by Maha Gargash
Noora eased her grip on the shayla but kept watching him closely. Was he telling the truth? His hair was a mass of strings hugging his neck from under his ghitra. He had an ancient scar that cut a clean gap on the corner of his right eyebrow. And there was another scar, too, just like hers, under the left side of the chin. She was surprised she had never noticed either of them before. One on the right, one on the left. Strangely, they seemed to balance his face.
“You see,” Hamad said. “My mother…well, her knuckles don’t bend. They’re as hard as a goat’s hoof.” He fiddled with the garment. “She just can’t make a strong stitch anymore.”
Finally he was showing some hesitation, and Noora pulled the garment out of his hands. It was faded by the sun and eaten by the sea. “Even if I stitch all those rips, there will be more,” she said, rubbing the fabric between her fingers. She pointed at the area that was to cover the back of the legs. “This doesn’t just need strong stitching at the seams. It needs big patches to cover these faded bits.” Under the arms, the fabric was sadder than her flowered red dress of the mountains. “And here, look.”
“You can’t do it.”
Noora watched the blood crawl into his ears, paint them so red under the sun that they looked as if they might pop. Now she was sure he was embarrassed, regretting having asked in the first place. She watched his head lower, only slightly. But his eyes remained fixed to her face, full of that same desperation she remembered seeing on the boat, all those months ago, when the wind had lifted that sheet.
He was about to leave. As he reached out for the garment, Noora held it tight. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
Noora snuck her arms under the mattress, pulled out the bodysuit, and fluffed it open. She smiled at her handiwork. Not only had she repaired the rips and strengthened the seams, but she had replaced large sections of it, using the extra white bits of cotton fabric she had collected from the dresses she’d made for all those village women. And now the bodysuit looked set, reinforced with shining new triangles and squares. No jellyfish stings can get through it, she thought.
It had taken her a whole week to stitch and patch the bodysuit. She had kept it hidden and had stolen the moments for sewing, when she was sure she would not be disturbed. If Shamsa saw what she was doing, she would surely make a big, embarrassing problem, and that was the last thing Noora needed at this point.
She had even kept Hamad’s visit a secret from Yaqoota, who had asked her the day before whether Hamad had come to see her. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Yaqoota, but her voice was so loud. And Noora had told her as much, which had upset her, too.
Walls had ears, and Yaqoota still hadn’t learned to lower her voice when she spoke. “Why didn’t he come to see you?”
“I don’t know why and I don’t care,” Noora had whispered, hoping Yaqoota would do the same.
Instead, Yaqoota’s voice came out in a blast. “But he told me he wanted to see you, to talk to you about something.”
“And why do you care?” Noora hissed.
Yaqoota shrugged but would not speak softly. “I am just asking. And what’s wrong with you, anyway? Why are you suddenly chomping your insides?”
Noora raised her hands. “Look, forget me. Just don’t talk so loud.”
“Loud?”
A shriek! Yaqoota’s up-and-down voice was exasperating. Why couldn’t she learn to speak softly, like everyone else? “Yes, loud.”
“And why are you acting so snotty,” Yaqoota said, “as if you’re the favorite of the house?” Yaqoota pointed her nose up. “Snotty, snotty, snotty.” Then, with demure steps, she tiptoed out of the room.
From that time, Yaqoota had stopped talking to Noora. But Noora wasn’t too concerned. A few days of sulking and she will be all right, she thought. She lay the bodysuit on the bed and ran her palm along the creases to flatten them, frowning at the bits of the old fabric that snuck their tired threads here and there. It was not as perfect as she would have liked; it wasn’t one clean piece of newness. Still, it could not be helped.
How would Hamad’s eyes look when she handed it to him? Would they sparkle with silent approval? Would he notice? Ever since she had decided to fix the bodysuit, he seemed to be in the house more often, delivering this, picking up that. She had even spotted his shadow outside her window during the resting hours. Twice!
Whenever they came face-to-face, crossing the courtyard or in some other part of the house, they would both let their eyes look to the ground—at least she did. And somehow, she saw him in her mind, and she always wondered whether he saw her, too, in his own mind. Or maybe he opened his eyes when she looked down. And those were the thoughts that circled in her head, like mischievous fish, chasing one another’s tails. The thoughts would not stop until she shook them away, slapped her cheeks for being so silly. She was acting as if she were committed to some guilty secret.
Noora drew lines with her fingers on the bodysuit and folded it into a neat square. Then she smoothed it again. Another week or two and the divers would be sailing away. And Jassem, too, off to India for trade. Deep inside, she felt some relief, but not enough to wipe away her anxiety at her shaky position in the household. She lifted the mattress and slid the folded garment under it. Later, she would try to send a silent message to Hamad, let him know that the bodysuit was ready.
28
Noora sat in front of the three large trunks that lined the wall of Lateefa’s room. Brass studs, hammered into the thick wood, festooned the lids and sides. She ran her fingers over the arrangement—triangles put together to make stars—and, once more, in her most casual voice, asked, “Where are you going, Ommi Lateefa?”
And Lateefa’s impatient answer was the same. “We, my child, we!” Her usual restraint was ruffled as she sat to one side in front of a smaller tin chest. Some new restlessness kept her rocking back and forth. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she said. “Open that middle trunk, take out my things. Let’s pack.”
Noora lifted the handle and pulled open the trunk. There were Lateefa’s clothes, the same dresses, thoubs, abayas, and burkas they had packed and unpacked the day before, and for days before that, too.
“Take only one dress, the rest must be thoubs,” she instructed. Lateefa preferred to wear loose, cotton thoubs in the hot weather. With its wide sleeves, from shoulder to waist, the garment was much more efficient at trapping breezes. “No, no, not in the middle, more to the right side,” she said, as Noora placed a sky-blue thoub with yellow dots into the trunk. Lateefa blew an irritated puff into her burka. “Take it out, take it out. It is not folded neatly enough. Fold it again.”
Noora did as she was told.
“All right, that’s better,” Lateefa said. “Now, that abaya.”
The abaya was harder to fold. The fabric floated out like a flyaway tent. As she placed it on the ground, to wrap it as best she could, she felt Lateefa’s scrutinizing eyes ready to pick on any mistake she might make. Those eyes seemed to follow her all the time, everywhere she went. The divers would be leaving soon, and Noora hadn’t even been able to nod a direction to Hamad as to where she could leave the bodysuit for him to pick up. Whenever she faced him, she always worried that Lateefa was watching, and her neck would freeze and her eyes would fix ahead to some invisible point.
“Now, the burkas,” Lateefa said, handing Noora an old strip of fabric. “Stack them on top of each other and wrap them in this. I don’t want the indigo to seep out and color my clothes.” She paused briefly before losing her patience once again. “Pah! Just take everything out, take it out! We’ll pack later.”
The next morning, Noora found out why they were packing, but not before breakfast. As Jassem and his wives settled around the breakfast mat, Shamsa hinted that she was pregnant. Again.
“Ah, I can’t eat,” Shamsa complained, stroking her stomach with glee. “I don’t know what it is, but something is blocking my appetite. I feel nauseous.” It was the same act every morning. Shamsa
was giving Lateefa and Jassem hope, trying to put in their minds that the child would come through her. Shamsa sighed and wedged her hand under her shayla to neaten her flawless fringe. Was Noora the only person who noticed her smugness? Clinging to her wrist was another bangle. This one was flat, with a turquoise dot set in its gold filigree.
“Are you feeling sick, dear?” Lateefa mumbled. She hadn’t quite finished munching her breakfast.
“A little,” Shamsa said, and Noora wanted to see some ugliness in her parted lips, but there was none. They were as vibrant as the petals of a desert flower after an unexpected rain.
Lateefa touched Shamsa’s head. “I think it’s the weather, dear,” she said.
“Have you packed my things?” Jassem asked Lateefa.
Lateefa closed her eyes solemnly. “That I am about to do.”
“Well, Lateefa knows, but I suppose I had better tell the rest of you,” he said. “I’m not going to India anymore.”
Noora’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to ask why when she felt the yolk of the egg she was eating dribble down the side of her chin—a warning to hold her tongue. She was not in a position to be so bold.
“Instead, I’m going to go to Leema. The rest of you will go to Om Al-Sanam, stay the summer there.” He nodded his head wisely. “You will get more drafts in the barasti huts out there than over here.”
Lateefa agreed with him. “Yes, much cooler, out there in the open desert.”
“I don’t need to tell you this, but this trip, the Big Dive…well, it’s going to be the last. It’s costing too much, and let’s be honest, there are simply no more pearls in the sea.”
The last dive? No more pearls in the sea? There was not a hint of regret in his voice, not one thought for the divers and their families. Noora remembered Jassem’s conversation with noukhada Hilal: all that money advanced to the divers, and now they would not be able to pay it back. What would they do? How would they feed their children? Noora pictured the divers roaming Leema’s tight streets, begging for ardees, just like that madman.
Jassem’s voice trailed back. “So I’ve decided not to waste money on the Big Dive, open other roads. The way to go is trade.”
“The way to go is trade,” Lateefa repeated, with a sober nod of her head.
“Yes, trade. Not just with India or Africa. But right here, in our own town, in Leema.” Jassem rubbed his palms. “So many Inglesis roaming around, with so much money and so many goods. I must make friends with them so that we can buy and sell from one another.” He leaned back and moved his tongue along the inside of his mouth, clicking away what egg and bread remained stuck to his gums. “Maybe I’m telling you more than you ought to know, being women and all, but it’s good for you to understand a little about the world.”
“Yes, trade is the way to go,” Lateefa repeated one more time.
29
They set out under the violet of the dawn sky. Walking in the sand was not the same as climbing mountains, and no matter how lightly Noora stepped, the sand seeped into her slippers and settled between her toes. Again and again, she paused to shake her feet and let the sand trickle out, until Lateefa scolded her. “Walk on, walk on. Don’t fall behind.”
It was better to walk barefoot. Noora pulled off her slippers and caught up with Hamad and Yaqoota, who strode along the side of Lateefa’s donkey. They were on their way to Om Al-Sanam, a desert where the dunes rose as the gentle camel humps it was named after. They would be staying there the full summer, far from the sticky heat of the coast.
Noora watched Lateefa’s hips sway on a donkey that looked too small to carry her. Every now and then, it objected, pausing to shake its head, only to be whipped with a soft reed and clicked back into a trot with a twist of her tongue. Secured behind her was her tin travel chest, filled with everything she might need out in the dunes. Everyone else’s belongings were wrapped in small bundles of cloth. If Shamsa had been with them, there might have been two travel chests, but Shamsa had asked for permission to stay with her family, and Jassem had agreed.
Noora was pleased she wouldn’t have to deal with Shamsa’s moods and sneers. At the same time, she was bothered that both Shamsa and Jassem would be staying at Leema for the summer. So much time! Shamsa could poison Jassem’s thoughts against her, mold Jassem’s mind however she wanted, establish her position in the household.
Noora wondered whether they were all thinking of the same thing. It was hard to see Yaqoota’s face, swallowed in its darkness by the plum sky. And Hamad, she tried to catch some appreciation in his face (after all, she’d managed to deliver the bodysuit without being spotted just two days before), but he would not look at her; he only stared straight ahead. He was probably thinking of his father, left to sea on this same day with the other divers, to search for those pearls.
“It will be better for us all out in those cool, white dunes of Om Al-Sanam,” Lateefa said. She sounded unperturbed, her voice as soft as the plods of their feet on the sand. “There the air will be dry, instead of all that humidity by the sea that makes my blood curdle.”
Noora watched her lean back with ease, holding on to the chest, as the donkey struggled up a dune larger than the rest. Its hooves dipped deep into the sand so that the tips of Lateefa’s slippers skimmed the surface. Her mind seemed empty of worries. Didn’t she see Shamsa as a threat as well? She had closed her eyes with clear-headed approval when Jassem had told her that Shamsa would be going to her family.
Such thoughts toppled on one another in Noora’s head, till she decided to put her slippers back on. At least there would be the distraction of trapped sand caking her toes.
The first arrow of light pierced the sky, and Noora squinted at the cluster of barasti huts that made up the settlement. There were other people there as well, families from Leema who had come for the same reason: to get away from the sticky, salty heat of the sea. There were goats, chickens, donkeys, and a couple of camels, too.
Noora welcomed the noise and movement after their walk under the silence of sky and sand. The scent of freshly baked bread in thick puddles of ghee wafted into the air, and children scampered out of one barasti and into another. The flat-roofed palm-frond huts were scattered randomly in a large dip between the dunes, about twenty, all in all. Jassem’s two huts stood at the end of the settlement, just under a gathering of three upright palm trees.
Hamad had brought everything they needed beforehand: pots and pans, cushions, flour, dates, rice, coffee, tea, goats, and chickens.
“There’s a well over there,” Lateefa said, pointing ahead, “with water as cool as a winter’s rain.”
Noora could not see it and wondered how anyone could find anything in such a vast expanse of shifting swells and hollows.
Lateefa quickly ordered the organization of the sleeping arrangements. She would take the first barasti (the one with the wind tower made of sack cloth). Noora would share the second hut with Yaqoota. A wooden ladder led to Hamad’s sleeping quarters. It was a palm-frond platform on four wooden stilts situated a little distance away, as was proper.
As the rays rose higher into the sky, the heat blasted out of the sand. They had unpacked, cooked and eaten lunch, and now Noora staggered into her hut. In the dimness, she rested her eyes from the sun’s glare and slumped loose-limbed next to Yaqoota on the woven palm mats that covered the soft sand.
The sweat clung to her hairline, and she pinned her face to the elongated gaps in the palm-frond walls, waiting for that mysterious breeze to wriggle through one wall and out the other. And then it came. A tired breath that was certainly drier but just as hot as the air by the sea. “So hot,” she said.
Yaqoota spat out her response. “Hot is hot, whether you’re here or there. Hot…is…hot.” They were her first words since they had left Wadeema, and her tone was as dry as the desert they were sitting in the middle of.
“What are you so upset at me for?” Noora asked.
“Hmph. You should know.”
“Oh?
And what if I don’t know?”
“You know everything—especially how to keep secrets.”
“There are no secrets to keep.”
“Just tell me the truth. That’s all I want. Then I’ll know whether you’re my friend or not.”
“What truth?”
“Humph.”
“If you’re talking about Hamad, he didn’t come to see me as you think he did.”
“If you say so.”
30
In the desert, the sun seems much bigger and somehow rounder and brighter. It washes the color out of the sky and blanches the dunes. Only in the late afternoons does the sun forgive, calling back its strongest rays to be stored for the next day. That’s when Noora wandered into the mass of humps that surrounded them.
Along with the vast emptiness of the desert came a strange informality. She could leave the huts and head in whichever direction she wished. Not that there was much difference, since every rising dune looked the same. Still, she liked that she could do that. Now, she sat on the edge of a lofty hill and burrowed her feet into the sand, watching a group of girls tumble down the slope.
“Come on,” shouted a little girl wearing a canary-yellow dress. “Swim down with us. Race us.” She was one of the older girls, perhaps seven or eight. She was climbing up the hill toward Noora, her shoulder-length hair crumpling into tangles as it began loosening out of her plaits.
Noora smiled at her. “I’ll get all messy. And look at your hair! Here, let me fix it.”
The girl pulled away. “It’s only sand,” she said. “You just shake it off, like this.” She waggled her head and, finally, her plaits fell open. “Come on, let’s go.”
Noora shook her head and wished Yaqoota was with her. They would have giggled and swam down the dune without a second thought. How stubborn that slave girl was! Ten days of sulking in Wadeema and another ten since they had arrived at Om Al-Sanam, and still Yaqoota refused to shake away her hurt. And now it was too late for Noora to confess that she had been right all along. That would just lead to more suspicion in the future. No, Noora decided, she must stick to her story. The girl was pulling her arm. “All right, all right,” Noora said. “What’s your name anyway?”