by Malu Halasa
She sensed apex predators nearby, but she wasn’t afraid. She had survived all manner of dangerous predicaments, including the journey from Egypt and the odd interludes afterward: the labyrinthine store smelling of gunpowder and metal, and an empty room in a house ruled by a grumpy old lady.
This was different. The fresh mountain air was a jolt to her system and her animal instincts took over. Relying on an internal compass, she headed straight into the old barn and selected suitable surroundings. To the amazement of her new keeper, she arranged straw and bits of paper apparently to her liking and nested comfortably. The man too spent that first night nearby, under a blanket of newspapers. While he snored, the pig emerged from her bed and continued sniffing, first fully around Hussein and then a nearby bottle, before exploring the length and breadth of the barn. Fortunately its thin walls were not open to the elements. She lingered by cracks and corners, looking for field mice or spiders. A leaking hose, which left pools of water where it snaked under a sliding door, suggested a range of possible wet spots, but before she allowed herself the pleasure of attending to herself, she determined that the location of another private space should be outside, so she could defecate if and when needed.
By dawn she felt herself settle. She had exerted control over her new surroundings. Her determination surprised the man, who initially left her alone for long hours but always managed to return for feeding and watering, sometime during the day or late at night. Every time he drove up in the van that had brought her here, he was distracted, deep in himself—she recognized the signs—but with just the two of them she realized that his demeanor improved with time. If clean air and enterprise didn’t bring him out of himself, she found she had the ability to.
She stumbled across her own powers of persuasion by accident. He didn’t keep her in a crate or in the barn and appeared to enjoy walking. Whenever they went out together he looped a rope around her neck and held it, trailing far behind to give her enough length to explore at will. Whenever he stopped for any stretch of time, he left the rope secured under a rock or attached to a bush, as he prepared the land for the working farm it was going to become. One afternoon he was busy and she, bored with ground already picked clean, slipped out of her noose. Pregnant sows insist on roaming. Hussein meanwhile hadn’t noticed the slack rope, and when he did, he called out sharply. Unseen, she tiptoed silently behind him. When he turned around and nearly tripped over her, instead of losing his temper he laughed out loud. Her reward was a lengthy back scratch. There was nothing better that she liked: building trust.
Once construction work began in earnest, she persisted underfoot, but only if the two of them were alone. When strangers came to the farm she didn’t have to be told to stay out of the way in the barn until after their departure. With Hussein, she reveled in her freedom, and she surveyed the new developments, running through or alongside them, smelling, always smelling. If something was particularly ripe, she retraced her steps, punctuated by loud grunts, and spent a few minutes more in rapt investigation. She watched with a mothering pride as small buildings, outhouses, and pens were erected and finalized.
Only when Hussein was completely immersed in his work did she allow herself to wander farther afield. She was naturally suspicious, particularly before dusk. In the lengthening shadows she felt a menacing presence, but she was intrigued too. The more directions a place could be ambushed from, the more ideal for burying and digging. In time, familiarity pacified a nervous disposition and developed into an unhealthy fascination. She was always careful, but there was open ground surrounded by rocks, away from the barn, she couldn’t leave alone. Odd visits, which had started as cursory checks once in the morning and again in the afternoon, after her nap, soon turned into long hours searching among clumps of spongy soil and grass around the spring and pump and, farther away, where hardier herbaceous plants sent moisture-seeking roots deep underneath, a microclimate delicate enough for the wild black iris. Where the water never reached was sand and scrub. In a relatively contained area, wetlands, pasture, and desert were at her disposal. Each had its delights. Yet as thorough as her explorations became, she wasn’t altogether satisfied. During different times of the day but more noticeably that moment when she should be returning to the barn and turning in for the night, the earth turned pungent and fungal, redolent of flavors she loved.
During her first encounter with the Great Smell, she mistook it for tubers twenty-five feet underground, but hard digging got her nowhere. The source wasn’t something rotting deep in the earth. Only when she pressed her mobile nasal disc along the surface did her mouth and brain explode with possibilities. The farm’s plain diet and the rococo urban waste of her youth had given her an ultrasensitivity, most noticeably in the realm of olfaction.
More out of inquisitiveness than hunger, she turned over rocks and kicked up soil. Hers was a refined palate formed by experience and travel. Still, of all the foodstuffs she was acquainted with, it was dirt she knew exceedingly well. Generations of swine before her had picked clean the dust of pharaohs, leaving it thin and wanting. In Palestine, despite imprisonment and an upset tummy, she detected a distinct sourness to the soil as though the goodness that had once been there had been leached out. Human density left a trail, much of it unpleasant.
Not here. True, she was temporarily waylaid by a small fiber from an old coat. But her olfactory nerves sensed the most amazing possibilities. Around and around she rolled in the dirt, with all her faculties firing. Ghostly trails at once turned solid, blending into and infusing a sensory onslaught. Inhaling deeply, she was enveloped by the Great Smell and one with the past.
She had tasted pistachios in flakes of baklava and leftover sprinklings in milk puddings gone sour, but petrified pollen from one of its trees was an entirely new experience. Finally she understood viscerally the full import of the messages her most sensitive organ had been telling her. Her eyesight was not the best but her prescience was clear. She was surrounded by what had once been ancient woodlands of cedar, pine, and oak. However, as the tastes of her childhood—cinnamon, carob, and the glorious date—flooded back to her, she understood this was only a part of a larger story. The forest had been cleared. In its place expansive gardens of fruit and nut trees, flowers, and vegetation had been planted and flourished, watered by a spring that ran more forcibly in its youth.
In the instant paradise was revealed, it was gone. Startled, she sniffed at the empty air. Instead of the Great Smell, pheromones of a wolf stretching itself in the caves above drifted past her on the wind.
Afterward she kept close to Hussein like a dog and was not averse to performing tricks. Consciously or not, she made him her own. They had been taking one of their strolls. But when he was staring off into the distance, she turned to face him. As he took a step forward, she laid her hoof gingerly on top of his foot, something the sad man didn’t quite believe. He moved his other foot forward, and a corresponding hoof met his. With each step, man and pig progressed. Over time they perfected a private dance of their own.
She needed no prompting and repeated the trick whenever he called to her. Neither was she shy nor stupid whenever the old eccentric from the store came to the farm, demanding amusement at their expense. She didn’t mind in the least because this was her home and she was in charge. If Hussein thought she hadn’t noticed the changes on the farm were for her benefit alone, he was wrong.
Her first litter of eight perfectly formed piglets survived the road trip. Her milk was strong as long as she had the freedom to forage, root, and snuffle. Of course the piglets couldn’t be entrusted to stay close, and she never paraded them around the spring. Some tastes came only with maturity. As the babies grew stronger by the day, she felt deep and abiding satisfaction.
Soon the thoughtful Ahmad joined Hussein and took over her and her children’s immediate care, but Umm al-Khanaazeer remained unaccountably attached to the sad man. Every three months, three weeks, and three days, she was pregnant again, and the father was Husse
in, who kept the spiral-tipped insemination rods at the ready. She was an object of study, a being of great fecundity. She had finally become an exemplary representative of the animal kingdom.
14
Girls spill out of their classrooms, turning the hallway into a noisy flood. From a doorway, Laila plunges into the torrent and is swept along. In theory, teachers take precedence over pupils, but in the school’s cramped conditions the rule is hard to enforce. Nevertheless, when two chattering teenagers block her path, she pushes through them.
At the end of another workday she feels relieved to be outside. This afternoon, more than usual, she is looking forward to her sons’ company for the walk home and she scours the children’s faces for her own. After a few minutes, she impatiently checks her watch and sets off by herself at a brisk pace. She doesn’t slow down until the water tanks on the roof of the new house come into view. In her haste to get inside, she skips up the front steps two at a time.
In the living room she kicks off her shoes for slippers and collapses onto the sofa. When baby Fuad appears in the doorway, followed by Muna, Samira, and Mother Fadhma, Laila inquires, “Have the boys arrived?” She was hoping that they were ahead of her.
“Not yet,” Fadhma says. Like the morning, after school Laila can be sensitive. So the old woman makes no comment other than what’s necessary.
“I waited.” Laila helps her youngest son into her lap. “I expect they’re off with friends.” Then she asks Samira and Muna, “What have you been up to? The house looks spotless!”
It is unusual for her to comment on Samira’s cleaning without first checking every corner, but Muna, oblivious to the finer nuances of household relationships, answers for them both. “We stayed at home. Visitors came.”
Laila stops hugging Fuad and looks up at Mother Fadhma. It would be bad enough if something happened, but not in front of their American relation. Laila’s headache is on the verge of flaring up again.
“They were childhood friends of Abd’s.” Fadhma’s quick response mollifies her daughter-in-law’s concerns. The two of them might not be the best of friends, but they rely on each other. Fadhma senses that Laila wants her to continue, so she adds, “We had a good time. That is, when this one is polite”—she eyes Muna—“and that one doesn’t fall asleep.” She glares at Samira.
Laila takes some perverse satisfaction in imagining the situation before her expression darkens. “Nothing was said?” She still expects trouble. When it does not materialize she never allows herself to feel entirely safe. There was a time when disaster didn’t constantly hover over her, but she can’t remember how that felt; now any delay in bad news appears more as a cruel trick than a reprieve.
Mother Fadhma nods quickly and changes the subject. “We can wait for the boys or have lunch now. What do you prefer? Hussein won’t be joining us—”
“Naam, let’s eat.” Laila carries her son to the kitchen. She senses there is more to be learned about the afternoon but she can’t wait.
After securing her son in his highchair, Laila reaches for one of the empty tins by the sink. It is not like her mother-in-law to neglect filling them, but before she loses her temper Fadhma turns on a faucet and water sputters forth. It is a good omen. Laila gratefully washes and dries her hands.
“We’re going to eat, Fuad. Look what Jadda made.” She spoons tabbouleh into a blue plastic bowl and sets it in front of him. The little boy is ready with a matching spoon.
Mother Fadhma places bread on the table. “I didn’t cook much today because we’re out tonight.”
Normally Laila would have interpreted Mother Fadhma’s comment—however innocently intended—to be a gibe; this afternoon it would have been about the women’s get-together that Laila was missing. But their American visitor has ameliorated the usual tensions of the household and it is in everyone’s interest to avoid discord. Laila asks Muna about her father’s friends.
“They were okay, and once we stopped talking about politics, it was all right,” the girl assesses. “I shouldn’t second-guess people. I kept waiting for Umm Omar to ask the inevitable question that all the old ladies get around to in our church. Why did my father not have sons? Was he upset at having only girls? That’s not something he could control.”
Another Hadith Laila learned for the school parents comes back to her. “‘From what is man created?’” she recites out loud from memory, “‘The Messenger of Allah answered…: “Man is created from the union of both the semen of the man and the semen of the woman. The nutfa of man is thick and from it the bones and nerves are created. And the woman’s nutfa is thin and from it flesh and blood are created.”’”
She explains, “During medieval Islam, people thought that a baby’s gender was determined by the parent with the strongest ‘semen’ in both men and women. Nobody believes that today, but some people assume if a man doesn’t have sons he didn’t try hard enough. If he really wanted boys, he should have as many children as possible or marry a new wife ready and willing to try to produce sons. Eventually the odds would be in his favor even when the genetics were not.”
Muna isn’t convinced. “What about Uncle Boutros? Auntie Dallah couldn’t keep having girls forever. What were they going to do if a boy did come along? Get rid of the girls?”
“That’s the question,” Samira joins in, “that has baffled the Middle East, South Asia, the subcontinent, not to mention the Far East and Central and Latin America. What do you do with all those girls?”
Laila pulls a face. “There isn’t one woman in this town who hasn’t been told she should have been born a boy.”
Despite loud groans and cries of “Oh no!” the women are merry around the table. In the excitement little Fuad rocks side to side in his highchair.
“When I was growing up,” Laila says as she helps herself to some salad, “my mother’s advice was ‘Do not look at, talk to, or go near a boy; never be alone with a man. Be constantly vigilant since your honor and mine are at stake.’ Then it was time to get married.”
“So why do you think it’s like that?” Muna asks. “Because of religion?”
“It’s easy to get the impression that religion’s at fault,” considers Laila. As it has engulfed the town, she has become intrigued not by its expression in women’s lives, but by its permutation. Through her friend Warda she was surprised to learn that Islam is forthright about sex and counsels women to enjoy their marriages, to pleasure their husbands and themselves. Laila feels that she and other Christian women are prudish by comparison.
Jesus was too much of a firebrand for a prolonged relationship with a woman. Always a son, never a husband or a father, his experience of women was limited and he never truly understood them. Meanwhile the number of Muhammad’s wives, according to scholars, ranged between eleven and thirty-one. During the religion’s great conquest of the Middle East many women had been widowed. Out of sympathy and duty the Prophet took them as wives and urged his followers to do the same. Such large households effectively socialized the region. It also made women a topic of study among the Sunni and the Shia. Laila had also been shocked to learn there was a canon of literature that focused entirely on female anatomy, sexuality, and psychology that was sometimes taught in mosques. It showed a lack of squeamishness on the part of Islam toward women, but it also pinned them down: biology as destiny. Marriage is the only relationship between men and women that is sanctioned by both the Qur’an and the Bible.
Yet, it seemed to Laila, Warda’s interior life was deeply satisfying, despite her religion’s emphasis on submission, first to God and then her husband. Even after death, men are favored in Islam. In Paradise, true believers are promised virginal houriyat who regenerate their hymens immediately after having sex. These gazelle-eyed women companions of the faithful are not, as promised, pure and untouched: just recyclable.
“The houriyat,” Laila tells Muna, “are really no stranger than the virgin birth.” She doesn’t want to be misunderstood and explains, “The regulation o
f women’s lives by religion and state is nothing new. The empowerment of women is not dangerous. It’s the reactions to that by men which are.”
She picks a fresh fig from the fruit bowl. “This is the food of Paradise.” Her lips cover the soft green skin. “It has always been the same—what men enjoy, women endure. No matter her religion, before a woman marries she must suffer for her husband. You know about sugaring, Muna?”
The girl says she has seen it often enough: her aunts in America boil lemon and sugar together into thick taffy, smear it over their arms and legs, and then yank it off to remove body hair.
“Before her wedding a girl sugars her whole body,” divulges Laila.
“The cousins told me,” Muna says, grimacing. “I never understood why they don’t just shave.”
“All except for her eyelashes, eyebrows, and the hair on her head,” Samira chimes in, laughing. She finds Muna’s reaction humorous. Because her mother is foreign, she probably hasn’t been schooled in Arab femininity.
Laila confirms Samira’s words as she peels a fig for Fuad. “That way her husband can see she is pure and virginal.”
“Just like American teenage boys watching porn over the Internet who have learned to dislike pubic hair,” Muna informs the women. “However, that doesn’t stop them from having sex with a ‘hairy’ girl. Afterward they go on Facebook to make fun of her and call her ‘dirty.’ So when it comes to banning hair from the marital bed, the Arabs were obviously ahead of their times.”
“Oh, great,” moans Samira.
“Well,” counters Laila patiently, “sugaring is the fate of brides. Right now women are toasting the happiness of a young girl getting married tonight. They’re filling her head with the same nonsense that my mother told me before my wedding day. ‘Be like a jewel in the palm of your master, or perfume, an odor that entices. You are to please but never demand. If you are too eager, he will only be ashamed. Close your eyes and pray to God it will be over quickly.’”