Women of Sand and Myrrh

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  After some weeks my relations with Suha went beyond those of a teacher and student. She invited me to her house and I made excuses several times before I was frank with her and said that Rashid would lay down the condition that she must visit us first. Suha was delighted and said that she’d rarely been invited into the local people’s houses and had always wanted to see them. The first time she came, I was glad to have the chance to ride in the back of the car next to her but I felt embarrassed to see my teacher chatting uninhibitedly with the Yemini driver.

  I kissed Suha on both cheeks as usual and asked her if we could sit in the garden. I noticed boxes and cases against the wall but it didn’t occur to me to ask who was going away because her house was always changing its appearance and she was always receiving things from abroad. ‘In this heat?’ she expostulated. ‘We can sit on the green grass,’ I smiled. ‘D’you call that grass, and green?’ she asked in a disgruntled way. ‘Even though the wind and sand have left nothing, green or otherwise?’ But she stood up and handed me a glass of tea and went ahead of me into the garden carrying a glass for herself, and we sat down. Suha’s eyes roamed over her garden and she remarked that she could see nothing in it that she wouldn’t be able to see on the other side of the garden wall, but I sat benevolently studying the tomato plant with the green fruit hanging from it, the water in the round plastic basin and the mauve and white bougainvillea on the wall. I didn’t like the scented tea she served but I sipped it all the same. I preferred it well stewed, and Suha had added a Lipton’s tea bag to my glass and left it until the tea became a deep brown colour. I sipped my tea feeling thoroughly happy. I loved foreigners’ houses. They were new and spacious. I began as usual to recount my problems with my brother and the bank, not noticing the listless expression on Suha’s face nor her distracted manner, until she interrupted me: ‘Did you get the paper from the sheikh?’ ‘Tomorrow,’ I replied excitedly. Our eyes met and we both began to laugh, remembering the day not long before when I’d asked to borrow Said and the car and she’d immediately begged to be allowed to come too. ‘I’d love you to,’ I’d replied, and she’d looked as blissfully happy as if I’d opened the door of Paradise to her. I was amazed because I hadn’t come across a person who asked permission like this before. Whenever we had the chance to leave the house we swarmed out like locusts, big and little, young and old. In the car she never stopped asking me if I was upset and if I felt any shame or anxiety. ‘Why should I?’ I asked. ‘Why?’ she shouted back in surprise, ‘When you’re on your way to ask your ex-husband for a divorce certificate after fifteen years?’

  I laughed: ‘What about it?’ I replied. I started to remember the way to the big house; it was the largest one in our area. A sentence escaped from my lips: ‘I hope the garden’ll be like it was before, Suha. It had an oleander and a prickly pear and yellow roses.’

  Suha slapped my hand lightly: ‘You’re impossible, Tamr. Thinking of the garden at a time like this!’

  I began giving directions to Said and we ended up in a dead end street. ‘Obviously you’ve forgotten the way,’ Suha remarked laughing.

  I looked all around me. ‘I don’t know what they’ve done with the road, sister. It’s higher, lower, bigger, as far as I can see.’ Said asked who was the owner of the house and when I mentioned the name, he said, ‘I know him. One of my group of friends is a driver for them.’ Not until we drove in through the open gate did I spy it. We got out of the car. Said went forward and hailed the doorman. There were numerous doors in the tall building which was built around an open courtyard. A woman appeared, crying, ‘Welcome, welcome,’ and kissed us. We followed her up a staircase with a scarlet fitted carpet. As she climbed she talked: ‘The sheikha has lots of nice stories to tell. She’s just arrived from down south. It was some wedding, there was enough food for a whole valley. Welcome to you. The people who couldn’t be there are forgiven.’

  Suha asked me what she was talking about. ‘They had a wedding,’ I replied, then correcting myself I said it again using the Lebanese word for wedding and imitating a Lebanese accent. We followed the woman into the large salon. I went up to the sheikha who wore a dress of gold silk and on her wrist lots of gold bangles set with precious stones which outshone all the gold gleaming around the room. She kissed me on both cheeks and then did the same to Suha, ‘Welcome,’ she said. ‘How are you? Are you well?’ ‘Thanks be to God. How are you?’ I replied. The sheikha leant forward to move the lump of incense in the burner and Suha looked about her. I too took the opportunity to snatch a glance around while the sheikha wasn’t looking. The furniture was new and there was crystal ware and objects made of what looked like silver, a verse from the Qur’an worked in gold, a Ramadan calendar, a stuffed falcon and beside it on a glass table, an arrangement of roses made of semiprecious stones. All this was new to me. Before the room had been no more than a humble sitting-room. Vast sofas stood against the wall. Gesturing towards Suha, the sheikha said, ‘Would the lady prefer to sit on the sofa instead?’ I smiled. ‘It’s all right. My friend’s Lebanese. She was a teacher at the Institute.’ Then I introduced myself: ‘I’m Tamr, Tawi’s daughter.’ The sheikha gasped, her eyes bright. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know who you were. When you got married I was in the south. I was very upset when I heard that you were divorced. I remember, I said to the sheikh, “You divorced Tawi’s daughter? The girl whose forefathers’ blood is one with the desert sand?” How are you? Are you married again? What’s your son’s name?’ ‘Muhammad.’ ‘Ah – Muhammad. And what is he doing? I see, studying. My son Abd al–Rahman married Nimr’s daughter the day before yesterday. You should have seen the bride: she was dressed like they were in the old days and she weighed as much as a camel, God bless her. Couldn’t you have been with us?’

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘I hope they’ll be happy and give you grandsons and granddaughters. But what I came for, sheikha, was a certificate of my divorce from the sheikh. I want to open a workshop and they asked me for it.’

  ‘Fine,’ she answered simply, ‘Ask for anything you want. There’s no problem, Tamr. But tell me, your son Muhammad, was he the one whom Ibrahim’s family kidnapped and then your brother chased after them and snatched him back?’

  ‘That’s right, sheikha,’ I replied smiling. ‘So you’ve remembered.’

  The sheikha sipped her coffee and Suha and I did the same. ‘I know everything,’ she said. ‘When I visit here the women in the house tell me all the gossip.’ Then she turned to the other women and told them the story of my son’s abduction. After some hesitation, because the sheikha wasn’t old in spite of her gold teeth and the streaks of white in her black hair, Suha interrupted, ‘Is the sheikh your son?’

  The sheikha reached out playfully to Suha and gently smacked her hand. ‘No, my daughter. I’m his first wife. And then the oil and the money came and the sheikh wanted more wives.’ Probably realizing that Suha wouldn’t know the Qur’an, she added, ‘The Almighty said, “Marry of such women that please you: two, or three, or four. But if you fear that you cannot treat so many justly, then marry one only …” So he married a second wife.’ There was silence for a few moments, then the sheikha transferred her attention to the other women. I didn’t rise to leave until I’d drunk some cold fruit juice, followed by tea, then coffee, and eaten some cake. I stood up and kissed the sheikha and asked, ‘Shall I come tomorrow to get the certificate?’ ‘Will it be all right when the sheikh comes back?’ she said. ‘He’s gone into the desert for two or three days with a group of his friends to hunt gazelles, but write the year of your marriage and your divorce for me on a piece of paper.’ I wrote the two dates on some paper from Suha’s handbag. As the sheikha took it from me Suha nudged me, and when we got outside she said, ‘What d’you bet that’ll never reach the sheikh?’ I laughed but answered reassuringly, ‘It’ll be all right, God willing.’ I said goodbye to her and, my cheeks flushed, thanked her for coming with me and lending me Said and the car. Suha couldn’t help conveying h
er misgivings to me once more, and I reassured her again, saying confidently, ‘She promised and it’s my right.’ Then she asked me, ‘What do you feel, seeing the house after fifteen years?’ ‘Nothing,’ I answered laughing. ‘It wasn’t my home. I was like a guest in it.’

  I noticed that Suha still looked distracted and had stopped talking. ‘You look as if you’ve got a headache,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it’s the heat. Let’s go inside where it’s air-conditioned.’ I told her what had happened between me and Rashid and how he’d turned down my new plan. Without waiting until I’d finished speaking she burst out, ‘Maybe Rashid’s right. Maybe you’ll lose out, putting everything you’ve got into a dressmaking business, and sewing machines and hair dryers and Filipino women.’

  ‘What else can I do? The schools don’t accept qualifications from the Institute. You have to have a university degree. Besides, everyone complains about the shortage of dressmakers. Women aren’t allowed to be measured. There isn’t even any consultation between a dressmaker and his customer – the little window that he opens between you and him isn’t enough – and nobody buys the ready-made dresses in the shops. How can a woman buy a dress without trying it on? Then there’s nobody to do hair and colour it. Honestly, Rashid’s not thinking about me making a loss. He just wants me to get married. He thinks I’ll bring shame on him. It’s Batul’s fault. She told him about my quarrel with Ibrahim: Ibrahim said to me on the phone, “I don’t want people to say that the mother of my son’s like a woman from one of those Far Eastern expatriate families, doing people’s sewing, and washing their hair. On top of that there’ll be women coming and going. How will my son be able to show his face in public when the authorities come and close the place down?” When I’d heard what he had to say, I lost control of myself completely. The blood rushed into my face and I buried my head in my hands and screamed out loud. Then I took my hands away to see the blood which I thought I could feel pouring from my head and face, and clutched my heart and imagined my hands covered in bruises from its wild beating. I rushed off into my room and tore my nightdress and banged my head against the chest and the wall, and struck my face. Poor Batul couldn’t get hold of me. I took off all my clothes, screaming, “Come and look, everyone. See for yourselves if I’m a slut.” ’

  I took a sip from my glass waiting to hear Suha’s irritated comments and her expressions of sorrow at my situation. But instead of sympathizing she stood up to pour more tea, then as if the words had been on the tip of her tongue for a long time and came tumbling out all at once, she asked, ‘Why don’t you go abroad to live and be free of all this?’

  ‘How can I?’

  With renewed enthusiasm Suha said, ‘Your English friend Mary could put you up for a bit and afterwards something would come along.’ I laughed and patted Suha’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Suha. What are you thinking of? Do you want me to go away and never come back? Leave my country and live in London? What would I do in London? A person away from his country and his nearest and dearest isn’t worth a stick of incense. It’s true I was happy abroad. But how I missed it here! I even missed the humidity and the dust and the heat, believe me. And what would they say about me? That I’d run away. For what reason?’

  Suha said, ‘I’m running away. Look, everything’s packed.’ She pointed towards the wall. I laughed, not bothering to look over at the case and the trunks. ‘Impossible. I don’t believe you. You must just be going on holiday.’ ‘I promise you,’ she replied, ‘I’m leaving in two days and not coming back.’

  Still amused by what I thought was her exaggerating, I said confidently, ‘That’s what you say, but as soon as you find out what it’s like to be away from here you’ll be back.’

  Suha was plainly annoyed at my implying that she had no alternative but to live here, and answered sarcastically, ‘God forbid. I hope I never even see it in my dreams.’

  ‘What’s the reason?’ I asked her. ‘You go to restaurants. You’ve got a car. You go to the pool.’ Then looking about me, ‘You’ve got a big house, air-conditioning even in the bathroom, a garden. No, you’ve nothing to complain about.’

  She sighed, and then almost screamed, ‘For goodness sake, Tamr! Where do you live? Out by the date palms. Of course. You’re well named, aren’t you!* I can’t breathe. There’s no freedom here. You can’t play tennis, go to the cinema, go for walks. There’s no entertainment – didn’t you hear how a crowd of them went to the hotel, dragged the men in the band off the stage, broke their guitars and threw them out? And they told the women to wait in another room.’

  ‘God forbid,’ I interrupted her, ‘Those are just rumours.’

  ‘What do you mean, Tamr?’ she cried. ‘A friend of mine was there. And the trouble was that her husband was away. Imagine if they’d known that she’d come out in the evening without her husband! Thank God she escaped. All the women got out through the window.’

  ‘Why should they keep their mouths shut?’ I retorted sharply. ‘Once when Batul and I were settling up with a supplier a quarter of an hour before prayer time, an old man came into the shop and banged on the table. I shouted at him and asked him what he wanted, but you have to excuse them – there are so many foreigners here.’

  Suha changed the subject; forcing a weak smile she asked me, ‘So what are you going to do?’ ‘You’ll see tomorrow,’ I answered with enthusiasm. ‘I’m going to get a licence to open my own workshop, in my name, that’s if Said can take me and bring me back.’ ‘Said and I are at your service,’ answered Suha. I rose to kiss her on both cheeks. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, darling.’ Suha thought I meant the car and Said, but what I was really grateful to her for was introducing me to another way of life in the desert which I’d known nothing of, starting with colours and furnishings and ending up with civilization. I thanked God that I’d gone to the Institute, had Suha as my teacher, eaten a slice of cake on that white plate with flowers on it, drunk tea with honey in it instead of sugar, which according to Suha was “white poison”, and seen Suha’s canary chirping, flying freely about the house, from her shoulder to the telephone receiver to the chair. It was all new and my mind had picked it up and recorded it.

  * Tamr means ‘dates’ in Arabic.

  2

  ‘Tamr. Not another word! Listen! Don’t turn me into an infidel and make a mockery of my prayers.’

  I was silent. I watched a fly swoop down on to my mother’s hand. My throat muscles tightened. The fly took off again and I sat facing my mother without speaking, watching it hover over her dry white skin.

  ‘Tamr, Tamr. Don’t let me regret the past. Four years …’

  I didn’t want her to finish and I got to my feet irritably. ‘I’m not listening. I’m not listening,’ I shouted, and went into the kitchen. I put the kettle on the stove and waited for the water to boil. I felt as if I had something sweet like Turkish Delight in my mouth and it passed down over my throat muscles, making them relax. If I’d stayed in the other room I would have seen my mother put a hand up to her face to adjust her veil; she would have disengaged a finger to touch her nose and the sweat under the eyes, before shaking it in my face. ‘Four years,’ she would have said, ‘and not a day went by without me saying my prayers, not a year without me fasting; I missed my period and the doctors said, “There’s a child in your stomach,” and I swore to God that I wouldn’t break a fast or miss a prayer. I know my Lord will take this into account on the Day of Reckoning, although while I was pregnant I could have been exempted from ninety days of fasting and about two hundred prayers.’ As usual I would have corrected her: ‘A hundred and twenty days of fasting,’ and, trying to calculate the number of statutory prayers my mother would have prayed in the course of four years: ‘It comes to much more than two hundred.’ I used to enjoy my mother’s stories about how I’d had needle marks on me and been completely bald when I was born, especially since now my hair hung down my back and my eyebrows and eyelashes were thick, and th
ere was no trace of the needle on my hands and thighs as far as I could make out from my mother’s constant intimations; she was for ever grabbing my hand and peering at it, bringing it closer until her face touched my skin, when she would mutter ‘Ha!’ and let it go. But I no longer liked this story of her four-year pregnancy, nor the one of my aunt’s about her daughter Awatef being born with her insides hanging out – imagine her swimming around in the womb with her guts trailing – and the doctors cutting her open and restoring every organ to its proper place. There was another one they told about two cats, sisters, who’d lived in their grandfather’s house, which I didn’t much like either: when the older cat was pregnant the other was jealous and after a while became pregnant too even though she never came out of her place in the box. The two went into labour together, cut each other’s umbilical cords and couldn’t tell their offspring apart.

  I used to look at my aunt and my mother as they finished off the tale and mumbled, ‘God preserve us from the Devil.’ They sat together morning and afternoon whenever my aunt visited the place, which she used to do a lot after she became half-paralysed. Their conversations wouldn’t develop and take off in different directions until after lunch between cups of tea and coffee and fruit juice and biscuits. Each of them wanted to tell her own stories and my mother didn’t listen to what my aunt said, nor my aunt to my mother. This was obvious from the way they behaved; my mother was absorbed in her fingers, my aunt poking about in her ear, then counting the beads on her necklace; or else my mother would get up for no reason and go off into the bedroom or the kitchen while my aunt continued her tales.