The Sand Fish

by Maha Gargash

  “That’s what you think,” squeaked a mousy-haired lad. “She talks to invisible people all the time.”

  “Yeah,” added a pink-cheeked boy. “And she has got smelly things in her house.”

  “Not only that,” Faraj said, his voice beaming with knowledge. “She turned her son into a dog.”

  Noora rolled her eyes with exaggerated surprise. “A dog?” The waves of the sea certainly lapped a strong imagination into their minds. She was about to laugh when she noticed Faraj’s bottom lip flip to his jaw in a scowl.

  “That son! From outside he looks like a person but inside he’s really a dog. She even took away his tongue.”

  Finally, Noora laughed. “Oh, a dog that can’t speak or bark.”

  Now the inside of Faraj’s mouth bloomed into a gleaming hoop. “Laugh if you want,” he said, “but we’ve watched her. She’s the master; he’s the dog.”

  “Dur-Mamad the dog!” the pink-cheeked boy mocked. “When she wants water, she raises her arm and he runs to get it.”

  “And when…,” began a third boy before Faraj signaled him to be quiet.

  “There he is,” whispered Faraj.

  Noora and Sager followed his glance. Dur-Mamad was farther up the slant they were on. His nest of grizzled hair disappeared behind a rock as he stooped to pick something up. Noora turned back to the boys and sighed, amused at their childish minds, wondering why they had dropped to their knees like cautious mountain cats.

  “Attack!” cried Faraj.

  His voice bounced off the sheer cliff faces, and the boys darted toward Dur-Mamad screaming insults. Noora and Sager were about to run after them when they heard the donkey’s bray of panic. It lashed the air with a sharp kick and dashed the other way.

  “The honey,” Sager cried and leaped at the donkey, clamping his arms around its mane. Noora plucked its ears and hissed a soft word of comfort. But the donkey would not listen. It kicked once more and pulled them with its weight. They staggered and let go.

  Noora’s mouth dropped open as she turned back to the boys. They’d turned into an army of ruffians, closing in fast on Dur-Mamad. They were hurling stones at him. One caught his calf; another chipped his arm.

  She and Sager rushed to help him, a middle-aged man who had braced himself for what was to come. He curled into the ground as the jumble of boys landed on him. Noora cringed as she watched them pull his hair and pound his back.

  “Get off him.” It was intended as a bold shout, but Sager’s voice cracked between heaves of breath.

  She ran as quickly as she could but had to stop when a thorn lodged deep in the softness between her toes. All the while she kept her eyes glued to the unfolding cruelty. Faraj was trying to flip Dur-Mamad over, to create a hollow into which his bullying army could wiggle, pinch the man’s cheeks, and poke his nose or eyes.

  But Sager was there before they could do that. He seized Faraj by the shoulders and, pulling him up, slapped him across a cheek. Faraj fell onto the gravel.

  By the time Noora reached them, the boys had wilted into submission as Sager dared them to take him on, confirming his strength with a thrust of the chest. “What devil stirred you?” he said, and walked back to Faraj. “Are you a creation of God?”

  Faraj looked up at Sager, shook his head, and spat. “He’s a freak. And, anyway, he likes us to play with him.”

  “You call this playing?” Noora scolded, and turned to include the other boys. “Throwing stones at the man, punching him, pulling his hair like that? Look what you’ve done to him.” She threw her arm toward Dur-Mamad, but he wasn’t there. She scanned the mountain. Nothing. Dur-Mamad had slipped away as quietly as a spirit.

  Faraj pointed an accusing finger at Sager. “You slapped me!”

  “And he’ll slap you again!” Noora snapped, and puffed her annoyance at the boys’ rounded eyes of anticipation. There was no guilt in them. She wasn’t sure what was infuriating her more: Faraj’s rude boldness or the boys’ eager whispers of cheer for their leader’s bravery.

  “He has no right to slap me. He’s not my father,” shouted Faraj.

  Noora ignored his whine and turned to the boys. “You are cowards, all of you.”

  Sager joined her. With his chest pushed out, he took a few menacing steps toward them. “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” he growled.

  The boys retreated with bulging eyes.

  “Get out of my sight before I twist your ears one by one until they fall off.”

  A small boy cupped his ears and scampered past Sager and Noora. The others followed, fleeing toward the village. Faraj scrambled to his feet and, with a tear-stained face, scampered down the mountain.

  Sager and Noora kept the scowls plastered to their faces as they watched the boys kick up a trail of dust in a panic of skids and slips. Noora wondered what joy they had gotten out of terrorizing the wretched Dur-Mamad. Wasn’t the harshness of their mountains enough? Maybe her father was right. Maybe they had turned wild from all that mixed blood.

  She could hear their shrill objections long after the dust had settled, long after they were tucked safely in the village. Only Faraj had stopped at a safe distance from them just under Zobaida’s hill—by the donkey. “I’m telling my father on you,” he yelled. “And he’ll beat you up and never let you come to our village again.” And with that, he wrenched the yirz out of its rope holding and threw it as far as he could.

  Sager and Noora gasped and dashed down.

  He pulled free the water skin and emptied it into the dry earth. Then he flung it in the air.

  “Stop it!”

  Faraj would not. With a final tug of revenge, he pulled loose the bowl of honey. He dipped his paw and clutched the comb, raised it to the air like the blanched skull of the nadba. Then, with a final smirk of defiance, he howled his victory: “Aooo!”

  Noora groaned. “No wood, no honey” she said, and bent over to pick up the water skin. “We’ve made this journey for nothing, haven’t we?” She looked up at her brother, his arm clasped tight around the donkey’s mane. “I mean, what kind of children are these?” she said.

  “They’re the kind who just want to wreck everything,” he mumbled, and a vein throbbed in his temple. “Spoiled, left to grow up like animals.”

  “Well, we can’t just ignore it all,” said Noora. “I mean, this Faraj boy, you said he’s the village sheikh’s son, this…this…Sheikh Khaled. Isn’t he the wise sheikh who is supposed to settle troubles? Well, maybe he should settle this trouble—a big one, I think, ganging up on that wretched man, throwing our things like that, stealing our honey. We must see this sheikh-father of his and complain.”

  Sager shook his head and let out a resigned groan. “What’s the point? The honey’s gone.”

  “You get stung and they gulp the sugar. That’s not fair.” She threw her arms in the air, opened her chest to the sky. She was about to screech her aggravation when she spotted Zobaida and the son peering from their hill. “They’re looking at us,” she whispered, and, dropping her arms, she began brushing the dust off her dress.

  Zobaida disappeared into her hut, but her son rushed down toward them with the enthusiasm of a child. As he drew nearer, Noora thought he might pounce on them, and she instinctively stepped back. But Dur-Mamad stopped abruptly and began hissing his hellos, a large grin shrinking the whites of his eyes. His complexion was the color of soot. Dull as a foggy night, even the wobbly curls of his salt-and-pepper hair could not throw a shimmer into that face.

  Dur-Mamad tried to communicate some information with haphazard flings of his arms. When she and Sager did not understand, he took a step forward and kissed Sager’s shoulder. Then he kissed the donkey’s forehead and tugged it up the hill, indicating that they should follow.

  10

  Dur-Mamad clutched Sager’s wrist and led him in. Then he walked back out and indicated to Noora that she should follow. Once she was in Zobaida’s hut, a whiff of rotting grass, old skin, and toenails assaulted her nose just as
Dur-Mamad sealed the entrance with a thin board, leaving only a sliver of light.

  “Stinky in here,” said Noora. “Why did he shut us in?”

  Sager shushed her. “Show manners—we’re guests here.”

  She fidgeted and shifted on her feet when something scraped her forehead. Noora lashed at it. She had crossed from bright light to dimness and had to blink hard before she could make out the dried plants hanging upside down from the roof.

  “Well, where is she?” Noora whispered.

  “I don’t know,” said Sager, as he settled on the floor on folded legs. “Just sit and wait.”

  She sat. “What does she want?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They waited, and as Noora’s eyes adjusted to the shadowy interior, she yawned and let her gaze drift to a row of jars and bottles lining the far wall. Were those squiggles dead sand-racer snakes? Her lips fell open in disgust. “Erkh. Did you see what’s in those jars?” In another jar, she was sure she could pick out the tips of the tails of mountain scorpions squished together. “Erkh,” she repeated. “This place gives me the shivers. Let’s get out as soon as we can.”

  She heard Zobaida before Sager could respond. From the darkness the healer appeared, shuffling in on her bottom from a doorway that led into another room they had not seen. Her clothes rustled and there was a clicking sound from a mysterious necklace. She settled cross-legged in front of them like a dark queen about to attend to the woes of her subjects. With her head tilted to one side and her eyes half-closed, she waited.

  Sager cleared his throat and said, “Your son brought us here.”

  “Yes, but you were coming to see me anyway, weren’t you?” Her raspy voice flowed like a lethargic current.

  “We were, but now there’s no point. We can’t pay you.”

  “Yes, because that rascal stole your honey.”

  What witch-blood ran in Zobaida’s veins that she should know so much? Noora’s head pulsed with the thought just as Zobaida shifted and stretched her legs. The beam of light from the doorway fell on her chest, on the source of the clicking sound. That was no mysterious necklace! It was her talismans, dangling from loops sewn to the edges of her shayla. Noora scrunched her nose at the teeth, claws, shells, and tiny bundles of cloth. She did not want to know what was in them.

  Zobaida swiveled her head, and Noora dropped her gaze, only to be startled by Zobaida’s deformed feet. From the ankles down, they curved into crescents that had none of the beauty of the moon.

  “You know, my mother tried to straighten them when I was small, but it didn’t work,” Zobaida said, and snapped open her eyes. Both her seeing, black eye and her blind, blue eye joined in an intense stare at Noora. “She would pin me down with her knees and place heavy rocks on my feet. How it hurt!”

  Noora felt the heat rise to her face. “I didn’t mean to…”

  “Never mind all that,” Zobaida said. “Masha’ Allah, you have done a good thing today. You are the first people ever to defend my son.” She sighed and clicked her tongue. “So helpless, life hasn’t been kind to him, giving him a tongue that moves without purpose and ears that can’t catch the sound of the wind.”

  Sager muttered something about only doing what was right when she silenced him with a raised arm.

  “No! What you did was something special. Dur-Mamad is my only son—as valuable to me as my liver. Even his father wouldn’t have stood up for him the way you did. He abandoned us, you know, when Dur-Mamad was just a toddler.” A growl crawled at the back of her throat, and she raised one of the clinging teeth to her mouth and blew a whisper over it. “To Moosa, you scoundrel, wherever you may be. May this tooth blunt your vanity and make you feel no better than a filthy dog.” Then she burped and slackened her eyelids. “Now, how can I help you?”

  Noora and Sager were too stunned to speak. And for a while, the only sound that filled the hut was their muffled breathing.

  “Well?”

  Sager coughed and released their predicament in a rattle of words.

  “Yes, I understand.” Zobaida nodded. “You have your home, but it’s no fortress of safety now that your father has become mad.” She had turned serene, almost motherly.

  “We don’t know what to do,” Sager confessed.

  “I can make you a potion, insha’ Allah, that will make him gentle. But the madness will always be there, this you must understand.” And with that, she pulled out two stones from behind her back and clapped them together.

  The board slid open. Light poured in, and Dur-Mamad hopped into the hut. Had he heard or felt her call? Noora did not have time to mull it over, for she was struck dumb by the unfolding special language of mother and son, which left her open-mouthed and feeling useless.

  There was Zobaida’s head lifting to the roof. There was her tongue slipping out in three sharp thrusts. There was Dur-Mamad reaching out for the shriveled plants she had indicated. A punch of a fist into her palm sent Dur-Mamad scurrying to fetch a mortar and pestle. When he returned, Zobaida twisted her wrists in the air, shaping an imaginary bottle he had to bring.

  She was about to make the potion. The meeting was about to end. Noora felt cheerful at the thought.

  But then a change washed over Zobaida. She had just begun to pluck the crumbled leaves from their stems when the black and blue of her eyes rolled to the back of her head. She dropped the plants and stared ahead through milky orbs. How eerie she looked! Her shoulders began to shake in a succession of tremors that wiggled all the way to her calloused feet. Were the jinn crossing into her world? Noora looked to Sager for an answer, but he was sucked into Zobaida’s trance.

  “I’ve never seen you before,” Zobaida said. “Am I right when I say that you have come from the deep mountains?”

  Sager nodded, even though his eyes remained glazed as he followed the healer’s swaying head.

  “We are Ibrahim Al-Salmi’s children,” Noora said sharply. She had to break the daze her brother was in. “We live a day’s walk away.”

  The tremors stopped and Zobaida’s head fell to her chest. She began mumbling into her burka. Each word blurred the next, and just as Noora tried to pick out what she was saying, Zobaida coughed back to earth.

  A flutter of blinks and the black and blue of her eyes bobbed back into place. Her head wobbled slightly, and she pressed the ground with her palms, as if making sure it was still there, before addressing Sager. “You have more problems than just your father, don’t you?”

  “Everyone has problems,” Sager mumbled.

  “But there is one particular problem that jabs at your heart, isn’t there?” She fumbled for one of the shells and began stroking it. “You have now become the man of the family and your biggest concern is your sister.”

  Sager dropped his gaze and said, “It’s true I worry about her. But then, what brother doesn’t worry about his sister?”

  Noora crossed her arms high over her chest and grunted. They were talking about her as if she wasn’t there. Where was this leading to?

  “She refuses to listen to you,” Zobaida said. “One thing you must know is that she’s different—headstrong, wild. But then, that’s all right.” She chuckled. “I’m different from other women, too.”

  Noora scowled at the witch’s attempt to spin her humor on the seriousness that had gripped the air. “I’m not so different, khalti,” she said, and wondered whether she should be calling her aunty at all.

  Zobaida stayed focused on Sager, releasing her eyes in an unremitting prowl over his face. “You see it was written that you would come for one problem but instead get the solution to another—the hidden problem that’s eating up your mind.” Zobaida touched her temple with a finger. “Your sister is growing too old—unmarried—and you don’t know what to do.”

  Noora objected with a squeaky gasp.

  Zobaida hushed her with a wave of the arm, as if she were no bigger than a mosquito, and continued to address Sager. “You want the best for her, but of course it’s
unthinkable that you try to find a husband for your sister. It’s just not done, to throw her name around like that. Shameful, wouldn’t you say? I mean, it’s the man who picks the wife, not the other way round. But I can help. You see, I was told what’s best for her. I was given the solution.”

  Did she say solution? Noora wanted to storm out of the hut, end this strange visit without giving it any more thought. But her breath thickened with curiosity and her limbs felt heavy. She remained where she was, stuck in a clammy air of anticipation.

  “She must get married,” Zobaida declared.

  It was time to stop all this! “You don’t know anything about us,” Noora said. “You don’t know what we want.”

  “Let her talk,” Sager insisted.

  How easy it was to fool Sager. What would the witch say next?

  The witch threw in some praise. “I think you are lucky to have a brother who cares about you so much. Masha’ Allah, he is a brave and gallant brother.”

  Noora shifted her weight as a renewed urgency to flee washed over her. She gulped at the sluggish air and said, “But this meeting has nothing to do with me. We came for our father, not me.” She turned to Sager. “Tell her, Sager.”

  “If you don’t want to hear what she has to say, you can wait outside,” he said.

  Tiny tingles nipped at Noora’s face, and the damp stench in the hut seemed stronger than when they had first entered. “Maybe I will,” she said.

  Noora got up and marched to the doorway. There, she paused to throw one final glance at them. Sager was waiting patiently, a blank stare fixed to the ground. The witch, on the other hand, was watching her intently, with a gleam of triumph in her eyes—both the seeing and unseeing.

  11

  Sweet girl,” Moza called. “Come here.”

  Noora marched into the bedroom. Just like the living room, the floor was covered with palm-frond matting. Two mattresses were rolled in one corner, and above them, on a nail wedged into a gap in the wall, hung one of Moza’s dresses. In the other corner sat Moza’s padlocked tin chest.