora stepped back, just out of his reach—just in case—and prepared to be brave. Once he understood what was happening to him, he would be able to fight those voices. With a thick swallow, she squeezed the fear out of her voice and said, “Abbah, it is the stones. That’s what is making you so.”

  Silence.

  At least he stopped waving his arms. “Your brains are tired,” she persisted. “You see, the stones take the heat and point it
at your head. And then this happens.”

  Ibrahim hunched his shoulders and pulled up his knees. Like a frightened mouse, he curled his body into a ball.

  Encouraged, Noora took a few steps closer and continued with the firmness of a mother advising her child. “You have got to avoid the heat that comes out of the hot rocks. It goes right through your eyes and to the back of your head, where it does all kinds of bad things.”

  He was breathing quickly, rocking back and forth. How vulnerable he seemed.

  She rested her hand on his shoulder. And that was when he turned.

  Ibrahim grabbed her wrist. It was a crushing grip and she shrieked with the surprise of it. Before she could do anything, he leaped to his feet and seized her hair with his other hand.

  “Who do you think you are?” he shouted, shaking her like an empty sack. “Talking to me this way?”

  Noora tried to wriggle free, tried to unclasp his fingers from her hair. All she managed was to kick up the gravel under her feet. He was just too strong.

  “I know you want to betray me, too,” he sneered. “More Al-Salmis betraying their own people!”

  “No,” she bawled, when another flash of lightning caught those dots in his eyes, throbbing in furious circles.

  “Tuff!” He spat at her. “You lie!” He pushed her onto the gravel and hollered at the sky. “Why is there so much betrayal around me?”

  Noora knew she should escape, but the shock of his brutality numbed her. She turned away from him, coiled like a snail shrinking into its shell, and twisted the pain out of her wrist and rubbed the sting off her scalp, surprised to find her hair was still rooted in place.