The Sand Fish

by Maha Gargash

  It was only when the village mosque came into view that she heard the bridal trills. Women and children waited by the slope that marked the end of the rocks and the beginning of the sandy shore.

  Gulsom grunted her satisfaction. She shouted her enthusiasm as they swarmed around Noora. “Make way. Give the bride space to breathe!” The women rounded their mouths and vibrated their tongues once again. And that is when Noora’s panic began.

  Within the trills and swirl of well-wishers and the heat of excited children tugging at her abaya, she felt her stomach twist and a sour taste stick to the back of her throat. Her journey was coming to an end—or was it just beginning? Whichever way she thought of it, it was not talk anymore. It was happening—to her—and it made her head feel light.

  “We’re nearly there,” Sakina whispered to Noora. “Time to cover.” She loosened her arm and veiled Noora’s face with the shayla.

  Through the slits and weave, the sun dimmed and the mountains turned gray, and Noora caught her first glimpse ever of the sea. So much water! It stretched out as far as she could see, so blue, till it was darker than the sky. This was a never-ending pool of mystery. She tightened her clasp around Sakina’s arm.

  “Don’t be scared,” Sakina said, her voice trembling with emotion, like a mother who was about to lose her daughter. “Just look straight ahead and one step at a time, even in life.”

  “But that water,” Noora mumbled, as the grainy sand seeped into her slippers. “I have to ride on it, and it just goes on and on.”

  Sager waited with the new husband by the rowboat that was to carry her to the larger jelbut vessel. When Gulsom had described Jassem the pearl merchant as a “mature man,” Noora assumed he would be her father’s age. But he looked at least ten years older—fifty years old or so. There he was, shining in his white dishdasha and neatly turbaned ghitra. He stood straight, his chest and tummy pushed out, full of the confidence of the rich.

  As their slow plod drew them closer to the shore, she saw a third man, bending over to steady the rowboat against the laps of the waves. Under his ghitra, his hair hung in silky strings around his chin. He looked a few years older than Sager, perhaps twenty or so.

  A flurry of waves rocked the boat. “Hold it steady, Hamad,” Jassem instructed the young man. “Now, let’s move on. We have to take advantage of this wind that’s picking up.”

  What terror! She had to climb into that tiny boat. The thumps in her chest muffled the voices around her, and under her veil, she wheezed and panted like a weary dog. It was worse than when her father had attacked her! At least she knew then that she feared his madness. But what was this dread? Was it from the deepening water in front of her or something else? As Jassem and Sager reached out for her hands to help her onto the boat, she pulled back.

  “What’s wrong with her?” said Jassem.

  She felt Gulsom’s arm hug her waist and nudge her ahead. “Don’t be silly!” Gulsom whispered. “Keep your dignity! Haven’t you learned anything from us?” Her voice had the sting of a bee.

  Noora glanced at the puzzled faces of the crowd around her. She hated that she was making a scene—it showed weakness. But she couldn’t help it. An alarm she could not understand was keeping her from boarding that boat. Or was she clinging to some last hope that someone might save her?

  Gulsom’s arm shoved her forward. And that’s when Noora flopped into a bundle, buried her face in her palms, and rooted her weight to the sand. They would have to lift her to get her on that boat.

  “I come all this way and this is how she acts?” said Jassem. “Doesn’t she know how fortunate she is that I’m taking her away from all this…this…wretched poverty?”

  Then her brother spoke. “Let me talk to her.”

  Noora felt him kneel down next to her. His fingers made their way to her chin—so soft, so gentle—and raised her head.

  He pulled the shayla off her face, but when she tried to fix his gaze, his eyes would not stay still. They bounced up toward Jassem, then flitted to the crowd that huddled around them. He, too, seemed uncomfortable under their scrutiny. “You must go,” he said, turning back to her. “It’s all arranged. It’s done.”

  Hope vanished. She searched for some regret in his face, some emotion she could carry away with her, to think about when she was alone.

  “You are his now,” Sager whispered. “I can’t help you. Nor can anyone else. So…” He paused. “Stay safe.” He lowered his gaze to the ground and stamped a hasty kiss on her forehead.

  She closed her eyes tight and whispered into her burka, “Mustn’t expect much, mustn’t expect much.” With a light touch, she let the shayla slip back over her face. The sun dimmed again and she murmured, “Must be thankful, must be thankful.”

  As she willed herself to rise, she heard the sighs and mumbles around her. And the matchmakers’ words flooded her mind: “Must be obedient, must be obedient.”

  Noora gripped the sides of the rowboat as it bobbed over the bay. In the middle sat Hamad, with each stroke rowing them into deeper water. His eyes were large and serious, as if all the problems of the world were swimming deep in them.

  She sighed and let her eyes drift over Hamad’s shoulders to the other end of the boat. There was her husband, lifting his nose at the sheer cliff faces that clawed Nassayem’s bay. The sides of his nostrils hung like wings. Prickly hairs cascaded through the dark crevices, as if aching to take in the crisp morning air. What an off-putting nose! Under the sun, its thin point gleamed, and balanced on the tip sat a pair of round, metal-rimmed spectacles.

  She clutched the boat tighter and dropped her gaze into the water. Even through her veil, she could see all the way to the shining pebbles at the bottom. How deep was this water? Could she dip her arm and pick them up?

  A school of yellow fish quivered along the bottom, their pink stripes catching the light before they chased one another around a mossy rock. It was a world she was seeing for the first time, just like the one she was heading toward in a place called Wadeema.

  19

  The jelbut glided smoothly out of the bay. Noora listened to the muffled splatters that slapped its sides from the musty room belowdecks. She sat on a mattress that was to be her bedding, between two sacks of rice, a tin of ghee, and a couple of baskets of dates. It was the storeroom, and she was sharing it with Lateefa Bint-Majed.

  Lateefa was Jassem’s cousin and first wife. She had accompanied him on this journey to approve his choice of a new wife, and after just one visit to the matchmakers’ home, Lateefa, with a voice full of the dull rasp of two stones rubbed together, declared, “She will fit nicely in our household.”

  She must be roughly her husband’s age but looked a little older because of the pouches under her eyes and the chicken skin of her chin. All her youth lay in her thick hair, dyed orange with henna. The tassels at the ends of her funnel-shaped, gold earrings tinkled as she twirled the mass into plaits. “I think it will take us seven days or a little more to reach home.” Her spittle broke the specks of dust that floated in the air.

  “Yes, Ommi Lateefa,” said Noora.

  It was the first thing Lateefa had insisted on, that Noora call her Ommi Lateefa, Mother Lateefa. And Noora guessed that that’s how she saw herself: a mother figure to Jassem’s younger wives. Noora was the third wife. Lateefa had told her that Jassem’s second wife, Shamsa Bint-Juma Bin-Humaid, was about twenty-two years of age and that he had married her three years earlier.

  It was Jassem who had decided on their living quarters. They were to stay belowdecks, away from the crew’s curious eyes. They were to come up on deck for some fresh air for an hour in the morning and another at dusk.

  The noukhada, or skipper, shouted from above, “Coming to open sea!”

  Noora heard the stomps of the crew and wood creaking on wood, lumbering rumbles like old bones coming to life. The lateen sail whispered and fluffed into place, ready to take on the drive of the wind. The boat rose slightly, then dipped with a thump. Its ge
ntle sway on the bay’s flat water was changing.

  Again and again, it lifted and fell until Noora’s stomach started to do the same. She breathed deeply through her nose, but the smell of old timber, dust, and salt made her stomach heave and rumble some more. When she tried breathing through her mouth, the damp and dust mixed together and stuck to her tongue.

  Now the boat was rocking from side to side like the hips of an old mule. Every now and then, it catapulted toward the sky and dropped hard with a thud that shook the jelbut’s wooden hull. Noora swallowed repeatedly, but the sour trickle of nausea would not go away. It snaked up her throat until she felt she could not control it anymore.

  “I’m going to be sick,” she said.

  Jassem made a sour face and decided the living arrangement had to be changed. His wives were to be moved above deck, to the front. “Inconvenient, but necessary,” he said to Lateefa and, turning to Noora, added, “Lucky you didn’t mess up on the food. Up there, you will be all right. You must suck on a lime and let the wind cure you.” Jassem instructed Hamad to bring their mattresses up and to secure a low awning on one side. For privacy Jassem erected two wooden poles that were to hold a stiff piece of muslin. This was the screen that was to separate his wives from the crew.

  Once in the open air, Noora ignored Lateefa’s bickering about the bother of moving and concentrated on feeling better. She sucked on a lime and faced the wind. As she gulped the salty air, she felt the queasiness slowly lift.

  The wind stung her eyeballs, and she moistened them with a flutter of blinks before guiding them along the coastline of sheer cliffs and fragmented rocks that tumbled into the sea. Then she looked to the open blue, where sunken mountains rested, the first of which loomed large in front of them. Its rim seemed too thick to circle.

  She heard Jassem call out from the other side of the screen, “Devil’s Rock! Hold on tight, women!”

  Noora shivered with a new wave of anxiety. Lateefa had told her about that rock, how there were devils that lived under it to shake any passing vessel that squeezed its way through the passage between the cliffs and the monolith. Noora sank to her knees and mouthed a prayer. As they entered the passage, she felt the boat shudder. Certainly, something lived in that deep water, something invisible and horrible. An underwater twister was spinning them as if they were no heavier than a feather. And yet Lateefa remained unruffled. She sat as still as a mountain, cross-legged under the awning, her full body covered with a light blanket. She looked like a tent, her head the central pole and her thighs holding the ends of the weave taut.

  The lateen sail lost its shape, flapped and jerked, protested the wind that now seemed to be blowing from all directions. A gust lifted Noora’s abaya and sucked it over the barrier sheet and, right away, her plaits flew into chaos.

  From under the blanket, Lateefa shouted at her, “Tame that hair. You look like a wild animal.”

  So she could see! “It’s the wind, Ommi Lateefa,” Noora cried, holding her billowing shayla with one hand and bunching her unruly plaits (which the wind had loosened) with the other. “I can’t control it. My hair’s flying everywhere. And now, my abaya has gone, too.”

  “And speak properly!”

  It was not the first time Noora had heard those words. Ever since that one time Lateefa had met her at the matchmakers’ house, she had insisted that Noora drop her mountain accent.

  The tent hollered again. “Why do you talk funny anyway, clicking your words like that?”

  How could the older woman be thinking of straightening her words at a time like this? “That’s how we all talk, Ommi Lateefa.”

  “Well, you’ll have to start talking our way, you know. Otherwise every one will think you are stupid.”

  Noora didn’t answer. She was watching what those hidden devils could do. They were pulling the boat toward the rock. She tasted the sting of sickness once again as the boat grumbled, twisted, and creaked. Its sail jerked and she heard Jassem call, “More left steer!”

  Noora could not watch anymore. She curled into a ball and swallowed and swallowed. This was no time to get sick.

  Then, miraculously, the boat steadied and swayed forward. It seemed they had passed the grips of those devils and she could look up again. Peeking through her fingers, she spotted Lateefa’s blanket. Even it had slipped off with those last shakes, lying in a mass around the older woman’s hips. Lateefa was staring at it, her mouth a pout of displeasure. “How much of me must I sacrifice for others?” she said. “How much of me will be left in the end?”

  Noora didn’t answer. It was better to keep swallowing.

  The muslin sheet flapped open from behind her. Jassem peered and said, “Calm now. You can move about.” She looked up at him and caught his nostrils rising high. What a sight she must have been with her hair tangled and sneaking out from under her shayla to cover a sweaty face that was surely greener than her eyes. Still, he stretched his arm to her. “Come,” he said, “you can stand up now, and wash your face.”

  And for a moment, she forgot to swallow. With her hand clasped in his, she vomited on him.

  The wind eased, the boat steadied, Jassem went to get cleaned up, and Lateefa was once more under the blanket, watching the world through its rough fibers. She said nothing about the mess Noora had made on their husband, only continued to complain about her discomfort. “They call this a blanket? It’s so worn-out I can feel the wind through it. And this mattress under me, so thin I feel my bones are sinking into the wood.” Lateefa grunted. “Now I’m beginning to feel sick, too. Limes, water, now!” she cried. “Ehh, Bin-Surour!”

  As if expecting her order, Hamad’s arm popped through the corner of the sheet with a handful of limes and a porous pot of water, which he blindly hung on a beam. Lateefa pulled off the blanket and immediately started rinsing her mouth over the side of the boat. And that’s when Hamad’s arm entered their space again. This time, it was holding Noora’s abaya.

  Noora reached out to take it when the wind played its mischief again. It blew off her shayla and snatched the sheet out of Hamad’s fingers, flinging it into the sky.

  She faced him off guard and unveiled. She knew she had to look down, but her eyelids remained taut, holding the intensity in his unblinking eyes—sad and tender all at the same time. The moment was brief, but Noora felt it stretch like a sleepless night. It was only when she heard Lateefa’s thunderous hawk and spit over the side of the boat that she flinched and lifted her hands to her cheeks, blinking at the russet circles of bridal henna dyed in the middle of her palms. She was a married woman staring shamelessly at the face of another man.

  Noora was curious. Why had that Hamad boy stared at her so? She thought about his face, the pleas in his eyes. He was a stranger, and yet she felt connected to him in some way. He had that same look of desperation she was feeling. Maybe it was because his life belonged to Jassem, too. Listening in to the sailors on the other side of the sheet, she gathered that Hamad was Jassem’s apprentice. Did he feel as trapped as she did?

  She spotted a rip in the lower corner of the sheet, close to edge of the boat, and quickly decided she could take advantage of it. She guessed that if she reclined on her side with her back to Lateefa, she could pretend to be sleeping. Her head would rest on her arm, and that way she would be at the same level with the rip. Then she would only have to fix her eye to the hole in order to watch what was going on with Hamad and the rest of the crew.

  She waited for Lateefa to lie down for a nap before testing her assumption, prepared to make adjustments, like propping herself on an elbow or even making the rip bigger if need be. But, just as she had predicted, there was no need for any alterations. It was easy, and her first glimpse was one of feet with hardened soles. Big feet, small feet, all deeply browned and roughened by the sun and wind.

  For days, as the sea opened generously and the mountains gave way to rocky hills, Noora tried to catch a glimpse of Hamad. But he remained well out of her vision. Then, one morning, as Noora stir
red out of sleep under the early sun, feeling its warming rays on her back, she heard his voice close to the barrier sheet. It took an instant to shake the sleep out of her head and to settle to look through the rip. She felt her eyelids quiver as she strained to spot him, but all she could catch was a view of the side of his dishdasha just before a sudden burst of wind slapped the sheet into her eyeballs. She pulled back. The burn was sharp. Her eyes watered. She rubbed the sting out of them and was back at her post within moments.

  Hamad was gone. Now it was Jassem who was in her vision, steering at the other end of the jelbut. Some of the men had paused in the middle of their tasks to listen to what he was saying. It seemed as if Jassem had just finished telling them a funny story. His eyes crinkled and his nose flattened as he released a hearty laugh. Noora crumpled her lips and nose till they stuck to each other. How happy he looked. And why wouldn’t he? He had never felt the pangs of deprivation.

  “Jassem Saeed Bin-Mattar is a fortunate man.” That’s what Lateefa repeated to Noora day after day. “His father was a pearl merchant and so was his grandfather before that. So, you see, with such an impressive lineage, he was born richer than the rest of the village, and certainly luckier. He can afford to dress well and eat rich and varied meals. But he doesn’t do any of that.” At this point in her description of their husband, the man she so obviously revered, she always nodded solemnly. “You see, he is a humble man.”

  The sea rocked the boat into a gentle lull and the wind changed direction, blew Jassem’s voice to Noora’s ears. His words carried that unique weight of privilege as he trumpeted words filled with the pearls of wisdom that the rich carry. “It is a necessity of life to live in a simple manner. Isn’t that right, Hilal?”

  “Yes,” said the noukhada, and joined the men, who seemed content to prolong their break by doing no more than listening to what Jassem had to say.