The Sand Fish

by Maha Gargash

“I must have it,” Lateefa insisted.

  And Noora nodded some more.

  Lateefa threw a casual wave at Noora. “You must go and get it for me.”

  “I’ll go,” said Yaqoota, jumping to her feet. “I can get your mirror.”

  Lateefa shook her head. “No, I want you to stay here in case I need anything. Noora can go.” She paused. “And Hamad, too—he knows the way, and can watch out for her in case there is any danger.”

  “Danger? She was born in the mountains, Ommi Lateefa, where snakes jump at you from under every stone! Green snakes, black snakes, striped snakes, spotted snakes.” Yaqoota’s laugh was full of the venom of those same snakes. “She can handle any danger that comes her way. She can even scare bandits away just by messing her hair and waving her arms like a madwoman.”

  “Shush, you insolent girl. If it’s not Shamsa, it’s you. Why can’t you treat Noora like your sister?”

  “Different color,” Yaqoota sang. “When you are lighter, you think the darker one has no brains, can’t see or understand.” She turned to Noora. “Isn’t that right, sisss…sissster?”

  “Enough! Noora is a wife of the arbab.” Lateefa’s eyes bulged out from behind her burka, two shiny pebbles, the anger in them held firm. “She will be the mother to his children one day. You must respect her when you talk to her.”

  Yaqoota scowled and stormed out of the hut.

  “Ehh…Bin-Surour!” called Lateefa.

  “He is like my brother and we are going to talk a lot on our walk to Wadeema.” Noora repeated the whisper again and again. And yet she felt a gush of restlessness speed through her like a flash flood through a wadi—a flash flood that uprooted bushes, ripped trees, even washed away whole sections of the gorge. She breathed deeply to slow her thumping heart. It’s the heat, she thought.

  “Why this, why that? You always spend too much time thinking about things.” That’s what Hamad had told Noora one time. And she had said that she liked to understand better and make a list of her options, so she wouldn’t have to decide on something there and then. Now she had a new list of everything she had to do before setting off for Wadeema.

  She would wear her better dress and cover it with the blue thoub with the delicate floral spray of embroidery on the chest. Just right. Of course, all the layers of clothing would have to be incensed so that the trail of ood peelings and musk could waft out with her every move. She would polish clean her teeth with a neem tree twig, wash her hair and twist it into two plaits, keep it neat with a stroke of jasmine oil, dab a dot of amber essence behind each ear. And naturally, there was the kohl—always the kohl.

  She walked out of the hut tapping one finger on the others, counting, until the noon’s sharp rays dazzled her, made her forget where she was going and what she needed to do. Then she remembered the pouch of red argil in her pocket. That’s what she had to do first, wash her hair. She hopped over the scalding sand and crouched in the shade behind the huts.

  As she emptied the powdered clay into her hair, she heard the rustle of fronds as Yaqoota entered the hut, puffing and grunting, in hurried steps that seemed to carry her in circles. She was like a caged wildcat, and her intensity infected Noora as she rubbed the stickiness out of her scalp.

  All that urgency! They became like creatures of the desert, like the nervous jerboas always hopping out of danger, like the tiny ginger ants that ran so swiftly you couldn’t see their spindly legs touch the ground, like those sand fish she sometimes spotted diving into the dunes quicker than the wind’s lift of fine granules. They were so at home in the velvety mounds where there was nothing hard to bash into. It’s the heat, she thought. The heat demanded that it be that way.

  Only Lateefa remained unaffected. Cool as the moon glow, she carried a sedate smile that tightened the dips under her eyes. Lately, whenever she spoke to Noora, her words were like droplets of pure honey, sweet with only a slight bite in the aftertaste.

  Why? Noora thought, and heard her heart thump louder. Why was that mirror so important to Lateefa? They had already spent half the hot months at Om Al-Sanam. Why couldn’t Lateefa wait till they returned to Wadeema? It wasn’t the distance that bothered Noora. Wadeema was not so far, so she and Hamad could easily be back by sunset. It was something else.

  A hush mingled with the heat as Noora tipped the earthen jug over her head to soak her scalp. Yaqoota’s march had halted and there was no noise coming out of Lateefa’s barasti. Noora shrugged away the urge to investigate since she had to hurry. She rinsed a few more times, till the water ran clear.

  33

  They stopped to rest on the slope of a high dune. Even though she was thirsty, Noora would not guzzle the water. She lifted the burka just enough to sneak in the water skin to her pouted lips. And then she let a little of it slip down the sides of her lips, like the dew of dawn along the petals of a flower that was waking up to morning’s light. She could have tossed the date Hamad handed her into her mouth, but she didn’t. Instead, she held it just under her burka and nibbled it, letting the tiny bites rest on her tongue, all the while conscious of the subtle roll of her mouth. There was deliberation to her every move, a careful design to bring out all the femininity that was in her. And Hamad was watching her, watching and pretending he wasn’t.

  Every time she looked up at him, he blinked away the discreet desire in his eyes and glazed them, fixing them to some distant bush behind her. Such were the little games that set off the flutters in her heart. She could go on and on, knowing he was observing every tiny gesture she made.

  Now she wanted him to drown in the deep wells of her kohl-lined eyes. She tilted her head just enough for the sun to fall through the slits of her burka. And then she stayed that way. She would not blink, only let her eyes take in all that light, let the green in them grow as bright as emeralds.

  That sun! A blood-red ball cradled in a broad smile of cloud. So bold! It was daring her to go on. She adjusted her abaya and shayla with a light stroke to let more of her forehead show, pictured her olive skin turn radiant under its ruby rays. And that’s when a sudden gust lifted the covers off her head. They slithered along her back to settle around her hips. This was not one of her little flirtations. It was the wind playing its naughty tricks once again, just as it had done on that boat, all that time ago.

  Hamad was watching her intently now. No longer did his eyes dart away. Without the familiar feel of cloth on her head, she was overcome by a peculiar timidity. Feeling exposed, she quickly pulled the covers back up just as a whirring, muffled growl broke the hush of the desert.

  The sound traveled along the rolling dunes as a dull rumble. The veins in Hamad’s neck expanded as he craned his neck east to west, north to south, in an attempt to guess where it was coming from. It was hard to tell and, finally, he lifted a handful of sand and let it seep through his fingers. “There,” he said, pointing east.

  Before Noora could respond, he yanked her wrist and pulled her up the dune. His palm was moist and she was surprised by the strength in it. Somehow, that strength did not fit with the agility of his lean build. They crouched behind the clumps of unruly grasses that crowned the crest and waited, like hunters stalking their prey. “There, sister, do you see it?” Hamad said, pointing ahead.

  Noora watched the plume of dust rise some distance away. Then the Jeep came into sight. It was the color of dusty leaves with a growl louder than its size. Like a rolling wave, it slid into another depression and disappeared.

  As the Jeep drew closer to them, they dipped their heads lower, even though they knew they were well camouflaged behind the bushes. Finally, it stopped on a level dune just below them, its sputtering engine falling silent like the breath of an exhausted camel.

  Two men and a woman jumped out. When they spoke, the words fell out of pursed lips in soft plops that sounded like dripping water.

  “Inglesis!” Hamad whispered.

  Noora nodded. Jassem had told her all about them. They had come to search for bitrole—a sticky, bla
ck oil, hidden deep under the sand, which was meant to make life easy. They lived in army barracks in the salt flats outside Wadeema and, every now and then, drove in the same shape and color of Jeep along the shore.

  Noora had spotted them through the window of the men’s majlis. One time they had wandered so close to that window that she could see their eyes, like bright marbles with every color of the sky and sea in them. But they were always men. This time, there was a woman, too.

  Noora was taken aback by her dress. It wasn’t the print of giant flowers of sunshine yellow; it was the shape, which was nothing like the loose dresses that kissed her own ankles with every step. This dress—the Inglesi dress—curved along the woman’s ribs and bunched at the waist. From there, it flared into an umbrella that stopped short just below the knees. There were her exposed legs, pale and lucid, just like the lizards that clung to the roof of her room in Wadeema.

  Noora’s eyes snuck back to Hamad. Lying on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, he was watching the English people intently. The sun’s red glow had settled evenly in his ears, and she expected him to voice some disapproval at the exhibition of bare skin. After all, there was none of the modesty that guided their ways.

  “Shameless!” That’s what she expected him to say when he opened his mouth.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he whispered, “That’s the box that makes reflections of things.”

  Noora curled her lips with puzzlement and looked back. Indeed, there was a compact piece of metal as large as her two palms put together. One of the men was fixing it on three metal legs.

  “See it, sister? It’s called a camera,” Hamad said.

  Noora watched the man glue the side of his face to the box and waited. When nothing happened, her gaze drifted back to the woman, whose age, although young, Noora could not guess. Her gold tresses were as thin as silk threads, and even though the breeze was light, it lifted each string as easily as it did the fine desert sand. She was stroking the other man on his shoulder now, laughing so heartily, so naturally, that Noora’s mouth unlatched with astonishment at the casualness of the woman’s gestures.

  He laughed, too, and threw an arm around her shoulder, squeezing her bare arm with the tips of his fingers before flattening his hand into a generous palm that followed the giant flowers of sunshine yellow that hugged her waist. He stroked those flowers so hard Noora thought he might want to wipe them away.

  They did not seem to care that there was another man present, even when that man removed his face from the camera, looked over his shoulder at them, and shouted some more popping words through his puckered lips.

  Was he telling them off? Noora waited for the couple to separate, as was correct in the company of someone else. Instead, they cackled and hugged each other. He pulled her tight to his chest. And then the woman lifted her face and smiled at him, unflustered, to bond her mouth to his.

  Noora gawked at those mouths. Stuck together like that! She felt confused and uncomfortable, and yet she was unable to look away. Was Hamad watching, too, or was he still scrutinizing the camera? She did not dare look at him. Only when she heard him grunt did she drop her face into her elbows. It was time to pull away. With a quick swivel, she sat up and rowed her way down the dune.

  34

  A heightened vigor touched Noora as she poked through Lateefa’s trunk, searching for the mirror. Was that a kiss, the way their tongues met like that? She felt like a child trying to understand a difficult word.

  Hamad was standing at Lateefa’s doorway, waiting. She knew he was thinking about it, too. From the moment she had slid down the dune, they had walked the rest of the way in silence, embarrassed by what they had seen—or at least she knew she was. How clumsy she had been, like those camels with their legs tied so they couldn’t wander too far. She had tripped twice over the hem of her dress in the deep sand when she had tried to walk faster, as if getting to Wadeema would wipe away her discomfort. And her hands! She wasn’t sure what to do with them. When she swung them, they gathered too much momentum, and when she clutched them to her chest, they molded too tightly to her skin. Nothing felt right on that walk.

  That kiss! Was it something she could talk about? She and Hamad were comfortable speaking about so many things. Still, Noora had long decided to hold back what she thought was too intimate, like her experience with Rashid. And now, the kiss. She could not chase it out of her mind. As she scraped the inside of the trunk, trying to feel the hard handle of the mirror through the clothes, she imagined those tongues entwined like mating snakes.

  “It’s the way they do things.” Hamad had moved closer, and now his voice was a murmur hovering just above her head.

  Bent over the trunk and on her knees, Noora felt her hands hesitate in the middle of the fluff of garments. His breath was falling warm on her neck. She picked up the sound of three discreet sniffs and closed her eyes, imagined he was catching the whiff of the amber oil that she had dotted behind her ears. It was a quick three sniffs, but she savored them before opening her eyes and turning to face him.

  Hamad straightened up and looked away to hide his embarrassment, but the blush had already settled in his ears and was still there when he looked back. He cleared his throat and said, “That’s how they kiss. I have seen it before…kissing like that when no one is watching, when they are alone.”

  “But they weren’t alone, brother. There was another man with them.”

  “In front of their own people, it’s okay.”

  Noora frowned and drummed her fingers on her crossed arms. He should have told her earlier, then she could have shrugged that English kiss away. Instead, he had let her walk all that way feeling uncomfortable, stumbling and tripping with uneasiness.

  “Well, did you find the mirror?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Hamad retreated to the doorway, and while he waited, Noora took her time finding the mirror with a leisurely shuffle from one trunk to the next. Even from that distance, she felt his touch—without his having to touch her. It was a pretend touch, of course. He was like a tender spirit that enveloped her skin, its warmth a lingering encouragement to a desire that felt so natural she could see only the good in it.

  When she reached the last trunk and still could not find the mirror, she scanned the rectangular room as if seeing it for the first time. Still so many places to look. Her eyes ran lazily along the colored crystal bottles and bowls that decorated the room. They sat on onion-shaped alcoves carved into the walls. Since it wasn’t being used, Lateefa’s mattress was rolled and stacked under the four-poster bed in the corner. The bed was covered with takyas, large cushions decorated with silk borders and squares of a red, green, and blue patchwork. She would have to move those to see if the mirror was under them.

  Overlooking its heaviness from being stuffed with all that cotton, she plucked the first takya off the bed. Immediately it slipped out of her fingers. “It’s all right,” she said, as Hamad hurried to help her.

  They reached down at the same time and hit their foreheads so hard Noora felt the pain shoot down the side of her neck.

  “Ow!”

  “Arkh!”

  Hamad’s head felt like wood. She flopped back and pressed her palm to her forehead, knowing that it would bruise.

  Hamad was on his knees and by her side instantly. “Are you all right?”

  Noora didn’t answer. Thoughts of how she would explain the bruise to Lateefa raced through her mind. What would she say? The takya was too heavy? A bruise caused by a cushion sounded absurd, and she began giggling.

  She could see Hamad was concerned, but the more he stared into her face with those grim eyes, the harder it was to stifle her chuckles. And when she noticed Hamad’s shoulders shudder, infected by her glee, she finally let go.

  She couldn’t remember ever having laughed so loudly. Tears streamed down her face, and she thought of the kohl spilling out and streaking her cheeks. As the stitches of hilarity bit into her stomach, she thought of how puffed her
eyes would look at the end of her laughing fit. Better! Then Lateefa would assume she couldn’t stop weeping from the pain! After what seemed an eternity of merriment, she couldn’t remember what had set her off in that way to begin with. All she noticed was that she was leaning forward, propped up on an elbow, her aching forehead close to Hamad’s.

  His laugh began to melt into a soft titter. His breath began to blow hot. Noora sniffed the tears away and wiped the runny kohl from under her eyes. Still, that steaming breath—so near, so thick she felt she could slice it with a knife.

  And then he leaned closer. She felt his ghitra brush her cheek. And on her bruise, he placed his lips and held them there.

  It seemed right, even though she knew it was wrong, and Noora closed her eyes.

  35

  Somewhere along their walk back to Om Al-Sanam, they stopped calling each other brother and sister.

  The sun’s last pink glow sank into the horizon just as Noora slipped into Lateefa’s barasti, hoping she could drop off the mirror and go. But Lateefa was waiting for her, legs stretched straight in front of her, rubbing her knees.

  “Masha’ Allah, you’re back, and with the mirror, too!” said the older woman.

  Noora nodded, thankful for the lantern’s weak flame, which cast broad shadows in all the right places, but still Noora would not tidy away the strand of hair she had purposely pulled out of her plaits. From under her abaya it spilled thick as a horse’s tail over the bruise she was trying to hide.

  “Well, where did you find it?” Lateefa asked.

  “On one of the shelves,” Noora mumbled. She had to get out as soon as she could. Her mind was like a twirling dust storm, filled with so much sand that it was hard to see clearly. Too many questions might make her nervous, make her say the wrong thing.

  She handed Lateefa the mirror, but as she turned to leave, Lateefa clutched her wrist and pulled her back. “Wait,” she said. “Tell me all about your journey.”